“Please!” cried Ursula. “Hand me thy key!”
“What’s your plan?”
“Methinks there be no time to explain. Quickly.”
I removed the key from around my neck and gave it to her. She held it to her lips and kissed it before instructing the rest of us to step back. Carlos immediately put his arms around Tony and me and pulled us into a tight-knit huddle.
“Urs, do you know what you’re doing?”
She returned a sly grin and replied, “Aye. `Tis a trick is all. I learned from the Grimoire.”
“The Grimoire? See!” I hit Tony on the arm. “You could learn from that girl. Would it kill you to read from the Grimoire once in a while and maybe––”
“Please!” I felt Ursula smack me on the side of the head with her open palm. “I need thy silence!”
“Uh, did she just hit me?”
I looked up at her just as she turned her back on us to face the wave of drigets that had advanced the closest. She held the witch’s key over her head and began twirling it in the air. I realized then what she was about to do.
“Go get`em girl,” I whispered, so not to distract her. Under the glistening gold halo of the whirling key, I heard her recite these words.
“Mothers of the coven, hear our plea. Pass thy fury through this key. Spare no force, our plight is dire, grant us thee thy ring of fire.”
We looked up after hearing those words and saw a magnificent jet stream of flames blast from the end of the key some ninety feet outward. It twirled overhead like rotors on a helicopter before laying down a solid ring of fire three-stories high.
The intense blaze incinerated the first wave of drigets, pushing the remaining troops back in a scattered frenzy.
Carlos cupped his hands above his brows and peered through the flames at the chaos beyond. “Holy cow! What did you do, call in a Napalm strike?”
“Nice work,” said Tony. “That will hold them off for a minute maybe. But we’re still stuck here.”
“We’re fine as long as the fire holds out,” I said. “Ursula. How long does the Grimoire say the fire ring will last?”
Her expression grew suddenly perplexed. “How long?”
“Yeah. How long before––”
Poof!
“Uh-oh,” said Carlos.
“It’s out,” said Tony.
I backhanded him on the chest. “No shit, Dick Tracy.”
“Tell her to do it again.”
“I don’t think we have time. Looks like they’re regrouping.”
“Hey, over there!” Carlos pointed, drawing our attention to a break in the drigets’ ranks behind us. “It’s a hole. We can make a run for it.”
And we did.
We ran our asses off. A few of the drigets closest to us tried to head us off, but Tony cut them both down easily with his bayonet. Another grabbed Ursula’s hair from behind and pulled her to the ground. He was just about to sink his teeth into her neck when Carlos sliced the bastard’s head off.
We picked Ursula up and dragged her until she could regain her footing and run on her own again. Though we made it a good distance, the effort to kill the few drigets that had gotten in our way had slowed us down considerably. We were still out in the open, vulnerable, and worse, the larger troops were again on the move.
“Tony. We’re not going to make it,” I said. “We have to try something.”
“Like what?”
“I think we can use the zip balls now.”
“You think that will stop them?”
“No, not if we fire them at the drigets. Like you said, there’s too many of them.”
“So, what did you have in mind?”
“The stalactites.”
He knew exactly what I was thinking. We stopped running, but told Carlos and Ursula to go on. With the advancing troop of drigets nearly upon us, we conjured up the biggest, badass zip balls we had ever spun up in our lives. On the count of three, we launched them at the ceiling and then took off running again.
The zip balls impacted simultaneously. Two massive electric blue bursts of energy rocked the cave to its core, filling the great cavern with the light of a thousand Roman candles.
The double explosions blasted a crater in the roof some fifteen meters wide. Tons of dirt and debris rained down on the drigets front line, killing dozens and wounding many more. The resulting shockwave traveled along the ceiling in a conical pattern from the crater’s center outward, shearing off hundreds of stalactites, all of which crashed down on the remaining drigets.
We were not out of the woods yet, though. Not all of them were dead. We ran until we caught up with Carlos and Ursula, who had inadvertently stumbled into a dead end tunnel and were on their way back out.
