Spellbound & Hellhounds, page 2
part #1 of Coven Chronicles Series
Bobo took in a deep breath, straightened up to his full height, and inspected Vanessa as though she were a girl scout and he was trying to choose between ordering nothing and waay too many boxes of cookies. Would it really kill him to take the risk? Only time would tell.
Finally, after a long moment of silence – and Vanessa wearing her most convincing and innocent smile to the point that her cheeks were starting to ache as she waited, complete with bright, hopeful eyes – Bobo huffed and flailed his massive paws over his head. “D’all right! You are such a spoiled child. But the moment there is trouble—”
Vanessa held up a hand, palm out, and closed her eyes, solemnly nodding to her partner in crime. “We leave and go straight to the Coven.”
Bobo’s eyes glazed over, and he sighed again. “Why do I not believe you?”
“Come on!” She whispered excitedly, ignoring his question and hopped over the door that had previously fallen.
With amazingly little effort, Bobo managed to be quieter than Vanessa as he followed slowly after her through the door and down the hall. “This spells trouble. Capital ‘T.’” He watched her practically skipping down the main hall as he bickered to himself. “All capitals,” he continued to furiously mutter under his breath.
Chapter 3:
The further into the destroyed building that they went, the thicker the scent of sulfur and ash became. While Bobo looked like something was going to leap out, yell surprise, and then eat their faces clean off, Vanessa looked like a kid in a candy store with a pocket full of coin.
In the academy’s main hall, the place looked like an abandoned war zone. Just past the massive entrance to the head offices and main doors, there were scattered pebbles that were speckled over the once spotless floors below. Wreckage that once made up the left-hand side of the staircase that led to the second floor were stacked in a heap below the base of the stairs. Carefully, they rounded the right-hand side.
Bobo looked up the stairs and shook his head no at Vanessa, silently telling her that the coast was clear above them. She nodded before turning to peer into the office door’s window. There was nothing to see but papers that appeared as though they had been met with tornado winds and office supplies that were littering the floor of the empty room.
She sighed. This was nowhere near the level of excitement she had been hoping for. She hadn’t been greeted with screaming students or frazzled faculty staff. Just silent, rubble-filled halls and the soft sound of her and Bobo’s footwork disturbing the debris cluttering the academy’s tiled flooring. She pursed her lips to the side and gave a short, nasally sigh, and the air from her nostrils lightly fogged the glass inches from her face before the haze disappeared without a trace.
Bobo spared a look at her and instantly rolled his eyes at his owner. “They evacuated the place long before you were heading this way,” he told her quietly, only furthering the sour taste in her mouth from the lack of the desired atmosphere.
Vanessa turned on heel and leaned against the office door as she aggressively blew stray strands of hair away from her face. There was something that caught her eye across the way. Ending her pouting fit and perking up a bit, Vanessa locked in on the new scorch mark on the wall. There was a silver name plate mounted next to the door under a thick layer of soot that had almost been hidden from sight under the shadowy film.
Noticing her interest being caught by something, Bobo came up behind his owner and looked over her shoulder.
“What did you find?”
“Another scorch mark,” she said in a hushed tone as she inspected the area surrounding the wall and then focused on the blast mark again.
“What does the name plate say?”
Vanessa shrugged as she searched around her for something to clean off the plaque. Feeling Bobo’s tie resting on her shoulder, she grabbed it and yanked on the clothing, forcing Bobo forward as she used the tip of it to rub off the black ashen blemish from the surface of the nameplate.
Instantly, he yanked the tie from her grasp and eyed over the item. The ogre sucked at his teeth and inspected his dirty tie. “I just had this dry cleaned. Do you know how hard it is to find a decent, good-looking tie these days?”
“Oh, hush. You know Big & Troll will be more than happy to see me walking in with you and waving around my Quarts Card at them.”
The beast raised a single brow over a disbelieving eye, “You mean the store we got banned from because you made fun of the pixie working at the service desk?” He hopelessly scrubbed at the blotted tie to no avail.
