Chapter 10
Wounds
“Raziel is here?!” Landry boggled.
Caden slowly turned in a circle. “C’mon, Raziel, give another shout so I can know exactly where you are.”
“You want to know where the Black Dragon is?” Ross squeaked.
“Absolutely. Because if I can find Raziel, I can tell it where we are and Raziel will tell Valerius!” Caden explained.
“And Valerius will be able to get us out of here?” Landry asked.
“Ah… no idea, but it’s a start!” Caden told her.
There was another roar! It came from the top of a mountain peak. The perfect place for a lair. Caden grinned. He gestured for the others to follow after him.
“This way! Raziel is up at the top of that peak,” Caden cried and started to jog along the edge of the crater.
“We’re not seriously going towards the roaring, are we?” Harvey asked even as he jogged behind Caden.
“Yep,” Caden told him.
He blanched, but kept following. Caden glanced over his shoulder. People were streaming out of the trees and running after him. Some cautiously, others without any trace of hesitation. Even Jasper Hawes decided he didn’t want to be left behind.
Huffing a little, Landry asked, “W-will R-Raziel know it's-you?”
Caden blinked. “Of course! It’s seen me. I look like me. I mean… yeah, for sure.”
He honestly hadn’t even thought of that as a potential problem. He didn’t think it was much of one now. He did look like himself. Raziel might be surprised to see him in the Spirit Realm, but Raziel was sure to know he and Iolaire were already in trouble.
“It’ll be fine!” he assured Landry.
She just nodded, too out of breath to speak.
Landry was not a terribly physical person.
He still seemed to have his Shifter stamina even though he couldn’t feel or hear Iolaire.
A trill of fear went through him at the remembered realization of that.
But he pushed it down, used it to fuel his steps, and didn’t let it overwhelm him.
Panicking has never done anybody any good, he reminded himself.
The base of the mountain was farther away than it had looked. Before they were half-way there, most of the group was too out of steam to run any longer. They walked swiftly, but some were even flagging at that. Caden kept looking back at them, alarm in his eyes.
“Maybe I shouldn’t have had everybody come with us,” Caden said to a sagging, breathless Landry.
“They--they wouldn’t--wouldn’t have stayed--stayed back,” she gasped out.
“I just don’t like us all being out in the open like this,” Caden admitted.
He kept looking down into the crater as much as he looked back at the people.
He didn’t know why, but he kept expecting to see the Behemoth there.
Would there be a White Dragon head mixed in with all the rest?
He swallowed sickly. If that had happened, what could he do?
The Behemoth could crush him. He wouldn’t even have Iolaire’s powers against it.
Could Spirits die? He was afraid he might find out.
“T-there! L-look!” One of the people behind him cried.
Caden skidded to a halt and spun around.
The person who had shouted was a middle aged man.
Caden could imagine him working as a lawyer, a banker or an accountant.
Some boring, yet safe desk job. He was dressed in a suit, though the tie was undone and the top few buttons of his shirt were open as if someone had grabbed him by the neck.
He was pointing to the right towards a hulking figure that stood about fifty feet away.
“Werewolf,” Caden breathed and he felt a chill run through him.
It stood over eight feet tall. The head was massive with a set of jaws on it that likely could shear a person’s head off and crunch it down in one bite.
Everyone was frozen. There were horrified looks on faces.
People were covering their mouths trying to hold back screams. Eyes were huge in their heads.
They were all completely out in the open.
This thing could be amongst them in seconds, ripping open bellies with its claws, cleaving heads from necks, and pulling off limbs like they were dead branches.
“This is bad,” Caden murmured.
“Y-yeah, what do we do?” Landry whispered.
“M-maybe it will just go away?” Ross suggested.
The Werewolf lifted its snout into the air and sniffed the breeze. It let out a sound that was somewhere between a moan and a howl.
“I don’t think so, Ross,” Caden answered faintly.
“So what do we do?” Landry repeated with more anxiety.
Caden’s head jerked back towards where the base of Raziel’s mountain lair was.
One hundred yards a way, maybe give or take.
Obviously, the lair was at the top. He doubted that they could make it all the way up before the Werewolf was upon them.
He doubted that most of them would even make it to the base of the mountain.
Not unless the Werewolf is distracted, Caden realized.
He was still relatively fresh. Maybe he could lead it away from the rest of the people? Give them a chance to get to the mountain where, at least even if they couldn’t reach Raziel’s lair, there might be places to hide? There certainly wasn’t in this plain!
