Chapter 38

[seymoure]

Chapter 38
“The Quest Goes On”

The candle flickered on the oaken table in the center of the Boar’s Head Inn.

Gasheen Sanchez lay his broadsword on the wood, but his other hand was not at rest on the trigger of his crossbow. The quarrel was newly filled with silver bolts. The warrior leaned back in the chair and put his blood soaked boots up on the table. He looked more relaxed than he ever was.

Sentinel Sebastian peered, with his one good eye, out the hole in the front door of the tavern. The night was dark, but he saw more than most. The patch that covered his empty orb was furry and black.

Mistress Muntz grinned as she slipped the dagger back in its sheath, knowing that more than one man would pay for the indignities that littered her life up to this point.

Count Vaskania swept down the stairs looking for his next victims. By his side was his bride, Dahlia Dante. The trio stood as one and bared their teeth in the direction of the vampire pair.

The Count hissed at these fools who had tracked him for so long. They had followed him from the land of the Druids, across the Goths and through a graveyard of Roman Legionnaires.

F’udd, the scullery boy spoke, “Save us. He will destroy all of us. He is evil personified. And she is worse than he is, she is unspeakable.”

Dante’s laugh rang through the tavern, and echoed around the inn. The sound would chill the spine of a dead polar bear.

The little man bounced up and down and pointed at the pair of undead lovers.

“Stab them, put something through their hearts,” F’udd shouted.

The trio of evil fighters moved between the vampires and the offal boy.

Sebastian’s hand reached out and took the dwarfish troll by the throat and held him aloft.

The little warped creature sputtered and gasped for his breath.

“No, he is the threat,” the dirty gnome bleated at them, “You have to kill him! He is an undead monster!”

The bolt of the crossbow was then held to the throat of the pile of dirty cloth that called itself a man.

“F’udd?” Muntz said as she leveled the dagger at the thing, “That’s the best you could come up with?”

The gnarled yelping thing looked up and saw all five of the others in the tavern circled around him. Their intent was nothing if not threatening.

In a blink the Boar’s Head Inn vanished into the mists of time.

Suddenly the four of them stood in the scorched lobby of the hospital.

They were surrounded by the charred remains of the fighters who would have joined them in their last stand battle again the evil one.

They were all burned, and in pain. But they were back in the real world.

At least they were in a realer world than the one they had just escaped.

“He would have kept us there, fighting with each other, forever,” Harriett said.

“Now we have to battle in this world,” Claus said just as he swayed, unsteady on his legs.

The Sisters swarmed around them and began to minister to their wounds.

If only hope had been as pervasive as the smell of burnt flesh, for that was everywhere.

© 2005 by C. Wayne Owens