Chapter 35
Elias lunged. He moved lightning-fast, blocking Rattatosk before Charlie could glimpse more than glowing yellow eyes and a huge figure covered in what looked like black scales.
“Run!” Charlie screamed at her friends. She leapt to her feet as Elias slammed into Rattatosk, managing to take the monster down despite being half his size.
The two rolled across the dirt. They were a tangle of black scales and pearly skin, spinning through the leaves and moss with such speed that it was hard to see exactly what was happening.
Elias had Rattatosk’s arms pinned to his sides—a feat that must have taken immense strength—and had ducked his head to avoid the snap and snarl of the beast’s jaws.
She’d never been as happy about Elias’s enhanced strength as she was right then.
Charlie looked over her shoulder, only to find that her friends and brother were frozen in place.
“Did you hear me?” she snarled at them. “Run. Now.”
Lou and Abigail didn’t need to be told a third time. They spun on their heels and took off into the forest.
Her brother didn’t move.
“Mason, please,” Charlie begged, turning all the way around to face him. “He’s going to kill you. Get somewhere safe.”
“If you think I’m leaving you here to face him alone,” said Mason, “you’re even more of an idiot than I thought.”
“Mason, you can’t do any magic, and wooden swords aren’t going to help us now,” she yelled. “Go! Protect Lou!”
With one last pained look at his sister, Mason turned and ran.
Charlie whirled around and took off toward Elias and Rattatosk.
Their bodies had come to a halt after rolling almost ten feet.
Charlie shut her eyes and plunged inward, grabbing for that ever-present current of magic.
She found it almost immediately. It was loud, thunderous, tumbling with rapids and sending forth huge sprays of froth. It had been waiting for her all along.
She dove inside.
Her eyes popped back open as she reached Elias’s and Rattatosk’s struggling forms. Without slowing her pace, she grabbed Elias around the waist and yanked him to her chest. At the same time, she let herself get swept away in her magic’s current.
Let it pick them both up and carry them high into the air and away.
Elias clearly hadn’t been prepared for Charlie to rescue him.
He flailed awkwardly as they flew, head jerking backward as they ripped through pine needles and oak branches.
Once they were a safe distance from Rattatosk, Charlie let the current carry them to the ground, where she dropped Elias.
He landed on his butt with an audible oof.
Sloppy work, but it got the job done.
Charlie whirled around.
It was then that she got her first real look at Rattatosk.
He looked just as she remembered from the photograph, only worse, because he was here, right here, in brilliant, horrible detail. His skin was a strange cross between flesh and snakelike scales that glistened in the moonlight.
Rattatosk crouched his spindly legs and launched himself at her.
Charlie dove out of the way, wind rushing from her lungs as she hit the ground hard.
She shoved herself back up as Rattatosk whirled around and lunged again.
This time, she was able to grab several currents of magic and thrust them forward.
They crashed into him like a brick wall, sending him flying backward.
WHAT GOING ON?
The words flashed into Charlie’s mind, backlit by neon red panic.
Rattatosk is here, she sent to Henry as loud as she could, hoping their telepathy worked both ways. She’d never attempted it before. We need your help.
I COME NOW
“I’m going to shift!” Elias yelled as Rattatosk rolled up onto his spindly limbs.
“No!” she yelled back, sending more currents of air at Rattatosk. “Your human body will be left unprotected. He’ll go right for it.”
Rattatosk was ready for her attack this time. He dodged to the left, to the right, leaping into the air, dropping and rolling across the ground like he was putting out a fire. He was so fast. Charlie threw current after current at him, but they wouldn’t hold him for long.
She needed something bigger. Something more permanent.
Levitation.
That was it. She could lift Rattatosk as high up into the air as possible and drop him.
It would be risky. She’d have to stop throwing the currents she was using for defense to summon enough power to lift him.
Even then, she had no idea if she’d be able to target such a fast-moving creature. But it was the only option she had.
Now or never, Charlie.
She reached down into herself, searching for a current strong enough to capture a monster.
As soon as her defenses dropped, Rattatosk roared and took off toward her.
He tore across the ground, claws ripping out stones and thick chunks of dirt along the way.
Charlie panicked, her mental grip slipping every time she tried to grab ahold of a current.
