She rounded several more trees until they thinned and separated and she found herself at last at the edge of the forest, overlooking a hill. At the bottom of the hill sprawled a village.
There were several rows of two-story houses, three or four on either side of a single, long cobbled stone road. The houses were built of weathered and hand-shaped stone, had thatch or tiled roofs, and wooden crossbeam windowpanes. They were painted in somber tones, but the paint looked new and neat.
Small front yards sported bright grinning jack-o’-lanterns and trees that bore sparse, bright colored leaves. Rows of lit candles were placed along the front windowpanes.
At the center of the town, there was a structure of some kind. It was very large and reaching, but terribly dark and indistinct. There appeared to be a round white pool at its base, suggesting it might be a fountain, but it was hard for Logan to tell from this distance.
Each house had a chimney, and each chimney smoked. The clouds of ash swirled and climbed, crossing the white face of the full moon to form images and visages that came and went with the breeze.
Logan started – and blinked. It’s night?
Only a moment ago, it had been daylight! Only seconds ago, in fact!
She turned around to face the forest she’d come from. But it had changed. Suddenly it looked deep and dark and uninviting, completely different from how it had been when she’d been in it.
Logan hugged herself and spun back around to face the village. The full moon had a bluish tint to it above. It was bright and enormous, and it illuminated the town with incredible clarity. Now that Logan took a better look, she could see some differences in the buildings below. Some of them were larger than others and seemed to have stables attached, or barns perhaps. There didn’t appear to be any sign of automotive industry, no cars, no trucks, no gas stations.
Some of the windows in the houses seemed to be emitting light but they were either curtained or boarded up; she couldn’t tell. The yellow glow coming from them was very faint.
Logan looked down at the hill she stood atop. A trail began a few feet away. It was dirt, but appeared hard-packed, and where it reached the bottom of the hill, it had been immediately cobbled with stones.
She screwed up her courage and started down the hill. It was an easy trek; her boots made a firm clicking sound as she walked. She normally loved that sound. It was the entire reason she wore boots with leather soles – the sound. She was an aesthetic person, enveloping senses, processing them, and placing them upon paper in her stories. They were like fuel to her.
However, at the moment, her boots echoed loudly in the night, making her feel conspicuous. She tried to walk softly, but that had never been something she was particularly good at.
As she drew closer to the first houses of the village, she moved more slowly, a chill running through her. There was a bite to the air here that she hadn’t felt before. That promise of cold she’d noticed earlier had delivered, and the crispness was now very slightly painful. She pulled her jacket more tightly around her and approached the first house.
It was a medium-sized cottage constructed of strong stones and thick, hard wooden crossbeams. The window appeared sealed up airtight, the workmanship careful and exact. Small orange and black tea candles lined the bottom windowpane, flickering warmly from the other side of the glass. Melted wax and stains from previous candles marred the wood, suggesting this was a common custom.
The light coming from the inside of the cottage flickered as well, suggesting it was cast by more fire, perhaps a large hearth and several oil lamps. The door to the cottage was thick and reinforced with metal bands. There was no way of opening it from the outside, which made Logan wonder how people got in.
There was a knocker on the door, composed of brass that possessed a light green verdigris aging. The knocker had been artistically drawn in the shape of a fat, grinning jack-o’-lantern, its stem an attractive curlicue that rose in ringlets off to the side.
Logan raised her hand, and her fingers stilled, poised over the metal ring that dangled from the carved pumpkin’s mouth. She could hear something coming from inside.
It was music. Violin music.
It was a sad and low melody, heart-breakingly sweet. Logan instinctively began to lower her hand again. It was an impulse; she didn’t want to interrupt such beautiful music.
But when she realized what she was doing, she forced herself to grasp the metal of the knocker and slam it down with resolute firmness. She knocked three times.
The music from inside stopped. Footsteps left one room and drew closer and louder, heading for the door. Logan stepped back as she heard something being scraped along wood from the other side.