“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen.” Caden licked his lips. “I’m going to distract the Werewolf and you all are going to run like Hell for the mountain.”
“That’s insane! That’s not a plan! That’s suicide!” Landry hissed.
“I think it sounds pretty good,” Ross muttered.
Landry hit his arm. “Why are you such a coward and a bad person?”
Ross rubbed his arm and said, “I’m not. It’s just Caden’s like a Dragon Shifter while we’re not. He can’t get hurt, right?”
“We don’t know that!” Landry shook her head. “I can tell that you don’t have your powers, Caden. You’re… you’re human like us!”
Caden swallowed. He didn’t have his powers. He couldn’t contact Iolaire. He had no idea if spirits could be hurt. “Landry, we don’t really have many other options here. I’m not sure… sure what powers I still have or if just being a spirit is enough to protect me--”
“You don’t know that!” Her eyes were huge with worry. So huge he could see them behind her too long bangs.
“I think the time for talking is over!” Harvey pointed towards the Werewolf which had fixated on a young woman at the edge of the group.
She was breathing heavily and was going to have difficulty running to the mountain, but now it looked like the Werewolf was going to run after her.
Her face went pale as milk and her eyes bugged out of her head as the Werewolf took one large step and then another large step towards her.
She let out a thin wail. People started back away from her as if they were offering her to the Werewolf.
Take her and leave me alone is what they’re thinking, Caden realized.
The girl looked right and left. She saw that a circle of space was opening around her.
She was no longer protected by the “pack”.
The Werewolf’s massive jaws opened. Rows of serrated teeth showed.
Saliva rolled down the sharp, white teeth and dripped off of the jaws, forming pools on the stony ground.
“I need you to get everyone to run when I tell you to,” Caden said to Landry and her brothers. “Don’t hesitate. Just run. All right?”
“What about when we all get to the mountain, the Werewolf kills you, and we’re still stuck here?” she asked him.
“You’ll go up to the lair--”
“Where Raziel will roast us and eat us!” she objected. “Caden, without you, this plan to talk to Raziel doesn’t work so you can’t sacrifice yourself!”
“Raziel will recognize you, Landry. It’s seen you when Valerius was in the store, remember?” Caden reminded her. “It won’t kill you.” Not at first anyways. “You’re not a threat to Raziel. So Raziel will listen to you.”
“And what do you think Raziel will do when we tell it that you died for us?” she asked.
“I’m not going to die. I’m a spirit. Spirits are immortal, right?” He accidentally made that more of a question than a statement. “You didn’t die of hunger or thirst here, Landry, and you would have if that was possible. So… I’ll be safe from this Werewolf.”
“You don’t know it. You shouldn’t chance it,” she said.
“I can’t just let that girl--”
“She’s Humans First,” Ross muttered. “She wouldn’t care if you died. Trust me. You shouldn’t waste your time on her.”
“Yeah, if you heard a tenth of the stuff she says…” Harvey shrugged his shoulders. “She’s not your friend, man. She’s not even your ally.”
“The same could be said about you two!” Landry yelled at them. “And me, too! God, guys, can’t you see that we’re all just a big bunch of hypocrites! Not Caden, but the rest of us? He’s not just saving her to save her, but to save us.”
“Guys, I’m trying to save all of you. It doesn’t matter what you’ve said or done, I’m doing this because I have the best chance of succeeding,” Caden told them. “We can debate the merits of saving people later.”
“Speaking of the merits of saving some people,” Landry growled and tipped her head towards Jasper Hawes who was moving around the outer edge of the group farthest from the Werewolf.
“He always takes care of himself,” Ross said with a touch of something. Not disgust exactly, but mixed with a little admiration as if he wished he could be that selfish.
“He keeps walking without watching where he’s going, he’ll fall into the crater and I’m not saving him in there,” Caden remarked as Jasper’s right foot nearly slipped off the edge and only by flailing his arms did he stop himself from falling. “All right, I have to go--”
“Caden, I don’t want to leave you alone--”
“Landry, please do this for me. Please,” he begged her.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her nod miserably.
She was a good friend. She’d made a mistake.
She’d wanted to be special, be a Shifter.
He got that. He understood it. But she’d been duped and had allowed the Behemoth to use her.
But he could forgive her for that. He knew that she would never make such a bad decision again.