The First Spell Weaver of Airendell: Book Two of the Airendell Chronicles (34 page)

She looks down and sees the blood and screams again in rage.  She flies at the beast and kicks it again.  This time the beast is only momentarily stunned.  Morna flips into the air and mounts the beast on its shoulders from behind.  She grabs the creature’s head and rips it off in one violent yank.  The beast immediately falls over backwards.  Morna tries to get off in time, but blood loss and exhaustion are taking their toll.  The creature’s mighty bulk pins her legs to the ground with a sickening, crushing sound.  Morna screeches in agony and tries to get from underneath the creature’s body.  But every move causes her intense agony. 

Morna lies back and closes her eyes, and roughly rubs her battered face.  She is covered in her own blood and the sticky, putrid blood of the beast.  She exhales slowly and then growls between clenched teeth, “Elias, I know you are still here.  Help me move him off of my legs and then run like hell!  I still need to feed.”  She snarls, baring her teeth at where she knows her godson is standing.

Elias hesitates, her voice is chilling.  It doesn’t even sound human.  And he can’t believe Morna is looking right at his location.  There is no way she should be able to see him.  He decides to test it and moves to the right.  She snarls and follows him with her gaze.  He moves back to the left and she again follows his movements.  “Quit screwing around, kid!”  She growls again.  Elias hesitantly moves forward and starts pulling on the beast‘s legs.  Morna pushes with all of her wavering strength and two of them quickly get the bulk off of her crushed legs.  Elias instinctively makes a move to examine her legs and she growls, “GO NOW!”

Elias complies and starts to run away.  Then he stops and turns back.  “I SAID RUN!” Morna growls between clenched teeth as she tries to sit up.

“Just a damn moment, Morna.  I am going to burn that damn thing if you can move away from it.  Then I am going to go get a deer or something for you to feed on.  So you hang on to that damned iron control that I know you are exerting for a little bit longer.  I will be as fast as I can.”  Elias says quickly.

Morna snarls and then nods.  Elias drags the beast away from Morna a little more.  She tries to move away, but stops when the crushing pain from her legs rips through her.  Elias moves towards her and she growls at him again.  “Sorry, Morna.” says Elias.  He weaves the fire spell and catches the beast on fire.  He watches for a few seconds to make sure the beast is burning.  “Hang on Pretty Morna, I will bring you some take out.”  He darts for the brush. 

Morna lies back and growls.  After a moment she chuckles at Elias’ words.  “Take out indeed!”  The pain from her injuries has her immobilized but the thirst is the worst part of it all.  The burning need in the very core of her being overpowers everything else.  She tries several times to get up so that she can feed, but her legs are crushed beyond use.  She knows, somewhere in the back of her mind, that her rapid healing is trying to put her body back to rights, but she knows if she can’t feed soon it will be futile.  Her heart is starting to weaken due to blood loss, she is starting to fear for her baby’s life when she hears something coming towards her from the woods. 

Elias has been gone about ten minutes when Morna hears him dragging something through the brush to her location.  She opens her eyes and struggles to sit up as she sees a huge boar being dragged from the woods to her location.  She chuckles weakly as she watches the four hundred pound boar being lifted up and flung towards her by the seemingly invisible Elias.  It lands about a foot from her.  Elias says, “It’s only stunned.  I wasn’t sure if you could feed from a dead animal or not.  So you better hurry, Pretty Morna.”

Morna nods in her godson’s direction and drags herself towards the boar.  She can smell its blood and hear its beating heart.  She can also smell her godson’s blood and hear his beating heart.  Her instincts urge her to feed on Elias but she ignores those and rips a patch of bristly fur back at the neck of the boar and feverishly bites a huge hunk of flesh from the creature’s neck. After she spits the flesh out of her mouth, she hurriedly starts to drain the blood from the beast.  Its beating heart pushes the blood through the wound at its jugular.  Morna drinks thirstily and sighs in relief after a few minutes.  She quickly drains every drop from the body of the beast but needs more. 

