Chapter 34

-Chase-

During the next couple of days, I watched Dante grow bigger and stronger with a smile on my face, giving him everything he needed to heal. It didn’t even end with physical transformation. His mental health was becoming more balanced as well, and I absolutely loved the confidence he was building up.

But that also meant that I now had a much more energetic werewolf in my hands. I could tell the walls were starting to come down on him. We went out on long walks and cleaned the yard when the weather allowed it, but he didn’t get tired that easily anymore. It was almost scary. Mere weeks ago, all he did was sleep, and soon, I would need to start exercising to keep up with him.

Werewolves… And wasn’t just a regular werewolf either, so I was getting concerned. And so was Ben. Dante’s condition was advancing, and as he grew more restless, he was also getting easily agitated. A big no-no taken the fact that when he got angry, he got murderous. So far things were good, but we all knew it was only a matter of time until he lost control of the beast.

A whole week went by as we anxiously waited for any news about the spellbook, and eventually, I got worried over my parents as well when they stopped answering me. Normally, if I couldn’t reach them by phone, I could use a simple blood spell, but now even that didn’t work. After three days of not being able to contact them, and no one in Njizrski hadn’t heard of Paraz or Izha either, I was getting increasingly worried.

I couldn’t think of a reason why they would suddenly go missing while hunting down a regular spellbook, but after everything that we had learned lately, I was getting paranoid.

But then, finally, that day arrived…

My phone started to ring that morning, waking me up from my slumber. I groaned when I reached to grab it, cursing the person who dared to call me so early.

My attitude changed completely when I saw ‘Mom’ written across on the screen.

“Hello?” I shot up in the bed.

“Is this a bad time to visit?” she asked without greetings.

“Do you have it?”

“I have it.”

Thirty minutes later, Dante and I were fully dressed and filled with restless energy as we stood with Ben right in front of the portal. Roe appeared next to us only a minute before Mom stepped through it, holding a big, black briefcase in her hands.

“Where were you?” I asked. “I’ve been trying to call you for days! I thought something happened to you!”

“Oh, we were in a tricky place,” Mom said while taking off her jacket. “No service, you see.”

“Where were you?” I repeated, eyeing at the briefcase.

“It’s a long story, but turned out that there’s plenty of copies to choose from,” she smiled, patting the briefcase. “But I didn’t want to settle with another cheap one, so I went ahead and got us the original.”

“What?” I breathed out, taking the briefcase from her.

“Well, it also turned out that absolutely no one is allowed to touch the original one,” she continued as I hurriedly opened the bag, and pulled out a pile of papers. Definitely not the book.

“What are these?” I asked, leafing through the obvious photocopies.

“For your information, it was better guarded than Mona Lisa,” she said as she walked past me. “Your father and I had to pull off our biggest tricks and use more brains than the four of us had combined, but we did it without getting caught! We copied the entire book, just for you, my dear.”

“So, this is legit. This is the entire book?” I asked.

“Yes. The whole original book.”

“Where did you find it?” Roe asked, peering the papers over my shoulder.

“Another fun fact! The book is said to be located in a vault at King Drammoth’s museum, but it is actually in Vongatah’s castle.”

“But… that’s in Bermuda Triangle?” I frowned. It was a very tightly secured place. Very tightly.

“There’s a castle in Bermuda Triangle?” Dante asked, looking shocked.

Roe snorted. “You will never meet anyone more paranoid than old man Vongatah. He built his castle in the ocean, secured the place in every possible way, lifted the anchor, and fucked off. Then humans started to go missing in that area and suddenly he was all over the human news. Well, kind of. He never got caught.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said impatiently, hurrying towards the lounge.

“Don’t you even want to hear how we infiltrated the place?” Mom asked with a disappointed voice.

“Later!”

Mom clicked her tongue in a disapproving manner, but I didn’t have time for her tales right now. I rushed through the entire pile of papers, realizing I couldn’t understand most of it.

“Which spell is it?” I turned around in frustration.

“Page thirty-two.”

The rest of them joined me while I searched for the right paper. When I found it, I stopped to stare at it. My ancient Njizrski dialect wasn’t any good, so I couldn’t tell if it was the right one. At least the text was actually readable. It looked like a completely different book than the one we had. The art sucked, though.

“Are you sure that’s it?” I asked, but it wasn’t Mom who replied.

“It is,” Roe frowned. “But there’s a small problem.”

I grit my teeth together, congratulated myself for not combusting on fire on the spot, and asked, “What do you mean?”

“These ingredients… Six out of seven are very easy to get. I’m sure you have some of them in your little shop.”

I congratulated myself for not pulling my hair off. “What’s the last one?”

“Slime gland of caragga.”

I closed my eyes, took a deep, deep breath, relaxed my shoulders, and turned to look at him. “Caragga?”

