“Pa,”Rolan repeated, more loudly. “Is that you?”
He peered into the dark, trying to make out his pa’s square build in the shadows. His father had busted accomplices out of cells before, some of them much more secure than Rolan’s. This place should be a piece of pie.
Straining his ears, Rolan listened for his father’s voice, his breathing, anything to indicate his presence.
Instead, he heard a skitter.
Rolan’s body went cold. He sat as still as a stone, listening, watching, his muscles tensed. It was only him and Newt in the station. And while Newt was an awful snorer, Rolan had never heard himorPa make a sound like that—like ten thousand tiny, hard legs scrabbling over rock.
He heard it again, closer this time, from somewhere above.
Rolan’s eyes stretched wide, straining for any glimmer of light that might reveal the whatever-it-was crawling across the ceiling, over his head. Maybe it was a spider. Maybe it was a rat. He could deal with spiders and rats. Nothappily, but he could deal with them.
But if it was theotherthing…
A thread of moonlight stretched through the narrow window behind Rolan, but it wasn’t nearly enough to illuminate the cell.
If he shouted for Newt, would the thing attack?
Rolan had no choice but to remain frozen as he watched the darkness, waiting for the sound.
It came again, on the other side of the cell this time.
Rolan’s eyes moved while the rest of him stayed still, and a bead of cold sweat dribbled down the nape of his neck and under his collar.
“Newt,” he whispered.“The light.”
Newt answered with a particularly robust snore, and the thing skittered again.
This time it moved across the window, and Rolan finally got a look at it in the silver moonlight.
His heart stopped beating.
The creature was as long as his arm, its sinuous body lined with legs, its head a spiked bulb on a stalk of a neck. It twisted, staring back at Rolan through three rows of pale, glowing eyes. When it opened its mouth, revealing teeth as sharp as arrowheads, wisps of blue mist oozed from its throat.
Cryptic.
Staring at the thing, Rolan realized this was as close as he’d ever been to one of the monsters. He’d glimpsed them before, in patches of shadow, vanishing into the night, and it had always been enough to fill his dreams with nightmares for days after.
What he saw now would keep him up for a solid year.
Ifhe survived this night.
For a moment time seemed to stop as Rolan and the Cryptic studied each other. It was hard to believe that this many-legged little monster had once been nothing more than a secret in someone’s head, a deed untold, a word unspoken. And over time that secret had grown restless, as all secrets do, until at last it pried itself free of whatever fool had been keeping it and scurried into the dark.
And in the dark, secrets changed. Theygrew. They took onmonstrous forms, sprouting legs and eyes and scales and claws. In the shadows of Crisanth, secrets came to life.
And then they attacked.
Rolan moved, but the Cryptic moved faster, sprinting off the wall with a raspy shriek. It struck the bench where Rolan had been lying, biting and clawing, scoring deep marks into the wood. Rolan flung himself at the bars, screaming for Newt.
The guard jerked up with a snort, making disoriented sounds as he fumbled with the lamp. Rolan whirled, ducking just in time as the monster came flying toward him. The Cryptic collided with the bars, snarling and furious, then dropped onto Rolan’s head. He yelled and shook it off, but not before the thing opened a cut above his eye.
Scrambling across the cell, wiping blood from his vision, Rolan knew it was hopeless. There was nothing in here to defend himself with. The Cryptic was driven by manic rage, the need tobite, claw, kill. Rolan had heard stories all his life, but nothing could have prepared him for the raw violence of the monster.
The Cryptic scrabbled about on the floor, gathering itself for another leap, when suddenly the door of the guard station burst open.
“Pa!” Rolan yelled.
