The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3) (29 page)

“
I’ll be fine.” Jake squared his shoulders.
Think Viking.
He lifted his chin a notch. “It’ll be fun.”

“That’s the spirit, kid.” Pride flashed in Derek’s eyes. He
tousled Jake’s hair. “Just stick close to Red and me. We’ll keep you safe. Stay between us. Whatever happens, don’t get separated from the group. And, ah, don’t drop that wand.”

“Believe me, I won’t.”

It was the only real defense they had against the gargoyles.

“Good. Let’s go.”
Derek strode ahead of him, waving toward the others while Jake followed, clutching the magical twig from a yew tree.

The Guardian turned to his troops. “All r
ight, you lot. If anyone gets hurt down there, yell for Red. His feathers have magical healing powers; he’ll give you one, and you should be all right. Of course, not even gryphon feathers are going to help if you let yourself get eaten, so stay sharp. Everyone ready?”

Jake looked around at their team: one towering Order knight; six grim-faced d
warves with axes gleaming (except for Emrys, who was carrying a sledgehammer instead, on account of the smashing part); a black leopard with greenish-yellow eyes agleam; a lion-sized Gryphon with claws bared, ready for battle; and one twelve-year-old boy trying to act like he wasn’t scared.

Jake hid a private gulp. Everyone said they were ready
to go. Even Leopard-Helena let out a low feline snarl.

Derek sent his ladylove a pointed look. “Don’t do anything foolish down there,” he warned her.

She growled at him in answer.

No doubt they were both wishing her twin brother Henry were with them
, too; the boys’ mild-mannered tutor was terrifying in his other form as a mighty wolf.

They would just have to do without him. And without Aunt Ramona and her formidable magical powers…

Then Derek lowered the Vampire Monocle onto his eye. “All right, then. Let’s do this.”

He signaled for them to follow, and with that, the whole team ventured into the Harris Mine.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Monsters in the Mine

A
s they walked deeper into the coalmine, everyone continually scanned the inky blackness all around them.

Jake gripped the wand like a weapon while his pulse pounded in his ears
. At any minute, he half expected some unholy beast to come charging out of the shadows.

So far, nothing.

Still, the place was impossibly eerie with all the workers gone, the machinery quiet, the coal carts parked on the tracks, and the drip-drip-dripping of unseen rivulets of water trickling down the walls.

Heart-stopping echoes
of faint noises whispered to them from the distant ends of every tunnel.

F
ollowing the coal cart tracks on a steep downward slant, they pressed on. The mine grew darker with each step. Just beyond the feeble glow of the dwarves’ few torches, it was as black as the coal the crews pulled out of here each day.

Jake wished he could see better in the dark.
Everyone else had excellent night vision. The dwarves were used to working underground. Helena was in her feline form and everyone knew cats could see perfectly at night. Likewise, Red was half-lion, with sharp eagle-eyes, and Derek was wearing the Vampire Monocle.

He
must have sensed Jake’s uneasiness, for he took it off and handed it over. “Here.”

“No, that’s all right—”

“Take it. I’ve got my Guardian instincts. Supernatural senses, remember? I should have thought of it before.”

“Are you sure?”

“You need to be able to see what you’re doing when it comes time to use the spell.”

“Good point.”
Jake accepted it gratefully and strapped the Vampire Monocle around his head, then fixed the camera-type lens over his eye.
That’s better.

At once, his surroundings appeared greenish-charcoal-gray instead of pitch-black.

He could finally see his companions, too. He saw the feathers on the back of Red’s neck standing up, like they always did when he was in battle-mode, then he noticed Emrys somehow reading the map.

“This way,” the head dwarf told them.

They turned to the right, continuing on a smooth downward angle deeper into the mine.

There was some sort of
square wooden structure ahead. Leopard-Helena meowed in warning.

A moment later, Jake, too, could smell the blood.

He squinted toward the structure. “It’s the pit ponies’ stables.”

And that splash of darker color on one of the stall doors was apparently blood.

“That must have been where the pony was attacked,” one of the dwarf warriors said, pointing.

Derek shook his head. “Daft keeping horses down here.”

“We’re getting closer. Let’s find a good place to set the bait,” Emrys said in a grim tone.

Red trotted ahead of them and quickly located a
good spot for their ambush: a junction where two coal cart tunnels met, with a tall, round ventilation shaft high above it.

Jake frowned at
the four-way intersection. “Won’t this give them an easy escape? They’ve got four tunnels to choose from as their getaway path.”

“Yes, but what interests us
more for the moment is to see which direction the gargoyles will arrive from when they come to take the bait,” Derek said. “That should tell us where they’ve been hiding—which direction to look. Then we’ll know where to hunt them. Otherwise, this mine is vast. They could be anywhere.”

“Oh.”
Jake nodded. “That makes sense.” Also, the intersection was relatively close to the pit pony stables, where the creatures had already proven their willingness to attack.

Derek gestured to the dwarf warriors to drag the slab of beef to the middle of the tunnels’ intersection, then they all
climbed up the service ladders and clambered onto the metal catwalks halfway up the ventilation shaft. This gave them a good vantage point of the dark junction below.

The dwarves and Red and
Helena spread out around the metal walkway, but Derek stayed next to Jake.

“H
ave that wand ready,” the Guardian advised. “And do me a favor, Jake.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t miss.”

Jake gripped the wand
harder. Then they all conformed to a rule of silence, watching and waiting for their quarry to appear.

Jake was surprised that no one else could hear his heart pounding like a kettle drum in the quiet. He fought the shivers that ran down his spine in an effort to stay motionless.

