Authors: Rain Oxford
“I will remind you that bad things happen to those
who don’t repay their favors.”
“Don’t threaten me, Vretial.”
“I never make threats.”
Liked what you saw? Grab a shovel and knock on
wood. If I answer, you’ll be dead.
I sighed, handed the phone back to Abby, and rubbed
my eyes. “He can’t even put in enough effort to rhyme,” I complained. Edward
was driving back to Ronez’s house because I still wasn’t feeling great after
inducing a vision. Maybe it was the fact that it was prompted or maybe it was
what I saw, but I was on the verge of shaking.
“What did he say?” Edward asked.
We need to go to the grave of the witch hunter. Is it
far from here?”
“In Colorado. It’s a two-day drive.”
“We could take a plane,” Abby suggested.
“No,” Edward and I said simultaneously.
* * *
We arrived at the house and Abigail went to take a
shower before I even shut the front door. “We should flash there,” I said.
“Not with Abigail. She may be one of the most
stubborn women I know, but she’s smart.”
“You are the only one who can stop her,”
a
voice whispered from nowhere. It was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.
“Did you just hear a woman say something?”
Edward frowned. “No. Was I supposed to?”
“I’m going to check on Abigail.” I left him in the
living room and went upstairs, then knocked on the bathroom door. The woman
opened the door with her towel wrapped around her, still dry. “Everything okay,
Abby? I thought I heard something and just wanted to check on you.”
She smiled. “I’m fine. I think I know what you meant
about ghosts now. I could have sworn someone was in my room, because some of my
stuff was moved, but my money was still there.”
A door slammed right across from the hall from us,
causing both of us to jump. It was Abby’s room. She swallowed. “Go take your
shower,” I said. She shut the door hesitantly and I opened the door to her
room.
There was a suitcase on her bed with everything
emptied out and scattered around. However, like she said; her money was lying
out on the bedside table. I shut the door and returned to my room to find that
everything was exactly as I left it. Worried, I searched the entire house and
found nothing else to indicate anyone was here.
I locked my bedroom door and sat on my bed.
“Xul,”
I called, allowing my power to send the summons throughout the worlds. My demon
appeared a moment later.
“Hello, master,” he said, almost sarcastically, as he
always did.
“Hello, demon. Is my family okay?”
“Ron is looking for the god weapons. Your wife is
working on a routine type of mission. As far as I know, Mordon is having a
lovely time with the girlfriend that he hates.”
“Good, but just in case something happens, give this
to him.” I took off my pentagram and gave it to the demon. “I don’t know how
close he has to be to draw on my power, so this might help him. How is Hell?”
“You really confuse people when you call him that.”
“Yeah, but he likes it. No sixteen-year-old likes
their real name. How is he?”
“Well, he’s not in mortal danger at this moment.
That’s about it. And your younger son is a brat, by the way. What do you need
me for?”
“Can you still possess people?” I asked.
Xul frowned. “Theoretically… if you gave me the
power.”
“Good. Very good.”
“Um… I have a bad feeling about this.”
Two hours later, Edward, Abby, and I were back in the
car, driving to Colorado. I hated road trips.
* * *
After riding in the car for two days, the three of us
taking turns driving, my normal sarcasm reached a truly offensive level. I was
actually pissing myself off at this point with my negativity. Nobody spoke for
the last hundred miles because nobody wanted me to open my mouth. But what
could they expect? I hadn’t slept in two days.
Edward finally pulled the car into a motel room,
insisting that we needed to shower and sleep before we tried anything illegal,
such as grave digging. He went in himself to get our room, which he then led us
to somberly.
I should have anticipated the deplorable condition of
the room. The carpet was gray and older than I was, the two beds with horrid
paisley blankets took up all of the walking space, and the walls were so yellow
that they were vomit-inducing.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I said, and squeezed
into the tiny bathroom. My shower was short and disappointing, for the water
pressure was low and the scum in the tub was rather revolting. By the time I
got out, both Edward and Abby were asleep. I crawled into bed beside the woman
and closed my eyes.
