by M H Ryan
“You kidnapped her, fed her to the spiders all to lure us into this pit and now you think we’re going to help you?” I said, holding onto Molly.
“I am so sorry I had to bring you here and if the very fate of the world didn’t depend on this, I would have just let the tree die and me with it, but he can’t have this tree.”
“How can we believe anything you say?” I asked.
“I can get you guys back home,” Lyra said. “I was not lying about that or anything else. You help me with this and what you do here may give my freed sisters a chance, in time, to defeat him.”
“You can get us out of here?” Cass said.
“I will use whatever power I have left to do this. I swear it, but first, the tree, please, we need to hurry.”
“Jack, I think we should burn the tree,” Kara said. “It has been turned into something terrible. I think it is ripening. It will be the merciful thing to do, but, Lyra, won’t it hurt you? I feel you are deeply connected to the tree.”
“I’m not sure. You have placed a shield over me, cutting me off from the tree, but even if I cease to exist, it is better than the tree ripening all the way for him. It will give him too much power. If the tree turns for him, there is little that will be able to do to stop him.”
“Eliza?” I asked.
“Burn it,” Eliza said. “I can’t see any path forward now with this tree still existing.”
“Fine,” I said, not wanting to waste another second in this cave. “Hanna, Aubrey, burn it down.”
“You better be for real on getting us home,” Hanna said, the flame in her hand brightening.
A flame hovered over Hanna’s hand, split off, and flew toward the tree and smashed into the trunk. The fire spread over the wood, and then a gust of wind from Aubrey fanned the flames and spreading them over the trunk. In seconds, the room became so hot that we started taking steps back from the rising flames.
“Thank you,” Lyra said. “Olmera can now rest. My fate is unknown, but I wish you well.”
She shimmered and then burst into a white mist. No, not a mist. They were particles, and the wind pushed them around the room, and as the cloud passed me, I realized they were the same dandelions that had passed us when we entered the cave with Lyra. One landed on my arm and then got carried away by the wind.
“You bitch,” Aubrey said. “I fucking knew it.”
“I should have killed her,” Benji said, gripping her bow and arrow.
“You hear that?” Carmen asked.
“They’re coming from the ceiling,” Cass screamed, pointing up.
At the ceiling, a massive black spider crawled out from a hole that had smoke pouring into it. It ran over the ceiling toward us. An arrow slammed into it, causing its abdomen to explode in a dark goo that rained down onto flames and the tree.
Right behind the first one, four more came out in a hurry. The smoke now filled the ceiling, escaping through the many holes.
“Kara, can you get us out of here?” I asked, hefting Molly over my shoulder. Thankfully she didn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds.
“This way,” Kara said, leading back up the way we came.
“I’m with you,” Benji said, with her bow and arrow at the ready.
We rushed up the shattered stone floor and up to the doorway leading out. I stopped at the doorway, making sure the girls were getting through when I looked up at the ceiling. It looked alive with the spiders crawling over it.
“I’ll send them all to hell,” Hanna said, faced the burning tree, and extended her hands out.
A roar came from the fire and it swirled into a tornado of flames, wrapping around the tree trunk and climbing. The fiery column crashed against the ceiling, hitting the spiders as it spread out like milk poured on the floor.
Aubrey stood next to Hanna, weaving air into the inferno and keeping us from cooking. The spiders fell, some still on fire, and slammed onto the stones.
“Come on, we got to get out of here,” I said, adjusting Molly on my shoulder.
I made room for Aubrey and Hanna as we all stepped into the doorway.
“Keep moving. We’ll block this entrance off,” Hanna said.
The sound of the fire and the falling spiders echoed through the chamber and into the hall. The wind blew by us and made it hard to hear the other spiders coming for us. But I felt them.
I knew now the thing or things that were moving with us as we walked through the tunnels. They were the spiders—the things leeching off this tree in some kind of support for the king.
