SHANNA AND THE SECRET OF THE SCREAMING SERPENT

By Meriades Rai

“Is that it?” Madeleine Presley asked. “The… what did you call it?”

“The Mandragorgona Helix,” Shanna The She-Devil murmured, gazing out upon a scene that was, in truth, altogether unremarkable. “It takes its name from its guardians.”

“I don’t see any guardians.”

Shanna grimaced, then held up a small object between thumb and forefinger. “You will,” she said, quietly, absently turning the translucent, colorless gemstone in her grasp so that it caught the sunlight filtering down through the jungle canopy overhead. “Once we’ve unlocked the gateway. And this? This little treasure is the key…”

The two women crouched in the deep shadows of a gigantic fern on the edge of a circular clearing. The area was ringed with trees and undergrowth but the only notable feature within the circle’s perimeter was a nondescript obelisk of bluish-black stone, no more than four feet in height, surrounded by barren earth. The obelisk was listing and semi-submerged, and its surface was weathered and misshapen to beyond the point of ugliness. There were no lichens on the stone, however, just as there was no grass at the base. No life.

“Nothing grows here,” Shanna said. “You can’t feel anything – no vibrations, so sense of anything untoward – but the stone exudes some viral aura that won’t allow it to become overrun. Otherwise there’s nothing to suggest what an extraordinary site this truly is. That’s why no-one can find it simply by looking for it… and why some people would torture and kill to discern its location.”

Madeleine glanced at her companion, noting the dark fury that settled over the other woman’s expression. Shanna was so angry, so bitter. With good reason, yes, but Madeleine couldn’t help but wonder how different she’d been a year ago, before… well, before her husband had seemingly died at the hands of the Red Priestess, a witch who’d been so determined to discover the secret of this very place.

Seemingly died. That’s how Shanna would have phrased it. Doctor Presley was convinced that Kevin Plunder, otherwise known as Ka-Zar, was still alive. Shanna was evidently willing to go to great lengths to learn if this was true.

“Stay hidden,” The She-Devil said, gathering her weapons and preparing to move forward, out into the open. “If the guardians allow us passage then you can follow me. If they don’t, it’s best they think I’m alone.”

Madeleine studied Shanna’s arsenal, her complexion wan. The She-Devil was carrying her double-bladed knife, with two greenish-black scale spokes extending in opposite directions from a central grip, but she was also laden with a shoulder-strap buckled with two more knives and a spear, slung about her lithe body and clasped to the throat and waist of her leopardskin garb. “If the guardians allow us?” she repeated. “You’re expecting trouble?”

Shanna smiled coldly. “I live in a world populated by prehistoric flesh-eaters,” she muttered. “Any day a person doesn’t expect trouble is the day they end up a lizard’s lunch…”

Shanna stepped out into the clearing. She crossed to the obelisk with careful tread, then reached out and touched the colorless gemstone in her palm to the coarse, black stone. For a moment there was no reaction. But then –

Madeleine gasped, the shock of what now transpired before her eyes like a physical blow. Suddenly the black obelisk was glowing a hot, electric blue, like a lightning strike in the middle of an ocean storm, and the air about it was instantly alive with crackling sigils, cavorting and rippling, swirling faster and faster until each intricate pattern of symbols was knotted into a singular whorl, with a cerulean-blue-tinged darkness at the heart of it. There was a howling on the air, but it wasn’t caused by the whirl of light – it emanated from the three creatures that now manifested on the outer current of the eddy, each wailing in unholy chorus.

Three sisters of nightmare, each with the upper torso of a naked female but the lower body of a serpent and with writhing snakes for hair, each with flesh and scales the mottled blue-gray of week-old corpses given over to Rigor Mortis, each with reptilian eyes and forked tongues, and reaching fingers clawed with ten-inch talons.

The guardians. The Mandragorgona. It was all Madeleine could do not to scream and run right there.

“Who awakens us?” the sisters asked in unison, their voices of varying pitch but somehow harmonized to create a sickly sweet, sibilant croon. “Who trespasses upon the Mandragorgona Helix?”

Shanna flexed her wrist and the twin blades of her dagger flashed with reflected blue light.

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll remember me,” she said, softly. “I’m Shanna The She-Devil. And I’m the one who trapped you here.”

