Chapter Seven: Speak of the Devil
"Did they see us?" Annabeth twisted around in her seat, peering back the way they'd come.
"Yes," said Gabriel, slowing down as he caught up. "What makes a clicking noise and flashes lights?"
"What- Oh my gods! A camera!"
"You have cameras?" asked Carl.
"Duh," said Annabeth. "This is not good. If they plaster our faces all over the newspapers, we're dead. It's like putting up a neon sign saying Here we are, monsters! Come eat us!"
"I take it that's a bad thing?"
"You got it. Percy! Can we go any faster?"
The half-blood boy shrugged and asked Blackjack. This time Gabriel heard the pegasus answer.
Sure thing, boss! But make sure nobody falls behind, okay? The black pegasus reared in the air, raising his wings in defiance before bolting forward far faster than they'd been going before. The other pegasi raced to stay with him, and Gabriel found himself struggling to keep up.
After half an hour of keeping up the grueling pace, Blackjack finally slowed down.
Don't think... we can go much... farther, boss, he panted. Gotta... take a... break!
"Sure, Blackjack. Find someplace to land." Percy patted the pegasus's sweaty black neck.
Gabriel landed on all fours and collapsed in a heap, completely exhausted. The pegasi landed and dislodged their riders, trotting a few steps away before starting to graze. Carl breathed a sigh of relief as he staggered a few steps to sit down next to Gabriel.
"I never want to fly again," he said. "At least not at that speed."
"Let's hope not," panted Gabriel, eyes closed. "Once was enough."
Grover was looking a little green. "Is it possible to get airsick on a pegasus?"
Not unless you want to be bucked off! said the satyr's dappled grey.
Percy relayed the message to Grover, who paled. "I won't get sick, then," he said.
"I hope not," said Annabeth. "We're off-track. We veered too far to the east."
"You can say that again," said Percy. "We're near the ocean."
"The ocean?" repeated Gabriel.
"The Atlantic Ocean," said Annabeth exasperatedly. "We're practically in Portsmouth!"
"Is that good or bad?"
"Good, I suppose, but there's been stories going around about a mass breakout of Stymphalian birds."
Gabriel sighed. "And what, may I ask, are those?"
Percy turned pale and pointed towards the trees behind them. "Those!"
Gabriel was on his feet in an instant, spinning around to see the huge flock of pigeons flying towards them.
"Pigeons?" said Carl.
"Not!" Annabeth ducked as they swarmed the group, making the pegasi abruptly take to flight. "Watch out for the beaks!" She swiped at a bird with her bronze dagger, and it gave an eerie clang against the bird's bill.
"What in hellfire..." Gabriel lashed out at the pigeons mobbing him and wincing when his fist connected with a bronze beak. He sharply raised his wings, buffeting the pigeons away from them.
But not for long. They got over their first initial shock and starting dive-bombing them again with triple the fury, slashing and tearing with beaks and claws.
"How do you kill them?" yelled Gabriel.
"Slice them in half! We've fought them before." Annabeth stabbed one of the birds trying to peck Grover's horns from his head and it exploded into a flash of feathers and dust.
"How did you get rid of them?"
"We used one of Chiron's CDs and put his boombox on high!"
Gabriel groaned. "What is that?"
"It's a music box!"
"A music box..." Gabriel took flight, smacking the Stymphalian birds away. "Carl! Where's that thing you had that drove Cardinal Jinette up the wall?"
"Oh! Yes, yes." Carl dug around in his robes while Gabriel kept him clear of pigeons. "Here it is!" He held up a small instrument that looked like a pennywhistle.
"BLOW IT!!" Gabriel was being forced to the ground, starting to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. The others were in the same boat.
Carl raised it to his lips and blew, moving his fingers over the holes in a quick, staccato rhythm.
The loudest, most piercing noise he had ever heard assaulted Gabriel's ears, and he yelled, falling to the ground. The Stymphalian birds screamed, flying around and twitching. They abandoned the clearing and flew skywards, leaving the friends to recover.
"Oh, my gods," said Annabeth. "That was incredible."
"Why, thank you," said Carl, returning the whistle to his pocket. "I am a genius, you know."
"If you don't say so yourself."
