“Bane was always a temporary measure,” Lucifer said, his tone clipped. “I’m sorry for your loss, but you need to get over it. We need to work together the best that we can. Like it or not, I am the leader of the Black Wings, and although I may be redundant when it comes to direct intervention between the humans and the threats of Midnight, my skills will be invaluable when the shades attack the winged.”
“And until then you can sit back and twiddle your thumbs,” Ryker sneered.
This wasn’t the diplomatic neph I’d come to know. This was a man who missed his friend.
“I’m here, aren’t I?” Lucifer countered.
“Yeah, to grab your Black Wing and leave.”
The pulse in Lucifer’s jaw began to tick. “Do you think we enjoy sitting on the sidelines? We fought a war for centuries, standing side by side with the neph against the White Wing threat. We are no cowards. We agreed to stand down to give humanity a chance to be truly free because we trusted in the tenacity of mankind, and I refuse to apologize for that.”
I’d had enough of this. “I think splitting up is a great idea. Lucifer, you take the left tunnel. We’ll take the middle. Give it ten and then head back this way to report back.”
Ryker’s stiff shoulders relaxed a little, and he stepped away from Lucifer, exhaling heavily. He rubbed his eyes with thumb and index finger. I watched as the fight bled out of his Adonis features. “I’m sorry. Now isn’t the time to get argumentative.”
And he was back. Thank goodness, because we needed him on form. This really wasn’t who he was. Ryker wasn’t the kind of guy to get easily riled up, but I’d been so caught up in my feelings I’d neglected to see how Bane’s loss was affecting the others. Selfish, selfish me. It was something to rectify once we made it out of here.
Slipping my hand into Ryker’s, I tugged him toward the center tunnel. “Ten minutes. See you back here.” I cast the words over my shoulder to Lucifer.
We dove into the cool interior of the central tunnel and switched on the flashlights, because there were no wall sconces here. Either the shades could see in absolute darkness, or these tunnels weren’t used by them, but by something else that didn’t need light to see. Another shudder, this time up the back of my neck. Thank God we’d cleared this place of spiderlings. Thank goodness Arachne was gone.
“I’m having flashbacks of the last time we were here,” Orin said.
“I feel like we’ve taken this route before,” Ryker added.
And then the reason why became evident as the tunnel walls became decorated in beautiful patterns.
Arachne’s silk.
This was the way to her chamber, the one we’d walled her into. My feet faltered.
Rivers cursed. So, he’d realized where we were too. Why were my feet faltering? Drayton had instructed us to come here in his note. To the place where we’d trapped Arachne. This was the place, so why was my gut telling me to turn and run?
And then it was too late, because we were in the chamber, surrounded by piles of rubble. Rubble that had once been the wall that had held Arachne captive. My heart crawled into my throat and beat a staccato rhythm. An all too familiar scuttling filled the chamber, and my hackles rose. No. It couldn’t be. We’d dispatched them all.
But there they were, Arachne’s children, crawling down the walls to meet us, leading the way for the main act, the spiderling mother herself. She dropped from the ceiling and landed with a wet plop in the center of the room. Her body was swollen beyond measure, lit up from within, where her babies could be seen writhing and eager to be born, and the rest … The rest clung to the walls and hung from silken threads.
It was a nightmare. A throwback to that awful time beneath the ground when she’d almost ended us all.
“This cannot be happening,” Orin said through gritted teeth.
But it was.
“Second chances do not come along every day,” Arachne hissed. “And yet here you are, just as my love promised me.”
“Your love?”
“My king. My liege. My Asher. He found me like he promised he would. He has liberated me as he promised he would, and our children will liberate us all.”
Their children? As in him and her with the procreation? Urgh! We backed up, weapons at the ready. There would be no defense against her toxin if she chose to spray it, but she seemed perfectly content watching us squirm.
The word trap came to mind and my heart sank, but now wasn’t the time to curse my misplaced convictions.
It was time to keep her talking, so we could formulate a plan to get the fuck out of here. “Asher doesn’t care about you or your spiderlings. All he wants to do is end the winged. Everything else is background noise. Everyone else is dispensable.”
“Not me. Never me. I’m essential. He came for me, and he cares enough to make my spiderlings his. He cares enough to infuse them with powerful essence. They are now part of his army.”
What was she talking about?
“Serenity,” Ryker said from my left. “I have a bad feeling about this. Switch to aether-sight or whatever you do.”
I slipped into the aether, and my heart stopped for a long beat, and then slammed into my ribs, hard. Oh, shit. Oh, fucking shit. Her spiderlings were hosts. The spiderlings were fucking shades!
“Serenity?” Orin prompted.
Asher’s silence in response to us moving the humans to Respite made sense now. The humans had been a filler for him, weak alternatives to what he could truly have, and while we’d been scrambling above ground to take away his advantage, he’d been burrowing beneath it to get to his true prize. He’d called Arachne to Midnight. She’d been his plan all along. Arachne was the mother of his army. And she was carrying a second batch. How the heck was I going to incinerate these? How could I get my hands on them without getting my face chewed off?
