Free The Twins of Noremway Parish by Eric R. Johnston

there playing solitaire and asked me to join him, as if I have nothing better to do right now.”
    “ Not to mention it’s a single-player game,” Urey said.
    “ Well, yeah that too–goes without saying. Good thing we never have any prisoners. I can tell you, trusting that guy in there alone…it’s dangerous enough just to have him around to keep my desk warm when I’m not there.”
    The chancellor smiled. “You ready? Let’s go.” He nudged the horse, which immediately quit drinking and walked to the carriage.
    They started on their way to the Waterman farm. Fear was not something either of them felt. Wolves seemed to be in short supply tonight, which seemed odd, but the night was silent for once. A typical night in Noremway Parish was filled with insidious howls that lasted until dawn.
    The house glowed with the reflection of the full moon. The blue-gray siding was usually bland, but combined with the moonlight it offered the sight of a pale ghost.
    Jasper stopped suddenly with a jolt. The wolves had come out. More precisely, the wolves had materialized from nothing right in front of them, and begun biting at the horse’s legs: intimidating bites.
    No flesh was torn, no thirst for blood satisfied: just the scheme of these mangy creatures to scare the horse into going no further.
    “ Looks like we’re here,” Phoenix said, jumping from the carriage, not giving a second thought to the wolves. They weren’t here to harm them. This was a fact that Phoenix seemed to intuit almost on a conscious level.
    Urey wasn’t so sure. As he surveyed the group, he noticed two or three that looked as though they wouldn’t be satisfied without a human meal. About four other wolves seemed intent on eating horse. Their howls were loud, their growls vicious.
    Suddenly a wolf, which had until then been hiding in the shadows on the porch, leapt at Urey, tearing at his cloak, and succeeded in sinking its teeth into his right arm. He tried shaking off the creature, but its bite was strong, passing through the thick material of his cloak, into his skin, and lodging into bone.
    Phoenix stood ten feet away, looking up at the majesty of the house, not giving Urey’s predicament much notice...or seeming not to.
    Nonchalantly, he said, “Get off him.” The calmness of his voice was eerie given the situation, but not unlike him. He was more apt to be laughing under these circumstances than desperately coming to the chancellor’s aid.
    The wolf didn’t let go. Perhaps it couldn’t. Urey was a strong man with large muscular arms. He struggled with the wolf, swinging it back and forth.
    ***
    Franz Phoenix raised the crossbow and fired. The arrow sailed through the air, cutting through it with the ease of a sharp knife through blubber, and entered the wolf’s back. What he didn’t anticipate was that it would continue through the beast’s body and enter into Ghora Urey.
    The wolf dropped, and so did the chancellor.
    The arrow was jutting from his abdomen. It had punctured either his stomach or liver. He didn’t know, nor was he all that concerned. He’d live.
    “ Get up. We have work to do,” Phoenix said. Miraculously Urey stood, as if nothing had happened, and broke off the arrow at the head. “Good, now let’s move.”
    Phoenix felt empowered. He hadn’t before given the chancellor orders, but for some reason he felt in charge here. He felt in control. And the fact that Urey was able to stand up and break off the arrow at his mere command intrigued him.
    He turned toward the house again and gave it another longing look. It was time to go in.

Chapter 5
     
    As Teret Finley lay in bed, wrestling with memories long past, and as Franz Phoenix and Ghora Urey entered the Waterman House, Decon sifted through books, documents, and any other literature he could get his hands on in an attempt to figure out what happened with the holy fountain. Why did the child dissolve when it came in contact with the holy water? And what was that