Max Helsing and the Beast of Bone Creek Read online

  Jed shrugged, his heart crashing like waves against the cliffs of his ribs.

  “Why don’t you check your phone, Jed?”

  Jed pulled his phone out and looked at it, utterly confused. “What good will that do?”

  Wing’s exasperated sigh reminded Jed of a disgruntled schoolteacher when dealing with a dunce. “I’ve spent the last three months scanning and uploading as many pages as possible from the Monstrosi Bestiarum onto our encrypted database. Your phone, the computer at Helsing House—they’re all now linked up and accessible via the Cloud.”

  “What cloud?” asked Jed, looking up, utterly bemused.

  Wing snatched the old man’s phone and gave Jed his own, the compass still lit up. “Why do I bother?” muttered the boy as his fingers danced across the touchscreen. “There!” he said in a matter of seconds, showing Jed the screen. “Just what I thought!”

  Jed snatched the cell back. The phone showed him all he needed, a digitized page straight out of the Van Helsing monster manual: Dyre Wolf.

  “I was sure I’d seen a rumor somewhere online of dyre wolves in New Hampshire,” said Wing. “Looks like I was right after all. Wing shoots! Wing scores!”

  Jed squinted at the beast’s description in the half-light. It made for grisly reading. If there were a crueler sentient pack animal out there, Jed had yet to encounter it. The dyre wolves were a throwback to a time when monsters and animals shared the earth. The arrival of man had pushed the dyre wolves back, virtually wiping them out. They had since lived far away from humankind, preying exclusively upon other magical beasts. Max’s great-grandfather had been the last Van Helsing to face one down, a lone male that had crawled out of the Undercity to hunt the homeless of Gallows Hill. How on earth would Jed fare against four of them, with only a ten-year-old bookworm for backup?

  “We’ve been heading north for a while and haven’t seen anyone,” said Wing, staring at his compass as Jed urged the breathless boy on his way. “Maybe the dyre wolves were mistaken?”

  “Don’t reckon,” grunted Jed, shoving his own cell back into his pocket. “The pack leader, the one they called Grimgrin, got the scent on the wind from up here.”

  The image of the monstrous wolves devouring those men in greedy gulps was seared onto Jed’s mind’s eye. Jed doubted there was anything left of those hunters now. He expected the wolves were already on their way.

  Eightball whimpered a few feet in front of him as they crashed through the forest, but it was too late. The hellhound flew up into the air, a loop of black cord tight about his belly. His rolls of fat bulged around the noose, which looked like it had nearly cut him in two. As for Jed, a different trap awaited him, as that accursed leg triggered a trip wire. He was able to shove Wing aside just in time as a weighted net fell from the boughs of the tree overhead, catching him as sure as a fly in a web.

  The “spider” lay nearby, sleeping on his bedroll beside a woodland pond. He looked up, yawned, and smacked his lips.

  “Well, bless my socks,” said Abel Archer. “If it isn’t the oldest monster hunter in town! Talk about a rude awakening.”

  “Zip it, boy, and get me out of this damned net!”

  “Now, now, Mr. Coolidge,” said Archer, stretching where he lay as Wing dashed over to Jed to try to wrestle him out of his bonds. “You come crashing in here, making a hell of a racket, no doubt waking half the forest, and you expect me to just jump to it like some peasant? What an astonishing lack of manners.”

  The next words out of Jed’s mouth were even more colorful. The young Brit glanced at Wing.

  “Such language! And in front of a minor, too.”

  Wing gave the muscled teen a boot in the shoulder.

  Archer chuckled. “You get the first one for free.” When Wing attempted a second kick, Archer deftly swept the boy’s legs out from under him and he landed unceremoniously in the pond.

  “You really are the rudest people.” Archer sighed. “Now, I know why Max is in Bone Creek. And I know why I am in Bone Creek. But tell me, Mr. Coolidge—and I’ll release you and your funny little dog if you behave—what are you doing in Bone Creek?”

  “Right now,” snapped Jed, “I’m trying to save your sorry ass, but I’m having second thoughts.”