Then she gasped as the grinning jack-o’-lantern suddenly had glowing violet eyes and they were staring directly at her. She took another step back, tripping a bit on the ledge of the cottage’s walk way.
But the jack-o’-lantern’s eyes narrowed. They blinked.
Logan heard a woman’s voice timidly but fiercely ask, “Is it the Dearg?”
A man gruffly replied, “Nah. This one’s not nearly buxom enough to be the Dearg.”
Logan stood several feet from the front door of the cottage when it was unlocked and began to swing outward. An old man appeared in the doorway. He had gray skin and purple eyes so light they seemed to glow as they gazed out at her from the threshold of the cottage.
“Well lass, what be ye then?” he asked, narrowing that violet gaze on her again as he raised his hand and placed a smoking pipe between his thin lips. From his left side crept a frail looking woman with the same dark gray colored skin but eyes of gold-orange that glowed like the centers of candle flames.
“Is she a witch?” the woman asked.
“Nah. There’s no’ that kind of magic about her. Come closer lass, so I can make ye out.”
Logan stayed where she was. It was taking a good bit of her faculties to process the couple’s appearance, including their accent, which was a bizarre combination of what sounded like a brogue and a Gaelic lilt and something else she couldn’t even begin to place.
“Och, mortals,” grumbled the old man. “Never listen.” He stepped past the threshold and moved toward her instead. The woman at his elbow let him go, but with reluctance. As he drew nearer, Logan’s heart pounded faster.
The old man stopped a foot away, lowered his pipe, and looked at her as if he were looking straight down into her soul.
“Ah then,” he smiled, showing her two rows of strong, if slightly yellowed teeth. “Ye be a bard.” He nodded, grinning, and the woman on the doorstep behind him sighed heavily in relief. “Please lass,” he said, gesturing to the cottage. “Come inside. The masquerade’ll be startin’ soon and ye don’t want to be out in it without a mask.”
Chapter Seven
For some length of time, Dominic floated. It was terribly nauseating. His surroundings were like smudged and blurred paint, indistinct and immaterial. He had nothing to hold on to. There was no ground, no sky, and he was afraid he was going to throw up in his sleep and choke on his own vomit like Jimi.
But then, in the most gracious kind of mercy, the nausea faded. The nothingness beneath him began to feel more solid, and the blurry, smudged-paint sky pixelated itself into different shapes that started to make sense.
He could feel other aspects of his body again, his head, his hands, his legs. He blinked, and his eyes responded. Things cleared a little more. He did it again, and then again, until everything had more or less returned to focus.
He was still in the forest he’d ended up in after separating from Samhain in the portal. His left cheek was pressed to fallen leaves. He could see his fingers a few inches away; he was laying on his stomach, his head turned to the side.
My head.
Logan had kicked him square in the jaw with the business end of her boot. For all intents and purposes, his jaw should be broken and he should have a concussion.
But his head didn’t hurt. Not at
all. The nausea had passed, and his vision had cleared. If he’d concussed, it had either knocked him literally senseless to the point that he couldn’t feel pain, or he’d healed already. Or maybe it had just been a lucky shot – for both of them.
Dom pushed himself up to his knees and looked around. The ground had been disturbed, most likely by Logan’s mad dash for freedom. Chunks of soil had been kicked up, and the leaves were clumped together in some places.
He got to his feet and was surprised at how steady he felt. In fact, he felt… good. Out of curiosity, he lifted his shirt and looked down at his chest. The red line across his midsection where Logan had carved into him with her knife was fading. He touched it gingerly. It was still a little tender, but not nearly as much as it had been before.
He dropped his shirt and looked at the ground with its messed up leaves. His gaze followed the leaves and their troubled pattern for several feet. There were clumps of them leading off into the distance, places where Logan had probably run and kicked them up behind her. This was good. If he could remember half of what he’d been taught in Boy Scouts, he might just be able to follow Logan’s progress through the forest.
