Rise of Allies (The Gryphon Chronicles, Book 4) (30 page)

Two of them, Jake had seen before. High up on the wall where she hung, the Boneless amoeba creature was floating in front of her, taunting her with its cold (according to Archie) and slimy touch.

But that wasn’t all. On the ground of the gallery, waiting for her to fall down, stood the terrifying spirit he had met the other night in the woods. The Headless Highlander, glowing grayish-blue. He swung his claymore menacingly, like a warrior warming up before a battle. He didn’t need a face to make his feelings clear: He couldn’t wait to chop Nixie up into little bits.

Jake saw that Boneless and Headless were only the henchmen of the third figure there, running the show: a slim, spectral hag with long stringy gray hair, great fangs like a tiger, and a green ghostly glow all around her.

She was the one doing the cackling, and she was holding Nixie on the wall by a green current of energy like a lightning bolt.

Jake stared with a chill down his spine. He had never seen a ghost work magic before.

No, this was something else.
What on earth are they,
he wondered,
and why are they doing this to Nixie?

There was no time to ponder his questions. He had to help her—for Archie’s sake, if nothing else. Lord knew the skinny little witch had been nothing but rude to
him
.

It didn’t matter.

Any boy as bent on being a hero as he could not do otherwise than Jake did at that moment, even though he really had no idea what he was getting into.

Ready to join the fray, he stepped into view around the corner and bellowed at the spirits:
“Put her down!”

#  #  #

Nixie looked over, aghast.
No, no, don’t interfere! Meddlesome boy!

“Stop!” she tried to warn him, thinking of her curse, but the young Earl of Griffon paid no mind.

With a wild swing of his hand, he sent the nearest bench flying through the air to smite the Headless Highlander.

But the kilted apparition promptly vanished, leaving the bench to crash into the wall, knocking down a painting. Meanwhile, Boneless began floating in Jake’s direction, swelling in size like a malicious fog trying to engulf him.

Nixie grimaced with impatience as Archie’s bullheaded cousin quickly learned that his telekinesis was of no use against a creature made of cold, slimy mist.

Even when Jake caused a bolt of energy to rend Boneless in two, both halves kept coming. Not that there was much the blob could do to anybody, other than render them disgusted.

The
really
dangerous one, of course, was Jenny Greenteeth. She hissed as she turned toward the intruder, baring her green, algae-dripping fangs.

“Crikey,” the young would-be hero muttered, dashing and weaving past Boneless.

“And who is this fine young knight come to rescue the damsel in distress?” the hag wheedled.

Jake ignored the question. “Let her go!” He brought up both hands and sent a double shot of telekinetic energy at the hag.

Nixie held her breath.

Even though Jenny Greenteeth was not a fully material being, the energetic blow was enough to make her molecules ripple, unsettled.

Nixie was impressed. Except that the moment the hag’s concentration was broken,
she
went plummeting to the floor.

A sharp cry escaped her. Her teeth knocked together and a jarring pain shot up her leg the moment she landed. “Ow!”

“Nixie!” Jake ran over, crouching down beside her. “Let’s get out of here!”

“I think I sprained my ankle,” she forced out through clenched teeth, while the pain brought smarting tears to her eyes. “Quick, here she comes—my wand!”

Jake twisted around and dove for it, even as a nasty cackle heralded Jenny Greenteeth’s swift return to full strength. “Well, me, what a talented boy! You’ll pay for that.”

“Quickly!” Nixie cried.

Jake snatched her wand from the floor where she had dropped it and handed it to her just in time for Nixie to deflect a nasty, green, crackling bolt of magic that the crone sent his way.

She drove it up into the ceiling, where it left a small, charred hole.

Jake looked up at it with a low curse, finally starting to ask himself, it seemed, what he had rushed into here.

“Foolish boy, thinking you’re strong enough to help this useless little witch. Against me?” the hag taunted. “You’ve thrown your life away for nothing.”

He took an angry step toward the threat. “Leave her alone! Who are you? You have no right to attack her, especially not inside the walls of Merlin Hall! This place is protected—whoa!”

He shut up abruptly and rolled out of the way to escape another drippy, green bolt of magic, pulling Nixie with him to safety.

She landed on her stomach on the floor, whimpering a bit at the throbbing in her ankle.

“Got some fangs on her, don’t she?” Jake muttered under his breath while the green lightning blasted a smoking pockmark in the wall behind the spot where they had just been.

Nixie swallowed hard. “That’s for ripping people’s throats out, either before or after she drowns them.”

He lifted his eyebrows and looked askance at her. “You don’t say! That’s pleasant. Well, get ready to run.”