Morna lies back to relish the strength that is slowly returning to her body, and closes her eyes.  She feels a hand on her leg and quickly rolls away.  “DON’T!” she roars.  “Please leave, Elias.  I don’t want to hurt you.  I am not under control yet.  I still need to feed.” She snarls at her beloved godson.  She sighs in relief when she feels him leave.  She didn’t hear or see him, but she knows he is gone.  She wonders how she can sense him while he has woven the hiding spell. 

She lies there trying to regain control over her instinct to feed and the mind numbing pain when she senses Elias’ return.  “DAMMIT ELIAS!” she growls.   When Morna smells the deer and its blood she rapidly sits up and grabs the animal from Elias.  She repeats the same procedure as she did with the boar.  Finally, her blood thirst is quenched enough after draining the deer to allow rational thought.

She looks right at her godson.  “Elias, I am okay now.  You can drop the hiding spell.”  She laughs, and says, “I seem to be able to sense you anyway.  But don‘t drop the iron-lion just in case.”

Elias drops the hiding spell and walks a couple of steps towards Morna.  “Is it okay for me to examine you now?”

“I am under control.  I won’t hurt you.  Besides, I think I am too messed up.  You could easily fight me off.”  Morna grunts in pain as she tries to move.  Elias looks at her skeptically.  Morna sees the uncertainty in his eyes.  

“Sorry Elias.  You must be pretty freaked out by what I have become.  I know I am.”  Morna admits.

“Not really Morna.  In the midst of it all, you were still in control.  I just don’t see how.  I know you must have really been struggling not to feed on me and yet you kept trying to send me away.  And I am a little freaked out that you could see me when I had the hiding spell on.  I know the spell was holding, how could you see me?” Elias asks as he moves closer to examine her severely injured body.  He quickly looks at her eyes and ears, and examines the head wound.  “Dammit Morna, you have a concussion.”

“Yeah I know.  I don’t have to be a competent healer to figure that out.”  Morna chuckles at herself and then says, “I couldn’t see you.  I could only sense you.  Your energy, your aura actually.  Maybe it’s something I gained when Almeda gave me her life force and aura?  But then again, that thought already occurred to you, didn’t it?”  Morna asks in awe.

“Yes it did.”  Elias says as he takes off his tee shirt and tears it into strips to stop the blood flowing from her wounded chest and abdomen.  “How did you know that?” He quickly tears his tee shirt into long strips and binds those wounds and holds his hands over her rounded belly and smiles in relief.

“He’s fine, I can sense him stronger than ever now.  We were both pretty weak before you brought that boar to me, kiddo.”  Morna says with a smile. “To answer your question, I can get impressions of what people are thinking.  I can’t read their thoughts, I just kind of have an idea what they are thinking.  I guess that’s another gift from Almeda.  She could do that.”

“How come you had to feed again today?”  Elias asks as he examines her legs.  They are healing improperly.  He knows he will have to re-break them and he is honestly afraid to try it without some help.  The pain will be intense and he knows Morna might try to kill him for it.

“I am not sure.  The intense need to feed, the thirst just overcame me out of nowhere. Hey kiddo, don’t try to do anything with the legs or the arm right now.  I am not sure I can control myself when you start re-breaking them.  You should go get help.  I am stable now.”  Morna assures him.

“What the hell was that thing that attacked you Morna?” Elias asks as he tries to clean the filth out of the wounds on her back.  “The blood, or whatever this crap is on your body smells like the filth we cleaned out of your wounds when you went to the spirit plane.”

“It was the mate to that creature,” says Morna.  “He was avenging his mate’s death.  He said the great mother led him to me.  I don’t know what he meant by that.  How did it get into Asgard?”

“How do you know its language?”  When Morna shrugs Elias looks Morna in the eyes and continues, “Look Morna, I know it’s gonna hurt, but I really need to get you out of these woods and get you somewhere that I can treat your injuries.  Or better yet, get one of the Asgardian healers to work on you.  I need to carry you to Heimdall’s place.  You have yourself completely under control, right?”

Morna reaches out and gently strokes the face of her beloved godson.  “I am so sorry kiddo.  I was truly a wild monster today, and you still are trying to heal me.  Thank you for what you have done for me today.  You have saved my son’s life and mine.  Actually, you saved the life of two of my sons.”

