Lady Night, page 11
The first Guard bristled. "Well, I didn't realise that what with all the snow covering it. I thought it could be—"
Derek growled at the pair, loudly enough to put a halt to the argument before it could really begin.
Moving on ahead, Derek glided down a steep incline in the ground and when he landed, he sniffed at the air. Picking up scents in the snow was difficult. In fact it was near impossible for most creatures such as dogs, but a dragon's sense of smell far surpassed that of any other beast. If the killer really was hiding out somewhere in these woods, then Derek may be able to pick up a faint scent.
On the air, beneath the overwhelming, fresh, earthy smell of snow, he caught the scents of the men behind him, the leather of their armour and even some cologne. He could smell the fading traces of a deer or two that must have wandered by not too long ago, as well as—
Derek looked to the wide trunk of a birch tree not far from where he stood in time to see something duck behind it.
Derek Changed. "All right, come on out," he said. "I know you're there." There was a moment in which nothing happened. He sighed. "Fine then, I’ll just come over and drag you out—"
"We’re here!" cried a boy as he jumped out from behind the tree. He had a freckled face and red curls peeking out from beneath his woollen cap. He looked at Derek with a mixture of awe and fear. "Please, don’t set us on fire."
Derek frowned."What—"
"Don’t be stupid, Micah," said another voice, and Eugenia, Edgar’s younger sister, also emerged from behind the tree, along with another girl with white-blonde hair. "He’s a Guardian. He helps people. He doesn’t set them on fire."
"But what about the bad ones?" The boy—Micah—asked Derek.
"It depends on how bad they are," he said before asking, "what are you doing out here, Eugenia?"
"See? I told you he knows me," Eugenia said to her friends with a smug grin. "Micah and Emmaline didn’t believe me when I told them I knew one of the Guardians that were here, so I had to prove them wrong."
"Is it true that Guardians eat raw meat?" asked Emmaline.
"What? No."
"Have you ever bitten someone's head off?" asked Micah.
"No."
"What about setting them on fire?"
"Maybe."
"Can I try your ring on?"
"No." Before they could start peppering him with anymore questions, he said. "I'm sorry, but I don't really have the time at the moment to stand around entertaining you. You should all go back home. These woods might not be the safest place to be right now."
"Because you're looking for the murderer, right?" said Eugenia. "Edgar told me there was going to be a big search today."
"But wouldn't it be hard to find a ghost?" said Micah. "Wouldn't it just turn invisible?"
"Stupid, I already told you, Lady Night's not the murderer. She's not real."
"But everyone else seems to think it's Lady Night," Emmaline pointed out. "Even Captain Goldridge has been saying so."
"I wouldn't put too much stock into everything the Captain says," Derek said, perhaps a bit harsher than he'd intended. Hearing that even the children were blindly trusting Orville's word made his temper flare. In a calmer voice, he added, "The thing is, we really don't know who the killer is, so we need to consider the possibility that it could just be a regular person."
"Maybe we can help?" Eugenia suggested eagerly.
The three of them looked up at Derek with wide, beseeching eyes that brought a reluctant smile to his lips. "I—"
The sound of snapping wood behind him, followed by the screams of a man, had Derek whirling around. All he saw was something large and winged, rising through the air with the struggling form of a Guard clutched in its claws.
The creature and the Guard disappeared through the treetops. The Guard's shouts grew distant until they were abruptly cut off.
Everything was silent.
Until something fell down from above and landed at Derek's feet.
It was the Guard's severed head.
* * *
Arabelle stepped back onto the cold streets. She turned around to face the man who had shown her and a Guard out of his house and smiled. "Thank you for your time. Have a lovely day."
"Hmph," was his response before promptly shutting the door in her face.
Arabelle sighed, her breath misting in the air. She understood that many of these people probably weren't too thrilled about having Town Guards show up on their doorsteps, unannounced, to search through their belongings and ask them questions, but at least they got to stay indoors. Even with the sun shining, Arabelle still felt as if her fingers were going to freeze off beneath her gloves.