“I can’t.”

“Lean on me.” Brow furrowed, Jake angrily zapped the hag with his telekinesis again and jumped to his feet, hauling Nixie upright as if she weighed nothing. He slung her arm across the back of his neck and half-dragged, half-carried her a few steps; leaning on his shoulder, she hobbled on her good leg, but kept an eye behind them with her wand at the ready.

Jenny Greenteeth shimmered, fighting the energy blast Jake had used on her, trying to hold her molecules together by dint of will. Likely, he had only made her angry.

“Come on, we’ve got to hurry!” her would-be rescuer urged, taking her toward the corner where he had first appeared.

Nixie wasn’t sure she saw the point. “It’s nice of you to help me, but she’ll only follow us or reappear later. You should go now while you can.”

He ignored the suggestion. “Why is she after you? Hey!”

He didn’t wait to hear her answer as Boneless swept ahead of them and began stretching itself as tall and wide as possible, forming a thin barrier to block their escape until its mistress could rematerialize. “Move aside, you thing! What is this thing?” Jake demanded.

“It’s just called the Boneless. Don’t you have them in England?”

He looked at her impatiently as they kept trying to duck and weave past the creature. “You act like it’s an everyday thing! Blimey! Boneless, Headless?”

“Be glad you haven’t met the skinless one,” she mumbled.

“Tell me you are joking!”

She sent him a dark glance.

“What the devil are they?”

“They’re called Bugganes. The Scottish version of bogarts. Well, the skinless one, Nuckalavee, is technically a bogey-beast. The point is, I can’t get rid of them!”

“So that’s why you’ve been acting so mysterious,” he said. “You’re being hunted.”

“And haunted,” she said under her breath.

“You don’t sound Scottish,” Jake remarked.

“I’m not from there, I was only passing through.” As he pulled her along, Nixie limped as quickly as possible to keep up.

“So what do they want with you?”

She shook her head, unwilling to share her deep, dark secrets with somebody she barely knew. “It’s a long story.”

“Right. Well, you can tell me all about it later. For now, this blob thing isn’t strong enough to stop
me
.” He nodded at the Boneless. “It’s just a stupid cloud with a face. We can run right through it. C’mon!”

He started to pull her onward, but Nixie resisted.

“Bad idea, Jake! You saw what happened to your cousin, didn’t you? The touch of the Boneless is so revolting, we’ll be temporarily immobilized, and then Jenny Greenteeth will get us!”

“Got any better ideas?” he cried.

“Why,
I
do, children!” the hag cut in, reappearing with a vengeance and whooshing up behind them with a wild cackle. “The two of you can
die
!”

Before they could react, the crone hit them with a jagged green explosion that slammed them forward and sent them flying off their feet. They passed right through the slimy mist layer of the Boneless. Ahead, the hard wall waited for their crash, another fine painting slated for destruction—to say nothing of their skulls.

Nixie feared she was about to get a broken neck to match her sprained ankle. She had to do something! In that split-second, time slowed to a crawl. Jake shouted in mid-flight beside her and threw up his arms in front of his head to break his fall; but Nixie—casting about desperately for a spell to soften their landing—aimed her wand at the gallery wall and shouted,
“Culcita actutum!”

Alas, the spell went seriously wonky.

Perhaps it was due to the clash of the hag’s magic sparking off her own, on top of all the deep layers of age-old enchantment that made up Merlin Hall. Whatever the cause, a most unexpected thing happened.

Instead of crashing headlong against the wall, she and the Griffon boy went flying
into
the painting.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Enchanted Gallery

T
hey tumbled onto soft, damp, emerald turf and rolled, still shuddering with disgust at having passed through the Boneless.
Ugh!
Jake felt covered in cold slime.

No expert in magic, he had no idea what had just happened, but it reminded him of falling out of the portal in Romania.

As soon as he caught himself, he immediately shook his head to clear it, fully expecting another magical assault from the green-fanged hag at their backs.

Aware of Nixie on the ground beside him, Jake looked up to meet the next attack, tossing his forelock out of his blazing eyes. To his astonishment, however, he saw the hag’s face pressed against a bizarre sort of window that hung in midair.
What the devil?

With Boneless hovering behind her, she banged furiously on the window with her fist, but her curses at them were muffled by the strange invisible barrier.

Jake calmed down a bit as he realized she could not get in. Nixie had also recovered from their fall, but as she pushed up onto her knees, Jake heard a sound of dismay escape her lips.

“Oh, no…”

He did not take his eyes off the hag, just in case she got through that weird window. “Did you hurt yourself again?”

