Dragon Spawn

by Eileen Wilks

  The tunnel slanted down steeply. Nothing ahead but lots of darkness—empty, as far as her mindsense could tell.

  “Do you have lots of ammo, Lily Yu?” Gan asked.

  “Plenty,” she said, hoping that was true. She had seven more clips, which would seem like a lot if she hadn’t just burned through three clips in under a minute. “Benedict, why did you use your machete instead of shooting that one over my head?”

  “Bad angle. Ricochet. Everyone needs to shut up now.”

  Cynna snorted. “With all the gunfire, I don’t think we need to worry about anyone hearing us.”

  “I want to hear them. I can’t with all your chatter.”

  They shut up. Even Gan. Which left a lot of silence for Lily’s imagination to fill.

  She tried to focus on her mind-mist, not on what—or who—might be observing them this very moment. Probably nothing and no one, she told herself, but the back of her neck prickled. The Great Bitch ought to be far too busy to scan her domain clairvoyantly—if she could even use clairvoyance in this avatar. Lily did not know much about avatars, an omission she intended to remedy when she had time. Damn Reno for giving them so little time for questions. She hadn’t been able to ask half of what she needed to.

  She also tried not to think about what might be happening to Rule. At least she had the mate sense to tell her where he was, that he was alive. Cynna didn’t. She wouldn’t know if Cullen survived until they saw him again.

  The tunnel continued to slope down, steeper in some places than others, twisting around more than it had at first. They’d passed two openings that led off who-knew-where—Rule had mentioned them—when the floor turned rough and the walls drew in closer. Lily was glad for her boots and worried about Grandmother’s feet. Benedict paused and whispered something to Cynna. One of the mage lights winked out and the other seemed dimmer. They continued with Lily barely able to see her footing.

  Had Cynna been able to recast her Finds for Ryder and Toby? There was a lot of rock between them and the children. Too much for a new Find? Lily wanted to ask, but the silence had taken on weight, as if it would require a physical effort to break it. Plus they must be getting close to the pit—that would be why Benedict had eliminated one of the mage lights. The pit was occupied. The cacophony of gunfire had surely alerted anything with ears, even this far away, but did demons know about guns? Would the resident of the pit understand what it had heard?

  Benedict raised one hand to signal a stop. He turned to Lily, moved close, and bent to breathe in her ear almost too softly to be heard, “Pit should be a little ways past that crumbled bit. I’m going to try crossing it. Stay here. Stay quiet. I may be gone awhile. Can you pass this on in mindspeech?”

  Lily nodded and reached for Cynna’s hand. As she passed on Benedict’s instructions, he moved off into gloom the dim glow from the mage ball didn’t penetrate—not to her eyes anyway. He’d mentioned a crumbled bit that she didn’t see, so she assumed his vision extended farther into the murk than hers. She took Gan’s hand next. Gan’s mind made her think of a walnut—not as easy to reach as some, but with enough texture that she could do it. Gan, of course, wanted to chat, but Lily cut her off and placed a hand on Grandmother’s head and repeated everything.

  Then they waited. The silence was profound. All she heard was the faint susurration of her own pulse in her ears.

  Rule had described the pit that lay ahead. He couldn’t tell them anything about its occupant—the information about it was in hieroglyphics, he said—but Gan was sure it was what she called the pit demon. Old Mevroax had heard of such a pit and its occupant, though he’d never seen it. There should be a rickety wooden bridge over the pit, she said. A few feet beneath that would be a dark, still pool.

  The liquid in that pool wasn’t water. It was acid—acid produced by the demon hiding beneath its surface. Acid which helped digest its prey. Impossible, according to Gan, to cross the bridge silently, for it was designed to creak . . . and the pit demon hunted by sound. Gan didn’t think it had eyes, though a couple of stories Mevroax had heard made her think it was sensitive to light in some other way, but its hearing was excellent. It seized anyone who stepped onto that bridge and dragged him, her, or it into the acid pool.

  Fortunately, the bridge wasn’t the only way to cross the pit. A narrow ledge ran around the rock chamber. If you were very quiet, Gan said, you could make your way across on that ledge without the pit demon noticing. Probably.

