Under a Ghostly Moon (Jerry Moon Supernatural Thrillers Book 1) (23 page)

"
I did warn you," commented Moon, shaking his head in sympathy.

“
Right," said Uri, "I think we're as ready as we'll ever be, so let's get going.  We need to take the path to the right. It goes along the rim of the valley, there, and then on up to the ridge of the old hill fort.  It shouldn't take us long to find what we're looking for.  Now, whatever happens, stick together.  This thing will try to separate us so it can attack each of us on their own."

The path was easy to make out in the moonlight, distinct and quite well worn
.  Nightingale Valley, as the stretch of woodland below the hill fort is called, was a favourite haunt of mountain bikers during the day and the earth of the pathways through the woods was criss-crossed with their tracks.  This created a difficult and uneven surface to negotiate in the dark.  They were roughly a third of the way to the top, when Moon stumbled over one very deep tyre ridge.  Sonia caught him, just in time to prevent him tumbling over the side of the path into the steep fall to the valley below. Charli and Roanne rushed to help.  They quickly got Moon onto safer ground and, as Sonia was helping him dust mud off the bottom of his coat, they heard Uri say, "Charli and Roanne, I think you two should scout ahead, I'll stay with the humans and make sure they're safe."

As the girls floated off into the darkness of the woods Sonia turned to Uri
.  "What happened to sticking together?" she asked.

"
They can look after themselves and I wish to take you by a safer route," he replied, leading them off along a less well-trodden path that branched away from the main one.

A few minutes later, Moon could hardly see his hand in front of his face
.  "Are you sure this is the right path?" he asked Uri, who was walking as silently as ever at his left.

"
Oh, yesss!" hissed the vampire, turning a face of hideously distorted evil on Moon.  His yellow eyes were glowing slits of malevolence under heavy serrated brows, which met over a dripping hole where the nose should be.  Underneath this grinned a mouth full of far too many sharp and uneven teeth.

Moon recoiled with shock
and, as he stepped backwards, he found himself plunging feet first down a hidden shaft.  "Jerry!" screamed Sonia, and made a futile lunge to catch him.

Moon
was certain that he was plummeting to his death, but suddenly all the wind was knocked from his lungs as another body cannonballed into him and thrust him to safety.  It was Uri, the real Uri, who cradled Moon gently onto the ground.  The vampire paused for an instant to check that his friend was unhurt before he leapt forth to battle with his own doppelganger.

"
It's not me!" he cried to Sonia.  "It's the goblin pretending to be me!"

Sonia, who had already decided to act against their attacker, whether
it was Uri or not, struck out with her ghost sense and ripped a chunk of insubstantial flesh from one side of the creature's face. "Damn!" she spat when she realised that she hadn't managed to disable it.

Turning what was left of its ruined countenance towards them, its remaining eye shimmering with furious malice, the goblin snarled and
swiftly doubled in size.  As it did so it transformed, shape-shifting into the form of an ogre with long apelike arms, each of which ended in three scythe-like, metallic looking claws.  "Don't be fooled," said Uri, "it can't harm us, it's all bluff." Then he launched his own attack on the creature.  The shining whip of his spirit leapt forth from his forehead and left a gaping hole in its chest, which leaked reddish ectoplasm like a mist of blood.

"
Mine!" shouted Moon, who had finally regained his breath.  He climbed purposefully to his feet and adopted a defiant posture with his feet planted well apart, he raised his arms and a lance of pure light poured out of him into the body of the wounded beast, ripping away what remained of its substance.  Very quickly, nothing was left but a single tiny red pinpoint that sped away into the darkness of the trees.  "Bloody thing damn near killed me!" he growled as the fury slowly died from his eyes.

"
Well, you really gave it what for, darling," Sonia commented a smirk of amusement playing around her lips.

"
We all did," said Uri with a grin.

"
What happened to you?" asked Moon.

"
It was wilier and more powerful than I expected." Uri shook his head at his own lack of vigilance.  "It waited until everyone else was distracted then trapped me with a tangling spell.  It took me nearly ten minutes to break out of it and stop wandering in circles..." Uri was on the verge of explaining further when a frantic ululating cry pierced the woods from the direction of the hill fort.  "That's Charli!"  He pointed up the hill.  "There is more complex evil at work in these woods.  Come on, they need our help."

They followed the path to a wider clearing in the woods near the top of the hill fort, where Roanne and Charli were
battling fiercely in the darkness. Moon couldn't quite make out the figures of their opponents in the tricky monotone half-light cast by the sickle moon.

"
Bugger!" swore Uri, whose vampiric senses were more acute than a human's.  Skeletons, lots of them! We're in real trouble now!"

"
Why?" asked Moon naively.  "I've fought hundreds of those things in computer games.  They just fly apart if you hit them hard enough."

Uri looked at Moon with a mixture of incredulity and exasperation.  Then he shrugged and shook his head. 
"That may be true for your games, Moon, but in real life they just fly back together again." He looked around.  "Such revenants are usually animated by some kind of magical power source, which should be somewhere nearby.  We need to find that quickly and destroy it."

One of the ancie
nt warriors approached at a steady run. It held a rusty iron-tipped spear in a thrusting hold and a chilling, bird-like screech issued from its lipless mouth.  Uri swiftly side-stepped the spear and, in the same movement, punched the shrieking skull into the trees. He followed through with a sweeping, kung-fu like kick to its thorax, which scattered ribs and vertebrae over a wide distance.  "Moon… I'll keep them at bay while you and Sonia look for their power source.  It should be quite obvious to someone with your talents."

