Storm of Prophecy: Book 1, Dark Awakening (30 page)

It was better than death.

Other than his own footsteps and rustling, the night became quiet. Vincent often had trouble keeping himself balanced while he carried Stacy, and it seemed to get worse the further he went. His ability to function seemed to be wearing down, and the flame at his knife point began to flicker. Despite this, he kept a steady pace to ensure that they weren’t found and that the night stayed quiet.

Hours later, dawn began to creep through the darkness, blanketing the area with a dim gray ambience. The scent of damp pine needles, leaves, and moss filled his lungs. Birds began to chirp, and the crisp morning air was filled with their song. A gentle breeze whisked through bushes. Between exhausted, foggy breaths, Vincent’s mind only barely registered the additional light enough to make himself cut the flow of magic to his knife and put it away. Able to hug Stacy’s legs with his right arm, he lessened the tension on his left and it felt stiff afterward.

Not long after this, he reached the edge of the forest, and they emerged into a sea of tall dead yellow grass, sparsely punctuated by clusters of wild brush. The direction he needed to go was somewhere to the right along these woods-that was where the road had ended. He turned slowly with Stacy atop him and started off, feeling like he had to look back upon a distant memory to realize that this was the way to go, even though it had only been earlier that night.

He was able to walk on for only a short time before deadly terror abruptly pierced every fiber of his being. He heard the familiar, loud roar bellow in his ears a decidedly uncomfortably close distance behind him. The instant it did, his panic took over and he ran and launched both himself and Stacy back into the nearby woods. No sooner had he, than an enormous black-winged form swept by through the air in his right peripheral vision.

He crashed hard on the ground with an unconscious Stacy. He glanced back behind them and noticed the wyvern making a circle in the air to come back toward them. It had been waiting for them to leave the forest and now knew exactly where they were. He could not hope to outrun it, with or without his injured friend. In a vain attempt to provide Stacy with shelter and concealment, Vincent hurriedly pulled her over and stuffed her limp form into some bushes behind a tree. Then he stood and drew his sword, the metal scraping sound filling the air. He held no illusions that this was going to be anything other than a fight to the death.

There would be no hiding.

Past the edge of the tree’s trunk, Vincent saw the wyvern’s black slit yellow eyes atop its black scaly head peering right down at his place in the forest as it made its gliding descent. It no doubt knew where Stacy was as well. Given the choice, Vincent decided that he would much rather die first than die second after watching the beast rip her apart in its jaws.

Summoning inner strength he didn’t know he had, Vincent strode purposefully toward the outside of the forest. Aggressive feelings as well as fear churned together as one within him as he put himself between the wyvern and Stacy’s place of concealment. It was going to
have
to kill him first. His eyes glistened from the altruism, his chest heaved in anger, and his muscles tensed while he gripped the sword so tightly that it felt like the metal wiring on the hilt was cutting into his hand. In his quiet, fearful rage, his mind became alert and he prepared himself for the final battle of his life.

A slow and surreal moment passed after he had stepped beyond the last tree, out into the open, and the black wyvern flapped its wings and came to a landing before him, a deep, rumbling, guttural snarl escaping its long, pointy teeth. The two stared at one another for only the tiniest of moments that seemed like an eternity while Vincent lifted his blood stained, battle-worn blade in both hands.

The instant it began to open its mouth with green flame caressing its teeth, instinct took over, making Vincent jump and roll to the side in order to avoid its blast. Because of his training and coordination, the maneuver was not detrimental; he used his momentum to come back to his feet and square off with the beast once more. The wyvern immediately turned its head toward him. This time it chose to attack by snapping at him with its jaws, hoping to bite him in two. Vincent denied it by making a lightning quick side step and hacking at the side of its mouth. The sword scarcely cut into its scaly hide at all, and it snapped at him again. His blade unintentionally slid between its teeth and deeply cut the soft underside of its mouth when he jumped backward and countered with an upward swing. The force of the jump made him fall backward.

