Steel Maiden (18 page)

The horses all seemed to be looking at the
bogs. Something in there was setting off the animals. I strained,
but I could only see swamp and sickly vegetation. Then I smelled
rotten eggs and damp earth. It filled my nose until it burned.
Grimacing, I searched for the source of the smell in the bogs. And
then I saw it.

A giant wave of light gray mist was rolling
silently onto the beaches. It moved faster than any normal mist,
but when I looked to the top of the trees next to me, they weren’t
moving. There was no wind. The air was eerily still.

My breathing came in rapid bursts. I watched
as giant fingers of gray mist searched the beach as though they
were alive and had minds of their own. The smell of sulfur choked
me. My eyes burned, and I had to blink the tears to see clearly.
Something was wrong.

My pulse raced as I grabbed my daggers.

“The mist!” I bellowed. “There’s something
in the mist!”

Heads turned my way, but they ignored me.
Some of them pointed at me and laughed. They must have thought that
I was mad or drunk.

“Bloody idiots,” I hissed.

I ran a few paces forward all the while
jumping in the air flailing my arms like an idiot.

“Listen to me, you fools!”

I pointed towards the evil white mist and
bellowed as loudly as I could.

“The threat is real. The mist is coming.
There’s something unnatural in the mist. You need to move!”

They stirred then. Some of them looked
frightened as the gray devil approached, but it was too late.

I watched helplessly as a giant wave of mist
rushed silently onto the beach and engulfed the unsuspecting men
and women. The great, mist-like hands of the bogs had decided to
come and get us.

Earsplitting screams echoed from inside the
eerie fog. And then I heard the sound of metal hitting flesh.
Horses trumpeted, but the mist muffled the sounds and made them
seem far away.

The mist kept coming. It spread out and
rolled along the beaches to where the others camped. My fear and
dread increased. I couldn’t see farther than a few hundred feet
now, not even the fires that burned along the beach. Everything was
covered in a blanket of fog. Horns blew, and the long and desperate
screams increased.

And then I heard wet guttural snarls and
growls that were unlike any living animal I’d ever heard before. It
was the sound of nightmares, the sound of creatures from another
world. And it was all coming from inside the mist.

In a mad panic, the horses pulled free of
their tethers. I caught a glimpse of Torak’s black tail as he
galloped away from the mist. Two bronze colored horses and a white
mare followed him. Seconds later the spot where they had been
grazing was completely submerged in the mist.

I wanted to call out to my friend, Torak, to
call him back, but I knew he wouldn’t come. The horses had sensed
the evil before we humans did. They weren’t stupid. They ran with
wild speed, and the mist would never reach them.

“Goodbye, my friend,” I whispered. I felt a
little bit of comfort that he was safe, but I knew I would need all
my courage to face this new evil.

I turned towards the rancid, burning fog.
Glowing red eyes peered at me greedily from inside the mist. They
were so close that I would make contact if I slashed out with my
weapons. The hatred and hunger in the eyes were unmistakable. It
wanted to taste
my
flesh. We hadn’t even made it into the
bogs, and yet something evil was attacking us.

There was no time to think. I lunged
forward, blades flailing. But in an instant, the eyes were gone,
and I was alone again. Although I’d often wished for solitude, this
time I didn’t. I longed to have someone, anyone, next to me. How
could I fight an enemy that I couldn’t see?

“Mad Jack?” I cried and took a careful step
forward.

“Mad Jack!” I bellowed as loudly as I
could.

I listened and prayed that he’d appear
before me. But the only sound was my beating heart. The air had
gone silent. The mist had silenced every living thing. Were they
even still alive?

The mist billowed like great storm clouds. I
turned to the path behind me, thinking about bolting like the
horses. But how far would I go before the fog monster reached me? I
could never outrun it. I would have to stand and fight whatever
monsters emerged from the fog or die trying.

The mist swelled towards me. It swirled as
if it had a mind of its own, soaring and twisting, surrounding me.
I choked out a sob as the smell of sulfur burned my nose. I
desperately fought my nausea and tried to keep my breathing
shallow. But the mist burned my lungs like the smoke from a
fire.

I pulled my shirt up over my mouth and nose
in a makeshift mask so I could breath. I maintained my fighting
stance, but my eyes burned so much that I couldn’t see through my
tears.

How could I fight if I could not see?
It was as if the mist had blinded us on purpose, to make us easy
targets for whatever demons hid within it. I could almost feel it
laughing at me.

I was trapped in a gray hell. Even if I
could run now, I would be running blindly. I was too terrified to
move, too terrified of what was in the mist. I could barely keep it
together.

“Hello!” I cried.

“Is there anyone here? Hello?” But there was
no reply.

I wiped my tears with the back of my
hand.

And then I heard a cry for help. It was so
faint at first that I thought I might have imaged it. But as I
tilted my head I heard it again. Faint, but it was definitely
human, and female.

“Hello?” I cried. “Where are you?” I waited
a moment.

“Tell me where you are. I need to hear your
voice so I can find you. Hello?”

Could I even help her?

I tried not to think about those glowing red
eyes as I moved carefully forward. I was sure the voice had come
from somewhere ahead of me and a little off my left. I took another
step forward.

“Please, just say something … anything so I
know where you are.”

I was probably going to get myself killed.
Every instinct in me screamed to run the other way, but I ignored
it. Maybe, just maybe, I could help.

Just as I was about to give up, a
bone-chilling scream filled the air. All the hairs on the back of
my neck stood up and I heard a thump.

I caught my breath. The scream had sounded
just like my mother’s, right before Brother Edgar had cut off her
head. It was a scream that would haunt me forever.