Dom felt a beam of sunlight kiss his cheek and glanced up. Little to no time seemed to have passed since before his little nap. It was still mid-afternoon, and the sun was in exactly the same place it had been in before Logan had kicked him.
Was that possible?
Dom frowned and blew out a sigh, running his hand through his thick black hair. “None of this is possible,” he muttered to himself.
And therefore, all of it was.
*****
Meagan counted down in her head. Her lips moved in silence, ticking the numbers off with her. Fifteen… fourteen… thirteen….
Somewhere behind her, in the darkness of the insanity the last few days had held, two vampires had been left unconscious in an alleyway behind a strip mall. They had been classmates of hers. Another classmate was dead.
Her history teacher, who was also her grove leader, was a goblin, transformed into one by the venom of a Hell Hound. Speaking of Hell Hounds, the horrid canine beasts had been let loose on an unsuspecting neighborhood. And her best friend was trapped somewhere beyond that pulsing portal in the arms of the Death God… who was in the body of another classmate.
Life had become a fairytale.
Eight… seven… six….
There were so many wrongs to set right, it would unnerve her if she allowed herself to dwell on it. It would seem insurmountable. So she concentrated on the swirling lights of the doorway into October Land and flexed her hands into fists.
Four… three… two….
Meagan glanced at her two companions. “Ready or not,” she said. They returned her nod of acknowledgement, and Meagan moved forward, stepping through the portal.
The moment she entered the swirling edifice, she wished she’d taken a deeper breath before doing so. The wind of its power sucked the air from her lungs at once, paralyzing her in its chaos. Colors swirled maddeningly, light blinded her, and a tingling, almost painful kind of sensation pricked at her skin. She felt a pressure in her head, pushing at her eyes, and she closed them, at once afraid the portal would literally tear her apart – or that she would explode.
And then she was being tossed through the other end.
She would have screamed, but she was too busy drawing in a harsh gulp of air as her body went awkwardly sailing through the air. There were flashes of red, yellow, purple, and green, and she could at once smell the scent of fresh apples; it was almost cloying, like a perfume. Thoughts of slamming into apple trees ricocheted through her mind.
But fortune was on her side, and she hit the ground instead. She rolled, came to a stunned stop, and then, just as she was gaining her faculties, she realized the others were coming through after her.
Move! she told herself. She shot to her hands and knees, scrambled to her feet, and stepped back out of the way just as the swirling portal flashed a second time, and another body came soaring through the air.
Katelyn was just as mute on her exit as Meagan had been, and Meagan knew why. She was inhaling madly, trying to draw in air. Now that they knew what traveling through portals was like, if the need ever came up again, she would remember to take one hell of a deep breath before entering.
Katelyn hit the ground near the base of a tree trunk, also fortunate enough to miss any of the trees themselves. Meagan watched her roll a few times and ran to meet her. “Are you okay?”
Katelyn shot her a big-eyed look, but nodded.
“Good,” Meagan said, reaching down and grabbing her friend by her upper arms. “Now get up and move!”
The two scrambled out of the way. The portal flashed again, this time with greater force and brightness, and Meagan’s eyes widened. They hadn’t moved back far enough. “Get back!” she shouted, shoving Katelyn to the side as she backpedalled.
Hugh Draper came hurtling out of the center of the swirling hole like a cannon ball. A blur of gray and khaki shot well past Meagan and Katelyn, sailing deeper into the apple trees behind them. They spun, following his progress as he left a trail of smoke behind him.
“What the –” Meagan had no idea what had happened inside that portal or why Draper was smoking as he was tossed out of it; it was surreal. She burst into motion, running after his form as it shot through several branches, knocking bright red, yellow, and green apples to the ground. He hit the ground at the base of a tree, slamming partially into the tree’s trunk, and came to a full, unmoving stop.
