His eyes fell upon a much larger stone, a boulder, nearby. It was far too large to lift, but maybe…

  He gestured to Ula. She set the torch on the ground and fell in beside him. They dug in their feet and pushed as hard as they could, groaning with effort.

  A faint roar was approaching as the monster spiraled toward them.

  Dan bellowed, his entire body shaking. Ula’s cries matched his own. The boulder rocked then tumbled forward. Dan rushed along behind it, shoving with all his might, and the boulder rolled into place, blocking the passageway.

  “Yes!” he shouted and wrapped the warrior woman in an embrace. They stood that way for a long second, their sweaty, trembling bodies locked together.

  Then they charged after Holly and Nadia. The boulder would buy them some time but likely only minutes, not hours.

  They padded over the mossy ground, weaving between humongous mushrooms, the trunks of which looked bruised in the torchlight.

  At the other side, they ascended a set of stone steps carved into the cave wall. Thirty feet up, they ducked through a small doorway and entered a narrow corridor that bored through the stone. Far ahead, perhaps a football field away, he saw Nadia’s flickering torch.

  The he froze in place.

  “Do you hear that?” he asked.

  Ula stared at him intensely but obviously couldn’t understand.

  He pointed to his ears, then pointed ahead.

  Ula turned her head to listen in that direction, then nodded with a snarl. She heard it, too.

  A roaring.

  The living darkness was on the move again. But the roaring wasn’t coming from behind them. It was coming from ahead. As if the living darkness had found a shortcut to where they were going.

  And Holly and Nadia were running straight at it.

  34

  Task of Terror

  “Holly! Nadia! Wait!” Dan shouted as he and Ula sprinted in that direction.

  But the winking torchlight in the distance disappeared.

  No, no, no!

  He raced out the narrow corridor. The roaring grew louder, swelling around him. This only made him run faster—so fast, in fact, that he would have missed the doorway if Nadia hadn’t popped out as he sprinted past.

  “The monster,” he panted, pointing past her, through the doorway. The roaring was coming from inside!

  But Nadia was all smiles. “Come on, slowpokes,” she said. “We found it!”

  They followed her through the doorway, closed and barred the heavy wooden door behind them, and stared in awe. They were standing upon a stone platform at the edge of a high-vaulted, conical chamber that reminded Dan of the inside of a volcano. The base of the chamber was a shimmering lake, two hundred feet across and lit from within by fronds of glowing blue vegetation wavering beneath the surface.

  The roaring here wasn’t due to a monster but a waterfall.

  Across the chamber, a sparkling cascade pounded down from high above, streaked in mysterious yet familiar red light.

  “We found it!” Holly called up from the water’s edge. “The Pool of Dreams. Come down to the water, and we’ll try to contact Zeke.”

  Squinting at the strange red light crackling through the waterfall, Dan laughed. “We don’t have to use the pool. Follow me!”

  He jogged around the Pool of Dreams’ narrow shore, ignoring the girls’ questions as he led them behind the waterfall.

  Beyond the wall of pounding water stood another wall, this one made of red light, and through its crackling crimson screen, he could make out a tall, stick-thin figure.

  “Zeke!” he shouted.

  The wall of red light split and spread open like parting curtains. Dan stepped through, and the girls followed him into the strange cave of red-veined black stones that he had visited in his dreams.

  The curtain closed behind them, shutting out most of the waterfall’s roaring, and a bright smile spread across the dark, mummified face of Zeke.

  “What took you so long?” Zeke asked. Before they could answer, he raised a finger in the air, turned, and launched a bolt of red energy into the crackling wall at the far end of the cavern.

  In the dream, dark predators had prowled back and forth like big cats.

  A much, much larger silhouette collided with the shield now, making the entire screen spark and shudder.

  “Hello, ladies,” Zeke said with a short bow. His voice was strained, and Dan felt bad for not coming sooner. “More darkness is arriving all the time. Right before I enacted the shield, two small ones, about the size of a cat and a dog, got through.”

