Authors: John James Gregory
The Meeratt went out of the room and through an opening in the wall and started up a flight of stairs to a large landing. He stopped in front of a doorway. Iolana strained to see what was inside this chamber, but Khu stopped her.
“Only the men can enter. For what is in this chamber will save him but surely kill you.”
Tom’s hand slid out of Iolana as she smiled at him.
“I will be right here waiting for you.”
“No, you won’t you will be needed elsewhere to help save him.’
Khu turned to Tom as the Meeratt went inside.
“Take off all of your clothes except for your shorts.”
Everyone watched as Tom stripped down to his underwear. Khu turned to the men.
“You may enter this chamber. It will be your job to chain and tie him down. He must not be able to free himself.”
The three women waited outside as Tom and the others entered the room filled with a dim red light. Crosley looked up at the source of the light and it appeared to be a ceiling of crystal and the light came from some source above the room. It was a small room with a large stone cross that was about waist high. Khu looked at Tom.
“You must be tied to this stone cross until your curse is lifted. It will be painful. The women must go on a quest to obtain some
aconite
. That will be needed to complete your cure.
”
“What is aconite?”
“You may have heard of it by a more common name, it is also called
monkshood
or
wolf's bane
.”
Khu looked at the men.
“There are chains and ropes over there. Tom you must lay on your back and the men will secure you to this cross. For only the sign of the cross is more powerful than the sign of the pentagram. Here you will stay for three days. On the fourth day the Wolf’s bane will be used and the pain you will feel will be intense but he has assured me that when that pain passes, you will be cured.”
Tom smiled and mounted the cross. He looked at it and fell on his back against the cold stone under him. The other men secured his feet and hands with both chains and ropes.
“Someone will stay here with you and give you water and insure you do not leave this cross or this chamber.”
He turned to Crosley.
“You may travel back to the others and tell them he will be cured. Your safe passage and the others will be insured.”
Khu turned to the other men.
“Does anyone know what wolf’s bane looks like?”
Jerrick raised his hand.
“I had a group of tourists once in the outback who saw a plant and asked me if it was wolf’s bane. I wasn’t sure so I looked it up on the Internet. It wasn’t monkshood and I found out that those plants don’t grow down here. As a matter of fact, they only grow in the mountainous regions of the northern hemisphere.”
“Good you and Iolana will travel north and bring some back.”
“But there is no way we can travel that far and return in under five days!”
“There is a way. Come let us talk to the women.
Berdy you will stay here and make sure he cannot pull himself off of that cross. I will be right back as well. If it looks like he will break free, shoot him with a tranquilizer dart and fasten him back to the cross.
”
Berdy nodded and continued to pull hard on Tom’s bindings to insure he would not be able to somehow break himself free.
Khu, Crosley and Jerrick came out of the room as the three women greeted them with concerned looks.
“Has it started yet?”
The light behind Khu coming from the room became stronger and more intense as Tom screamed in pain. Iolana wanted to enter but Khu stopped her.
“That is the power of the cross and He who gave up his life on it that will save him. It is also the same power that would destroy the three of you. You must not enter until he is flushed out of that chamber.”
Iolana was curious about the use of the word ‘flushed’. Was it really what Khu meant or was it a flaw in his choice of words in a tongue not normally spoken by him?
“So if one was going to cure, say, one of us, they would not use this room?”
“No. One of us would use a different chamber that has nothing in common with the room Tom is in. Come, you must help Tom in other ways.”
Chelsea was puzzled.
“But Khu you entered the room and you are one of us. Why didn’t it…”
“I will explain that to you later, right now, there are things we must do to save him.”
Khu led the girls, Jerrick and Crosley back to the ledge. After a short set of instructions, Chelsea and Hadiya left with Crosley. Hadiya wanted to go and check on Shawn. Now only Iolana and Jerrick were left to behind to begin a quest to finish the process that Tom began. Jerrick was drained. He had not slept or ate in a long time. Khu looked at the pair.
“Now you must eat and rest. Iolana, do you have your day pack?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He led the pair back into the village and into an empty home.
“You will both eat and rest now.”
Both recognized the Meeratt youth who entered carrying fruits and skins with fresh water. It was the lad they had saved from the mushroom. It appeared to smile at the pair as it laid its food on the floor. He walked over to Iolana and held out his arm.
