Storm of Prophecy: Book 1, Dark Awakening (26 page)

Still no one came.

He suddenly felt Karl jump with a start at his left. “Did you see that!” He demanded.

Vincent’s eyes desperately searched the forest in front of them. “See what?”

“Not out there!” Karl screamed in a near panic, his voice accelerating in fright. “It’s Craig! His eyes just opened! He’s alive!”

As he looked down, Vincent’s own eyes became wide and his hairs began to stand on end. Craig lay still as stone, his skin just as pale as before. A motionless and inert form, his corpse exuded only the hollow aura of a rock or a stick with none of the vibrant energy one could sense from something living, yet behind his cracked glasses, his eyes were still open, just as Karl had said. They stared upward blankly and had an eerie gray cast to them with small streaks of black. Vincent felt his skin grow cold.

“Keep your head, Karl,” Stacy admonished, not seeing it, “you know that’s impossible.”

“It’s true,” Vincent said quietly, hardly realizing that he had spoken the words.

“You two are nuts,” she concluded, “it’s just a trick of light. We need to stay focused or we’re dead.”

“I’m telling you his eyes are open!” Karl protested.

Stacy growled in aggravation and broke from her position to turn around and gaze past Karl to see for herself. She let out a gasp and was quiet a moment. “What does this mean?” Craig began to sit up and Stacy let out a scream. Stan, who was laying face down, started to get up as well.

Rick had stayed where he was, keeping his back to Vincent. “What? What’s happening?”

Stacy was just as horrified as Vincent and Karl. “They’re moving!”

“Maybe they weren’t dead, just unconscious,” Rick offered.

“No,” Karl insisted, “something’s definitely not right here.”

Although Vincent was worried and astounded, he had to consider other threats as well. “Stacy, guard our backs.” She still stared in shock at the two rising forms. “Now, Stacy!” He shouted. In his peripheral vision he could see her returning to her position. The two finished rising to their feet.

If Rick was correct, the boys shouldn’t be a problem, and could maybe even provide some assistance. Somehow, he couldn’t make himself believe that but tried talking to them anyway. “Craig, we’re here to help,” he announced cautiously. “If you’re hurt, we can get you back to the keep, but right now there are dangerous people around and we need you to fight with us.” Craig ignored Vincent’s words, as did Stan, and they began lurching forward without expression on their pale, ghastly faces.

“I don’t think that’s going to work, Vincent,” Karl remarked.

The two crept forward with Craig getting closest.

“Perhaps they’re just deranged,” Stacy suggested from back in her position, “something the cultists did to their minds. Maybe they’re in shock.”

Before they could answer, Craig suddenly lunged at Karl. He swiftly ducked to the side and put him off balance while Vincent instinctively hammered Craig over the top of his head with the bottom of his sword hilt, knocking him straight to the ground. He had hit him much harder than he intended to and hoped that he had not caused any serious damage.

The next moment, Stan was grabbing Karl and trying to bite his throat. Karl struggled with him and was able to keep him away from it but only barely. Before Vincent could say or do anything, Craig suddenly bit his leg, his teeth painfully sinking in when he clearly should have been unconscious.

Vincent furiously kicked him in the gut with the other leg to no effect. “Get off!” He growled angrily through the pain of the bite. Craig retracted his teeth, not because of what Vincent said or did, but to claw and grab higher, no doubt to go after his throat as well. Enraged, Vincent beat him down again and pressed his right foot down on his chest to keep him from moving or biting. Craig continued grabbing and clawing at him, digging his fingernails painfully into his flesh and trying to pull and push the leg off.

“Are you alright?” Stacy asked.

“Stand your ground!” Vincent yelled back.

He looked up from Craig and noticed that Karl was fighting a losing battle against Stan to keep him away from his throat, and the split second instant of decision was upon him. Time stopped. Vincent held his sword high in both hands while looking down at Craig. Craig looked dead, but what if he wasn’t? How could he kill him? Had something truly terrible happened to him, or was it possible that he was still alive but mentally deranged? If that were true, it would be wrong to take Craig’s life. Craig wasn’t a cultist, he was just an innocent boy. One of their own.

