The Dark Portal (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 3) (35 page)

It felt like a lifetime since then.

Then he stared across the road at the prison-like school on the opposite hilltop, behind its bristling wall of wrought-iron fences.

As the first pinkish-gold rays of s
unrise reached over the horizon and fingered the turrets of the ominous brick building, Jake knew his enemy was in there, lurking in the shadows. Feeding on the children.

But not for long, he vowed.

One way or the other, he would make sure that Garnock got exactly what he deserved.

And
soon.

PART V

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

A Hero’s Welcome

J
ake, exhausted, shuffled out of the cemetery like the walking dead, while the ghost-head zoomed off alone.

F
reed at last from the cursed tomb, it hurried off to tell its ghost-body the good news that they’d soon be reunited.

Jake
still had Brother Colwyn’s lost skull safely wrapped in the makeshift knapsack of his scarf, slung across his shoulder.

As the ghost-hea
d disappeared down the road, Jake didn’t really mind being left alone for the last leg of his journey. After all, Brother Colwyn had seen him through the hard part—that horrible shortcut through the devil’s kingdom. Of course, bad as it was, Jake was still glad he had seen the place firsthand and now knew that all that scary stuff was real. One wanted to know such things.

It made a difference in how one lived. Indeed, logic would suggest that those who snapped their fingers at Hades and cal
led it stuff and nonsense did nothing but increase their own odds of ending up there.

Anyway, crossing Hades was still better than being trapped in the mine. Jake was sure he’d have either run
out of air or light by now. Not a happy prospect. The thought of losing either of these essentials made him enjoy the beauty of the morning, with its fresh air and birdsong, all the more, even though more walking was the last thing he wanted to do right now.

As he dragged him
self down the dusty road with slow, shuffling steps, he would’ve given a large portion of his gold for a horse or carriage or even a friendly gryphon to give him a ride.

Ah, well.

At last, the entrance to his property came into view.
Wonder if Aunt Ramona has written back yet,
he thought as he stepped over the invisible magic threshold that bounded Plas-y-Fforest. Maybe he should try contacting her again or even asking her to come, since a battle with Garnock now seemed imminent.

But she’s
just so very old,
he thought with a frown. He couldn’t help wanting to protect her.

Powerful as she supposedly was, Jake hat
ed to drag a three-hundred-year-old witch into danger. Surely her battling days were done. She didn’t even like using magic anymore for the most part. Too many unpredictable side effects.

As he was mulling the question, a flicker of mov
ement in the branches above drew his eye.
Pixies
. The wee forest folk were watching him again. They looked quite fascinated. He had no idea why. But he certainly remembered King Furze’s warning that the next time he crossed a pixie’s path, he had better show respect.

Though he was the lord of Plas-y-Fforest
, Jake gave them a cordial nod and went on his weary way up the steep, wooded drive. He had no sooner reached the top, where the cottage came into view, when he heard a familiar voice yelling: “Everyone, I see him! He’s coming up the drive! Hurry, everybody! Jake! You’re alive!”

Jake
spotted Archie on the roof watching for him through his telescope. He waved back, smiling; his cousin was practically jumping up and down with excitement.

The next thing he knew, everyone came flooding out of the house and rushed over, surrounding him
with quite the hero’s welcome.

“We thought you were dead!” Dani cried.

“I knew you weren’t,” Archie said.

Jake drew in his breath to see Derek and Miss Helena safe and sound. He was so overjoyed that he actually ran and hugged them. Then everyone hugged him. The girls were crying with relief to have him back. Archie was glued to his side.
Amid the hugs and tears and handshakes, licks (from Teddy) and nuzzles (from a purring Red), however, the Guardian was none too happy with him for going off with Red to clear the gargoyles from the mine.

“I couldn’t help it a
fter I saw them nearly kill you, Derek,” he said. “How could I let them go, right when we finally had them on the run?”

The warrior frowned, but mostly he was pleased that Jake had come back in one piece. “Well,” he said
in a brusque tone, “you’ll have to apologize to Emrys. He thought you were following the group the whole time. Poor fellow nearly had an apoplectic fit when he realized you weren’t there. He thought one of the gargoyles ate you. He was ready to tear the whole mine apart.”

“I’
m just glad the dwarves were able to rescue you like they promised. I take it you two were all right?”

“We got washed out into a lower cavern about a hundred yards downstream.”

“Poor Miss Helena got dashed against the rocks and broke her leg in the fall,” Dani reported. “Thankfully Master Emrys had an extra one of Red’s magic feathers. After Red came back to us, he told Isabelle how you killed the gargoyles but were stuck inside the sorcerer’s tomb. Then Isabelle told us.”

“Red said you were confident
you could find another way out,” Archie chimed in.

