“
What is it? What’s wrong?”
Persephone asked. His body language alarmed her.
“
Both of the spare battery
packets are gone. I’m so glad I changed them when I did. We don’t
have backups anymore,” Dr. Stine said. He hoped twenty hours would
be enough.
Alexander exhaled a
high-pitched scream. Dr. Stine and Persephone turned around and
watched a horde of yetis swarm around the boy. He raised his voice
and read a verse from the Bible. Angelique and Razor rushed to his
aid. But they paused when the yetis wobbled on their feet. Their
eyelids grew heavy and they collapsed to the ground. Alexander
continued to read from the Bible until he was certain they were
asleep.
“
Let’s get out of here
before they wake up,” Dr. Stine said.
Alexander stepped over the
outstretched arms and legs of the yetis. He followed Dr. Stine and
the others toward the slope of a tall hill. A layer of snow hid the
path from view, but they remembered where it was. And while they
climbed the hill, Dr. Stine wondered how he’d break the news to
Angelique that he’d lost her spare battery packs.
***
Thirty minutes later, Dr.
Stine raised his hand into the air and clenched it into a fist.
Everyone stopped walking and stared at a wide chasm. Snow and
icicles caused a wood-and-rope bridge, which spanned the chasm, to
sag in the middle. Several nests rested on high ledges above the
chasm. Alexander pointed at winged women, who darted from one nest
to the other and inspected the eggs. Persephone noticed that the
women boasted the heads of humans and the torsos of
birds.
“
Ah, yes! I knew we’d run
into harpies sooner or later!” Persephone said.
“
Are harpies dangerous?
Will they attack us?” Alexander asked. His eyes widened.
“
Actually, I think they’ll
leave us alone. They won’t bother us unless we provoke them. Of
course, they’re known to be thieves. They might try to steal items
from us. But I think they’ll let us cross the bridge without
incident,” Persephone said.
Dr. Stine and Angelique
stood in silence and watched the behavior of the harpies. They
glided through the snow leisurely, obviously not affected by the
cold temperature and the heavy precipitation. When the harpies
hovered above a nest, they counted the number of eggs. Then they
whispered to each other before moving on to the next
nest.
Dr. Stine turned to face
Angelique. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
“
What is it? Is something
wrong?” she asked. She didn’t like the tone of his
voice.
“
Yes. The spare battery
packs slipped out of my pocket while I was dangling from the side
of the cliff. They fell into The Valley of Fire,” he
said.
“
It’s a good thing that you
switched them when you did,” Angelique said.
“
We need to hurry. Your
battery pack won’t last forever. Reverend Stark is chasing
Alexander. Zachary is about to face the guillotine. And we still
haven’t figured out why Xavier stole the battery packs in the first
place,” Dr. Stine said. He chewed his fingernails.
“
And Alexander might become
a werewolf. There’s no guarantee that the antidote will cure him
permanently,” Angelique said. She whispered in a low
voice.
Dr. Stine stepped onto the
frozen planks of the swaying bridge. Icicles dangled from the rope
framework of the structure. Strong gusts of wind caused heavy
snowfall to whirl against him at an acute angle. He lifted his
hands in front of his face to keep the snow out of his eyes. He
glanced over his shoulder and signaled for everyone to wait until
he crossed to the other side. He didn’t trust the bridge and
worried that too much weight might cause it to fall apart due to
the weather conditions.
Dr. Stine glanced over the
edge of the bridge and felt light-headed. His hands grabbed the
frozen ropes when his stomach dropped and a strange, falling
sensation seized him. He looked straight ahead, resisted the urge
to look down again, and quickened his stride. Moments before he
reached the other side of the bridge, he heard a strange, whirring
sound. It sounded like the hum of engines. He turned around slowly
and gasped.
A hovercraft emerged from a
white curtain of snowfall. A tall man, who wore a colorful robe
that boasted zigzags and geometric patterns, steered the hovercraft
with his left hand. In his right hand, he held a fire sword. Flames
rippled up and down the sides of the weapon while the Hovercraft’s
pilot giggled. Spirals of white hair jutted from the man’s scalp in
different directions. Dr. Stine stumbled backward when the man
jumped off of the hovercraft and landed on the frozen bridge. Dr.
