Secret Keeper (My Myth Trilogy - Book 2): Young Adult Fantasy Novel

by Jane Alvey Harris

  From the settling dust and debris the ancient limbs of Tree emerge, standing sentinel beside the cracked sidewalk across the parking lot. Slivered pieces of torn sky hang limp among Tree’s dying branches. Toad is nowhere in sight.

  Judge Dybbuk was telling the truth. We are in the Third Realm. Or at least, what’s left of it.

  And there’s Drake, hauling on the leashes, practically dragging Jacob, Aidan, and Claire behind him across the ruined skyscape and disappearing into the empty black mouth of the abandoned parking garage behind Tree. Wheezing and hissing, his crimbal chase across the empty lot after them.

  “Stop him!” My legs pound the pavement in pursuit. My maidens pace me step for step, but we aren’t fast enough. Darkness swallows up Dad, the kids, and the crimbal before any of us can weave to catch them.

  Clammy cold clings to us the second we enter the interior of the garage. A gangrenous stench clogs my nostrils, souring the breath in my heaving lungs.

  Evil cackles echo off the squat concrete pillars and thick half-walls. Something with sharper teeth than Time has gnawed pits and craters in the cement. Demonic shadows stretch along the cramped ceilings, gorging on the faint light creeping in from the entrance, seeking sightless for something to sink their fangs into.

  It’s as if the garage itself is sentient. Breathing.

  Teagan weaves a disc of Blaze in her hand, holding it up high. “Stay away from the shadows,” she whispers. “They bite.”

  “Show yourself, Drake.” My voice echoes boldly back at me from every direction. “You coward. Did you really run away from five maidens?”

  “Listen to yourself, Dear One.” Drake’s words repeat around the garage in a hollow sneer. “You would know about running away.”

  “You left them all alone,” Judge Dybbuk’s throaty cackle scrapes out from behind an unseen shadowed column, a drop of filth whose echoing splash fills an empty bucket. “Now they belong to him.”

  Furious power thrums in each of my cells. Chloe and Minali weave a barrier tight around us. Twist holds a katana in each hand, a thorn whip of Blaze coils at her hip. Teagan holds her light up high. Energy spirals through each of her seven chakras, ready to strike.

  With a glowing hot ribbon of Intention, I mimic Drake’s binding rune Isa, piercing the edges of Chloe and Minali’s shelter like a needle, stitching the two halves together.

  “Let go,” I murmur. “It will hold. Draw your weapons.”

  My maidens stand, four points of a compass surrounding me protectively, circling on adrenaline-tensed calves.

  A vile gust of winds scuffles debris across the ground at our feet, licking the boundary of our defense, testing the weave for weakness.

  Is it strong enough to withstand Drake?

  The walls inhale, sucking the last dim light into insidious lungs. Teagan’s Flame extends only to the edges of our shield. A massive blindness hammers beyond our barricade.

  The walls exhale…

  …no, not the walls… Eight thousand eyes open as one, reflecting Teagan’s light.

  Elegant, weird, long-legged movement disrupts the solid darkness along the perimeter as a host of spiders unfold their jointed limbs, lowering themselves from the web-covered walls.

  Light-devouring spiders.

  But that isn’t all.

  A horde of crimbal pours in from pitted holes in the concrete walls.

  We’re surrounded by all the worst we can imagine.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Three armored crimbal detach from the horde and advance, each wrangling a towering huntsman spider by a chain attached to a spike of Isa needled straight through one of their two arm-like pedipalps. My siblings’ bodies lie draped across the saddles cinched around the hairy bellies of the arachnid beasts, stiff and unmoving.

  All the blood drains from my face. My lips prickle painfully as I stare in horror at the three gargantuan spiders. Battle helms crown their heads, sheathing their mandibles in polished razor-sharp metal. They each have some sort of telescopic goggle affixed to their upper row of four wide-set compact eyes, while a single visor extends the length of their bottom row of narrow-set eyes, emitting a subtle glow.

  Spiders with night vision.

  Crude painted runes smear the exoskeletons of their thoraxes, and nail-studded leather bands wrap the seven spiny elements of their eight legs. Their steel-encased tarsal claws shred the concrete with every step they take.

