“This is going nowhere,” Derek added, sitting back like Tammy, with the rest of us following his action. “Looks like we’re going to be stuck in here through the day, after all.”
“What if more spiders come this way?” Tanda asked, sitting straight up.
“Then I will kill them,” Fala replied, in his human voice, causing all of us to look back his way. “I should have at least grabbed the pants.”
***
Cates was the first one to the huge spider’s chambers, he first saw the dead spiders, then he saw Fala’s clothes thrown down on the floor. “Fala! Renee!” he called out in his deep, gruff voice. The others filled the room with Sydney stepping back up a few of the steps, not believing his own eyes.
“Where could they have gone?” Garvin asked, moving one of the dead beasts with his foot.
“Through one of those,” Cates replied, pointing up.
Fala held his hand up and turned his head back the way we came. “I heard something,” he said, then barked; it was all that I could call it. That’s when we all heard the echo of someone yelling, “Come back this way!” I think we all cheered, as Tammy grabbed Fala’s leg, telling him he might want to take the back again, so his butt wouldn’t be up in anyone’s face; namely hers. Jacob was up on Cates’ shoulders, looking into the holes that had marks showing that movement had recently gone through, then began calling out, and that was what Fala had heard. I was right behind Tanda and Derek and even past the glow of our own torch I could see the light shining from the opening of the hole, and the beautiful face of Jacob smiling in at us.
“Leave you alone for a few hours and look where we find you,” he said, hopping down from Cates’ shoulders, so that Cates could help us down. “What were you thinking climbing into this creature’s resting place?”
“We were thinking we would find another way out, after the wall shut,” Derek said, dusting the webs and dirt off of his knees, cleaning his hands at the same time.
“Count yourselves lucky. Most who encounter these creature’s domain, do not live to tell about it,” Cates said as he took Tammy into his embrace.
“Oh they tried to make us a part of this place forever, believe me,” she replied, wrapping her arms around him.
“Two things, what are they, and how the hell do we get out of here?” I asked, nervously looking up at the other holes.
“Its' family is known as the wolf spider. These are a mutant form that is much like their smaller kin, only these hunt without the use of a web,” Jacob explained, leaning down by the one that tried to hunt me. “It is said that these were only heard of in fantasy, but Cates and I found ourselves in their midst many years ago, in the underground lair of an enemy to our old master.”
“Any idea why they would be here, along with those,” I asked, pointing at the baby cribs.
“There’s a room behind those, with a table used in hospitals, or a table much like them, to help a woman give birth. The biggest difference with this one is the straps that hold the woman down, are there to keep her by force.” Tammy explained, as she walked closer with Cates.
“Not to mention the number of bodies that have to be in those piles of bones,” Derek added. “And I’m sure you’ve already seen these.” Then he squatted down by a pile of the smaller bones that were mixed with an odd powder-like substance.
“The owner of these kept them fed well, and must have used them to scare whomever into submission of his ways,” Jacob said, running his hand in the bottom of one of the cribs. “From the size of these I would say they were more like the owners pets, than merely inhabitants of his lair.”
“Can we leave now? I really want to go back up,” Tanda fumbled with her blade, nervously looking up at the holes that we saw nothing come out of. “Do you think there may be one for each hole, Jacob?”
“More than likely when they were placed in here. But, with the looks of things, it has been some time since this area has been used for the feeding of these being, so it would be possible that most have died by now.”
“Unless, they have a way to get out and go feed…right?” Derek asked, walking back to the group.
“True, but I believe more would have converged on you had there been more. They are a graphic hunter and when hunger is their foremost thought, they will hunt as one,” Jacob responded, looking back up to one of the holes.
“So how do we get out of here?” Tanda asked, a second time.
“We go back the way we came,” Cates replied, releasing Tammy and pulling Tanda’s tiny form closer to him. “That door won’t be a problem for me, sweetheart.”
“Then can we please go? I mean right now, I don’t want to be down here anymore,” she said as her lower lip began to tremble.
“Tanda, are you alright?” Garvin said, going down on one knee in front of her.
“No, brother I’m not. Yvette used to tell me that the giant bugs were going to eat me one day, if I didn’t do as she said…and now it’s coming true.”
“When did she tell you these things?” he asked, picking her up like a small child.
“For years after they took us from our home. She knew I was afraid of them, especially spiders. Remember the night she locked me in the wooden box, for not brushing my hair?”
“I do. I will never forget it.”
“I screamed, because I felt something crawl across my leg. It was then that she began telling me of the giant insects.”
“Let’s get her out of here,” Derek said, nodding at Garvin and taking Tanda into his arms. “No one’s ever going to hurt you again.”