How could anyone bear to live in a place this cold? If Arabelle had been brought up around here, she would have packed up and made for the warmer parts of the country as soon as possible. Maybe I was born here, and that's why my mum left me, because she didn't want me living in such a freezing cold place. Maybe she wanted warmer temperatures for me. The thought failed to inspire any humour in her.
She made her way down the street, pausing only when she saw Edgar Greyhill and another Guard exiting a house further up.
"Found anything of interest?" she asked as she approached them.
Edgar shook his head. "Nothing yet. And you?"
"Not a single thing."
"We've probably nearly searched all of the stores and homes in Windfell and we still haven't found anything," said the Guard accompanying Edgar.
"That doesn't mean we'll never find anything," said Arabelle. "If not in the town, then perhaps outside."
"Let's hope," Edgar said with a sigh. "I—"
"By the Goddess, what is that?!"
Shouting was coming from the direction of the town square. Wasting no time, Arabelle, Edgar and the Guard were racing down the street.
In the square, people were gathering to stare at something in the distance. The town square provided the perfect view of the land at the bottom of the mountain. From there, one could see the Valley stretched out beneath them, the woods, and more snow-capped mountains.
At first, Arabelle thought that what she was seeing was a huge gathering of black birds swarming around the Valley and the surrounding woods. But no, those weren't birds. Even from this distance, Arabelle could tell they were much too big to be any kind of bird.
The distant sound of screaming drew Arabelle's attention to where one of the winged creatures was lifting the flailing body of a Town Guard into the air above the trees.
Screams rang out around her as the creature tore the poor man's head from his shoulders.
* * *
Blood from the Guard's severed head seeped into the snow.
But there was no time to focus on that now. More of those creatures were bursting through the branches above their heads.
Gargoyles, Derek realised, when he caught a good look at one of them for the first time. They had long, spindly limbs and blue skin so dark it almost looked black, stretched over emaciated bodies. Their faces reminded Derek of the skull of a dog, with a pair of curled horns upon their heads. He knew them to be creatures born of magic—dark magic.
Shouts rose up from the Guards as they were set upon by the gargoyles. Some of them reached for their swords in time to try and fend off the gargoyles. Others were knocked to the ground or carried off screaming.
There was a scream from behind Derek, and he turned to see a gargoyle land in front of the children. It rose onto its hind legs, towering over them like a bear, strings of saliva dangling from its jaw full of serrated teeth. Its pupil-less blue eyes, cold and unblinking.
Drawing his sword, Derek rushed forward, placing himself between the children and the gargoyle. With a hissing growl, it swung a massive, taloned hand at him. Derek dove onto the ground to avoid the attack. While he was on his back, he swung his blade at the gargoyle's outstretched arm.
The sword sliced straight through the flesh and sinew, and half of its arm fell to the snow in a bloody heap. The gargoyle yowled as blood poured from the gaping wound in its arm in thick streams.
While it was distracted, Derek leapt to his feet and plunged his sword through the gargoyle's chest. It cried out in a high pitch that raised the hairs on the back of his neck as he pushed the gargoyle over and onto its back. When it toppled onto the ground, the gargoyle's skin went grey and shattered into chunks of stone.
Behind Derek, Eugenia and her friends were huddled together, their faces white with terror.
"Go! Hide!" He shouted at them just before two more gargoyles came charging towards him.
He Changed with no time to spare before the gargoyles had him on the ground.
It was like having a pair of stone statues fall on top of him. While the gargoyles certainly didn't look it, they were heavy, and it was all Derek could do to keep them from tearing into him completely as they grappled with each other in the snow. He felt claws rake across his hind leg and teeth sink into his shoulder, just above the wing joint.
