Changeling Dark Moon Read online

  From nowhere, the hunched figure of the sorceress appeared. Her back was to them and her entire body was racked with convulsions that made her twitch and shake violently. Slowly, she managed to lift up her head and move towards the desk, looking for the one thing that could alleviate the agony that she was in.

  Charles pushed the Globe into Trey’s hand, looking up into the huge wolf’s eyes. ‘Go,’ he said. ‘Don’t wait for me, and don’t try to help. Just go. Now!’

  As if she had heard the silent words, the sorceress turned to face them.

  Trey looked down into the inky black innards of the ball in his hand. Something swirled and moved in there, something that seemed almost alive, and he began to lift the thing closer to his face to—

  ‘GO!’ Charles shouted, bringing Trey back to his senses. The sorcerer pulled the door open and shoved as hard as he could against the great bulk of the werewolf, forcing him from the room before slamming the door shut.

  Gwendolin let out a huge scream of rage as she sent the first fireball in his direction.

  Charles was ready for the onslaught. He had waited all of his young life for a moment like this – a chance to face down an opponent as skilled as himself. The years he had spent studying his craft and honing his powers with his father had culminated in this moment. He was, he believed, ready for her. But as he fended off her first attack he could feel the raw power that radiated from her. He’d expected her to be exhausted, her energy spent after her labours that day. But he had underestimated just how powerful she had become during her time in the Netherworld, and the sheer force of dark, malignant magic that seemed to burn off her made him, if just for a second, wonder if he really was skilled enough to defeat her.

  *

  Gwendolin had straightened up as soon as she became aware of the two of them at the door – all thoughts of the agony that had engulfed her seconds before suddenly forgotten. She watched as the young mage (she could sense the magic in him and the strength of his powers now) pushed the Globe into the werewolf’s hand, and she suddenly knew who they were and what they were here for. She also knew that unless she could recover the Globe she was done for, so she summoned up every drop of strength within her and attacked. But she had been too slow. The lycanthrope had been bundled out of the room by his companion before she could stop him. She would have to dispatch the human sorcerer as quickly as possible and then deal with the werewolf before he could get away.

  Her face twisted into a foul-looking mask of fury and she sent a huge ball of fire at the young human standing barring the door. He didn’t blink. He countered the spell, the room exploding in light so bright that it made them both turn their heads away for a second as the burning sphere detonated in the space between them. When she looked at him again he stared back at her with a show of insolence that she had not been subjected to in a very long time. He was skilled for one so young, and she smiled at the prospect of breaking him.

  They stood that way – sizing each other up across the room – before they both raised their hands at almost the same moment and the air between them became a thick soup of energy that danced and shimmered and boiled.

  Even though she was impossibly tired, Gwendolin grinned across at her opponent. In the crackling and swirling magic that now filled the room, she knew everything that she needed to about him. His entire life was there woven in among it, all mapped out for her (as her life and powers were to him), so that she knew his strengths as well as his weaknesses. She felt him inwardly blanch at the knowledge that she had forsaken her humanity to become what she was now and she revelled in his dawning realization that, for all his training and dedication, he was not capable of defeating her. She would have looked forward to killing him in a slow and delicious way if it was not for the fact that she needed to stop the werewolf before he could get free of the fortress.

  He was strong – perhaps the strongest mage that she had faced in a very long time – but his weakness was his own fear of the dark arts; he had been afraid that they would consume him if he delved too far into their secrets, and so he had left himself vulnerable – especially here in the Netherworld where the dark forces were at their strongest.

  He was beginning to weaken, his belief in himself and his abilities ebbing away now, and she could sense his desperation at the realization that he was merely forestalling the inevitable. She closed her eyes and smiled to herself. Then she summoned up all her powers and felt his own strength buckle under as a result. Raising her arms, she lifted him high up into the air above her head. He struggled against the magic, but he was a beaten thing now. She slammed him down into the desk and laughed aloud as the wooden furniture exploded under the force of the impact – great shards of splintered wood flying in every direction. He tried to break the link between them; he was thinking quickly and she knew that he was trying to summon a fire strike of his own, but she was always ahead of him, reading his thoughts and countering everything he tried.

  Her eyes rolled back into her head and she silently mouthed ancient words in a long-dead tongue. A pool of fire appeared in the centre of the room – its black flames gobbling up the oxygen and making the skin on their bodies fizzle and char from its immense heat. She easily lifted him again, this time hanging him up over the burning hole and watching him squirm and struggle to break free from her.

  He would die far too quickly for her liking.

  She paused then – a delicious and evil thought filling her twisted mind. Once she had recovered Mynor’s Globe from the werewolf, she would use it in conjunction with Skaleb’s Staff to bring this miserable human being back to life. Then she could kill him again, properly, over and over again, until she eventually became bored with him. Only then would she behead him and have her trophy mounted on the metal stake that was set into the wall of the room for this very purpose. She watched with grim satisfaction as the young sorcerer became aware of her plan and his eyes flickered towards the spike protruding from the wall.

  She knew that Caliban would demand the lycanthrope be handed over to him, but she would be willing to make this trade – she had no interest in the werewolf boy.

