Rise of Allies (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 4) (49 page)

“Oh, my poor Boneless, what have these horrible children done to you? You’re all dried out! Hold on, I’ll have you out of there in a trice!”

They ran after the hag as she reached for the door of the cage to free the Boneless.

“Get away from there!” Archie warned. “Don’t touch my invent—”

“Aaaiiee!”

Jenny Greenteeth screeched, flung backward by a large electrical shock upon touching the Faraday cage.

Unfortunately, it did not kill her, but only made her furious as it threw her to the ground. Though she looked like a crone, she jumped up like a gymnast, and in her wrath over the capture of her pet, she curled her claw-like fingers, and a bright green ball of energy appeared in her hand.

She hurled it at the cage. The whole contraption toppled over, handcart and all. But when the cage struck the ground, the dried-out Boneless shattered into a hundred pieces, destroyed.

Jenny Greenteeth recoiled at what she had done.

Archie clapped his hands to his head. “You’ve killed it! Oh, what did you do that for? We weren’t going to hurt it. We were just going to study it!”

Jenny Greenteeth was aghast. “L-look what you made me do, you horrible monsters! This is all
your
fault!” Her frightening stare homed in on Nixie. “Wasn’t it enough that you killed the MacGools? Now you’re responsible for killing Boneless, too!”

“I didn’t kill those people and you know it!” Nixie cried.

“Indirectly you did, you little murderess. You banished us from the castle and stopped us from protecting them, and they died! It’s your fault, horrid girl!” Jenny Greenteeth flew at Nixie from across the grass.

“Oh, no, you don’t!” Dani bellowed, hurling the first poison globe at her.

Jolted out of her frozen state of terror, Nixie threw hers, too.

Both vials hit the hag and broke open, splashing the deadly potion all over her.

The hag let out a howl.

“It’s working!” Archie cried.

Nixie faltered, amazed to see this was so.

“Hit her again!” Dani shouted. “Come on, everybody!”

They reacted swiftly, everyone grabbing vials of potion out of Nixie’s black bag. Jake and Maddox, Archie and Isabelle all pelted Jenny Greenteeth without mercy.

She tried to block them from hitting her, but as the potion started to work, smoke began rising off her everywhere. The hag threw back her head, convulsing, and roared at the night sky.

But when Jake reached to get another globe, Nixie’s black bag was empty. The fanged, old bogart witch had been hit with their full arsenal, and not a one had missed. Jenny Greenteeth seemed to be getting smaller, melting down into herself.

“I’ll get you for this, Nixie!” she hissed. “You’re never getting rid of me!”

“That’s quite enough of your threats!” Archie stepped forward, taking up his lady’s cause. “Now look here, madam. The fact of the matter is, you don’t even exist. So go away and don’t come back!”

“How dare you!”

“You will leave Miss Valentine alone, do you understand? Try coming back again, and you’re going to get even worse!”

Jake and Maddox glanced at each other in surprise as the boy genius gave Jenny Greenteeth what-for.

“You’re nothing but a glorified nursery bogey, and for your information, we all left the nursery long ago. We are not afraid of you. Not one bit!”

“Ah, but
she
is, my fine young gent.” Hunching down in pain, Jenny Greenteeth sent Nixie a knowing evil eye.

“No, I’m not!” Nixie shouted, but she wasn’t very convincing.

Jenny Greenteeth cackled even as she melted smaller. “I’ll be back.”

“Oh, shove off, you nasty old thing!” Archie snapped, taking a step toward her, quite fed up.

“Only if you come with me, dearie!” With that, Jenny Greenteeth grabbed the boy genius and whooshed up the road a few yards, dragging Archie with her. She plunged over the side of the bridge and disappeared underwater.

“Archie!”
Jake shouted as they all raced back down to the river’s edge.

“Get back, it’s a trap!” Maddox roared at the girls, tearing off his coat. “Back away, Jake. I’ll get him.”

“I’m not going anywhere. He’s my best friend!” Ignoring the warning, Jake rushed into the dark river, searching frantically for his cousin, Maddox just a few steps behind him.

“Archie! Archie!”

Both boys waded out until they were waist-deep in the river, feeling around below the opaque current for any sign of their friend. At the edge of the water, the girls were half-hysterical, calling his name.

Nixie’s patience snapped, though only a minute or so had passed. She headed for the water. “I’m going in. This is my fault—”

“No, Nixie!” Despite her own panic, Isabelle somehow managed to hold her back. “It’s you she wants!”

Dani suddenly had an idea. “I’ll go get the naiads!”