  “One’s dead,” Dan said. “The other one got bigger.”

  “Um, understate the situation much?” Nadia said, “That fucker’s huge. Like a billion times bigger than a dog.”

  “That explains why these things,” Zeke said, nodding across the cave, where another impact shivered through the sizzling energy, “are so eager to get through. Living darkness has a hive mind. These monsters can sense each other.”

  “Where are they from?” Holly asked. “The Plane of Ever-Shade?”

  “Exactly,” Zeke said, and another smile twisted across the withered face of the mummy. “When Griselda pulled her little stunt in the stadium, she opened more than one gate. Darkness flooded to the aerial gate, the one you saw me close. But later, this gate stayed open, and some of the living darkness found it. I tried to close the gate as soon as some of it slipped through, but those things,” he said, pointing toward the caterwauling beasts on the other side of the red shield, “jammed the gate open like a boot blocking a door. I cordoned off the rift with a globe of energy, but until the living darkness backs away, I can’t close the actual gate, and I’m stuck here maintaining the shield. Trouble is, those big bastards over there know that part of the hive is on this side. Maybe they can sense that the thing you met is feeding and growing. Maybe they have inferred that your world is a good hunting ground.”

  “You can’t force the gate closed?” Dan asked. “Just crush them or whatever?”

  Zeke shook his head and sent another jet of red light into the shield, which glowed more brightly. “Opening and closing gates is complicated magic. Takes a lot of time and energy and focus. Before I could finish, my force field would deteriorate, and the darkness would break through.”

  Dan nodded. “So what do we do?”

  “We have to make the darkness back off,” Zeke said. “That’ll buy me time to close the gate.”

  “How do you make the darkness back off?”

  The crazy smile that spread across the mummified face was undeniably Zeke’s. “That’s where you come in, tough guy. That’s why I’ve been trying to get your sorry asses over here.”

  “What do we have to do?”

  “Simple,” Zeke said, nodding toward the waterfall and the catacombs beyond. “Just kill the monster. Once it’s gone, it’ll stop sending signals to these bastards. They’ll pull back into the Plane of Ever-Shade, and I’ll slam the door.”

  Dan stared at him for a second, dumbfounded. “Just kill the monster? We barely managed to kill one the size of a cougar. This thing is the size of a whale.”

  “Yeah,” Nadia said, “like a psychotic whale that can shift shapes faster than you can say holy fuck, that thing’s squeezing through the keyhole.”

  Holly nodded, bewildered. Ula looked back and forth between them, gripping her axe.

  “You have to kill it,” Zeke said. “Until that thing’s dead, more and more darkness is going to flood here from the Plane of Ever-Shade. You kill that thing, the rest of the darkness will feel the pain, like you slammed the door on its nose. It’ll back off, and I’ll close the gate.”

  “All right,” Dan said, nodding numbly. “I understand why we need to kill it. But I don’t see how we can kill it.”

  “I’ll give you a little help,” Zeke said. He reached into his poncho and produced a feather and a dark, slender stick.

  Dan pointed at the stick. “Is that some kind of wand?”

  “Better,” Zeke said, flashing his crazy smile again and holding the stick out to Dan. “It’s black licorice.”

  35

  Hunting the Beast

  “I have to fight the monster alone,” Dan said later, standing at the edge of the glowing blue pool. “There isn’t much than any of you could do against it. I can fly.”

  Ula ranted.

  “Take my bow,” Holly said, handing him her short bow and quiver of arrows.

  Her words and movement seemed slow. Everything seemed slow now. Everything except his own thoughts and actions.

  He slung the bow and quiver over his shoulder.

  “Take my daggers,” Nadia said.

  “Just one,” Dan said. “I don’t want to leave you without a weapon.” Then with a grin he added, “Besides, if it comes down to daggers, I reckon I’m fucked.”

  Holly popped onto her toes and kissed him hard on the mouth, then melted into an embrace. “Come back to us, husband.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  He kissed her, and Nadia came into his arms. “Yeah, like the elf said. Take care of yourself, okay? I’m kind of getting used to you.”

