The scenes were seamlessly meshed together, the emotions the same. In each, I couldn’t understand why James didn’t believe me. But I also held back some of what I knew because I didn’t want to trust him. I was reliving the same experience over and over, but this time, I might not lose just my fiancé. I could lose my life and freedom.
Something pulled me from the dream, and despite the dream feeling like it had lasted an eternity, I also felt that I had done no more than blink. The entrance of the cave was pitch-black and the fire low. Horton was slumped down, his large head resting on the wooden box containing Eugene.
I didn’t know why I woke until I heard a faint whine and the soft pitter-patter of tiny feet on the mat behind my head. I slowly rolled over and saw Pox pacing next to me.
My momentary pleasure that he had gotten so close to me melted into confusion at his quiet distress. Everything was then clarified horribly when I saw the thing crawling down from the hole in the back of the cave. The spider was the size of a car.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I blinked repeatedly in some misguided attempt to dismiss the image. The spider wasn’t moving very quickly as it crawled down the wall, but even as I watched, another leg poked out of the hole. It was no wonder the cave had been so empty. It was the entrance to some underground vortex of mutant spiders.
My brain was unwilling to accept that the spider was as large as my eyes showed me it was. Perhaps it was just really, really close to me. I sat up slowly, locking my two eyeballs on the spider’s eight black orbs. It was dark in the cave, but enough light shone from the fire that I could see two curved pincers on either side of its mouth. They twitched like it was eager to eat me.
I put one hand in front of Pox, shoving him behind me, as with my other hand, I reached back to grab the gulper tooth. “Horton, Eugene? A little help.”
I brought the tooth in front of me, gripping it so hard with both hands that the edge bit into my palm. The spider hit the ground, pincers quivering in the air as though trying to catch a scent.
“Raph! Chloe!” I attempted to throw my voice to give them warning as two more spiders exited the hole and started to descend the wall.
Pox let out a few noises that sounded like a dog’s bark crossed with a cat’s yowl. The first spider seemed to smile in satisfaction. The pincers on either side of its maw were slick and shiny. The smell set my throat aflame. I coughed and crawled backward.
Until then, everything had been moving slowly. Every photon of light hitting my eye burned itself into my memory with crystal clarity. But suddenly, it flipped, and everything happened at once.
Raph shouted, “Crap on a cracker!”
Chloe screamed in one long high-pitched screech.
The spider moved toward me, grabbing at me with one of its legs. Pox raced between us, barking and snapping at the spider. In a movement as fast as lightning, the spider grabbed Pox instead of me. The little animal let out a scream of terror and pain. I snapped into action. I whipped my arms out, wielding the gulper tooth like a sword.
But I had no experience with swords. I’d never used anything bigger than a kitchen knife. But the suppressed rage of the past few days gave my arms a strength and speed that they might have been lacking on a more relaxed week. Roaring with anger, I swung the tooth hard at the thick black appendage that had snatched Pox off the ground and was bringing him to the spider’s gaping maw.
I had thrown my whole body behind the swing, expecting resistance, but the green bone sliced through the spider’s leg like a hot knife through oatmeal. The spider screamed and pulled back, bumping into the two spiders behind it. I grabbed Pox and swept him into my arms. His tiny toes gripped me along every bit of skin they could reach.
Horton caught me by the shirt. “We have to go!”
Chloe’s and Raph’s receding figures were racing toward the exit. The spider I had fought was still quivering near the back wall, but a new wave of spiders had started to move forward.
Horton opened his mouth and let out a long deep roar that sent such a visceral sense of fear through my body that I had already run a dozen strides before I realized I was moving. Pox was still screaming in alarm as he crawled up my body to grip my neck with his paws. A wave of spiders pulled apart our mats as they flooded across the cave.
Horton passed me. “Run faster!” he shouted.
I tore off after him as the tappity noises of the spiders and their chittering sounds filled the cave. We burst out onto the red sand. Twin full moons hung overhead, filling the beach with silver light. I ran to catch up with Raph and Chloe down by the shoreline.
“They won’t leave the cave,” said Horton.
The interior of the cave was black, and it took a moment for my eyes to register that it was caused by the mass of spiders rather than a lack of light. I could catch flashes of light from our fire and the occasional item being thrown into the air.
“Now we know why such a ‘nice’ cave was empty.”
Raph rubbed his hands up and down his arms before giving in to a full-body shiver like a wet dog. “Spiders! Why did it have to be gross, hairy—ugh! Chloe, why didn’t you tell us they were so big?”
Chloe swallowed. Her eyes were wide, and her gills quivered. “I had no idea. They said the spiders were as big as a horse, but I don’t know how big a horse is, and they exaggerate all the time!” She was on the verge of hysteria.
I stepped between them. “In this case, they weren’t exaggerating. Do you know—”
Pox lost his grip on my neck.
I reached up, and he whimpered under my touch as I pulled him into my arms. In the moonlight, I could see a dark-red patch on his belly and blood oozing from a gash on his side. He let out a pained squeak before his eyes rolled back in his head, and he became a dead weight.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Pox?”
Chloe caught my arm. “The spider venom! Did it touch him?”
