Chapter 83
Horror had a taste. It was the metallic bite of battery acid and the brittle tang of epinephrine squeezed through a shivering heart. The scent clung to the back of my throat, choking all reason and calm, until I was infected too.
Horror wasn’t an emotion; it was a disease.
Once you were inoculated, it ravaged you with fever until you expelled fetid, fear-soaked sweat, pungent, scalding tears, and wretched tuberculosis sobs.
I tripped over a jutting stone, and Luvic grabbed my arm and shoved me in front of him.
Tears leaked from my eyes. I sprinted after Last up the narrow, bone-lined tunnel.
The creature—the horror—consumed the Clarks’ green candlelight. It shoved the tunnel into midnight darkness and devoured the hot air so we were suffocating on our own fear.
It was ravenous. The horror had been caged for centuries, and it wanted to glut itself on any living thing in its path.
The tunnel was too small for it. The walls were so narrow Luvic’s shoulders nearly touched the sides. The ceiling was so low he almost had to duck. The monster couldn’t fit through its narrow mouth.
That fact gave us a ten-second head start.
But the horror was hungry. It wanted to infect, and it wanted to consume. Its body was a black, writhing mass, and its center was teeming with gray and black larvae. When the monster’s center contracted, eyeless larvae fell to the stone and raced up the tunnel.
We sprinted toward the light, but the horror consumed every trickle of it around us. It stretched itself over the stone tunnel, seeped into the cracks, filled the cavern, and tore after us.
The walls growled and screamed. The rock tore apart, and as it did, it sounded like a giant beast being slaughtered.
Luvic turned, his eyes glowing jackaltooth-orange, and shot a wall of boiling water behind us. The black larvae shrieked as the steaming wave scalded them, drowning their screams.
Luvic grunted when the water was swallowed by the blackness, and the horror’s gut opened and spewed more larvae.
My teeth chattered, and I jumped over a stone. “It’s not . . . it’s . . . it eats . . .”
My mind was too jumbled, too horror-stricken, to speak.
I’d once seen horror drive beings mad. Not this horror. Nothing this old. Maybe only a larvae.
But years ago, a group of six slipshots standing on top of Hell Gate had suddenly screamed with terror and flung themselves from the roof.
They’d hit the stone below and been killed instantly.
Terrified, I’d asked Rou what had happened, and she’d only said, “Horror. Don’t worry.
It’s gone now. It flew off to infect someone else. ”
More tears leaked from my eyes. They scalded my cheeks. I could taste the battery-acid fear in them. I gasped as Luvic grabbed my hand and growled, “You let this thing out on purpose?”
“It infects people. It consumes. It’s—”
It was impossible to breathe. To talk.
Last screamed. The whites of her eyes took up her face. She spun toward the horror and conjured an iron wall coated in poison spikes. It locked the tunnel behind us.
The horror didn’t try to shove through the door. Instead, it stained the stone walls and seeped through the cracks and the rock’s pores.
“We have to make it to Primus,” Last gasped. “We have to . . . he’ll . . . he’ll . . .” She yanked in a deep breath.
Luvic shoved another wall of scalding water behind us. I didn’t look, even when I heard the shriek of larvae swallowed by the waves.
“. . . save us,” Last finished.
Ahead was a light at the end of the tunnel.
It glowed sickly green. Primus stood with his hands out, the Clark next to him.
They were both looking down the tunnel with curious, detached expressions. They knew something was happening, but by their apparent unconcern, they didn’t know what.
“It’s here!” Last screamed. “It’s coming!”
Then the horror peaked over the slope, and its darkness was made visible.
Its writhing mass grabbed at my ankles and tripped me.
At its touch, mindless terror flew through me.
I sobbed, and Luvic grabbed my arm and yanked me upright.
He shoved a fury of water creatures at the horror.
The water creatures glowed blue. They raced at the horror, churning and boiling.
They were a small army of water dolphins, water dogs, and water bugs.
The horror opened its dark maw and swallowed them whole.
It was enough time, though, for Luvic to yank me free and pull me toward the tunnel’s opening.
We were almost to the Clark and Primus.
But that meant the horror was almost to them too.
I saw the moment they realized they wouldn’t be able to control it.
Their faces shifted from unconcerned curiosity to fear. And then, with the monster’s proximity, their expressions changed to horror.
“Primus!” Last sobbed, reaching out a hand.
The Clark spoke, and Primus gave a sharp jerk of his head. He held out his hand for his sister. Last jumped toward the tunnel’s opening. The horror had surrounded us. Its jaws were closing around us, and the larvae were swarming.
Primus watched the horror reach out. He looked at his sister and at Luvic and me behind her. Then he twisted the hand he was holding out to Last.
He conjured a thick stone wall, locking us inside the tunnel with the monster.
Last slammed against the wall, and then the ground opened up beneath us.
I screamed. My stomach plummeted, and I rolled through the air. I hit Luvic. Last kicked me as she somersaulted. Then we hit the dirt floor in a jumble of limbs. My head slammed against the ground, and my teeth rattled. The wind flew from my lungs, and they seized from the force of the fall.
Primus hadn’t saved us.
He’d made us the sacrifice that’d stall the horror long enough for them to escape.
The monster could’ve seeped around his stone wall, but he’d also thrown us into his conjured pit. It was twenty feet deep, narrow, and as dark as the stomach of a monster.
The rock moaned as the horror tested the walls and then slid down the hole toward us.
“He’s killed us,” Last said, her voice laced with fear. “Primus . . . he . . .”
A jackaltooth snarl ripped through the hole. “How do we kill it?” Luvic asked.
“I don’t know.” I shook my head even though no one could see me.
“How do we trap it? How was it locked up before?”
“It took . . . it took a principal, his six heirs, all their sons and daughters,” Last whispered. “He’s killed us. He’s—”
I closed my eyes. Found the calm, brightly lit center of my locked heart. Think. Think.
The horror crept around us. A fetid, anticipatory stench filled the hole. It savored our fear. It was a monster with its mouth wide-open, enjoying the moment before its teeth crunched down on its juicy, squirming, terrified prey.
Its jaws snapped.
“Conjure a bed!” I screamed.
No one moved.
“Conjure a bed!”
Luvic twisted his hand. A twin bed appeared before us, lit by a night-light.
I knocked three times on the stone ground and shouted, “Good night, sleep tight, time for me to give a fright!”
The stone floor under the bed opened. I grabbed Luvic and Last’s hands and dove headfirst into the abyss, right as the horror’s black jaws snapped closed.