For a moment it seemed that my hand would become trapped in the fluid, which had the substance of craft glue. Then I put some will and some force behind it, and my hand passed easily through the wall, and the rest of me with it.
Nathaniel grabbed my other hand before I disappeared, and J.B. lunged for Nathaniel. All four of us slipped easily through the wall, which wasn’t really there at all.
I wished we had stayed put.
“So that’s a reptile-mammalian thing,” Beezle said. “It’s certainly…large.”
We were in a massive cavern, similar to the one where the nephilim had been imprisoned in the Forbidden Lands. At the far end of the cavern, blessedly away from us, was a gigantic creature coiled in a ball, sleeping. It had roughly the body shape of a lizard, the diamond-shaped head of a snake, and its body was covered in shaggy fur like a woolly mammoth.
Between us and the monster were piles of bones. Piles and piles and piles of bones, stacked higher than I would have thought possible.
“How long has that thing been here?” I breathed.
“It must have eaten everything that’s ever come through the passage for thousands of years,” Beezle said.
“Where’s Chloe?” J.B. said, squinting. “Are those bones?”
“I’m going to be so happy when you get your glasses back,” I said.
“There,” Nathaniel said, pointing toward the ceiling.
Three human-shaped cocoons hung there, suspended by thin strands of webbing. All three cocoons were wiggling, indicating that the person inside was still alive and trying to get out.
“I told you that once there was viscous fluid, there would be a cocoon,” Beezle said triumphantly. “Although I’ll tell you that I don’t want to know where it gets the thread for the cocoons from. That thing is already weird enough as it is.”
“Where did the other two come from?” I asked.
“It’s Jude and Samiel,” Nathaniel said. “Can’t you hear Jude?”
Now that he mentioned it, I could. The wolf’s voice was muffled by the webbing, but it was definitely him.
Chloe, Samiel and Jude were directly above the sleeping whatever-it-was. The monster didn’t seem to have been disturbed by our presence or our whispers, but that couldn’t possibly last.
“Well, at least we’re all together again,” I said. “I think the only option is for the two of you to fly up and cut them down. Then bring them back here and I’ll cut the cocoon off so we can get out of here.”
They nodded, and I bit my lip as I watched them fly away from me. I wanted my wings back. I was tired of watching everyone else do things I ought to be doing. I was tired of being carted around like a child when I could have been flying.
J.B. and Nathaniel had a quick, quiet conference as they reached the cocoons. Beneath them, the monster shifted in its sleep, grunting and snorting, and we all went still.
The creature didn’t seem like it was waking, so J.B. positioned himself next to one of the cocoons. Nathaniel cut the thread with his sword and J.B. caught the person easily. I saw his mouth move, reassuring whoever it was, and he flew toward me.
Nathaniel was right behind him. He stopped only for a moment to whisper something to the person who remained.
J.B. landed just ahead of Nathaniel. “It’s Samiel,” he said, laying my cocooned brother-in-law on the ground. Samiel was contorting inside the web.
Nathaniel put another person next to him. “Jude,” he said briefly, and went back for Chloe.
I bent close to Samiel. “Samiel, you have to lie still for a minute. I’m going to cut you out, and I don’t want to cut you.”
He stopped moving. I placed the blade at his shoulder and carefully used the tip to lift away the tightly wound thread. Then I sliced through on a diagonal from his shoulder to his hip, and hoped I missed all the major arteries.
Once I’d loosened the thread, Samiel burst out of the cocoon like the Hulk bursting out of his clothing. He looked wildly around, and J.B. grabbed Samiel before he could go tearing through the cavern. He made Samiel look at his face.
“Nathaniel’s getting Chloe,” J.B. said.
I repeated the procedure with Jude, who looked very annoyed once he emerged.
“Never even heard it coming,” Jude said. “I think it only makes noise if it wants to.”
“Uh, yeah, I think so,” Beezle said, and pointed.