Soon, time seemed to creep to a standstill. He could not tell how many minutes had passed. Half an hour?

Waiting for the monster to appear was agonizing when nobody was quite sure what to expect. Little was known about gargoyles’ daily habits. The grimoire in the archives had simply said that they came in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, with varying degrees
of intelligence and aggression.

Some were meaner than others. Some displayed the reasoning po
wer of the average human child, while others functioned as mere brute beasts.

Jake was pondering the question of what kind lived in the Harris Mine and how they might have got here, when suddenly, a sinister, low
sound came from the tunnel.

T
he blood froze in his veins.

The voice he heard
next was not of this world. A chatter and a chirp with an occasional wary hiss, rather like some sort a demonic squirrel.

This was accompanied by the low
, rasping rhythm of claws scraping stone as it approached, drawn by the bloody, raw bait.

Jake held perfectly still as the creature stepped into view in the dark opening of the northern tunnel.

He stared through the Vampire Monocle in disbelief.

He had seen gargoyles carved on old churches, but to see one standing there, alive…

All he knew was that that thing did not belong to this world. It came from somewhere below, and it was hideous.

Ape-sized and dark gray in color, the gargoyle had a grotesque face, a pug nose, and drool dripping off its up-fangs as it crept toward the bait. It had little blunt nubs of horns on its head and leering, wide-set eyes.

It hopped closer, investigating the slab of beef.

Jake flinched when it opened its mouth wide and ripped off a chunk of the raw meat.

Derek nudged him with his elbow. Jake’s heart was racing. The Guardian gave him a nod as if to say,
Go on. What are you waiting for?

Jake tried to settle his frayed nerves. His hands were shaking so badly he fear
ed he’d miss the nasty creature.

Concentrate,
he told himself. Though a little unnerved by the sight of the devil’s imp gnawing on the beef ribs, he shoved his revulsion away, bringing up the wand.

Just as he was about to do the spell, a second gargoyle
appeared, drawn to the bait; Jake floundered, unsure what to do. He glanced at Derek in question.

The Guardian gave him a firm nod, silently indicating
that he should get them both.

Jake gulped. But as he aimed the wand at the gargoyles, the first gargoyle chased away the new arrival with a vicious snarl. It seemed the ugly beastie had no intention of sharing the banquet with his comrade.

As the second one shrank back into the shadows, Jake pointed the wand, focused his mind on his target, and summoned up all the magical power in his blood.

A bead of sweat ran down his face. Then he suddenly shouted:
“Petrificus!”

Energy crackled out of the wand’s tip like a miniature lightning bolt and hit the
feasting gargoyle square in the belly.

A direct hit!

At once, the gargoyle started changing into stone. First its stomach turned to solid gray rock, spreading outward from there, traveling down the creature’s limbs and up to its ugly face.

“Go!” Derek waved the dwarves into motion.

Quick as a wink, they were racing down the ladders.

“Hurry! You’ve only got thirty seconds!”

“Oh, I need less than that.” With these bold words, a scruffy, dark-haired dwarf brought up his axe and struck the gargoyle statue in the middle.

It cracked in
half at the waist and fell in two pieces.

“Ha, ha! Thank you very much.” Wallace took a bow while his
hearty mates crowded round to cheer him and to get a closer look at the beast.

“Lord, that thing’s uglier than my mother-in-law.”

“Pshaw, it’s even uglier than yer wife.”

“Hey!” The two dwarves pushed each other back and forth in harmless horseplay, while Wallace turned to grin and wave at Jake.

“Well done, lad! That wasn’t so bad, was it? And you were so nervous!”

“I think you really have to smash it!” Jake called down, but his warning came too late.

Wallace suddenly yelped in pain and fell to the ground, bleeding profusely from the back of his leg.

His friends rushed over to pull him clear of the two halves of the gargoyle, which had just come
—separately—back to life.

Helena roared, Derek vaulted off the catwalk, and Jake leaped to his feet for a better view.

Meanwhile, the two halves of the gargoyle were flopping around, trying to cause trouble. The lower half was trying to escape, bumping into everything.

But the upper half with the claws and the big, nasty fangs was furious, lashing out at anyone in arm’s reach.

Wallace groaned as his friends dragged him farther back to safety. “I can’t believe it bit me.”

“Jake,
the spell! Again!” Derek bellowed from below, clearing everyone else back. “Out of his way, you lot! You’ll be turned to stone if it hits you!”

“Petrificus!”
Jake shouted, waving the wand again, and again, the lightning flew.

He repeated the spell for both the upper and lower halves of the gargoyle.
In seconds, the halves turned back into stone, then Derek took the sledgehammer from Emrys, and pounded them both into dust.

Then
the ugly gargoyle was no more.

“Lord
Crafanc! Will you help him?” Emrys called from beside his wounded man.

Red glided
down at once to give Wallace one of his healing feathers, using his beak to pluck it off his wing. The Gryphon offered it to Emrys.

The head dwarf took it gratefully. Unlocking the healing powers in Red’s feathers was a simple process. Emrys was obviously familiar with gryphon magic, for he took the feather at once betw
een his hands and started rolling it back and forth quickly between his palms, like someone trying to start a fire with sticks.

W
hite smoke started coming up from the feather. A burst of bright sparkles rose in the darkness as the red feather disintegrated into magical golden dust.

Emrys sprinkled the powdered feather all over the torn flesh on the back of Wallace’s leg. The golden
dust sank in, easing the pain from his face.

“Uhhh,” said Wallace.

Jake and everyone else waited anxiously to see what would happen.

Several
seconds later, Wallace started laughing. “Woo-hoo! Well, you don’t see that every day, now, do you?”