The last vultrex had indeed survived the slings and arrows of its earlier battle at Devil's Bridge, but, at the moment, was probably wishing it had not. Or at least wishing it had not made it back to the castle where it stood in the great hall cowering before the Strega reporting its failure to carry out her orders. The Strega was furious. She reached up with lightning speed, snatched the tall beast by its rope-like neck, and yanked it smartly to its knees.
"What do you mean they got away?" she roared as she strangled the already weakened, injured vultrex. Aside from a few sharp halting wheezes as it struggled to draw a single breath, the vultrexwas silent. Arteris and Canisera looked on with sadistic grins while the wounded behemoth suffered at the hands of the Strega.
"Answer your master, foul beast," ordered Canisera.
The Strega released the vultrex and slapped Canisera with blinding speed. The swift strike was so loud that it echoed sharply within the cavernous space of the great hall.
"Shut your mouth. You and your incompetent husband fared no better."
Unable to defend his mate, Arteris simply hung his head in shame. Canisera stood red-cheeked, face throbbing with pain, struggling to mask her anger.
"There are seven now," said the raspy-voiced vultrex as it wavered weakly on its knobby knees. Capricia's arrows still protruded from its battered body. "Including—" it continued hesitantly, not wanting to draw further wrath from the wicked Strega. But the Strega's wrath was not to be avoided.
Flesh and sinew snapped and popped as the Strega torturously twisted one of the arrows that jutted from the left side of the vultrex. The beast screeched in sheer agony until it simply hadn't the energy to continue.
"Including what?" demanded the Strega viciously.
"A witchslayer, Strega," answered the vultrex with extreme fear in its eyes.
With a bloodcurdling fury-filled scream, the Strega lashed forth a spell casting hand and a lucent red plasma wave blasted the vultrex high against the far castle wall.
"Impossible! The bloodline was severed! I felt it," she thundered.
There the beast hung, firmly pinned to the cold stone blocks, spread eagle, writhing in agony. When the Strega's punishing hand finally fell, the vultrex dropped to the floor with a hard, loud thud. Two arrows piercing its wing snapped in half upon impact, and the third one in its side was driven ever deeper into its large body. It lay motionless, groaning in misery. The Strega spun abruptly, stormed across the sprawling great hall, and exited beneath an archway leading into a darkened corridor.
The Strega feverishly paced her cauldron chamber plotting her next move. At the center of the chamber a shiny, viscous, blood-red liquid boiled furiously within a bulbous sixty-gallon cauldron. Serpentine flames reached out from beneath and hugged tightly as they snaked up the sides of the blackened cast iron kettle, hungrily licking at the flared rim. Against the back wall loomed an ominous stone altar—the Altar of Tortured Souls. It projected into the chamber some fifteen feet and stretched thirty feet end to end. Rising five feet from the castle floor, a wide flight of several steps ascended the altar. At each side of the steps stood a large stone column, which supported a heavy stone canopy overhead. Beyond the steps, toward the back of the altar, was a lectern carved from a solid black tree stump and topped with a massive leather-bound tome, rife with evil spells. The base of the lectern flared outward like the base of a tree. And just as roots creep forth from the base of a tree, so too crept forth roots from the base of the wicked lectern. They reached out in every direction like wandering tentacles and wove their way in and out of the solid stone as they went. Covering the entire base, pillars, and canopy of the altar, seemingly carved from the stone, were the twisted, anguished faces of countless tortured souls trapped in agony at the hands of the vengeful Strega.
The pained faces jutted out sharply as if struggling with all their might to burst forth from their stone prison. But, tightly coiled around the throat of each and every soul, holding them firmly entombed was an offshoot of the malevolent black roots. Beyond the lectern, nearest the back wall, a thick gnarled root had grown up four feet out of the altar floor. At its end, it spread out like the twisted fingers of an evil hand and cradled a broad stone platter that brimmed with a black viscid, glossy liquid. The Strega strode up the steps, crossed the altar, and stood beside the vessel. She crouched over it and stared intensely into the blackness until it gradually gave way to a vivid scene unfolding before her eyes. The Strega watched scornfully as Frankie and the others trekked across the rugged countryside.
"A fellowship of fools," she said, voice oozing with derision as her cold eyes traced their way to Ambroggio at the front of the pack, "led by the biggest fool of all."
She took a deep breath and raised her hands above the reflecting pool and spun a spell, "If of the house of Fretini the bloodline survives, And of that bloodline a witchslayer thrives, And if that witchslayer has come for me, Reveal yourself so I may see."
Frankie's face came into focus and slowly magnified until it was all that could be seen within the evil reflecting pool. The Strega studied him intensely, trepidation hanging heavily on her brow.
"The prophecy is true," she uttered in fear. The Strega stared at Frankie, her brow tightly crimped as she ruminated, "And if the foul foretelling is faithful to the letter, you now seek to ally with the Befana," she said aloud to herself.
The Strega quickly waved a hand over the reflecting pool and the scene shifted perspective. She was now peering down on the terrain from high above. She studied the landscape surrounding Frankie and the others.
"Though you draw near to the Hallowed Woodland, you shall not reach it. For amid the valley that you do traverse, I command a warrior's soul by an ancient curse."
The Strega stormed down the altar steps and to her cauldron. There, she slowly began to circle the seething kettle of her witch's brew. She whirled in an eerie ritualistic dance, conjuring the flames of the fire with a hypnotic sway of her hands as she went. They rose and fell rhythmically—high then low, high then low. The fire continued to pulse, and the Strega invoked the spirit of a dark rider to do her bidding. "From the murky depths of his watery tomb, Where the Busento meets the Crati Fiume, Raise the Visigoth to seal their doom."
She plucked a single strand of her long silky black hair and held it in the palm of her hand. With a steady gentle breath the hair ascended hauntingly into the air where it hung, undulating inches above her hand. Slowly it began to take the shape of a tiny horse and rider until it was a fully formed outline galloping through the air toward the witch's brew. The Strega watched with an acid smirk as the bewitched horse neared the mouth of the cauldron. At the last moment she resumed her spell.
"Follow the rivers south then east, To slay the slayer like a beast."
And with the final word, the horse dove headlong into the boiling brew as the Strega cackled wickedly.
YOU ARE READING
Beyond the Wicked Willow: Chronicles of a Teenage Witchslayer
FantasyFRANKIE FRETINI has had a horrible year. And, just when he thinks things are looking up, well...all heck breaks loose. It happens in home-ec class just moments after the girl of his dreams, Jenny Moran, invites him to the annual town carnival. Still...