Sleep never came.
* * *
I was still painfully awake when Edward got up to
take his shower. Abby woke a few minutes later and turned on the television to
the news. After a night of watching the clock on the table mock me, I was flat
out snarly.
My head throbbed with my pulse, lights flashed behind
my eyes every time I closed them, and my own
breathing
was too loud.
“We should wait until night to go to the grave,”
Edward said, entering the room. He wore black jeans and a fitted black t-shirt
with leather boots.
He kept his hair shorter than it was when I met him,
which I thought at first was his attempt to look more modern. I eventually
realized, however, that it was because Ronez kept his hair shaggy. Over the
years, as he passed through stages of accepting his brother’s death, Edward
changed superficial, subtle things without changing anything major. Maybe the
fact that Ronez was brought back temporarily from death three times was more
detrimental to Edward than it was worth.
“No,” I said. “I need to get back to Mordon, so we
need to get this done as soon as possible. I’ll cover us with something.”
“Are you okay?”
“I will be. The sooner we kill this guy, the better.”
“I thought you didn’t want to kill him,” Abby said.
“I don’t really care anymore.”
Edward stopped by a diner to get us all coffee on the
way to the grave. I breathed deeply, absorbing the warmth of the steam and the
scent of the brew. It was winter for sure, as each day since I arrived was
colder and wetter than the day before. Dark clouds hid the sun with an
unrelenting solidity, as if the life-giving star was being held hostage and we
would never see it again.
But this wasn’t England, so I was fairly certain it
would show its face eventually.
Or maybe that is the coffee trying to cheer
me up.
I finally took a small sip, only to find it bitter,
sour, and weak all at the same time. It smelled much better than it tasted,
which was why I couldn’t bear to toss it out, and at least it warmed my hands.
I watched out the window as Edward drove into the
gated graveyard. Many of the tombstones were huge, though whether it was to
honor the soul or to make the surviving loved ones feel better, I didn’t know.
We pulled up to one insignificant plot with barely a plaque on the ground, and
got out. The rain instantly soaked my skin through my clothes.
“This is it,” Edward said.
I popped the trunk of the car and pulled two shovels
out.
“Maybe you should do your magic before we get
started,” he suggested.
I shrugged and summoned my magic. It felt sluggish,
which was surely due to the gloomy weather, but I knew the same “inconspicuous”
spell I had used at the hospital was solid. Edward took both the shovels and
handed one to Abby.
“Why don’t you take a nap in the car?” he suggested.
Abby stared at me with an equally concerned frown. “You are sweating,” Edward
explained.
“No, I’m not. It’s the rain.” I took the shovel back
from Abby and started digging before he could argue. I felt worse by the hour,
so wasting time was a bad idea.
* * *
My shovel hit the coffin with a satisfying thud and
we spent the next ten minutes clearing off the casket enough to break into the
wood, which wasn’t terribly easy.
Good thing to keep in mind next time I go
grave robbing.
The blisters forming on my hands were actually a relief, for
it distracted me from the general aching all over my body.
Before I could crack the wood, wooziness set in. The
already dusky daylight suddenly darkened until only vague shapes were visible.
I felt the world tip and Edward’s hands steadying me. This was a vision trying
desperately to overcome me. Then, as swiftly as they had come on, the
perceptions vanished.
Once again, I was standing in the graveyard, confused
but coherent. Edward held me still and upright by my shoulders. “Are you okay?”
he asked.
Movement in my peripheral vision directed my eyes to
the right, but nobody was there. “Yeah. I’m just tired.”
“Get back in the car and rest. You didn’t sleep much
in the car.”
I didn’t sleep at all since the night we returned to
Earth. “I’m just tired,” I said. I wasn’t foolish enough to disagree with him,
so I went back to the car and got in. “I’m forgetting something.”
“It’ll come to you.” Edward broke open the coffin
with a few easy strikes, peered into the dark hole, and cursed in Sudo.
“It’s empty,” I surmised.
