Iridescence

Chapter Forty-Nine (Vanessa)

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

VANESSA

Things were starting to get bad. At first, the room we'd entered had been empty, but all of a sudden, impossible creatures started to appear. I'd never seen anything like them before.

They had the bodies of bears, the heads of horses, and sharp talons for hands. They also had the fangs and tongues of snakes.

Jenna screamed in pain as one of the creatures clawed her arm. "Na!" Lucky shouted as he raced to her side. The creature licked Jenna's wound before Lucky flung it into a labyrinth with all of his strength. He examined Jenna's injury in horror as blood poured out and her arm started to turn black.

"Move," Krissy said. She started forcing Water into the wound to cleanse it. Poseidon and Tethys took over as more creatures tried to attack. Krissy blasted several away from me and Billy with a tsunami wave.

"What are these things?" Jack demanded. "They're, like, out of a nightmare or something!"

My eyes widened in realization. "Jack, you're brilliant!" I exclaimed.

"I am?" He asked in confusion.

"They're dream demons," I explained. "They usually don't exist in the waking world."

"How do we fight them?" Krissy asked. "I'm trying not to drown us with all of this water I'm flinging around."

"I can trap them in labyrinths," Lucky volunteered, "but more might show up."

"My athame will work on them," I said, "but there are way too many for me to take on alone."

Billy summoned an army of shadow creatures. "You're not alone," he said shyly as the shadows awaited his command. I smiled at him, finding his willingness to run into battle beside me without question incredibly endearing.

"I know," I replied. "Let's see what we can do."

Billy and I started to fight against the creatures. Lucky opened labyrinth after labyrinth, trapping as many inside as he could at a time. Apollo was busy healing Jenna's arm as Poseidon and Tethys continued to cleanse her infected wound.

Hermes was running in circles to herd the dream demons into the center of the room. Jack kept teleporting out of the way of attacks, occasionally moving others to safety as needed. Prometheus tried to set the demons on fire, but they didn't seem to burn. The flames irritated but didn't hurt them.

Ares and Nike were stabbing at the creatures furiously. It didn't kill them, but it slowed them down.  Nemesis started ripping their tongues from their mouths, causing the creatures to scream in pain. I stared at this in shock and horror for a moment.

"Vanessa, are you alright?" Billy asked as his shadows kept one of the demons from attacking me.

"Yeah," I replied. "I just didn't expect Nemesis to start ripping out tongues."

"One of those tongues poisoned your ally," Nemesis pointed out. "This is a fitting form of revenge."

I could hardly argue with that, although her vicious assault seemed a bit cruel to me. I focused on using my athame to banish the creatures I could reach back to the dream realm.

"We can't keep this up much longer," Lucky said. "There are too many of them."

"We need help," I agreed as Jenna, now fully healed, flung her javelin into one of the demons. It hissed at her and lunged toward her. Jenna pulled her javelin out and Jack teleported her to safety before the demon could injure her again.