Using my extra sense, I reached out for the spiders. They were just faint whispers of creatures, and I tried harder to reach them, but it felt as if they were a mile away even though I knew they weren’t. Only a hint of anger and a manic territorial mindset crept in as their emotion. They didn’t like us, and I suspected Lyra had been the only thing keeping them from getting to us in the first place. With her gone, we had nothing between them and us.
Reaching out to the whole cave, it dawned on me what we were truly up against as I felt hundreds of the spiders in every direction. There was also something larger, more powerful, that I had at first thought was a seal, but it held the same kind of feeling that the other spiders had, just amplified to stupendous proportions. The mother spider Lyra mentioned—it had to be.
Lyra…what had happened to her?
“Carmen, do you still have a bubble on Lyra?” I asked.
“Yes. I don’t know how, but I still have it on her,” Carmen said, holding onto Emma’s hand.
“Good, keep it that way. I think it might give us a small chance of getting out of here,” I said.
“I’m getting a feeling we are heading toward an end, Jack,” Eliza said.
As we moved down the hall, the wind and sounds of the great tree burning diminished enough that the sound of the spiders came through. A clattering of a thousand legs, scratching and clicking across stones as they raced through the tunnels, all converging on us.
“Is that spiders coming?” Benji said, holding an arrow back in her bow.
“There’s so many,” Kara said, turning in a circle as the sound seemed to be coming from everywhere.
“I don’t want to die in some smelly spider cave,” Aubrey said.
“No fucking way are we going down in this shit hole,” Sherri said. “I will personally stab a thousand spider bitches to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“This isn’t good guys,” Eliza said, looking scared.
“Jack,” Cass said, yelling over the growing noise of spiders. “I just want to let you know that I’m sorry, and if this doesn’t go down the way we want it to, my only regret is not kissing you.”
I grabbed her and kissed her on the mouth, deep and hard, before setting her to the side.
“No regrets,” I said and marching past her. “There is no way we are dying in here. I won’t allow it.”
“I might have regrets as well,” Shaya said.
I moved toward her as well, when Hanna rushed to us.
“Wait, stop,” Hanna said, sweat beading on her face. “I have an idea.”
“Don’t just hold it in, big brain, spit it out,” Emma said.
Chapter 34
“We have a foreseer with Eliza,” Hanna said. “She is perhaps the most important person in our group. Stick Emma on her and tell her to go with her gut. I trust that more than going back on any path that Lyra took us in on.”
She’s a smart one, Murrack whispered in my head.
“I don’t know,” Eliza said, not sounding confident.
“Trust me,” Hanna said. “Going through the way we came is suicide, with a hundred holes leading into that main tunnel. We’d be walking right into a freeway of spiders.”
“Carmen, can you maintain the bubble on your own?” I asked.
“Yes, like, no problem,” Carmen said with a smile as she looked around. “It’s kind of cool down here. This cave feels like a big hug.”
“What the fuck is w
rong with you?” Aubrey said, eyeing Carmen sideways.
“See?” Sherri said and laughed. “This is some dope shit right here. This is living, people. Carmen gets it. Whoa, feel that rush!”
“Great, now we have two crazy people in the group,” Aubrey said.
“I’m not crazy,” Carmen said, sounding anything but. “You guys don’t feel it in here? It’s like… so powerful.” She touched her stomach and closed her eyes.
“I don’t even know what you are anymore,” Aubrey said.
I had a suspicion but now wasn’t the time.
“Emma and Eliza, get up to the front and lead the way. Take us to exactly where you think you should go, even if it seems logically the wrong way. Just follow that gut. Benji and Sherri, make sure nothing gets to us on the front line. Cass and Aubrey, take the sides, Shaya and I will get what is above us, and Hanna, you get the rear. Okay? Okay.” I pushed Eliza and Emma to the front of the group while making sure I had a good grip on Molly.
“This way,” Eliza said, and I hoped that hesitation in her voice didn’t mean she was second-guessing herself.
