“I didn’t know you could do that.”
He shrugs, looking away. “It hadn’t really come up.”
“Is that how you survived down here all that time? Pretending to be worse than you are?”
“It’s one of the ways,” he admits. “Those of us who aren’t the fiercest and strongest develop various coping mechanisms to stay alive. But don’t ask me what the others are because I’m not about to start spilling all my secrets. I need to keep some of the mystery alive.”
LB comes to an abrupt stop before us. We only barely avoid walking straight into his bristly abdomen.
“What?” I ask. “What is it? Did you find them?”
Before he can answer, several huge ropey things fling themselves around the corner and begin trying to stab him. They look like giant thorny plant stalks. He hesitates, trying to fend them off with a few of his legs while turning to look back at me.
“These are . . . real monsters? Or more friends?”
Two of the plant stalks twist past him and take swings at Peter and me.
“Real monsters!” I shriek, trying to press back into the wall beyond their reach. “Real monsters! Please kill them as previously discussed!”
LB springs into action. The thorn monster, from the bits I can see, seems to be a lot bigger than he is, but LB makes up for his smaller size with pure ferocity. I can see flashes of something else, paler and — bonier? — also attempting to attack, though the thorn monster seems to be taking up most of the available room in the passage. Peter watches LB with reluctant appreciation while I suddenly remember that I can help.
The next time one of the plant-stalk things comes close to us, I reach out and push — with my hands and my power — like I did when that other demon was trying to kill Ryan. It jerks back, and the stalks suddenly seem to decide to focus on LB instead of bothering with us.
Peter watches me for a moment. “Do you have to be touching the demon to use your power on it? Can you try doing it from a distance?”
“I — I don’t know. I can try, I guess. I don’t want to hurt LB by accident, though.”
I creep forward, watching the battle and waiting for a piece of enemy demon to place itself far enough away from LB that I can aim at it without having to worry about hitting the spider-demon instead. Then I realize I have no idea how to even attempt this. I’ve gotten pretty good at channeling the power through my hands when I’m trying to share my protection with my friends, and the touch-and-push thing I’ve done so far with the demons seems to be a variation on that theme. Actually pushing my protection-power out beyond my body on its own is a completely different animal.
Peter seems to see the problem. “You have to visualize it,” he says. “Think of . . . think of trying to create a ball of energy in your hand. Just like when you share your protection by sending it through your hand to someone else, only this time you’re pushing it just past yourself into the air, like you’re holding it in your palm.”
It’s a little hard to concentrate with the sights and sounds of giant demons fighting right beside us, but I do my best. I stare at my hand and try to picture my roachy power as a sphere of shining white energy. But nothing happens.
“Close your eyes,” Peter says. “Just try to see it in your mind.”
“I know what visualize means!” I snap at him, but I close my eyes as instructed. It does seem a little easier this way. I try to re-create the feeling of sharing my protection with Annie, only instead of Annie it’s the air in the middle of my cupped palm that I’m trying to share with. And instead of protection, I try to think about the feeling of pushing my energy out as a weapon.
I think it’s working. In my mind I can see it: a swirling ball of white light, centered in my palm. I open my eyes again, not looking at my hand, trying to find a target. I’m afraid if I see my empty hand I’ll lose it; I need to keep seeing the image of the energy in my mind. Feel it coiled there, waiting to strike.
I find one of the plant stalks that isn’t too close to LB and focus on it, picking a spot to aim for. Then I throw the sphere of energy like it’s a softball, hurling it forward through the air. I can almost see it, arcing toward the demon, flying fast and true to its target. It collides with the thorny appendage in a silent explosion of light.
The demon jerks slightly, but nothing like when I was actually touching it. My euphoria evaporates.
“It worked!” Peter shouts jubilantly.
I am already shaking my head. “It was too weak. The demon barely felt it.”
Peter rolls his eyes at me. “Hello? It was your first try? Come on, that was great! You proved you can use your power as a weapon without touching your target! That’s awesome! All you have to do now is practice.”