“It’s not my fault that I found it hilarious that she was working there. She was so … tiny.” She strained the last word and then added, “And, yes, that store.”
There was a bit of silence as Vanessa read the sign, finally. “Hey, Bobo, look here,” she said, thumbing to the sign as she reached over and grabbed the cracked open door that led down to the underground level of the building.
“Curious,” he remarked, noticing the words ‘boiler room’ etched into the silver nameplate. The door made a sound as though it was trying to object to being peeled open. The witch cared little for the door’s protests and had managed to open the heavy door enough to give room for her and … Well, he could fit if he sucked in his gullet, Vanessa thought as she looked the ogre up and down and let her eyes rest on his tummy region.
He held his stomach defensively and grunted at her, “I’ve been dieting lately.” He gave a wheezing cough and tried to change the topic. “Is that the door?” he gaped.
“Yeah,” she said ignoring the worries of his belly and comments of dieting.
“A bit much for a boiler room, don’t you think?” Bobo inspected the thick metal door that looked like it was more like two doors rather than one. On one side it was a regular looking, thick wooden door. But upon opening it, you’d see that the opposing side wasn’t wood but another few inches of reinforced steel with a layer of patchwork metal magically nailed to it. He furrowed his brow at the curious door. “Hold the crystal ball… is that iron?” Bobo gulped after inspection.
Vanessa only nodded in reply and then swiped her hand over the wall. After repeatedly hitting nothing, she sucked in air with a hiss-like sound and whispered, “Blast it all.” She dusted off her hand after noticing cobwebs and a thin sheet of gray dust caking her hand.
She reached into her pocket, dipped her thumb and middle finger into a golden, shimmery dust and snapped her fingers together. A spark leapt from her fingers, and an orb of light danced and bobbed around her before stopping in front of her face. “Light switch, please.” The orb gave a jingling sound like it was a floating bell, and the bell was giggling or answering her in a series of high-pitched rings. It sped away in a flash and went spinning in dizzy spirals down the staircase. A moment passed and then the florescent lights overhead blinked on and occasionally dimmed in and out as they struggled to stay lit.
“Did you really need to use Tinkerbell’s Spirit to find a light switch?” the ogre asked in a disbelieving tone.
“What? I couldn’t find the—”
Her words were cut short by Bobo jutting a massive digit at the switch under the nameplate, and she defensively shrugged. “Never hurts to practice magic…” she said with a carefree expression.
Rolling his eyes, Bobo squeezed in through the opening enough to look downstairs. The light barely touched the floor at the foot of the steps, and there seemed to be a lot of cobwebs, dust, and dirt indicating that the space was rarely used.
“Interesting,” he whispered.
Interesting indeed.
Why did the academy need such a massive door? A door like that was built to keep things in, not out. The iron was on the other side, the …the wrong side. That meant, whatever they were trying to keep at bay was contained in the confines of the basement level of the academy. Why on Raen would they need that?
Good questions, but there wasn’t anyone there to interrogate at the moment. Information to log away and come back to later. But, for now, it had both Bobo and Vanessa enquiring what was going on in the building. That wasn’t normal.
Normal or not, nothing was stopping Vanessa from venturing further into the lower region of the building to find answers, adventure, and fun. Bobo, on the other hand, felt like he was forced to babysit the most reckless preteen the world had to offer. Though, Vanessa was an adult – or so she claimed ardently and often – because she was old enough to smoke from a pipe, drink the hottest on tap ale from a local tavern, live on her own, and pay her own bills. Though, she did those all respectfully, she had a destructive streak in her that put her younger counterparts to shame.
Vanessa was practically skipping down the steps. “Come on, Bobo!” she called up to her companion, and the beast had to inspect every crack in the paint before he looked down at her as she descended.
