Chapter 31
I stared up, my exhaustion and pounding headache fading to the background out of sheer amazement. “Billy?”
The oldest and only female of the O’Donnelly clan spun to the side, sliding deftly off the giant beast’s muscular shoulders to stand.
Her cheeks were streaked with some kind of mud she’d used like warpaint, and her tawny hair was tangled and wild.
Yet, somehow, she pulled off the look in a ‘badass warrior bitch’ kind of way.
“Who the hell’re you?” she asked, her eyes flitting between Hook, Moll, and I. “My brothers pay you lot to help them come get me?”
“Something like that,” Paddy answered, stepping tentatively closer. “But…how’ve you been?”
She closed the distance between them in a stride, bonking him upside the head. “Took you long enough to come after me.” She flashed a grin, pulling him into a hug that said whatever she was talking about was forgiven.
Footsteps sounded from behind me, and I spun to see Tom, Garth, Xander, and the three remaining O’Donnellys stepping out from the cave.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Jacob marveled.
“I told you she’d be fine,” Andrew replied, dashing forward to throw his arms around her, seemingly unworried about the thousand-pound saber tooth bear standing just behind her.
“Of course I’m fine,” she answered, looking confused as to why anyone had thought otherwise.
“Care to fill us in on what happened here?” Xander asked, interrupting the little reunion.
Paddy winced, his eyes darting toward Hook as Billy explained, “We were in the first layer looking for opals a few months back and I got forced down here by a particularly nasty jackalope that someone, ” she shot a pointed glance at Scotty, “should’ve seen coming.
Been hunting and gathering to survive ever since. ”
Xander gestured toward Paddy. “And you all have been planning a way to come here and find her ever since? Before we agreed to pay you 10,000 gold pieces to get us down here? While you acted as if you were only in it for the gold?”
I winced as Paddy threw his hands up in surrender. “Look, we do what we gotta do.”
The Captain took a step forward, raising his iron hook to silence Xander before he could say more. “Water under the bridge. Now let’s get a move on. We don’t want to be stuck down here for any longer than necessary.”
Of course he wouldn’t care why the O’Donnellys were all here, or if they came with us. He had no plans for what came after this, anyway. The money was meaningless to him, as long as he accomplished his goal.
End Pan and Tink.
I turned away, doing my best to push past the wave of despair that fell over me.
He was a spirit of vengeance, his eyes constantly fixed on that goal. Even now, I could feel the fury, just barely below the surface of his carefully held facade. The single-minded desire to get the clock and kill the two who’d wronged him and killed so many others.
Xander opened his mouth to argue, but shut it as he met Hook’s gaze, dipping his head. “Alright. We’ve got a crocodile to catch.”
“A crocodile?” Billy asked, cocking an eyebrow. “Only one beastie like that ‘round here, and I know you can’t be talking about him. Unless you’re stupid.”
“Noru,” Hook answered. “We’re looking for Noru.”
“Gods damn it all,” Billy muttered under her breath. “Well, we’re guides, and I have no problem guiding you to Noru. But you’ll have to do the fighting on your own.”
“That was the plan.”
“And I don’t mean to be morbid but have you and my brothers made arrangements to get them paid in the case you…aren’t able to pay them out once this is over with.” She didn’t wince once but kept her eyes locked on Hook.
He laughed dryly, producing a small, rather wet-looking envelope from his coat. “Present this to my crew, and you’ll get your payment. No more dallying, though. We need to move.”
A sharp stab of pain in my forehead pulled my attention upward, and I looked up at Fetch, dumbfounded. “Did you just…bite me?”
He clicked his beak, shaking his head back and forth as if in pain.
“Your wing?” I asked as we began to walk. I let a trickle of my magic dribble out, probing him with it. There was pain, but it wasn’t from his wing.
“Want me to take a look?” Tom offered, slowing down to let us catch up.
“It’s not that,” I said, chewing at my inner lip as I sealed my magic back up. “It’s this place. The magic here, he can feel it, same as I can.”
“Very odd,” Xander remarked. “I do feel it, from the Opal, but it’s not nearly as pronounced as it seems to be for you. Your magic is so strange…it reacts to this unlike anything else.”
Made sense, given that it was magic from an entirely different world. But I’d save that conversation for a different day. “I’m getting used to it, and I feel much stronger here.”
“That should come in handy when it’s time to face Noru,” Xander said.