“That’s not the way we came in,” Kara said, looking around nervously.
“I think that’s a good thing,” I said. “Can you help me with the above as well?”
“Yes,” Kara said, holding onto her knife and looking at the stone ceiling. “Did I mention I hate spiders?”
“I can’t stand them,” Benji said. “This one time, I got a bit on my arm and it got all red and hard. It burned and itched like crazy. I can’t imagine what happens when one of these things get to you.”
“You’d be dead,” Carmen said with a smile as if that was the most inviting thing to happen.
“We’re getting you therapy after this,” Aubrey said to Carmen.
Behind us, the hall lit up with a great flame burst, and I turned back to see a spider on fire. No, there were several spiders on fire, crawling over each other in their furious last moments. Hanna, as if letting loose pent-up rage, yelled at them, igniting the flames and turning the spiders to ash. More were coming through the fire and I felt their anger and also, obedience.
Hanna stopped screaming and backed up into us, breathing hard and barely able to stand.
“I’m sorry, I’m getting weaker,” Hanna said.
The glowing ceiling dimmed under the audible assault as the spiders, on fire, crawled toward us. I got my first good look at one as its face pushed through the flames.
Spiders normally have many eyes, but this monstrosity had a pair of eyes just above its wide mouth, giving it a disturbing human-like face. It hissed as it stumbled forward, most of its body on fire. With its mouth open, its two large fangs protruded from the top of its mouth. I didn’t know how I knew, but I knew that those were the teeth it used to suck more than just blood. They sucked the life from the tree, and I knew if we hadn’t gotten to Molly, they would have taken their time and sucked the life out of her as well.
Their large body appeared as black as the evil stones that had gripped Carmen and as large as a horse. Their legs protruded from the torso, as tall as I was and clacking and scratching the floor as they pulled their body toward us. I felt the pain and anger from them in hot waves that matched the fire engulfing them.
“Crap,” Eliza said, holding onto Emma’s hand. “We have to go this way, but I think it’s going to get tight ahead.”
Another blast of flames came from Hanna and then a crack from Benji’s arrow. It slammed into the darkness with a sickening, liquid thud, and a screech from some unseen eight-legged beast. That’s when I heard a noise from above.
“Cass, above,” I said, looking up at the dark hole in the ceiling.
Cass jumped next to me, threw a piece of the metal out and then launched it into the hole above with a loud, twanging sound as the object flew.
Another flame burst lit up the area giving me enough light to see into the hole. The spider was damn near on top of us. The metal sliced through the spider with a crunching sound. I jumped out of the way, with Molly on my shoulder as a shower of black blood crashed onto the floor. The carcass slid down from the hole and slammed against the ground. Its guts sprayed out in all directions. I covered Molly as best as I could as the other girls scrambled away from it.
Cass’s piece of metal flew back to her.
“Gross,” she said, taking it back and shaking the spider goo from it.
“Group up,” I yelled, pushing the group away from the hole and away from the tree that continued to burn.
We gathered near Eliza as she stooped and made her way into a smaller tunnel.
“I swear to god,” Carmen said. “If I have to go into some crappy hole and get dirty. We should just stay here—”
“Shut up,” I said. “We’ve got an army of eight-legged monsters coming for us. No time for the sass. Now get your ass in that tunnel.”
Carmen opened her mouth and I gave her a look that sent her cute ass right into the small tunnel. Now, how the hell was I going to get in there?
Carrying a person and crouching wasn’t a good mixture, but I didn’t have much choice. I repositioned her onto my arms, holding her like a baby, and shimmied my way into the tunnel. I stumbled forward and gripped Molly tight against my chest as I set one hand down. Adjusting my grip, I growled at all the shit coming our way. The noise dimmed the hall into near darkness and a great burst of light came from behind us as Hanna and Aubrey protected our rear.
The girls were yelling. Some in fear but most of them were roaring with anger.
The spiders were closer. I think the way we took surprised them and now they were adjusting. I felt the dominant one, which I suspected was the mother spider, moving in our direction.
