Keeper of the Stones: Black Dragons (19) Part One

“Kieran! Kieran!” Someone had grabbed his shoulders and had shaken him awake. It took him a few seconds to place the voice; he wasn’t used to it being so shrill. “Kieran!” They shook him again, more violently this time.

He opened his eyes and then lifted a heavy arm to block out the bright sunlight. Too late: his retinas were already fried. He squinted in the bright sunlight and made out Aliessye’s slender arms, the curled ends of her dark hair, her… Kieran looked up quickly, at her face this time.

She stared down at him, eyes wide and frantic. Her mouth gaped open as she gasped for breath and her hair, always so neat and perfect, was a bushy mess. Her pink cheeks and sweaty forehead made her look like she’d just been running a marathon, but had doubled back to be Kieran’s own personal alarm-clock.

“Yeah?” he grunted, trying to sit up without worsening his stiff back anymore.

“You must come with me – now!”

“What is it? Am I missing the sunrise?” He rubbed his face with his other hand, trying to wake himself up a little. He remembered the white orb hanging high in the sky. He frowned. “Oh. Yeah. It’s already risen.”

“Kieran!” Aliessye hissed. “We must go to the catacombs. It is not safe. The ha-”

An ear-splitting shriek cut across the gentle bubbling of the fountain. Chills swept through Kieran as he was taken back to the grassy stretch between Junella and the forest. It was that same screech; the one that had sent them running for the cover of the city.

It was the harpies.

“Holy shit.”

“Quickly.” Aliessye began to pull him to his feet, Kieran let her, needing her help as his strength fled his trembling limbs. “Go there.” She nodded to a neat line of trees. Kieran wondered for a second why he should run to the edge of clearing, but then realised that that was in the opposite direction. “Wait inside the building. I will be with you shortly.”

“What build-?”

The harpy’s shriek rang out again, echoed by the cry of another.

“Go!” Aliessye pushed him toward the trees.

He stumbled away, his head spinning and his heart pounding. His movements were sluggish; it was like his body didn’t want to respond. He’d rather just drop to the floor and curl up into a tiny ball. It wasn’t fair: a minute ago he’d been asleep and now he’d woken up to something worse than a nightmare.

Talons gleaming in the dying light. A hooked snarl, flashing yellowed, rotting teeth. Dirty, tattered feathers matted with blood. The reflection of himself in growing, black pupils…

He stumbled and nearly fell down. Leaning his hands on his knees, he tried to get his breath back and slow the furious thumping of his heart. It didn’t seem to work, especially with the screams of the harpies echoing about the courtyard. He pushed himself upright and turned to look for Aliessye. He didn’t want to meet another harpy, but he couldn’t just leave her there.

She was standing in the fountain, her palms pressed against the black slab. With a jolt, Kieran remembered her telling him about the fountain, how the water rose up to form that weird shield that covered the city. He watched her, fighting the urge to turn and run every time a harpy’s cry sounded.

Her eyes were closed and her mouth opened and closed rapidly, like she was talking to herself – or the fountain. For a while that was all that happened, but then the water stopped flowing from the top of the fountain. It began to rise up from the bottom.

Kieran watched in amazement as the water started to crawl up the slab like tentacles of tree vines. Slowly they curled around the black marble, flowing over Aliessye’s hands when they reached them, and all the way to the top. The ground began to tremble and an ominous rumbling sound filled the air. Kieran fought to stay upright as the ground shook harder and gritted his teeth to stop them from chattering. For a few moments nothing else happened. Then-

“Shit!”

Kieran automatically ducked as a huge stream of the water shot up into the sky. It went so high that for a second or two, Kieran couldn’t see where it had gone, then there was another explosion and Kieran saw something shoot out in all directions, like the sudden opening of an umbrella.

The water spread across the sky and, as it began to fall, Kieran saw what had covered the city three days ago begin to take form. He flinched as a wailing alarm – the same he’d heard from outside the city – blasted out from the black slab. He nearly ducked again when he looked back up and saw the water begin to move toward them, but a second later he saw how slowly it was falling and realised he’d have a while to wait before he should start to worry about being hit by it.

Aliessye pulled her hands free from the slab and turned, ready to follow Kieran. She saw him and opened her mouth wide to scream at him, eyes fixed on something behind him.

Time didn’t slow for Kieran, if anything it sped up. Something crashed into him from behind and, before he knew it, his mouth and eyes were filled with dirt. He struggled to pull his face away from the ground so he could drag in a breath and figure out what was going on. Something sharp dug into the back of his neck and a familiar weight on his back crushed him. Hot, foul breath rolled over the back of Kieran’s neck. He cried out as whatever had been stuck into his neck was pulled out and thrust in again, like little shards of glass or … teeth…

While rolling around on the ground, fighting to squirm away from what had him pinned down, Kieran caught a flash of speckled, dirty brown. Air whooshed around him as those heavy, brown canopies beat furiously.

It was only when a cruelly taloned hand shot out and wrapped itself around his face that Kieran realised what was attacking him.

A harpy.

Again.

He tried to remember what he had done three days ago to dislodge the other harpy but, with the thing trying to get to his jugular, it was kind of hard to concentrate. He was vaguely aware of Aliessye’s screams and when a familiar iron tang and specs of red began to splatter the ground, he knew the reason. The harpy was making a mess of his neck. If he didn’t do anything to get it off he could bleed out, or it could just rip his head off, which was what it felt like it was trying to do.

Kieran bit down on one of the fingers digging into his mouth as hard as he could. Its feet pounded into his sides as it tried to wind him and make him let go. But like a determined Pit-bull, Kieran held on and dug his teeth into it even harder. When the harpy’s grip began to loosen, Kieran bucked and kicked like there was no tomorrow, swinging back his elbows to deliver sharp blows into its face.

The hand began to slip away and Kieran spat its finger out of his mouth. The teeth had long ago left his neck and he was able to twist around and swing a fist right into its pig-ugly face. It worked, this harpy was less pain-tolerant and immediately sat back, allowing Kieran to push it completely over.

He held it to the ground by wrapping one hand around its throat, the other he folded into a fist and pulled right back so he could deliver as powerful a punch as he possibly could. He stared down into its face, its eyes mere slits of fury as it tried to get free. Terror spurred him on, made him deliver the first punch, and then the second, then the third…

Dimly, he was aware of Aliessye screaming. Her hands were at his shoulders trying to pull him away. A bloody mist coated his white robe and a sickening crunch sounded as he punched the harpy again, breaking its nose.

“Kieran!” Aliessye screamed. “Kieran! There are more! We must go!”

He hesitated, his bloody fist hovering over the harpy’s disfigured face. More, there were more. He couldn’t fight off a whole plague of them. Not like this.

Aliessye tugged at his robe and Kieran allowed her to drag him away from the harpy. It rolled to the side and forced itself into a crouch. Aliessye clutched at his arm and began to lead him toward the trees. He let her, twisting his head back so he could watch the harpy rise and slowly spread out its wings.

“Kieran,” Aliessye begged, bringing him back to himself. He knew she was saying with her pleading tone that they needed to run faster to escape the harpies. He ground his teeth and stretched out his aching legs, feeling like they would give way beneath him at any moment.

Behind him, he heard the shrieks of the harpy, calling others to join the hunt.