“What is this place?” Alexa asked, her echo bouncing off the walls and webs, making them thwang.
“You are in the inner space,” Azlu said, “The shallows of the living unconscious. Welcome.”
“This place is freaking me out.”
“There is no need for alarm. We are here. Ezree is here, too.”
“Ezree?” I asked, “He can hear us?”
“We can hear you,” came another raspy, voice. This one male. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but I knew it was somewhere overhead.
“We are ready for you now,” Azlu said, “Lure the creature here, and we will trap it in our webs.”
“Won’t it run away the moment it gets near here?”
“Mother will not make her presence known. It will be up to us to contain the beast, but we will succeed.”
It was starting to sound like the spiderling was moving, her voice was shifting from one side of the cavern to the other. Looking up, I thought I could see her… but then I saw the size of the thing using the web to descend, and I suddenly wasn’t so sure.
She had many limbs, most of them long and black and pointed. Though she still kind of looked like Azlu, what few bits of her skin were exposed were also covered in tough, black chitin that shimmered as she moved. The resemblance to anything human stopped below the torso, though; from there on, she was all spider.
All seven feet of her.
“Azlu…” the word fell out of my mouth. “Is that you?”
“It is me,” she said, “Although I perhaps appear a lot more intimidating here than I truly am. I wanted to look intimidating.”
“You can control what you look like?”
“This is a dream world. If you know you are dreaming, you can be the master of it.”
Like what I did with my collar. I checked my neck, and it was gone. Flexing my fingers, I made my claws extend, only this time I wanted them to be a little longer, and sharper. As I watched them extend, and extend, and extend, I realized I could make them grow or shrink with just a thought.
“This is awesome,” I said, and then I looked over at Alexa. “You try it.”
Alexa looked a little confused for a moment, but then she stretched her hands out, and magic sigils burst to life all along her skin. Bracelets of life curled around her wrists, sigils of power drew themselves across the back of her hand, and shafts of light erupted from her fingertips. She had to snap her hands closed to contain the light.
“Yo’, I’ve got my magic back!” she shrieked.
“Do you think you can do what you have to do?” I asked.
“Once that thing is in here and held in one place, I’ll try and strip it of its power. If I can do that, then maybe the spiderlings can keep it trapped here. Maybe even forever.”
“How do you feel about that, Azlu?” I asked.
“It is powerful, powerful enough perhaps to avoid incarceration in here,” Azlu said, “But if we succeed, we will not let it out… for there are worse monsters cocooned in our webs than the devil of Harrowgate.”
I nodded. “That’s good enough for me. All we need to do now is find it.”
Azlu pointed one of her large, thin limbs toward an opening in the cavern. It was at ground level, and it looked big enough not only for Alexa and I to get through, but also for the beast. The only problem was, it was covered in webs—thick, tough, white webs.
“This way,” she said, “You will find it here.”
Azlu climbed along the strands of webbing overhead as we moved toward the opening, and just as we reached it, the wall of webbing parted with a sick, squelching sound. With a gesture of her hand, the way was open for us to move through, but this was as far as she went.
I looked up at the totally alien, arachnid-human creature standing next to me. “The next time we see you, we’ll have the devil hot on our heels,” I said.
“Come back to us,” Azlu said, “We would miss you if you expired.”
“Expired is… yeah, okay,” I shook my head. “We’ll be back. Be ready for us.”
Azlu bowed, and then it was time. Time to hunt the devil down.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Izzy
It was too easy. Despite how tired the skeleton crew was, I had expected Harrowgate to put up more of a fight, but we were already almost at the last checkpoint. Once we were through that, there was only one stretch left before reaching D-Block, Six, and Alexa. I had trouble wrapping my head around all this, and I had been around the block enough times now to know that meant something was probably wrong.
I tugged on RJ’s coat as we moved briskly through Harrowgate’s corridors.
“What’s up?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
“Something’s not right,” I said. “Where are the soldiers?”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing. It’s not like this place to be so unguarded.”
“I haven’t seen a single military truck go into or out of this place in, like, at least a week. Maybe longer.”
“Maybe operations just slowed down around here. You know, ever since people started dying.”
“It could be that, but I don’t believe for a second that we’re gonna just be able to waltz into D-Block and walk out with our people.”
“Trust me, I know. I’m keeping my eyes peeled.”
I nodded and patted him on the back. “Good. First sign of trouble, I want you to—” no sooner had we turned a corner that a whole unit of men came into view. They were waiting for us. Five of them, all clad in black tactical gear, all of them pointing fully automatic rifles at us. “Ahh, there it is,” I said, putting my hand up, “What did I tell you, RJ?”
“You never told me you knew Psionic magic.”
“No, that’s my jurisdiction,” came a voice from behind the soldiers. The men in black uniforms parted, allowing for a tall, skinny blonde guy wearing a black duster to step between them. He was slow clapping with gloved hands. Before he spoke again, his left eye twitched. “Welcome back, Seline.”
“Warden,” she said through her teeth, her gaze lowered. “I would love to stay and chat with you, but we’re on a tight schedule, and we’d like to keep it.”
“Yes… yes, of course, your little lost lamb.” He paused. “Six, is it? That’s what they call her.”
Seline didn’t like that. I could see the expression on her face hardening, I could hear her gloves squeaking as she clenched her hands into fists. I placed my arm on her shoulder and moved beside her. “Warden,” I said, taking over, “It’s good to see you again… how’s the kid?”
The Warden scowled. “I should’ve known you would be helping these rats break into my place of work, Wardbreaker.”
“Rats?” Aaryn went to step forward, and even though RJ was able to stop her from launching into an attack, her rapid movement still made the guards a little twitchy.
Twitchy. Good one. I’m using that.
“Listen, Twitchy.”
“What did you call—”
“—I need you to shut up for a moment, okay? Because I know you think you have this whole situation under control, right? I bet you’ve been watching through your cameras, and you thought, let’s wait until they’re between checkpoints, that way we can jump them, and they won’t have an easy time escaping. How am I doing here, am I in the ballpark?”