  That’s what Benedict was doing now. Checking out the ledge, making sure it was passable. If it wasn’t . . . well, it needed to be, that was all. If they absolutely had to, they could backtrack, take one of the tunnels they’d passed, but those were much more tortuous routes. Without Rule’s mental map, they were likely to get lost. Likely to run into more demons, too. Maybe more than their small party could handle.

  At last she saw Benedict’s figure emerge from the gloom. He came up to her, took her hand, and breathed in her ear the way he had before, “Mindspeak me.”

  I’m listening, she sent.

  Benedict’s mental voice sounded exactly like his physical voice. The ledge is crap, but intact. The walls are phosphorescent. Enough light for me, probably not for you and Cynna. Don’t know about Gan. Ask her. Tell me what she says.

  Questions and responses passed between her, Benedict, and the others. Gan saw in the dark “as well as any gnome and better than some.” And how well did gnomes see? “Better than humans. Better than dogs. Not as good as owls.” Grandmother’s night vision was at least as good as Benedict’s, Lily assured him, and probably better. Her size, however, was a problem. The ledge was too narrow in places for a seven-foot tiger, however agile. Benedict wanted Grandmother to resume her human form. Grandmother asked how wide the pit was. Between fifteen and seventeen feet, he told her via Lily. That would not be a problem, she said. She would jump the pit, going last in case she made some small amount of noise in landing.

  Benedict agreed to this and gave his orders. Cynna was to leave her mage light where it was. Not extinguish it—its dim glow at their backs would help for a time—but she shouldn’t allow it to follow them. The tunnel continued to narrow, so they would go single file. About forty feet from here it was partly blocked; a chunk of the ceiling had fallen. After that, the tunnel crooked left and then right in a way no natural lava tube would. No doubt the volcano’s deceased ruler had tinkered with it.

  The pit came right after the second tight turn. Benedict would guide the two who wouldn’t be able to see the ledge clearly, if at all: Cynna first; Gan second, on her own if she could see as well as she claimed; then Lily with Benedict; and last, Madame would leap across.

  They set out.

  By the time they reached the rubble blocking part of the tunnel, Lily could see the others only as vague shapes. Getting across the loose stone silently was impossible—for her anyway, and apparently for Gan and Cynna, too. Benedict and Grandmother managed it. Visibility was even worse on the other side, and Benedict had them link hands: him first, then Cynna, Gan, and Lily, with Grandmother pacing silently behind her. Gan’s small hand was warm, her grip tight. When they turned the first sharp corner, real darkness descended like a blanket. Lily found herself breathing carefully, as if the blackness might truly smother her. She reminded herself that things did not always go to hell when she was underground, then had to stifle a hysterical giggle. She was already in hell.

  So was Rule . . . several yards over her head and about half a mile that way. The contact, however limited, provided by the mate bond helped.

  They proceeded slowly, with two of their number unable to see anything. Space became both constricted and unformed, as if dissolved by the blackness, and the need for silence pressed on Lily almost as grindingly as the darkness. The second turn was even tighter; she had to feel her way around it with her free hand. And then a glow appeared ahead. Faint, so faint she’d never have n
oticed if the darkness had been one shade less absolute, but welcome. Even if it did mean they’d almost reached the dwelling of the pit demon.

  The slow crawl of their hand-linked line halted. After a pause, Gan tugged Lily forward. She obeyed, and in seven steps saw the source of the faint luminescence over the top of Gan’s head. The chamber’s walls glowed a faint, eerie green—not enough light to see by, not for her, but enough to restore definition to the space around her. Easy to see where the exit was in that wall, for it was utterly black. Large, too.

  Leaning forward to peer over Gan’s head, she saw luminescence splashed up three walls and caught and reflected by liquid below. On one wall, two dark forms. She couldn’t see the ledge they moved along. To her eyes they seemed to be lizarding across the eerie green wall, visible only because their bodies blocked the glow. She watched, reminding herself to breathe, as the two forms reached the other side and promptly vanished once there was no phosphorescence to block.

