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Spider laughs. “Itsy-bitsy, itsy-bitsy death,” he hums.
Then he shakes her off. Her body crumples to the ground, lifeless.
Caleb shimmies out from beneath the Fae beast and runs to Maddy, his heart pummeling his ribs. Maddy!
“Nooo!” When he reaches her, he drops to the ground beside her, but her eyes are completely white. The irises are cloudy, and it’s as though the whites have taken over her whole eyeball. He shakes her, but she doesn’t respond. There’s nothing.
“Itsy-bitsy, itsy-bitsy,” Spider sing-songs.
Gently, Caleb lowers Maddy to the floor, fury coursing through him. Images of the council hall dance in his mind and he welcomes the rush of heat through his veins. Before he can do anything, something slams into the back of his head, knocking him forward. His vision dims, and he can’t tell who’s there. The power he had lessens, as if the spell is falling back into place.
There’s a scuffle at the far end of the Veritas lobby, and Caleb can’t tell who’s out there. It’s too dark, too hard to see. Did Spider’s venom get him, too?
But the scuffle continues, and Spider is beaten back.
Caleb’s eyelids flutter, and before he drifts into the black, he recognizes…
Alec.
Chapter19
Madeleine
Spider webs slide across Maddy’s face, and she shivers as she finds she’s lying in the middle of a darkened space. Her surroundings are made of the silken strands. She’s drowning in webbing, and she can’t get it off. It grabs at her, choking her, squeezing her. The weight of it pushes against her chest and makes the atmosphere heavier than it should be in Veritas.
She swats at the threads without breaking them. Who let all the spiders into Veritas?
No matter how many times she blinks her eyes, she doesn’t feel like she can really wake up or sit up. Her vision is still clouded. What’s going on? She swipes at her face, trying to wipe webs away. It’s like being the first one to jog through the park beneath the short trees. How many times had she done that? But she hadn’t been running in years.
No… Now she’s a vampire, and there’s something else going on here. Isn’t she still in Veritas? Something isn’t right about what’s going on. What happened before she opened her eyes? They’d been attacked by an intruder, and Caleb had launched himself at it. A dark shadow creeps through her mind, and her skin prickles.
Spider!
The revelation chills her, and she spins in place, trying to find something to grasp other than spider webs. But there’s nothing. Had he…
It’s her. It’s Spider’s venom. She saved Caleb from certain death, but she was stabbed herself. The point of his leg pierced her skin like a sharp toenail, and the poison burned through her, knocking her into wherever she is. Perhaps she’s withdrawn into her mind or been transported somewhere else.
Now she’s here with pain spreading through her, outward from her chest.
The darkness of the venom tinges the air, the poison making the atmosphere heavy. It’s spreading through her and the web strands sting her skin. She tries once more to bat at the webbing, but now her limbs won’t move. The paralysis doesn’t slow, and she sinks into the ground in the spider web room. It must be Fae magic.
None of her magic overcomes anything. No magic swells. Instead, the pressure increases, and it’s as though her cells are dying one by one. Caleb was alive before she woke up here. Concern pours through her, and worry twists her stomach. Is he still okay? Was he been able to avoid losing to Spider?
Maddy grits her teeth, at least her jaw still works, and she’s able to breathe. It feels as though her whole body has fallen asleep from the loss of circulation, and she’s being tied into a fear straitjacket. Her heart throbs, and her vision blurs. Caleb, where are you? He has to be okay.
Her shoulders droop, and Maddy doesn’t know what to do. She’s trapped in spider webs with no way out, and she’s not sure how to help him at all.
Surely, he’ll find the weapon. He must.
Surely, he’ll beat Orion, too. If the weapon falls into Orion’s hand, then he’ll destroy the only thing which can kill him for good. Caleb can’t let that happen.
Maddy’s heart clenches, and she twists in place. Yet the numbness spreads, and she can’t reach out. She squeezes her eyes closed and pushes against the fear. She imagines breaking through it and finding strength on the other side. Her hand moves slightly, and she flings her arm at the surrounding webs.
Her fingers hook the strands, and she scrapes a few aside. The gap encourages her, and another fling of her arm knocks more aside. She pushes up, and more webbing falls beneath the flail of her arm. Maybe her fingers are starting to work better. Her toes wiggle inside her shoes now, too.
Struggling to sit up, she heaves herself to her feet, scraping away at the sticky threads coating her skin. She takes several steps in a row across the spongy ground while she squints at her surroundings. Each step is a little easier than the last one. There aren’t any trees, nothing outside of the webbing. She must be in an alternate realm made by Fae magic, and it doesn’t agree with the vampiric parts of her. There must be a way out of here.
Maddy walks through the silken threads, ripping and shredding the webs, searching for some sign of how she can get the hell out of here. She trips on something on the ground, and turns back to see what it is.