“No.” He crouched down, reached into the coffin, and
pulled out a wooden chest, which was old and about a foot wide. “His bones are
gone, but his ritual box is still here. If he rose from the grave, he could
have closed or replaced the coffin, but he would have taken this with him. If
he didn’t return from death, why are his bones gone?”
“Because he went into the box… but he didn’t climb
out. He had the magic to get out, but not enough to take his chest with him. He
couldn’t get it… maybe he didn’t even know where it was… or maybe Ronez… Oh,
shit.”
“Care to share with the class?” Abby asked.
I rubbed my eyes. “Check the coffin. I bet you’ll
find one of Ronez’s charms on it. The witch hunter escaped, but he couldn’t
find his way back to get the box. We just led him to it and unburied it for
him.”
Edward cussed again. “What do we do now?”
“We take it with us and hide it in Ronez’s dungeon.
At least we know the witch hunter can’t break Ronez’s powers. Oh, and I
remembered what I forgot.” When they both stared at me blankly, I reached
behind the wheel and turned the key. “I forgot to put our cover back up after I
dropped it during my episode. We should go.”
* * *
The ride was agonizing. I was in no condition to
drive, because I still couldn’t fall asleep for even a second. By the time we
made it home, I felt like I had the worst flu. In fact, I felt like I used to
when I got sick before I became a Guardian.
“I need to see Mordon,” I said as I fumbled to unlock
the door. It took me a moment to realize the simple act was so difficult
because my hands were shaking.
“Is he in trouble?”
If he were in trouble, he would have flashed to me.
No,
I think it is me who is in trouble.
“We’ll get this put up and I’ll go
check on him.” Not giving him the chance to argue, I got the door open and took
the chest from him. Fortunately, neither of them followed me down the stairs
into the basement.
“This is a fantastic idea.”
I didn’t look around to trying to find the source of
the voice, because I knew whose voice it was this time. What I found most
disturbing was that it didn’t sound like it was coming from inside my head.
“He said to knock.”
I knocked on the coffin with the shovel.
“What’s in the chest?”
I set the chest down next to the mage staff and
knelt. We hadn’t opened it because we were afraid it would draw the witch
hunter, but it was as safe as it could be in Ronez’s magic room.
I pulled the metal clasp…
Why is it rusted if it
hasn’t been exposed to water?
I opened the lid, ready for any kind of horror to spring
from it and attack. Inside was a collection of talismans, candles, and potion
bottles. Or maybe poison bottles. Careful not to mishandle any of the unusual
items, I searched the box for anything I that should have meant something to
me. Nothing…
I closed the box, went back into the basement, and
poured my magic into the doorway to the magic room. It sealed quickly, becoming
a wall once again. As far as I knew, Ronez and I were the only ones who could
open it.
“What’s in the chest?”
“Nothing useful to me,” I said aloud to the voice.
Finally alone with the chest secured, I focused my
magic on flashing to Mordon. My energy reacted instantly, light flooded the
basement, and I felt the world around me vanish. A new location started to form
for just a moment, before it broke apart. The energy turned on me almost
violently, but it was more like a frightened reflex than an ambush. My magic
tried again to land me somewhere safe, only to receive another fierce
rejection.
This time, my magic created a strong barrier around
me and returned me to the only location I was apparently safe; in the Land of
the Iadnah. The light cleared, leaving me standing before the dark god,
Vretial.
He sighed, sitting on his large boulder as usual.
“You can never seem to stay out of trouble for long, young Noquodi.”
I wasn’t very young anymore. “I need to get to
Mordon.”
“Then why aren’t you with him?”
“Something happened when I tried to get to him.”
“Oh, no,” he said mockingly. “You mean that someone
realized Mordon was your greatest weakness and figured out how to keep you two
apart? That’s so unexpected.”
“You always have a plan up your sleeve.”
“No, I think that’s you who always has the plan. I’m
the one who is always out for myself, remember? Besides, I’m not the one who
owes anyone a favor.”