  Archer laughed as Wing dragged himself out of the pond. “I can assure you, Mr. Coolidge, my arse is anything but apologetic, and—”

  Even with the net draped over him, Jed was able to make a clumsy leap across the clearing. He landed in the dirt beside Archer, making the brash youth jump.

  “Quit the flowery talk, you dunderhead, and get me out of here. There’s a ravenous pack of dyre wolves on its way, and it’s your scent they’ve taken a shine to.”

  Jed and Archer eyeballed each other for a split second. Then Archer whipped his bowie knife from his belt, catching the net and sawing through it, right up the middle. He was only halfway through the job when the undergrowth burst apart, and four enormous wolves pounced.

  Archer was a blur of sudden, violent movement. The nearest and biggest, a black-furred monster, caught an army boot to its jaw, sending it skidding away. The next lunged in, openmouthed, only for Archer’s bowie knife to tear a strip off its tongue. It yelped as the hulking young hunter followed with a punch on the nose. That was enough to make the other two hang back as Archer seized hold of a damp Wing and tossed him up into the tree bough overhead. Wing moved quickly, scrambling along the branch until he could haul Eightball up to safety.

  “The black one’s the leader.” Jed gasped as he tore the cut net in two and rose. “Called Grimgrin.”

  “Cool name,” said Archer, nodding approvingly.

  “Grimgrin!” shouted Jed. “A challenge for you. Your champion versus ours. You win, we’re in your bellies before sunup. We win, you’re out of here, never to return. Winner takes all.”

  “Takes . . . all?” growled the big black wolf. “What’s to stop us from taking all anyway?”

  “Don’t mistake us for those chumps you just filled your face with.” Jed puffed his chest out. “You’re not facing one, but two of humankind’s greatest monster hunters, Jed ‘Killer’ Coolidge and Abel Archer.”

  Archer gave Jed a thumbs-up and wink for the name check, which the old man promptly ignored.

  “So whaddaya say? Who wants to fight me?”

  Archer leaned across to Jed. “I thought you were talking about me as the champion, Grandpa.”

  “I’ll fight you,” said Grimgrin, taking the bait.

  Jed lifted his black flashlight and ran his fingers along its length. A light appeared on its end.

  “That’s your plan?” said Archer in disbelief. “You’re going to clobber it with a flashlight?”

  “I’ll fight you, Jed Coolidge,” said Grimgrin, “and I’ll crush your bones and suck the marrow dry. I’ll—”

  Jed was leaping, flashlight in hand. As he brought it around, it extended a further three feet in length, transforming into an elegant staff in an instant. The telescopic weapon struck Grimgrin across the snout, a flash of light exploding where it connected with the wolf’s muzzle.

  “Some folk really love the sound of their own voice,” grumbled Jed, swinging it back the other way. It glanced across Grimgrin’s brow, leaving bright sparks with its passing.

  “Elf magic?” roared the dyre wolf, as his brothers howled in horror. They snarled and snapped at Archer, who promptly reached for his ax.

  “You recognize the magic of the Undercity?” said Jed, driving the black beast back. “You should have stayed there, Grimgrin.”

  Jed jabbed the wolf in the chest. The nightwand had been a gift from an elf sorceress, way back in Jed’s youth, in return for a noble deed. More than that, it was a lover’s gift from a life that might have been. The telescopic staff was just one of its many uses, while the illumination tended to exhaust its energy. Its charge was limi
ted, and already almost spent. Jed just had to keep Grimgrin moving a bit longer.

  The nightwand came around again, but the black wolf was faster. Grimgrin’s jaws snapped around the staff’s middle, the light blooming at its end as the monster’s eyes narrowed. The dyre wolf’s laugh was a demonic gurgle as he ignored the ball of magical light. Jed booted Grimgrin in the head, causing the wolf to dislodge his jaws from the nightwand as he staggered back, hindquarters slipping into the pond with a splash.

  One of the other wolves jumped forward, its jaws clapping together inches away from Jed and causing the old man to stumble. Archer’s ax swept about, cutting a scarlet gash along the smaller wolf’s flank.