I open my mouth to tell him that we don’t have time for me to practice, that we’re already in the middle of the place that I should have been practicing for long before now, but before I can speak, something huge and hard slams into me and throws me facedown against the stone floor. I try to roll away but it has me pinned there, the enormous weight of it crushing my lungs against the ground and making it impossible to breathe. I can hear Peter shouting somewhere nearby but I can’t make out what he’s saying. I flail my arms, trying to get my hands on whatever is on top of me, but I can’t reach, and I don’t know how to send the energy up through my back and I can’t concentrate enough to try the softball thing again and also I still can’t breathe and things are starting to get a little fuzzy and dark and floaty.
And then something else slams into me and I think how unreasonable it is for anyone to expect me to be able to deal with two giant demons at once, especially when everything is so hard to focus on and I’m still facedown on the floor in the dark, and then suddenly I can breathe again.
After a few somewhat grimy-tasting but very welcome gulps of air, the sense starts to filter back into my brain and I can think clearly enough to try to get to my feet and away from whatever was just trying to kill me. But the getting to my feet idea proves to be a little overambitious, and instead I end up in a kind of pathetic half crawl toward where I can still hear Peter shouting. When I get close enough, I feel his hand grasp mine, and he pulls me up to a standing position. And then I stumble around to see what is actually happening.
The plant-stalk demon is dead, or at least motionless. The other demon, the paler one with sharper edges and white bony parts, is currently struggling underneath LB, just a few yards away from where Peter and I are huddling. LB is bloody and at least one of his legs seems to be damaged, but he practically radiates power and strength and joy as he strikes the bone demon again and again with his pincers and forelegs. I remember that he can feed on this kind of thing, the killing and the suffering of others. Which is normally repellent, but in this case I’m happy to have him eating his fill. Bon appétit, you magnificent fucker.
When the bone demon finally stops moving, LB gives it a final stab and then practically bounces off the corpse, turning to face me with unmistakable good cheer.
“I have killed the monsters!” he says proudly. “Before they killed you!”
“Yes,” I agree. “Well done, LB.” I shuffle forward and pat the least gory bit of him I can find. “Are you — are you hurt at all?”
“It is nothing,” LB says. “Monsters cannot injure me.”
Grateful all over again that he is on our side, at least for now, I force myself to nod and smile. “Great. Wonderful. Let’s, um, let’s keep going, then, okay?”
He skips forward around the corner, and Peter and I exchange a glance before hurrying after him. My chest hurts from the near crushing; otherwise I feel relatively okay. But I still let Peter help me as we move swiftly onward through the dark.
We catch up to the spider-demon before he can get too far ahead.
“LB?” I ask. “Do you think we’re getting close?”
“Close?”
Oh for the love of God please don’t tell me he’s forgotten what he’s supposed to be doing. I would
have to kill him, and that would be both difficult and inconvenient.
Patient and gentle, dammit. I dig my fingernails into my wrist, and I manage to keep my voice calm. “Close to finding Annie and Ryan? My friends?”
He stands there, considering, and I infer that he is searching for the right words to answer my question. Peter sees what I’m doing to my wrist and captures my hands in his, stopping me from actually drawing blood.
“I only know which way to go to search. I do not know exactly where they are. I cannot say how long it will be. Maybe very soon.”
He’s still on task. Thank God. “Okay, that’s —”
“Or maybe never, if they are already killed by the monsters. It is hard to say.”
Words fail me, and I can only stand there looking at him. After a minute, Peter clears his throat and says, “Great. Thanks, LB. Let’s keep going, then, shall we?”
LB turns around and continues on his way. Peter puts his arm around my waist and guides me along after LB. “They’ll be okay,” he tells me quietly. “They’re smartish for humans, and they’ve both proven to be pretty damn resilient in the past.”
I blink at him gratefully. “Thanks, Peter.”
“Plus, I feel like Ryan and I still have so much unfinished business. He can’t just die in some dark hole without me even knowing what happened. It wouldn’t be . . . it wouldn’t have poetic resonance.”
