Chapter 27 #2
Gerald was stepping forward, about to offer her some of his green juice, when the clouds thundered. It shook the ground. We were tossed, rolled, and thrown into the air. When we landed, the clouds were closer than they’d ever been, and the arena had plunged into near darkness.
Then the crowd screamed, and even though it was a wordless sound, I understood the intent. Kill.
They rushed over the stone ledge, falling toward us like a human waterfall.
“Follow me!” I took off, running in the direction Finn’s rope guided me.
After that, it became a nightmare of which Hell Gate could only dream.
The only thing that saved us was the darkness.
I sprinted from under the avalanche of depraved souls.
Justice and I fought side by side, while Luvic roared and batted the depraved back.
Gerald stayed in Luvic’s wake, darting out every now and then to jab and then retreat.
But the darkness led to confusion, and the gluttony for cruelty led the depraved to turn on each other.
The Den was a riot, and the thunderous black clouds pressed closer, urging more depravity.
“Don’t look!” Justice shouted. “Don’t look! Just keep going.”
I wouldn’t. I couldn’t look. Even the quick, running glances I had would haunt me for the rest of my life.
We burst through the gate and sprinted across the field, passing the freestanding columns. The golden rope led toward the forest. I veered across the grass, aiming for the darkened trees.
“That’s the forest! That’s where the beasts are!
” Gerald yelled, yanking on my arm and tugging me to a stop.
“We can’t. We’ll die. We may as well go back to the city!
Idiot! You’ve killed us. I should’ve handed you to them as soon as you fell from the clouds.
I should’ve left you clueless and pushed you into the arena. Idiot! We’ll all die—”
“Shut up!” Justice grabbed his shirt and leaned two feet down to face him, breathing hard. “Shut up.”
Luvic snarled. Behind him, I saw at least a hundred people rushing out the gates after us.
“Justice. Come on!”
He dropped Gerald’s shirt, gave him a disgusted look, and then sprinted after me.
The closer we got to the forest, the hotter it became, until I was so covered in sweat I felt like I was dangling in the steam above a pot of boiling water. Above, the clouds were so close that if I jumped, I’d be able to scrape my fingers through them.
The clouds hung over us like a black silk sheet covering a colony of things. We couldn’t see the things, but we could discern their shape and their movement and the way they hungrily followed us.
The rope led into the forest, and I followed it, sprinting into the dark woods.
The trees were old, with gnarled gray bark and gray moss that hung from their branches like moldering funeral clothes on a skeleton.
The ground was covered in rotting wood and a creeping orange fungus that sneezed every time I stepped on it, sending up noxious spores.
Unfortunately, the leaf mold and rotten-woods scent wasn’t masked by green apples and mint.
Instead, I could detect a hint of star jasmine.
Every now and then, the trees flickered from bare-limbed skeletons to beautiful, full-leafed oak trees, and the orange fungus morphed into daisies and black-eyed Susans.
I jumped over a rotting log and ducked beneath a branch. Next to me, Justice swiped through a cobweb. I glanced over at him.
“The juice is wearing off.”
He nodded, his jaw clenched. “Yeah. You really got a way out of here?”
I pointed. “Just ahead.” Then I turned to Gerald. “Can we have another shot of your juice?”
The slipshot spat on the forest floor. “Thanks to you idiots, I dropped it. We have about five minutes before we think it’s all rainbows and daisies in here.
The forest slug’ll eat us, and we’ll like it.
Or, heck, those depraved chasing us will tear us apart, and we’ll laugh like we’re being tickled. Or maybe the clouds’ll get us and—”
Luvic snarled and bared his teeth at Gerald, and he finished with, “Friggin’ Bard monsters.”
We ran further in. I ignored the fluttering of the blue-winged butterflies and the clusters of wildflowers.
“Here!” I pointed to a tall tree. Unlike the rest of the forest trees, the clouds didn’t touch this one.
In fact, they made a vortex around it. The tree stretched at least two hundred feet into the air, as tall as the Merchant’s apartment building.
It wasn’t malevolent feeling like the rest of the trees.
Instead, it had a strange humming energy.
“This is it.” I pointed up. “We have to get to the top.”
That was where my rope ended. Which meant the other half of the rope was outside the Den.
Luvic nudged my hand with his head.
“Jackaltooth can’t climb,” Justice said, and I didn’t know if he was happy about it or not.