It was at this point that Madeleine Presley began to suspect that Shanna hadn’t told her everything about their present situation…

The man named Drewitt was preoccupied – with the pain coursing through his right arm, due to his wounded and infected hand, and with feverish visions of the revenge he planned to inflict upon the savage witch who’d reduced him to such a state. He was also dwelling, with regret, on the fact that he hadn’t simply killed Madeleine Presley somewhere out in the South Pacific rather than airlifting her to the Savage Land by plane. The thing was, there were the fringe benefits to visiting the hidden jungle, weren’t there? He and his cronies hadn’t ventured into hostile territory just for the sake of a dramatic backdrop to kill some posh English sort who fancied herself as the great white explorer; that was just icing, a nice little earner on the side. The real reason Drewitt had flown out here, and why he’d visited the Savage Land six times in the space of the last ten months, was –

Drewitt saw the dark shape rise up alongside him a split second before he heard the snarl in the back of the creature’s throat, and noted the blood red eyes and the slathering fangs inches from his face. He didn’t even have time to lift his rifle, let alone aim it.

That was the problem with not being focused on the task at hand. You ended up dead.

Or… not?

“Leave him. He may be… useful to me.”

Drewitt thought the voice might be female but he couldn’t be sure. It was distorted, like it belonged to someone speaking through a mouthful of melon, but it was also deep and laced with a slight echo, giving it a disquietingly unreal quality.

Drewitt turned, slowly. The creature that had been about to devour his skull in one bite – and the size of its maw left him in no doubt that this would have been possible – was some manner of wolf, a wolf twice the size of the standard variety and seemingly comfortable standing on its hind legs, like a human. It was poised and quivering, but it wasn’t attacking. Drewitt kept turning.

Behind the dire wolf there stood another figure. Tall, slender and crooked, with a feminine curve to the body, garbed in filthy red robes and with the remnants of some kind of headdress about her long, black hair and the all-but-fleshless cast of her face. What looked like ants swarmed about the ghoul’s ruined eyes and mouth.

No wonder she couldn’t talk properly, Drewitt reasoned, in perhaps his last moment of lucidity before he tipped over the edge into madness.

Ezlenza, the undead Red Priestess, smiled.

“Yes,” she gurgled. “Useful, both of you. And I know exactly what to do with you…”

The animal with the golden fur padded carefully along the narrow trail that meandered, hidden, through the denser undergrowth of the valley. Let the two-legs in their many and varied guises plough the more common thoroughfares of the jungle, thus exposing themselves to the dangers of the giant predators that roamed these areas; thiscreature, he preferred the more clandestine routes on offer. They were safer – no spears through the haunch to concern him, nor enormous jaws suddenly descending to close about his throat with a conclusive snap – and they were quicker. Which was important, of course.

The golden cat knew that time was of the essence. Shanna needed him.

And sabertooths were loyal unto the end…

The three sisters screamed as one.

“The She-Devil! She returns! She returns!”

Shanna looked on grimly as the serpent women slithered towards her, their threatening intent all too plain – but she stood her ground, neglecting even to brandish her double-bladed dagger. Instead she raised the hand that clasped the translucent jewel once more, and it was this that gave the sisters pause just as the reached the shimmering periphery of the Mandragorgona Helix’s aura.

“You know the deal,” Shanna declared, her eyes narrowed. “Make a move on me and I destroy the keystone – and you three go with it.”

“As does the Helix,” the Mandragorgona hissed, each of them swaying independently to some unheard musical strand yet together adhering to an eerie, overall symphony. “To risk so much in summoning us, your dependence upon the portal is evident. You would sacrifice your own need to see us perish?”

“Well, If the alternative is to stand back and let you sibilate me to death instead…”

The sisters regarded Shanna hatefully, sly intelligence gleaming in their slatted eyes. In each instance their mane of snakes writhed like living crowns of scale and poison.

“An impasse, then.”

Shanna scowled. “A negotiation, actually.”

“Your terms, feral dog?”

“Well, you can stop calling me names for a start.”

The Mandragorgona danced in agitation. It was obvious how much they wanted to kill this woman who stood before them, so brazen and insolent, but Shanna met their murderous glares with icy deportment. Watching, wide-eyed, from the edge of the clearing, Madeleine Presley couldn’t help but feel a twinge of admiration. She’d always considered herself a tough cookie – she’d even been prepared to tell that bastard Drewitt to go to hell whilst staring down the barrel of a rifle – but this? This was something else entirely.

Shanna The She-Devil looked each of the three sisters in the eye in turn, then relaxed her hand and allowed the shining gemstone to glitter openly in her palm.

“My terms, then,” she said. “Grant me safe passage… and I’ll give you what you’ve always wanted. I’ll set you free.”

The sisters shivered in something like delight. It made Madeleine feel quite sick.

