Authors: Lynn Red
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Hunter said, leaning forward and grabbing Damon’s shoulder. “We got a bunch of people here who I want to keep safe, and we don’t even have our... uh... backup,” he said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Damon snarled. “I know what this asshole is capable of, and I’ve seen these riders before. If they get anywhere near Poko, he won’t stand a chance.”
“Neither will we, out here alone,” Hunter said under his breath.
Damon wasn’t listening. When we should have turned left to Poko’s cave, Damon swerved right, bouncing off the road, and sent a plume of sand up in our wake. That was the first time I heard their engines.
The hum was just the right pitch to make my stomach hurt. I concentrated on the throb in my brain. I hoped somehow to contact Poko and let him know what was going on, that we were here, and so were Blight’s riders.
The dirt in the sky was black and billowy, and blotted out the sun. It was so strange, almost surreal, to watch the line of riders approach, especially now that I knew what they were – who they were. If not for that, if I just saw them riding through the desert, I might just think they were a bunch of bikers, out for a morning ride.
“What are we going to actually
do
?” I asked, to whoever was listening.
The group courage from just a few minutes ago was already beginning to seem a little ludicrous, in the face of what was coming our way.
I counted ten of the riders, though they were just black dots on the horizon. I really, really didn’t like the look of them, or the black cloud of sand, or much of anything else about all this. Without thinking about it, I reached over and took Damon’s hand, chewing my lip.
“I don’t know anything about Blight,” Damon said, his eyes hard and focused. “I don’t know if he’s going to fight, or if he’s just going to shoot fireballs. I just can’t say. But the others, we can deal with. Here’s the thing. They’re old. Like, really old. If you hit them, dismount them, anything, really, they’ll just turn to dust.”
“Dust?” Hunter asked, with a little laugh. “Like, they’re just summoned minions, or something?”
“They might be,” Damon answered. “Never thought of that. But it doesn’t matter a whole lot. They don’t seem to have minds. They just keep coming until they’re dead.”
“Well, that’s good to know anyway,” Hunter said.
I looked back at Cat, expecting to see panic, but she had the most serene, peaceful, almost haunting calm on her face.
“They’re really close, Damon,” I whispered. “Too close. How do they move so fast?”
He shook his head. “Don’t have to obey the speed limit, if you don’t care about paying tickets, I guess.”
Damon shifted his eyes back and forth.
“Do we drive straight into the middle of them?” he asked. “Or do we wait?”
He clenched his jaws tight. Lifting his fingers one after another, he drummed them against the steering wheel.
“Damon, they’re getting closer. I don’t know how much longer we have before...”
Turns out, about that long. A wave of dirt slammed into the side of the Suburban and made it lurch. A second one hit, right afterwards, and before I knew what was happening, we were tipped over on our side. A huge crack split the windshield.
“What was that?” Hunter said, pushing Cat out of the door that swung open with his legs. He dragged himself up, and out, of the overturned wreck as soon as she was free. “I’ve never seen a wind like that.”
After a whole lot of straining, and a whole bunch of cracking glass, Damon managed to break the window, and fish me out.
“I think that wind wasn’t entirely natural,” he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, and letting the chain fall heavily from his wrist to the ground. “Remember,” he said. “Just try to get them off those bikes. They can’t take much of a fall.”
“What about the boss man?” Hunter asked. “That Blight guy?”
“I have a feeling,” Damon said. “That he’s what hit the car.”
Another black cloud roiled, and with it, my guts twisted. This one just moved around us like a normal wind, albeit one full of foul dirt.
The riders were in view, then. They seemed like robots, just staring straight ahead, riding into a fate they didn’t really understand.
Damon clenched his fist, the leather on his glove squeaking against the silver chain. Before my eyes, he and Hunter looked at each other, and then both hunched over slightly, flexed out their muscles, and let transformation take them.
Not all the way, just halfway between wolf and man, the place they liked to be, in a fight. Their muscles swelled, thick and hard, as stiff fur pushed out of their pores. Their jaws elongated, their hands knotted up, then relaxed into powerful, savage-looking claws.
“Ready?” Damon said to Hunter. “They’re almost here.”