We all turned. Nathaniel was hanging in midair, his wings flapping just enough to keep him there. He held Chloe in his arms, and she was deathly still. Very likely she had fainted inside the cocoon, which was a mercy given her intense claustrophobia.
The reptile-mammal thing had silently risen from its sleep and drawn its head level with Nathaniel. It watched the angel and his cargo with orange-yellow eyes, the pupils slit like a snake’s. Its mouth hung open, full of shiny fangs. Those fangs were only a few feet away from Nathaniel and Chloe. The monster and Nathaniel were both frozen in space, staring each other down. It was almost as if they were silently communicating.
“Get out,” I said to the others.
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Beezle said, lifting off from my shoulder.
“No,” J.B. said, his voice strained as he struggled to hold Samiel in place. Samiel had gone wild as soon as he’d seen Nathaniel and Chloe so close to the monster’s head. “We all stay together.”
“Yeah,” Jude said. “Whatever you do, we’re in for it, too.”
“I was going to distract the monster so that Nathaniel and Chloe could get away, and then I was going to run down the passage,” I said.
“We’re not trying to kill it?” Beezle asked, hovering in the air next to me.
“I’m not going to try to kill anything that big or that old without magic,” I said. “Besides, I don’t need it to be dead. I just need for us to get away.”
“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, over here!”
Jude and J.B. shouted as well. Jude even picked up a heavy bone that looked like a human femur and tossed it in the direction of the creature.
Neither the monster nor Nathaniel moved. I was again struck by the sense that they were somehow communicating. Or that Nathaniel was being…
“Hypnotized,” I said.
“Non sequitur,” Beezle said. “We’re trying to distract the monster here.”
“We can’t distract it, because the monster is trying to hypnotize Nathaniel,” I said.
Samiel broke free of J.B.’s grasp, which was inevitable. Samiel was amazingly strong, stronger than most supernaturals.
However, Jude was amazingly fast and grabbed Samiel’s ankle, pulling him back to the ground as Samiel tried to fly to Chloe.
Jude punched him in the face.
“Quit it,” Jude growled. “Do you want to get her back, or do you want her to be eaten?”
I want her back, Samiel said, and then he swung at Jude. The wolf was more than prepared, and grabbed Samiel’s fist.
“Then stop and think,” Jude said. “Or at least do what Maddy thinks.”
What the hell does she know? Samiel signed. She makes it up as she goes along, and the person she loved got stabbed to death. I don’t think Maddy is the best person to decide how to save Chloe.
I turned away from them. I didn’t want to see what else Samiel might say, what other truths he might reveal in the heat of anger. It wasn’t the time for hurt feelings. But it did hurt. I’d always thought Samiel loved me unconditionally, that he didn’t blame me for Gabriel’s death. I guess it just proved that, as everyone kept telling me, I needed to stop taking people at face value. I was the only person I knew who wasn’t any good at deception.
While all this was happening Nathaniel and the monster remained locked in their silent communion.
“Why is it taking so long?” I wondered aloud.
“Nathaniel’s resisting,” Beezle said. “That’s pretty impressive, considering he’s got no magic right now.”
“How can you tell?”
“If he wasn�
��t resisting, then it would be over by now. And since the monster wasn’t responding to us, it must be unable to get out of the spell until its victim is hypnotized,” Beezle said.
I looked at the monster, then at Nathaniel and Chloe, and I had an idea. “Are you willing to bet my life on that theory?”
Beezle looked uncertain, an expression I’d hardly ever seen on his face. “Why? What are you going to do?”
“J.B.,” I said. “Can you put me on top of the monster’s head?”
14
“NO, I CANNOT,” J.B. SAID.
“Cannot or will not?”
“It’s the same damn thing,” he said. “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to let you do whatever you’re thinking of doing.”
“I want you to fly me up to the top of the monster’s head and drop me there, and then I’ll stab it through the eye,” I said.
“And now that I know your plan, I am definitely not helping,” J.B. said.
“I thought you weren’t going to kill it,” Beezle said.