Tanda wrapped her arms around his neck and up the stairs they went. The rest of us followed, with me and Tammy feeling two feet shorter for not paying more attention to her and letting our own fear blind us to hers. I told Jacob about the tiny bones in the desk drawer, and he explained that the owner must have kept them for souvenirs, having to take them before the spiders took the victim. He then explained that they would not still be as hard as they were had they been collected after the spiders had their way, or they would have been brittle like the others. I was floored, well beyond shock, to think that anyone; be it breeder, normal, floating creature, or anything else; could be cruel enough to cut the fingers off of newborn infants while they lived, or otherwise. It had to be the most morbid things we had witnessed, and something I wished I had never asked about. Now I had the vision of tiny babies screaming out as some horrid insect mutilated their bodies, with the one that was supposed to protect them lying dead on the floor a few feet away.
***
Cates and Fala were now sticking blades into the cracks of the second wall where it split and were trying to pull it out enough to get a grip on to push it down long enough for us to escape. Garvin, Sydney, and Tammy were rummaging through the room, when Garvin dropped what looked like a photo frame after he looked at me, and stepped back. The wall was halfway down when I started walking over to see what he had found, and why it had bothered him so much that he dropped it the way he had. Garvin stepped in front of me, and told me that we need to hurry.
“What did you find, Garvin?”
“Nothing, it’s not important.”
“It was important enough to make you look like you saw a ghost,” I replied, trying to move around him.
“It is best if we just leave,” he said, grabbing both of my arms.
“Take your hands off of me, right now,” I demanded, looking him right in the eyes, and he released me stepping to the side.
I leaned down and picked up the square object, and my mouth hit the floor. It looked like a plaque of some sort, but it was the name inscribed on it that turned my world upside down. ‘Philip Vegee Lebrun’, was the name that looked back at me. I began wiping the black gore off of the rest and uncovered a smaller painting much like the one we had seen on the wall. It was, indeed, the same man. Martin had lied to me about his father being a rich French aristocrat that Yvette had killed when she took advantage of him. I felt a hand on my shoulder a
nd just knew it was Jacob.
“Martin is not his father, Renee.”
“Really, it doesn’t matter. Why did he lie about him, Jacob? Why did he tell us he killed the owner of this place and cleaned it?” I said, getting angrier by the second. “Why did he act like he had only been here for a short time? He’s known.” I spun looking Jacob in the eyes, with tears falling out of mine. “He’s known all along.”
“I wouldn’t want others to know my father had done these horrible things,” Sydney came up behind me.
“Perhaps he was saving you the pain of knowing what he had come from,” Jacob added, with too much sorrow in his eyes for my liking.
“He has never spoken of his father to us,” Garvin mentioned. “Nor did we ever hear tales of it in the home of our maker.”
“Are y’all kidding me? You’re actually taking up for him?” I said in utter disbelief at the response.
“I say he’s a lying no good piece of dog shit,” Derek replied, standing behind the desk and looking up at the painting, then, out of nowhere pulled his blade, jumped up and stabbed it into the forehead of the character on the painting and let the blade rip through the canvas as his body dropped back down.
“Thank you, Derek. I happen to agree. I was raised to believe that there was never a good reason to lie to those you care about…never, and that if the truth couldn’t be told to others then just don’t say anything,” I responded to them all, dropping the plaque back into the filth of the spider’s waste where it belonged. “When he gets back there’s gonna be hell to pay.” I stormed past Jacob, who had disappointed me to the very core by seeming to have compassion for the likes of anyone who would lie about this and so many other things; not to mention, doing it while looking us right in the eye. Where I came from, that made a person worse than the liar that told tales behind ones back.
Cates and Fala had the wall close to the floor when I leapt up on it and helped bring it on down; that hadn’t been my intention in the least. I just wanted out of the deranged room of sick deception and lies. My maker was the son of a baby killer; one who left the mothers to either die on top of the dead bodies of the ones there before them, or killed them out right before rolling their corpse off the birthing table. As I was making my way as fast as I could up the stairs and out of the hell we had discovered, another morbid thought crossed my mind. Father Lebrun could have been sick enough to remove the infants himself, and more than likely helped, in one way or another, to make the stupid spiders treat his belongings with so much respect that nothing in the dark study below had any of the black web or the spider’s black gore on any of it. I could hear Tanda and Tammy calling out my name as I ran up the last of the steps. I ran out into the kitchen then headed for my room and locked my door. I took a quick rinse in the stone shower and lay down on top of the covers on the bed in the same gown I had worn the night before. I wished so bad that we had had enough time to get back to the safety of the shelter in the tunnel. I wanted out of this place and would do so first thing when I woke. No one knocked on my door when I heard them coming down the hall. I just heard the doors to their rooms open and shut, and, with the exhaustion of the night, I closed my eyes and let sleep take me before the dawn had its chance.
Chapter Fourteen
I woke to silence, no fire coals crackling in the fireplacetonight. But, when I sat up to focus my eyes to the darkness of my room there sat Jacob, in the high-back chair, looking at me. He had turned the chair around so that he could do so, and my anger came back to life. “How did you get in here? I had my door locked for a reason, ya know?”
“I know,” he softly replied. “It was an easy entrance.”
“That’s not the point, Jacob. And why is that you keep waking up before me when I was waking before you on the ship?”
“You are very exhausted and you sleep past the setting of the sun, not just from the pull, Renee. You need to talk about what we found last night,” he said, coming to the foot of my bed and sitting down.
