The Blood Witch (The Blood Reign Chronicles Book 1) (3 page)

Jak lay there stunned, covered with dirt and debris, struggling for the air that had been forced from his lungs. There was something heavy lying across his chest which was not making catching his breath any easier. Whatever it was across his chest seemed to be a branch or root or something of the sort. Where it had come from he didn’t know, but ironically thought it would have come in handy a few moments ago when they had been
looking
for one.

Clearing the debris and struggling to his feet, Jak was amazed that he wasn’t hurt very badly, with only a few scrapes and bruises but nothing too serious. Thankfully, the ground shaking had finally stopped and he realized all was calm again.

He called out to Brigette, but there was no answer and his heart sank in despair. Fearing the worst, he frantically clawed through the debris, tossing aside rocks and dirt calling for her, but there was still no answer, only an eerie silence broken only by a lone pebble bouncing down the slope.

Precious moments ticked by, and Jak’s heart began to race against it, when a faint noise off to his left caught his attention. The faint scraping noise that he could hear, made it clear that there was something under the rocks and dirt that had fallen from the cliff face, and was now buried in rubble. He scrambled to the place where the noise was loudest and began to hastily clear away the rubble.

After frantic moments, he struggled to lift the last large rock, but nearly jumped out of his skin and stumbled backwards when he saw what lie beneath. To his horror, it was the ridge cat, still breathing and struggling to get free of the rocks and debris to reach him. Desperately he grabbed a nearby stone and began to smash it wildly against the skull of the trapped cat in an attempt to stop it.

For all Jak knew, Brigette was dead now, and it was this stupid cats fault. But then again, if the cat hadn’t chased them up the cliff, they would have been right there at the base of the ledge, possibly asleep when the earth shaking came and they both would have been buried under all the rocks and dirt. The thought provided no solace to Jak.

Moments passed and Jak realized his face was wet and sticky. In his panic and anger, he had thoroughly crushed the cat’s skull to a bloody unrecognizable pulp. Now blood was running down his face and into his eyes, but not all the wetness on his face was the cat’s blood. Some of it was his own tears mixing with the blood from the cat, making pink trails down his cheeks.

Jak dropped the bloody stone and sat there motionless, letting the smell of the blood permeate his senses. It was an awful putrid smell to him. He had never gotten used to that pungent smell of fresh blood. Growing up in the small village of Elsdon, they had to grow most of their own food. Some of the food they ate came from the livestock they raised and butchered. Jak had helped his father and brothers clean and butcher many animals, including cows, chickens, deer, and elk, but he could never get used to the smell. The odor of the blood always turned his stomach and made him want to gag.

“Are you going to help me, or just sit there?” It was Brigette’s voice that spoke the words, but was Jak just imagining it? He raised his head slowly in disbelief, glancing around hopefully, when he spotted Brigette laying several paces off, half covered in a heap of rubble and debris.

“Well?” she said indignantly. “Are you going to help me or not?”

“S-Sorry, I didn’t know where you were…...I thought you might be…….are you okay?” Jak responded in a flood of relief and confusion.

“Yes, I think I’m okay,” she said with a slight grimace of pain, “but I think my leg might be broken. If you would get off your behind and come and help me get this rock off of it, then I might be able to stand up and see.”

Jak leapt to his feet and rushed to her side, a feeling of elation surging through him at finding her alive after all of this. He gently cleared the debris and lifted the rock that had her leg pinned. Her leg was scratched and purple with deep bruises, but it didn’t look as if it was broken. Other than her injured leg, she was in remarkably good shape considering what had just happened. Her red hair and face were covered in dust and dirt and she looked a mess, but she only had a few other scrapes and bruises. However, Jak knew because of her leg, he would either have to try and carry her back home tomorrow or go to Elsdon to bring help. She would be in no condition to walk very far by morning when the soreness and stiffness from the injury set in.