“Draper!” Meagan skidded to a halt beside him and dropped to her knees. The wizard groaned and, with Meagan’s help, turned onto his back.
“Are you okay?” she asked, wondering if he’d broken anything.
“What is that catchy colloquialism you say here?” he asked, his voice a bit gruff with pain, but otherwise okay. “Ouch?”
Meagan almost smiled. She nodded. “That would be the one. Is anything broken?”
“I think not,” he replied, taking a moment to assess his legs, arms, fingers, and toes. “As you also say – I’m good.”
“Thank the gods,” Meagan breathed. She helped him get slowly to his feet. “What happened in there? Why did it throw you out like that?” She touched the shoulders of his sweater, where it appeared singed. “You were actually on fire or something.”
“My magic, it would seem, did not mix well with the magic in the portal. You see, I am already under the influence of a very strong spell.” He paused, bent over, and brushed off his pants legs and sweater, knocking loose the leaves and dirt clods that had stuck to him. “The one that allows me to travel through time. Different forms of magic are like oil and water. Surely you know this?” he asked, looking up at her.
If Meagan had been a more “proper” witch, she might have blushed. But she had proven herself capable far too many times over the last few days to let one missed lesson shame her. “Nope. I must have slept through that class.”
Draper frowned, looking confused. But it didn’t matter.
“So it didn’t like the way you smelled and it tossed you out with a bit more force than it did us,” Meagan surmised.
Now Draper smiled, chuckling a little as he nodded and finished cleaning himself off. “More or less.”
“Um, guys?” came Katelyn’s voice from behind them. They turned to face her. “Where is Mr. Lehrer?”
Chapter Eight
The moment Dietrich stepped through, he could tell the portal didn’t like him. It didn’t want him there.
There was something about the blood now running through his goblin veins that made him understand – he belonged in another kingdom. His “kind” had been banished there long, long ago. The portal knew that. To it, he was a runaway. An escapee.
Something like that.
The colors of the portal swelled and grew painfully bright. It felt hot – so hot, it was like a flash heat, rushing through his skin to his bones. The portal stole the ai
r from his lungs as well, but he was fairly sure that was just due to the fact that he was moving impossibly fast through it. It would do the same to Meagan and the others.
In every other manner, the portal attacked him because he was a goblin. It burned him and then blinded him, and all at once, Dietrich realized the swirling doorway fully intended to throw him into that goblin kingdom, wherever it might be. To put him back in jail where he belonged.
But he was only half goblin, really. The rest of him was still Mr. Dietrich Lehrer, the history teacher, and very powerful grove leader.
He used that power now, that stored magic he’d had a feeling he might need, and fought against the vicious pull of the portal. He concentrated through the blindness and the heat, focusing on October Land, on following Logan and Samhain, on exiting in whatever realm they had gone to.
He managed. Just barely.
But his problems in traveling through the portal had only begun.
They attacked him the moment he was roughly ejected. He barely had time to acknowledge the faint combination of tree colors, the strong smell of apples, and the nearing of the hard, leaf-strewn ground before he was slamming into it at a tremendous, painful speed and rolling to a rough stop.
He lay still for a moment, trying to regain his bearings. His senses were overwhelmed with the scents around him, in sharp contrast to his blurred vision. His body was slightly stunned from the fall, but not for the first time since his transformation, Dietrich was admittedly glad for the massive goblin body – if he’d been human when he’d come hurtling out of the portal, he would have broken something. He’d never been thrown so hard in his life.
He was lying facedown, his right tusk digging a small furrow in the moist ground beneath him when he noticed the indistinct dark shape just past the leaves in his direct vision. He tried to adjust his tortured sight while he pushed himself up a touch. It was a pair of boots?
He blinked rapidly, trying to clear away more of the portal’s blindness. After a moment, he could tell that it was a pair of boots, black motorcycle boots, and there was also a pair of blue-jeaned legs.