With a roar that was part pain, part frustration, Derek released a breath of scorching fire. One gargoyle was unlucky enough to get caught in the it. It sprang away from Derek, turning to flee and screaming that horrible scream as flames charred its body.
The second gargoyle scrambled away to avoid meeting the same fate as the other, but was unable to avoid Derek as he tackled it to the ground and sank his fangs into its unprotected neck, like a sabre lion bringing down a deer.
The gargoyle struggled only briefly before it crumbled to stone.
A scream caught Derek's attention. A child's scream. He saw Eugenia and her friends had taken refuge in the branches of the birch tree, but had now drawn the attention of two other gargoyles. The gargoyles seemed to be egged on by the children's screams, snapping their jaws and clawing at the tree bark frantically in their desperation to reach their prey.
Derek rushed over, leaping into the air and grabbing the gargoyle closest to Micah and Emmaline, dragging it to the ground and clawing out its throat.
He was too late, however, to stop the second gargoyle from reaching Eugenia. The girl screamed as she was plucked from her branch and carried off above the trees.
Derek shot into the air after them. The gargoyle didn't make any move to kill Eugenia like Derek feared it would. Instead it continued to carry her away, high above the ground, heading. The gargoyle didn't seem to notice that Derek was following it, or if it did, it did not seem to care.
He dared not breathe any fire at the gargoyle; there was too great a chance that Eugenia would get caught in it as well. But no matter how hard Derek beat his wings, it simply wasn't enough to close the gap between himself and the gargoyle. Instead, Derek focused on propelling himself higher into the sky.
He climbed high enough until he was flying well above the gargoyle. Then, closed his wings tight against his sides and went in for a dive.
The wind whistled in his ears as he cut through the air at an alarming speed. It was only a matter of seconds before he collided with the gargoyle in a bone-shuddering impact.
As Derek and the gargoyle grappled with each other in mid-air, biting and clawing at one another, Eugenia slipped from the gargoyle’s grasp. Screaming, she plummeted toward the frozen lake below.
Derek disentangled himself from the gargoyle by breathing fire in its face. Once he was free, he dove after Eugenia, catching her by the back of her cardigan only feet from the surface of the lake.
He set her down gently on the ground by the lake's edge.
"Are you all right?" he asked, Changing and kneeling in front of the girl, checking her over for any signs of injury. "Are you hurt?"
Eugenia didn't look at him, but she shook her head. Her face was stained with tears and she was trembling harder than a newborn fawn, but Derek assumed it was more from shock than the cold.
He would have comforted her, reassured her that she was safe now, that he would protect her, had it not been for the returning gargoyle. Derek had just enough time to shove Eugenia out of the way before the gargoyle charged into him, lifting him off the ground and slamming him into the ice of the lake, which immediately cracked and gave way beneath them.
They plunged beneath the water and the coldness that hit him was like a thousand icy daggers stabbing into his skin and straight through his bones.
The gargoyle, however, seemed unperturbed by the temperatures. Its only focus seemed to be holding Derek under the water until he drowned. He noticed that the skin on the gargoyle's face and front was covered in fresh burns.
Derek Changed as he struggled to free himself of the gargoyle's hold. Fire breath wouldn't help him now—not while he was underwater—so he kicked, bit, and scratched at the gargoyle until it finally released him.
Except it wasn't that the gargoyle released him, it was more like it was pulled away from him. He watched as the gargoyle disappeared into the murky depths, its cries muffled by the water.
Before Derek could even think of making a break for the surface, something shot out from below him and wrapped around his tail, pulling him further down. It didn't take long for Derek to realise what had caught him. A lucaira. Through the bluish murk, he could make out the dark shape of its long, oval body and eight outstretched arms.
Derek didn't have time to stay and gawk at the beast. The ice-cold water was starting to make his body go numb, and it was becoming increasingly difficult not to try and gasp for breath.