Billy let out a sharp breath. “Have yet to meet the Tideblessed who’d be more than an afternoon snack for that fucker. I wish you the best, I really do, but you’re up against forces even we don’t fully understand. The entirety of The Fen bends to his will.”
“And he’s going to bend to mine,” Hook cut in.
Billy shrugged. “I’d love to be proven wrong. The bear that’d been walking alongside us nuzzled at her face, and her arm snapped up in a blur, flicking him directly on the nose. “Out of here. Shoo!”
And, for whatever reason, he turned tail and ran. Gods only knew what she’d done to earn that type of respect from the beast. “If even she’s saying we can’t beat him, maybe we are screwed,” Moll muttered, her eyes pinned to the ground.
I bumped her gently with my shoulder. “We’ll handle him. Don’t worry about it.”
“You won’t be getting close enough for it to be too dangerous,” Xander said, his voice firm.
“The O’Donnellys can help you get out if things go poorly for us.
” Moll opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off with a shake of his head.
“I’m not budging on this. I’ll have them drag you out of here if I have to. I want your word.”
She scowled, but nodded, nonetheless. “Fine.”
“You can still shoot at it with your slingshot or something,” I suggested. “It’s not the kind of thing you can just run up and stab to death.”
“Wise choice, lass,” Scotty grunted, striding past us as he made his way to the front of the pack.
“How’d you survive down here for all this time?” I asked Billy, changing the subject as we squeezed through a particularly-dense section of jungle.
She pressed her index finger to her temple. “Wits. The beasts of The Fen have strength and size, but I have smarts. I’ve stayed by the edge, heading into the jungle to hunt only when I run out of meat.”
“And you haven’t found a way out in all this time?” Moll asked, glancing nervously in the direction we’d come from.
“It’s like the place doesn’t want me to leave. Most of the tunnels are too steep to climb up, and every time I think I might have a good one, it closes before I can use it. Maybe we’ll have better luck now that there are so many of us.”
My fingernails dug into my palm, feeling a sudden wave of claustrophobia despite the size of the place.
She’d managed to survive for quite some time on her own, but a group our size would attract more attention.
Even if we did manage to kill Noru, our struggle wouldn’t be over.
We’d still have to find our way back out.
A reddish gleam caught my eye, distracting me from my worries, and I leapt toward it, leaning over to scoop it up.
“Maelstrom Opal,” I marveled, gritting my teeth as I held my magic at bay as I stared at the ever-shifting gem.
The pain was nothing like it’d been in Garth’s room, but it was still uncomfortable to look at.
“They fall from the ceiling, sometimes,” Billy said, glancing back at me.
“We should grab some on our way out,” Tom suggested. “Probably worth a bloody fortune.”
Garth glanced over at me, a dark expression on his face as he sucked in a ragged breath. “We had loads of them, before that hydra came for us.”
Billy whirled on him. “You’ve been here?”
“Many years ago. Though it hasn’t changed a lick.”
“At least there’s hope, then. How’d you make it out?”
“Got lucky. Me and the two other survivors all ran through our own exit. I was the only one who made it out.”
She nodded. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
“One step at a time,” Garth said. “But where is the beast? Can’t be too far, as far as I can remember.”
“Haven’t seen him in person, thank the gods,” Billy answered, “but we’re a mile or so away from the zone where the biggest beasts—” She cut off abruptly, holding out an arm as she slowed to a halt.
My heart thumped in my chest, and I let the magic trickle out once again, sending out feelers for nearby life.
A dozen little nodes of energy appeared in my mind's eye, not counting the members of our party.
But, this time, there was none of the bloodthirst. I probed at one, getting a distinct image of some small, woodland critter. A squirrel? Or maybe a chipmunk?
I breathed a sigh of relief. “I don’t feel anything,” I said. “I think we’re good.” For whatever reason, it somehow seemed safer here than it had on the first layer. Maybe there were fewer monsters?
I expanded my search a little further, wincing slightly as I sensed a presence closer to the edge—some kind of strange wolf creature. Steering clear of it, I probed inward instead. Maybe I’d be able to feel Noru if?—
A pair of blood red eyes fixed on me in this magical realm, seeming to stare through me, all the way down to my soul itself. I reeled, trying to suck the magic back into me, but it yanked me back, its crimson gaze never wavering.
Die.
Die.
Die.
It came through as a feeling rather than a word, but I understood it as clearly as if he had spoken it. An instant later, a bone-rattling rumble split the massive cavern.
I let out a slow, shaky breath.
“He’s here.”