Spellbound & Hellhounds, page 16
part #1 of Coven Chronicles Series
He jolted and looked around him. Sniffling and wiping his nose on his sleeve, Bobo rose to his feet and walked to his forgotten weapon like he was drunk. His back was to Vanessa, and he was facing the floor and the tunnel that would lead the way out. “Vanessa,” his voice was hoarse and hardly
audible with all the pitiful sounds that surrounded them.
“Yes?” she answered, but she feared his next words. He was going to ask to save them. She didn’t have the heart to list protocol. They weren’t tethered. They weren’t spelled with a proper intelligence spell. Hex, most of them were hardly classified as living. There was no way that they could get all of them out and not have the Coven find out or cause city-wide panic.
She inhaled, ready to speak the bad news in the softest tone she could muster, but his question made her lose her breath and it came out of her in a half-croak. “We need to put them to rest,” he said.
That was not what she was expecting. It was nowhere near the anticipated question. She stammered for a moment and then finally found her tongue to be able to speak again. “I wouldn’t even know what spell—”
“A Rip Van Winkle curse,” he said it in a tone that lacked his usual spunk and life. He sounded monotone. Plain. It didn’t suit him at all.
“I suppose I could try if I could find something to ground me—”
Again, he interjected with an answer, “Use me.”
“What?” she gasped.
He turned to face her and rose his gaze from his reflection in the blade to meet her eyes. “Use me to draw your power from. I’m a demon. I’ve got enough power in me to supply you with what you need to perform the spell.”
She was lost. He was determined, that was to say the least. But a spell like that and on such a grand scale. It would take a team to perform it. She was just one witch. There was no way she had that kind of ability, even with Bobo using himself to ground her. “I … I don’t know if I’m—”
Once again, he shot in a reply before she could finish a sentence. “You are strong enough.” He stepped forward. His voice wasn’t playful. It was serious. “I’ve never doubted your power. Never. You have always doubted yourself. I give you hell for it. Leon does too. You are a good witch, Vanessa. You are a powerful witch.” He slowly approached her and knelt down in front of her and bowed his head. “Please. I’m begging you to tap into that power. Believe in yourself like I believe in you and put my brethren to rest. This…” he looked around the cells again and a tear fell from his eye before he locked gazes with her. “… This is worse than hell.” The weight of that statement rested upon her heart as she heard it and played it over and over in her mind.
Vanessa stared at him in half-awe. The proud and intelligent Botobolbilian was on his knees and begging her for her help. “Get up.”
“Tell me you’ll do it.”
“All right! I’ll do it. Just … by the goddess, stand up,” she urged him as she dipped down and started to aid him to his feet.
Bobo’s hands clamped down on her arms. His tear-filled eyes burrowed deep into her own, and it felt like it reached a bit further. “Vanessa. I need you to believe that you can do this.”
“I …” she hesitated to tell him the truth and just nodded a bunch, hoping it would be enough for him to let the matter go.
“You can do it,” he whispered and tightened his grip on her.
“I’m not sure that I can,” she admitted.
“I know you can,” he was half smiling and half crying.
“I can try, but I’m not sure if I have that kind of power, Bobo.”
“You. Summoned. Me!” he yelled, and his bellowing voice snatched her body into a stiff, unbelieving mass. She started to blink as she tried to remain still. Bobo had never used this tone with her. It scared her a bit, but, more so, it hurt her to hear him use it with her. He indignantly shook her in his grasp with eyes of frustration and pain. “You summoned me.” His voice was strained, and his eyes frantically searched hers. “Not even trying or paying attention, this little witch with a whole lot of sass, horrible table manners, and one nasty temper, summoned me… you are what most envy, Vanessa. You have what others crave. Power.” He stared at her for a long moment and another tear dripped. “Use it. Save them from their suffering.”
She nodded. She didn’t know what else to say. She had never seen him like this. If he believed in her, then she had to try. He looked to the side, realizing he’d been crying, the shame settled in. Retrieving his handkerchief, he wiped his face and nose before resuming some of his normal stature.