“Oh no! Are you hurt, Jak?” Brigette asked as she took his head in her hands, peering up at him with worry in her eyes. “You are all covered in blood!”

Blood did cover Jak’s face, and there were even specks of blood in his dirty blond hair. “It’s not my blood,” Jak said softly with downcast eyes, “it’s from the ridge cat over there. I – I got carried away. I was angry when I thought you might be…dead.”

“Shhhh,” Brigette said softly, smiling up at him, “it’s okay. Are you sure you aren’t hurt?”

The way she was staring into his eyes and her soft hands on his face made Jak’s heart race and his hands sweat, and the whole thing was beginning to make him feel … uncomfortable, but at the same time exhilarated.

“I’m fine. I only have a few cuts and bruises but nothing too bad,” Jak said, as he slowly pulled his head free from Brigette’s delicate grasp. When her hands left his face he immediately regretted pulling away. He wanted to feel the exquisite, comforting touch of her hands again.

“Well, I’ll take care of you when we get back home,” she said with a sly grin. Jak returned her smile as their eyes locked again. It was several moments before he realized what he was doing; the awkwardness returned and he quickly turned away to clear his throat roughly.

“What
was
that?” Brigette asked, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence. “It felt like the whole ground was shaking apart.”

“I don’t know,” Jak replied, shrugging his shoulders, “I’ve never heard of anything like that happening before.” As he shrugged, dust fell from his short cropped hair, although the dust didn’t do much to change the color of his hair.

Jak surveyed the surroundings, which were now bathed in a somewhat unsettling pale blue moonlight. All was completely calm and subdued now. Everything was very quiet…. too quiet. It was as if all the animals and birds in the mountains had fled or were too frightened to make a sound. It was strange since there were always sounds in the mountains, crickets chirping, raccoons and other small animals foraging for food, owls screeching as they hunted. It was never this completely quiet and still. It suddenly made Jak’s skin crawl, and left him with a decidedly lonely feeling, as if they were the only ones left alive in the world.

As Jak looked around, he could see rocks and boulders strewn everywhere as if a giant hand had scattered them across the landscape. Large sections of the cliff had simply fallen down and now lay in heaps on the valley floor. The tops of some trees had snapped with the violent shaking, and some of the older weaker trees had toppled over completely and now lay on the ground like corpses strewn across a great battle. He thought it a wonder that they were still alive with all the destruction that surrounded them.

After a moment, Brigette dusted herself off as best she could then attempted to stand and test her injured leg, but it turned out to be too tender to bear her full weight. Jak stepped closer to help support her weight, but he had to stoop over since he was so much taller than her.

Jak, at only sixteen was taller than his father and even his older brothers, as well as most of the men in the village. Brigette, on the other hand, was fairly petite and short compared to most of the other villagers in Elsdon, not to mention Jak. Their height difference made helping her a little awkward, but she reached up and put one arm around his neck for support. It would be slow going, but they needed to get away from this place and find some real shelter for the night.

The pair swung wide away from the cliff face to avoid the boulders and rocks that had fallen in heaps from the terrible shaking. The ground continued to shake on occasion, but nothing compared to earlier. All the same, it was still nerve-racking, not to mention unsettling, made worse by the fact that their progress to find shelter was arduously slow. Jak could tell that Brigette was in a lot of pain from her injured leg, but even so, she never complained about it. Her arm around his neck, and her body against his for support was feeling much better to him than it should considering the circumstances. He began to feel guilty for the pleasure it gave him just to feel her body against him.

As Jak was looking over the devastation, attempting to find a suitable shelter for the night, something caught his eye. It looked like a cave just a few hundred paces up the valley. He had never seen it there before and could barely make it out over the distance, but in the bright moonlight it was visible, and he was sure it was a cave. The rock slides must have uncovered the entrance, since Jak was certain it had never been there before tonight.

“We’ll head for that cave up ahead,” Jak announced, trying to sound reassuring.

