Chapter 10 #2
“Ready?” Caden whispered. He saw them nod. “RUN! EVERYBODY, RUN! FOR THE MOUNTAIN!”
And everybody, but Caden and the girl ran.
The girl had dropped down to her haunches.
She had brought up her arms over her head as if that would protect her from the claws and the teeth.
They wouldn’t. Caden could easily imagine them being ripped off just as easily as the wings of a fly by a naughty child.
The Werewolf watched the human prey run away. The powerful muscles in its calves bunched and flexed, ready to send a burst of energy to its legs for it to dash after them. But it resisted the urge as the girl was right there.
And so was Caden.
He approached with a steady stride, not showing fear, hands in the pockets of his jeans, meeting the Werewolf’s gaze levelly.
“Hey,” Caden said to the girl, “what’s your name?”
She didn’t answer him at first, terror having stolen her voice.
“Listen to me, whoever you are, it’s going to be okay,” Caden told her. “I’m a Dragon Shifter, remember? Or maybe you didn’t know. But I’m the Ninth Dragon Shifter.”
He had no idea whether that mattered here.
Yeah, he’d been able to jog without effort, but he was thinking about that.
Maybe it wasn’t because he was still joined to Iolaire, but because he had perceived he shouldn’t get tired and so he hadn’t.
While the others had perceived they should get tired and so they had.
They remembered what their bodies were capable of.
But here they had no bodies. They were spirits.
So exhaustion and other physical limitations didn’t really exist.
So maybe that means that the Werewolf isn’t stronger than me, because it doesn’t have a body and I don’t have a body. Instead of mano-a-mano, it’s spirit to spirit combat, Caden thought.
He didn’t know though how powerful his spirit was in comparison to this Werewolf spirit. But, then again, Iolaire had chosen him. He and the Dragon Spirit were meant to bond. So he hoped that meant his spirit was pretty damned strong.
“Gena,” she mumbled, not taking her arms down from her head. “It’s going to kill us.”
“No, it’s not, Gena,” he told her confidently. “We don’t have bodies here. We’re spirits. That means you can run without tiring. You can run as fast as the wind. Maybe faster. Hell, you might be able to simply will yourself from where you are now to the base of the mountain.”
“W-what?” she whispered and then let out a low moan as the werewolf took another step forward. “No, I have asthma!”
It could have just raced towards her and had her in its claws in seconds, but it was watching him carefully. He was an unknown quantity. He wasn’t acting like prey.
Good. That’s right. Be uncertain. Keep your damned distance, Caden thought.
“Gena, you aren’t in your body,” he told her, emphasizing every word. “You don’t have asthma here. You are free of it.”
Her head turned slightly towards him, her lips parting at his words, as if she wanted to believe him, but wasn’t sure she could.
“When I bonded with my Spirit, I thought I was the same as before. But, let me tell you, I can rip a door off its hinges. I can run a marathon without breaking a sweat or even needing to catch my breath,” he told her.
“The same is true here. When we bond with our Spirits our bodies change. When you’re here without a body, you’re free of all of its limitations just the same. ”
He was now just a few feet from her while the Werewolf was twice that distance.
He imagined himself as Indiana Jones and her as that golden idol’s head that he was trying to replace.
But instead of replacing the head with a bag of sand that weighed approximately the same, he was going to put himself in her place.
He sauntered a few steps closer. The Werewolf bared its fangs.
“That’s rude,” Caden said to it, even as his stomach did a flip and then tried to hide in his feet.
“What are you doing?” Gena asked hoarsely. “You should run.”
“Actually, you’re going to run and I’m going to keep our friend here occupied until you get away with the others,” Caden said.
“I can’t breathe!” she wheezed.
“You only think you can’t breathe, remember? No body here so no asthma,” he stated.
“No body, no asthma?” she repeated.
“That’s right. I want you to keep saying that to yourself and when you’re ready, you’re going to run as fast as Usain Bolt to the mountain,” he told her.
She let out a soft laugh, which he was pleased to note had a lot less wheezing in it. “O-okay.” A pause and then, “You really think I can do this?”
“I know you can, Gena. It’s the power of the mind here. The power of the spirit,” he reminded her. “Now, are you repeating that sentence in your head?”
She nodded.
