Tales of Aradia The Last Witch Volume 1 (36 page)

“You alone?” Dereck’s
loud voice boomed from out of nowhere.

Aradia whipped around,
looking the entire room over, and finally found Dereck at the top
of a long, winding staircase.

“What do you think?”
asked Aradia.

Dereck was silent as he
slowly descended the staircase. Aradia gathered her courage and
asked, “So? I have kept my end of the bargain, will you keep
yours?”

“As I said earlier, I
have no reason to kill your parents. I will not harm
them.”

“Then my parents are
safe!” said Aradia, thankful despite the severity of her
situation.

“Yes, they might be,”
said Dereck, shifting into his werewolf form again. “But you sure
as hell are not!”

With the speed and
power of a tornado, Dereck leapt from the staircase towards Aradia.
He landed a few feet in front of her, bounded once, and tackled
her. She was ready and rolled with him. They wrestled and she ended
up pinned, Dereck’s paw-like hands wrapped around her throat. He
started to squeeze.

She closed her eyes,
and in spite of Dereck crushing her windpipe so strongly that her
face was beginning to turn blue, she calmed herself.
You tried it that way once,
she said.
You won’t win
fighting him hand to hand.
Aradia
managed to smile.

Dereck’s face became a
mask of confusion only to change to pain when Aradia wrapped her
own hands around his throat and summoned her flame. She smelled
burning fur and flesh. He howled in agony, but still held her
throat.

She kneed him in his
gut and pulled him close enough to head-butt him. His grip faltered
and she gasped a deep breath. Following through on her combo
attack, she rolled him off of her, sprang to her feet, and kicked
him sharply in the face.

“You really should have
taken my parents hostage. That way I might have wanted to hold
back!”

She clasped her hands
together like a praying mantis, and from her clasped hands emerged
a huge whip of flame.

Dereck scrambled to his
feet. On all fours he stalked a circle around Aradia, just outside
her whip’s reach. His cockiness was gone.

Aradia cracking the
fire whip. He wasn’t sure of what he was seeing, or if it were even
real. He pounced and came down at her from a high arc, attacking
her from above. She whipped at him with her flame construct,
lashing him across the torso from left shoulder to right hip. He
screeched in pain and completely failed on his landing, coming down
in a heavy thud which snapped the decrepit old
floorboards.

“Maybe coming here
wasn’t the dumbest thing I’ve ever done!” Aradia chuckled, cracking
the whip again, this time across his back.

Dereck ran towards the
front door.

Aradia, however, had
other ideas.

“Oh hells to the no you
don’t!” she shouted, stamping her foot on the floor. The doors
glossed over and became immovable. Dereck pried at the handles, but
they didn’t even shake on their ancient old hinges.

Aradia smiled as she
said, “Now this is when it gets good.”

It had been almost
impossible for Dax and Roy to find Aradia, but once they noted the
flashes and loud booms coming from the manor on Warlock Hill, it
definitely narrowed the search. They raced through the forest and
Roy smashed himself into one of the manor’s old front doors which,
to his surprise, did not crash open.

Picking himself up, he
and Dax looked at one another.

Dax proposed,
“Window?”

Roy nodded.

In unison the two
jumped and crashed through their respective window panes. Dax was
careful to use his arms to protect his heart from any wayward
shards of wood his arrival might have flung about.

The duo found Aradia
and Dereck battling on the second floor.

Dereck tried dodging
the fireballs Aradia threw at him, and in return, she tried to
avoid him whenever he lunged or swiped at her for an
attack.

“I am going to rip you
to shreds and feed what is left of you to pigeons!” he
threatened.

Aradia sighed as she
swung herself around a huge pillar and said, “Sticks and stones may
break my bones, but so far you have yet to hurt me! And between you
and me, I don't think you ever will!”

Dereck roared as he
slashed his claws at her, but Aradia ducked every blow.

“Hold still dammit!” he
finally cried out.

“Now what fun would
that be?”

He furiously slashed as
quickly as he could while Aradia tried to dodge the blow
again.

Aradia didn’t know
whether he lured her to overextend herself or if she had merely
gotten overconfident, but either way, his claws finally made
contact. His hand managed to scrape against Aradia's belly. The
wound was not deep, but it was painful, and again there was much
blood.

Aradia cried out in
pain, and the fireball she was holding dissipated. Dereck grinned
wickedly as she dropped to her knees. He moved in for the
kill.

He moved in for the
kill, only to be sacked from the side by another werewolf. Roy and
Dereck rolled over one another, Roy swiping and biting at him more
ferociously than he’d ever attacked anything. Dereck was larger,
stronger, and more experienced than Roy. He was also injured,
tired, and not nearly as incensed.

Still, even with the
field somewhat leveled, experience won out over youth. Dereck got
Roy on his back, and opened his mouth to bite out the younger
werewolf’s throat. Aradia summoned a fireball to stop, but the pain
from her stomach was too great, and she couldn’t.

“Nooo!” Aradia cried
out.

Time seemed to freeze.
She couldn’t believe what was happening. She’d come here to protect
her loved ones, and now she was going to be responsible for the
death of a loved one. She realized in that instant that she didn’t
really know for sure how she felt about Dax or Roy, but she loved
them both in some capacity, and she couldn’t lose either of
them.

Wonderfully, she didn’t
have to.

Dax had climbed to the
rafters above the pair and crept through the darkness where Aradia
and the werewolves hadn’t noticed him. Now he struck, like a rock
spider snatching its prey. He dropped himself from the rafters and
landed on the elder werewolf’s back. He used an old, rusty
fireplace shovel as a gag, forcing it crosswise into the wolf’s
gaping maw, keeping him from closing his jaws.