“Cave? What cave?” Brigette asked, as her limping seamed to get increasingly worse with each step she took. Jak now had to support more of her weight than he had been just a few moments before.

“It’s just up ahead there a little ways,” he said, motioning in the direction of the cave entrance. “Do you think you can make it that far?”

“Oh, I see it now. Yes I can make it,” Brigette’s voice was strained with pain and fatigue from the long day and her injury, not to mention almost getting killed by a ridge cat, and a treacherous fall from a cliff.

The pair hobbled haltingly toward the cave entrance. Jak was well aware that he needed to get Brigette off her leg very soon since it must be throbbing with pain by now. As they neared the spot, he noticed something odd about the place. There was what appeared to be cut stones lying about near the entrance of the cave. Stumbling closer, he could make out many rectangular cut stones lying around the entrance to the cave in disarray, as if a wall had fallen down.

The houses in Elsdon were made from stones like these here. Most of the houses in the village had been built many, many years ago, long before even Jak’s grandfather had been born. Whenever the houses or structures needed repair, or an addition to make room for expanding families, the villagers would use stones like these. For some reason there was an abundance of square-cut stones in the area around Elsdon. Some of the stones were much too large to use for their houses, but there were plenty of smaller ones, enough to build many more houses and buildings than the small community needed. They would lay the stones one on top of the other with a thick clay mud between each layer to hold them together. The stones here were just the same as the ones in Elsdon, and Jak wondered what these were doing way out here.

“You wait here,” Jak said as he helped Brigette to sit down on a large rock a little ways from the entrance to the cave. “I’ll go in first to make sure the way is clear.”

It was a measure of her distress that she didn’t protest about being left outside. Normally, she would insist on going in with him to explore the cave. Brigette’s fiery disposition and boldness was a match for the color of her hair, but now she sat down on the rock and waited in compliance while Jak scouted ahead.

Jak wasn’t sure what he was going to see in the darkness of the cave, but at least he could feel his way around a bit and make sure no wild animals had taken up residence there before he brought Brigette inside. There had already been enough surprises for one day and he didn’t want any more right now.

He had to hunch over slightly to fit through the small opening that was still partially obstructed. As he was passing through, he noticed that some of the square stones were still in place around the opening, like a partial wall, and was blocking part of the entrance. Looking closer, he realized that the cut stones apparently had been used at some time to wall up the entrance to the cave and seal it off, but he couldn’t understand why someone had taken the time to seal off the cave.

When Jak was a young boy, his grandfather told him stories of mines in these mountains of Hlifglynn around Elsdon. His grandfather had said that long ago the great King Arlund had his men dig mines where they would look for gold and other precious metals and gems. But Jak’s grandfather had told him other stories of how Elsdon had once been the site of the great castle Bothvan, where King Arlund ruled the whole world. Supposedly, that’s what all the cut stones that were lying around Elsdon were from…. remnants of the great castle that once stood there long ago. Jak had always believed that his grandfather’s stories were just that, stories to entertain the children, but now he wasn’t so sure. Maybe his grandfather was right about all of it, but doubt still lingered in his mind that his Grandfather’s stories could actually be true.

Jak pulled himself back to the moment, since his grandfather’s stories weren’t what was really important right now. Crouching down so he could fit through the partially blocked entrance, he took a few hesitant steps inside with his hands outstretched in front of him, feeling his way through the blackness of the interior of the cave.

After a moment, his eyes began to adjust slightly to the darkness of the cave. There was just enough moonlight coming through the opening to allow him to just barely make out some of the interior walls. There appeared to be a fair size chamber before him.

An uneasy feeling about this place began to creep up on him making shivers run down his spine. The air was dank and musty, and something just didn’t feel right, but he didn’t really have any other choice. This was the best place they were going to find in the dark and Brigette needed to lie down and get some rest. Besides, it was probably just his imagination and unease from all the strange events of the day.