“My wand!” When she lifted it, paling, he saw that it was badly cracked, the upper part hanging off the base like a broken arm.

“Not going to do much magic with that,” he said tautly.

“What am I going to do?” she cried. “I’m useless without it! Jenny Greenteeth’s out there! Now I’m defenseless!”

Jake frowned at her. “Now, now. There’s no need to be so melodramatic. She can’t get in, look.” He pointed at the window, then glanced around uneasily. “Where are we, anyway? What did you do? Wish us away somewhere?”

Nixie looked at him, as though startled that he hadn’t figured it out.

“I don’t do magic! What?”

“Um, Jake… I think…we’re in the painting.”

He stared at her as if
she
had gone mad. “How can we be in a painting?”

Before she could reply, Jenny Greenteeth punched the window angrily.

“I’m pretty sure that’s the picture frame,” Nixie said, nodding toward it.

He squinted at it in confusion. “Nah…”

“You may be safe in there for the moment, little witch, but don’t worry,” the horrid hag wheedled. “You have to come out sometime, and when you do, I’ll be waiting. For both of you!” Then she spun around with a creepy, unnatural motion and zoomed away, dragging Boneless with her.

Nixie gulped.

Jake looked askance at her. “You’ve got interesting taste in enemies. Whew! Dashed lucky I came along.”

Instead of thanking him, she huffed. “Don’t you ever stop bragging?”

“What? I’m not bragging. I just saved you!”

“Actually, I saved
you
,” she retorted. “Without my spell just now, we’d both have fractured our skulls, as was her intent.”

Jake stared at her, taken aback. “Talk about ungrateful.”

“You shouldn’t have interfered!” Nixie yelled at him. “You had no business barging in like that. Now they’re going to kill you, too!”

“Ha. No, they’re not.” He frowned at her, then jumped to his feet. “They can try, but trust me, I’ve already dealt with worse. Hey, did you see that?” he asked all of a sudden, turning quickly.

“See what?” Nixie mumbled, still cross at him.

“Not sure… Barely glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye. It just went running by the edge of the pasture. There, along the stone fence. An animal of some kind, I think.”

She straightened up. “Did it look dangerous?”

“No, I think it was just maybe a…dog or something.”

“Oh,” she said uneasily.

Jake was surprised by how timid the usually-tough girl was acting now that her wand was broken. She really seemed to think herself helpless without it. So, this was why Aunt Ramona always warned against anyone becoming overly dependent on magic.

He shrugged off her problems. She could easily buy a new wand from the fairy market. He had problems of his own. Ghosts to interview. A reputation to save. And how the deuce were they to get out of here?

Hands on his hips, Jake glanced around at the rural autumn landscape they had somehow landed in. A pretty boring picture, in his view. Not much of interest to look at, just a typical English pasture in the countryside, with squat stone fences and thorny hedgerows, their leaves reddened with the season. A babbling brook meandered past nearby, and a grove of brilliant-hued trees filled the dip between hills.

Still, he was surprised at how convincing the world inside the painting was. He could smell the unmistakable scent of autumn on the crisp, chilly air: a mix of homey hearth fires burning in the distance and the pleasant pungency of decaying vegetation.

“Huh,” he grunted philosophically after a minute. “Can’t say I’ve ever been in a painting before. Didn’t even know they had a spell for that.” He looked at Nixie. “Do you do this often, then? Go flying into paintings?”

“No, of course not!” She gave him a withering look, as though she could not fathom the thick-headedness of boys.

“Touchy!” he chided, taken aback.

“Well, I didn’t know this would happen! I can only guess it was all of the magic combined that landed us here.”

“Fine, never mind, then. Let’s figure a way out and get you to a doctor.” He reached down to help her up, but she knocked his offered hand aside.

“I don’t need your help! Not now, not ever! Don’t you get it?”

“Blimey,” Jake muttered.
Girls are so moody.
He gave her a reproachful frown, for really, that was no way for a damsel to talk to her rescuer.

On the other hand, she
was
a witch, he remembered. They weren’t really known for being friendly.

Shrugging off her ingratitude, he turned his attention to getting out of the painting and started toward the strange window hanging in midair at about chest level.

Nixie let out a huge sigh as he walked away. “Jake? Jake!” she repeated insistently.

“What?” He stopped and turned around with an impatient look.

“Sorry—I don’t mean to be so cross. It’s just I’m so monstrously tired because of the Bugganes. Beyond all toleration. They’re trying to drive me insane by depriving me of sleep.”

“Oh.” That would explain the dark circles under her eyes.