Another burst of light flashed, and I looked down at Molly in my arms. Molly had her eyes closed and her head flopped around my right biceps. Her pretty face reminded me of Margo Robbie. I could make out a few tattoos on her chest and arms, but there wasn’t enough light or time to figure out what they were.
“It opens up,” Eliza yelled back to us.
The ceiling rose as I worked my way down the tunnel until I was able to stand upright with a still-unconscious Molly in my arms. The room wasn’t large, and we all stopped next to Eliza. On the other side, another tunnel led into the darkness. The only problem was the gaping chasm in the floor between us and it.
Behind us, Hanna had flames raging with her hands out, walking backward. She came into the room, sweat dripping from her reddened face. Her pink hair was tousled, and she was looking pissed off.
“I can’t keep this up for much longer,” Hanna said, breathing hard as she bent over. “How the fuck are we getting across that?”
I looked over the edge and down into the blackness below. It was too far down. Too far out of the way, and I felt them down there, scurrying around, looking for us. They were making too much noise to have a chance of hearing us.
The other side had to be twenty feet away. I looked back at the tunnel behind us and knew they were coming—many of them.
“It’s too far to jump,” Benji said, standing next to me and staring into the abyss.
“I can do it,” Sherri said. “Look, there’s a plank on the other side. I can jump this and get the plank back over.”
“No,” Benji said. “It’s too far, even for you.”
“Can’t you just move rocks and shit?” Aubrey said, pointing at the gorge.
“Yeah, and bring the whole place down on us?” Benji said. “Why don’t you stir up some air and fly that plank over here?”
“Yeah, let me get my wand out and summon it,” Aubrey said.
“I’m so sorry,” Eliza said. “I brought us here.”
“They’re coming, you idiots, do something!” Hanna said, shooting out another flame and lighting up the room.
I took a deep breath, stowing the words that were hitting the back of my teeth. “It’s this place, remember, it’s turned or turning. Don’t let it eat you. We can figure this ou
t. Eliza wouldn’t have brought us here if we couldn’t.”
“I can jump it, Jack. I’m a future Olympian long jumper,” Sherri said, pushing her chest out and showing off that American flag bikini with pride.
“I can’t argue with you,” I said as I adjusted Molly back to my shoulder.
“You got what, twenty feet of runway in here?” Aubrey said. “I’ve seen your jumps, and you are the best, even better than me, but this is what, seven meters?”
“Six and a half, I’d say,” Sherri interrupted. “Just give me something to jump off of.”
“What?” Aubrey asked.
“Get on the ground next to the edge, and I’m going to use your back as a springboard. When my foot hits your back, give me a boost.”
“Are you serious?” Aubrey said.
“You’re the strongest one here,” Sherri said.
“Hey!” I said, not totally agreeing with that statement.
“Just get on all fours, bitch,” Sherri yelled out to Aubrey.
“It’s not like I haven’t heard that before,” Aubrey said as she got on her hands and knees next to the cliff.
Sherri took a few steps back and ran at Aubrey. She ran forward, stepped onto Aubrey back mid-sprint, and then jumped up as Aubrey pushed up at the same time.
Sherri flew, and Aubrey sent a gust of air, blasting Sherri.
I watched Sherri fly through the air, moving her arms and legs. I didn’t think she was going to make it, and my heart jumped in my chest as I moved toward her. Right before she landed, she stretched her feet and arms forward. Her feet hit the other edge of the cliff, and she slammed into the ground, rolling forward a few feet.
“Yes!” Aubrey said, doing a fist bump.
An arrow flew right past Sherri and slammed into a spider.
Sherri jumped up and looked at the dead, bleeding spider on the ground. Then another spider dropped from the ceiling, right on top of Sherri, smothering most of her body.
“No!” I screamed.
A piece of metal flew out, slicing through the spider and killing it instantly. The spider collapsed onto Sherri.