Running with the Demon - Terry Brooks [185]
One arm suddenly free, the Knight thrust the black staff deep into the monster’s maw and sent the magic forth. Fire lanced into the monster’s throat, burning and consuming, and the maentwrog reared backward in pain, trying to break free. But the Knight clung to it stubbornly as the maentwrog beat at him with its arms and tore at him with its claws, shrieking. The Knight felt as if everything was breaking apart inside his body, but the staff remained buried in the beast’s throat, the fire exploding out of it.
The maentwrog stumbled and fell, then lay writhing on the earth, frantically trying to rise, to rid itself of the fire within. The Knight yanked the staff from its throat and drove it into one baleful eye, feeling the maentwrog’s head shudder beneath the blow. He struck a second time, then a third, as fire flared in brilliant spurts and smoke billowed into the night.
When he could no longer lift his staff to strike, he tried to disengage himself from the shapeless mass at his feet, but his legs refused to respond.
Don’t leave Nest alone! he screamed in silent desperation, and then his strength gave out completely and he collapsed.
In the smoky aftermath, the clearing went still.
Raindrops fell on Nest Freemark’s face, soft, cool splashes against her heated skin. They fell out of the blackness in a ragged scattering, and then began to quicken. Nest brushed at them absently as she lay sprawled on the earth at the edge of the clearing, her eyes locked on the mix of smoke and gloom that roiled before her. She could,not see what was happening. In the last desperate moments of the struggle between John Ross and the monster, everything had disappeared. Fire belched and inhuman shrieks rent the air, and then suddenly there was only silence.
“John,” she said softly, his name a whisper that only she was meant to hear.
A sudden breeze rose off the waters of the Rock River, gusted through the deep woods, and began to sweep away the haze. As the night air cleared, she could see both combatants, sprawled on the ground, motionless. She climbed slowly to her feet. Steam was rising off the maentwrog, and as she watched, it began to disintegrate, collapsing on itself as if a shell in which air had been trapped and released. The massive body broke apart and fell earthward in a cloud of dust and ash, and in seconds only an outline remained, a dark shadow against the torn and bloodied earth.
John Ross remained where he was, motionless and crumpled. The black staff no longer gleamed. Nest moved to where he lay and stared down at him in horror.
A sudden, violent explosion shattered the silence, and the force of the explosion was so powerful that the shock wave rocked her as it passed. The explosion had come from some distance off. She turned to look for its source, and she saw fireworks exploding everywhere. But they were not going off in any pattern, and the flashes of color that identified their location were not only overhead, but at ground level as well.
“It’s only you and me now,” he said quietly, a serene look on his face, his hands folded comfortably before him. “I suspected that Mr. Ross might try to intervene in this, so I arranged a minor distraction. It looks to me as if it did the job. Care to check for yourself?”
She straightened, forcing herself to stand fast, closing away her emotions so that he would not see them. “What do you want from me?” she asked, keeping her tone of voice flat and expressionless.
“I want you, child. My daughter. I want you with me, where you belong.”
She choked back the urge to scream in rage. “I told you not to call me that. I am not your daughter. I am nothing like you. I have no intention of going with you anywhere. Not now, not ever. If you make me go, I will run away from you the first chance I get.”
He shook his head admonishingly.