Now I am blinking less gratefully, but he’s still sort of cheering me up, so I don’t chastise him. Instead I ask, “Why haven’t you ever tried to get Ryan out of the way?”
Peter flashes me a humorless smile. “Who says I haven’t?”
“I believe that if you’d tried, you would have succeeded.”
He’s quiet a moment, and I’m not sure he’s going to answer me. I wait, watching LB’s spider legs propelling him onward with a horrible sort of grace.
“There’s no way that would ever work,” Peter says finally. “Despite what I suggested to him when we first got down here, if Ryan ever experienced an ‘accident,’ I know you’d suspect me. I can’t . . . I wouldn’t want you that way. Always doubting, never knowing if you could trust me. Besides, if . . . I’d want you to choose me of your own accord. Not because Ryan was suddenly no longer available.”
Now it’s my turn to be quiet. I don’t know how to respond to that.
We walk in silence for a while before I manage, “I love him, Peter. I love you, too, but not like that.”
“A little like that,” he says, not looking at me. “You kiss me like you love it. Like you don’t ever want to stop.”
Somewhere inside me, my traitorous electron swells with agreement.
“I can’t pretend there isn’t something there between us. It’s like . . . it’s like a chemical reaction. Powerful and automatic and not our fault. But I love Ryan. It’s different with him. And he predates you. And . . . that’s how it’s going to stay, Peter. I need you to know that. I love you, and I want you to be my friend. I don’t think I could stand it if you weren’t my friend. But I don’t want you to have any illusions. This is not a love triangle. I’m with Ryan. I’m staying with Ryan. You need to be able to make your peace with that.”
More quiet. More walking through the dark, suffocating passageways. And then Peter looks at me with that mischievous grin that I hate and love and fear and I don’t know what else. I look at him and I take in that grin and all the feelings it inspires and I don’t say anything, I just wait.
“I know,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop hoping. Or stop trying.”
His arm is still around my waist, and he squeezes me, half tickling, half grasping for dear life. I laugh, because I can’t do anything else.
“I know.”
Sometime during the next interminable interval of silently following LB, trying not to fear the worst for Annie and Ryan, and also trying to ignore the ever-more-insistent tugging of my newly installed internal GPS, I realize that I have once again been neglecting to take advantage of a primary source of information.
“Hey, so what do you know about this amulet guy?” I ask Peter. “I mean, other than that he made the amulet and is locked up down here somewhere.” Just as I say this, my demon-compass tries to get me to turn around and walk in the opposite direction. You have to wait, I tell it silently for what must be the hundredth time. I’m sure it’s my imagination, but the tugging is beginning to feel somehow sulky and annoyed.
“Not a lot, unfortunately. He’s super powerful, but I’m sure that much was clear already. They called him — well, in your tongue, he’s called the Craftsman. Making powerful items was sort of a . . . a hobby of his, I guess. An addictive one. And eventually he started making things that drew too much interest from the wrong demons — or, well, the right demons, depending on your perspective — and they locked him up for it.”
I scrape one finger along the endless stone wall. “He doesn’t sound that scary.” I find myself picturing a kind of gremlin-like Geppetto, tinkering away in his little demon workshop.
“He’s going to be terrifying, Cyn.” Peter reaches over and grabs my arm to get my full attention. “Don’t have any misconceptions about that, please. The amount of power it takes to create the things he does — it’s more than I can even imagine. And to have found an outlet for that power, one that he loved, and to have been prevented from ever doing it again . . . he’s surely lost his mind, locked away down here. He’s going to be huge and powerful and angry and insane. I think there’s more than one reason Mr. Gabriel didn’t try to come down here himself.”
My mental image of Geppetto has morphed into something monstrous and unrecognizable, and I quickly shove him out of my imagination.
“How long has he been here?”
“A long time. Thousands of years, maybe.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
I pick up our pace a little, closing the distance between us and LB. “You almost sound like you feel sorry for him,” I say after a minute.
