Seconds after Lelani bolted from their camp, the darkness swallowed her whole. Seth took his position by the tree and again felt the warmth flow through him. It was a calm, healing heat; even his corns felt great.
“What can you see?” Cal asked Cat, who was positioned above Seth on a thick branch.
“The fireflies are breaking into groups,” she said. “Looks like a bunch of floating balls of light.”
“They’re blind,” Cal noted. “The light shrinks their pupils… obliterates their night vision. Everyone get ready. They’ll be at us soon.”
“What?” Seth exclaimed.
“It’s on our terms.”
“Well, okay then,” Seth responded sarcastically.
“Hey!” Cat shouted. “One of those light orbs just dropped and disappeared! And there goes another!”
The group could hear many bolts whistling through the air. They braced for impact, but nothing arrived.
“They’re shooting the other way,” said Cal. “Trying to take her down.”
“Should I fire?” Cat asked.
“No,” Cal said. “They’ll be on us soon enough.”
“Another one down,” Cat reported. “Hey…!”
“What?” Seth asked.
“Two of those lights are heading this way, fast!”
Seth stepped on one of the dead gnolls by the tree to get a slightly better vantage on the field. Cat MacDonnell was right, the orbs were moving their way. Seth’s heart began to race. Cat looked as scared as he felt. He smiled at her and put on a braver face. One ball of light broke off to their right heading west, away from their camp. Seth couldn’t blame anyone, even the bad guys, from wanting to distance themselves from all this conflict. As the remaining group approached their well-lit area, Seth was able to make out the other people running alongside the gnoll.
“Cat! Take out that gnoll!” Cal ordered.
Cat aimed at the fireflies and fired. The border pyres were just starting to illuminate them. Seth could make out the fur on the gnoll’s body. Cat fired again just below the head. The gnoll whimpered as it went down. The fireflies dispersed. The rest of the gang was on top of them.
Those that made it past the pyres appeared human enough. Two turned toward Cal. A tall Nordic-looking henchman managed to get a bolt off before the cop shot him. The quarrel lodged in a trough in the cop’s vest where the gnoll had shredded it earlier. Seth could tell it had broken through when Cal winced. The cop kept firing at the other one, who continued to advance despite several direct hits.
The other two attackers headed toward Seth and Cat. One was tall and ugly, with a protruding lower jaw, similar to the fellow with the cold breath they fought in the tenement in the Bronx. Unlike his counterpart, he had long black hair which he kept tied back in a tail. He wore a white Judas Priest T-shirt and jeans, and nothing else despite the weather, not even shoes. He moved to the left of the tree while the other guy, a portly Mediterranean type in overalls who reminded Seth of Mario from the Donkey Kong games, moved to their right. Seth realized he was at a terrible disadvantage because he had to maintain contact with Rosencrantz.
Cat fired at the giant, but he was quicker than someone that size had a right to be. He rolled toward the pyre closest to the tree as she fired off shot after shot. She only grazed him. He got behind the pyre and kicked a pile of burning wood and paper at the tree with enough force to send streamers into the branches. A smattering of burning material singed Cat and Seth. “Mario” came around the other side.
Cat continued to shoot at the giant, keeping him at an honest distance. That left only the little guy for Seth. The man had heavy eyes with little life in them. His skin was sallow. He had a dagger in his right hand, but didn’t have quite the same devotion as the other assailants. In fact, if Seth didn’t know any better, this guy wanted to be there less than he did.
“What’s the deal, bro,” Seth said. “Wanna go home and we call it a night?”
“I wish I could, mister,” the guy said with a slight Italian accent. “But they got’a my heart, and I gotta do what they say to get it back.”
Seth didn’t know what “they got’a my heart” implied, but this guy clearly didn’t want to hurt anyone.
“Look man, it’s never too late,” Seth cajoled.
“I’m sorry,” the man said. “But you gotta die.”
The guy threw a half-hearted stab, which Seth easily caught at the wrist. Just as with the gnoll, the man’s flesh melted under Seth’s grasp. The hand with the knife fell away to the ground. The man didn’t scream. He looked dumbfounded at his stump. No blood pumped forth… a congealed red gel oozed out.
“What the fuck are you?” Seth asked.
Frightened, the man said, “I was a person like you.” The man sobbed, but produced no tears. “I no alive!” he shouted in anguish. He shook his head and tore open his shirt. He took out a small piece of paper with numbers on it and handed it to Seth. “You tella Matilda, Lorenzo love her so much,” he said. The man took Seth’s hand and pressed it to his chest. It melted through, past the empty chamber where his heart should have been, and came out the back. To both their surprise, Lorenzo was still standing, with a hole through his chest and Seth’s arm deep into it.
“Oh shit!” Lorenzo shouted. He was in a bigger panic now. “What I gonna do? How I gonna die?”
