Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) (58 page)

             
"This is stupid, Magnus," the battle mage began, but was quickly interrupted as the wizard leapt towards him swinging the fire blade. His own weapon came up instinctively to catch the attack. The smell of burnt hairs on his arm and forehead made the young man's nose itch almost instantly.

             
A second strike and Sebastian nearly dropped his sword as it threatened to burn his hands. The leather smoked from between his fingers. "Sword!" the word triggered thought and flame leapt up the blade even as the third stroke caught his blade with the force of a hammer.

             
Sebastian's weapon shook free of his fingers with the jarring impact. "Shield!" he cried out frantically. A shield shimmered around his left arm. The blue glimmer cast a chill towards the wizard who lashed out once again with his flaming sword. Only a few impacts and the shield began to tear even as Sebastian was rocked back again and again.

             
Suddenly a blast of wind caught the grey forcefully across the chest. The wizard, he noted now, had started chanting and used the sword with only one hand as the second now pointed to where his chest had just been.

             
Sneering down at the fallen student, Magnus frowned and shook his head, "Like I said, I can't figure it out. You may have something on regular soldiers, but it hardly seems worth the effort."

             
"Novitiate Magnus, desist!," a voice called from behind the assembled battle mages. "Anyone can win when he attacks an opponent by surprise. Such behavior is intolerable, however, and cowardly. I will have your teacher notified of your actions here today."

             
A strong looking man dressed from head to toe in black stepped forward and faced the young mage. There was a coldness in his eyes that could chill most men to their souls. Even an arrogant man like Magnus was forced to swallow a moment to regain his composure, but regain it he did and the attitude that flowed from it. "Falconi Garrett, how nice to see you too. Have I done something to warrant your attention this morning?"

             
"I would say so, boy," the demeaning name caused the wizard to flush even more red beneath the sunburn and freckles. "When you attack anyone in White Hall, whether wizard, mage or man, you become my problem or another's. This time it was my privilege. Now apologize and show you have at least a little honor, novitiate."

             
The wizard stood still a moment before looking down and saying, "I'm sorry that I beat you around and I'm also sorry that you aren't good enough to do anything about it, Sebastian."

             
"Magnus!," the falconi growled.

             
"I accept," the grey replied abruptly cutting off his elder. "Next time I won't let you get away with it either, Magnus."

             
A bit of surprise stole into the mage's eyes. A moment later, he answered, "We'll see." The wizard turned away followed by his followers who all shared much the same expression. The door closed and Sebastian busied himself with retrieving his sword and cleaning it before replacing it in its sheath.

             
The students and their teachers moved back to their areas and began again. A new trio stepped into the courtyard with raised eyebrows at the unusual activity of the courtyard. Eyes also strayed to the Falconi standing over the young battle mage.

             
"Why?"

             
Sebastian stood up again and asked, "Why what, sir?"

             
"I told him to apologize and he insulted you. You, however, accepted the insult when I would have demanded more from that arrogant little pup."

             
Shrugging indifference, the younger man replied, "He said nothing inaccurate. I should have been better ready for him. We all know what his kind can do. I didn't fight well. He won. I'll remember for next time though."

             
The older man chuckled though the sound didn't seem like amusement. The laughter never touched his eyes at least, "I suppose you will at that. Let me ask you something though. What will you do to win next time?"

             
The younger man shrugged. "I'll be ready for those tricks at least and expect that he'll try more."

             
The falconi nodded. The young man had a quiet intensity that he had seen only rarely in his years of fighting. He knew from experience that those tended to be some of the best. "I expect that he will. You're Sebastian, correct?"

             
The younger man nodded.

             
"I hope to see you in falcon brown one of these days, lad. Maybe then you can prove that hothead wrong about us."

The Mermaid’s Chest

The four friends jogged down the beach in the direction the boat and two girls had gone. Fighting the urge to run harder and knowing it would be futile if they did, the four hurried along the sand with its broken branches and washed up seaweed forcing them to keep an eye on where they placed their feet.

“You don’t think she’d actually leave us behind for real?” Taylor gasped as she ran near the back of the group. She had never been overly athletic and preferred theater and music to running track, so she had avoided it since the first year of gym.

Emily had firmer control of her breath since she swam and jogged quite often. Wanting to be a sports doctor in the future, the girl felt she should be an athlete as much as possible. Shaking her head Emily spoke loud enough for her friends to hear, “No, if I know her, she’ll figure to get just out of sight before turning around to get us, but then again Faith could let us wait for half an hour before doing it. When she pulls pranks, my little sister tends to go for maximum effect.”

“I’m going to kill them both!” Katie snapped looking somewhere between Emily and Taylor for fitness as they jogged along the beach. “When I get my hands on her…

“She has our food and water too. It’s not like she could have at least left us something.”

Phoebe tried to concentrate on where she placed her feet. Thankfully her friends back home had kept her somewhat active and her breathing was still fine. She still wondered why they were running. Faith would have to come back for them, wouldn’t she? There was no way that the girl would leave them stranded on an abandoned island without food or water.

Even if Faith had a grudge against her sister, Phoebe couldn’t believe that the rest of them would need to be tortured as well, but she had to admit that she barely knew her younger cousin. The past few days the Australian had become close friends to Emily, Katie and Taylor with a lesser degree of time spent with the younger girls. Even so, that hardly meant she or any of the others should be left behind.