“I do,” Peter says. “It must be terrible, what they did to him. What they’re still doing. It would have been kinder to kill him.”
“Why didn’t they?”
Peter gives me a condescending glance. “Demons, Cyn. Not so interested in the kindness, remember? Besides, the more horrible the punishment, the greater the deterrent. They didn’t want anyone else to follow in his footsteps. And no one has, as far as I know. Which makes the things that he created all the more precious now.” He pauses, shaking his head. “I don’t know how Mr. Gabriel’s friends got their hands on that amulet. He’s going to be very, very powerful once he gets that missing piece back. And his physical form.”
“Right, well . . . we’re going to figure out a way to stop that part from happening. After he takes the curse off Ryan.”
There’s a tiny hesitation before Peter answers “Right” that I don’t like one bit. But I pretend I didn’t notice. Ryan will be fine, and Mr. Gabriel will un-curse him, and then . . . and then . . . we’ll figure something out. We have to, so we will.
Up ahead, LB suddenly pauses at an intersection.
You would think I would learn not to get my hopes up every damn time.
“Is it our friends?” I ask eagerly, leaning forward to try to see.
“No,” LB says, backing slowly in our direction.
“Um,” Peter says. He is looking back the way we came. I follow his gaze. Some enormous shadows are growing on the wall. There are at least two. Maybe more.
The shadows are definitely too large to be Annie and Ryan.
LB has turned to face us. “There are monsters in our way. Too many for me to fight.”
“Is that including or not including the monsters coming up behind us from the other direction?” Peter asks, gesturing toward the still-growing shadows.
LB looks at the shadows. “Not including,” he says.
Unfortunately, we are, of course, currently in a long passage without apparent side ex
its of any kind. Our only options are to go on, toward monsters, or go back, toward also monsters.
Needless to say, I am not a fan of either of those choices.
“Cyn?” Peter begins.
“Shh,” I tell him.
LB has adopted a stance that I have lately come to associate with him trying to have thoughts about something. Since I am one hundred percent sure that I don’t have any ideas for how to get us out of this situation, and (judging from Peter’s panicked expression) about ninety-eight percent sure that he also does not have any ideas, I feel very strongly that we should let LB keep digging around in his brain for whatever solution he might be able to come up with. I just hope he finishes thinking before the monsters reach us.
To my surprise, when LB shifts position (which I take as an indication that he has completed his mental exercises for the time being), he addresses himself to Peter.
“Can you protect against my poison?”
“Uh — no, I don’t think so. Not with just my own strength to work with. Why?”
“You must cover your parts as much as you can,” LB says. “I will try not to hurt you.”
Then he turns to me. “I am speaking up about something I know. But there is not time to tell you. Only to show.”
With that, he hooks me with one of his long forelegs and pulls me against him. I yelp as I find myself thrown up beside Peter, who is swearing and squirming and trying to tuck his hands and head inside his shirt. Then, holding us both tightly in place, LB begins to run back down the passageway on his remaining legs.
We come upon the shadow-casting monsters almost at once. There are two, and they both seem to be insect-based in their appearance. I can’t get a very good look from my current position, but I catch glimpses of long multijointed legs and jagged green carapaces and incongruously pretty, feathery antennae.
LB doesn’t break stride. He keeps running, lashing out at the monsters in passing with a couple of limbs and his pincer-things. For a moment it seems like he’s going to make it through, just push past them down the corridor and keep on running. But then I see one of the insect monsters jab out one of its own long legs, and suddenly LB pitches forward, tumbling into nearly a somersault. I scream, burying my face in his furry, bad-smelling chest. He’s still covered in mud and blood and various other substances, and then there’s his own underlying scent that is fairly repulsive all on its own even without the added embellishments from his recent victims, but in this moment I don’t care about any of that. His protective leg presses tighter against us as he struggles to right himself with the others and turns to face our attackers.
Curse of the Evil Librarian Page 13