The pieces of the shattered warrior were quickly
reuniting.  His body was already almost complete and, as he and Sonia cast around for the source of their opponents’ power, Moon caught fleeting glimpses of the skull rushing through the undergrowth.  The frantic snapping of its cracked yellow teeth bore an obscene similarity to an angry Yorkshire terrier.

"
To me!" cried Uri as he ripped a branch from a nearby tree to use as a weapon.

The
two vampire girls flew through the air and landed on either side of him.  "Where the hell did you get to?" asked Roanne angrily.

"
I'll explain later," replied Uri, swiping at the almost fully reassembled skeleton with his makeshift club.  "There's no time now.  We need to protect Moon and Sonia while they look for whatever's controlling these things."

The vampires formed a protective triangle around the two humans, who huddled together in the centre and tried to ignore the battle going on around them as they concentrated on pinpointing the skeleton warriors
' power source.

They
were confronted by nearly twenty skeletons advancing from the direction of the hill fort. All of them wore the tattered remnants of Iron Age armour and carried ancient but very sharp looking weapons. The occasional piece of jewellery, like a ring or torc glinted in the moonlight as they advanced upon the small huddle of vampires and humans.  Moon was momentarily distracted from his search when he noticed that the armour and items of jewellery seemed to hover over the bones as if supported by invisible flesh.  Probably just another characteristic of the spell that animated them he realised.  He seriously doubted that there had been twenty complete skeletons lying under the soil of the mound, the magic must have somehow gathered these creatures together from dust and fragments of bone.

"
Jerry," whispered Sonia, who had been concentrating more on the task Uri had given them.  "I may be wrong but there seem to be sort of ‘strings’ attached to each of the skeletons.  Do you see them?"

Moon
looked towards their attackers and quickly ducked an axe that was flying with deadly accuracy from that direction.  He took a few deep breaths to regain his composure then focused his concentration on the bony cohort that rattled before them.  "I see what you mean," he said with surprise.  It was very faint but each skeleton had a misty tendril trailing from it and they all seemed to converge on the centre of the hill fort.  "Uri, I think we've found what we're looking for."

Uri turned to Moon
.  He held a skeletal arm in each hand. They continued to claw at him with their sharp, bony talons, despite being separated from their owner.  "Where?" he asked, flinging his grisly burdens far into the forest.

"
Over there," Moon pointed.

"
Right, Charli, Roanne!" Uri yelled to his embattled lovers.  "We need to head for the centre of the fort, over there."

"
But that means we have to go straight through the middle of them," complained Charli.

"
Then that is what we must do," replied Uri firmly.  "We can't allow these things to continue to guard this place or the woods won't be safe night or day."

Trying to maintain their protective formation, the five of them, started to edge slowly towards the centre of what would have been the old fort's main enclosure.  It was dangerous work. Their ancient foes were armed with solid weapons and centuries in the ground didn’t seem to have blunted their skill in using them.  The vampires were in less peril than the humans, as long as they kept their heads on their shoulders and didn’t allow any of their opponents' wooden shafts to pierce their hearts, but they were struggling to protect their more vulnerable friends from harm.

"
I've had enough of this," muttered Moon under his breath as an ancient spearhead grazed his leg.  He grabbed the spear before its owner could retract it and struck the nearest grinning skull between the eyes with the butt of the shaft, knocking it into the undergrowth.  He swiftly smashed his stolen weapon down on the decapitated warrior's breast bone, scattering ribs everywhere.  The rest of the ancient fighter continued to attack, lashing at him frantically with its sword and razor sharp claws.  He smacked the spear's butt desperately into the middle of its spine, which effectively snapped the skeleton in two and bought him a short respite from its attack.

"
Sweeping strokes," advised Uri, snatching up the warrior's sword from its searching fingers and tossing it to Sonia, "and try to scatter the bones as far apart as possible, especially the skulls." As if to demonstrate this he made a high, sweeping kick at his nearest oncoming assailant, knocking its helmeted skull into the woods.

Moon whirled his spear at another skeleton, catching it in mid thorax and dispersing bits of bone over a twenty metre area
.  "How come all modern vampires seem to come equipped with a deadly knowledge of kung-fu?" he asked.

"
This isn't kung-fu," replied Uri, kicking effortlessly through his headless assailant's rib cage and spine.  "It's called
Thor's Hammer
.  It's an ancient Viking combat technique I studied in Kiev.  Not all martial arts come from the far East you know."

A shrill scream from
Sonia brought Moon quickly to her side.  He could see that she had been wounded but didn't have time to help her because her assailant was pressing in for the kill.  Fuming with anger and concern, he stuck his spear between its legs, tipped it over and delivered a devastating kick to its head, sending its skull curving up and out over the ridge and down into Nightingale Valley.  He followed through by jumping on its ribcage.  Snarling with fury, he pounded the brittle bones into pieces and kicked the splinters as far as they would go.

"
I think you can stop now, Moon," said Uri, surveying their battlefield where nothing but fragments of skeleton twitched and writhed as they struggled to reform.  "We seem to have a respite.  Moon, do what you can for Sonia, quickly! Then we need to make a break for the source of these horrors before they can reform themselves."