by Amy Braun
“What?” I asked.
He let go of me and took out one of his own knives, cutting open his palm before I could say anything.
“It doesn’t always have to be you,” he said.
Warrick turned and smeared his blood on the pentagram.
Almost instantly, there was a heavy sound of the door unlocking, then a steady grinding as it slid open. Max moved closer and our collective flashlights illuminated the room before us.
“Fuck,” I breathed.
The cavern was completely covered in cobwebs. White, silky strands of webbing curved along the corners of the room, some of it looking shiny and fresh while other parts looked dusted and old. Strands hung in between the floor and the ceiling like stringy stalactites and stalagmites. The floor was lined with a heavy network of webs, as was the roof.
All of that was creepy. But not nearly as creepy as the large, oval shaped cocoons randomly spread around the room. All of them were around four to six feet tall, sticking to the walls, the floor, the corners, and the roof. I got a little nauseated when I considered the things inside those cocoons were probably people. I could only pray that Fate had taken mercy on them and let them die before they were wrapped up.
“No chance we can skip this room?” I asked.
Max looked at me. “Uh, no? Why, are you afraid of spiders?”
“I have a strong dislike for them.”
Max raised his eyebrows. “Holy shit, are you seriously afraid of spiders? You know they’re a million times smaller than you, right?”
It was the first time in hours since Max had sounded like himself, so I held back on the idea of smacking him.
“I get the feeling that after this, you’ll be thinking differently,” I grumbled before I walked into the room.
It was like walking on sticky quicksand. The cobwebs clung to our feet and sank a little with every step we took. It was hard to stay balanced, and we only had each other to fall on when we stumbled.
We were about a quarter of the way through the room when I heard the first skittering noise behind me. I whirled in the direction of the sound, but saw nothing. Max and Warrick turned with me, and I did not like the tall shadows cast by the tiny flashlights on our belts.
We took a couple more cautious steps, heard more skittering noises, and then Warrick shouted in alarm. I whirled and saw a spider the size of a pit bull latched to his back.
He stumbled but didn’t collapse or thrash around as much as he should have, using his knife to stab the spider in the face. It screeched once, then dropped off his back into a black, ashy heap. Warrick glared at the spider’s body, but didn’t look fazed at all. I raised my eyebrow. Warrick was nothing if not practical.
I stopped admiring his coolness when I heard more skittering noises and chitters. There were more spiders. A lot more. At least eight of them poured out of hiding from deep within the cobwebs, and I was positive they were dropping down from the ceiling.
Warrick handed Max a handgun. “Keep them off us!” he shouted.
I didn’t know how many there actually were, but I was going to get up close and personal with them. I wanted to get out of this room right now, and the best way to do that was to have everyone fighting and shooting as much as they could.
Using my hatchet, I twisted and slashed at the spider I saw coming out of the corner of my eye. It squealed when my blessed blade struck its head, black blood squirting onto the underside of my arm. I wrenched the hatchet out as it dissolved, and took an awkward step forward to see Warrick shooting as many spiders as he could until the chamber of his shotgun clicked empty.
Another spider jumped for him, but I was close enough to kick it away. The move saved him, but caused me to stumble forward and hold my arms out for balance. The perfect target for a spider to get its pincers around.
I cried out as the pincers dug into my left arm, squeezing like a vice as the arachnid tried to sever it at the elbow. I swiveled my torso and hacked at the spider’s face until it let go, but I didn’t kill it. This was when I noticed they weren’t just big spiders. They were goddamn big demon spiders.
Their bodies were black, lithe, and covered in coarse hair and white cobwebs, the feelers on the back of their eight legs hooked and sharp. They had four antlike pincers, and six blood red eyes on the top of their head.
I had always thought spiders looked disturbing, but now I knew I was going to have nightmares about them for the rest of my life.
Which might not last much longer.
The spider hissed angrily and launched itself at me. My feet were trapped in the cobwebs, but I turned my upper body so the spider didn’t slam into me. Its clawed legs still brushed along my stomach and there was enough weight behind the graze to throw me off balance. I didn’t care about grace or style, so when I slammed my hatchet into the spider’s back, I dropped right onto the cobwebs and the spider.
It reeked of sulfur and bad body odor, almost making me gag as it wriggled to get free from under me. I raised my hatchet and slammed it down again and again until the spider collapsed in on itself. I was covered in black, demon-spider blood, my left arm was throbbing with pain, and I couldn’t unstick myself from the webbed floor.
Which made it all the worse when the mother of the demon-spiders landed in front of me.
She must have hidden in the corners from us, because there was no mistaking her. She looked just like her children, only four times the size. She had a dozen glowing red eyes and ten legs instead of eight. Fear threatened to freeze me, but I couldn’t let that happen. If I did, I was dead, and so was Dro.
I was still stuck on the floor and had no time to get up. When she charged me, I flipped myself aggressively onto my back so I was underneath the mother spider. I hacked at her legs with my hatchet, but she was able to move around this environment way better than I could. After two strikes, she had moved again. She raised her thorax and I saw the sharp spinnerets under her belly. She lunged down at the same time that I pulled my feet back to avoid being stabbed by them. The mother spider made the same move, getting closer. There were only so many times I could curl myself into a ball before those spinnerets drove themselves into me.