Several minutes later as the girls neared a bend in the island’s shape, they spotted the boat drifting near the middle of the channel and the two girls moving frantically onboard.

“Oh no,” Emily gasped, “
she didn’t?”

“Didn’t what?” the other girls seemed to answer in a chorus as their eyes went from Emily to the speedboat out on the water.

Giving a groan and sweep her hands along her cheeks anxiously, the blond leading them answered, “I think she may have broken it!”

A feeling of dread covered them all as they moved to the edge of the sand where the water rose and fell splashing across their bare feet. The four girls standing side by side watched as Faith broke out the paddles. It wasn’t an efficient endeavor and the waves would work against the boat making it that much slower.

Emily stripped back to her swim suit. “I’m going to swim out and try to help them before they drift away.”

Taylor joined her though the second girl wasn’t as strong a swimmer as the trim blond. Both girls pulled their hair back into tails that they tied with flex bands that had been on their wrists like bracelets. With hair out of their way, both girls waded in for several feet before they were up to their waists in the water.

Plunging her upper body into the water and letting her scooped hands push through like an arrow, Emily quickly slid through the channel cutting through towards the speed boat with long, strong strokes. Taylor followed right behind her though at about half the pace of her more athletic friend.

Phoebe glanced to Katie, who still stood beside her and hesitantly asked as her attention moved back to the water and the girls swimming towards the crippled boat, “Should we…?”

The curly blond quickly shook her head. “When they get closer we can wade in and use the anchor’s rope to pull them in. Emily and Taylor can handle it. Besides there are only four paddles so we’d just add weight and get in their way, unless you wanted to try kick paddling behind them to push the boat?”

Scrunching up her face at the idea, Phoebe quickly shook her head. “No, I like your idea better. When they get closer we can wade out to grab the rope and pull them in then.”

The plan decided, the two girls waited for the others. Emily made it to the boat first and gave Taylor a hand up before getting onboard. Everyone could tell that the elder sister was angry at Faith, but the blond haired girl said little about the fact that her little sister had done something reckless and stupid. Instead she set Taylor to work with Brook on one side of the boat and joined her sister using another paddle to paddle from the other.

Sitting a few feet above the water and having to lean over the side of the boat, the four girls struggled for nearly twenty minutes against the tide despite only being a short distance away from the
island to start. The currents fought their efforts refusing to let them take shelter by the island. It was as if the boat had become an uncooperative enemy beneath their feet.

While the girls paddled, Phoebe looked at the part of the island that might end up being their refuge for longer than she could have known when they first arrived that afternoon. Only twenty feet back from the water, the island jutted upward in a forty foot climb to a cliff top. It had a lot of loose stone, the girl thought, though she wasn’t a skilled climber so her guess was hardly an educated one. Vines and other greenery dotted the off white stone and the brown of dirt colored it in places where the cracks were big enough to give purchase.

The sand near where they stood was worn into an odd groove like a river’s bed nearly ten feet across and five feet deeper than the ridges to either side leading back towards the wall of stone. She guessed that at higher tides the water might enter the trough that extended all the way to the steep wall. The wall of the cliff curled a bit coming closer to them on the near side and obscured the end of the trough from Phoebe’s sight, but instead of dwelling further on the land she returned her attention to the water and the approaching boat.

“I think we can get the rope now,” Katie stated grabbing the other girl’s attention from her search.

Emily must have thought the same thing. Abandoning her oar a moment, the girl moved to the anchor and swung it for a decent throw ahead of the boat. With a splash, it sunk quickly and dug into the sand beneath the water unseen. Worries of the tide pulling them back were over as the anchor would be tough to pull free.

Katie and Phoebe waded up to the taller girl’s chest and the smaller blond dove under to find the rope. It still took a few seconds to find the thick cord in the murky water, but Katie was able to pass off the strong strand. Letting Phoebe, who was taller, pull the length to where she could help pull the craft towards shore, the two then began pulling the boat with the rope. Their feet were set in the soft bed of the channel but the boat began to turn as the girls strained to pull the boat after them.

Paddling to assist the girls in the water, the six soon had the boat close enough to shore that the anchor was forced into the sand in the sandy groove which had begun to fill with water as the tide began to rise. The moon was rising in the east even as the sun continued to fall into the west. Time was getting to be a scarce thing and when the daylight left them, the girls would have no hope of fixing the engine or rotor until morning.

Phoebe noticed Emily searching thru the bag she had brought along which held a smaller handbag. Producing her cell phone, the blond flicked it on with an answering chime of music. After only a few moments, Emily’s forehead knotted worriedly. “I can’t get any bars,” she announced in disappointment.

While the other girls on the boat began searching for their own phones, Katie tripped a set of levers on the housing and forced the motor assembly forward. The shaft with attached rotor lifted out of the water revealing a snarl of seaweed and other plant material. Phoebe waded over taking a look at the mess that had been made of machinery.

As Katie began to pull the weeds free, the other girls began to add announcements of their cell phones having no signal.

Emily walked over to the rear of the boat looming over Katie where she worked at the snarl. “How bad is it?”

“The shaft doesn’t appear bent or broken, but I can’t see everything yet,” the wavy haired blond said glanced up with her blue eyes meeting her friend’s gaze.
A slight smile of relief flit across her mouth trying to be encouraging.