“And he did,
” Isabelle finished with a sniffle.

“How? A tunnel or something?”
Dani asked.

“Something like that.” Jake wasn’t ready to talk about his stroll through the underworld quite yet. First things first.
He was a little choked up by their outpouring of concern for him. He cleared his throat, trying to stick to business. “I found some things of interest in the tomb. Here.” He pulled the folded page from Garnock’s grimoire out of his pocket. “Archie, can you translate this? I think it’s Latin. Be careful, though, it’s a magic spell. Don’t speak the words aloud. No telling what could happen if you do. I’m fairly sure this was what Garnock was working on right before he died. It may give us a clue about his next move.”

Archie took the paper from him, glancing over it with a nod.
“Shouldn’t take long.”

“What’s in there?” Dani pointed at his makeshift satchel.

“Oh,” Jake said, “I found the Headless Monk’s head.”

She jumped back, aghast. “You’ve got a
head
in there?”

H
e laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s just an old skull. High time poor Brother Colwyn got his noggin back. Then he can finally rest in peace. I’m going up to the chapel ruins as soon as we’re done here.”

“Well, I’m going with you!” Dani declared.

“Me, too!” said Archie.

“Me, three,”
Isabelle added.

Derek gave Jake’s shoulder
a brotherly squeeze. “As you can see, this lot won’t be letting you out of their sight any time soon.”

“I only have one question,” Dani said in a thoughtful tone, staring at the top of Jake’s head. “What happened to your hair?”

“Huh?” He touched his hair self-consciously. Had he singed it off crossing the river of lava?

“You look like that
pixie, little what’s-his-name. Wake-robin.”

“What?”
Jake cried in alarm. “Oh, no!” He ran inside to find the nearest mirror, with Teddy chasing at his heels.

A
moment later in the parlor, he leaned closer to the looking glass, studying his reflection in dismay. Thankfully, not all of his hair had turned white like the pixie’s—just a streak of it at his left temple, curling back around his ear.

“Great, now I even look like a freak,” he mumbled.

“I think you look very distinguished,” Archie declared, folding his arms over his chest.

This
from a lad who insisted on wearing a bowtie most days. Jake just looked at him.

“I don’t suppose anyone’s hu
ngry?” Snowdrop Fingle asked from the doorway to the kitchen.

Jake shot his hand
up. “Me!”

The ho
use brownie beamed. “Oh, goody! I thought you might be after all that, my lord.” She whirled off, mumbling to herself about preparing “a wee snack” for them, which to Snowdrop usually meant a celebratory feast.

“Go on
now, wash up,” Miss Helena urged, rumpling his white-streaked hair. Jake dashed off to do as she said.

It was awfully good to be back.

Mrs. Fingle did not disappoint. The celebratory meal was grandly begun with partridge stew flavored with bits of bacon and lots of button mushrooms, as well as a Toad in the Hole of juicy mutton chunks baked in batter.

Everyone
had a merry time at table, passing around the bread and then the butter, talking nonstop, on through to the final course, a baked apple pudding.

Jake described the gargoyles and told how the dwarves had joked the whole way through the mine.

At length, Derek and Miss Helena stepped out for a walk in the garden, after which came a great deal of giggling from Dani O’Dell.

She reported
in hushed tones that she had personally seen the governess give Derek a kiss on the cheek for saving her life down in the mine.

“
Ew,” Jake said. “As a lady or a leopard?”

“A lady, you nit!
”

Took her long enough,
Jake thought in satisfaction, pleased for his warrior friend. Derek had liked the shapeshifting lady for a very long time.

Dani prattled on in her lively, nonsensical way while Jake munched happily on everything in sight, only half listening.
He took a second helping of the pudding, just happy to be back.

The festive mood darkened, however, when Archie returned with the full tr
anslation of the Spell of a Hundred Souls
.

“
All right,” he said. “Let me put it this way. This spell lets you put yourself into a state where you’re not technically dead, but you’re not fully alive, either. It’s a way of cheating death…sort of like a legal loophole.”

“How’s that
?” Dani asked.

“It allows you to
magically separate your spirit from your body. You can then store your soul in some inanimate object for an indeterminate length of time, to be brought back later.”

“What sort
of object?” Jake recalled something the miner ghost, Barney, had said at the séance about a glowing ring. “Would a sorcerer’s ring work?”

Archie nodded. “I sh
ould think so, but it doesn’t really matter now. Garnock has obviously left whatever object he had stored himself in for those five hundred years that he was stuck down there. His main challenge now, according to this, is to reconstitute his body. In order to do that, he’s got to drink from the life-force of a hundred different people. That why it’s called the Spell of a Hundred Souls.”

“So,
that’s why he’s going around sucking the life out of everybody,” Jake murmured.