The Crimson Brand (31 page)

Two homunculi stood outside the door to block his path.

Ronan growled through a mouthful of dirty cloth and tensed his haunches to spring.

Turoc’s stench blanketed him, and before he could leap, Ronan felt two long fangs sink into his side.

Ronan screamed and fell.  He lost the sack and was dragged backward by the teeth anchored in his body, scraping his ribs, puncturing one of his lungs.

He couldn’t move.  He could hardly breathe.

And he couldn’t escape in his usual way.  The fangs burrowing into him, the pain that seemed to flood every nerve of his body, the venom that paralyzed him, all made fading away impossible.  He was stuck here now, mind and body, for better or worse.  Probably worse. 

The fangs pulled free of his flesh and he felt blood gush from the wounds.

“Ronan?  Aren
’
t you supposed to be dead?”  Rough hands seized Ronan by the scruff of the neck and spun him around.  Moonlight fell on the face before him: long, curved fangs; shining golden eyes; and the horns that hooded them.  The crimson brand between those horns.  The mark of his master.  “It
is
you!”

Ronan felt a curse on his lips but didn
’
t have the strength to speak it aloud.  Turoc seemed to read it in his eyes, though, and laughed.

“Why are you angry with me?  I
’
m not the one pretending to be dead ... hiding from old friends.”

He lifted Ronan by his scruff and brought him closer, face-to-face.  “Don
’
t be shy, old friend, speak your mind.”

Ronan spoke, a whisper only Turoc could hear, and in a language only his old enemy would understand.

Turoc snarled and flung Ronan back to the ground.  “That was quite rude, old friend.”

Ronan lay only inches from his dropped bag.  He tried to stand, but the effort burned like fire in his every muscle.

“Bring him,” Turoc said.

The homunculi jumped down, landing on either side of Ronan.  The one on his left, covered to its waste in soot and ash, upended the bag and dumped the contents into the dirt.  He ignored the cloak pin, the watch, the mirror, and picked up the Blood Opal box and doorway relic.  Then he pointed at Ronan and chittered a command at the others.

Ronan felt himself lifted from the ground again before the pain overwhelmed him and merciful darkness engulfed him.

Penny went to bed early, emotionally drained and physically exhausted, and awoke early the next morning with the rising sun slanting through the open curtains of her window, sliding across her face in dusty bars.  She lay there for a few minutes, basking in the warmth of the spring sunlight on her face, her eyes closed, her mind happily blank.  Only the gentle squeaking of bedsprings reminded her that she had company.  Katie, a much less exuberant sleeper than Zoe, was in the spare bed so often occupied by Zoe.  Then Penny remembered that Zoe was just beneath her in the spare bedroom, where she’d been sleeping since noon the previous day.  If she wasn’t awake by now, she would be soon.

Reluctantly, Penny opened her eyes and turned toward Katie.

Katie had rolled onto her side, away from the slanting shafts of light moving across her bed, and was sleeping as deeply as ever.

“Kat?”  Penny’s voice was slightly above a whisper, and when there was no response Penny decided to let her sleep.

It was strange having Katie back in her life, beyond the stolen hours late at night in the hollow.  Mr. West’s change of heart was as unexpected as it was sudden.

Sweeping tangles of hair from her face, Penny rolled onto her side and slid her feet from under the cozy covers of her bed.  Cringing a little as the soles of her feet hit the cool floorboards, she stood and walked to the window to close the curtain.  She was awake now, but there was no reason Katie shouldn’t get a little more sleep.

She gazed down on the vivid colors of Clover Hill, the green of the grass and the mingled white and lavender of the wild clovers.  This was her first spring in Dogwood, and though it would be a few more weeks until the abundant trees for which the town was named bloomed, clover was everywhere.  While she stood, appreciating the view, a familiar figure appeared.  A tall, black-haired figure.

“What’s so interesting out there?”