“Keep going,” Tony said, palming Carlos’ chest and pushing him back. “There’re still out there, wounded, but they’re coming.”
“Can’t, it’s blocked.” Carlos hiked his thumb up over his shoulder. He was out of breath and sweating profusely. “It’s a dead end. We have to turn around.”
We looked back through the tunnel. The dark passage stretched for fifty feet before turning, beyond that, somewhere, a herd of pissed-off drigets were coming.
Tony turned to me. “What do we do? More zips?”
“No.” I quickly surveyed the condition of the crumbling walls and ceiling. “Another zip will certainly cause a cave-in. We’ll suffocate.”
Carlos said, “Better that than getting eaten by those things.”
“Look!” said Ursula, pointing at an odd-shaped boulder jetting out of the wall.
“What? I don’t see anything.”
“On my word, that boulder moved.”
I went over and set my hand on it. “This one?”
“Aye. Think naught of it, if I am wrong, yet I know what I saw.”
“Come on. How could it––”
The damn thing suddenly thumped out of its nestled perch and nearly landed on my foot. I jumped back, a little startled and a lot afraid. Carlos readied his bolo and Tony his bayonet.
“They found us!” Carlos yelled. “The bastards found us!”
“Hello,” said a voice through the hollow left by the stone.
“Wait.” I held my hand up. “I know that voice. That’s––”
“Jerome!” Ursula cried, recognizing his lumpy baldhead the moment it poked through the thirty-inch opening. She seemed a lot happier to see him than did the rest of us. Maybe she forgot how he tried to get us all eaten. Apparently, Carlos had a better memory.
He drew the bolo up over his head and let it drop like a guillotine. Jerome snapped his head back at the last second, as sparks from metal on stone showered the floor.
“Carlos, wait!” I grabbed his arm as he raised it over his head for a second attempt. “That’s Jerome!”
“I know! I’m going to kill him!”
“No!” This time it was Tony, the only one there strong enough to force Carlos’ arm back down. “Let’s hear him out.”
He lowered the blade, but maintained a white-knuckle grip on the handle. I bent down and peered into the hole. “Jerome?”
He popped his head out. “Hello.”
“Hello yourself. What are you doing here?”
“I come save you. You follow. Jerome take you safe place far away.”
“Oh no,” said Carlos. “We’re not going anywhere with you. Not this time.”
I shushed him over my shoulder. He shot back a look of sour indignation, but otherwise kept his trap shut. I said to Jerome, “Why should we trust you? You led us into an ambush.”
He turned his eyes away. “I sorry. Jerome not want hurt you. Jerome had job. Bring food home.”
“A job? That’s what we were to you? I thought we were friends.”
“Yes, friends!” He looked up at me with animated eyes. “Jerome no have friends before.”
“Sure, it’s no wonder,” said Carlos, “you keep eating them.”
“No. I no eat. Jerome make big m
istake.”
“I’ll say.”
“Carlos, please. Jerome, listen. We need to get out of here. Can we trust you to help us?”
“Yes, yes. You come. I show you out.”
“Are you sure? No tricks?”
“No trick. You come now. We go.”
I stood up and gave Tony the option. “What do you think?”
The sound of driget murmur seeping through the tunnel grew louder. They were advancing more cautiously than before, but still advancing.
Tony heard them, too. “I don’t think we have a choice. We can stay here and face them now, or follow Jerome and maybe face them again later. If it’s all the same to you, I vote for maybe later.”
“Yeah, I vote we kill the little fucker now,” said Carlos, “and then we go through the hole. What do we need him for?”
“No, no!” Jerome slipped through the hole the rest of the way and tried to take Carlos’ hand. Carlos wouldn’t have it. “Carlos need Jerome. Tunnels go all the where. Every way. You get lost forever.”
“Maybe, but I’m willing to take my chances.”
“Please, friend.” Again, he tried to take Carlos’ hand, and again Carlos jerked it away. “I no trick you. I friend. We all friend.”