Sharp gunshots popped through the room. I had been so busy fighting for my life that I’d somehow managed to drown out the sounds of gunfire. But at least Max was still alive, and shooting. The mother spider hissed and started for him, forgetting about me for a second. Arms suddenly hooked themselves under mine and hauled me to my feet. I whipped my head around and saw Warrick behind me. Black blood and cobwebs were on his face and in his hair, and I could see more cuts on his chest.
I pulled out of his arms and looked at the mother spider approaching Max. The other smaller spiders seemed to be dead or hiding, but they were insignificant compared to the mother spider. Max stepped back and fired another shot at her as she crawled up the wall to get height on him. His shot missed as she was crouching, getting ready to strike. I reached for a silver knife on my hip. Max might have crappy aim, but I didn’t.
He took a step back and stumbled, landing on his ass on the webbed floor. The mother spider hissed and was about to jump off the wall when I threw my silver blade. Even from ten feet away and three feet up, my throw hit her square in one of her eyes. She shrieked and thrashed, whirling on us.
“Good job pissing it off,” Warrick hissed sharply.
“Not the time,” I shot back.
The mother spider stomped angrily in our direction, the webbed floor trembling with every step she made. Warrick and I split off from each other, but she was focused on me. I ducked and dodged as fast as I could to avoid her, but was aware of my surroundings so I wouldn’t be end up against a wall and become completely fucked.
The mother spider bowed down and swiped at me with one of her legs, nearly hooking into me. While I was distracting her, Warrick found his opening. He lunged up with his knife and stabbed the mother spider in her thorax. She shrieked as he twisted the blade and did as much damage as he could, be
fore one of her legs lashed out and kicked him hard in the chest. Warrick flew across the room, and I lost sight of him in the darkness.
I reached up and wrenched my silver knife out of the mother spider’s eye, her horrifying arachnid face snapping back to mine. I slashed my hatchet across her face, the blade cutting into two more eyes like they were juicy grapes. The mother spider screamed and slammed her head into my chest before I could back up. I landed on the floor, and she drove her head into my chest again. It felt like a truck was bouncing up and down on my chest. I could feel my collarbone straining under the strikes. As she came down again, I pushed up with my silver knife, driving it straight into her head. The mother spider whipped her head back and forth, making me lose my grip on the knife.
Then she scooped me up in her pincers and started pulling me towards her mouth.
The adrenaline pounding through my heart started to crack, and give way to fear. I pushed out with my arms and legs to keep her from completely crushing me, but it wasn’t going to do much good for long. She was just so fucking strong. I could see sharp, snakelike fangs and a tiny black tongue flickering inside her mouth. She squeezed and my body condensed again. I tried not to think about what was happening. If I did, I was going to scream. If I screamed, I would die.
I shifted my hatchet into my other hand and slammed it into the mother spider’s top pincer, hacking it wildly until it was half dangling from her face. She howled and dropped me. I landed on my back, my body aching even though it was freed. The mother spider took another step toward me, and I knew I wouldn’t escape in time.
A shotgun boomed on my left, the blast hitting the mother spider in the side of the face. She screeched and turned to the person who had shot her.
Warrick.
His face was hard with determination. He never blinked when he fired a second blast into the mother spider’s face. She recoiled and started backing away. He swiftly reloaded the shotgun and kept shooting her in the head. Something moved out of the corner of my eye, making me jump. But it was just Max trying to help me up. He was covered in cobwebs, black blood, and scratches. He had gotten it easy.
“I take it back,” he said. “Spiders are fucking scary.”
There was another high-pitched screech, the blast of a shotgun, and then silence. We turned to see Warrick walking over to us with the shotgun at his side, calm and confident as ever. He was covered in demon blood and bruises. Behind him, the mother spider was buckling and crumbling into chunky pieces of ash.
I’d never wanted to kiss a man so much in my whole life.
I halted all the fantasies building in my mind when he stopped in front of me. His eyes traced my injuries, focusing on my left arm.
“How bad is that?” he asked.
I shrugged, acting like my arm wasn’t burning. “It hurts, but I can still move it.”
“I’ll take a look. Max, can you look for the exit?”
He hesitated. “You killed all the spiders, right?”
“If we didn’t, call for help.”
Max frowned. “Not encouraging, dude.”
Warrick handed over his shotgun. “Feel better now?”
His frown turned into a pout. “No.”
But Max started walking deeper into the room anyways. Warrick turned to me and waited. He wasn’t going to let me go anywhere until he was done playing doctor, so I peeled off my jacket and looked at my arm.
It looked like someone had placed a mini bear-trap near my elbow, leaving a nasty, bite-like bruise. Blood seeped out of some of the tenderized flesh. My forearm was slicked with demon-spider saliva. I handled the grotesque very well, but it felt disgusting just looking at the mess the spider had made of my arm.
Warrick frowned and started reaching for the med-kit in his jacket, taking out some more gauze.
“Lucky for you, their venom isn’t poisonous,” he said, beginning to wrap my arm gently.
