She heard Lt. Meyers call out her name. “Harley, I can’t find the door. I saw the gargoyle strike you. Are you alright?”
Her arm was still bleeding. Harley was sure that a few of her ribs were bruised, possibly cracked. She wasn’t okay.
“I’m fine Roger. Don’t worry about me.”
“No man or woman left behind. Lake, you know that.”
She was in trouble. Lt. Meyers never used her last name unless he was upset, or she was in deep shit with him.
“I will be safe inside the circle. Please get the injured to the hospital. I can always call you to come back if I need help.”
“That wound looked pretty deep.”
“It’s not that deep. It will be fine. I probably won’t even need stitches. She hated lying to him, yet she saw no other choice. She would be able to get out of the circle by simply dispelling it.
She wanted them to leave first. Harley had no idea if the black soot like ashes that covered everything would affect anyone outside of the circle.
She didn’t know that gargoyles exploded after death. In fact, in all her studies she had never ran across a case of exploding gargoyle.
Harley reached out with her senses. The ash contained dark magical energy. Why it wasn’t affecting her she didn’t know, yet without a doubt, she knew it was some sort of trap and would harm normal humans.
She tried to keep the fear out of her voice. “Roger, get everyone as far away from here as you can. Call for magic backup. We need a whole team. Something in this ash is toxic to nonmagical beings.”
“Harley, are you alright?” His voice had dropped low so only she could hear him. It was thick with worry.
“I will be okay. I promise. Please just get everyone out of here. Get the containment team here.”
“Let me call it in. At least I can give you a time before I leave.”
Lt. Meyers came back a few minutes later. “The team is on its way. It might be an hour before they get here. Are you going to be alright, until then?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You know I don’t like leaving you behind.”
She shook her head. “I know you wouldn’t leave any of us behind. I’ll be okay. Please just get everyone else to safety.”
She drew a few deep breaths to calm her nerves. She really wasn’t sure if she would be okay or not. No sense in putting other lives in danger. None of them could do anything for her.
As the hum of last vehicle’s engine became a distant memory the ash began to settle. It swirled around her as if a wind were blowing it then slowly began to fall away from the protective dome, allowing her to see again.
As she sat there catching her breath several figures emerged from the dense woods.
A sinking feeling overtook her as she realized this was not the cavalry coming back to save her. It was the vampire welcoming party.
CHAPTER FOUR
Six figures passed through the “door” of her protective circle. They didn’t even have to pause to find where it was. She wondered if they had been watching her from the woods, while she fought the gargoyle.
Three of the figures were vampires. One female and two males. Two of them were ghoul thugs, and the last was a jester.
Out of all the paranormal beings that currently approached her, she was least happy about the jester. She hadn’t had to deal with them very much, as such they were still an unknown entity to her.
He was tall, his skin fair. His neon green hair was kept short and spiky. His frame was lean, almost too thin. He was wearing baggy jeans, black leather boots, a t-shirt with an ICP (Insane Clown Posse) logo on it and a ripped, worn looking jean jacket.
His energy seemed to be stronger than the others. It was chaotic, to say the least. The trouble with jesters is you never knew what you were going to be dealing with.
They could be mildly deranged or completely unhinged at any given moment. She sent up a silent prayer to the goddess that she would survive the evening.
The female vampire stepped forward. “You’ve trespassed on our master’s property. Come with us.”
The two ghouls stepped forward and leaned down to get her on her feet.
“Don’t touch me. I can get up on my own.”
The female vampire sneered. Her full crimson lips turning into a snarl. “They weren’t helping you. They were restraining you. You are not a guest, you are a prisoner until the master says otherwise.
She would be giving the “master” a piece of her mind. The ghouls grabbed her and roughly hauled her off the ground.
She bit the inside of her lip to keep from crying out. As one of the ghouls grabbed her injured arm. Blood still seeping out of the wound.
“Hey let me put my boots on.”
They ignored her. Her struggles only further injuring her arm and making her ribs feel like someone was taking a sledgehammer to them.
She was walking barefoot through the woods. Over sticks, rocks, and other normal debris. Harley’s feet were taking a beating as they walked.
They walked for twenty minutes before Harley saw the first out building. It looked like a small smokehouse. The buildings though well maintained looked as if they had been built in the 1800’s. Harley wasn’t an expert on architecture, so it could be a replica of the age. It was as if they were stepping back in time.
The house they approached was a large manor home. Enormous in fact. The house was made of stone with steeply sloping roofs,
