Her torso unfolded, and four new arms appeared, unrestrained, each holding a dagger.
And it would start with a weapon or four.
Once she had cut off the gag and scraped the ticks off each arm, it was a matter of finding the right melody to unlock the chains . . . and then a quick stumble up the cellar stairs. It was a house, she recognized, between the convenience store and the restaurant. One of the first they had occupied.
Probably the same one he stored Mr. Slider in.
She wasn’t sure if she wanted Skip to be here for a fatal confrontation, or to escape unseen. In any case, he was nowhere to be found, and she did not wait for him. She was sick and weak, having left most of her blood in pails.
In the pails he set out for her blood. Oh, you bastard, she thought, crashing and reeling through the room, intent on flight.
Get to Libby, her mother’s voice told her. Libby can save you.
She burst out the back door of the restaurant and into the woods, toward the blue dome in the distance.
I’ll help them now. Jennifer, her mother, all of them. They’ll heal me and make me strong again. Then we’ll stop Skip together.
If anyone can.
CHAPTER 34
Jennifer
Jennifer ground her teeth. This isn’t supposed to be hard anymore!
“Better focus,” advised one tiny dragon with watery scales.
“Eyes closed,” suggested another.
“But not too tightly,” added another. “You need the tears.”
“Don’t try to disappear,” a fourth reminded her. “Try to dissipate.”
“Breathe quickly.”
“Crouch down a little.”
“Become moist.”
“All right, all right, all right!” Become moist? Their recent help against Skip notwithstanding, Jennifer felt like punting these runts into the dome wall and seeing if they’d bounce back.
This was the basic lurker skill. Basic! Lurkers were dragons. She was the Ancient Furnace. Whatever any dragon could do . . .
“Can you do it yet?” came Catherine’s voice. She was coming out of the hospital into the parking lot, holding a packet of Perk-E Turk-E Jerk-E.
Jennifer growled. “Don’t you have a watch shift to start up on the roof?”
“You kidding? Who needs a watch when you’ve got three thousand misty dragon-midgets here in the parking lot? Ember would be nuts to attack here now.”
“First, in case you haven’t caught up with current events, Ember is nuts. Second, we’re going to try another attack soon. Sonakshi and I agree—they can’t stay hidden forever.” She motioned up to the mist creature who hovered like a cumulonimbus above the hospital. “So they’ll be leaving again within the hour.”
“Why not have them stay out there—didn’t they say they’d almost gotten to Skip and Andi?”
Jennifer felt a thrill of irritation. “Because I should be leading them. They’re my responsibility. This whole situation is my responsibility.”
“That seems a bit much.”
“If you don’t understand, I can’t explain it.”
“You’re surly because you’re getting shown up by the Tuna Brigade.” Catherine held her hands up defensively as a murmur of discontent washed through the sea of lurkers. “Hey, joking, guys! I’m a big fan. You smell great.”
“Why don’t you go on a supply run? Or practice your whomping? Or drown yourself in the Mississippi?”
Catherine gave an easy grin as she looked east, toward the river. “You kidding? It’s way too cold—what the—Jennifer!”
Staring where her trampler friend was pointing, Jennifer still took several seconds to process what she was seeing. Out of the forested cliffs across the river to the northeast, a shape was rising. At first, she thought it was the cliff itself heaving—but when several appendages appeared and rubbed away the clinging vegetation, she realized it was something else.
“Skip’s behind this, isn’t he?”
“Hard to imagine anyone else.”
The colossal eight- legged form expanded, pulling back onto its hind legs and lifting its other appendages high. Its earthen tones brightened into a sickening lime hue, and its abdomen stretched to cartoonish proportions.
“It’s going to attack!” one of the lurkers called out. This inspired alarm among its brethren, who offered helpful input such as “Spread out!” and “Brace yourselves!” even as Jennifer saw that this creature had no interest in the town of Winoka. In fact, she wasn’t completely sure it was a creature at all.
Whatever it was, it was reaching for the moon.
Impossible, she told herself: but she knew it immediately to be true. Even under a new moon, Jennifer always felt the subtle tug of the invisible satellite, and her heart always pointed like a compass to its location. This arachnid—this sorcery, this thing—was intercepting her connection. Up, up it rose into the indigo, so high that Jennifer felt like a gnat at the base of a tidal wave.
Tidal wave. The words hit Jennifer hard. She turned to Catherine.
“Skip has found a way to stop the lurkers.”
As if pulled out of hiding by her son’s sorcery, Dianna Wilson appeared at the hospital entrance. She was not looking at the unfathomably long spider-sorcery, nor at the place in the sky where Jennifer knew the dark side of the moon to be. She did not have to; she kept her gaze on the crowd of dragons before her.
“You are all in great danger,” she told them. “The end has begun.”
“I know,” Jennifer replied. “Once Skip destroys the moon, anything that depends on the tides . . .”
Dianna shook her head with a sad smile. “You don’t understand. Skip isn’t going to destroy the moon. He’s going to become it.”
They were all in the parking lot—the sea-scented lurkers with Sonakshi looming over them, and Jennifer and her mother, and the dragons and beaststalkers and everyone else who lived at the hospital. Everyone, Jennifer noticed, except Evangelina.