“How the fuck should I know?” a distressed Seth responded. He had had his fill of bloody sludge for one night. Seth left the tree, pushing Lorenzo backward toward the nearest pyre. He braced his foot against the man’s stomach, pulled out his arm from the guy’s chest, and pushed him into the fire all in one motion. Lorenzo’s cries of terror rang hollow. Seth doubted Lorenzo could actually feel the fire. After all, he took a hole in his chest with barely a whimper. The idea of burning alive was probably more than Lorenzo could handle. Seconds later, Lorenzo fell silent. Seth didn’t know if he was truly ended or simply found peace with what was happening to him. If burning to ash did not kill that guy, Seth certainly didn’t know what else would.
Cal and the other henchman rolled into Seth, knocking him on his butt. The goon had the same baggy eyes and sallow skin as Lorenzo. Cal outclassed his opponent and had him properly pinned, but could not render the man unconscious.
“Won’t die?” Seth asked.
“Get back to the damn tree,” Cal growled.
“Crap!” Seth said, getting up.
Ben hobbled out from his position near the trailer and hacked at Cal’s assailant with his ax. “Get to the tree,” Ben told Seth. “I’ll help him.”
Seth turned around to get back to position, only to find Mr. Seven-Foot Ugly in between him and his destination.
“Cat?” Seth called out. “I thought you were keeping this guy honest.”
“Out of bullets,” she yelled back.
The giant smiled. Seth realized he couldn’t get around the guy to Rosencrantz. Buckshot rang through the air and the giant took a hit to the shoulder. He howled in rage at Helen Reyes on the trailer steps, who then took a second shot at him. Seth grabbed some burning paper and branches and threw it at the giant, singing his own hands in the process. “Shit!” he screamed, and blew on his hands.
The giant stumbled back against the tree, swatting the embers on his clothes. Cat, who was still on the branch above, took the rifle by its barrel turning it into a makeshift club and whacked him in the head with the butt. Seth saw his opportunity and squeaked by the big guy to lay hands on Rosencrantz again. He reached out and grabbed the giant by the arm, but nothing happened.
“I’m not a wight or a filthy gnoll,” the giant said in a deep baritone voice that was peppered with nails. He took a swing at Seth, who ducked just in time to see a deep splintering indent punched into Rosencrantz’s trunk, instead of his head.
Cat hit him again with the rifle. The giant grabbed the butt this time and yanked the weapon out of her hands. He smashed it against the tree and tried to grab Cat from her branch.
Ben came up from behind and lodged his ax a good three inches into the giant’s right hamstring. The giant roared and backhanded Ben. The old man fell back several feet, his head almost falling into one of the pyres. Cal tackled the giant from the side shoving him away from the tree and past the border pyres. Seth wondered what happened to the henchman Cal had been fighting. Someone grabbed Seth’s ankle. It was a severed hand. He shook his leg but it wouldn’t let go. Ben had done a real good job on that guy with his ax, and now all the pieces were dragging themselves toward Seth. The hand on his ankle began to blister and melt, just like Lorenzo.
“I guess that’s a wight,” he said to Cat.
“Come here,” she said. She placed her foot on his shoulder and then a large portion of her weight.
“What the heck?”
“Help me down,” she said. She crouched until she was sitting on Seth’s shoulder. Seth squatted until her good foot touched the earth. She grabbed the remnants of the rifle, hopped over to the dismembered man, and used it to sweep the pieces Ben had chopped into a pyre. The fires were getting smaller.
“Helen, we need more magazines,” Cat said.
“Is Ben all right?” Helen asked.
Cat spotted Ben on the ground and rushed over to him. Ben had a cut across his head and a shiner on his cheek where the giant hit him. “Ben, are you okay?”
“I feel like Muhammad Ali in ’71, when he was introduced to Frazier’s left hook,” Ben said. He smiled to advertise that he was fine.
Cat searched for Cal and the giant. They were beyond the compound, out there in the dark. Seth could hear the struggle. He didn’t know what they would do if it was the giant that returned. Cat borrowed Helen’s shotgun and walked into the dark toward the sounds. Seth wished Lelani would do her thing so he could go hide under the trailer.
“Come on tree… talk to me,” Seth said. “Tell me what to do.” Seth climbed up Rosencrantz, using the giant’s indent in the trunk as a foothold, and took position on the big branch. In the meadow where Lelani fought, he saw a fireworks show like the type you see on the fourth of July. “Give ’em hell, Red,” he muttered under his breath. Then he heard Lelani scream. The sound cut through the night like a razor and chilled him to the bone. Seth thought something went horribly wrong. She failed. Then everything slowed, moving as though underwater. Something was coming at him from the meadow, and he knew… Seth knew this was it. He somehow knew to open his arms wide as though to catch a medicine ball. The force entered his embrace still crackling with potency, looking for its target to rewrite laws of physics in a way this universe was not used to. The energy flowed through his right arm around to his left, which he aimed toward the spell’s point of origin, and it exited back toward the south meadow. Time started again.