The memory of his hesitation to kill Jeanette flashed through his mind again.

The objective realization came fast. Indecision fled his being to be replaced by a frightened fury as the sword came down. Once Craig’s head was severed, the corpse twitched and then moved no more. Blood oozed out of the opening.

Despite his revulsion at seeing Craig’s head removed, Vincent did not waste even a fraction of a second as he rushed to help Karl. He helped push Stan back with his left hand and then ran him through with his blade on the side of his rib cage.

Nothing happened.

Vincent’s eyes widened in surprise. It made no sense. He tried again, thinking he had missed. He knew he hadn’t missed. The blade passed through Stan again; he even checked and looked at the blood on it. No effect. With the two of them so close like that, Vincent’s choices were limited.

Frantic to save his cousin, he buried his sword in Stan again, all the way to the hilt, and then twisted it, using it to push Stan while grabbing a hold of Karl’s shoulder to force them apart. At first it gained them no purchase, but it allowed Karl a free hand to start pulling Stan’s off. Pushing hard, Karl was finally able to get himself free and was flung off to the left, losing his balance.

A chill ran down Vincent’s spine, he looked up and instantly realized the obvious. Just as Stan was turning his attention to Vincent, starting to move to grab at him, he brought up his right foot and used it to kick-shove him off the sword. Stan was forced away a good distance and fell to the ground. Vincent’s chest heaved, more out of unrest than weariness as he held his bloody sword at the ready in both hands toward Stan.

Karl was at his side next, floating his rock above his left hand and breathing even harder from his prolonged ordeal. They turned their heads toward each other and shared a brief look of shock. The next moment, Karl curled the fingers on his left hand like he was holding a ball and flicked it. With incredible speed and power, his large flat rock flew through the air and smashed down on Stan’s dirt blond head, causing his skull to burst apart in a spray of blood, bone, and brain, like a tomato battered by a club. Stray drops of blood were flung on their faces. As if alive, the rock floated back up afterward, covered in gore, and hovered in the air a few feet in front of Karl once again, dripping red.

The two of them waited.

Stan did not get up.

They exchanged another look, eyes wide and still feeling stunned by what had happened. Then they turned their gaze forward at Stan’s corpse again. Vincent thought he might be sick.

“Just what the hell is going on here!” Karl demanded, breathing hard and brushing off in frustration some the disheveled strands of his blond hair out of his face. “Why did they attack us!”

Vincent had no answer, instead he just looked at the bloody mess that was left of Stan’s head, letting his eyes glide over to the grievous yet ineffective wounds he himself had inflicted. He then glanced down at Craig’s bloody, headless remains at his feet, pushing it away with his boot while wishing it had landed somewhere else. “There’s something else about them that doesn’t quite make sense.”
He grimaced, feeling a deep revulsion.

Karl looked from one to the other like he and immediately caught on to what he was saying. “You’re right, for some reason their heads appear to be their only weakness.”

“What are you two talking about?” Stacy asked, her back still to them.

Though he didn’t want to, Vincent dutifully shared it with Stacy, his tone grave. “I don’t know what was wrong with Stan or Craig, but if you see anyone like them again…blast them apart or go for their heads,” he explained, “I think it’s the only way.” He kept his wary gaze to the woods once more, the grimace still on his face, and started moving his sword one way and to the other when he slowly turned his body back and forth.

“Okay…but did you really need to kill them?”

Karl guffawed. “‘Need to kill them?’ Stacy, they were already dead! Vince had the full length of his steel through him and it did nothing!”

“In who?”

“Stan!”

Stacy seemed shaken a moment. “Oh.”

“They weren’t alive, they weren’t deranged, and the cultists didn’t do anything to their minds,” Karl concluded. “What we saw had to be some form of necromancy! I’m sure of it! These bastards are raising the dead!”

“Then the situation is much worse than we thought,” Rick commented.

Amidst the sound of rain there was a man’s laughter to his right and Vincent wheeled his head. At the other end of the clearing, not far from the cauldron, a man looking just like what Stan and Craig had once described to him came out into the open. He began slowly clapping his hands together while he laughed. His straight dark hair was strangely not soaked from the weather, and the faint dark splotches under his eyes were not washed away by it either. The peasant clothes he wore, a clear façade, hung just a little too tight.