  “Back, Fellfang.” Grimgrin laughed, shaking his soaking coat like a dog that had been in the sea. “We had a deal with these men. We shall stand by it. Then we shall eat our fill.” Grimgrin’s cackle was joined by that of his brothers. “Is that all you’ve got, Jed Coolidge? A trinket from the Undercity? An elfin plaything? It isn’t even a proper weapon!”

  “Isn’t it?” said Jed, diving forward and plunging the nightwand’s end into the pool. He shouted out the ancient words of magic, taught to him by the sorceress who had lived a dozen mortal lifetimes. The magical staff unloaded everything into the pond, discharging all its stored lightning in one bright and blinding flash. Grimgrin thrashed in the churning water, the elf magic coursing through the huge dyre wolf. His limbs locked, his muscles contorted, and his organs ruptured one after another. The other wolves looked away as Grimgrin, their alpha, their leader, enjoyed a grisly, glorious death. When his smoking corpse splashed down into the pond, blood streaming from every orifice, Jed knew the job was done.

  He turned wearily toward the other three wolves, who had begun a chorus of growls.

  “We had a deal, Fellfang.”

  The beta wolf’s snarl was cut short when Abel Archer’s ax smashed into the ground, a mere whisker away from his face.

  “That could have been your skull, wolf,” said the Englishman. “Now scurry on home with your tail between your legs—there’s a good boy.”

  Fellfang turned and ran, his brothers fleeing with him. Jed collapsed and dropped the wand, which reverted back to normal size, as Wing and Eightball climbed down out of the tree. Archer picked up the black tube of dull metal, his eyes wide with wonder as he tried to read the runes.

  “I wouldn’t try to decipher it if you’re a novice with magic,” said Jed. “Last person who did got his face scorched off.”

  “You have to tell me who your outfitter is, Mr. Coolidge,” said Archer, giving the cylinder a swish through the air as Wing and Eightball rushed to Jed’s side. “I simply must pick up one of those.”

  “It’s one of a kind,” replied Jed, as he received a hug from a boy and a lick from a dog. He winked at Archer. “Like me.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  BATTLE FALLS

  The flight from the cave hadn’t gone quite according to plan. Running hell for leather through the cavern, Max and Syd had gotten separated when the teenage monster hunter charged headlong into a handily situated stalagmite. The girl had run on, Max yelling to her to head down the cliffs.

  When Max finally emerged from the cave, Murdo the troll was right behind, squeezing out of the fissure in a (very) blind fury. If the monster’s sight had been fully functioning, Max’s number would’ve been up. As it was, the troll was dependent upon his other senses. His ears and nose kept him on Max’s heels, as the boy bounded, splished, and splashed his way toward the head of the waterfall.

  If the moon and stars hadn’t been out that night, there was a fine chance Max Helsing’s monster-hunting career—and more important, his life—would have ground to a halt atop those cliffs in the White Mountains. The glow of the heavens guided him down the stream and all the way to Battle Falls. Without the stars’ guiding light, he might have run straight off the crags.

  Max collapsed onto a boulder beside the top of the waterfall. The water looked like polished glass here, the moon’s reflection rippling on its surface as it raced away off the plateau. Max looked about, panting for breath, trying to work out exactly where the path down was located.

  “Okay, Max,” he said to himself, as behind, in the darkness, he heard the troll drawing nearer, throat gurgling and belly growling as he came. “The exit should be . . .”

  He looked one way and then the other, but it was hopeless. He was completely turned around. He pulled Barnum’s map out of his pocket.

  The ink markings ran in rivers of their own from the sheet. Max’s numerous falls and flounders in the stream had ensured the scroll was as soaked as his undies. He tossed it to the wind, which carried it off the cliffs and down to the forest below.

  “Maxelsing!”

  He turned, sick to the pit of his belly, as the mountain troll splashed closer, swinging his stalagmite club and striking the riverbed. Water and pebbles erupted, showering the boy and sending him staggering closer to the cliff’s edge. There was nowhere left to hide. Max looked at Splinter in his hand. He shrugged; it was hardly the ideal weapon to have on hand in a scrap with a troll, especially one wielding a giant stone club, but it was better than nothing. If only he’d packed a bazooka for the camping trip.

  “Hey, Murdo!” shouted Max. “What say you and I have a little chat, eh? See if we can’t hammer out an understanding, an agreement of some kind, where we both get what we want? Mano a mano. Guy to guy. Whaddaya say?”

