Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (ebook audio reader .txt) 📖

inside.

Waving to it, Key looked up at the witch’s face. “Is that for a fire spell?”

Chuckling, the witch shook his head. “No. It is a poultice. One of our guys got bit by something poisonous back in the graveyard. I’m going to treat it.”

He continued on, walking to where Key saw a man laying down in the snow, clenching his arm and panting. His skin was turning jaundiced and his eyes were starting to go red.

Key stood up. “Was it a demon that bit him?”

“We never touched him,” Yadis snapped. He was sitting on a rock sharpening his chinked sword with a whetstone.”

“I didn’t say you did!” Key shot back. He stomped over to the man who had been bit. “But that…that bite does not look good.”

The other men around him nodded. The witch muttered words as he placed the poultice against the wound. Almost immediately the yellow in the man’s skin sucked towards the poultice, but the man’s eyes remained red. His jaw that hung open. As he panted, it seemed like his canines were elongating into fangs.

Key took a step back.

“What kind of demons live in graveyards?” Key asked, backing away farther.

The witch tilted his head and recited, “Oh…parasitic demons mostly. If a corpse is not burned, the eggs can hibernate until it senses a host approaching. Then they hatch to take on a new host.”

“Do you know any parasites with fangs?” Key asked. He had backed up right into Lesar who turned to look down at him.

“What’s wrong, kid?” Lesar lowered the sword he had been sharpening.

The witch blinked as he shook his head. “No. But, uh…oh, crap!”

He suddenly jumped away from the bitten man. He was now panting hard, his eyes glowing red.

The others lurched away from the man.

“I got to him too late!” the witch cried out. “He just thought it had been some bug!”

“What did bite him?” Donal stared.

“A Walking Corpse,” the witch murmured. A feverish sweat broke out on his face.

“A walking what?” Lesar gaped at the man, retreating further.

Kleston rushed to the pack some of the men had brought from camp and took out a rope. He quickly tied it to make a noose.

Key retreated behind the Cordrils, towards the city.

“A demon that’s a walking disease.” The witch backed off, running to dump out the rest of the pack. He shook out the sack. “If it bites you, its poison turns you into one of them. Then they eat you. Had I known—”

“What do you mean had you known?” One of the men shouted at him. “You’re the witch!”

Cringing, the witch rubbed his skin where a rash had developed. He lifted up the empty sack. “I don’t know everything. Walking corpses are very rare. Why did you guys choose to wait in a graveyard?”

“People avoid them?” One of the men murmured with a shrug.

With his noose, Kleston ran back to the infected man and tossed the noose over the man’s head. The man turned just then, opening his mouth to bite, and jumped on Kleston. He sank his teeth in Kleston’s arm as if to take a chunk out.

The witch jumped on the infected man, pulling the bag over the man’s head. He yanked the man off of Kleston. Fiercely, he then tied the strings to the bag closed.

Kleston backed away, clenching his arm.

“The poultice!” The witch pointed to the brew he barely used on the infected man.

Nodding, Kleston shoved his hand into the pot, grabbing as much of the muck as he could. He immediately smeared the foul smelling mix onto his bite. Almost right away it swelled. Bloody ooze with a stench of rot foamed out of his arm. Kleston smeared the poultice on several times until the lesion quit oozing.

Their once companion, now demon, howled, fighting the bag over his head, but they tied him up. Luckily the bag muffled most of their infected campmate’s cries. Listening to the now-demon, Key cautiously walked over to Kleston, peering into his eyes.

Kleston lifted his eyes to his then smiled. “I’m ok. It’s healing.”

“You’re not going to become one of them, are you?” Key asked, his voice breaking.

Shaking his head, Kleston smeared on more of the poultice, just in case. “No. An early treatment gets rid of the disease. I’ll be fine.”

But the transformed man was not. The sunlight burned his skin, as if cooking it. He howled.

“What is with you guys?” The team working with the magician jogged up. “We can hear that howling all the way to the city.”

“You can?” The Cordrils glanced at one another.

“Yeah. But luckily it sounds like a Walking Cor—” The man immediately choked, peering at their writhing captive. He took a step back. “Someone got bit by a Walking Corpse?”

Kleston gestured to their infected friend, nodding. “Last night in the graveyard.”

The man retreated further. “But don’t you know what that means? The one that bit him is nearby. I bet he’s waiting for the dark to attack.”

“Why would he wait?” Lesar approached this man. He seemed to know the most about those demons.

“Because the sun burns them. And that man is now its food.” The man pointed right at their infected friend.

“I think we’d better head back to camp,” one of the other men said. “Give this operation up for lost.”

The Cordrils nodded. Donal turned to get his travel pack.

“No,” Kleston said. “The other Walking Corpse will follow us back to camp if we go. We have to kill it here.”

“How?” Yadis stood up.

Lifting something gold and thin from under his shirt, Kleston held up the end with a bell. “I always have a demon chain on me for emergencies. I can noose it, and it will fall to the ground. We need a bag to stick on its head so it won’t bite anyone.”

“I’ll make more poultice,” the witch offered, pickup the nearly empty brewing pail.

Kleston nodded to him.

“What should I do?” Key asked, rushing after him.