“Free,” the Mandragorgona crooned. “Free again!”

“Yes,” said Shanna, impatiently. “If you can save your little happy serpent dance for later, I’m in rather a hurry. Do we have a deal?”

The sisters swooned together, their lower bodies entwining lovingly about one another and their serpent crowns alive in a frenzy of delight.

“A deal, She-Devil,” they sang. “After the torment of eternal captivity… freedom for the Mandragorgona!”

Shanna rolled the jewel across her knuckles like a magician with a gold coin, and in that moment her expression darkened, as if she were having second thoughts. Then she sighed. “Ah, well,” she murmured. “I always suspected I’d be doing this one day. I just never anticipated why…”

And then she tossed the keystone into the cerulean whorl, an act of seemingly careless abandon but one which generated a result every bit as dynamic as when Shanna had activated the obelisk – for this time the crackling electric blue surged outward, through the Helix and the Mandragorgona sisters and further on to the edges of the clearing where sparks fell like hot hail upon the plants and earth with smoke and sizzle, causing Madeleine to yelp and scoot backwards from her hiding place. Ahead of her, Shanna also flinched as embers licked at her bare arms and legs like fiery tongues, singing the flesh. But she didn’t retreat.

Not when the Mandragorgona, released from their magical internment as promised, were now arrayed before her, rearing back on their serpentine coils and regarding the human in their shadow with pure malice.

Madeleine looked on in horror, barely able to breathe…

…and then a hand fell on her shoulder, and another curled about her mouth in the split second before she could scream.

“No shriek. No shriek! Eisha, Eisha. It hurt I ears.”

Madeleine heard the familiarity in the urgent whisper at her shoulder, its mangled grasp of English and its strange, braying inflection. She looked down and saw that the hands grasping her were misshapen, with a hard, cloven texture to them, and that they belonged to arms patterned with a distinctive black and white stripe to the fur.

Martyllr’kaedr the equ’quagga. Or, less exotically, Marty the zebra-man. Madeleine rolled her eyes and pushed the invasive hand away from her mouth.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped. “I heard Shanna tell you not to follow us, but here you are, and – ”

“We get clear,” Marty interrupted, as Madeleine wriggled free of his grip and turned to glare into his deep brown eyes. “There be fighting now.”

“But… they made a deal. They said – ”

“You know story of scorpion and fox?”

Madeleine blinked. “What?”

“It human fable. Shanna tell. Back in days before she sad, she tell many stories. I like.”

Madeleine glanced back at the clearing where Shanna and the three snake women were still facing one another in some tense, silent standoff.

“I think I know the one,” she said, slowly. “There’s a scorpion and a fox trapped by a forest fire, and the only way to escape is across a wide river. But the scorpion can’t swim, so he pleads with the fox to carry him across on his head. The fox refuses, saying that the scorpion will sting him, because that’s his nature – but the scorpion promises he won’t. The fire’s getting closer. Eventually, reluctantly, the fox agrees. He lets the scorpion climb onto his head and sets off across the river. Tragically, halfway across, the scorpion stings the fox between the eyes. Dying, the fox is bewildered. Why did the scorpion do it, he asks, when it’s obvious that they’d both drown? I couldn’t help it, the scorpion replies. Like you said. It’s just my nature.”

Marty stared at Madeleine Presley, then grinned, his buck teeth spilling out of his snout. “Sweet,” he said. “You tell story even better than Shanna!”

Madeleine grimaced, eyeing the Mandragorgona in dismay. “They’re not going to honor the bargain, are they?”

“The snakes? No, they not stingers.”

Madeleine frowned. Then she saw the three sisters finally begin to slither apart, grudgingly allowing Shanna to pass between them. The glittering whorl of the Helix was now open; Shanna could cross the mystic threshold any time she wanted. Squaring her shoulders, she stepped forward… and then, in the blink of an eye, she whirled to one side and then the other, lashing out with her double-bladed dagger and disemboweling the first of the Mandragorgona on her right before delivering a similarly deep but less lethal cut to the sister on her left.

Madeleine gasped. Marty raised a bushy eyebrow.

“It Shanna,” he said, his voice somber. “She the one who can’t help sting…” Two of the serpent women fell back in momentary astonishment as they watched their sister fall, the coils of greenish-black intestines that spilled wetly from the gaping lesion in her abdomen not unlike the nest of snakes that clustered about her scalp. The dying creature wailed pitifully, her head thrown back and her arms thrashing uselessly at her lower half, but then she collapsed, twitching, in a dark pool of her own blood.