Up ahead, a collective war cry from the advancing drigets confirmed they had spotted us. They launched into a full charge, spear tips leveled.
“Quick! Everyone!” I turned, grabbed Ursula and pushed her towards the hole. “There’s no time to argue. Carlos, you can kill him later. Right now I need everyone to get your asses through the hole. Come on. Chop-chop!”
Jerome, the closest, scrambled in first, then Ursula and Carlos. Tony stood back and waited for me to go next. “Uh-uh,” I said. “You go. I gotta collapse this tunnel or we’ll never outrun them.”
I thought he would tell me he couldn’t do it, that he wasn’t going to leave me behind; that he loved me too much, it was too dangerous, yadda, yadda. Instead, he said, “Yeah, good idea,” and he slipped through the hole like a greased pig.
“Good idea?” So much for chivalry.
By the time the drigets reached my position, their rowdy war cries had morphed into simple savage grunts-for-all. I had spun up another wicked cool zip ball and planned to launch it at them just as I dove into the hole. My plan was to cause a cave-in and bury the troop in the process.
Of course, nothing works like it’s supposed to in the ES.
After whipping up the zip ball, I pitched it at the lead row of the ugly little fuckers. They had seen what the other zip balls did and thought they knew what to expect. They slammed on the breaks, digging their heels into the soft dirt, hoping to keep as much distance between them and me as they could. However, instead of a face full of electrically charged whoopass, what they got was wet.
I know. Who knew? Damned ES.
In classic paraphysical form, the spontaneous exchange of sub-atomic particles completely zapped the zip out of my ball and turned it into water.
After realizing the harmless nature of my assault, the surprised drigets regrouped and lunged towards me again. Without thinking, and certainly not even aware I could do it, I splayed my hand over the boulder that Jerome knocked out of the wall. I lifted it off the ground with the thinnest cushion of air between it and my palm and I rolled it at the oncoming drigets.
The boulder mowed them down like bowling pins, squishing them flat and splattering the cave walls in globs of gooey slime.
That wasn’t the end of it, though. No sooner had the boulder come to rest at the far end of the tunnel, than another wave of screaming, bald-headed, frog-faced fanny fuckers rounded the corner.
“Ah, come on!” I shouted. “Give me a break!”
“Lilith!” I turned and looked to see Tony crouched down, peering through the hole in the wall, his arm outstretched. “Give me your hand. Quick!”
I grabbed his hand and threaded myself through the hole. “Aww, see there,” I said. “You do love me.”
“Of course I do. Now stand back.”
What he did next made me oh, so proud to call myself a witch. After ushering me aside, he conjured up a perfect baseball-sized zip in the palm of his hand, coaxed it into a free-floating spin with the tip of his finger and then hurled it through the opening in the wall.
“It’s not going to work,” I said. “I tried that already. It’ll only turn to w––”
“Duck!” he yelled, and then threw himself over me. He blanketed my back with his broad shoulders and wrapped his muscular arms around my head.
The resulting explosion shook the ground and rattled the walls. The concussion was immediate, blasting a concentrated mix of cave dust and pulverized stone back through the hole like buckshot. It peppered the walls above our heads and raked the top of Tony’s ass with stinging bits of gravel.
“Ouch! Fuck Me!” he cried.
Of course, I didn’t take him literally. I knew he wasn’t in the mood for that. “I’ll take a rain check,” I told him.
He waited for the dust to settle before rolling off me and onto his back, and then quickly onto his belly. “Damn! That hurts. Look, will you? Let me know how bad it is.”
I pulled the tattered monk robe up over his butt and had a look. It wasn’t as bad as I’m sure it felt, but the gravel bits had scratched him up some. “Well, you do have a boo-boo. Want me to kiss it and make it better?”
“Yes.”
I laughed. “Sure, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“What?”
“I’m not kissing your ass.” I slapped his left cheek, the one less scraped up. After all, I’m not completely heartless. “Let’s go catch up with the others.”