Stine noticed that the man wore a leather holster around his waist.
The butt of a nuke gun jutted from the holster.
“
You
blew up
my
factory! You
annihilated
my sweet Desiree! I’m going to make
you pay, Dr. Stine! You’ll learn your little lessons! You’ve got
lessons to learn!”
“
I thought you died in the
explosion! How did you survive?” Dr. Stine asked.
Professor Beauregard held
the sword with both hands and guided its blade through the air. Hot
flames at the end of the blade caused snow to melt and icicles to
disintegrate. The professor tiptoed across the bridge’s frozen
planks and cackled wildly. When he thrust the tip of the sword
toward Laurent’s throat, a surge of heat singed Dr. Stine’s beard,
eyelashes, and eyebrows. The scent of burnt hair lingered in the
cold air.
“
Do I really need to tell
you the details? Fine, be that way! I went into my secret,
underground bunker and found my stash of weapons! Fortunately, an
extra hovercraft was down there also! And now…I’m going to
kill
you!” Professor Beauregard said.
Dr. Stine dodged the fire
sword when Professor Beauregard aimed it at his throat and swung it
through the air. The sword missed decapitating Dr. Stine by
centimeters. Dr. Stine crouched low and charged at Professor
Beauregard’s legs. He wrapped his arms around the insane
aristocrat’s knees and knocked him down. The fire sword slid across
a thick layer of ice and fell through a gap between two boards.
Professor Beauregard screamed while he watched the fire sword
tumble through the air and vanish into a white sea of blowing snow.
He kicked Dr. Stine in the face and bloodied his nose. Then he got
to his feet, yanked his nuke gun from its holster, and aimed the
weapon at Dr. Stine.
“
You shouldn’t be too
concerned about nosebleeds! I always get them at these altitudes!”
He moaned when his hovercraft crashed into the mountain and
exploded.
Professor Beauregard pulled
the trigger three times. One of the radioactive bullets penetrated
Dr. Stine’s left shoulder. Blood oozed from the wound and formed a
wide, maroon stain on his white robe. Another bullet grazed Dr.
Stine’s left temple. More blood trickled from the gash and flowed
across Dr. Stine’s cheek and into his white beard. The third bullet
strayed to the right and impacted an egg in a nearby harpy
nest.
“
It looks like I need to
practice my aim! And now is the best time to sharpen my skills! The
next bullets will go straight into your
brain
!” Professor
Beauregard said.
Dr. Stine listened to the
harpies screech and wail. The sound of flapping wings intensified
when dozens of winged women swarmed toward the nest and mourned the
death of their unborn child. An elderly harpy soared toward
Professor Beauregard and exhaled an eardrum-rattling shriek. More
harpies swarmed from their hidden alcoves and flocked toward the
scene of the murder. Professor Beauregard staggered backward and
aimed the nuke gun at the harpies when they hovered in the air
above him. The elderly harpy hovered near the remnants of the egg
and mourned the death of the unborn embryo. She exhaled a series of
high-pitched noises and beckoned for the other harpies to join her.
A chorus of angry voices echoed in the frigid air.
Dr. Stine listened to
Professor Beauregard scream while the harpies lifted him into the
air with their talons. A blur of wings and blood spiraled in the
blizzard and created red snow. Angelique, Alexander, and Persephone
screamed while they listened to Professor Beauregard beg for his
life. His decapitated head dropped to the frozen boards of the
bridge. It rolled across a layer of ice and snow and created a red
smear. It stopped rolling when it impacted an uneven board in the
middle of the sagging bridge. Then the harpies heaved his skinless,
shredded corpse into the ravine and licked their talons
clean.