A rather large number of people in black robes with hoods showed up in several rows behind him, but it was too dark for him to tell how many. Vincent’s heart pounded. His body shook as his muscles tensed. His fists tightened on his sword, knowing that soon it would taste more blood. Karl and Stacy moved up on the sides of Vincent and Rick to face them.

He kept laughing as he walked a little further and continued clapping his hands together in amusement. “Brilliant,” he mocked between laughs, “well done. I especially enjoyed your red haired friend’s wonderful little stroke of acumen, ‘about it being much worse.’” His laughter died out, but he remained deceptively gracious. “I’m sure you must think us monsters,” he started, “and I admit that our methods are sometimes crude. But there is really no cause for aggression or hostility between us, no need for you to turn away in fearful ignorance.” His voice turned more sweet. “We could even be friends, you could join us in our noble cause.”

“And what cause is that?” Vincent asked.

He swept his arms out and bowed only slightly before coming back up. “Why to serve and worship Kargoth The Almighty in all his divine glory.” He eyed each of them carefully, seeming to take further stock of them. His eyes glided up and down the length of Stacy, studying her form, and she momentarily averted her eyes and shifted her weight uncomfortably. “The four of you are not entirely without value, it would be quite unfortunate to waste your talents. Even you with the sword were quite impressive the other night, if a bit troublesome.” He smiled. “Even more impressive that you still stand before us.” Vincent clenched his jaw. “If you will but swear allegiance to the Lord of Death and join him in his revolution against the false gods,”-he paused-“I shall spare your lives.”

As always, Stacy’s mind worked fast. “Why should we seek death from him in order to be spared a death at your hands? Where’s the logic in that?”

“Life and death shall become as one,” he answered cryptically, “and those who serve him well will be rewarded with everlasting happiness and vitality, all who oppose him, punished and tormented for all eternity. Why struggle against the divine one when everything you desire could be yours if you would but submit to his will?”

Vincent felt overwhelmed by the danger they were in, and the numbers they were up against, but he had no intention of ever submitting to this Kargoth. He gritted his teeth.
Nor to him
. He gripped his sword tighter. “You’re going to pay for all your crimes.”

“Crimes? What crimes?”

“You know very well what I’m talking about: you killed countless children and other innocents! You stole from us! And now you murdered Stan and Craig!”

“Oh right, that,” he dismissed offhandedly, “but then again, I didn’t really kill them, you did.”

“Does that lie comfort you?” Vincent asked in retort.

“Why yes…actually, it does. I will be very comforted to know that the authorities will be wasting their time holding you responsible instead of coming after us. And who can blame them? After all it was your sword that cut off that one’s head,”-he pointed then let the hand down-“and your rock that…delightfully put an end to the other.”

“I’ll ‘put an end’ to you!” Karl shouted back in unrestrained rage.

“No, I don’t think so,” he replied, still not showing any loss of mirth, “you see the four of you will be quite dead once the magistrate or the wizards arrive. You will be blamed for their deaths posthumously, I’m afraid. As for me, I have something I need to finish cooking.”

“Is that how you did it? With that infernal concoction?” Vincent asked next.

“That?” He asked innocently, pointing to the cauldron. “Oh my no, I don’t need that to turn them or anyone. That is something altogether different, something much more delicious,” his eyes looked up and he seemed to be imagining something pleasant, “quite delicious indeed.” He looked back. “It’s a shame you won’t join us. I didn’t really expect you to, I just thought to be generous by offering you an alternative to needless suffering.”-he clasped his hands together-“well,” he said, letting out a breath, “I’d simply love to keep chatting with you, but right now we need to finish our work…and unfortunately you cannot be allowed to interfere.” He turned to the cauldron and walked toward it along with several others. As he did, he shouted over his shoulder to the rest of the cult members, no longer in a nice tone, genuine or not. Now
it sounded snide, grating, almost angry. “Please entertain our beloved
guests
.”