“Keep your eyes open,” Kleston said to him. “And don’t let it get near you.”

“How do you kill it, though?” Yadis asked again. “You said this thing is a corpse. That means it is already dead, right?”

Nodding, the witch said, “You have to cut off its head, then burn the body. It doesn’t feel pain, so it will keep going after you. Demon wards and traps don’t work on them either. They can walk right through them for the same reason.”

Yadis looked shaken up. He glanced to the other Cordrils. For some reason, they looked more nervous than the human men. Key walked closer to Kleston to see if he had something else on him to defend them from demons. Kleston was already rolling the chain in his fingers.

“Why didn’t you use that chain on your friend?” Donal asked, nodding to it.

Lifting the chain up, Kleston said, “This thing chokes a struggling demon to death and pulls him to the ground. I didn’t want to see my friend die like that.”

“Are you going to kill him?” Donal asked.

Blinking, Kleston nodded. “We have to put him out of his misery. But we need him alive to lure the Walking Corpse to us. Otherwise we can never go home.”

The men absorbed that fact in silence.

“I see.” Donal turned and walked back to his group.

 

They waited as the sun lowered in the sky. When the magician ran, breathless back into their camp, grinning from ear to ear he met the morose faces of the men waiting for the demon to come. He stared in incomprehension then turned to Key. “What’s going on?”

“A Walking Corpse has followed us here from the graveyard at Herra,” Key said, clenching the sword someone had handed him. “We’re waiting for it to arrive.”

“Did it bite someone?”

Key gestured to their staked down and tied comrade whose flesh was now flaking in the sun from s heightened state of decay.

Covering his mouth, the magician walked over to the witch. He peered into the pot full of brewing poultice. “At least you look prepared. Maybe I’d just better go back into the city.”

Kleston shook his head. “No, Vang. We need you here.”

“Alright.” The magician sat down.

But the moment he sat down, Gregor jumped up.

Gregor thrust out his sword, stabbing the thing that had leaped out at him from the shadows. The rotting demon’s eyes were barely in its sockets. It was mostly skeleton by then with very few muscles to move its almost completely decayed body. Gregor had grabbed its face, easily pushing it away from him. The demon clattered to the ground, its brittle bones breaking. However, Gregor continued to howl.

His hands quickly turned yellow. It rippled over his skin like a sick wave, then went up his face. His hair rapidly went from sandy color to a dead white. His eyes flamed out from a glowing cool blue to a hot searing red. He whipped around, staring at the others. Hunger filled his eyes as his teeth elongated into fangs.

“That was way too fast!” The witch jumped up, retreating behind Kleston.

“Gregor!” shouted Yadis, reaching for him.

“No! Don’t!” Lesar pulled him back. “The same will happen to you! We can’t touch him!”

The three Cordrils tore back in terror. Their comrade, with all his strength, charged towards them for an instant meal.

The other Walking Corpse struggled with its broken bones and rotted ligaments to stand. Its eyes hungrily fixed on the Gregor.

The humans leapt out of the way, except for Kleston who lifted his demon chain, tossing it at the Cordril-gone-Walking-Corpse. But Gregor had always been fast. He dodged the noose, and the chain fell into the earth.

Everyone scattered. Gregor-the-Walking-Corpse charged after Kleston who ran in terror from him. Kleston leapt over their fallen comrade to get away. But Gregor did not go for the already fallen human who should have been his first target for a meal. Instead, he continued after Kleston.

Key watched as his terror cover him. But then he saw the chain.

Darting from his hiding place, Key dived for the demon chain. He grabbed it off the ground then rolled back onto his feet. As the men screamed, shooting their arrows at the new demon, trying everything to fell the former Cordril as it snapped at Kleston with his teeth, Key clawed his way up the hill then jumped onto Gregor’s back. He looped the chain around the demon’s neck.

Both fell.

Key toppled over to the right as Gregor let out an unearthly howl. Gregor was now incapable of sentient thought, struggling against the noose as it tightened more and more with each move.

“Gregor!” shouted Donal, though he was unwilling to get near his choking comrade.

“I got a better idea,” the magician shouted.

He jumped in front of the demon and snatched the bell end that had anchored it to the ground. Then he ran, leading Gregor towards the city. And though the demon fought the chain, he did not pull back. It ran after its next victim—the magician—as if choosing a different meal.

The other men went after them, though the witch remained behind. Shaking his head, the magician set the bony Walking Corpse on fire.

Kleston panted on the ground. Key ran over to him, looking for another bite wound.

“I’m fine,” Kleston said. “But you touched it. You got to clean off that rash.”

Key looked down at his arms and face. Red and white splotches covered his skin as if it something was trying to make him into a demon.

“It won’t kill you, but it will hurt,” Kleston said.

They sat down in the snow. The infected man still moaned nearby on the ground.

Rubbing their skin with the poultice until the rash was gone, watching the scene ahead of them. The witch eventually picked up the pot full of the rest of the poultice to follow the others in case he had to treat any other casualties.

Kleston glanced at their fallen friend then rose up, nodding to him for Key. “We have to put him out of his misery.”

Key closed his eyes, groaning inside. “Is there really no cure?”

Shaking his head, Kleston lifted up his sword. “No.”

The man took