I dashed blindly towards the sound. The fact
that I could hear my feet padding the ground brought me some
comfort. This was not a nightmare. It was truly happening.

I raced towards the woman’s cry, and my own
mother’s screams rang in my ears again. Tears ran down my face
freely now, and I sobbed as I ran. My foot caught on a root, and I
stumbled, but I quickly steadied myself and kept moving.

Another scream. This time it sounded as if
it were right in front of me. I gripped my daggers and screamed,
“I’m coming!”

Images of my dying mother flashed in my
mind’s eye, urging me forward.

“Stay where you are.”

Something caught my foot, and I went
pitching forward. I landed hard on the ground and knocked my breath
out. I had landed with my daggers pointing up and had nearly
impaled myself. My legs were wet. I must have landed in a
puddle.

I pushed myself up and gasped.

A shriveled heap lay at my feet. The blood I
was covered in was not my own. The body was so mangled and twisted
that at first I hadn’t even recognized it as a person at all. There
was no sign of clothes. The skin had been sliced into strips, and
each strip had been peeled away from the body like you would pare
an apple. The bloody muscles, flesh, and entrails were strewn about
in puddles of deep maroon blood. The body’s limbs were scattered
around, and the tendons were still attached at the sockets, as
though they’d been ripped from the body. Blood. So much blood. The
face was a woman’s, but the deep mangled gashes looked as though
something with large teeth had taken a bite out of her. Her eyes
were two empty black holes.

My body convulsed, and I vomited. I retched
again and again until the bile burned my throat. I was crying so
much that the world was a blurry haze.

What kind of monster could do this?

“Elena!”

Mad Jack’s voice sounded behind me, and I
nearly collapsed in relief.

“Mad Jack! I’m here! I’m here!”

I forgot about the dead woman and rushed to
the spot where I’d last heard his voice. But he wasn’t there.

A pair of glowing red eyes peered at me
through the mist. And just as my scream caught in my throat, the
creature lunged.

CHAPTER 18

T
HE CREATURE CAME AT me so fast that
I barely had the time to lift my arms and block the attack. But
still, I wasn’t fast enough.

My right arm burned with pain as I spun
around with my blades out in front of me and slashed at the beast.
I jumped back, and it let out a shriek that chilled me to the
bones.

I didn’t wait to see how badly I had injured
it. I veered away and dashed in the opposite direction.

It caught me by the edge of my cloak. I
heard a rip and fell head first into the ground. The creature
roared, and it lunged for me again. I could see black blood oozing
from the wound across its abdomen, but I hadn’t cut deeply
enough.

We were both injured now. I leapt to my
feet. My arm burned where three sharp claws had sliced through the
sleeve of my tunic. My skin was already swelling with infection and
discharged a yellow liquid that mixed with my blood and smelled of
rotten flesh. The thing had venom in its talons.

My breath came fast and hard, but I felt the
warmth of my healing powers fighting the infection, and I prayed to
the Creator that I’d heal fast enough to survive the next attack
from this monster.

The mist cleared, and the creature hesitated
for a moment so that I had time to examine it more closely. It
stood over six feet tall, upright like a man, but hunched over. It
had long gnarled arms that nearly grazed the ground with a thicket
of coarse gray fur that covered its crooked, misshapen body. Its
gleaming skull was bare except for sparse clumpy tufts of fur. Its
rough body was crisscrossed with scars that looked as though they
had been ripped open over and over again and had never healed. Its
broad brutal face with a flat nose, large twisted maw, and glaring
red eyes shone with intelligence and hunger. There was nothing
remotely human or even warm blooded about it. This thing was dead
and rotting. Strips of pink flesh hung from its talons, and I
thought I was about to be sick again.

I was in such a panic that I couldn’t
breathe. I could hardly move.

Could I kill it?
The fighting skills
I’d acquired in the Pit would not be enough to defeat this
nightmare.

Where were the others? Had the others
escaped
? I was sure that Mad Jack had called out to me from
somewhere nearby.

The monster and I faced each other alone in
the small clearing.

A gurgling escaped from the creature’s
throat, and when it opened its jaw, I could see rows of brown
fish-like teeth. Then four fanged tentacles writhed out of its
mouth and lashed towards me.

I flailed with my weapons in the attempt to
cut them, but the tentacles grabbed me, and sank their sharp fangs
into my arms and legs. They wrapped around my waist and lifted me
in the air. I screamed as the poison from the tiny fangs entered my
blood stream and burned like liquid fire. The tentacles squeezed my
body and crushed my lungs. I opened my mouth to cry out, but
vomited from the smell of rotten flesh instead. I could feel the
suction of the tentacles pulling at my skin. I felt weak and
nauseated again, and I could see that the creature was drinking my
blood.

I was horrified. I could heal from cuts and
deep gashes, even from some poisons, but I knew my healing
abilities couldn’t replace buckets of my blood.

I was going to die.

My head fell forward as my loss of blood
sapped my energy. I couldn’t hang on to my thoughts.

Miraculously my blades were still in my
hands. Whether the Creator had decided to help me, or the thing
didn’t bother to disarm me, I didn’t care. I gripped my blades with
all the strength I had left and hacked at the tentacles in one
powerful upward slash. I heard a shriek as my blades tore into its
flesh.

It retaliated, and I hit the ground hard
with a horrible snap. A shock wave of pain shot up my left arm. I
could see that my arm lay in an awkward position, and I could no
longer feel my hand.

But I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Just
as soon as I hit the ground, I was up again. I could see a tangle
of severed tentacles at my feet as I fought the nausea that washed
through me.