She bolted off toward the water nymphs upstream for help. A few minutes later, hearing the girl’s panicked screams, a few of them came swimming at top speed to find out what on earth was wrong. When Dani told them, they sped off under the bridge and joined the hunt for Archie and the hag.

The swift, fierce naiads found them, too, and attacked Jenny Greenteeth. Baring their claws and taking swipes at the hag underwater, they were able to distract her long enough for Archie to lunge up once out of the water, glasses gone.

Jake rushed toward him, splashing wildly with every stride, but his cousin only had time to gasp for air before Jenny Greenteeth pulled him under again.

She, too, surfaced, but only long enough to hurl her green energy spheres at the naiads zooming around her. They were hit one by one. Struck by the same explosive blasts of magic that had thrown Jake and Nixie into the foxhunt painting, the naiads were knocked unconscious. Two floated away, carried off by the current, while one was actually tossed up onto the banks and hit her head against a rock.

Jenny Greenteeth submerged again with a cruel cackle.

Then the water went calm.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Nixie’s Nightmare

N
ixie felt her whole world crashing in. Her worst fears were coming true before her eyes, and in that terrible silence, terror overtook her, freezing her where she stood. This was eons worse than the hag drowning her cat. She couldn’t believe she had caused this, had brought about the death of the first boy who had ever noticed her.

Possibly the kindest human being she had ever met.

She felt like she couldn’t breathe.

“I can’t find him,” Jake said, turning to them in despair. He suddenly punched the water and screamed at the river,
“Give him back!”

Isabelle was sobbing.

“Help me,” a soft voice rasped nearby. “Can’t…breathe.” The injured naiad had woken up and was unable to reach the water by herself. Her head was bleeding, and the gills along her ribcage strained to breathe. Dani ran over and helped to roll her back into the river, while Maddox, hating inaction, refused to give up. He took a deep breath and dove in to search underwater.

Alas, even the sharp eyesight of a Guardian was of little use in a murky river, with nothing but moonlight to illuminate the watery world below.

Nobody else knew what to do.

“We have to help Maddox,” Isabelle said in a shaky voice. “We’ve got to find my brother.” She stepped into the water, but Nixie grasped her arm.

“Wait.” Staring at the current, she remembered something Archie had said in the lab.

“
If belief is what originally brought Jenny Greenteeth into existence, then maybe disbelief is the key to unmaking her.
”

“I don’t believe in you,” Nixie uttered, her voice barely audible. “I don’t believe in you,” she said again, a little more loudly.

Isabelle turned almost angrily to her. “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Do you hear me, Jenny Greenteeth? You’re not real!” Nixie shouted at the water all of a sudden, fists clenched by her sides. “Say it with me—please!” she implored the others.

“That we don’t believe in her? How absurd! We all just saw her. How much more real can she be?” Jake flung out, tears in his eyes. “She just killed Archie!”

“No.” Nixie barely had the strength to tell them her idea. “Archie said that since she’s a nursery bogey—created by belief—then maybe disbelief could
unmake
her. He said it would work.”

Isabelle flinched. “If my brother said it would work, it’ll work. I don’t believe in you!” she shouted wildly at the river.

Dani joined in, running back from helping the naiad. “I don’t believe in you, Jenny Greenteeth!”

The grim look on Jake’s face said that he thought it a pointless exercise, but he was desperate enough to try anything, so he joined in, too.

When Maddox came up from another fruitless underwater search, his clothes sopping wet, his hair plastered to his forehead, he heard their chant, and though a bit confused, he echoed their refrain.

“We don’t believe in you!” all the children shouted.

The river began to churn.

It seemed their chant had certainly got Jenny Greenteeth’s attention, and this time, when she rose from the river, her wrinkled face was filled with utter malevolence.

“I don’t believe in you!” Nixie yelled at her.

“What have you done with my cousin?” Jake shouted.

“Jake, the chant!” Dani told him.

“Fine. I don’t believe in you!” he continued, saying it with the others, but everybody knew this was between Nixie and the hag.

“You are done tormenting me. You are not real,” Nixie vowed.

“Then why are you so terrified?”

“I’m not. You’re nothing,” said Nixie. “You don’t even exist. I don’t believe in you!”

“Stop saying that!” the hag screeched.

“I don’t believe in you. Children made you, and we can unmake you, too. You’re not real.
Go back into the nothing that you came from!
”
Nixie shouted with all the witching power she possessed.

Jenny Greenteeth howled, her head thrown back, the moonlight gleaming on her algae-covered fangs. She had already been sorely assaulted by the potion, but this—five strong-willed youngsters denying her existence—was more than she could take.