Shanna pursued the second of the Mandragorgona in a singular, murderous mind, slashing again at the same spot where she’d already inflicted injury, but again her enemy somehow managed to slither clear of a fatal blow. As it was, however, the humid jungle air was hazy with the snake woman’s blood and her pain was enough to drive her further back, almost into the spiral heart of the Helix. The creature screamed, apparently more terrified of this fate than of Shanna’s blade.

“Killer!” the third of the Mandragorgona screeched, lunging forward and grappling Shanna about the neck and shoulders. “Betrayer!”

The She-Devil offered no further verbal riposte, concentrating instead of slipping free of her foe’s stranglehold before she could tighten her serpentine body about her and crush the life from her bones. She twisted at the hips, shifting her balance expertly from one side to the other, then suddenly ducked and thrust forward, dragging her weapon behind her in a back-handed slice that opened the Mandragorgona’s chest in a clean slash between her breasts, from gullet to throat.

Brackish blood gushed in a tide and the snake woman recoiled, screaming. As she withdrew, however, she snatched at Shanna’s hair with a clawed hand and pulled, dragging the savage off her feet and through the air. A thickly scaled tail then swept up and clubbed the She-Devil in the stomach, driving the air for her gut and lungs and sending her spinning – into the waiting grasp of the other living Mandragorgona.

A shrieking face dipped, and a wide jaw distended still further, revealing a rack of wickedly sharpened fangs. Shanna bent backwards until her spine protested, but her enemy was too quick. The fangs sank into her left forearm a heartbeat before they closed about her face, Shanna managing to bring her arm up to protect herself with one final, desperate twist.

There was blood and there was pain.

Shanna cursed, but she didn’t despair. She’d known worse – this was the same arm that a dire wolf had bitten into the previous night, for a start. And besides, this all-or-nothing strike, fueled by hate, had left the wounded Mandragorgona exposed.

Shanna struck a truly savage blow with her dagger, plunging one blade deep into the snake woman’s right temple at such an angle and with such force that the sharpened scale then re-emerged at pace through the other side of the creature’s foreskull, lacerating much of the frontal lobe as it passed. Shanna then flexed her wrist and curled her blade in corkscrew fashion, ripping the near edge out through the Mandragorgona’s eyes and slicing off much of her face, revealing the damaged brain beneath. The cut of the weapon then reversed, and the posterior blade stabbed swiftly into that open cerebellum, all the way to the back of the fiend’s snake-laced skull.

The creature was dead before it even realized what had happened – a mercy, Shanna would have proposed, that it didn’t deserve.

The Mandragorgona fell and Shanna staggered away from it, immediately turning her attention to her forearm. With clinical application she cleaned her blade of snake blood on the hip of her leopardskin and then delivered two precise cuts to her own flesh, one of either side of the puncture wounds on the upper side of her forearm, approximately three inches from her elbow. Ignoring the blood and pain she then sliced diagonally between the two circular wounds – already beginning to superficially darken with the spread of decay – and, with two deft flicks of her blade’s tip, she diced away the directly infected area.

Mandragorgona toxin was deadly. Knowing that she’d likely be facing the beasts in battle, Shanna had imbibed an anti-venom concoction specific to that toxin earlier that day, else no amount of quick scalpel work would have saved her as the poison entered her bloodstream. Accelerated necrosis, however, was another matter, and unless treated instantly it resulted in the need for amputation; by damming the infection of her flesh she’d probably just saved her arm.

The time it cost her, however, left her open to attack from the final Mandragorgona.

The snake woman lunged. Shanna again thought briefly of her other recent battle, with the dire wolves up on the mountain; there, Zabu had come to her rescue at the last moment. She’d receive no such aid here. It was all down to her. She wondered if, before meeting Madeleine Presley, whether she would have unconsciously accepted death… but not now.

She still didn’t believe that Kevin was alive, but the world be damned if she was going to perish before she learned the truth.

The Mandragorgona slammed into Shanna’s back, pitching her forward onto her bloodied arm, but due to her drifting her shoulders at the last instant she saved herself from another bite. She then rolled as she hit the ground and sprang to her feet, facing back in the snake woman’s direction, her double-bladed dagger brandished at chest-height and ready for her enemy’s next attack.

The Mandragorgona feinted, undulating on its serpentine tail, then pounced again – but Shanna read its ploy and countered accordingly, slipping beneath the creature’s attack and lashing out again at the lower throat area where the Mandragorgona was already wounded. This time her strike was perfectly judged, the strength of her blade and the muscle behind it enough to sever mottled gray scaleskin and bone beyond…

…and to decapitate the snake woman with one thrust.