“That was when I thought it was distractible,” I said. “It’s not, so I’m going to kill it. Or at least injure it horribly enough that it won’t be able to chase after us. And if you don’t fly me up there, Jacob Benjamin Bennett, I will climb up to the top of the monster’s head from its tail, and you can stand there and watch me.”
“She threw down the middle name,” Beezle said.
“You’d do it, too, just to piss me off,” J.B. said.
“No one else has a better idea. You’ve got the wings; I’ve got the sword.”
“It’s a goddamned freaking miracle you’ve survived this long,” J.B. said, and he scooped me up.
“Keep Samiel here,” I said to Jude.
“No problem,” he said. He had wrapped his arms around Samiel’s and was holding the furious angel still.
“I think I’ll just stay here and keep score,” Beezle said.
“You do that,” I said. “Everyone be ready to run.”
J.B. held me close to him as we flew. I was tense in his arms, preparing for the moment when he dropped me. I wasn’t completely convinced that the monster would be able to ignore my presence once I landed on its head, and I wanted to be able to stab it and get out of there as quickly as possible.
“Once you drop me, circle around and wait close to the ceiling,” I said.
“Like I’m going to leave you there alone,” J.B. said. “Don’t be stupid.”
“You don’t have a sword,” I said. “What are you going to do?”
“Make sure you don’t get tossed into a wall when the creature goes berserk after you stab it,” J.B. said. “I agreed to this insane plan, but I am not leaving you alone there, so forget it.”
We were above the monster long before I was ready. It hadn’t seemed to notice us flying directly toward it. As Beezle had noted, all of the creature’s energy was focused on Nathaniel.
The angel hadn’t registered our presence, either. His face was red from the exertion of trying to resist the creature’s spell, but he was resisting. Now that we were close, I could see the spark of fury in his eyes.
J.B. straightened so that it looked like we were standing in the air, and very gently lowered us toward the monster’s head. The creature’s fur was matted and filthy, and it smelled like it had been rolling in meat for the last hundred years.
I have a sensitive stomach, and pregnancy did not help. My first deep breath of the monster made me gag.
“If you puke on me, I’m going to drop you on the monster and leave you there,” J.B. said.
“Your shirt already has blood on it,” I said, breathing shallowly and trying to suppress the urge to vomit. “What’s the difference?”
“Blood is cool and manly. Puke just makes you look like a loser,” J.B. said.
It was astounding that we were this close to the creature’s head and that it wasn’t trying to swat us away. Or wrap us up in silk. Or gobble us in midair. It was really that absorbed with Nathaniel.
My boots touched the monster’s head. J.B. stayed aloft, his hands under my shoulders ready to lift me away if the monster made any indication that it noticed I was there.
It didn’t move.
“Just stay right there,” I whispered to J.B.
“I told you, I’m staying with you,” he said.
“Then don’t put your feet down,” I said. “Just fly close to me so you can scoop me up if anything goes wrong.”
J.B. had placed me on the broadest part of the creature’s diamond-shaped head. Its eyes were set on each side, close to its snout and under a prominent brow ridge like a snake’s. To sink the sword deep enough, I’d have to kneel close on the ridge and stick the sword into the eye with my arms over the edge.
I proceeded carefully across toward the creature’s right eye. J.B.’s wings made a little current of air behind me.
I knelt above the reptile-mammalian thing’s eye and drew my sword. I lowered it until the tip hovered above the slit pupil.
Still the monster did not move.
I plunged the sword into its eye with all the strength I had.
Several things happened at once. The monster howled, thrashing its head, its cries so deep and strong that the cavern rumbled. Rock cracked and fell from the ceiling.
Nathaniel shot toward the exit with Chloe in his arms.
I held on tight to the hilt of the sword as the creature shook its head back and forth. My grip on the handle was the only thing keeping me from getting tossed into a wall as J.B had predicted.
I pushed harder with the sword, trying to do as much damage as I could. Fluid gushed out of the monster’s eye and over my hands.