  Pleased with her hideous plan, she began to lower Charles’s body down into the fire.

  The door flew open and Gwendolin barely caught sight of the blurred figure of the werewolf flying through the air towards her, clawed hands outstretched and the vast, open jaws hurtling straight for her throat.

  She had never imagined for one second that he would return of his own volition. Nor could she have predicted the ferocity of the attack that the were-creature launched against her, or the speed with which it moved.

  She felt the claws rip through the skin of her face and her hands flew up to the wounds. She momentarily forgot everything except for the pure and exquisite pain that exploded through her. The black flaming pit instantly disappeared as her control over the magic needed to sustain it slipped and vanished. Charles fell painfully to the floor, burnt and bleeding badly.

  The wolf’s mouth was upon her now and would have destroyed her had she not somehow managed to get one of her arms down in time to avoid the creature tearing her throat out. Instead the beast bit through the flesh of her forearm, sinking its teeth through muscle and sinew and tendon, deep into the bone below. She screamed at the pain of it, crying out for her master, Caliban, to save her. Knowing that she would die if she did not do something, she delved deep inside herself, summoning up every last drop of strength and energy that she could muster. Her eyes rolled back in her head again, and she pushed the giant lycanthrope away from her, the werewolf lifting up off its feet and slamming into the book-lined wall opposite.

  Trey looked up in time to see the ruined desk rise up off of the ground as if lifted by some huge invisible being. It flew across the room at him. Pieces of the broken furniture smashed into him. He raised his arms, attempting to fend off as much as possible, but a broken splinter of wood, the size of a chair leg, speared his side, causing him to howl in pain. He felt the blood
spew from the wound.

  But the desk had merely been a diversion, a means of distracting his attention.

  Trey looked up to see that the sorceress had transformed into a hideous beast. The demon was almost the same height and build as he was and appeared to be hewn out of pure muscle. Sharp horns of bone grew through the thick red hide that covered its body, to go with the larger curved and twisted horns that grew from the sides of its head. The demon leered at Trey, its pupils tiny pinpricks of black inside the yellow orbs. It moved towards him, peeling its lips back to reveal a black tongue that flickered across teeth designed to rip and tear.

  They met in the middle of the room. Trey lunged at the demon’s throat, but his opponent rocked back, driving its knee into Trey’s thigh, where a huge horn growing from the kneecap ripped a gaping hole. The demon smashed a fist into Trey’s face, spiked knuckles inflicting terrible damage and sending a shower of crimson into the air. Another fist followed the first, but Trey turned his head and sank his teeth into the creature’s wrist. A loud hiss came from the demon and its eyes rolled in pain. They broke apart for a second, slowly circling each other and looking for an opportunity to attack.

  Suddenly the demon charged. It flew across the space separating them, its head lowered, hoping to impale the lycanthrope on those cruel horns. But Trey was quicker. Hours of training with Flaug and the other demons had honed his reflexes and he saw his opportunity. He grabbed one of the nethercreature’s horns, forcing the head lower and putting the demon off balance, twisting his own body at the same time to avoid the impaling weapon. With his other hand he reached towards the demon’s spine, where more of the curved spikes grew. Grabbing one, Trey hauled the creature up into the air, using all of his strength until he had it suspended high over his head. The demon screamed, flailing its arms and legs in an attempt to make contact with the werewolf below.

  Trey took a deep breath, ignoring the agony in his leg and side, concentrating on keeping his balance.

  The demon screamed out, still thrashing around wildly and trying everything it could to break free.

  ‘I know what you tried to do to Alexa, Gwendolin.’ Trey transmitted the words into the sorceress-demon’s mind before throwing it at the wall.

  It sailed backwards through the air before coming to an abrupt halt with the great metal spike protruding from its torso. The demon changed as Trey looked on, morphing back into the figure of the sorceress, whose eyes gawped down at the rusted metal skewer that she was impaled upon, her fingers fluttering along it as if she could not believe what her eyes were telling her. Gwendolin lifted her head to take one last look at the werewolf. It stared back at her mercilessly …

  And watched the sorceress die.

  Trey rushed across the room and knelt down by his friend’s side. Charles was still alive, but only barely. He carefully lifted his unconscious friend and draped the limp body over his shoulder as gently as possible so that he might carry him in a fireman’s lift and still have both his hands free. He felt his own side with his hand, looking at the blood there. His wounds were hurting more than ever now and he took a deep breath, trying to push the pain away, ignore it. Cocking an ear to check that Charles was still breathing, the werewolf turned and left, grabbing the small glass globe that he had left on the threshold of the room as he went.

  Trey didn’t look back. He ran as quickly as he could down the stairs and through the doors that they had used earlier, ignoring any thoughts of making his escape through guile and stealth. His breath sounded ragged in his own head, and at every turn he expected to run headlong into a troop of guards dispatched to find and kill them. He could hear from the shallowness of his breathing that Charles was in a very bad way, and he was adamant that they would escape as quickly as possible, and that his friend would not be allowed to die in this place.