The murderous hag began convulsing. Smoke rose in plumes from her body. Her bony hands curled with rage, her face contorted with pain.

“Nooooo!”
she screamed. Then she suddenly exploded, a circular wave of green-tinged magic barreling out in all directions from the point of her destruction. The power of it blowing past them shook the kids off-balance. They had to catch themselves, and then Jenny Greenteeth was no more.

They stared at the river.

“We did it,” Dani breathed.

But any joy Nixie might have felt at this victory was destroyed, for as soon as the hag had vanished, Archie’s body floated up, facedown in the river.

He wasn’t moving.

Panicked beyond words, Jake and Isabelle both sprinted into the water to retrieve him as the current started gently carrying him away.

“No, no, no,” Dani was uttering, while Nixie just stood frozen, too horrified to move.

Maddox helped them carry Archie up onto the grass, where they turned him on his back. His eyes were closed; his face looked tinged faintly blue in the starlight.

“Archie!” Isabelle screamed, trying to wake him. “Please, he’s not breathing.”

Jake started screaming for his Gryphon.

“Move back, there’s no time!” Maddox pushed everybody out of the way and leaned with both hands on Archie’s chest.

He started trying to pump the water out of his lungs, but Nixie saw Jake staring at the far bank of the river, his face ashen. He was so still, standing riveted, that she had the awful feeling he was seeing Archie’s ghost.

“It’s not working!” Isabelle sobbed, watching Maddox try to revive him.

“Is he really…
dead?
” Dani whispered in a strangled tone, clinging to Isabelle.

“No.”
Nixie had been standing a few feet away, feeling utterly powerless. But something about that word, with the weight of its terrible finality, galvanized her into motion.

With jerky steps, heart pounding, she gripped her wand and marched over to Archie’s side, dropping to her knees.

Holding the wand in both hands, she closed her eyes, searching deep within herself for her power, the deepest source of her magic. At last, amid her panic, she laid hold of it and calmed down enough to start to work.

She thrust the wand straight up at the dark sky, opened her eyes, rose to her feet, and began murmuring to the elements.

A strong wind suddenly blew; clouds gathered; thunder rumbled.

“What are you doing?” Isabelle asked amid her tears.

Nixie did not break her concentration to answer. Her will, so fierce and focused, dropped down into that place where the rest of the world ceased to exist. There was only her and the inscrutable magic that had somehow poured out of the very core of her from the moment she was born and made her who she was.

The wind blew stronger, the air shifting at her command; a great thundercloud gathered overhead. Magic thrummed through her veins.

At the edge of her awareness, Nixie saw the others back away when the first thin, bright, beautiful lightning bolt barreled down to kiss the tip of her wand like a greeting from a friend. It was ready to oblige her.

The electricity in the air made everybody’s hair stand on end. The gale swayed the trees and made the river froth, and there she was, in the center of the storm.

“Archie,” she whispered. Lowering herself slowly to her knees again, she lay her left hand on his chest, where his gallant heart had stopped. Her right still clutching her wand, she ignored the fact that she had never attempted anything of this magnitude before. “Listen to me. You are my friend. Please don’t leave. We need you here, so much. You’re not done yet. Think of all the inventions you still have to make.” Her words broke off, but tears streaming down her face, she had so much more to tell him silently.

I know this world hurts. Especially for people like you and me, who really don’t fit in. It’s dark and it’s full of mean people who don’t understand us, and it must be so tempting to leave and go into the light, but I’m begging you to stay. Jake needs you. I need you. And if anyone can make this awful world a little better, it’s you.

“Come back, Archie.
Now!
” She pointed her wand at him and uttered the command, and the dainty lightning bolt she’d captured flew into his chest.

It jolted him from head to toe. Jake spun around, as though seeing the ghost fly back into the body, and then he cursed in amazement as Archie suddenly coughed.

Isabelle let out a strangled sound and Dani made the sign of the cross, while Maddox quickly helped him to sit up. Water poured out of his mouth. Coughs racked his shoulders, and his eyes flew open as he took a huge gulp of air.

“You’re alive,” Jake whispered. Without warning, he lunged at his best mate and caught him up in a bear hug, his eyes squeezed shut. Isabelle put her arms around them both, weeping with astonished joy. Dani, also crying, flung herself into the group hug, while Maddox stared hard at Nixie.

You just brought that kid back from the dead.

He didn’t have to say it aloud. Though Nixie was totally drained, the shock of what she had just accomplished with her magic at the tender age of twelve had also shaken her to the core.

She dropped the wand as though she had been clutching a viper.