  Dan kissed her, surprised to feel her trembling in his arms.

  He straightened his clothes and equipment.

  For a tense second, he and Ula stared at one another. Both clearly wanted to embrace, but neither made the first move. Finally, Dan nodded, and the warrior woman nodded back.

  “It’s go time,” Dan said. “I have something like thirty minutes to kill this thing.”

  “You’re talking really fast,” Nadia said with a smile.

  “And you’re talking reeeeaaaally slow,” Dan said. He pulled out his torch, which glowed brightly despite being unlit. Zeke had cast a continuous illumination spell on it, and now the torch would shine until destroyed.

  It had been no problem for Zeke to maintain the energy shield while casting simple spells. After enchanting the torch, he had cranked Dan’s speed with an acceleration spell and given Dan another ability that kicked serious ass.

  Waving goodbye, Dan launched into the air.

  The acceleration spell would only last thirty minutes, but he would be able to fly for five or six hours. He had to find the monster, attack at double speed, and destroy the living darkness before the acceleration spell expired.

  He flew to the top of the waterfall, which spilled out of a dark tunnel high up the chamber wall. Soaring over the waterfall, he entered the dark tunnel. There was only three feet of space between the rushing river and the tunnel ceiling.

  He flew slowly, doing his best to stay between the water and the stone ceiling, deafened by the roar of the raging river, forced to squint by the spray of the churning water. The magic torch lit his way, revealing strange runes etched into the dark stone walls.

  He popped out of the tunnel and was in the forest again, hovering above the stream that fed the subterranean waterfall. The forest here was dim. Feathers of green mist drifted from the left.

  He flew over a short rise then downhill, weaving between trees. Around him, green mist thickened in the gathering darkness.

  The glowing crevasse opened beneath him, and Dan flew along, scanning the scene until he landed at the spot where they had killed the acolytes. Perching on the edge of the cliff, he peered down into the swirling green fog.

  Are you down there? Or are you still hunting us in the tunnels?

  He jammed the enchanted torch into his belt at the small of his back, hiding its light beneath his cloak. He could see without it, thanks to the fluorescent green fog.

  Time to hunt.

  The bow felt small in his big hands. Small but deadly, much like Holly herself.

  The bow was simply yet elegantly designed. Elvish runes twisted across the limbs, which gave off a soft glimmer of illumination. The handle was made of antler, with corrugated ridges that provided a good grip. The bowstring was as thin as spider silk.

  Selecting an arrow, he marveled at its beauty. Delicate runes crawled along the silver shaft, which glowed faintly, as if infused with moonlight.

  More magic. His barbaric soul snarled instinctually, but with a magical dagger and an enchanted torch in his belt and not one but two spells lending him magical abilities, it wouldn’t make much sense to reject a magical bow or arrows now.

  He nocked the arrow and tested the bowstring. The draw was short, but he was strong enough to bend his lead arm and still brace the weapon. It would work.

  He had to make it work.

  Every second that this beast lived, more darkness gathered from the Plane of Ever-Shade. Zeke couldn’t maintain the shield forever. If that shield collapsed, living darkness would flood through the gate to join the beast. Living darkness would ravage the forest and destroy Holly’s grove, growing as it ravaged this world, all the while drawing more darkness from the Plane of Ever-Shade.

  Find it, then. Find it and kill it.

  He took a deep breath, leaned over the edge, and whistled like he was calling a dog. The whistle echoed back to him, bouncing back off the opposite cliff and ricocheted down into the foggy depths of the canyon.

  A flurry of birds rushed past, squawking, and an animal in the woods across the chasm scampered away, crunching leaves and snapping branches. A deer, probably, or a squirrel.

  Then silence and stillness.

  He saw nothing but the boiling green mist.

  He heard nothing but the breeze in the trees and the faint howling of wolves on some far-off hill.