They slid through her fingers like sand, leaving her defenseless, and Rattatosk was almost there, just a body’s length away, his jaws spreading wide …
A pillar of shadow slammed into him from the side.
Rattatosk flew across the clearing, crashing hard into a tree. The shadow pillar bent and stretched, wrapping around both the monster and the tree trunk like a boa constrictor. It pulled in tight, pinning Rattatosk to the tree.
Charlie spun around, ready to yell at Elias for ignoring her and shifting into mare form. But when her eyes landed on him, she didn’t see a boy made of shadow.
She saw only a boy.
Just Elias, standing beneath a pine tree, staring down at his hands.
“Did you just…” she asked, trailing off in amazement.
When Elias brought his eyes up to meet hers, they were wide as Frisbees. He nodded.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” she whispered.
“Neither…” He looked down at his hands again, blinking. “Neither did I.”
Their moment of wonder was short-lived. Behind Charlie, a great ripping sound tore through the air. She spun around to find that Rattatosk had torn the tree out by its roots, using only the strength of his legs and back.
Good gods.
Rattatosk pulled at his shadowy cords, managing to loosen them.
He was too strong. Too powerful. When the cords were loose enough, he swung his torso violently to one side, sending the tree flying toward Elias.
Too late, Charlie grabbed for a current of magic to shove the tree out of the air.
Thankfully, Elias was faster; he threw up both hands, sending two jets of shadow smashing into the tree trunk, shattering it into thousands of pieces.
The monster roared in frustration.
“Tell us who’s controlling you!” Elias yelled. He held his hands out to either side, conjuring a half-dozen knives of shadow from thin air. The knives shot across the clearing, aimed at Rattatosk’s the chest.
“Never,” the beast hissed, springing out of the knives’ path and grabbing hold of a tree trunk with all four of his clawed hands and feet.
Another shadow dagger materialized by Elias’s head, which he launched at the tree, but Rattatosk pushed off just before it hit, grabbing hold of a second one.
Elias conjured yet another knife, and they repeated this dance a third time, then a fourth, then a fifth, Rattatosk leaping between trees like a huge, monstrous version of the squirrel he was supposed to be.
“Besides—you’d never believe me if I did. ”
“Try me,” said Elias, shooting one last knife.
Rattatosk dropped from the tree, landing on all fours on the forest floor. He let out a hideous, mucus-filled cackle. “It will change everything you thought you knew.”
This was Charlie’s chance. Now, while Rattatosk’s attention was on Elias. She took a deep breath, centering herself as she reached inward and grabbed the strongest set of currents she could find. She wove them into a net and shot them forward, praying they would hit their target—
But just before they did, a Tasmanian Devil slammed into Rattatosk’s face.
“Shit,” Charlie yelled as her magic lifted both Henry and her target into the air. She yanked on the currents, splitting open the net and scattering it in all directions. Rattatosk and Henry fell to the earth.
The v?tte didn’t even miss a beat. He descended upon Rattatosk like the vicious tornado he was, going straight for his yellow eyes. Rattatosk roared with pain, swiping at Henry with his long, venom-laced claws.
“No!” Charlie screamed, but Henry was just fast enough. His flying blur of green limbs and nails and teeth dodged out of the way as Rattatosk’s claws soared through open air.
A hand closed around Charlie’s arm. She almost screamed before she realized it was Elias.
“Charlie,” he said, voice frantic. “We have to work together. Me, you, Henry. We can’t take him down if we don’t collaborate.”
She glanced over at Rattatosk. He was swiping frantically at Henry, but the v?tte had successfully blinded him. He didn’t know where Henry was going to attack until he was already there.
Henry went for the neck, a wrist, a calf, tearing out huge chunks of flesh with nothing but his teeth. Rattatosk howled and swiped, but Henry was always one step ahead.
It was too dangerous. Sooner or later, one of Rattatosk’s claws was going to find Henry’s skin. Even one tiny, venomous slit was enough to kill.
She looked back at Elias and nodded. “You hit him with shadow. I’ll hit him with magic. After we pin him down, Henry can go for his throat.”
“Perfect,” Elias agreed. “Let’s do this.”
He gave her arm one reassuring squeeze. Then together, they turned and went to work.