Penny turned, startled, and found Katie sitting up in bed and rubbing the sleep from her eyes.  She yawned, stretched, then swung her feet down to the floor, where they quested blindly for her slippers.

“It’s Zoe,” Penny said, and beckoned Katie to her side.  A moment later they were sharing the window and watching their friend make her slow way toward the hollow.

“Think we should go after her?”  Katie watched Zoe’s progress with mild concern.  “She shouldn’t be alone now.”

“I don’t know.”  Penny was as concerned as Katie, but when she was upset she
liked
to be alone.  Zoe might resent their unwanted attention.  She was about to say so when she saw something moving through the grass far off to Zoe’s right, flanking her.  She pointed it out to Katie.  “I think Ronan is keeping an eye on her.”

“He hasn’t been around since last week,” Katie reminded her.  “Do you think he knows about her grandma?”  Even as she spoke, her eyes narrowed.  She wiped the dust from the window with her sleeve and pressed her nose against the glass.  “That’s not Ronan.”

“What?”  Penny could only make out a small Ronan-sized something parting the grass in tandem with Zoe.  Then its path led it to a stunted, skeletal dogwood, and it clambered upward, swinging itself from limb to limb until it was near the top.  It watched Zoe for a few moments, and when she paused to turn in its direction, it dropped back into the wild grass and clover.

“That’s not Ronan,” Katie repeated.

Rather than restate the obvious, Penny simply gaped.

The thing that was not Ronan but that was clearly stalking Zoe was roughly humanoid.  It stood a few feet high, had a spindly, hairless body and limbs, a large head, and huge hands and feet at the ends of its short legs and overly long arms.  It moved like a monkey through the thinning grass, hunching forward and balancing on its fists as it ran.

Penny stumbled away from the window and ran to her bed, kicking her shoes beneath it, then dropping to her stomach to retrieve them.  She pulled them on and ran to the trapdoor to the hallway below without lacing them.  She turned to see what was keeping Katie and found her rummaging through her overnight bag next to the guest bed. 

“Hurry, Kat!  We gotta catch up!”

“Chill out, Penny,” Katie urged, cringing as Penny stepped on one of her own shoelaces and nearly tumbled backward over the railing around the trapdoor.  “Stop yelling, and close that thing before you fall through it and break your neck.”

Penny regarded Katie, nearly weeping in frustration, but did manage to stop herself from shouting again.  “Chill out?  Did you see that … thing?  We have to ….”

Penny began dancing in place, frustrated beyond words.

“We don’t have to catch up,” Katie said in soothing tones that made Penny want to scream again.  She seemed to read this in Penny’s face and rolled her eyes.  She at last found what she was looking for in her bag, and held it up.  “I have an idea.”

*   *   *

Still slightly pink in the face over her moment of total panic, Penny entered Aurora Hollow via her wardrobe door, her wand ready in one hand, her mirror held tightly in the other.  Zoe was still too far away to hear, but Penny figured she had only a few minutes to set Katie’s admittedly clever plan into action.  She peered into the mirror and saw Katie staring back at her.

“Ready?”

“Yeah,” Katie said, then nodded firmly as if to convince herself that she was telling the truth.  “Go!” 

Penny stuck her wand behind her ear for temporary safekeeping and removed Zoe’s wand from her waistband.  She clutched it with the mirror in her left hand, retrieved her wand, then threw Zoe’s wand and the mirror into the air.

They rose together in an ungraceful arc, broke apart at the summit of their flight, then paused in midair, slowly spinning in place as if dangling from invisible wires.

Penny sighed in relief, then urged them forward with her wand as she began to climb the slope to the flat crown of Clover Hill.  They obeyed her direction with only an occasional dip or meander in their gliding journey down the well-worn path.  She reached the edge, wishing
—
not for the first time
—
that she’d had the good sense to be born with hair that blended a little better into the background, and watched the wand and mirror as they floated down the trail.  When they were almost lost to sight, she let the wand fall and encouraged the mirror to rise a little higher, still low enough that the tall grass obscured it but high enough for Zoe to see when she arrived.