“I want to know where the other one is,” Hunter snapped back, a fierce tone in the back of his throat. “The big one, this Blight guy. I’m guessing, if we can manage to control him, somehow, the others will fall into line?”
Damon shrugged.
From behind us, another black, silt-filled cloud blew through. We all covered our eyes and stared into the distance, keeping our eyes on the slowly circling group of bikes, in front of us.
“What are they doing?” I asked Damon, who was still flexed up and tense, like he was ready to pounce. “Why aren’t they coming?”
He shook his head, slowly, from side to side. “I don’t know, but... Lily! Get down!”
Damon shoved me to the ground. I hit the dirt, right before Cat crouched low. Something sailed over our heads. Just above my back, a tire hummed, so close that I felt the air sliding through the treads.
“Shit!” I yelped, covering my head with my hands. “What’s happening?”
Cat’s eyes were just about the size of a pair of saucers, and when the second rider went right over us, she flinched just enough, for his tire to brush against her.
“Ah!” she cried out, reeling in pain from the burn.
Then, right after the sudden burst of activity, all was silent. Very, very silent. Not even Damon or Hunter made a sound.
“You okay, Cat?” I asked.
She reached out and grabbed my hand, squeezing.
“Yeah, it... it hurts some,” she said. “Nothing’s broken.”
Slowly, I lifted my head, and as the dust cleared, I saw why everything was so quiet. Both Damon and Hunter were in the hands of the riders who had just buzzed us. One of them had his hands in Damon’s mouth – the other was strangling Hunter.
They were standing there, totally silent, not moving a single muscle – if they even had muscles. Their bikes were, apparently, just gone.
Damon’s feet were dangling a few inches from the ground, kicking back and forth wildly, bouncing off the legs of the creature that held him like a helpless child.
“Li...ly...” he gasped. “Can you... do...”
A million things ran through my mind. What
could
I do? I tried to concentrate, tried to make my vision go green, but there was too much noise and panic. I couldn’t still my thoughts enough to travel.
“It’s... killing... me...” Damon groaned and swallowed. Breath wheezed when he tried to fill his lungs.
His voice was fading, and fast.
“Cat! No!” I screamed out, as she scrambled to her feet, and ran to Hunter.
It was too late. The leathery, gray werewolf just swung his arm and knocked her backwards. She sailed five feet, maybe ten, before hitting the ground with a hard thud and skidding a few more.
“Any...thing...” Damon groaned. He was starting to gasp and sputter, starting to turn blue.
I pressed my fingers into my temples, trying to channel the energies, like Poko showed me. Our little lessons seemed like an eternity ago.
Suddenly, the one of them holding Hunter roared and cracks started to spiderweb out from the center of his body. The beast opened its mouth in a silent scream, dropped Hunter, and a second later, burst into a cloud of fine dust.
Hunter hit the ground, rolled to the side and lunged forward as soon as he gained his feet. He ripped one of his knives from where it was tied, and drove it straight into the face of the one holding Damon.
The creature’s fingers clenched tight, then released, like the muscles in the thing’s hand were in the middle of a spasm. Damon collapsed onto the ground and sucked a breath as Hunter dragged him backwards.
From the wound Hunter’s knife made, the creature began to glow red, clawed at the hole in its face, and then fell over backwards, exploding into a fine mist before it hit the ground.
“Told you all those knives were a good idea,” Hunter said, trying to catch his breath, as he helped Damon to his feet. “Can’t ever be too—”
“Get down!” Damon yelled, shoving Hunter aside and whipping his chain through the air.
The thing barreling toward him, even though it was on a giant, exhaust-spewing motorcycle, somehow made absolutely no sound. It was like he’d whipped a ghost.
And then, it hit me.
That’s exactly what he
had
done.
Blight brought with him a horde of spirits – shadows of soldiers from a forgotten age. It was almost like they were a cohort from beyond time, beyond space.
The spirits popped in an out of existence, one after another. They’d appear, take a swing, or silently blast through the middle of us, and then vanish again before anyone could strike.
One thing was missing though – Joram Blight.
Off in the distance, a howling, screaming wind began to blow. Almost immediately, my brain started throbbing in my skull, like it was trying to burst out. I fell to my knees, clutching my head and rocking from side to side.