“Shades, they’re all shades.”
“It was a fucking trap,” Rivers snapped.
And we were surrounded.
“Asher will be pleased,” Arachne said. “Your dead bodies will be my gift to him.”
The spiderlings attacked, but not as a mass like they’d done the last time. This time, they attacked with precision and formation. They attacked with a plan. They attacked like an army. There was little time to formulate, only time to react. My daggers cut into limbs and sliced hides, but where one spider-shade fell, another took its place. There would be no reprieve for us, not from this horde.
“Make for the exit!” Orin bellowed. “Just cut through to the exit.”
It was the smart plan, but it meant leaving Arachne alive, it meant leaving the vessel that could swell Asher’s army intact.
I couldn’t do that.
Arachne had to die, and I knew just how to do it.
Chapter 18
She was cursed, invincible, or so she thought, but viewing her in the aether, the cracks in her armor were evident, and her soul, her humanoid soul, was bound in this horrific shell. My hands itched. I could free her.
Just needed to get close.
Just needed to get my hands on her.
“Cover me!” I didn’t wait to see if they heard, there was no time. If this was going to work, then the action had to happen now while Arachne thought she had the upper hand. While her guard was down.
Rolling to avoid the stab of a spiderling’s talon-tipped leg, I skidded across the dusty ground and smashed into Arachne’s bulging abdomen. Her body tensed, and she spun, ready to spear me with her fangs, but my hand was already inside her, passing through her armor and into the place where her true essence resided. She froze, her heartbeat echoing in my head, and then I made the cut, the daggers slicing through the thread that bound her to this body—a body that had never been hers. Her sigh filled my mind, and then her legs curled in on themselves as she dropped.
Shit. I threw myself back just in time and slammed into a wall of muscle. Screams echoed off the walls and the spider-shades attacked with vigor.
“Grunts. These ar
e grunts,” Rivers yelled. “They take longer to heal. Hit them hard, and we can make it out.”
The bloodshed began in earnest as we cut our way toward the exit. Ryker and Orin were swallowed by the mass. Damn, please let them have made it out. More spider-shades dropped from the ceiling. Rivers let out a bellow as he was swept away from me, and then I was alone—an island in a sea of killer crawlers. But there was no way I’d be going down without a fight. My body went into auto mode, the pain of every scratch or stab muted by adrenaline. No toxin. They weren’t spraying, which was a small mercy. It gave us a chance. It gave the others a chance. Please let them have made it out. A spiderling knocked me flying, and as my body arched through the air, I saw my guys by the exit, fighting, pushing, desperate to get back into the room. Desperate to get to me.
“Go!” My voice a boom. “Get out. Now!” I surrendered my life to fate, hitting the ground in a crouch that jarred my knees. Fate would decide if I’d live or die; all I could do was fight. The seconds blurred, time stopped, and my limbs grew sluggish, slower. My thighs quivered. Pain lanced across my back, bringing tears to my eyes and darkness to my vision. My leg gave way, and I stumbled to the ground.
Surrounded. I was surrounded, and yet, they hesitated. Why? I looked up into the nearest spiderling’s eyes, slipping into aether-sight to see the shade’s face twisted in wonder. It scuttled forward, and the others moved back. Was this their leader?
I pulled myself up. “What are you waiting for?”
It cocked its head, unable to speak with the body forced upon it … forced. This pairing had been forced. The knowledge hit me sudden and sure. It waited. Trapped in the body Asher had made him inhabit, this grunt, this shade unable to speak out.
It was waiting for death.
A wave of sorrow crested my heart, and I slapped my hand onto its leg, expelling power hot and potent. There was no scream, no protest. The shade burned silently away until he was gone. Silence, deep and complete, followed, and then a roar ripped through the room and the spiderlings scattered. I spun to see Drayton barreling through the gap. Nephs I didn’t know fought alongside him, pushing back the threat. He’d come to help. I’d been right, this wasn’t a trap.
Orin appeared by my side. “Time to get the heck out of here.”
My feet left the ground as I was slung over his shoulder, and we sprang into motion. We made it to the tunnel, to Ryker and Rivers, but we just kept going.
“Stop. Wait. We have to wait for Drayton!” I hammered on Orin’s shoulders.
“No. We need to get out of here before Asher gets wind of what’s happening and sends reinforcements.”
We came out into the sconce lit-chamber, and Orin set me on my feet.
“We can’t leave Drayton.”
“That isn’t your friend,” Lucifer said from behind me.
I turned on him to find him carrying a figure over his shoulder. “Drayton is in control. I know it. Why else would he have just helped us?”
“Because not all the shades agree with what Asher is doing. Xavier is one of them. He helped us get to Abbadon, but there’s no time to explain it all now. It’s imperative we get Abbadon out of here.”
The stubborn mule inside me kicked and stomped. “It is Drayton. He’s making Xavier feel this way. We can’t leave him to Asher’s mercy. He helped us, we need to help him.”