With some good timing and luck, they would catch Zoe’s stalker by surprise, find out what it was and, more importantly, what it wanted.

A few minutes later the top of Zoe’s head came into view, and the rest of her body quickly rose to join it as she crested the last rise. 

Her head hung, her face pointing down at the trail and obscured by a fall of long black hair, and just as Penny began to fear she’d miss the mirror entirely, maybe stepping on her wand in her distraction, she paused.

Penny’s gaze darted from Zoe to the surrounding field, but she didn’t see their uninvited guest. 

After a startled step backward, Zoe bent and went to one knee, as if tying her shoelaces, and Penny saw her scoop the small mirror from the air before her.  She bent close to it, hiding it behind her curtain of hair.  After a few seconds Penny saw her slip the mirror into her pocket and part her hair with her empty hand to search for Penny.  When she rose a moment later, Penny saw her wand clutched close to her leg.

Penny readied herself.  If Zoe followed Katie’s plan, it would happen quickly.

Zoe faced Penny, too far away for Penny to read her expression or even tell if Zoe had spotted her, then she turned right and strode off the trail and into the grass, moving deliberately slowly.

Penny crouched a little lower, aware that her vivid hair made her an easy target for anything with working eyes but unable to do anything about it. 

Zoe continued through the waist-high grass, her movements sharp, her posture tense.  A few seconds later, the strange gray creature broke through the grass and onto the trail.  It paused there and fidgeted for a moment in apparent indecision, hopping once in place to catch sight of Zoe.  Then it turned, first one way then the other, and froze when it saw Penny.

Penny’s breath caught in her throat.  For a moment she thought she was going to faint.  Her world went slightly foggy at the edges, and her legs began to wobble beneath her.

She thought she knew what the little monster was now.  She’d seen one like it only the week before, tiny enough to fit in the palm of one hand.  She knew this one wasn’t hers.  Hers had green eyes, her eyes; this one’s were gold with slits for pupils.

The thing regarded her for a second, its strange face registering surprise, then its thick, pale lips pulled back in a snarl to reveal large teeth that looked as if they’d been chiseled from granite.  It growled, a rough, high-pitched sound, like a dog on helium, and charged.

The faint feeling retreated all at once, and her heart hammered in alarm.  She remembered with some surprise that she was holding her wand, and pointed it at the charging monster.

The little gray man bounded down the trail toward her in long strides and leaps, dodging the pummeling spells she sent toward it with ease.  Her spells gouged divots in the dirt around the little monster.  She demolished a small bush on its right and cracked a large rock just as the charging creature leapt over it.  She grazed it once, chipping a sliver of stone from its shoulder, throwing it off stride for a moment but not stopping it.  She tried a levitation spell, but the little monster was moving too quickly for her to catch it.

Zoe called out somewhere in the distance.

Fighting her panic, Penny conjured a shield just as the thing closed the remaining distance.  It bounced back, as if striking an invisible wall.

It shook its head and growled, then faced her again.  Its large eyes narrowed, and it snapped at the air between them with its rough stonelike teeth.  Then it lowered its bald head and charged again.  It struck the invisible barrier between them with enough force to push Penny a few inches down the hill.  The shield shimmered momentarily in front of her, and her wand bucked in her hand.

“Could use some help!”  Penny cried out, bracing for another charge.

The thing twittered madly in a strange, incomprehensible language, then charged again.

Penny felt this impact all the way to her shoulder, and the shield fell as her wand flew out of her hand.  Before she could regain her tottering balance, the little gray man plowed into her and they tumbled backward down the hill and into Aurora Hollow.

She no longer felt ashamed of her earlier panic.  It seemed justified now.

Penny heard Zoe call to her as she tumbled to a stop at the bottom of the hill, bruised, dirty, and winded.  The little gray man held on to her, chirping madly.