As Bobo collected himself, she prepared a salt circle, a nightingale feather, and a mini-scroll with charcoal runes written on it. She stood outside the circle staring at the white salt lines that surrounded Bobo. He was holding out his massive paws while waiting for her. Vanessa stared down at them as she bit her lower lip. She wasn’t killing these poor creatures… she wasn’t. She was setting them free from a fate worse than death. She was giving them the freedom they deserved. Free from pain. Free from a slow death. Free of prison walls and dark tunnels and cold nights.
She wasn’t unsure anymore, she took one of his hands in her own and stepped into the circle. With her free hand she lay the feather in Bobo’s palm and released a slow calming breath. Within the circle, a soft wind picked up and moved their clothing and danced with strands of Vanessa’s hair. Closing her eyes shut, she focused on the words and dug deep to have the strength to say them and not breakdown. The inhale of air was tainted with the must and putrid scents of the tunnel, but her voice was sweeter than honey as she slowly prayed out loud, “A nightingale to show a melody to the shade of night, the feather a gift for one last song, may their sleep be sweet, and their final moments not prolonged. The scroll a final moment, a memory, a dream, goddess give them a quiet passing, a release from anguish and pain. May their death be like the last breath of winter. Gentle, relenting, and giving way to new life, a spirit’s spring.”
The feather shimmered and rose, floating away from Bobo’s hand. The scroll drifted from Vanessa’s, and they danced between Bobo and Vanessa’s palms. They watched it ascend above them. A silver light emitted from the two and then, the feather burnt slowly with the scroll and turned into sand, which drifted on an unseen and unfelt wind to each cell. It lazily wafted through the bars, glided through the cell, and landed softly into the eyes of the ogres. One by one, their eyes closed. Their breathing slowed. Rest took over. A final deep sleep. And a final dream before they would pass from this world onto the next.
Bobo watched as the sand drifted from cell to cell. Bringing the peace that he had wished for each of them. Soon, the whimpers and sniffles and moans all stopped. Bobo didn’t know if he should smile or weep.
The Rip Van Winkle curse was gray magic, meaning it was neutral magic. All neutral magic worked the same. If there is ill intent, the magic picks up on it and will turn the spell into black magic. If there are good intentions, the magic remains gray with an aura of white. It would still ping on the orb back at headquarters. Normally, gray magic wouldn’t do that, but a spell this big most certainly would. They couldn’t stay much longer. If anyone in the Coven was part of this horrendous act, they’d notice the activity here and be on their way before dispatch could send out investigators for the gray magic spell.
“We can’t afford to stay; we have to leave,” she reminded Bobo, and he just nodded as he looked from cell to cell. A strange calm washed over him as he watched his brethren slumber.
“Of course,” he whispered. The way that he looked, the tone of his voice, and how slow he seemed to be moving almost broke Vanessa’s heart. But they couldn’t spare anymore time down here. They needed to get out of there and tell Leon what they had found.
Gathering up her belongings, she took the time to double check everything on her person. When they left, she didn’t want anything to tie her and Bobo to the spell or give hints that they had been down there since they were ordered to stay out. She was making sure all her pouches were secure before kneeling to pick up her staff when she heard it.
That dreaded sound.
A growl that rattled with the sounds of hell as if the mouth that produced the horrific melody was the doorway to the fiery pits of torment itself. Vanessa froze, and her heart broke free from her ribcage and clawed up her throat, each beat snuffing out the ability to draw in a full breath of air.
Slowly, her eyes walked the narrow corridor between the cells and rested on the end of the tunnel where, not one, not two, but three hellhounds stood. Lava-like saliva dripping from their boney charred mouths and singed the stone ground below. Their throats rumbled with their menacing guttural warning. Any moment they would rush at them. One of them gnashed its teeth in the air, and one of the others barked and snipped in their direction. It wasn’t until the third one craned its head back to howl – the sound a cross between a large dog and a woman screaming – that Vanessa snatched her staff up quickly and pointed it at the trio of hellhounds.