"Oh, I did say so myself. I must say, I almost prefer baby vampires to those things. Almost." Carl brushed a few loose feathers from his coat and picked one up, frowning. "This isn't a pigeon feather..."
"That's mine," said Gabriel.
"Hmm," said Carl, and pocketed it. "Now that that's over...?"
"We keep moving," said Annabeth, shaking dust off of her shirt. "We were unprepared."
Gabriel remembered someone else saying that to him, not so long ago...
"I was unprepared. It won't happen again." Anna tapped him on the chest with her saber before sheathing it.
Now Annabeth was saying near the same thing...
"Van Helsing?" said Annabeth. "Van Helsing!" she repeated, this time more forcefully.
Gabriel blinked. "What? Oh, sorry." He followed the others to where the pegasi had landed.
They were prancing nervously in place, clearly unsettled by the attack.
Why did they attack us, lord? asked one of them to Percy.
"I don't know," he answered. "We just were talking about them and-"
"Speak of the Devil and he will appear," said Gabriel.
"What?" said Percy and Grover at the same time.
"It's an old saying," said Carl. "If you speak of the Devil, he will appear. I don't know if it's true or not but-"
"It's like speaking of the Kindly Ones," said Annabeth slowly. "They will appear. Names are not to be used lightly."
"It seems we were using them a little too lightly ourselves," said Carl. "This is a strange place."
The campers had mounted their pegasi, and Carl quickly mounted as well. "Van Helsing," said the friar, "maybe you should ride for a bit."
Gabriel shook his head and spread his wings. "Not yet," he said.
Carl opened his mouth to protest, but the pegasi were already taking off. The hunter followed, keeping an eye out for any more of the Stymphalian birds, but none appeared. It was as if they had melted away to nothing...
Xx
Five days later.
"There it is," said Annabeth, pointing towards the towering structure set on the top of a hill above the trees. "Some idiot brought a castle here from Romania and didn't take very good care of it. The dragons took over, but the owner of the castle eventually drove them out, thinking they were overgrown lizards. Of course, he couldn't explain the scorch marks on the walls or a perpetual stench of brimstone..."
Carl gaped. "Unbelievable!" he gasped. "It's-"
"Castle Dracula!" Gabriel forgot to keep his wings spread and dropped several feet before recovering. "Oh, my God."
"Castle Dracula?" said Percy. "I thought Dracula was a vampire."
"He is," said Carl. "That's his castle. I believe the correct term used was 'an icy fortress from which there was no return'... but how did it get here?"
The pegasi landed about twenty yards from the massive front doors, which were cracked and thrown wide, like the mouth of a hungry, starving predator.
"Look at the architecture!" exclaimed Annabeth. "It's amazing. I've never seen anything like it."
Unlike the last time Van Helsing and Carl had gone to Castle Dracula, the stonework was covered in vines and birds' nests perched in cracks. Gone was the snow and ice that had smothered the gothic structure; now it looked more like one of the many castles of Ireland. It was almost serene...
If it wasn't for all the memories it recalled.
Carl glanced at Gabriel nervously, wondering how his friend would react. When the hunter only followed the campers through the castle doors and down the steps deeper into the citadel, the friar had no choice but to go after them.
No fires burned in the raised braziers. None of the offspring that had hung on the ceiling remained from the experiments Dracula and Igor had tried. A warm wind whistled through chinks in the walls, creating an ghostly soundtrack as they moved through the castle.
They climbed the stairs up to the east tower and stopped as they entered the assembled laboratory. The ruined equipment had been cleared away, stacked in neat piles in plastic containers by the walls. The glass in the windows had been replaced, but broken again... by something big.
Grover picked something up from the ground and showed it to the others. "A dragon scale," he said. "A big dragon."
The scale was the size of his palm, a glittering red that changed colour when you tilted it. It shone in the late afternoon sunlight streaming in from the windows, seeming on fire.
"That's interesting," said Carl. "How big do you think the dragon was?"
Gabriel gestured wordlessly to the far side of the laboratory, and the rest of the group gave a collective gasp.
_____________________________________________________________
Me: *whistling innocently*
Van Helsing: You did that on purpose, didn't you?
Me: Of course! The more cliffies the better...