“Nonsense Morna.  You stopped yourself from attacking us.  Even after we ran away, you could have caught up with us, but you didn’t.  And after Micah left with Kyle, you could have fed on me.  You knew where I was despite the hiding spell.  I don’t know how you controlled yourself, but you did.”  Elias kisses her bloody forehead and says, “Stop talking and let me carry you out of here.”

“No need.  I think your dad and brother are here.”  Morna turns her gaze to a spot at the edge of the clearing.  “Brian?  I won’t attack.  You don’t need the hiding spells, but keep the iron-lion spells on.”  Brian and Micah drop their hiding spells and walk towards Morna.  Morna sniffs the air and says, “George?  Come on out brother.  I am under control.”

“How did you know we were here Morna?”  Brian asks. As George walks into the clearing from the other direction.

“I can apparently sense your aura when you are under a hiding spell.  I could sense this one too.”  She says pointing at Elias.  “But he was too stubborn to leave, even when I threatened to kick his ass for him.”  Morna says with a chuckle.  “Lucky for me he stayed with me.  I would probably be toast if he hadn’t helped me with that Stone Coat cannibal from the Spirit Plane.”

“That creature did this to you?”  Micah asked.

“Yes, and it might have killed me if Elias hadn’t bashed it in the head with a rock.” Morna laughs and absentmindedly reaches down to caress her growing belly.  The head injury and the loss of blood are dragging her down towards unconsciousness quickly.

Brian, Micah, and George watch her intently and Micah asks, “The baby?”

“I think he’s fine,” says Elias, but we really need to get her to help.  She lost a lot of blood and is still bleeding.  Look at her legs and her arm.  Her back is really shredded.  She has a nasty concussion too.  Has Luca made it back?”

“He hadn’t when we left.  It took us quite a while to find you two.  You are really deep into the forest here.  We might not have been able to find you if George had not been with us. Let’s make a stretcher and haul her out on that.  Maybe that won’t cause her too much pain,” says Micah thoughtfully.  He pulls the sword from his sheath and starts hack off saplings to make a stretcher.

When Elias takes his dad’s sword and goes to help his brother, Brian leans down and looks Morna in the eyes.  “Mo, did you try to hunt my son?”

“No Brian.  I promise I didn’t.  I wouldn’t do that.”  Morna promises her old friend.

“Damn Morna, I was afraid I was going to have to find a way to kill you.”  Brian says quietly, looking agonized. 

Morna pats the hand of her friend and says, “I understand completely friend.  No need to explain what you mean.”

Elias hears the last of their exchange and loses his temper.  “What the hell is wrong with you Dad?  Morna wouldn’t ever do that.  She wouldn’t ever hurt me.”

Morna holds up her hand to quiet her godson.  “Your dad is right.  It was damned foolish for you to stay behind alone.  After we killed that creature I might have tried to feed on you if I wasn’t so busted up.  So don’t get bent out of shape at your father over his reaction.  Mine would be exactly the same if the roles were reversed.”

“Morna, you had plenty of chances to feed on me and you didn’t do it.  You won’t do it.”  Elias declares impassionedly.  “I know you, who you are.  No matter what is going on with your body, you are still you!”

Morna looks at George.  He hasn’t said a single word to this point.  “Well brother?  Have you decided whether or not you have to kill me?”

George ducks his face in shame and says, “Sorry Morna.  I wasn’t planning on killing you, if I could keep from it.  But I was going to wrap you in my binding cord.”

Morna is nearly unconscious by this point, but she rallies when she smells a familiar scent.  “Luca?”

Her beloved mate is by her side instantly.  “Right here, baby.  He looks around the clearing quickly and looks back at his beloved.  He quickly assesses her condition and says, “What the hell happened here?  Is that a NA’YU’NUWI burning over there?”

Morna starts crying now and says, “Lucian, please take me away.  I am so glad you are here.  I almost turned on Kyle and my godsons.  Take me where I can’t hurt anyone.  Please baby…” she sobs brokenly and clutches at her mate with all her strength.

“Yeah it’s a NA’YU’NUWI.  Someone led it to Morna.  She killed it, but it messed her up really badly.  We need to get her to Heimdall’s and heal her.”  Says Elias quietly.

“Were you here Elias?  When she fought that thing, were you here?”  Luca asks in a controlled voice.