The Mandragorgona head spun through the air and landed with a clump on the edge of the clearing, not far from where Madeleine Presley and Marty were cowering together. Shanna stalked across, cradling her injured arm, and reached down to grab a fistful of dying snakes. She lifted the head, exposing a stricken face of wide eyes and slack jaw.

“Should’ve just done that the first time we met,” the She-Devil snarled. “It was Kevin’s idea to show you mercy. But he’s not here at the moment. It’s just me. And now we do things my way.”

Shanna cast the head aside then, and sank to her knees. Madeleine and Marty cautiously pushed through a curtain of ferns and approached. Shanna’s expression made it obvious that she’d no wish to discuss what had just occurred and the doctor saw it well enough, but she just couldn’t help herself.

“I don’t understand,” Madeleine said. “Why renege on the deal you made? They were letting you pass…”

Shanna stared up at the English woman through the fringe of her hair, her eyes dark. Then, she sighed. “When the Nuwali left the Savage Land, they camouflaged the Helix with an aura of illusion,” she explained, “but they also installed guardians, should that aura ever be breached. The Mandragorgona were content enough in their duties until a few years ago, when the illusion was accidentally disturbed for the first time during a minor earthquake. When the Mandragorgona realized what riches lay beyond the Helix in the Savage Land they were prepared to abandon their post so they might feed. They’re carnivores, you see, as dangerous as any raptor, and if allowed the freedom of the jungle they would have delighted in wholesale bloodshed. As I said, I was in favor of killing them outright. But Kevin disagreed. So we reached a compromise.

“We used the keystone – a shard of the obelisk, the physical manifestation of the Nuwali’s illusion – to bind the Mandragorgona to the Helix, so that they could never be free until that key was returned to the whole. In returning here today I knew the sisters would either agree to my request – thinking that, liberated from their prison, they’d be able to indulge their hungers first and then later track me and kill me at their leisure – or that they’d break the deal and attack me outright. I’d already made my decision to get my attack in first.”

Doctor Presley regarded the She-Devil warily, saying nothing. Grimacing at the pain of her arm, Shanna met the other woman’s gaze with conviction.

“If you have something to say,” she murmured, “now’s the time.”

Madeleine breathed deeply. “You’re just… different, that’s all,” she said. “To what I was expecting. Whenever Kevin spoke of you it was as a kindly soul, unenamored with civilization but certainly not…”

“Bloodthirsty?” Shanna glowered. “Believe me, doctor, watching your husband die in you arms can change a person.”

And I still don’t believe he’s alive, she might have added. I’m just going through with this to prove it, and so I don’t have to spend the rest of my days wondering.

But she said nothing more, at least not this subject. Instead she turned to look at the shimmering blue whorl of the Helix, and was about to dictate what their next act would be as a group when there was a sudden commotion in the undergrowth away to their right. Shanna, Madeleine and Marty all turned to witness an unexpected arrival – a handsome, golden sabertooth with bright agate eyes – and their expressions all registered identical amazement.

“Oh,” said Shanna, uneasily. “Oh, now, this isn’t good…”

Zabu’s awakening was a rude one, what with being clubbed viciously about the snout by his lady tiger. He blinked, opening his mouth to roar, but then he saw his partner’s face and thought better of it.

What? What did I do?

The female sabertooth hissed in reply. Zabu still didn’t know what he’d done but he knew enough to be sorry for whatever it was. He was, after all, male. He blinked some more and then climbed warily to his feet and looked around. What was the problem here? He’d hunted, he hadn’t soiled himself in his sleep after drinking too much fermented pomegranate juice, he’d managed to be sincere when admonishing the cubs the previous night for their over-excitement following Shanna’s visit, he’d –

….wait.

Zabu looked at the cubs peeking out sheepishly from behind their mother’s legs. Or, to be more precise, he counted them.

One, two, three, four.

He counted twice, just be sure. Four was not five. It was one short.

Zabu closed his eyes and sighed.

Oh. Oh, now, this wasn’t good…

NEXT ISSUE: Be here next month as Shanna, Madeleine, Marty and an unexpected fourth companion take their leave of the Savage Land and find more than they bargained for in Prague, whilst the Red Priestess weaves her diabolical magic to horrifying effect – and the secrets behind the man named Drewitt’s visits to the jungle are revealed!

If you have any comments on this story you’d like to pass on, please feel free to email the author at ameriades@hotmail.com . Hope you enjoyed chapter four!