Charlie summoned as many currents as she could at once.
To her left, Elias held his hands at his sides and sent shadowy cords slithering from his fingertips, winding their way up his arms and around his neck.
By the time Charlie opened her eyes, Elias’s entire torso was wreathed in shadow, and Charlie felt as if she were filled with enough magic to lift a small house.
They looked at each other. Locked eyes. After a beat, Elias nodded.
Charlie turned back to the fight and raised her voice as loud as it would go. “Henry!” she screamed. “Get out of the way!”
The whirling tornado did as she asked, hurtling away from Rattatosk and behind a tree. As soon as he was safe, Charlie and Elias thrust out their hands and let loose their power.
The impact was enormous. Rattatosk flew backward, crashing through trees, ripping them up by their roots and toppling them to the ground. He hurtled twenty feet through the air, thirty, forty, a trail of destruction following in his wake …
At the fifty-foot mark, Rattatosk crash-landed in the dirt, scaly body skipping and bumping over rocks and logs before finally coming to rest in front of a huge boulder.
Henry whirled after him, soaring over the trail of damage left in his wake.
He paused in the air, enlarged, green-skinned body hovering over Rattatosk’s unmoving form, and waited.
And waited.
For several moments, there was only silence. Charlie and Elias stood side by side, chests heaving.
When Rattatosk didn’t move, Henry peered over his shoulder. His long fangs flashed in the moonlight, bulging black eyes widening in question.
I RIP OUT THROAT NOW?
Charlie nodded.
Henry descended.
Snarls and the sound of tearing flesh echoed through the forest. Charlie looked away, not wanting to watch Rattatosk’s final moments.
She knew that he had to die, that it was the only way to ensure that no more innocent children died instead.
But it didn’t change the fact that it wasn’t really Rattatosk who was behind these killings; it was whoever held his leash.
Now they might never know who that was.
As the grotesque sounds of Henry’s work came to a halt, Mason came sprinting into the clearing.
“Whoa,” he said, staring down the flattened forest at Rattatosk. “Is he…?”
Charlie held up a hand. “Wait.”
One second.
Two seconds.
Three seconds.
Henry rose into the air, blood dripping from his white beard.
He flew back toward them, body shrinking from green gremlin back to tiny, adorable gnome along the way.
He landed on the forest floor in front of them, toddling over to Charlie’s leg.
She ignored the wet feel of blood as he nuzzled her ankle.
“Thanks, buddy,” she whispered, bending over to scratch his head.
“You beat him,” said Mason.
“For now.” Charlie straightened back up. “Rattatosk is gone, but whoever was controlling him is still out there.”
“And too cowardly to show their face,” Mason said. “Whoever it was, it’ll take them time to regroup. We can come up with a plan before then.” He grinned. “You did it, sis.”
“We did it,” she corrected, smiling down at Henry and nudging Elias with her elbow.
Henry chirped.
“We did it,” Elias echoed. He was smiling, but his voice was oddly soft, his eyes distant.
“Elias?” Charlie asked, tilting her head. “What’s—”
Elias’s knees crumpled beneath him.
“Hey,” Charlie yelled, leaping forward to catch him before he hit the ground.
She wrapped her arms around his torso, and together they fell to the forest floor, her butt hitting the ground as Elias’s limp body flopped over her lap. His arms and legs were dead weight. His head sagged, neck completely useless.
“Elias?” Charlie shook his body, trying to wake him up. “Elias?”
Panic rising, she shook harder and harder. One of his arms flopped over, exposing soft flesh.
That was when she saw them.
There, just inside his elbow, where she should only have found smooth skin:
Three shallow, red gashes.
Her vision constricted and tilted on its axis. She knew what those lines were. She knew what they meant. They were barely there; if they’d been regular cuts, they would have already disappeared, given Elias’s remarkable healing abilities. But they hadn’t, because these were no simple incisions.
They were cuts from the claws of Rattatosk.
Claws so venomous that one cut meant the end.
“Char?” Mason asked. “What’s going on?”
Charlie no longer felt like she was inside her own body. She watched from above as the girl below her raised her head to look up at her older brother. Her face was blank. Her eyes dead. When she spoke, her voice was like a computer, toneless and mechanical:
“He’s dying.”