The tip glowed like white fire. “Force push,” she yelled, and a ball of power spat out from the staff and grew into a massive disc shape that took up the width of the channel as it sped faster than she could blink towards the hounds. The spell hit them, and the dogs yelped as they flipped back and hit the bars of the cells and the stone walls. She knew they wouldn’t stay down. They healed like nothing she had ever seen before.
“Bobo!”
“Already one step ahead of you,” he said as he grabbed her by the arm and forced her to run down the other end of the tunnel.
“If we can get to the original tunnels, I can post a barrier spell. It won’t last long, but maybe long enough to get away from them.”
“Wait…” Bobo stopped and looked around, then ran down the other tunnel, the one that only led to more prison cells and possibly a dead-end.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve got a plan,” Bobo said as he searched each of the cells and stopped when he got to an empty one. In an unexpected display of brute strength, that she always knew he had but hardly saw him demonstrate, he ripped off the door to the cell and chucked it behind him carelessly.
It clanged as it slammed against the opposing wall and dropped to the floor with a reverberating thick, dull toll. “I hope you weren’t trying to be quiet.”
The howls echoed in the other tunnel, and they both turned to face the direction the sound had come from. There wasn’t much time. “Look, Vanessa. I need you to trust me. Those things, we can’t kill them. But we can trap them.”
“With what?”
“A talisman spell.” As soon as he said it, she had her mind relive the moments that Leon had come down and saved them. A barrier spell had repelled the hounds.
She snapped out of it and looked at Bobo shaking her head. “But those are temporary.”
“Not if you etch the runes into the wall. It could last a day, maybe even two or three if you do it right. Enough time for the Coven to get prepared and come down here to retrieve them to take them to a better holding dwelling.”
“I … I dunno…” The snarling was now at the mouth of the tunnel. There was no more time to argue. She growled and nodded. “Fine. I’ll do it. Only because those things roaming free down here is bad news. If they get out. A lot of innocent people could get hurt.”
She fished a piece of chalk from her pocket and crashed into the wall. “Keep them away from me,” she commanded as she started to scribble a rune onto the rough stone.
“With pleasure,” Bobo wrung the handle of his battleax and then ran down to greet the hellhounds as Vanessa frantically etched runes around the stones of the cell. Each time she heard a yelp, or cry, or heard something slamming into a wall she resisted the urge to look. She had to concentrate.
She was shaking, her breathing was hitched and shallow, and her mind was racing through every spell and incantation that she knew. Another piercing bark tore through the tunnels, and a roar of pain ripped from Bobo’s throat. The sounds filled her with urgency and caused Vanessa to drop to her knees and dig out a piece of parchment. Her fingers fumbled over the crinkled paper as she smoothed it out. She scrambled to gather the chalk after it slipped from her grasp and rolled across the ground.
Crazily, she made a talisman and hastily slapped her hands together to pray. Closing her eyes, she started the most dangerous part of the spell. She couldn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t stop chanting or the spell would fizz and die.
“Burn it into stone!” The talisman lifted from the ground as the coal markings sparked, like a flame catching to a line of gunpowder, and etched the runes magically into the stones. Then, the parchment rose to the top of the cell and hovered there as she kept her hands in prayer form. She mentally tugged at their connection. Tethered together since summoning day, there was always an invisible line, a cord, that connected pet and owner. A spiritual link that can become so strong between the two that some could even speak telepathically. Bobo and she were not that lucky. But she could tug on that string, she could get his attention and that would be enough.
“Just…a …second… dear!” she could hear Bobo struggle with the dogs, but her eyes were shut as she focused on the spell. She heard, no … felt the ogre’s thundering feet as he raced over to her. As he skidded to a stop, she heard his labored breathing and then his words graced her ears. “No matter what you do, Vanessa. Trust in me,” his hand gripped her shoulder tightly, “and believe in yourself.”
The hellish sounds of the hounds pierced the air around her and made her flesh ripple in goosebumps, the hairs standing on end instantaneously as she kept her eyes shut and her mind reciting the spell continuously. She could feel the air as Bobo twisted his torso and, with all his might, smashed one of the dogs into the cell so hard that she heard multiple snaps resounding all at once. The next dog tried to bite at his feet while the other went for his arm.