“You know this from experience?”
“Research, actually. Only the mother spiders have venom. The little ones don’t.”
I sniggered. “I wouldn’t have called those little.”
He smiled at me, sending another warm ripple through my heart. When he finished with the gauze he took a step back so I could put my jacket back on.
“You’re still going to wear that thing?” Warrick said.
“Yup. It’s my lucky jacket.”
He looked at me like I’d just told him I ate live centipedes for breakfast. “It’s ripped shreds, covered in blood and dirt and God knows what else. It’s literally holding together by a thread.”
I met his eyes. “The key word is lucky. I got this jacket when I was last employed.”
There was bitterness in my voice and hesitance in his eyes, but Warrick didn’t look entirely stunned. Max must have told him about my time with the Blood Thorns. The kid gossiped like a teenage girl. But if my past bothered Warrick, he didn’t show it.
“Doesn’t seem like it would be a happy reminder.”
“It isn’t. That’s why I kept it.”
Warrick raised an eyebrow, waiting for me to continue. I shouldn’t have said anything, but it was too late to go back now.
“I was on a run that went bad,” I explained. “My target caught me spying on him. We got into a fight. I took the jacket from him when it was over and used it to cover my wounds until I got back to the house.” I paused to remember. “He was the first man I killed.”
Warrick was quiet for a moment. “And you wanted a reminder of what you did,” he stated quietly.
I nodded. “After that, I knew what I would become. What I had to become to keep Dro safe. As soon as I accepted it, the jacket started bringing me luck.”
“Pretty strange luck,” he said, half amused, half serious.
I shrugged. “You make your own, right?”
I flexed my arm back and forth, trying not to wince. It was sore and I’d need to watch it, but it was useable. I could feel Warrick staring at me again with that gentle, understanding look. I really wished he would stop doing that. It made me want to be closer to him.
“I found the door,” Max called. “Can we get the hell out of here now?”
I walked away before Warrick could say anything else. He gave me a fair amount of distance before he stared following me. I decided that was a good thing. The only people I wanted to be close to right now were Isabel and Drake, so I could shove a knife into their hearts.
Max pulled open the door and walked through it into the tunnel. I took a deep breath and felt the pain from my latest fight. My body was sore from being crushed, I had new bruises, and my arm throbbed. Never mind the latest mental damage I’d gotten.
I had to push it all down. If I thought about it, the fear might cause me to falter, and I would get the three of us killed. I couldn’t allow that. Not when Warrick and Max were already risking so much by coming on this brutal adventure with me. I walked ahead of them.
***
Nearly thirty minutes later, I made the next left and came to a stop at the door. Max walked up to it and quickly found the pentagram. He sighed and held out his hand, looking at me.
“My turn,” he said.
I gave him a respectful nod, then took out a silver knife and drew a shallow cut along his palm.
“Ow,” he complained.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s a scratch.”
He made a sour face at me, reaching forward to touch the wall. “You are not the person who should be telling me the difference between a scratch and a serious injury.”
Warrick stifled a laugh behind me.
The lock on the door clicked and the door ground open. The light from our dull torches showed nothing. No ghouls, no spiders, no traps. Just blackness.
It made me more nervous than anything I’d seen in the other rooms.
This door moved with excruciating slowness. I felt like I could run back through all the other rooms and endure all their trials again before it widened any further. Just when I thought we woul
d be trapped in the hallway for ages, the door shuddered to a halt. We waited, but it didn’t open any further. There was no way we could get through all at once.
“Perfect,” I growled. “Just fucking perfect.”
“I’ll say,” echoed Max. He paused, then added, “Makes you think something bad is behind that door.”
I scoffed. “Like we’ve had anything good.” I started to walk for the crevice. It wasn’t even wide enough for me to walk straight through. I would have to press my back to the wall and slide in.
The moment I put my spine to the wall, Warrick grabbed my wrist. “You sure you want to go first?” He looked worried.
“Yeah,” I lied. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, so let me go through first. If the door starts acting up, I don’t want one of you to be crushed.”
The worry lines around Warrick’s eyes deepened, but he let go of me when I started lifted my hand from his.
Before I lost my resolve, I shuffled along the rough wall and into the room. Just as I squeezed inside, I heard a distant, savage roar, and the door behind me began to close.
I whirled around. Warrick and Max were panicking because the door was still sliding shut, and they couldn’t push it open. It was only moments before the door crunched shut, and I was in complete darkness.
Max and Warrick’s yells were muffled from beyond the stone, telling me to hold on. It wasn’t the most comforting thought, since I was alone in blackness with something that sounded very, very angry. I couldn’t wait. Maybe if I opened the exit door, the entrance one would unlock and let the guys in. The flashlight on my belt was as effective to my surroundings as a penlight, so I took careful steps as I looked for any wires or mismatched steps that would spring a trap. There didn’t seem to be any.
But my heart was still pounding fiercely, ready to break out of my ribcage and run. I breathed evenly and walked slowly through the room. I focused on going straight ahead, but it wasn’t long before the shadows were playing tricks on me. I would imagine something streaking past my vision, but when I looked for it, I just saw black.