At the exact same time that the wyvern jerked its head back in pain, Vincent scrambled off his back and onto his feet with incredible speed to ready himself for its next strike, and was only barely in time. Aggravated by its prey’s painfully sharp defiance, the wyvern flapped its wings angrily and opened its jaws to let out another horrific blast of green fire. Vincent bolted around it to the right in a circle to avoid the streaking blaze that it chased him with, running closer as he did to increase the distance it needed to turn its head for aim.

Filled with utter madness and bloodlust, Vincent heated his blade red hot, enough to cut through metal, and charged in further. Before he could get close enough to hit the gray scales on its underside, they wyvern hopped back a step like a bird and tried to snap its jaws onto him again. Furious at the delay to his satisfaction, Vincent swung upward angrily and caught the tip of its forked red tongue and several of its lower teeth, cutting them off about halfway. Its upper ones were unaffected and speared painfully several inches into his upper back and shoulders, forcing a yell of anguish from his throat. The points slid against bone and he dropped to his knees in agony.

The wyvern recoiled its head again with a roar after suffering an agony of its own and then seemed to notice that it had gained the upper hand. Vincent wished it would try to bite him again so he could make it hurt more, but he knew that it had learned better. The beast began opening its now deformed jaws, and bright green flame began blossoming from deep within its mouth, illuminating in that brief instant the pink tissue inside. Vincent watched, knowing it was the last thing he would see.

In the next split instant just as the blast was clearing its mouth, a huge boulder suddenly clouted the side of its head with enough speed and force to knock it aside and send the horrific green streaking blaze shooting far off through the sky to Vincent’s right.

“Get away from him!” He heard his cousin yell at the wyvern in a strained voice, falling to one knee. “You bastard!” Vincent knew it must have taken everything Karl had to throw that boulder; there wouldn’t be another.

Against the terrible pain in his badly pierced and bleeding back, Vincent let his full fury wash over him like molten steel to the point of insanity and forced a renewed attack. Pure rage made him ignore all pain as he yelled angrily like a madman and rushed in to swing his heated blade hard at the creature, over and over again. Its hide was so tough that the long, ragged scars which streaked across its scales dug in only superficially into its flesh yet inflicted enough harm to make the wyvern back up several steps. It still hadn’t recovered from the dazing blow to its head and was starting to panic from this new onslaught. Vincent swung mercilessly, his crazed wrath convincing him that he could kill it, that he would kill it.

In its confusion, even as it retreated and tried to get its bearings on where Vincent was, Karl used his power to rip from the ground and hurl wet grass-strewn clumps of sod into its face again, missing its eyes on the first attempt, but not on the second. “I said get away!” He shouted again angrily. Pieces of the wet mud and grass roots fell from its head around Vincent but were barely even registered in his consciousness, his only thought being to kill, to cut, to strike down.

Finally realizing that this quarry was most certainly not worth the trouble, the battered, blinded, and scarred wyvern began to turn around and flee. As it did, Vincent viciously kept hacking at it, making a small cut at the base of its right wing and hacking at its tail as it ran to take flight once more. It tried to swat him away with its tail, but he rewarded its effort only by bringing his sword down on it, the powerful impact making the blade cut in deeper even as he was pushed away. The tearing off motion removed some of the force with which he was flung away. He felt the wind knocked out him as he landed hard on his side.

He couldn’t see above the tall grass as he lay dizzy and winded, yet he heard the flaps of its wings and was able to tell that it was gone at last. Before he knew it, Karl was standing behind where he lay. He cursed at seeing all the blood and asked if Vincent was still alive.

“I’m still here…” Vincent murmured.

Karl cursed again and was beginning to panic. “Those bite marks are huge! There’s no way we’re going to get back before you bleed to death!” He cursed again. “And what the hell happened to Stacy! Where is she!”

Vincent fought the pain the motion brought and took out his knife, heating it red hot. He had trouble getting his words out between pained breaths. “Stacy’s…behind a tree…here, take this and press it on…press it on…before I run out of time.”