Damon knelt to help me, but as soon as he did, two riders appeared for just long enough to lash him with their long, horrible chains.
He shrieked and threw back his head, enraged. Damon glared for a split-second and reached out, grabbing the tattered cloth hanging from one of them. Just as his fingers wrapped around it, the creature dissipated.
“Damon,” I said. “Don’t bother fighting them. They’re just illusions.”
“What?” he roared. “How can an illusion do this?” He turned his head and showed me the deep, nasty gouge, where he’d been punctured by the chain.
I shook my head. “They have no minds, at all, they’re just... I don’t know, it’s almost like they’re ghosts, or maybe memories of the past.”
One of them appeared right behind me, so close that I felt the mist emanating from him. He reached for me, his hands wrapping around my wrists. I started to scream, but stopped myself.
“Surprise him,” I mouthed to Damon. “Act like you’re scared.”
He gave me a confused look, but did what I said. Covering his face, Damon moved forward slowly, shouting that he wanted to give up.
“Take... us... to... the elder,” came a voice so ancient, so strange and brittle, that I imagined it could come out of an Egyptian mummy.
I nodded to Damon and writhed as the creature’s fingers bit into my wrist.
“Yeah, of course,” Damon said. Just... just don’t hurt me! Or her!”
The wraith looked at me, and then at him. As soon as my feet hit the ground, I ducked and rolled, and Damon swung his chain like he was trying to take a tree down. It wrapped around the creature’s neck, and then he yanked, ripping it through. The creature shrieked, and vanished.
That seemed to make the other ones mad.
One after another, the spirit soldiers materialized and lunged, and, one after another, Damon and Hunter swung their knives, their chains, and sometimes each other. One would duck, and the other covered him.
Damon fell, and in the instant before a ghost cycle crushed his throat, Hunter lashed out with his sword and chopped the monster in two. With a really obnoxious grin, he helped Damon to his feet.
“What are we supposed to do?” Damon gasped, between attacks.
A blast of wind slammed into me from the left. Another struck me in the right. I sucked a breath, but that just made it hurt worse. The air seemed to be pushing on my lungs from the inside out, stretching and aching, like something was trying to force its way out.
Against all reason, I exhaled, and got a moment’s relief.
“I think... keep swinging... It’s... draining him.” It was all I could do to wheeze that out in between fighting my own lungs.
“Huh? Draining who?” Hunter shouted, as he whipped that ridiculous sword off his back, and cut another ghost wolf in half.
Hunter’s hands were red and swollen from the silver dust the creatures seemed to leak, but he wasn’t stopping.
“Blight?” Hunter asked.
I took another breath, and then fell on my side, clutching my ribs. Exhaling had stopped working. I just couldn’t physically force the air out of my lungs. I tried screaming – I tried to shout, to blow out – but, it was like my lungs were just going to explode.
I just started weeping. Partly out of desperation for something to relieve the agony in my chest, and partly because, well, I felt like crying. It turned out to be the only thing that worked.
The harder I sobbed, the less I hurt, like I was controlling the energy floating around us.
“Lily!” Damon shouted. “Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it! These things... whatever they are, they’re...”
He paused to duck a wild drive-by chain, and whip the rider in the back.
“They’re getting slower,” Damon shouted. “They’re not disappearing so fast. I think we’re killing them!”
What he said made me freeze. If anything was going to work...
Amidst the chaos around me, I summoned the last of my courage. Crisscrossing my legs and balling up my fists, I centered myself, just like Poko taught me. I closed my eyes, and almost immediately the sounds of fighting, the whipping wind, and the skinless ghosts trying to kill me, just melted away.
The entire world became an ebb and flow of energy, a gentle and even flow, of spirit and life. I took a breath, and a ripple spread from my lips outward when I blew it out.
With my new clarity, I realized that Blight was in the only place we never bothered to look.
Up
.
––––––––
S
traight up, a mile off the ground, I saw a writhing, monstrous cloud. It was a swirling mass of sparkling black, shot through with a sickly, pale gray. Deep inside it, there was a face that I knew as soon as I saw the dangling braids.