  Their crimbal handlers halt about fifty paces out from us, spaced about thirty yards apart from each other.

  The handlers yank their monstrous mounts down so their spiny legs splay flat around them like crabs. Roughly, the goblins heave Jacob, Aidan, and Claire to the ground, and I reel internally like I’ve taken a direct punch to the gut as each of their lifeless bodies thump against the unforgiving cement.

  Flows of Drake’s Keen bind their arms to their sides and sew shut their mouths. As soon as the handlers stand them upright, intricate webs of incomprehensible knots loop around them, enclosing them in separate, vitreous cages.

  Immobilized within his prison, I see a tear escape the corner of Aidan’s eye.

  Oh, thank God. My heart nearly explodes with relief…he’s alive.

  Then I remember: Spiders.

  This isn’t my nightmare. It’s Aidan’s.

  He’s visited the Third Realm before, in a lucid dream. He started having them about the same time I started self-medicating…right after we received Dad’s release notice in the mail. When we arrived at the Vineyard, Aidan told me about traveling to a strange shadowed place in his dreams. He told me about Toad and the Tree he guarded, and about the abandoned parking garage. He recounted watching me stride out of the glade and across the empty lot straight to Toad. How when I knocked on his ‘Stay Away’ sign, Toad opened his mouth to reveal Princess Nissa, who gave me the weapons and said they represented Jacob, Aidan, and Claire: my Purpose. Aidan also saw Drake disguised in mist, climbing out of his box to set a trap of impossible choices for me; he told me how he called and called to me, but I didn’t answer because I couldn’t hear him.

  And now, Aidan’s deepest fears have returned him to the Third Realm, only this time he brought all of us with him, and now we’re trapped.

  The handlers wrench their beasts’ chains, hauling them back up to full height. Slow at first, then repeating faster and faster in some grotesque arachnid ritual, the spiders’ abdomens vibrate in synchronized bellows. Louder and louder their bellows repeat as they rear up on their six hind legs. Their front limbs contort until they’re nearly perpendicular to their swollen bodies before striking back at the ground, scraping boulder-sized chunks from the concrete while thrashing their heads side to side.

  From every direction a deafening battle cry reverberates as a legion of spindled spiny legs join the fray.

  “They’re starving, poor creatures,” Drake’s magic-amplified voice snakes out of the dark. “Quite a handful when they’re hungry, but I find them much more eager to hunt this way. Light and stone keep them strong and healthy, but what they thirst for is blood. Children’s blood, especially. So very pure.”

  Claire’s shoulders slump in her straightjacket of Keen, her body tipping back against the transparent wall of her cage. Her black lashes smudge against her ghost-pale skin.

  “I’m impressed with the progress you’ve made in Channeling, Dear One.” Drake’s disembodied whisper slithers sibilant through the gloom, sliding easily through Chloe and Minali’s weave. His pet name for me falls on my ear, a vile caress. “You’ve appropriated my rune to bind your adorable little shield…such a quick study. They do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But I’m afraid you’re in over your head.”

  From the black shadows at the furthest edge of the garage Drake glides, encircled by eerie unnatural light, his red lined cloak swirling around him. “How kind of you to summon me here, my son,” he says, approaching Aidan’s cage. “It’s nice to be back in what remains of my sanctuary. I think it’s hi
gh time your sister pays for the havoc she’s wreaked on all of our lives, don’t you? Haven’t you had enough of her selfishness, enough of her betrayal? Aren’t you tired of the way she always abandons you just when you need her most?”

  My eyes lock on Aidan’s. “No. Aidan,” I cry. “I was coming back, I swear, I would never leave you…”

  “I imagine that must be awfully tiring to hear over and over again,” Drake interrupts. He shakes his head sympathetically for Aidan. “But the truth is, she does little else except leave you, isn’t that right?”

  Aidan’s eyes slide away from mine.

  “I think it’s important for them to know the truth, Dear One, don’t you? Don’t you think it’s only fair that they know you’ve been playing on the beach while they wait and wonder if you’ve been hurt or killed or if you’re ever coming back?”