Karl understood without him explaining it, and cursed obscenely again before taking the knife carefully by the handle as if he wanted nothing to do with it. Vincent clenched his teeth shut, this time making sure his own tongue was behind them. He could not see it but immediately felt the intense, burning, searing agony as the flat of the blade was pressed to his flesh. Karl had not bothered to take off Vincent’s shirt since he was in a hurry, yet still seemed able to find just where the applications were needed. Vincent sweated profusely and gritted his teeth hard each time it was pressed. Somehow, his pride at being strong enough not to lose consciousness from it was small solace; the pain was making him wish he wasn’t quite so strong.

A new worry hit him. “Make sure they’re seared all the way shut,” he said through gritted teeth.

“I am, I am!” Karl replied. “Just hold still, damn it!” He could tell that his cousin wasn’t having very much fun with this either.

After he was finished, he returned Vincent’s glowing knife and helped him stand. Enormous pain shot through Vincent’s back as he bent down to pick up his sword and return it to its scabbard. He managed but still felt dizzy, and his vision was distorted somewhat with tiny specks flying around that only he could see. He felt pain in his ribs with each breath, but the breaths made the specks go away.

“Where’s Stacy?” Karl asked again.

Vincent painfully lifted his right hand to point. “She’s back there. Come…I’ll show you.”

Sensing his trauma, Karl walked slowly with him back toward the spot on the outskirts of the forest where he had hid her, using his hands to help steady Vincent’s balance. He also did not appear to want to hurry, Vincent could tell, because he too was clearly exhausted. On the way, Vincent kicked at a long tooth fragment he had cut from the wyvern. A slight wind rippled the grass and Karl’s green robes. The gray cloudy sky brightened its bleak overcast the slightest bit.

When they got to Stacy, her face was pale and she appeared in just as bad a shape as before. Her skin around the top of her neck had blackened scars where Vincent had put his heated knife to stop the bleeding. Long wet brown hair matted the sides of her face and was covered in charred spruce needles and forest debris at the top, clogged with mud and blood toward the bottom. Her dress was soiled with it even more, bearing the signs of every fall she had taken with him, and there was still a crimson smear on her side from the neck stump of the zombie that crashed into her. She lay motionless and restful, her scraped up and cut face somehow retaining its beauty despite her ordeal.

“What happened to her?” Karl asked. “She’s not…is she?”

“No.” Vincent leaned his shoulder on the tree next to her, taking his breaths slowly and conscientiously, barely able to stand. Karl looked back to him silently with a curious and concerned expression. Vincent regretted saying the next part through his pained breaths but had to. “I don’t think…I can carry her any longer…could you please…?”

Karl held up a hand to reassure him. “I’ll take care of it.”

Just as he bent over to grab a hold of her, Stacy began to stir again, moving her head to the side slightly. She let out a small moan. Karl’s hands completed their journey to her upper arms and she let out another moan behind her closed lips. Her blue eyes opened slightly.

“Vincent?” She asked weakly, not seeing who it was.

“I’m here,” he whispered in reassurance from above them. “So is Karl…we’re going home.”

She let out a faint moaning grunt of a breath through her nose. “We’re not back yet?” She asked in barely conscious delirium.

“We will be soon…just hang on a little longer.”

“Can you stand?” Karl asked. “Here, let me help you to your feet.” With her barely audible voice, she accepted his assistance and he gently lifted her up.

Vincent wondered about their other friend. “Have you seen Rick?” He asked while Karl did this.

“No. Have you?”

Vincent was beginning to fear the worst. “We saw him get attacked by a mob of undead just before we escaped,” he replied in disappointment. “I hope he’s still alive.”

“He should be, knowing him. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

Vincent sighed and turned his head away. Stacy had already come far too close and was still in danger; the thought of losing another of his friends was unbearable. He wanted to help him but knew there was nothing he could hope to do. If Rick was even alive, then he was just going to have to make it back on his own without them.