“It has to be fresh and intact, so…” Roe trailed off, avoiding my gaze.

“Pack your bags, boys,” Mom said with a way too wide smile on her face – that freaking lunatic. “We’re going to the Death Zone!”

“Death Zone?” Dante repeated.

“The dark side of Njizrski,” Roe explained. “Not a friendly place.”

It really wasn’t, as the name suggested.

“We need more lunatics,” I sighed.

*****

“Hi! And welcome to my crib!” Zane smiled at us when Dante, Aaliyah and I stepped through the portal into the entrance hall of his small house only two hours later. “So! You need firepower?”

“And lots of it,” I nodded.

“I have just what you need,” Zane smirked, gestured at us to follow him before heading towards his living room. We followed him until he stopped at the back of the room, in front of a door that led into the kitchen. He pulled the door closed, mumbled a few words I had taught him, and opened the door again, revealing a staircase behind it.

I glanced at Dante and wasn’t disappointed when I saw how wide his eyes were. He didn’t say anything, but I knew he was impressed.

Zane turned on the lights and started walking down, the rest of us following him until we reached his second basement.

The fun one.

“Uhm…” Dante muttered as we stopped at the bottom, looking around at Zane’s gun collection. The basement was filled from top to bottom with all kinds of weapons one could use to invade a small country. “This can’t be legal,” he coughed.

“Which is why I needed a second basement,” Zane smirked at him, before turning to look at me. “Sooo? Where are we going? What do I need to pack with me?”

“Bazookas,” I told him.

“Bazookas?”

“Bazookas.”

“How do you have bazookas?” Dante breathed out. We all turned to look at him, and I was about to reply to him, but he lifted his hands up. “You know what? I don’t want to know.”

“Probably for the best,” Aaliyah smiled.

“Chase, please tell me where we’re going,” Zane begged. “I’m getting too excited!”

“We’re going to Njizrski,” I revealed, and he stared at me for a short moment.

“To the Death Zone?” he guessed.

“Yup.”

“To do what?”

“To hunt caraggas,” Aaliyah replied.

He blinked at us, but then his smile returned. “Sounds absolutely crazy. I love it. Are we going alone?”

“No. This time we’re bringing a small army, so we need a lot of guns. Big guns.” I told him. “We came to help you carry.”

“All right – let’s get to it then,” he nodded.

I was not taking any chances. The dark side of Njizrski was no joke, and we needed all the manpower we could get.

The plan was relatively simple. We needed to get to the dark side where the sunshine hardly ever reached, find a snowy plateau where the caraggas lived, capture one or two of them so we could get the gland and mix the ingredients for the spell right away, and finally, use the spell on Dante while keeping the other caraggas at bay.

What made things problematic was the fact that everything in that place wanted to kill us, including the plants. Caraggas themselves were like four-legged land-piranhas with sharp teeth and claws, and they were roughly the size of elephants. Plus, their white fur coats were so thick that my spells were practically useless against them, and so were guns that were not grenade launchers.

If only the gland didn’t need to be fresh… I could simply go buy one at Njizrski, but the ingredients had to be mixed immediately after the gland was removed – which was not an easy task since it was so fragile that even a tiny scrape of a knife would burst it wide open, and because the book specifically said intact, we couldn’t take any risks.

And sadly, there was no one mad enough to actually have caraggas in their backyard.

“We’re leaving tomorrow,” I explained to Zane while we carefully carried crates full of grenades upstairs to the portal. “But we can’t go without a careful plan, so we’ll gather tonight at Ben’s.”

“This is so exciting,” Zane said and turned to look at Dante, who was carrying a grenade launcher. “We’re one step closer to finding the cure for you!”

Dante nodded shortly, but he didn’t seem as excited as the rest of us felt. Once we reached the portal, and I put my crate down, I turned my attention to him.

“Are you all right?” I asked gently, watching him put down the weapon.

“I can’t help but wonder how bad that place is,” he muttered, looking at the crates.

“It will be dangerous, but this isn’t our first rodeo,” I told him. “We know how to deal with the Death Zone.”

“What if the spell doesn’t work? What if something happens and we’ve risked our lives for nothing?” Dante asked, and I didn’t like the tone in his voice – it was a little too negative.

“It will work. The spirits–”

“What if they were wrong?” he asked with a frown. “How could they know the book has the cure?”

“We’re not having this conversation now,” I told him as Aaliyah tried to get past us to the portal. “You don’t have to worry about anything. We’ve made trips to the Death Zone several times already, and no one has died.”

“It’s like a walk in the park,” Zane concurred with a smile on his face, holding one of his precious grenade launchers.

Dante glanced at the weapon, and it was clear that he wasn’t convinced. I placed my hand on his chest, making him look at me.

“It’ll be fine – by the end of the day, we’ll have a good, solid plan,” I told him before I grabbed the crate again and stepped through the portal.