“You know, most of us get a say in the matter. Nooo. Not with you. Come on, Bobo. Let’s inspect the dark basement, Bobo. What could possibly go wrong, Bobo?” he mocked the whole way down the narrow decline into the practically black abyss. All the while, Vanessa ignored any slight upset chatter that she might have overheard coming from the demon.
She dipped her fingers into the Tinkerbell’s Spirit again and then into a pouch to its side, but hanging a few inches lower, and then rubbed her finger, thumb, and pointer together in front of her face while breathing on the collected powders. A slight chant, though it was whispered on an exhaled breath, hardly audible in any realm, escaped her lips and touched upon the dust. Instantly, a soft tangerine glow rose around her hand, and she used her appendage as a flashlight, pointing it in the directions that light was needed, as they trudged through the tight space of the lower building’s halls.
There was a hushed, almost strained whisper coming from Bobo as he followed behind his master. “Be on your guard,” he advised, his eyes darting though the blackness like arrows searching for a mark. A worry was growing in the pit of his being, and it screamed through his every limb to be on alert, so much so that his axe was pulled and ready to swing at any threat that dared to approach the pair. The cold steel in his grasp did not alleviate this gnawing excitement that nipped at every fiber of his being. Somewhere down there, something was bound to leap out at them. He was sure of it.
Traveling deeper into the boiler room, they started to stumble upon things less basement-like of an academy and things more akin to a spot that was not safe for any person of Aeristria. Bleach white candles, hanging bundled bunches of lavender, and thick charcoal smudges slowly crept over the edges of the cold concrete flooring and walls that led to a small hall. The hall was also lined with the large, dove feather shades of candles. It gave way after a short distance, opening into a room holding darker colored candles of azure, plum, crimson, and obsidian.
Bobo stopped just before the opening into a new room and saw it ablaze in a burnt sienna glow of collected candle light. He turned in the hall, looking back from the eggshell washed room laced in dry lavender bundles and white candles and … banish a banshee … was that salt? He spun on heel and called for his master in a strained voice, “Vanessa.” She heard him, but she was too busy eyeing the room with her jaw slack in awe and inspecting every detail in an unbelieving and sluggish manner.
“Bobo,” she breathed his name as she started to tremble, and then the light that she had called upon went out, along with the teeming assortment of candles in the basement. “They’re here …” her voice sounded panicked and scratchy.
What had these people done?
Chapter 4:
If there had been a shred of light in the basement, Vanessa would have been able to see her breath. Desperately clinging to the air in frosted puffs that moved so slowly, one could hardly tell they were drifting before disappearing inches from her frightened face. A sudden chill had gripped the world around them, and the silence that bled into the room was as thick as a dragon’s hide. “Bobo,” Vanessa whispered.
“I’m here,” he breathed back.
She waited with bated breath for something to emerge from the unforgiving abyss beyond her strained vision and solidify the fact that, indeed, things were not right within the academy. Vanessa was too scared to try to use a spell to light the room again. She feared that, in doing so, whatever horrors were lurking about the murky oblivion of the halls would spot them and rip them limb from limb before she and Bobo could think of a counterattack.
As time ticked by, the anxiety that had been swelling within Vanessa’s chest had started to die off. She was beginning to find her nerve once more when she started to reach for her pouches, hands attempting to locate the proper sacks to create a light spell from memory alone. Her courage dissipated like an insomniac’s hope for a full night’s sleep when the sound scratched over her nerves, giving birth to new terrors that devoured her heartbeat like a ravenous beast. She suppressed the urge to gulp when from the dreaded dead silence there came the sound of long claws clicking over the cold concrete floor.
Tick-tick. Tick-tick. Tick-tick.
Each sound of the paws with sinfully lengthy claws resounding in the small confines of the room made poor Vanessa’s heart stop for a brief moment before restarting with a quickened tempo. The painful heartbeat was forever on the rise like the muscle had become a savage animal, and it threw itself against her chest franticly before trying to scale her tightening throat. The terror was as copious as the darkness and almost as pungent as the stench of brimstone and sulfur.