The Werewolf was now only ten feet away. Caden was even with Gena.
“I’m going to step between you and the Werewolf, Gena,” he said calmly, not taking his eyes off the shaggy beast. “I need you to be ready to run. Are you ready to run?”
“Yeah,” she said.
She’d brought her hands down to her sides. He saw her calf muscles flexing as she prepared to jump to her feet and race towards the mountain. Caden stepped between her and the Werewolf.
“Gena, now!” he cried.
She leaped up and was like a blur, running full out, towards the mountain. The Werewolf made a curious sound. She was supposed to be weak prey. Not strong. Not able to run so fast. But now she was gone. Only a dust trail remained to show her passing.
Caden was alone with the Werewolf.
“It’s just you and me now,” Caden murmured.
The Werewolf’s head shot towards him. Angry, hungry eyes narrowed and more teeth were displayed. A full dental kit of terror. More saliva dripped from the powerful jaws.
“Can you understand me?” Caden asked.
Iolaire and Raziel could understand English. Was that something they developed over time? Or was it something that every Spirit knew? Iolaire hadn’t talked at first, but it had seemed to understand what was going on.
The Werewolf opened its jaws and a low, guttural growl was emitted. It clenched its clawed hands, clicking the inch and a half claws together as it did so. If it did understand English, it didn’t seem to want to communicate.
Okay, now I need to imitate Usain Bolt and lead this thing on a merry chase before I lose it and double back to the others--
Before he could even finish that thought, the Werewolf leaped.
If Gena had been fast, the Werewolf put her to shame.
Caden had only a millisecond to realize what was happening before he was on his back.
The Werewolf’s clawed hands pinned his shoulders to the dry, blasted ground.
They drew blood as the claws entered his flesh like a knife would hot butter.
The Werewolf’s knees painfully dug into his thighs.
Saliva dripped down from its jaws and dripped on his face.
“AH, GOD! GROSS!” Caden shouted.
Even in this terrible situation, the foul, thick gunk was enough to have him yell in disgust. He jerked upwards and the Werewolf was rocked off of him for a minute.
I’m stronger than it is, Caden realized in that split second.
The Werewolf seemed to smile down at him as it reasserted its dominance--seemingly--and prepared to enjoy devouring him one mouthful at a time.
Mind over matter. No body here to keep me down. I’m pure energy. As strong as I was with Iolaire. No… stronger, Caden told himself.
The Werewolf’s foul breath gushed over his face and throat.
It was leaning down to snuffle at the soft bits just underneath his chin.
Caden wrenched his right arm out from under the Werewolf’s painful grasp.
His right hand shot out and he caught hold of the Werewolf’s throat instead. It let out a surprised whine.
Caden dug his fingers into the furry, hot flesh there.
His fingers broke through the skin and hot blood was pouring down his arm and pooling on his chest. The Werewolf tried to shake him off.
It brought both clawed hands up in the air, preparing to rake his face, throat and chest. Caden threw the Werewolf bodily thirty feet from himself and then jumped to his feet.
His hands flexed at his sides. His eyes narrowed. The Werewolf was already getting to its feet, shaking its head as if to clear it, its hands rising to its injured neck. It glared at him. Caden smiled.
“C’mon, puppy, you want to play?” Caden asked, pretending to be Illarion at that moment. He wanted to intimidate and the Green Dragon King could do that in spades.
The Werewolf’s gaze became worried. It searched his face for fear.
What it saw instead was an eagerness for combat.
Caden advanced upon the Werewolf, keeping that slightly deranged smile on his face.
For a final effect, he licked his lips as he stared at the weeping wounds in the Werewolf’s neck.
The Werewolf turned on its heel and ran off into the woods far down the slope.
It had decided that there must be easier prey than this insane human.
Caden studied the green and silver vastness, making sure that the Werewolf was not simply circling around to attack him from a blindspot, but there was no sign of the beast. Only the wind blew through the branches of the trees, but nothing else moved.
Caden let out a shaky breath and lifted his arms to run his hands through sweaty hair.
He winced as the wounds in his biceps let out a fresh gush of blood.
He pulled down his shirt and saw that the wounds the Werewolf had made were still there.
Though he willed them to close, they remained.
He stared at them for long, long moments.
Maybe spirits could die.