  The moment they did, Gan released Lily’s hand and set off, a much smaller occlusion of the glow. Long moments later, she, too, was erased by the darkness of the exit.

  One form started back toward Lily. The largest one. Benedict moved more quickly on his own than when acting as guide and soon stood in front of her, solid and reassuring. He took her hand, squeezed once, and tugged her to the left.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “TO me!” Rule yelled as he sprang from the ledge, twisting in midair so his feet hit what remained of the demon’s face. The crunch was satisfying. So was the way the giant demon howled in outrage, even if it did hurt his ears.

  Best of all was that it dropped Carlos to reach for Rule.

  No time to find out if Carlos lived. The creature might be huge, but it wasn’t slow. Rule hit the ground running, aiming for the juncture with the next tunnel.

  Big, heavy feet followed him.

  He reached the intersection and kept going. A burst of gunfire greeted his passage, shatteringly loud. Some instinct made Rule spin to see if—oh, shit, yes. He jumped again, getting out of the way. The behemoth was toppling.

  A ton or so of monster hit the stone with a sullen thud. And didn’t move.

  Rule wiped blood and sweat from his face, looking around. Everyone was unhurt except Carlos, who was farther back in the tunnel. And, of course, Daniel, who had been injured in the first big fight and unable to keep up. They’d left him guarding the bikes. “Cullen. Check on Carlos, back down the tunnel. Jude, go with him. Mason, stand watch. Max—”

  “I’m okay,” wheezed his friend—but he didn’t move from the spot where he’d fallen when the giant finally let go.

  “Hang on,” Rule told him. “I’ll help in a minute. I want to be sure the son of a bitch is really dead this time.”

  They’d first encountered the enormous demon aboveground, but one of the grenades had seemed to lay waste to it. They hadn’t taken time to check. In retrospect that looked like a mistake, but an understandable one. Most creatures didn’t survive having some of their brains spill out of a broken skull.

  This one had apparently only been stunned. It must have followed them down into the tunnel, catching up while they were distracted by a dozen smaller demons. In killing them—crablike things with nasty pincers—Rule’s party had gotten split up. Rule had ended up on a ledge because it gave him a good range of fire. Jude, Mason, and Cullen had pursued some of the demons into an intersecting tunnel. Carlos had taken a deep wound in his leg, and Max had been wrapping it with gauze when the behemoth arrived and grabbed them both.

  Rule had remembered what Gan said about demons and the wounded. When the creature started to lift Carlos toward its mouth, he’d acted. He hadn’t been in position to shoot—Carlos and Max were in the way—so he’d jumped.

  It had worked. That’s what counted.

  “Carlos will be okay,” Cullen called. “Got knocked silly, but he’s come around. I’m finishing with his leg now, and he could use some food to help with the healing drain.”

  “Feed him, then. Max?”

  “Dislocated shoulder. If someone would pop it back in the socket, I’d be fine. Tell me that thing is dead.”

  “There’s no pulse and not enough left of the head to mention. Unless it carried its brains somewhere else . . .” Rule bent to examine the remaining pulped bits of skull.

  STEADY.

  The voice was clear, intimate, and impossibly lovely. Unmistakable. Awe froze Rule in place . . .

  The mate bond snapped.

  His vision blackened. He lost track of the world and his place in it—lost track even of his body in the shock of that loss.

  Then the bond was back. Lily was back. Belowground like him, only deeper, and that way . . .

  “Rule!” Mason’s voice, urgent. “Rule, what happened?”

  “Stay on watch,” he managed to croak, utterly unable to answer the question. What the hell had happened? Other than him toppling over onto his side, that is. He pushed himself upright, then continued to his feet and found that he was steady. Just as the Lady had commanded.

  “Rule?” That was Cullen’s voice, worried.

  He looked over his shoulder. Cullen was helping Carlos limp toward them. “I’m fine. Max needs his shoulder put back in place.”

  “I’m glad you’re fine. You’re also blazing away like a nova.”

  “What?”