Banish a banshee! She couldn’t swallow. She couldn’t move. The fear had reached out from behind her and hugged her close to it. She was lost in the darkened room and all she could think of was how the creature was inching closer and closer to her. There wasn’t an escape.
“… No…” It was a barely audible whisper when the word was squeaked out of Vanessa’s dry mouth. This wasn’t some tricky imp or feral succubus. The dead giveaway was the growl that had risen and washed through the ink drenched room. It started off low and almost unnoticeable, but it soon rose in pitch, and there was a heat that flowed with the sound as if you could reach out and grab the sound itself and yank its source toward you. Within that growl, though, was the sounds of Hell. Screams and wails and booming dark laughter entangled the guttural noise until it seemed to be one fluid sound, and you couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended.
This was not a normal trait of any animal or being. No standard puppy was this threatening. This was … a hellhound.
Well, double-dip a candlestick. If she could just get to her—
Vanessa’s thoughts were cut short by a flame igniting across from her, and the light of the fire casted a glow over the horrifying beast that was snarling in her direction.
A lion-like tail with a flaming puffed tip connected to a massive, burly body. Its lower half was hairless and was covered in obsidian skin so pronounced one could mistake it for a pocket of a deep, endless void. The black, leathery skin stretched over a hulking frame and strained to conceal ripples of bone that rolled up its spine. There was matted, knotted, and greasy hair lining its neck and the contours of its face like a lion’s mane. Around the chest, stomach, and throat there was an ember-like glow that emitted from the creature as if a campfire was its soul, and all that looked upon it could see the raging fire that rested just beneath the flesh. But a campfire smelled far better than this beast.
The face was made up of harsh, sharp bones lacking both skin and fur. Two twisting, weathered horns spiraled back from the posterior of its skull like antelope horns. Great billowing clouds of smoke thinned out from its face like the whole beast was about to become engulfed in flames. For the brief moment that the room was alight with the hellhound’s tail tip, it made a growling hiss at her, and the glowing throat of the demon rattled with the low gurgling sound. Sharp-as-talon claws chipped the concrete under its paws effortlessly, and Vanessa’s breath hitched at the sight.
The tail flame dimmed down slowly, and the hellhound’s eyes brightened like two radiating rubies right before the comfort of light left the room. Only the sound of the growling exuding its final warning filled the space, until that too faded from the scenes, and silence resumed its role around them.
She knew it was coming. The lunge that the beast had calculated when it had gotten Vanessa’s placement in the room after igniting its tail. She could do little to stop it. Without a sound, the hellhound’s jaws were suddenly inches from her face, and she screamed as she threw herself back, only to hit the wall a second later. Pain blossomed over the back of her skull and shoulders, only dulling down when her will to live switched from an apprehensive coil in the pit of her stomach to clutching her mind like a vicious demon possessing a being. Her whole body tried to melt into the wall, attempting to recoil from the second attack. There was no time to react, no time to whisper a spell, or dip her fingers into a powder to buy herself some time, or dust to save her soul.
Onyx claws sank deep into her clothing, the threads fraying at the curved touch and slitting the garment as they curled into Vanessa’s arms. She felt the harsh points jabbing into her, threatening to tear more than just clothing. It was on that fine, aching line between bruising and drawing blood. Her gloved hands kept their steady hold on the staff that was aiding in keeping the beast at bay, but the wood was sizzling and faint cracks could be heard as the creature twisted and threw its weight about the weapon in an attempt to overpower her.
Pain flared as the heat of the hellhound poured over her, and she felt her visible skin start to burn on the verge of bubbling, causing her to shriek in deafening agony. Scents of slow charring flesh assaulted her nostrils. She could smell her own body roasting from the heat that the hellhound emitted. The burn started to scorch through layers of clothes and caress the meat underneath with scalding waves of heat.