  “Mmm,” said the troll. “But Murdo wants to eat Maxelsing.”

  “Yeah, Max Helsing isn’t keen on that. I was thinking more we could hook you up with a lady troll. That’s what your cave really needs—a woman’s touch. Believe me, back home in Gallows Hill, the contacts I have in the Undercity? I guarantee I can bag you an interested party. We can really sell this: fresh air, great views, eligible . . . umm . . . bachelor?”

  “Murdo not interested in lady trolls,” said the stony-skinned fiend, shaking his enormous head, blind eyes still staring into space.

  “Ah, how rude of me to assume. Perhaps a nice fellow, then?”

  The troll stomped his foot. “Murdo just wants to eat Maxelsing!”

  Max sighed. “Are you sure I can’t persuade you that there’s more to life than eating me?”

  The troll chuckled, saliva drooling from his tusklike teeth. Even though the monster wanted to eat him, Max didn’t look on the troll as a bad guy. Trolls ate people, on every continent. That’s what made them trolls. At least this one had been reformed for some time.

  Max suddenly made to run along the plateau, away from the waterfall and the troll. The stalagmite descended, smashing the crag and crumbling the cliff edge in front of and around Max. He leaped back, splashing into the river and instantly feeling the fast-flowing water pull at his ankles. He waded the other way, keeping a healthy distance from the waterfall’s overhang. Again, the club came down, the river exploding as if a depth charge had gone off. Max stood there as the water came back down, soaking him from head to foot.

  The troll’s hand shot forward, frighteningly fast, making a clumsy grab for Max. Murdo succeeded in knocking him over, the current seizing Max and pulling him toward the falls on his belly. Before he could disappear over the edge, Max felt the troll’s hand grasp him by his messenger bag and drag him back, out of the river and into the air. Max twisted and turned, caught up in the satchel strap like a rabbit in a snare. He got a great view of that big ugly face as Murdo brought him closer, the monster’s belly now snarling with wild anticipation below.

  The troll stopped suddenly, his blind eyes shifting left and right, as his nostrils flared and his ears twitched.

  Max covered his face as something flitted past, missing him by inches. When it hovered a short way from his face, Max saw it was a will-o’-the-wisp, a fairy of the forest. Of course, this wasn’t a breathtakingly beautiful sprite like the kind Peter Pan kept in his poc
ket. Although its top half was roughly humanoid, its lower portion was that of a swollen bug, bloated abdomen glowing like a floating Chinese lantern. It hovered before the helpless boy for a moment, before zigzagging through the air toward the troll’s face, buzzing the monster. Max couldn’t help but feel touched by the fairy’s brave, and admittedly impossible, intervention. What could one tiny will-o’-the-wisp do to save him?

  The sightless troll batted it away, once, twice, the fairy coming back for more each time, slowing the fiend and buying Max precious time. It flew around the monster’s giant head, a belligerent gnat in the face of a lion. Then the troll snorted, sending the tiny being spinning into the darkness. Murdo grinned before returning to the squirming, dangling boy in his grasp.

  Murdo’s mouth opened wide, a stinking, saliva-coated tunnel, as he prepared to toss his supper down his gullet. Before the troll could bite down, though, he felt a stabbing pain in his clenched fist as the creature known as Maxelsing struck back. Up went Splinter, again and again, peppering the mighty hand and those filthy fingers. Murdo cried out, releasing the messenger bag instantly as boy and satchel crashed down into the water.

  Max didn’t wait around. Repositioning his bag, he splashed away along the shallow river, trying to get to safety. He felt, rather than heard, the troll’s next furious attack, as the wind whooshed around him. Max flopped forward with a splash as the stone club swept past and over him. If it had connected, the entire forest below the cliffs would’ve been speckled with bits of Max. He rolled over as the troll roared, aware of exactly where he was, spittle splattering the boy and the river.

  A bird suddenly flew by, narrowly missing Max before smacking the monster’s face. Then another, swooping by the other way and raking a broad, bulbous cheek. A third was followed by a fourth. The troll cried out, and Max smiled.