Where is she?
It didn’t matter, right now. Dianna was talking.
“The end as our kind knows it,” she was explaining, “is not about death or judgment. It is about—”
“Blood?” Jennifer guessed.
Dianna looked at her evenly.
“Because you guys seem to care an awful lot about blood. I’m just sayin’.”
“It is,” the sorceress continued without breaking the younger’s gaze, “about poison.”
Jennifer snapped her fingers. “Poison!”
“I’ll bet blood still plays a part,” Catherine muttered with glum helpfulness.
“Poison is about change,” Dianna continued. “Instead of death or life, we worship the change that poison represents—what it forces upon our prey and the rest of nature. And there is no prey like the satellite that has danced over us since the dawn of time.”
“And the moon is important why—because of the tides?” Elizabeth guessed, as Jennifer had. “Will he dominate the seas, once he captures the moon?”
“Shifting the seas, and the creatures that live off them, is only the start. The Poison Moon is—”
“Full of poison?”
“Jennifer, honey.”
“Oh, come on. Like that would surprise anyone.”
“The Poison Moon is the ultimate weapon and fortress in one,” Dianna explained patiently. “Once this ritual is complete, Skip will exist in two places at once: here on earth, and within the moon. We could destroy his body here, and still he would exist. From an impregnable position, Skip could do as he pleased: throw the seas into chaos, break off mountain-sized pieces of the moon and hurl them at us, seed smaller chunks with whatever creatures he saw fit to create and sow the earth with millions of them.”
He will change all below, yet resist change himself His power will draw from the moon, which pulls the seas.
“Great. Thanks for the iambic armagedda-meter, Misty. It was a real contribution.”
“The moon has more than military
value. It is a portal—the portal—into all the universes where arachnids, dragons, beaststalkers, and every other power you know exists. A few you don’t, as well. Once he controls the moon, he controls that portal—and he can spread his dominion into those universes.”
“The Quadrivium tried that once,” Jennifer pointed out. “I stopped you.”
Dianna could not hide a patronizing smile. “Jennifer, darling, I stopped us. You advanced a loud opinion and caused a whirlwind of trouble, which gave us an opportunity to reconsider our goals and methods.”
“Still.”
“It doesn’t matter—it will do you no good to travel from one universe to the next if Skip spoils them all. The Poison Moon is something the Quadrivium never contemplated—the costs of performing the sorcery were too high to us, personally.”
“What costs?”
“Basically, the sorcerer has to endure endless, immortal pain.”
“Yeah, but there’s probably a drawback, too, right?” When a pained silence was her only response, Jennifer muttered, “We’re somewhat levity-free today, I see.”
“The Poison Moon becomes weapon, fortress, portal . . . and hell. Since only the most powerful among us could even contemplate the sorcery, the idea of someone willing to pay such a price seems incredible.”
“Yet Skip is willing to pay it.” Elizabeth looked back at the spider-sorcery. “Why?”
“Because it’s Skip,” Catherine and Jennifer said in perfectly eerie unison.
Her mom was shaking her head. “There’s more here than that . . . is it possible he doesn’t understand the cost?”
“Or maybe he truly is insane,” Catherine guessed.
“Either is possible,” Dianna answered. “But the most likely explanation is that Skip has divined an alternative way to start the sorcery. Instead of damning himself, perhaps he discovered a way to damn others.”
Jennifer’s heart fell. “Andi.”
“A reasonable guess.”
“Right up his genetic alley, to make others pay the price.”
Dianna ignored that comment. “We can’t know for sure what price Skip paid. If all the secrets of this sorcery were known, it would doubtless have been tried before. By The Crown, if no one else.”
“I know how we can find out. We can go over there and kick his ass.”
Dianna, confused, turned to Elizabeth. “Does she listen any more carefully to you than she listens to me?”
“I wish.”
“Cute, Mom. Look, I know you said he’s going to be immortal and all—but can’t we stop this sorcery before that thing reaches the moon?”
“We can’t do any such thing, honey. We’re stuck in this dome.”
“Not after I learn how to self-vaporize—”
“No time for lessons,” Dianna chided her. “Those who can go, should go. It is time to face this threat down. No more diplomacy.” This last was directed at Elizabeth, who did not react.
“Okay, so they go.” Jennifer motioned at the water dragons and Sonakshi. “We’ll get Xavier and the dragons outside to join this time. And you. What about Evangelina . . . where the hell is she, anyway?”
The sorceress shifted uncomfortably. “I will find my daughter and join the battle as quickly as possible.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa . . . you don’t know where she is?”
“At least things aren’t getting complicated,” was Elizabeth’s dry comment. “You two showed up and started talking about how we have to stop Skip. Now the time is here. And she’s where—trying out the new city trail system?”
“She’s likely feeding.”
“Likely? It was your turn to watch her! It’s always your turn to watch her!” Jennifer shook her head. “I feel like I shouldn’t want the answer to this, but: feeding on what, exactly?”
“Or whom?” Elizabeth added.
“Not important.”
“Well, if you say so . . . then it must be incredibly important.”