Luvic dropped Last to the ground and sat down on his haunches. He stared at me with wide orange eyes. An itch crawled down my neck. If the brooch made it so Luvic did what I said, then . . .
“Luvic?”
He tilted his head.
“You’re a man.”
He made a chuffing noise.
“That’s Luvic?” Last made a surprised sound and poked at Luvic’s fur. “Luvic is a kitty? I love kitties. I’ve always wanted one for a pet. Would you like to be my pet, Luvic?”
He bared his teeth and snarled.
I leaned closer and looked into his glowing jackaltooth eyes. “Listen. Luvic. You are a man. You are not a jackaltooth. You are a man. If you want to leave, you’ll listen to me. You are a man. You are not a beast. You are a man.”
Justice grunted and shook his head. If he had a choice, we’d have left Luvic in the arena. I knew that. But like Justice said, I still had a choice, and I was choosing Luvic.
“You’re a man.”
At my words, the stinging sensation in my finger increased until it felt as if I were pressing my finger into a needle and pushing the sharp point through bone and nail, all the way to the other side.
Luvic’s face contorted with pain, a snarl ripping from his throat. He convulsed, his bones and muscles twisting and writhing.
Justice swore, and Gerald stepped back, while Last smiled and clapped her hands.
Luvic howled, and the howl became a scream, and then the ragged scream broke off. Then, in a violent, gruesome, bone-twisting writhing, the jackaltooth reformed into a shuddering, bleeding, broken Luvic Bard.
He squatted on all fours, his head down, dragging in deep, guttural breaths.
I held my breath as he lifted his head. He snarled. His eyes were still wild, but—thank goodness—deep brown. His mouth was covered in blood, and his glossy black hair stood on end.
He was naked, wounded, and bloody.
“Oh darn,” Last said with a small pout. “He’s back. Maybe when we’re married, you could stay a kitty?”
Justice snorted.
Gerald’s mouth hung open.
“Luvic?”
His gaze turned to me. Chills ran over my skin. He still looked at me like he was a jackaltooth. Hungry and predatory, in the way something watches you right before it tears your heart out.
“Can you climb?” I asked.
He held up his finger in a “just a moment” gesture and then turned to the side and vomited. When he was finished, he wiped the back of his arm across his mouth.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice a low, guttural growl. “I can climb.”
A high, piercing noise, insectile and shrieking, echoed through the forest.
Justice spun around. “What was that?”
“Giant slug,” Gerald said.
“There aren’t slugs here,” Last said. “This place is beautiful. I love it. We should stay here forever. Right, Mari?”
“What do you see?” I asked Luvic.
He shrugged. “Trees.”
“Not flowers and butterflies?”
“I see them too.” His lip curled in a snarl. “But I know a cage when I see one.”
I nodded.
I’d nearly lost the effects of the juice—the star jasmine scent was leaching into me. In the distance, I could hear people shouting and running through the woods. They’d reach us soon. Maybe before the giant slug or the other forest beasts.
“Justice?” I looked at him, and he nodded. “I’ll go first. Luvic, can you carry Last? She won’t come otherwise.”
His mouth twisted into a sardonic smile, and then he nodded. He twisted his hand, and suddenly, he was clothed. He twisted his hand again, and I was dressed in the same clothes I’d been wearing earlier.
I gave him a grateful nod. “So me, then Luvic and Last, then Gerald. Justice?”
He nodded. “I’ll bring up the rear.”
The shriek sounded again, but this time, it almost sounded like music. A lovely, angelic serenade.
“Are you sure this is the way out?” Gerald asked.
Justice narrowed his eyes. “Of course she’s sure.”
Luvic bent down and helped Last climb onto his back. “Hold on tight,” he murmured, his mouth a tight line.
Last sighed and dropped her head to his shoulder, wrapping her legs around his middle. “I don’t much like you, but you are pretty. You’re even prettier when you scream.”
Luvic stared at me as if somehow this were my fault.
The star jasmine scent swirled around me, hitting me with a wave of dizzy giddiness. The forest took on a soft, dreamy feel. I felt . . . I looked at Justice and smiled.
He narrowed his eyes, stepped forward, and tilted my chin. “Mari.”
I blinked. “You feel it?”
He looked down at my lips. “Every day. Let’s go home.”
He pushed me toward the tree. It’s funny—when he said “let’s go home,” it sounded like he said “let’s go back to hell.”