And then I started to scream. And scream. And scream. The stuff that was pouring from the monster’s eye was burning my skin, burning through it, into the muscle and bone beneath.
J.B. grabbed me, pulled me away. My hands were bound to the sword now, the acid melding my palms to the hilt. I couldn’t let it go even if I wanted to.
The creature bellowed as the blade slid out of its eye, tearing nerves as it went. J.B. was forced to carry me in front of him, the sword still before me like I’d just drawn it from Arthur’s mystical stone.
Nathaniel had deposited Chloe with Samiel and Jude and flown back to help J.B. The angel grabbed my legs and the two of them carried me through the air like I was on a stretcher. I barely registered Nathaniel’s presence or the screeching of the monster. The reptile-mammalian thing was now knocking over piles of bones as it tossed its head and lashed its tail.
The crash of bones was tremendous, like a rock slide, and I had just enough sense left to realize that the bones were just as much of a danger.
“Get everyone out of here,” I said through gritted teeth.
“They are already moving down the passage,” Nathaniel said.
“We will be right behind them.”
Somehow the two of them got us out of the cave without being crushed by rocks, bones, or reptile-mammalian thrashing. The cries of the monster receded as they hurried down the passage to catch up to the others.
My eyes were blurred with pain. The burning was going right down inside me, deeper and deeper, scorching every cell it touched. Nothing had ever hurt so much. I whimpered.
“Gods above and below,” Beezle said, but his voice sounded like it was very far away. “What did you do to yourself now?”
“I have no way of healing her until we get out of this thrice-forsaken cavern,” Nathaniel said.
Chloe said something then, and Jude, but it was watery in my ears. They were conferring, trying to determine the best way to get out.
“Just keep going forward,” I slurred, but none of them seemed to hear me.
And then everything was quiet, and black.
I woke to the feeling of cold rock beneath my cheek. I was curled like a baby on a wide flat stone, and the wind whipped my hair into my face. My sword was gone, and my hands no longer burned. I sat up and looked around.
<
br /> I was alone, and a vast expanse of white sand stretched in every direction. There was nothing for the eye to see except that unbreaking, unyielding ocean of white.
“What now? Another trick?” I said. “J.B.? Nathaniel?”
“You won’t find them here,” a voice said behind me.
I scrambled to my feet and spun around, wishing to all the gods that ever were or would be that I had my powers at that moment, because Evangeline stood there.
Evangeline, my many-greats-grandmother, the consort of Lucifer, also known as the crazy bitch who’d possessed me and tried to use me as the instrument of her revenge.
“What are you doing here?” I asked warily.
“I should ask you that question,” Evangeline said, and her smile was crafty. Her black hair danced in the wind like contorting snakes. She wore a simple gown of gray, and she looked young and fresh again, the way she had when Lucifer had first fallen in love with her.
“Death agrees with you,” I said, avoiding her leading comment.
I quickly realized that I was not in Titania’s realm anymore. Or maybe my body was, but my mind and spirit had taken a walk. I wasn’t about to give Evangeline the advantage by letting her know that I had no idea how or where I was.
“Yes, it does,” Evangeline said. “You could probably be improved by death.”
“Death doesn’t seem to stick that well on me,” I said. “You should have thought of that before you let Ramuell tear out my heart.”
“Like your grandfather,” she said. “Always thinking the rules don’t apply to you.”
“So far, they don’t,” I said. “You seem to have suffered the fate of the ordinary, though.”
Evangeline narrowed her green eyes at me. “I have never been ordinary to Lucifer. He has defied space and time for me, the most sacred laws of the universe.”
I remembered something Puck had said when Lucifer and Puck had encountered each other on my front lawn. He’s been going someplace he shouldn’t. He’s been a naughty, naughty boy.
“Lucifer’s been coming here, to see you,” I said. “This is where he’s been going when he’s out of touch.”
“Yes,” Evangeline said. “That is how much I meant to him, that he has spurned death to be with me.”
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