  “Power.” Cullen released Carlos with a pat on his arm and came up to Rule. “You’ve suddenly got about twice your usual load of magic.”

  He was oddly reluctant to speak of the experience, but this was his friend. His closest friend. Rule lowered his voice. “The mate bond snapped. Then it came back. Lily’s okay, but just before that—”

  “Trouble,” Mason called. And underlined his warning with a burst of fire from his weapon.

  * * *

  WHEN Benedict had called the ledge crap, he hadn’t been kidding. Even at its widest Lily had to move sideways. Maybe it was Benedict’s solid, reassuring presence that left her feeling . . . not fearless, for she was supremely conscious of the emptiness at her back and the creature which lurked below. But capable. She could do this. Slow and careful, that was the thing, and when the ledge narrowed so much her feet didn’t fully fit on it anymore, Benedict guided her hand to first one grip, then another. With those to balance her, she was able to creep along the worst spot on the balls of her feet.

  Then—hallelujah!—it widened again, and she breathed more deeply as she sidled around a curve in the wall with the dark exit looming only a few feet away . . .

  STEADY.

  The voice was calm, clear, as implacable as it was beautiful. And familiar. Lily froze under the sheer immediacy of that voice.

  And lost Rule.

  And cried out—

  Then he was back, the mate bond telling her as surely as ever that he was right there—alive! He was alive!—but that second of loss had loosened her grip on the world and her knees. She’d folded and was in the process of falling off the damn ledge when a sure, strong arm slid around her waist and hoisted her the rest of the way off. And flung her through the air.

  She landed badly, with her legs sticking out over the air, but a hand—Cynna’s hand—closed around her arm and helped her scramble the rest of the way to safety. Cynna released her. She realized her weapon wasn’t on her shoulder. She patted around in alarm, hoping against hope it had slid off her shoulder when she landed, not while she was in flight.

  “Oh, no!” Gan cried. “The big man—”

  Light blazed, dazzling bright. And she saw Benedict still on the ledge—with a huge, corpse-colored tentacle wrapped around one leg. His machete flashed, but the angle was bad. Blood dripped from a slash in the creature’s putrid skin, reddish-purple blood, which was a surprise. All the demon blood she’d seen before had been as red as her own. But the tentacle remained wrapped aroun
d his leg.

  “Hell, no, you don’t!” Cynna cried out. She flung both hands in front of her and began chanting words that tumbled through Lily’s mind without registering.

  Now that she could see, it was easy to spot her weapon, right by the edge. She reached for it as the liquid in the pit began to bubble in a slow seethe. A second tentacle slid up from below the surface of the acid pool and reached for Benedict.

  Already lying down, Lily shifted just enough to bring her weapon to her shoulder and fired, stitching a careful line across the second tentacle. Purple blood flew everywhere, along with gobbets of pallid flesh as the bullets cut the damn thing in bloody pieces.

  Yet another tentacle shot up out of liquid that was now boiling madly, emitting fumes that burned Lily’s eyes and nose. And another—but the one gripping Benedict went slack. Then the others did, too. A moment later, a pale, enormous body floated to the surface, bobbing in the bubbling liquid.

  A tiger roared.

  “Back up!” Lily rolled quickly, getting out of the way. A second later a tawny, black-striped body sailed seventeen feet over the frothing liquid to land with graceful ease on their side.

  “Good shooting,” a deep voice announced.

  Lily sat up, blinking eyes watering from the fumes. Benedict didn’t look any worse for wear, and he hadn’t lost his weapon. Any of his weapons. He stood on the other side of Grandmother. “What happened?”

  She swallowed. “The mate bond. It—it was gone. Then it came back. Rule’s alive, but I thought . . .” Only she hadn’t, not really. No thought could form in the vastness of that loss.

  Benedict frowned. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “No.” She should tell him about the voice. She knew she should, but somehow she couldn’t. Or didn’t. Wasn’t supposed to? She shook her head and got to her feet, hitching her weapon on her shoulder. She was shaky. That was probably just the adrenaline, but her eyes were watering and her nose and throat burned. “I think we’re breathing in acid vapor.”