  Grainy and disjointed, a film begins to stream from an unseen projector, superimposed on the pitted walls of the abandoned garage. The wavering old-timey title reads: A Young Boy’s Worst Nightmare. The inconsistent crackle of the winding reels punctuates the raw footage of Aidan screaming soundlessly at the bottom of a sepia pit. Dirt and exposed roots absorb the pounding of his bloodied fists.

  I reach for my brother. Years elapse in the space of seconds as I shout myself hoarse, and though Aidan is just thirty yards away, he’s deaf and blind to me as the frantic film of his terror plays on.

  “Children, children,” Drake chides, “please pay close attention.”

  The film winds down. The spiders rake the cement in front of them. The crimbal clang their weapons together. But Drake, the Master of Twisted Ceremonies, raises his voice clearly above the din. “Dear One, since you are so determined to save your brothers and sister from me, I offer you a choice: you may choose one of your siblings to save.”

  No. He can’t do this.

  “Which will it be. Emily? Who will you save and who will you sacrifice?”

  Doom lacerates right through skin. My heart blanches, my blood is sludge, my muscles are leaden and useless. Thorns of insanity spike and strangle my nerve. I am paralyzed by panic.

  “Now, now, Claire, this is no time for a nap.” Drake pivots to face Claire, slinging a dart of Keen from the palm of his hand. “You’ll want to be awake for this part of the show.”

  The dart penetrates the cage, sinking into Claire’s neck just below her earlobe. Her eyes fly open but her mouth is stitched shut. She strains to turn her head side to side, her eyes searching, but she can’t move. She stares at me, pleading.

  “Perhaps you’ll choose your sweet little sister, Claire. She is, after all, the youngest and arguably the most vulnerable,” Drake muses. “Why, with her apricot hair and freckles, she’s the spitting image of you when you were younger. So innocent. So impressionable. So pliant.

  I sink to my knees, squeezing my eyes shut.

  “Or perhaps you’ll choose Jacob? You’ve always been so close, until recently. You could be close again. He has so much potential, doesn’t he, Emily? Think of all the wonderful things he could do in the world with that brilliant brain of his. It would be such a shame to watch him die.”

  “Get up, Emily.” Twist rams her foot into my thigh. “I’ve got a wall around Drake. It won’t hold very long.”

  “But my money’s on Aidan,” Drake’s words are rancid grease. “You’ve always had a soft spot for him, haven’t you, Ems? Oh, we’ve all seen the bond you share. He reminds you of yourself, doesn’t he? The same anxiousness, the same imagination, the same intuition. Why, if one knew what to look for, they might even notice he has the same delectable power that first attracted me to you.”

  I cower lower to the ground, covering my ears with my fists.

  “Get up, Emily.” Minali slaps my hands from my ears. “The cages are unraveling.”

  My eyes fly open. As Claire’s cage and binds unwind, she falls, slumping limp to the ground.

  “Minions. FEED.” Drake commands.

  A dervish of side-jointed legs blocks my view of my siblings. A thousand spiders cartwheel at them, bloodlust glinting in their double rows of murderous eyes.

  My hands and feet push me up off the ground, but as soon as I’m vertical, terror floods my mind, debilitating me.

  Aidan’s invisible cage is unraveling now. The second the binds dissolve from his arms and legs he’s in an all out sprint for Claire.

  He’ll never make it.

  Hopelessness eclipses me. I can’t pull the fabric of this ruined Realm down around us…what’s left of the ragged cloth would never conceal all of us. Hiding isn’t an option.

  A second and it will be over.

  Please, God, I pray. Help them. Please don’t let them suffer.

  Help them yourself, Shield Maiden.

  Obsidian! Please, help me. I don’t know what to do!

  What is your Purpose?

  To stop Drake from hurting the people I love, I answer automatically. But I can’t do this! I can’t choose between my brothers and sister!

  He has no Authority to make you choose, Shield Maiden. He has no Power.

  The truth in Obsidian’s Voice strikes a gong inside me, nearly knocking me off my feet.

