Page 56 of A Touch Enchanted

The crackling of dead leaves started almost immediately, as a low bass note of thunder rumbled the earth. Through the trees, a black snake with a body as thick as an oak slithered straight for us with its jaws open wide. Its fangs couldn’t carry poison, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t still deadly. We spread out and it hovered over us, unsure of who to attack first.

Wes and Audrey took the front, palms held out as they fired twin bolts of lightning at its underbelly. The lightning bounced off its thick skin and flew over my head, singeing a few strands of my hair. I’d ducked just in time.

“What the hell?” Finn yelled. “It’s got armor now?”

Clever curse. While we’d been trying to gather all the information we could find about it, it had been studying us. Learning our powers and our weaknesses. Protecting itself against known threats. It couldn’t anticipate everything though.

Donovan and I raised our voices and called to the birds. Within seconds, a cloud of feathers shot out of the surrounding trees. They descended and pecked out the snake’s eyes. When it unhinged its jaw to snap at its attackers, Audrey shot lightning straight into its soft mouth. The snake’s head exploded. It turned to smoke before its massive body hit the ground.

“Nicely done, baby.” Wes scooped her up and planted a smacking kiss on her lips.

“Fuck yeah.” Finn pumped the air with his fist. “That was fucking awesome.”

Audrey, flushed from Wes’s attentions, gave us a curtsy.

We continued up the path, keeping communication lines open with the animals so they could let us know what else was coming. The snake had been huge, but relatively easy to bypass with six against one. If the curse really wanted to keep us from the gates, it would have to throw a lot more than that at us.

Another half-mile up the trail, the flowers began to wilt. The bushes turned brown. Smoke leaked out of the trees and surrounded us, keeping the rest of the trail from view. Donovan and I called to the ground animals, but the curse had blocked them out.

“Is this a mental attack?” Thora asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said. The smoke wasn’t closing in on us, it just kept everything else at a distance, nullifying our ability to communicate with the animals. The only thing we could hear was the incessant sound of crackling leaves.

Something whisked out of the smoke, then a blinding pain shot through my back. I slumped forward, my legs giving out from under me. I turned my head to the side, and Donovan had an arrow poking out between his ribs. His eyes had glazed over with pain.

“Hold still,” Thora whispered in my ear.

Her soothing voice calmed me as she ripped the arrow out of my back, tearing through my skin like tissue paper. I screamed, but within a second the pain was gone. Completely healed.

Once Thora and Finn had healed all of us who had taken an arrow, we pushed through the smoke and kept moving. The curse continued to flow over the forest floor, causing the animals to scatter. They pretty much told us we were on our own.

An army of walnut-sized wasps tried to attack us, but Wes and Audrey froze them with ease. They shattered on the forest floor and joined the rest of the smoke that continued to swirl around us, taunting us with whatever unknown attack it was planning next.

With only a quarter of a mile to go before we reached the cave, a warthog charged out of the foliage. But this wasn’t a cute little bug-eater like the one that had rescued Simba from the desert vultures. This one had razor-sharp teeth and a series of angry-looking spikes on its back. Eleven other friends joined it, forming a circle of grunting wild beasts with death jaws.

“This is new,” Finn said. “What do you suppose we do about these?”

Wes hit one with a bolt of lightning. It screamed before bursting into a veil of black vapor. But that pissed off his friends, who immediately attacked. Wes and Audrey tried to hold them off, but they were severely outnumbered.

“Grab their snouts,” Thora yelled. “Touch makes them weaker.”

As one headed straight for me, jaws snapping hard enough to take off one of my hands, I leaped to the side and grabbed it around the snout, forcing its mouth shut. The spikes on its back sliced through my arm right before it turned to smoke. Ribbons of skin hung down as blood pooled in the dirt at my feet. My vision clouded and bile rose to the back of my throat.

“I got you, small fry.” Finn wrapped his hands around my arm and my skin instantly knitted back together. Only a smear of blood on my tank top remained from the injury.

Wes and Audrey continued to fire lightning at the warthogs, careful not to hit anyone in our party in the scuffle. Once the last one had been destroyed, they leaned against each other. Audrey wiped the sweat from her brow, leaving behind a streak of dirt.

“These gates better be worth all this damn hassle,” Wes said.

I couldn’t say if they were or not, considering that we didn’t know what they were for.

We finally made it to the dead zone. I expected another fight, but only silence and the soft breeze greeted us. A bird landed on a nearby branch and I asked her about the curse. She said the dark poison wouldn’t come here anymore. That it was afraid of this place now.

Whatever magic Finn and Thora had released when they nullified the poison and destroyed the cave must’ve been powerful. And it must’ve been good. An enemy of my enemy and all. If the curse was against it, that probably meant it was on our side.

The six of us stood over the open hole and looked down into the pitch dark. Just because the curse wouldn’t go into the dead zone, didn’t mean the cave was safe. But we’d come all this way. Turning back now would be a waste of effort and we were on borrowed time.

Donovan passed around flashlights, then gestured for Wes to go ahead. “After you.”

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