  It wasn’t until he got to the hatch in the floor that led down to the dungeons that he paused. He didn’t want to go down into the darkness again. He didn’t want to have to see what might have become of Moriel at the hands of the demons. He stood there, his cargo draped across him, and listened to the sound of his own heart as it thumped against his chest, staring down at the trapdoor and willing himself to move forward again.

  At that moment a scream of rage seemed to emanate from the very walls of the fortress itself – Caliban had found the dead body of his sorceress.

  The sound was enough to galvanize Trey into action again. He pulled the hatch in the floor open, letting it crash down against the floor on the other side. Forgoing the ladder, he jumped down on to the landing below, bending as he landed to soften the impact for Charles as much as possible. He took the stairs three at a time, leaping down into the darkness. As he descended he glanced about. The cells were all empty; the bars that had sealed in the prisoners had been torn free of the walls and it was clear to Trey, even at the speed he was going, that the tiny tombs no longer contained the poor souls that had been so cruelly imprisoned within them.

  When he came to the bottom of the stairs he slowed to take in the devastation all around him. There were body parts scattered everywhere. The floor was strewn with dismembered limbs that looked as if they had been torn, not cut, from the demon bodies that they had once adorned.

  He needn’t have worried about Moriel.

  He turned his back on the scene and jogged over to the door that led out into the bailey. Relieved to find that there was a huge handle on his side, he reached out to grab it, but stopped himself from actually opening the door. He and Charles were not far from freedom now and he wanted nothing more than to throw it open and sprint across the open space on the other side. He knew that he could cross it before any flying demons were able to get at them and then it was simply a matter of getting through the tunnel and escaping to the portal in the outer wall. He didn’t want to think what would happen if it was not still there, if Gwendolin had closed it before returning to her room in the tower.

  Come on, Trey, he told himself.

  But something still halted his hand. A small icy shiver ran down him and he looked behind him into the dungeon, expecting whatever it was that had set his senses on edge to come at him from out of the gloom.

  He shook his head, telling himself that he was being foolish, that he was risking his and Charles’s safety by stalling here. He threw the door wide open, emerging into the bailey – and straight into the onrushing attack of Caliban.

  Trey stood, looking in disbelief at the sight of the vampire, unable to imagine how he had got down to this level so quickly. He had either misted to get here, or there was some other, faster way down the tower – perhaps the route that they had used to transport the Draugr. The vampire flew at the werewolf in an apoplectic rage, a whirling flash of fangs and talons and rampant hatred. Caliban’s eyes burned a deep red against the grey-white of his flesh, his mouth an open maw of fury and destruction, intent on tearing out the throat of the werewolf. Trey saw all this in a fraction of a second, powerless to defend himself against the unexpected attack. He shifted his weight, dropping his shoulder in an attempt to let Charles fall to safety, but instead the young sorcerer wrapped one arm around the lycanthrope’s neck and thrust the other in the direction of the vampire. Caliban was hurled backwards through the air, legs and arms thrown out ahead of him, his body propelled viciously by some invisible force. But the vampire was on his feet almost before he had landed and glared back at the two teenagers, a loud hiss coming from his lips. He misted, disappearing to appear immediately before them again, the metal blades of the prosthetic hand flashing in the air to tear the throat from the werewolf. The vampire had won.

  And then he was gone.

  Trey reared his head back, knowing that he could not escape death at the hands of the vampire lord, when a black shadow blurred past his vision, removing the vampire just as it was about to deliver the blow that would end the teenager’s life. The shadow moved so quickly that the boy had no chance of making out what it was. But he knew. He shot his head round, tryi
ng to track Moriel as she flashed up into the sky high overhead. Caliban was slashing at her face and throat as he struggled to wrestle himself out of her grip, but the battle-angel ignored his attempts at freedom.

  ‘Go, Trey Laporte. Now!’ Her voice filled the sky. ‘Run!’

  Something slipped from the battle-angel’s grasp, falling through the air and landing with a thump on the ground ahead of where Trey still stood in the doorway.

  ‘It is yours now,’ Moriel cried over the furious screams and shrieks of the vampire lord. ‘Now go!’

  Trey sprinted for the exit carved into the rock on the opposite side of the bailey, dipping slightly to scoop up whatever it was that Moriel had dropped for him on the way. He tore through the opening and plunged down the tunnel, his huge thighs powering him through the blackness towards the portal up ahead. Charles lay across his shoulders, a lifeless rag doll.

  As he neared the opening he thought that he could smell exhaust fumes in the tunnel. He shook his head at the tricks that his mind was playing on him in the state of panic that he was now in, and pushed ahead around what he hoped was the last bend. He saw the incredible sight of Tom sitting inside the car that he had backed all the way into the opening, waiting for them with the engine ticking over. Trey gratefully breathed in a huge lungful of the hard, metallic reek, thinking how the pollutant had never smelt so good. He wrenched the rear door open, then stopped, laying Charles down on the ground next to the car.

  ‘Trey?’ Tom’s voice called out to him from inside the car.

  Trey looked down at the young sorcerer and then crouched over him, placing his head against his chest. The lack of any sound told Trey what he already secretly knew, that his friend was dead, that he had died in that last desperate act to save them from the vampire’s attack.