“Drink of his blood. The veins in his arm are as large as those in one’s neck.”
Iolana looked up at Khu.
“But won’t I…”
“No. Because of his size, it would take much more than you could take to affect him.”
The young Meeratt took his knife and scraped a section of his forearm and poured water over it. He offered it to Iolana who bit into it. It tasted very sweet and when she finished, the creature did not seem at all affected. Khu pointed to a dark entrance way.
“In there is a restroom of sorts.”
“Now all three of you will rest... I will return when it is time to travel.”
The Meeratt followed Khu in the direction of the entrance and lay down in front of it. Iolana felt very sleepy and rolled out her dirt bag and quickly nodded off. Jerrick was asleep just as soon as he finished eating.
The stone door entrance to the ‘red’ room slowly opened. Tom’s hands and ankles were heavily bandaged yet his blood had soaked through. Berdy had set his rifle down and looked at Khu.
“I drained the next two darts in the rifle. They each have only a drop of the sedative. If he wakes before I return, hit him with only one. That will keep him out for a while longer.”
“He is exhausted. I will leave the door open and if he does wake up, you will hear his screams and know that it is time for you to return.”
The large Meeratt with streaked hair closed the door behind Berdy so it would only be cracked open until Berdy returned. Berdy went down the stairs and over to the roofless hut where Iolana and Jerrick were sleeping. He stepped around the young Meeratt they have saved from the mushroom and knelt down next to Iolana. He shined a bright light in Iolana’s eyes and gradually covered it up with his fingers until it was very dim and turned it off. Iolana opened her eyes.
“Damn, I didn’t think that would wake a vampire but Khu was right.”
She immediately propped herself up and looked at the mercenary.
“How is he?”
“He is alive. He has been in much pain but I think the treatment is working. I knocked him out long enough for us to change his bandages. It seems like every hour he starts to transform into a werewolf and pulls frantically on his bindings to free himself but then the cross beneath begins to glow and he changes back to normal. Then we give him water and patch up his self-inflicted wounds and the whole sequence repeats the next hour. Khu says it may be like this for the next few days.”
“I wish I could be with him or comfort him in some way.”
“Dear lady because you are a vampire, that red room would make you react the same way as if you walked out into the high noon sunlight.”
“There have been many times in my ‘deceased life’ that I thought about doing just that.”
“He needs you but not as a visitor, but as the one who gets the wolf’s bane.”
“What does that do?”
“When these sessions pass, Khu can use it to heal all his wounds and at the rate he is tearing through the bandages, he will probably have cut his wrists and ankles to the bone. That plant has the capability of restoring all injuries he has during this process. You must go with Jerrick and bring back a bag full of that plant.”
“But Jerrick said it was only found in the Northern Hemisphere thousands of miles from here.”
Jerrick looked over at the sleeping Meeratt by the entrance.
“According to Khu, those wind tunnels you traveled here in go all the way from here to locations north of the United States. This young one is called Cinnet. He will guide you all the way there and back. You must wake Jerrick now and the three of you must leave soon. Khu thinks you will be there by sundown tomorrow evening if you leave in the next hour.”
Iolana nodded and wiped her eyes and stood up.
“Oh and Khu said to feed on Cinnet’s arm when you get the need to do so. From the way Khu talked he could be your food supply for over a month and the only side effect he would have is to drink more liquids.”
“Do you think Tom will still want me when he is once again normal?”
“You understand I don’t know him that well, but the way he looks at you, I would say he is stuck on you for life. Remember the only reason you knew about this place was because a vampire a long time ago was cured here, not a werewolf. So I am sure that somewhere down here is a room that could cure you as well.”
Iolana looked across at Jerrick and smiled as she daydreamed about a real life.
“A family, a fireplace and growing old together, children… all those things I dream about and never before even remotely thought was possible.”
Berdy took a few pieces of fruit and bit into one.
“I’m going back and you and your friends need to get going.”
“Berdy… thank you.”
“Maybe it is what I do for a living, but life to me has always been very precious to me.”
The mercenary walked around Cinnet and went back up to the ‘red room’.
***
Jerrick laid in a stone gutter in front of the horn that pointed away from the channel in front of the plateau. Cinnet was adjusting the lengths of his straps as his feet dangled off of the side of the channel with his platform.
“You are to hold on to these straps and don’t let go for any reason.”