My parents were with Roe, Paraz and Izha in the living room area, arranging their weapons and other equipment. Aaliyah was making her way to the lounge, where the twin brothers, Roscoe and Denzel, were piling their stuff. I stopped to stare at the little army I had summoned.

A smile emerged on my lips. Death Zone.

I was the worst lunatic of them all.

Dante followed me through the portal and stopped right next to me. I looked up at him, about to tell him that there really was nothing to worry about, but my voice died at the back of my throat. Dante didn’t even blink as he stared at the arsenal we had gathered.

“Dante?” I spoke his name, my smile long gone. Deep down, I already knew it was coming.

And I knew it was going to be much worse this time.

“Roe?” I called quietly, taking a slow step away from Dante, but that was it.

The final trigger.

Dante let out a massive roar, a sound no human could possibly make. Everyone in the room sprung around in surprise, ready to fight whatever was coming, and it only made things worse. Dante’s transformation started in the blink of an eye, his gray fur nearly exploding out of his body, his bones cracking loudly as he grew bigger than ever before, his face turning into a row of sharp teeth… And he roared in pain and anger, sending us all scattering for cover.

All except for one.

“Chase!” Roe yelled as Dante’s transformation neared complete faster than I had ever seen. Eru jumped out of her nest, landing as the massive sabretooth she was on the floor, growling just as furiously at Dante as he was at me.

Oh, his eyes were fixed on me.

Roe emerged between us in his true form, snapping his fingers, but that didn’t stop Dante.

“Shit!” my master cursed and tried again while I was frozen on my spot.

“He’s resistant!” Izha yelled over the sounds, and now my heart froze as well.

Werewolves were not resistant to spells.

“Chain him!” Paraz ordered, and the three of them conjured massive shackles around his neck and arms, pinning him between them.

Someone yanked my hand, but I was unable to take my eyes off Dante who was howling in fury at his captors, the three big demon lords who were struggling to hold him. This was the beginning of phase two? He was going to grow bigger and stronger than this? How…? How?

How were we supposed to control him? He was immune to spells!

“Quickly! Take him to his cage!” Ben shouted at the front door. “He won’t calm down otherwise!”

“Right!” Roe yelled angrily. “How?!“

Dante was still staring at me… I didn’t waste a second when I pushed Zane away and hurried towards the stairs, waving my hands in the air like it was somehow needed.

“Come! Over here!” I yelled and Dante launched towards me, nearly taking the three demons with him. They were digging their hooves to the floor in order to slow him down. My plan was working! I ran down the stairs, Dante’s angry roars shaking the walls around me. Once I reached the bottom floor, I ran through the lab without looking back. I didn’t need to – I could hear him right behind me.

“I’m here!” I yelled again as I got into the cage, and he replied with a growl, dragging the demons across the laboratory to get to me. His claws tore through the floor panels as he pushed forward…

“You need to get out of there!” Roe yelled. “He’ll rip you to shreds!”

“Let me deal with that!” I yelled back, but I honestly had no idea how. There was only that one door, and Dante was almost there.

“Fuck that!” Roe yelled.

And that mother fucker let go of his chain.

For a second, I really thought I was going to die. Paraz and Izha were not ready to hold Dante without him, so Dante managed to yank himself free. He didn’t even blink when he jumped at me, his claws at ready, aiming at my heart.

It was the longest second of my entire life.

Then, something red flashed before my eyes, and I wasn’t standing in the cage anymore. Pushing me aside, Roe slammed the cage shut and locked it. The beast realized that we had fooled him, and the roar he let out hurt my ears, but it was nothing compared to the sounds he made when he started attacking the metal door in his rage.

“Come,” Roe said, trying to start leading me out of the lab, but I refused.

“No, I need to stay with him!” I said, trying to free myself from his grip, but he easily hoisted me on his shoulder. “No! Let go of me!”

Roe didn’t reply to me. Izha and Paraz followed us out, closing the rest of the heavy doors on our way to the stairs. Once there, Roe finally let go of me, but didn’t let me go back.

“He won’t calm down if you’re close,” Roe said quietly while the others continued their way up, leaving us alone.

I stared at the door. “But I’m his…”

“The beast doesn’t know you,” Roe said apologetically. “You need to let him calm down.”

It took me a moment before I was able to look away from the door. I suddenly wanted to cry, and it only got worse when I saw his sad expression.

“We need that cure,” I whispered.

“We’re getting it, I promise,” he said, lifting my chin up. “Did you get hurt?”

I shook my head, and shivered when I heard Dante’s howl… Everything happened so fast… I was unable to wrap my head around what just happened. My hands were shaking. I was shaking.

“Come,” Roe said again, and this time, I followed him…

But each step I took away from my love felt heavier than the last one, and the sound of his desperate roars broke my heart as he kept attacking the cage that prevented him from coming after me.