He struggled to free himself from the lucaira's hold and when that didn't work, he Changed. With no tail to grab onto, he was free from the lucaira's hold. Derek pushed through the water, trying to make it to the surface as quickly as he could, desperate to reach that shimmering circle of light where the ice was broken above him.
He felt another one of the lucaira's arms wrap around his left ankle and another grab hold of him around the torso, squeezing tight and dragging him down into the icy depths.
This time, he didn't even struggle. He couldn't struggle. He couldn't move. He could hardly feel his body at all. He couldn't even feel the lucaira's arms around him anymore. Even the cold had left him.
Derek barely even noticed that he'd let go of the breath he'd been holding up until now, until he began to choke as water filled his lungs.
It was the last thing he remembered before everything went dark.
* * *
The gargoyle screeched as Arabelle set it alight. It plummeted down toward the earth, bursting into a shower of stone half-way down. Another came careening towards her, claws outstretched, and before Arabelle could even think to move out of the way, a purple blur sped past, right into the gargoyle. Rosalie sank her teeth into its neck, turning the creature to rubble.
Gargoyles. By the Goddess, what are gargoyles doing here?
So far, the gargoyles only seemed to be focused on attacking the Valley. They'd made no move towards the town, which was a relief in a way. However, trying to keep the Valley dwellers safe was a challenge, especially when the only ones who stood a real chance against the gargoyles were Arabelle and Rosalie. Many of the Town Guards put up a valiant effort, but the gargoyles had numbers and sheer viciousness on their side. When she'd first made it down to the Valley, she'd been too late to help as a Guard was set upon by a pack of gargoyles. She had only been able to look on helplessly as he was torn limb from limb.
Screams from below alerted Arabelle to where a trio of gargoyles were tearing into the thatched roof of a cottage.
Arabelle launched herself at the gargoyles, ramming into one and knocking it over the side of the roof and breathing fire on the others until they took off, squealing.
Peering through the hole the gargoyles had clawed open, she saw an elderly couple huddled together in the corner, their faces stricken with terror, but otherwise seemingly unhurt.
Something hard ploughed into her and she tumbled over the side of the roof, landing hard in a frozen vegetable patch.
Arabelle rolled onto her back in time to see a gargoyle diving towards her, talons extended and mouth wide open—before it broke apart.
Arabelle brought her wings up to shield herself as bits of rock rained down around her. When next she looked, it was to see that the rest of gargoyles were, one by one, exploding into chunks of stone. A man that was in the middle of being carried off by one fell to the ground as the gargoyle fell to pieces.
After the last of the gargoyles shattered apart, all that was left was a shocked stillness.
Rosalie landed next to Arabelle and Changed. "What just happened?" she asked, helping Arabelle to her feet. She knew Rosalie wasn't only talking about the sudden demise of the gargoyles.
Arabelle surveyed the destruction that was left in their wake. The ruined homes, the blood and the bodies strewn along the ground like discarded toys. She saw a Guard kneeling over what was left of one of his comrades. He bowed his head into his hands and sobbed.
"I don't—I don't know?"
* * *
Consciousness returned to Derek with a flash of red light.
No longer was he numb from the freezing water as feeling returned to his body. The water he had inhaled seemed to disappear and new air filled his lungs. He became aware of his surroundings instantly, taking in the lucaira that was still holding onto him and a red glow emanating from his chest.
But there was no time to dwell on it. The cold was already beginning to seep back into his bones, and he could only hold his breath for so much longer. The lucaira had pulled him even further toward the bottom of the lake. He could now make out the reddish skin of the lucaira's body and one huge, black eye.
With his free arm, Derek reached for the dagger sheathed at his belt and stabbed the blade into the soft skin of the lucaira's arm wrapped around his middle. A cloud of red blood rose up into the water and the arm quickly recoiled, as did the one around his leg when he slashed at it.
As soon as he was free, Derek Changed, using his wings and powerful tail to launch himself through the water, towards that wavering circle of white light.