“Talk about it? What the hell is there to talk about? The facts speak for themselves,” I loudly replied, pulling my knees to my chest.
“I, too, would keep something so appalling to myself if I had been in his shoes.”
“How can you say that and why are you defending him?”
“I am not defending him, just his manner of deception, Renee. As I said last night, Martin is not his father and all who have known him, knows this. Was it a lie that he killed the one who owned this? Do you know he did not put a stop to his father’s wicked ways?”
“No, but he could have explained to me that his father was a bad man, not some fancy pants that Yvette used to get his family fortune. I wonder if she even used him? I wonder about a lot of things, now, when it concerns how he became a breeder and exactly how that came about,” I said, thinking of the things he had told me. “It could have all been lies.”
“Do you see it a lie when he tells you that he loves you?”
“I thought he was telling the truth about everything else, Jacob. I was looking in his eyes then too.”
“Were your words true when you said that you loved him?”
“That is one of the stupidest questions that I have ever heard,” I said; as I tried to get off the bed, with him taking me by the arm and pulled me back down.
“Please, answer my question.”
“Of course I meant it, why do you think I brought us all the way to this forsaken place? I have loved him from the moment I laid eyes on him,” I answered, lowering my head so he couldn’t see my pain.
Jacob removed the note that he and the others had retrieved from the castle gate of Inara’s home and handed it to me. “I wasn’t going to show you this, but with the events that have happened, I think it best that you see it.” I looked at him confused and took it. I had to read it twice; first, in order to understand the writing, then, to try to figure out about the writer being sorry about ‘our’ Martin.
“What does it mean?” I asked, looking at him and holding the paper so lightly it drifted from my fingers and landed on the floor.
“It means that he was taken from the tunnels by one of the houses; more than likely, one of the sisters. For what reason, I cannot say.”
“We have to go get him.”
Jacob raised his brow.
“Maybe I want to be the one to kick his ass, not let one of those horrible sickos.” I looked down at my ring finger on my left hand and my heart began to melt. “Why do you think they would take someone like Martin?”
“It could be for a number of reasons, but, if they found out that he was the maker of the demon coming to destroy their happy homes, no matter how sick they may be… I believe they would use him to get to you.”
“Then I guess that we have new plans to make. Are we going to use the secret tunnels to get into Inara’s, or do you think that it’s a trap as well?”
Jacob told me ‘trap or no trap’ we needed to seek out the entrance and see what came from exploring it. He also said if Inara hated her sister as much as her sister hated her, then maybe we could use them against each other without either one knowing about it. When I asked how, he just turned his smile at me and leaned back on the foot post of the bed. “Bait,” he said, then explained that we would allow one of us to be captured, letting them think that they had one of the highest members of our group. They would have to lie well and be convincing enough to make whichever sister we choose believe that the rest were wounded or killed in the tunnels. Giving them a much smaller number than what they were thinking was coming into their territory in the first place.
“And who do you have in mind for the, bait?” I asked, thinking he was going to say my name but hoping he wasn’t.
“I will go in as bait and the rest of you will wait to attack when they take me to the gala that the note speaks of,” he explained, smiling.
“No way, Jacob. That’s crazy, what if they kill you as soon as they take you to their dungeons?”
“They won
’t.”
“Yeah, well, how can you be so sure?”
“Because they will want to show their capture off to the other sister, along with the crowds that gather at their feet.”
He went on further to explain that a few of us would enter the underground tunnels, fully armed, to find out if Alex, the boy Felicia, and his pet Bernard, were telling the truth, then bring them back as our own trading tool. In turn, making their master think it was her sister who had committed foul play against her. Of course, he said we might want to try and make our way to Angelica’s estate and retrieve items we could leave behind to make Inara believe what we were trying to pull off. Taking their pets sounded like a wonderful idea, but that, and getting Martin back was all that I liked coming from Jacob at this point.
“There is one other scenario,” Jacob added.
“Another one? Oh please, do tell,” I laughed, until I heard his reply.
“The assassin could have tracked us here and told the high mistress of our numbers trying to enlist her help to find our whereabouts.”
“I had almost forgotten about the elders. Do you think that I got us in over our heads this time?” I asked, looking over at him, wanting to see the answer in his eyes, not his words.
“I think this is right where fate has brought us,” he replied, with a return smile.
“Do you think whoever has Martin, is hurting him?” I knew I had just asked another stupid question, but he never said a word.
It was then that I saw his answer in his eyes. It was the caliber of creatures we were dealing with that should have had me answering my own question. They would be causing any that they took discomfort for the sheer joy of it. “We have to find him,” I said so softly that he knew my heart was breaking, no matter how angry I was that Martin had lied. And no matter how mad I was at the man that I loved, it was nothing compared to the fire that was burning for those who dared to take, and possibly harm, him. “One more thing, Jacob. No one is going to be bait…not now, not ever. On this, I am pulling rank.”
Bloodbreeders: Lies Beneath London Page 12