Crunch! Thud! The neck of the hellhound that went for the ogre’s legs was stepped on full force, and he proceeded to swiftly kick it into the cell. She could hear the heavy body landing on top of the first, and she felt her lip tremble. Still, she managed to keep up with the spell. Her wrists were shaking to the point that it was hard to keep her hands in prayer form.
Bobo gave a sharp, loud roar of pain and she heard him hit the floor. What happened? Was he okay? Was he conscious? She almost opened her eyes to check, but she didn’t dare. She only jerked her head in the direction of the cry and then went perfectly still. There wasn’t a sound. Silence descended upon the tunnel. She couldn’t stop mentally reciting the incantation. Her hands trembled no matter how hard she tried to control it. She wanted to see if Bobo was okay. She wanted to see if the other two were still knocked out in the cell. But, most of all, she wanted to see where that last hellhound was.
The sound of lava-like spit hissing as it burrowed through rock sizzled mere inches from her. Vanessa moved her foot as to escape the saliva but didn’t know exactly how close the hellhound was until it growled, displeased with her movement.
She frowned. Her lips twisting into such deep grief that she was sure to wail and cry out loud, but she restrained and only sniffled. Her lower lip quivered. She shook and sniffled a bit more. Hot tears burned her eyes as she squeezed them shut even harder. No matter what, she never stopped reciting the incantation. Her body was wracked with quivers, but she never stopped reciting. Bobo told her to trust him. It couldn’t end like this.
…she had tried so hard…
It lunged with hate and hunger and Vanessa felt the warmth of the hellhound’s breath as it washed over her face causing her lashes to curl from the intense heat, and she felt a fang scrape over her neck. She jerked back but kept her hands in prayer form, her mind fixed on the spell, her heart sunk with despair. The beast yipped in pain and gargled like its windpipe was being crushed. “You won’t touch her, you mangy beast,” Bobo snarled into the hellhound’s face and then thrust it into the opening of the cell. “Now, Vanessa!”
She opened her eyes and bellowed, “Let it be sealed on Raen as it was below!” The conscious hellhound leapt for the opening only to be greeted with the spill of golden light falling like a curtain over the front of the cell. It hit the barrier and whimpered as it was zapped with a jolt of power that threw it to the ground. It whimpered again before limping away from the doorway. Glaring at the two that had trapped the beast within, it circled the spelled cage with a menacing snarl.
“Nice job!” Bobo commended her victoriously only to be greeted with a flurry of Vanessa’s tiny hands flying at him in a series of uncalculated slaps.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again!”
Even though the slaps hurt, Bobo couldn’t stop laughing as he covered his face to avoid the blows.
Chapter 22:
They didn’t exactly rush to leave, but they didn’t take their time either. There wasn’t anything chasing them anymore, but they still needed to get out of there before they were caught by the Coven or bumped into whoever was responsible for all the atrocities the caverns had stored away if they came to check on their experiments.
A little reluctant to leave the hellhounds caged with such a slap-dash spell, Vanessa continuously looked behind them as they made their way for the main tunnel. Each time she saw the golden splash of light illuminating the passageway it brought her some comfort, even as the sight faded from her vision. Once out of sight, worry gnawed at her relentlessly as they walked.
Bobo bumped her with his elbow and she jerked with surprise. “It’ll be fine, Vanessa. You did good. Stop worrying about it.”
She nodded. He was right. They did what they could. For now, they needed to get out of here and head back home to tell Leon about what they found. Hopefully, he would know
what to do. She didn’t trust her judgement anymore. The Coven could be infested with corrupted members. Right now, she only trusted Bobo, Leon, and Lyx. Everything else was blurred lines in the sand.
She sighed while in deep thought. If anyone would know what to do in a crisis, it would be Leon. His ability to be able to come up with a plan, and multiple backup plans, always amazed her. Not to mention his skill in reading people. She’d probably never tell him that, but that didn’t mean it amazed her any less.