  Drake is a master manipulator. He spews lies and intimidation, but it’s all farce. Just like his ridiculous threat to sue anyone who tries to take Jacob, Aidan, and Claire from him… He would never risk taking me to court, not in any Realm except the Third where he is in charge. There’s no jury in the world that would believe the word of a traitorous, deceitful, convicted felon over mine.

  This is a trap meant to crush my spirit, to deplete me so I’ll be too weak to stand up to him. A malicious ploy constructed from my greatest fears and my siblings’ worst nightmares. He’s placed his children in mortal danger to feed his own selfish needs.

  Rage seethes in my gut.

  What stands in the way of your Purpose, Shield Maiden?

  Only about a thousand crimbal and a horde of flesh-eating spiders.

  We will rip them limb from limb.

  The chaotic tumult recedes as the gears of Time slow. I am Emily Ava Alvey. There is no power greater than the Power in me.

  I fuse with the Spark at my center. Keen vaults my vision high above my body. From the apex of the garage, I survey the battlefield below.

  Lit by the tenuous flicker of Teagan’s flame, the darkly glowing infrared mesh of Chloe and Minali’s shield still holds, but we are insignificant specks within a cavernous space against overwhelming odds. Fifty paces away, Jacob stands stiff, still bound by Drake’s weave, while Aidan slow motion bolts for Claire. Spiders and crimbal charge, razing the distance between the people I love most and certain annihilation.

  Back into my body I fly.

  “Maidens,” my voice trembles quiet, just loud enough for my sisters to hear. “Merge.”

  Unthreading the needle of Isa from our shield I let it drop. Chloe, Teagan, Minali, and Twist stand straight up and take a collective step in toward me.

  We’ve only ever talked about this. I don’t know if it will work. But I’ll try every last outlandish idea until there are none left and still I’ll never give up.

  Cocooned at the epicenter of my Spark, infinite points of equidistant light stream endlessly outward in every direction. I open fully, expanding and dissolving in numberless simultaneous detonations, extending beyond my edges, the fulmination of a pricked balloon.

  The blast assimilates my maidens’ physical matter. On the verge of extinguishing, I flex inward—a rubber band at its furthest extension—absorbing my sisters’ energy.

  A cataclysm rages beneath my mutating skin. Our heartbeats converge…

  …we pulse once….

  …twice…

  …align along a common central axis…

  …amplifying exponentially…

  …increasing in overlapping orbs.

  Hands overhead

  I weave a needle of Isa

  Driving it straight through the vibrating constel
lation

  of our seven shared chakras.

  Third Eye open

  I compress our matter into

  a sphere of solid mass until…

  …sinking…

  …shrinking…

  …no space exists between us...

  …we are one…

  …we are many…

  I light the fuse

  A wink

  No sound

  A spreading ring of razor-sharp light

  Omnipresent we alight

  a flame of devastation

  realizing form a millisecond before vanishing

  reforming

  descending reborn upon another throng.

  A fist, we pound.

  A boot, we crush.

  A sickle, we raze monsters to less than pre-conception.

  Every fiend we touch no longer is…it never even was.

  A mad rumbling rolls the concrete beneath our feet. Cracks appear in the walls, raining showers of debris around us.

  Faster than lungs recycle air, extermination is complete. Remnants of shadow spawn litter the ground. Watery moonlight seeps in through the mouth of the garage.

  Pausing only for a wide-eyed moment to stare at the sudden emptiness surrounding them, Jacob and Aidan continue their rush toward Claire’s inert form.

  Exhausted, I collapse, drawing the spike of Isa up through my crown chakra.

  My sisters tumble from me, panting on the ground, triumph painting their sweat-damp faces.

  “Now that’s what I call WILD,” Teagan pants, peering up at me with one tawny cat-eye.

  I stand. Jacob and Aidan bend over Claire a hundred paces away.

  “Go on. They need you.” Twist smiles, her voice shaky. “We’re right behind you.”

  “Speak for yourself,” Minali says. “I’m passing out right here. For a week.”

  Muscles bolstered by the need to hold them, I sprint toward my siblings.

  He’s there…crouching in the shadow of a pillar as I race past.

  My legs forget how to move. I trip graceless, landing in a heap, breaking my fall with my hands.