My throat was practically welded shut with fear. Perhaps it was that Pox had raced to save me or, even more likely, this was the final snowflake that shifted my entire hillside into an unstoppable avalanche. From the murder, to the accusations, to an engine fire that had nearly killed one of my crew members, then to my own kidnapping, then to being swallowed by a gulper, and to surviving a giant spider attack, it’d been a bad day. Pox dying was the one thing that might push me over the edge.
I took a deep breath and dropped the tooth I still had clenched in my other hand. “Do we have any supplies?” I moved to a slight depression where water had been trapped as the ocean receded, and I lowered Pox’s body into the chilly liquid.
He trembled as the saltwater soaked his fur and turned the little pool red with his blood, but his eyes didn’t open. I continued to wash him, but the red jelly-like patch stuck to his skin seemed to grow in front of my eyes. After touching the warm, sticky mass, my fingertips started to tingle, and I swallowed hard, wondering what I had just exposed myself to.
I patted my clothes, but only my mother’s Bible was there. Taking it as a sign, I murmured a quick prayer for a miracle then turned to see if the others had something more physical to offer.
Chloe felt around on her clothes. “I still have these in my pockets.” She pulled out the bar of soap and the vitamin-C skincare product.
Raph leaned over to look. “You brought beauty supplies?”
I grabbed the soap from her hand, tore off the paper covering, and ran the bar over Pox’s fur. The gelatinous mess attached to the fur started to disengage, and the heat and tingling in my fingers lessened. “Do you know anything about the venom? Anything at all?”
“Eugene, see what you can find out.” Horton kneeled next to me, cupping his large hands together and scooping up water to pour over Pox.
The little wooden box flashed its light, indicating deep thought.
Chloe took the bar of soap from me and held it as I worked the suds into the caline’s fur. “Um, not a lot. It’s dangerous, but some of the Ceruleans make a
drink from it. It’s super-duper dangerous. It’s both venomous and poisonous. It’s this icky green-brown color until they add something to it that makes it edible.”
“What do they add? It must neutralize it.”
Pox stirred in my arms, twisting around to look up at me. He panted heavily and whimpered. He still had an oozing wound on his side, and small blisters were forming on the delicate pink skin underneath his fur.
“I don’t remember. That show was a bunch of seasons ago. It’s like a yellow fruit and sour. They had little slices of it, and they squeezed it into the tea made with the venom. They reenacted a traditional meal including the tea. One family on the planet controls the supply, and it is only good for a few days. You can only have one drink. I just don’t remember anything else.”
A small dot of hope started to burn in my chest. “Was it a lemon? Does that sound familiar?”
“I… I don’t know,” she wailed.
“Correct, Captain Laika.” Eugene interjected. “The information that I can access says that ascorbic acid, which is vitamin C, can be used to neutralize the venom. This is most commonly done by squeezing the juice of a citrus fruit into the venom tea. This could be the juice from an orange, lemon, grapefruit—”
“Thanks, Genie.” I grabbed the bottle of vitamin-C skin serum from Chloe and used my free hand and teeth to unscrew the top. I poured a generous amount onto Pox. “It’s okay, baby. This will help,” I cooed even as a part of me acknowledged that I was practically hysterical. I tried to sniff back my tears.
“Come on, little buddy,” Raph said, leaning over my shoulder. “You’re part of the team, just like Genie over there.”
The tension around Pox’s eyes eased, and he stopped whimpering. His breathing slowed to a deep and steady pace. I continued to work the goo into his fur, and my fingers no longer tingled and burned.
I sniffled again then broke into a cough, casting a glance back to the cave. It would be just our luck if the spiders swarmed from the cave while I was distracted. I was shaky and weak. I couldn’t even imagine how many hours it had been since I had deep, pain-free sleep for a full shift. I yawned. I was running out of resources and strength. “Horton, how long was I asleep?”
Eugene responded. “It was seventy-three standardized minutes from the time that you last spoke until you called for assistance.”
My yawn was spreading around the group. Chloe opened her mouth and gills wide. Raph copied her, his white teeth glowing in the dark. Horton followed suit with his head flipping back like a puppet and exposing row upon row of sharp teeth.
“I am all out of ideas and options,” I admitted. I was feeling sick from my injuries and the continual pumping of adrenaline into my system. I was finding it difficult to regulate my body heat, and I sweated and shivered at the same time. “Chloe, do you know anything that might be useful?”
Raph muttered under his breath. “She’ll remember once we are about to die.”
“Hey!” she shouted at him. “It’s a show mostly about dinner parties, throwing drinks in each other’s faces, and gossiping. This other stuff is just casually mentioned here and there.”
Raph jabbed a finger at her. “Okay. Then besides the metal-eating sea monsters, spiders that want to eat us, and cute little pets, do you know anything about the planet? Anything useful?”
She threw her hands in the air. “They don’t care about lying, but being a bad host is the worst. They dress outlandishly and wear too much makeup, and that includes the men. They distrust the fleet. They will give you anything, but then again, they are rich, so it doesn’t really matter. They could talk for a million years about who did what to whom, and the perfect apology makes up for anything. Is any of that useful?”