Chapter Thirteen
We entered another, much larger chamber in the seemingly endless cave system. Where once the ceiling rose sixty feet or more, we now could scarcely see it. The cathedral soared to dizzying altitudes of unimaginable heights where the stalactites looked like toothpicks.
“Check it out,” Tony said, his eyes rolling in a vertical climb straight up. “The roof’s as high as clouds.”
“Unfuckinbelievable, ain’t it?”
“Couldn’t have said it better.”
I grabbed his arm. “Come on. Let’s catch up with the others.”
Carlos, Ursula and Jerome had stopped to wait up for us at the foot of another rope bridge. Unlike the first one we crossed, this one was only a hundred feet across from one side to the other. Still, the drop beneath was inconceivable.
We had come to a great chasm, a vertical split in the rock so unfathomable, that when Carlos tossed a rock into it, we never heard it hit bottom. For all I know, it’s still falling today.
“So, what do we have here?” asked Tony. “Is this another one of those drooping bridges?”
“It is,” said Carlos. “I checked it out. It works just like the last one. Touch it, it falls. Let go and it reels back in.”
“Do we have to cross it? Maybe there’s another way out.”
“Jerome says no. This is the only way.”
“You trust him?”
“Hell no, I don’t trust him.” He pointed down the narrow trail running parallel to the chasm. “I say we go that way.”
“I see. Lilith? Any feelings about this?”
I confronted Jerome. His eyes, as always, looked most sympathetic. I had fallen for them before, and in spite of the benefit of hindsight, they appeared no less convincing this time. “Jerome, are you sure this is the only way out?”
He hesitated; I hoped to make sure he weighed his options carefully enough to give me the correct answer, lest I let Carlos pitch his sorry ass out into the chasm.
“No. Is not only way,” he said, after giving it much consideration.
“Ah-ha!” said Carlos. “I knew it!”
Jerome held up two fingers with overlapping suction cups. “Is two way out. One way here.” He pointed at the bridge. “Other way…” he turned around and pointed behind us, “there.”
“The way we came?”
“Yes. Two way only.”
“Okay,” I said to Tony. “Guess it’s the bridge.”
“Guess it is, but look. We don’t know how strong or reliable the bridge is. So, I’ll go first. Ursula, you go next. All right?”
“Aye.”
“Lilith, you follow her. Carlos?”
“I’m going last.”
“Last?”
“Yeah. I’m going to stay here and keep my eye on this guy,” he said, pointing to Jerome. “Once you three cross, I’ll send him over. When I know you’re all safe on the other side, I’ll join you.”
“Fair enough. Let’s do it.”
The last time we crossed a rope bridge, it was windy, noisy, and particularly dangerous, especially considering that we could not touch the handrails. This time, I expected no trouble. Boy was I wrong. Again.
The four of us lined up behind Tony in the designated order of crossing. We kept our hands folded behind our backs to resist the temptation of touching any part of the ropes. After all, if the bridge were to dump Tony over the side, we knew we would all hear his endless scream in the back of our heads for eternity.
Tony was just a third of the way across the hundred-foot span when he called back a progress report.
“Boards are a little rotted here!” His voice carried in echoes down the canyon walls and rolled back to us in a hollow bounce. We heard, “Here, here, here...” making it sound as if he was counting the number of boards that were rotten.
“Just don’t touch the handrails, whatever you do!” I hollered back. My voice didn’t carry that same hollow sound like Tony’s, but it did echo. Mostly what came back to us was a muffled, “Do-do-do… ” Carlos laughed at that. I pretended not to notice.
In less than two minutes, if my concept of time was at all close, Tony made it to the other side. He waved his arm up over his head in animated gesture, signaling Ursula to start her crossing next.
“All right,” I said. “Take it nice and slow. Put one foot in front of the other, keep your hands off the ropes and look straight ahead. Okay?”
“Aye. One foot off the ropes. Eyes on my hands and the other straight ahead.”
“No. One foot in front of the––”
8 Gone is the Witch Page 16