Izzy came down beside Alexa and checked for her breathing, and her pulse. Sanchez did the same for the third woman, who had to be Azlu—the other Spiderling.
“I’ve got a pulse on Alexa,” Izzy said.
“And this one… I can’t tell whether she has a pulse, but I think she’s breathing,” Sanchez said.
“Oh, no…” I said, as I pumped frantically against Six’s chest. “No, no, no, you can’t be dead. You can’t be dead!”
Sanchez stood, grabbed her radio, and clicked it to life. “Code blue in D-Block,” she said, “I repeat, code blue in D-Block. I need a Vivimancer in here right now.”
“Roger,” came an electronic voice “He’s on his way, ETA two minutes.”
I breathed into Six’s mouth again before continuing to administer CPR. Her body was still warm, I could the heat coming through her clothes and when I had touched her neck to check for a pulse. Even though her heart was stopped, it hadn’t been stopped for long. There was still time, there had to be, but were there two minutes?
Izzy and Sanchez watched from the side of the cell, powerless, as I tried to revive the woman I had come here to rescue. My own heart hammered against my temples. I couldn’t hear myself think, except to count the rhythm of the beat in my own head. If Sanchez or Izzy were speaking, I wasn’t paying attention.
I was entirely focused on reviving Six, but as the seconds ticked over and her skin began to cool, I felt the sting of tears begin to bite my eyes.
“Don’t you die on me,” I said, not once missing a beat. “Do you hear me, Six? I forbid you to die!”
“Seline,” Izzy’s voice finally made it through.
“What!?” I snapped at her.
“I think… she’s gone…”
I shook my head. “No. No, she’s not gone. She can’t be gone.” Grabbing her nose again, I breathed into her mouth for a third time, ignoring the rational part of my brain that had noticed she was already starting to cool.
The prison Vivimancer came rushing into the cell, and once Sanchez directed him on who to help, he moved in to try and lend his assistance. At first, I didn’t want him anywhere near her. Tears were falling out of me in a torrent, by now. But Izzy came up behind me and was able to pull me away so the Vivimancer could work.
He was supposed to be well versed in the art of healing magic, so if anyone could help her, it was going to be him.
But still, the seconds continued to tick over, and Six wasn’t waking up.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Someone slapped me in the face, and when I opened my eyes, I saw stars.
“Will you get the fuck up already?!” Alexa yelled into my face.
I blinked at her. “What?” I asked, “What’s happening?”
“Get. Up!”
My body was sluggish and slow to respond, my limbs were stiff, and I couldn’t feel the left side of my face—the side opposite to the one that had been slapped. But adrenaline was starting to course through my veins, quickly sobering me up and putting me square in the moment.
Alexa stared at me, half of her face painted red in the glow of the emergency lights. “How am I—”
“—you need to stop talking and get up, because I’ve just had to save your life and fight that son-of-a-bitch off at the same time. You’re welcome.”
I wanted to ask more questions. I wasn’t totally sure what had just happened to me, but the sudden roar from within the relative darkness of the corridor made me scramble to my feet. I couldn’t see the beast, but it was there, somewhere. Lurking. Watching. Whimpering.
“You fought it off?” I asked.
“Hell-yeah I did. I thought I lost you, too.”
I touched my face where I knew I had struck the wall. It stung, but I was in one piece. “I just… had the strangest dream.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Bitch, we are dreaming! Now let’s get the fuck moving and trap this asshole so we can get out of here!”
“Right. Cobwebs.” I scanned the walls around me until I found them, and then I started running, but my mind was heavy with what I thought had just happened. I had died. Hadn’t I? The Horseman had pulled me deeper into himself. Hadn’t he? We had just said we were in love. Hadn’t we?
If Alexa had pulled me back from the brink, then I wasn’t dead yet… and if I wasn’t dead yet, then we still had a chance to finish this.
The monster had started chasing us again. I could hear it rushing down the hallway, all four of its limbs pounding on the ground as it ran. It was so fast, it was almost on top of us by the time I spotted the broken section of wall that would lead us to the spiderlings.
Taking the sharp turn with just seconds to spare, we dashed into the dark tunnel, batting the cobwebs as we encountered them. The thickest, and toughest of them, though, parted all on their own, allowing us to slip past without getting stuck in them.
“Hurry,” came Azlu’s voice, “The trap is ready.”
Alexa sped ahead of me, deftly zipping and weaving her way through the cobwebs with ease. On a normal day I would’ve been able to keep up, but my head was pounding, and I was understandably a little distracted. Instead of speeding, I focused on not falling, which had been what got me the last time.
Losing my footing, even for a moment, had resulted in a close flirtation with death. I didn’t want to experience that again, even if what I remembered of the experience had been strangely calming.
Finally breaking through the last of the cobwebs and spilling into the large cavern beyond, I came to a screeching halt next to Alexa and turned around to face the wall of spider silk that looked like it was closing, tightening to create a tough, sticky net.
You’d think the devil, despite the fact that it behaved like an animal, would’ve easily been able to figure out it was being led into a trap, but it didn’t. It kept coming, charging, ripping, clawing, and tearing its way through the mess of webbing.
But it was getting slower.
I could hear it huffing, and puffing, and panting. Tearing through those webs was sucking the energy out of it, but all it could do was keep moving, keep coming. We had pissed it off, and now it wanted to eat us. It had a single-minded goal, and it was going to carry out no matter what we put in its path.
Well, unless mother showed up—but she wasn’t going to. Not now.
“You ready?” I asked.
“I’ve never stripped a monstrous beast of its powers before,” she said, “But I’m ready. Azlu, are you ready?”
“We are ready,” came a pair of voices from above, one male, one female, both synchronized. The spiderlings hung upside down overhead, slowly descending from long strands of webbing that stretched all the way to the cavern’s ceiling.
“Alright,” I said, “Alexa, you start hitting it with magic, Azlu and Ezree, you wrap that thing up and make sure it doesn’t go anywhere.”
“You will need to weaken it, Six,” Azlu said, “Its chances of escape will reduce if it is hurt before we cocoon it.”
“Hurt it. Easy.”
I could see it, now; the figure crashing through the dark mouth of the tunnel. It was close. Close enough that its mere presence made the last few feet of webbing start to rattle. As soon as I saw one of its massive paws tear through the wall, I sprang into action, growing my claws and rushing toward it.