***
Fifteen minutes later,
after everyone crossed the bridge safely, Dr. Stine guided the
group to the top of another slope. They located a wide crevice in
the side of the mountain, which provided shelter from the cold wind
and the falling snow. Dr. Stine stretched his arms and legs while
he relaxed on a bed of straw. Persephone crouched next to him and
used tweezers to remove the radioactive bullet from his shoulder.
After she plucked the bullet free from his flesh, she seized a
healing potion from her satchel. She removed the cork and poured
the fluid across the wound. The potion bubbled and felt warm on his
skin. Persephone wiped blood away from the graze on his temple and
poured some of the potion on that wound, also. Then she leaned
forward and kissed him on his lips.
“
You’re very lucky to be
alive. He was aiming at your head,” she said.
“
I know. Obviously, he
didn’t practice at the gun range very often,” Dr. Stine
said.
“
We need to be more
careful. The mountains are dangerous. The yetis could’ve finished
us off easily if Alexander hadn’t put them to sleep. Can you
imagine what would’ve happened if he’d been a werewolf when that
happened? All of us would be dead right now. It’s time for him to
drink another antidote,” she said.
Dr. Stine watched
Persephone open her satchel and remove a flask of yellow liquid.
She stepped away from his makeshift bed and approached Alexander,
who’d fallen asleep on the other side of the chamber. Persephone
leaned forward and shook his shoulder with her free hand. His
eyelids slowly opened and he groaned when he noticed the flask.
When Persephone removed the cork and shoved the flask at him, he
rose to a sitting position and frowned. Then he quickly drank the
antidote, grimaced, and coughed.
“
Thank you, Alexander. And
please keep your Bible handy. We might need your special talent
again. I appreciate how you put the yetis to sleep,” Persephone
said.
“
You’re welcome. And thanks
for creating the antidote. Even though it tastes horrible, I’m glad
it’s cured my affliction. I don’t want to be like my father,” the
boy said.
Persephone strolled away
from Alexander and found Angelique sitting in a small niche near
the front of the deep crevice. Stanley hooted, blinked his eyes,
and sat on Angelique’s left shoulder. Persephone noticed that
Angelique had found a pen and a piece of paper. She scribbled a
message on the sheet of paper until she noticed Persephone. When
she tried to flip the paper over and hide the note, Persephone
snatched it out of her hand and read the cursive script:
To Zachary, My
Love:
We’ve almost reached the
top of Mount Zahn. I should’ve believed you when you told me to be
careful! We encountered a pack of wild yetis. Then Professor
Beauregard caught up to us and almost killed Dr. Stine. A flock of
harpies decapitated him when he accidentally destroyed one of their
eggs. Dr. Stine installed a new battery pack, but it’ll only last
twenty hours. I’m worried that I might not make it to Cadaver
Island. I hope and pray that we’ll see each other again, but death
is the most likely outcome for both of us. I love you, my darling.
Please let me know what’s happening at Thames Keep. Until then,
best wishes.
Yours truly,
Princess Angelique
Bosc
“
So you were going to send
poor Stanley into the blizzard to deliver this?” Persephone said.
She held the note in the air and frowned. Angelique knew she wasn’t
pleased.
“
I need to know if Zachary
is okay. And he needs to know where we are. Stanley can survive in
cold weather. He’s done it many times in the past,” Angelique
said.
“
Are you sure he’ll be
okay? We might need Stanley in the future,” Persephone
said.
“
He’ll be fine. And it
won’t take him long to deliver the message and bring back Zachary’s
response. We’re not that far from Thames Keep,” Angelique
said.
“
Here, Stanley. Take this
to Zachary and be safe!” Persephone said. She folded the note and
offered it to the owl. He clutched it in his left talon, hooted at
them, and flew away.
Alexander ran into the
chamber. Beads of sweat dripped across his pale face. His hands
trembled. He jerked his right thumb over his shoulder and tried to
talk. Slurred words and incoherent sounds rose from his larynx. In
the distance, Persephone and Angelique heard Dr. Stine scream. He
begged for someone to help him. When they broke into a sprint,
Alexander stumbled along behind them and tripped over his own
feet.