Dianna ignored her. “Sonakshi—you should take your people to the Cliffside Restaurant.” She pointed. “It is not far from where that thing originated, and where its hind legs are still anchored. Jennifer will send along the others, and we’ll not be long in joining you. Hurry, please—once the bridge to the moon is complete, stopping Skip becomes far more difficult. Probably impossible.”
She turned to Jennifer and Elizabeth. “The rest of the world is also in danger. You might want to tell them that.”
CHAPTER 35
Andi
Andi was having considerable trouble staying upright when the gigantic sorcery erupted a short distance away.
Against her own better judgment, she had taken a short rest—maybe an hour—once she was a few hundred yards into the woods. She couldn’t help herself—by her best guess, she had lost at least two pints of blood. Maybe three. Wasn’t four lethal?
Whatever. She had to rest, even if Skip was chasing her. And as it turned out, he didn’t find her.
Maybe he didn’t need to, she reflected as she watched the giant spider reach for the heavens. Maybe he already had enough blood from me, and he decided to start the ritual with what he had.
The Poison Moon. Oh, how could he? Driven, yes. Selfish, yes. Filled with hate, yes. But this . . . the times they talked about it . . . the times he talked about it . . .
A fact she didn’t know she had bubbled up in her mind: Skip had always been the one to initiate discussions about the Poison Moon.
Skip always liked to touch her, to love her
(love he doesn’t know love and neither do I)
after they’d talked about it. After he’d talked about it.
She had never thought.
She never thought he had the power. Or the drive. Not for that. It was love talk.
She had found the path down the steep slopes to where the bridge vaulted from the eastern shore, when she saw the mist roiling within the dome.
They’re coming for him already. She stretched her head up at the spider-sorcery. Good. I hope they’re not too late.
She briefly considered ways in which she might assist them—could she help them locate Skip? (No, and Dianna probably had that covered.) Could she fight alongside them? (Not without keeling over.) Give them advice? (Not without wasting their valuable time.)
No, there was nothing to do but continue toward the town. She would beg Jennifer and Dr. Georges-Scales for mercy, gratefully receive aid, and then rejoin whatever battle was still in progress. If she was too late for that last, then she would work with her new allies to bring the dome down. Sure, Slider’s sorcery was powerful—but she was Quadrivium as well, and with the right song, maybe she could unlock this barrier’s secrets . . .
“Freeze!”
CHAPTER 36
Andi
Andi froze. She was pretty sure she placed the voice right, but she didn’t know if this was good or bad news. Or possibly an aural hallucination based on blood loss.
“Eddie?”
“Don’t turn your head! Face front! I’ve got an arrow pointed right at the back of your skull—you know I could hit you from ten times this distance!”
“I do know, and stop shouting. It’s killing my poor head.” She raised her arms and stared ahead into the empty woods. “Eddie, I’m giving myself up. Skip tried to kill me. He’s gone insane. I want to help Jennifer now.”
“You’ve had your chance for months.”
“For heaven’s sake, Eddie. Look at that thing.” Without turning, she pointed back and to the right. “Which threat do you think is the real one—me, or that?”
“I can’t do anything about that. I can do something about you, though.”
“Fine. Escort me to the barrier. Hand me off to the town sentries. I won’t resist.”
“Escorting you anywhere seems a whole lot more difficult than releasing this bowstring.”
“Please don’t.” Her vision began to cloud again—freaking blood loss!—and she stumbled. “Eddie. Cripes. I need a hospital. Plea
se.”
Wherever he was—he sounded like he was in an elevated position, perhaps in a tree—he hesitated. “You look pretty damn white.”
“Normally, I’d take that as an insult on my father’s behalf.” Her jaws almost split from an enormous yawn. Slowly, she dropped to one knee as an alternative to keeling over. “Eddie—escort me to the bridge, or carry me, or shoot me, or leave me to die.”
She heard him sigh, then the sounds of tree bark crumbling. “I’m dying for you to be tricking me into some sort of trap.”
“No trick. No trap.”
“Right. If there’s two things arachnids hate, it’s tricks and traps.”
She shook her head, partly to disagree and partly to unseat the spots that had settled in her peripheral vision. “I’m not just arachnid, Eddie. I’m beaststalker—like you. Glorianna Seabright was my mother. Your mother was a beaststalker, too.”
“Don’t talk about my mother.”
“Okay. So, how about this weather? Looking pretty misty.” She motioned toward the mob of water dragons rolling over the river, through the dome.
“Yeah, they’re back. I liked what they did the first time. I suppose your boyfriend has a new plan, though.”
She shrugged, not having the strength for any more words. He sure does have a plan. Wait until you see it.
He was directly behind her now; even his careful steps made noise on the first fallen September leaves. She imagined him with arrow cocked once more. Perhaps the bow was put away, and he had blades ready. It didn’t matter. She only wanted to get to the bridge.
He slid an arm under her and lifted her to her feet. “Let’s go.”
As they descended the slope, the mist came up to greet them. Andi wondered whether this thundercloud of draconic fury would recognize her, envelop her, try to destroy her. Did they know Eddie? What would they make of her surrender?