Then he did some biting
of his own, flicking out his fangs and sinking them deeply into the
wolf’s throat.

Dereck screamed,
releasing his hold on Roy and clawing at Dax as he had earlier at
Aradia. Unlike Aradia, though, his scratches and cuts had little
effect.

Dax struck again and
again, like a tiger rattlesnake or a black mamba. Now it was
Dereck’s blood flowing freely.

His injuries were
mounting rapidly, and his strength was waning. Soon he was no
longer even swiping at Dax. The large werewolf fell to his
knees.

“Dax,” Aradia said.
Still Dax mounted his assault. “Dax!”

He stopped and looked
at her, mouth and chin dripping with werewolf blood.

“That’s enough,” she
said. He tilted his head curiously. Roy, too, who was crouched and
ready to strike, seemed uncertain of her meaning. “He’s
incapacitated.”

“Aradia,” Dax warned,
but she only shushed him and waved him back. He
complied.

Dereck, still in his
wolf form, managed to hold himself up, albeit unsteadily, on his
knees. He was burned, bruised, bleeding, and broken.

His mouth opened and
closed several times. She wasn’t sure if he was trying to speak, or
attempting in vain to bite her. Finally, he spat out, “What the
hell are you, you crazy bitch?”

At this, Aradia smirked
while balling her hand into a fist.

“I’ll give you a hint,”
she stage whispered. “You’re only one letter off!”

Then she clocked him.
He fell over backwards, finally, mercifully unconscious.

Chapter
Twenty-Nine

“Holy buckets,” Ross
muttered as his daughter and her two companions strolled in the
front door. Dax’s mouth and clothes were stained dark red with
recent blood, and Roy was in his wolf form.

“Oh my,” Liza
agreed.

Between the three of
them, the trio carried another werewolf. Roy, on all fours,
shouldered most of the burden.

“Dereck Caradoc, I
presume?” Mr. Dayton asked.

Dax nodded. Roy
shrugged him off his shoulders and onto the Dayton’s sofa, the same
sofa upon which Aradia had only recently tossed him. Mr. Dayton
wrinkled his nose. Dax interpreted that as a sign that they’d soon
have a new sofa.

“You all didn’t, ah…”
Ross asked.

“Kill him?” Aradia
finished.

“Well…”

“No,” Mr. Dayton
replied. “They did not.”

“How do you know. Can
you hear his heartbeat?”

“Dead werewolves revert
to their human form. If he remains a wolf, he lives.”

“Bah!” Ross replied. “I
should have known that. American Werewolf in London used to be one
of my favorites.”

“Um,” Liza said, not
believing how cavalierly her husband was handling the situation,
“what happened?”

“We let Aradia show him
what happens to people when they cross her. Poor bloke never had a
chance!”

Aradia smiled at him,
causing Roy to growl softly. “That’s not exactly how it happened. I
got by with a little help from my friends.”

Ross pulled out his
phone. “This is amazing. I’m calling the police now.”

Mr. Dayton stepped
forward and interrupted him, saying, “I would greatly appreciate if
you held off on that for a moment.”

Ross looked at the
other man. So far, he liked the vampire well enough, but his
opinions could change quickly based on how this conversation played
out. “Alright. Say your piece.”

“I believe we can all
agree it wise to at least wait until he resumes his human form
before notifying your human authorities.”

Ross chewed on that.
“Yeah, yeah that’s a good point.”

“Further, though, there
is a bigger picture to consider. Dereck has proven himself
unpredictable and disrespectful of both human and hidden laws. Even
if he were arrested, there is no guarantee that he would not simply
shift again, in front of humans even.”

“I hear you,” Ross
said, “and I don’t mean to disrespect your people or your customs,
but I can’t let that stop me from doing my duty. We can’t just let
him walk. He must stand before a court for his crimes.”

“Agreed,” Mr. Dayton
said. “But what kind of court? What kind of authorities are more
equipped to deal with him?”

Understanding dawned on
Ross. “You’re talking jurisdiction with me?”

“After a fashion,” Mr.
Dayton replied. “He has violated both human and hidden crimes, but
can only be judged by one standard of justice.”

Aradia cringed. She
didn’t like the idea of hidden justice.

Ross was wavering, but
not completely convinced.

“There are the children
to consider as well,” Mr. Dayton played his trump card.

“What do you mean?”
Ross asked.

Aradia piped up,
saying, “He means what I was telling you about before, the highest
hidden law, remaining hidden. If Dereck tells humans about me and
Roy and Dax, then the three of us could be punished.”

“Well, that isn’t
justice!” Liza exclaimed.

“No, it’s not,” Aradia
agreed. “It’s not justice at all. But for now, at least, it’s the
way things are in hidden society.”

Ross asked, “What about
us, then? All of us? Isn’t everybody in this room guilty of that
same crime just by discussing this with Liza and me?”

“Your situation is a
special one,” Mr. Dayton explained. “I’d have discussed this more
earlier, if not for the interruption. Aradia, you are the last of
your kind. As such, you find yourself in an unusual
situation.”

“What kind of
situation,” she asked cautiously.

“We will discuss the
details at length, if you wish. Suffice to say that not all hidden
rules apply quite so strongly to you as to others. You are
permitted human allies who know our secrets.”

“But if Dereck started
telling the world about us…”

“Not protected,” Mr.
Dayton finished.

They all mulled on
their options. Finally Ross spoke. “If I turn the accused over to
your justice system, you give me your word he will answer for his
crimes?”

“Indeed I do,” Mr.
Dayton replied.

“He will be judged
before some form of impartial court which will rule and issue
judgment based on the merits of his case?”

“I believe it will be
so.”