  Shit, he thought. I’m going to have to go down there and find this thing, aren’t I?

  Oh Hades.

  Yes, that’s exactly what I’m going to have to do. Fly down there and go back into those fucking catacombs, where the monster will be waiting for me in the darkness like a ten-ton rattlesnake.

  Maybe I should—

  The beast rushed up out of the chasm with a bloodcurdling shriek.

  Dan shot backwards, lifting off the ground and flying backward, and the thing slammed down on the stony ground where he’d been standing, making the cliff side shake.

  Dan shot into the air.

  The hulking darkness roared up at him.

  Dan drew the bow and looked for the best target, only to realize that there was no best target. The thing was a liquid tower, a column of pitch-black terror with no discernible features, no eyes, no ears, no throat, no face or mouth or anything.

  A tentacle of night-black flesh peeled away and lashed out at him.

  The attack surprised Dan, and if he had been moving at normal speed, the monster would have snatched him clean out of the air. But thanks to Zeke’s acceleration spell, Dan dodged the tentacle and loosed the arrow, sinking the missile into the dark flesh near the point where the arm had sprouted.

  The beast cried out with rage. Another, thicker limb swung free of the main mass, swinging up from below, braced itself on the cliff’s edge like the leg of a climbing man, and the monster swung itself onto the top of the cliff.

  The tarry mass spread sideways across the ground in both directions, losing height but gaining width as the thing went from column to wall. Suddenly, it was ten feet tall and forty feet wide.

  Dan fired another arrow, sinking it center mass.

  The beast howled, the sound seeming to blast from its entire surface.

  Dan fired again.

  With another scream, the beast morphed again, sprouting a dozen tentacles that writhed along its upper edge like snakes atop Medusa’s head.

  “Well, you’re ugly enough,” Dan said, and fired again.

  The beast gave another bloodcurdling, big cat scream and lunged.

  Dan zipped aside and circled behind the monster to attack from behind.

  No sooner had he flown around the other side than the thing was attacking again, lashing the air with its many tentacles, which thinned and stretched now into slender cords thirty feet in length. They lashed the air, cracking like whips. One slashed across his cape, slicing the fabric.

  Dan zipped backward over the crevasse.

  Trying to flank the thing had been a mistake. This monster had no front, no back, no blind spots.

  He fired again and again and again, driving arrows into the nightmare creature as it screeched and slashed the air with its deadly appendages.

  The monster convulsed, shot upward with shocking speed, and stretched over the chasm in an arch of living darkness that almost skewered Dan in midair.

  He nocked another magical arrow and fired.

  The monster roared, scrunched back into itself, and sat there, still as a black boulder.

  Was it resting? Plotting? Setting a trap?

  Dan fired another arrow.

  The beast snarled with frustration but didn’t counterattack.

  For a split second, Dan understood how the dark thing felt. He remembered his own frustration that day on the training field, when Holly’s brother, Briar, had nearly beaten him to death, dancing and striking, ducking and jabbing, never giving Dan the chance to land a powerful blow.

  Well, now the tables had turned. Dan had become the slippery opponent, flitting this way and that and raining down strike after unanswered strike, while his larger, more powerful opponent raged on, swinging harder and missing all the same.

  Hit and run, he told himself. Stick and move.

  The beast surprised him then, sweeping a tentacle across the ground and launching stones and debris like a shotgun blast.

  “Whoa!” Dan shouted and dove like a hawk. The projectiles whooshed overhead. That had been close.

  He swooped down into the mist and zoomed back out forty feet from the monster.

  Unexpected laughter barked from his lungs. The blend of combat high, flight, acceleration, and dominating his much larger opponent was one hell of a rush.

  Hovering there, he fired again, sinking yet another glowing arrow center mass.

  He reached to load another missile and realized that the quiver was empty.

  Shit is about to get interesting.

  He shouldered the bow and drew his sword.

  Despite taking nearly a dozen magical arrows, the creature showed no sign of slowing down. Just how many hit points did the fucker have?

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28