She flopped onto her back on the grass and shut her eyes as though she could fall asleep right there. “They threw me out of my bedroom window last night, three stories up.”

His jaw dropped.
“What?”

“I thought I was going to die. I almost wished I would’ve.”

He went back to her in shock and crouched down to be nearer to her eyelevel. “They
threw
you out a window? Are you serious?”

“No, I’m joking,” she snapped, sitting up again and shooting him another look of annoyance. “I’m just telling you what happened.”

“How did you survive?”

“Nuckalavee caught me outside before I hit the ground. The skinless one I mentioned. He’s the worst one of the lot. He’s horrible. Thankfully, he doesn’t come inside much ’cause he’s a bogey-beast.”

“What does he look like?” Jake asked in concern.

She shrugged. “Nuckalevee’s sometimes called a water-horse, but he’s not the nice kind—he’s a monster. He’s blood-red ’cause all his muscles and tissues are showing on account of his having no skin.”

Jake stared at her, aghast. “I think I’ve seen that thing lolling in the stream where the naiads like to swim. Will he hurt them?”

She shook her head. “He might if they get too close, but as a water bogey, he’d at least have some respect for them.”

“No skin… He sounds disgusting.”

“Try having him grab you in his mouth.” She sighed, looking exhausted and small. “Last night, when I finally got away from them, I went into the art gallery to look at the paintings for a while ’cause it makes me feel better. But as tired as I’ve been, what with them tormenting me every night, I fell asleep right there on the bench. That’s where they found me this morning, a little before you did. They started right back in where they left off, pushing me around.”

“How long have they been torturing you like this?” Jake asked angrily.

“Months.”

“Have you told anybody to try to get some help? Like the Elders?”

“I can’t! Jenny Greenteeth put me under a curse!” she burst out. “Anyone who tries to help me gets killed! Don’t you understand? That includes you now! That’s why I got so angry at you. You can pretend to be as cocky as you like, but trust me, you’re no match for them in the end. I thought
I
was, but now, look at me. I’m a wreck!” Her coal-black eyes filled with tears, and the protest on the tip of Jake’s tongue dissolved.

Yes, he was a thoroughgoing blockhead when it came to girls’ emotions, but even he could see she just needed to talk. Get her troubles off her chest.

Nixie shook her head, turned aside, and quickly wiped away her tears, though he had already seen them. “I’ve been trying so hard to keep my problems to myself. But then you came barging in, pretending you’re a hero.”

Well, I am.
Jake frowned indignantly. At least, he was trying.

“And now you’re going to get murdered, the Order’s golden boy, and it’ll be all my fault. I’ll probably get banished from Merlin Hall for this, thank you very much. Why didn’t you listen? I told you to stay out of it. I told you to leave me alone, but you ignored me. So don’t blame me when the Bugganes pick their time and place and come to kill you. When you’re a ghost yourself, maybe then you’ll learn to mind your own business!”

Crikey
. Jake took a moment to absorb all this while Nixie looked away and strove to get her understandably frazzled emotions under control. Though it took all of his considerable bravado, he ignored a vague twinge of alarm at her dire words.

“I am not going to get murdered, I promise you,” he said calmly, doing his best to sound as fearless as Derek.

“They’ve done it before. They killed my cat! Poor Midnight.”

Jake was taken aback. “I’m sorry, that’s terrible.”

Nixie sniffled. “Jenny Greenteeth drowned her.”

“Well,” he said after a moment, “I am not a cat. I’m a person.”

“They almost killed my friend, Amelia, too. I had to pick a fight with her for no reason and tell her I didn’t want to be friends with her anymore before they’d leave her alone. They made her get pneumonia!”

“Nevertheless.” Jake gave her a stern look. “I’m helping you and that’s final. Got it?”

“Jake—”

“Did it ever occur to you that the reason they beat you up so badly is because you’re trying to take them on alone? There’s always strength in numbers, Nixie. You’d be surprised at how well me and my friends manage against all sorts of unpleasant entities. We’ve dealt with giants, gargoyles and—other things.” He stopped himself from mentioning Garnock.

Instead, he counted off his other victories on his fingers to assure her (and himself) that he knew what he was doing. “A sea-witch, my uncle’s insane servitor henchmen, a number of dangerous ghosts, a dragon—oh, did I happen to mention an angry Norse god?”

She rolled her eyes and looked bored at his accomplishments.

Jake scowled. “Point is, we are hardly going to be intimidated by that sorry lot out there, so you might as well accept our help.”

“It’s bad enough that you’re already a part of it, but don’t drag Archie into this,” she finally said after a long, weary pause.