I sighed. “Not at this exact moment.” But then I started to think about our situation. “What about the justice system? Someone is trying to kill us. Would that be their version of the government or military? Or could that be someone acting without permission?”
“Oh!” She pulled her head back in surprise. “That is a good point. If they had started a nasty rumor about your husband’s pool, then I would believe a civilian did this. But since someone is trying to kill us, it must be with the authority of the king. No civilians have that kind of weaponry, or any at all. It’s all banned.”
“Good,” I said, rubbing the last of the ascorbic acid into Pox’s fur. The angry red flush of his skin was relaxing into a slightly upset pink. I pulled him against my stomach and wrapped the bottom of my shirt around his body. “What is the king like?”
“According to the cast, he is handsome, though he isn’t my type.”
“I was thinking more about his personality. Is he just? Fair? The kind that flies off into a murderous rage and attacks fleet officers for no reason?”
“No, not really. I think he is mostly hands-off when it comes to day-to-day stuff, but he is the final word on any matter. A few seasons back, Octavia accused Balenciaga—those are two of the House Mavens—of cheating her in a land deal, and somehow, they were able to take the matter in front of the king to decide. His word is final. He tries to be fair, though I got the feeling that he was swayed a lot by flattery and what sounded best rather than the law.”
Pox shivered and moved in closer, tucking a nose under his back foot then letting out a big sigh. I stroked his back, and he shifted to press against my palm. “How did they get a meeting with him?”
“I don’t know. You guys are really overestimating the educational value of this show. I swear I’m not holding back anything.”
Raph looked ready to come back with some comment, but something caught his eye. He pointed toward the cliff.
My breath caught in my throat. On a trail down the cliff and halfway across the beach were at least three dozen people, many of which were carrying torches. A shuttle appeared, cresting the cliff.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
My brain spun in circles. I hoped to assemble a plan, but nothing was coming together. None of us had shoes, let alone enough supplies to survive for more than a day. But I wasn’t going to give up, even if it didn’t seem possible that we could outrun even those people, let alone the second shuttle that had just appeared overhead.
But then another part of my brain started to notice details. The people approaching us weren’t marching in formation or holding weapons. They were talking loudly and laughing. The men wore colorful suits, and the women had on long dresses that trailed in the sand. Many of those not carrying torches were holding their shoes in one hand and drinks in the other. They didn’t even appear to notice us much beyond a few quick waves as they moved toward the shore.
Overhead, the shuttle paused and fired a shot.
I ducked down at the sound, but the shot went straight out over the ocean then erupted into a burst of blue light that exploded like a flower before dancing down to the water. A second and third shot replicated the process with a green firework then an especially impressive white one that filled the sky.
The ocean churned as gulpers rose to the surface. I stepped back on instinct, though they had to be a kilometer out from the shore.
Chloe was staring at the group of people moving across the shore. “Don’t be mad at me. There is literally no way I could have known this.”
“Known what? What in the universe is going on?” I asked as I turned to Raph and Horton, who shook their heads. Even Eugene somehow managed to look blanker than normal.
A woman spotted us and waved. “Chloe! Darling!” She broke into a trot, headed straight for us.
She appeared very similar to Chloe. Her gills were quite visible because of the sparkly glitter brushed on to accentuate them. Her makeup was expertly done. Even in the dark, the colors were bright enough to glow. Her hair was a bright orange that I had not seen naturally occur in citizens of her planet.
“Hello, Mother.” Chloe stepped toward the woman and extended her arms for a hug.
Raph’s mouth dropped open. “You have got to be kidding me.
”
The two women hugged and exchanged air kisses before Chloe tried to step back.
Her mother caught her around the shoulders and turned her face to the light. “You are so thin, my dear. And I don’t understand why you and your…” She looked us over carefully before picking a word. “Um… your friends are down here? Why didn’t you come to the house? Or better yet, why didn’t you just tell me that you were coming? I would have sent one of Auntie Messi’s vehicles to pick you up. But really, dear, you should have told me that you and guests would be here. It is rude to show up without an RSVP.”
“Mother,” Chloe dragged out each syllable into a full sentence, “I know that.”
“Well, clearly you don’t since you didn’t tell me that you were planning on joining us at the wedding. Your auntie will be thrilled that you are here, obviously, but she is going to need to make up extra rooms for everyone and make your little green Ignesian friend a comfortable setup.” She turned to Horton. “Dear, what can we do to make you most comfortable?”
“Wait, wait, wait.” I finally got my voice back, and my brain was reasonably caught up. “Chloe, you have an aunt on Cerulea, and you didn’t tell us?”
“I didn’t know. Last I heard, Aunt Messi stilled lived on Aquaria. It’s not like she’s my real aunt.”
Her mother gasped. “How can you say that? She loves you just like she was blood and has been such a dear friend of mine for years, just years. And I told you she bought a home here when I sent you the invite last month.”
Chloe folded her arms across her chest. “Did you send it electronically?”
“You can’t send a wedding invitation electronically. People will think you are cheap. And it was just so lovely. Heavy paper from real trees, gold lettering. And they had a professional calligraphy artist hand-address each one.” She clasped her hands to her chest.
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