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When they were out of the way, and clearly expecting something fancy, she hauled back, slammed her shoulder against the thing, and got nothing but molars that rattled like marbles in a box.
"Fuck," she breathed with a wince.
"That had to hurt," Z muttered. "You okay-"
The wall started to vibrate and they all jumped aside, training their weapons on the door that emerged from the stone and slid out of the way.
"Guess it was scared of you," Vishous said with a hint of respect.
Xhex frowned, as the humming static suddenly increased until her ears rang. "I don't think he's in there. I can't sense him at all."
Ehlena stepped forward, clearly prepared to plunge into the darkness that was revealed. "I can. He's right-"
Three sets of hands grabbed her and held her back.
"Hold up," Xhex said, unclipping a Mag-Lite from her belt. As she hit the beam, a thin hall about fifty yards long was revealed. At the end, there was a door.
Vishous went first, and Xhex was right on his ass, with Ehlena and Z coming quickly behind.
"He's alive," Ehlena said as they came to the end of the corridor. "I can feel him!"
Xhex expected trouble at the steel panel-but no, it swung right open, revealing a room that...shimmered?
V cursed as Xhex's light sliced into the chamber. "What the...fuck?"
Hanging in the midst of a room with liquid walls and flooring was a massive cocoon shape, the black outer wrapping of which moved and glistened.
"Oh...God," Ehlena breathed. "No."
Lash had been practicing his gifts at the Omega's lair, and man, didn't all that work come in handy on a night like tonight. As the two squadrons of lessers he'd called in from the neighboring town got to work fighting with the Brothers, he faced off against a beast the size of a Ford Expedition-and traded fireballs with the motherfucker.
Jumping away from the house, because the last thing this situation needed was a visit from the Plattsburgh Fire Department, he caught sight of a splinter group of vampires heading for the outbuilding across the way. They went inside, and when he didn't see them again, he had a feeling that was the way you got into the colony.
Which meant that as nice as it was to play volleybomb with Puff the Magic, he needed to stop fighting and start going after his female. He had no clue why the hell the Brothers showed up at exactly the same time he had, but when it came to symphaths, he was willing to bet there were no coincidences. Had the princess known he was coming up here and tipped off the Brotherhood?
The dragon spat out another barrage of flames, and the blast illuminated the fighting that was going on all around the farmhouse's lawn: Everywhere he looked there were Brothers squaring off against slayers with bare knuckles swinging, and daggers flashing and shitkickers flying. The symphony of grunts and curses and pounding, cracking impacts made him feel stronger, more powerful.
His troops were fighting his teachers.
How f**king poetic was that?
But enough with the nostalgia. Concentrating on his hand, he created a whirlwind of molecules, spinning them with his mind faster and faster until the centrifugal force spontaneously combusted. As the whirling mass of energy pulled together, he kept it palmed and raced forward toward the purple-scaled beast, knowing the damn thing had to take an inhale break after it threw out its bombs.
The dragon was no dummy and crouched down, viciously clawed arms coming up to defend itself. Lash stopped just out of swiping range and didn't give the bastard a chance to pounce. He threw the energy ball right into the beast's chest, plowing it over, knocking it out cold.
He didn't hang around to roast s'mores over the smoking carcass. Sure as shit, after some deep-breathing recovery that dragon was going to pop up off the ground like the Energizer Bunny, and at the moment the coast was clear between Lash and the barn.
In a tearing rush, he raced for the outbuilding and burst into the empty, unremarkable space. In the far corner, he saw a horse stall, and he followed damp footsteps over to it. The treads disappeared into a black square.
Lifting the slab was grunt work and then some, but the sight of more prints down a set of stone steps got him juiced. Tracking them all the way to the bottom, he found himself in a stone corridor, and thanks to the red glow from black candles, he was able to follow their wet path-although his road map didn't last forever. With all the warmth being thrown off, water dried fast, and by the time he got to a three-way branch, he had no clue which way the bunch had gone.
Inhaling, he hoped to catch a scent, but all his nose picked up on was burning wax and earth.
Threre was nothing else. No sounds. No rustle of movement. It was as if the four he'd seen going down here had disappeared.
He looked left. Right. Straight ahead.
On impulse, he went to the left.
Chapter SIXTY-NINE
Ehlena's eyes refused to process what she was looking at: They just flat out no-way'd the situation.
It couldn't possibly be spiders. She couldn't possibly be looking at thousands upon thousands of spiders...oh, God, spiders and scorpions...covering not just the walls and floors, but...
In horror, she realized what was hanging in the center of the room. Hanging from ropes or chains. Hanging and covered with the teeming masses that blanketed every square inch of the cell.
"Rehvenge..." she moaned. "Dearest Virgin...Scribe."
Without thinking, she lurched forward, but Xhex's strong hand pulled her back. "No."
Struggling against the iron band locked on her upper arm, Ehlena shook her head violently. "We have to save him!"
"I'm not suggesting we leave him," the other female said tightly. "But if we go in there, we're going to be attacked like something out of the Bible. We have to figure out how to-"
A brilliant glow flared, cutting off Xhex and bringing Ehlena's head around. Vishous had removed the glove on his right hand, and as he lifted his palm up, the planes of his harsh face and the swirls of the tattoo around his eye stood out in sharp relief.
"Bug Be Gone." He flexed his illuminated fingers. "The Orkin man only wishes he had this kind of shit on his truck."
"And I have a buzz saw," Z said, grabbing a black tool from his belt. "If you can clear the way, we'll get him down."
Vishous crouched by the sharp edge of the swirling insects, his hand spotlighting the tangling, surging horde of small bodies and twitching, spinning legs.
Ehlena clapped her palm over her mouth, trying not to gag out loud. She couldn't imagine that all over her body. Rehvenge was alive...but how had he survived? Without being stung to death? Without going mad?
The light from the Brother's hand spiraled out in a straight line, singeing its way to where Rehv hung, leaving nothing but ashes and a burning, wet stench that made her pray for nose plugs. Once extended, the burning illumination split and spread, creating a path.
"I can hold it, but move fast," Vishous said.
Xhex and Zsadist leaped out into the cave, and the spiders on the ceiling responded by spinning threads and dripping down like blood seeping from a deep wound. Ehlena watched the two of them bat the invaders away for only a moment before she whipped off her backpack and dug in.
"You smoke, right?" she said to Vishous as she unwrapped her scarf and put it over her head. "Tell me you brought your lighter."
"What the hell do you..." V smiled when he saw the aerosol spray can of topical antibiotic in her hand. "It's in my ass pocket. Right side."
He shifted so she could work the heavy gold weight free, and as soon as she got the thing, she stepped out into the chamber. The can wasn't going to last long, so she didn't use it until she was standing right behind Xhex and Zsadist.
"Duck!" she said just as she depressed the spray button and fired up the lighter.
The two of them went low and she vaporized the air guard from above in a blast of flame.
With the way momentarily clear, Xhex got up on Z's shoulders and reached forward toward the chains with the buzz saw. As a high-pitched whirring noise filled the cave, Ehlena kept up her offensive, letting out bursts of fire that kept most of the bastards on the ceiling and not on the pair's heads and necks. The saw helped as well, sending sparks that further repulsed the arachnid guard, but as if in payback, spiders landed on the sleeves of Ehlena's jacket and crawled upward.
Rehvenge jerked. Then moved.
One of his arms reached out toward her, scorpions dropping off of it, spiders shuffling to stay on. The limb lifted slowly, as if the burden of its second skin of insects made it nearly too heavy to move.