I guessed that was what we were doing. Was he afraid of what he knew was coming?
“It won’t turn out like you fear,” I said. “I won’t let it.”
He smiled. Shrugged. “Maybe you don’t have a choice.”
He nudged me again, and I started to climb.
Hand over hand. Up. Up. Grasping limb after limb. Using knots and branches to boost myself higher. My hands were sweating and my arms and legs shaking by the time I reached the top.
When I looked down, a wave of vertigo nearly yanked me from the limb I was balanced on.
“Whoa.” Luvic grabbed me and steadied me. Last still clung to his back, her expression placid and happy. “You all right?”
I nodded. Gerald and Justice weren’t far behind. Far, far below, more than a hundred people were gathered at the base of the tree.
I’d nearly lost all the juice. The people looked as if they were dancing and laughing and having a wonderfully joyous time. They were surrounded by butterflies and flowers and the sweet scent of jasmine.
“You go first,” I said, pointing to the next branch. It was covered in a hazy film, and the leaves looked like the abstract pattern on ugly seventies avocado-green wallpaper.
“Through there?”
“Right.”
Luvic nodded and then boosted himself up. In one smooth motion, he tossed Last toward the haze. There was a strange sucking noise, and then she disappeared. He grunted in surprise.
Gerald had made it to me. He scrambled up the branch, shoved past me, climbed around Luvic, and dove through the haze.
“I guess he was in a hurry.”
Luvic scoffed.
“Justice,” I called. “You coming?”
“Yeah. Just . . . there’s something . . . go on ahead.” He struggled with his hold, his shoulder muscles rippling. Then he glanced up and smiled, and feeling triumphant, I grinned back.
We were almost out. We were going to escape a Den of Depravity. We were going to do it together.
“When we get home,” I said, “you and I are having real ice cream. We deserve it. We deserve alllll the ice cream. You and me, we’ll stay up all night eating ice cream and watching the Bard funeral on TV.”
Luvic stiffened. “The what?”
Justice’s nodded. “It’s a date.”
He went to pull himself up on the branch next to me, then he grunted and made a startled noise. His knuckles turned white, and his whole body went rigid.
“Justice?”
His expression filled with fear. Justice was never afraid. Never. Except . . . except when I was in danger.
“Mari. Get back through.”
“What?”
“Get back through now!”
Luvic swore. He lunged and grabbed my arm, swinging me up.
Then I saw why Justice had gone rigid. The black clouds had broken the vortex around the tree. They were rolling up the bark and swallowing every limb and every leaf in their path.
The black clouds flickered between malevolent, hungry things to glowing golden clouds. But in both cases, they were wrapped around Justice’s legs.
“No.” I jabbed my elbow into Luvic’s side. “No!”
I lunged down, trying to break Luvic’s hold and keep my balance. I grabbed for Justice, trying to reach his hand. If I could hold onto him, we could pull him up and out.
Luvic clutched me, yanking me back, snarling.
“Justice! Grab my hand!”
He held my gaze, then he nodded, reaching up to me. I held out my hand, taking his.
“Did you think I’d just leave you? I choose you too.”
Justice grasped my hand and smiled. Then the cloud, sensing its loss, reared up. Its tentacles grabbed Justice, wrapping his chest and his arms in its black chains. It smothered and suffocated him in darkness. The tentacle raced up his arm, stretching toward me.
Luvic swore and yanked me back.
Justice’s expression changed in an instant, from a soft, surprised smile to . . .
He knew.
For as long as I live, I won’t ever forget his expression.
He knew.
He knew the black cloud was going to take him.
He knew Luvic was going to throw me through the haze and leave him to die.
He knew he was never going to escape the Den of Depravity.
“Mari,” he said, although I couldn’t hear his voice over my scream.
The worst part of it was the shock and then the pain and then the acceptance. All of that crashed over his face in a single second.
“No!”
But me saying no didn’t do anything.
The cloud yanked Justice from the tree. And just like Gerald said, it wrapped him in tentacle-like strings and threw him through the air, reeling him at light speed back toward the arena, that temple of depravities.
I felt Luvic’s arms wrapping around me, pulling me toward the haze. “Let me go! Let me go!” I punched and hit, and Luvic swore as he kept precarious footing on the limb. “Let me go! I’m going after him!”
“Not a chance—”
And then Luvic punched us through the haze, and—
I left Justice in hell. Without me.