Ryker sighed. “She’s right. We can’t in good conscience just leave.”
“Yes, we can,” Rivers countered.
“Orin?” I looked to the gentle giant for support.
His expression clouded. “We need to get you to safety, and we need to get the humans out.”
Humans? I noticed them for the first time now, hovering at Lucifer’s back with Jonah and his wife.
I met Lucifer’s gaze. “You saved them?”
Lucifer shrugged. “I didn’t do anything. I liberated the neph, Jonah, and he opened the cages to set the humans free and then they followed me out here.”
Humans were our priority, there was no arguing with that, but they didn’t need me to get them out.
I summoned my daggers. “Get the humans to safety. I’ll be right behind you.” It was my leader tone, and no one questioned me this time. I took a step and the world rumbled.
“I think that’s our cue to leave,” Rivers said. “Diggers.”
Cassie had the MED digging to get us out. Dust and rock began to fall from the ceiling.
“Get back!” Ryker cried.
I jumped out of the way in time to avoid a chunk of rock the size of my head. It hit the ground and rolled, and then the whole fucking ceiling began to cave. Who the heck had decided to use diggers? Bad idea, this had been a fucking awful idea. Coughing and gagging, we backed up as far as we could. We were about to be buried alive. Another rumble, this time farther away, was followed by shrill screams.
“The other chamber is caving in,” Rivers said. “It’ll buy us time.”
Us, but what about Drayton and the shades that had helped us? My pulse a jackrabbit, I pushed past Ryker and ran toward the tunnel. I was less than a meter away when the whole thing caved in on itself, rock and rubble and choking dust. My scream lodged in my throat and died.
“Harker, move it now!” Bane’s voice jarred me into action.
There was no getting through that. No getting to Drayton. That knowledge was like losing him all over again, a crushing sensation that clamped around my lungs and squeezed. I spun on my heel and headed back. Voices echoed down toward us from the hole in the ceiling, and then a rope ladder appeared.
Lucifer passed Abbadon to one of his Black Wings, who began to climb, and then he propelled me up the ladder.
We’d got what we’d come for, but I’d lost Drayton all over again. I’d failed him again.
“I’m sorry,” Lucifer called to my back. “I truly am.”
***
The fire in the hearth crackled, echoing my dissent with pops and crackles as it devoured the kindling. The guys had stationed themselves about the room, their gazes wary, not used to seeing me so agitated, but Lucifer was the calm totem in the storm. He watched me coolly, levelly, and it was driving me nuts. I needed a blowout, a raging argument, the kind I’d have had with Bane.
“We left them to die.” I paced the lounge, anger and guilt a hot ball in my chest.
“They’re shades,” Rivers said.
“And you were the Mind Reaper. People change. They helped us. They want to stop Asher.”
“I understand they could have been valuable,” Lucifer said. “But we had a mission, and we had to stick to it.”
Valuable? “I don’t care about how valuable they’d be. I care that they put their lives on the line to save us and we ran. We left them to die.”
“They’re shades. I doubt they can die,” Rivers pointed out.
“So we left them trapped for eternity. Yeah, that makes it all better.” I threw up my hands. “What is wrong with you people?”
Ryker and Orin exchanged glances, and Rivers just crossed his arms, unfazed. It was Lucifer who answered.
“In every war, there are casualties. Xavier helped us to set Abbadon free, he helped us escape at the cost of his life because he knew it was the only way to prevent Asher succeeding. He sacrificed himself so Abbadon could be free and you could live. Your ability is paramount, and Abbadon was important to Asher’s experiments.”
“What experiments?”
Lucifer’s jaw ticked. “To find a way to infect the winged.”
Infect the … If he did that then he could simply take over. Just slip in and have it all. Ice filled my veins. “How far did he get?”
“Too far, but not far enough we hope.”
“You hope?”
Lucifer pinched the bridge of his nose. “We can only wait and see what happens from here on. He has data, blood samples, but winged blood doesn’t last long outside our body. It evaporates, and so he’d have to work fast with what he has in his lab.”
“He has a la
b?”
“Yes, the tunnel we took led to it. It was where he was holding the humans. Jonah was already there with Xavier when we arrived. Xavier was actually the shade charged with Abbadon’s care. With Jonah’s arrival, he knew we were on our way. He met us there with some of the rebel shades, and the rest you know.”
I ran a hand over my face. “We dealt a blow, then?”
Lucifer nodded, a small smile playing on his perfect lips. “You killed Arachne, and we found Abbadon. We took away their advantage.”
“Stalemate,” Rivers said.
Relief flooded me, my knees gave way, and I plonked my butt on the sofa. “I need a drink.”
The door slid open, and Cassie stood there. Her face was pale and stunned.
“Cassie?” Orin took a step toward her, but she shook her head and moved aside to reveal the reason for her shock.
A figure stepped into the room. Disheveled, bloody, but alive.
Drink forgotten I slowly rose off my seat. “Drayton?”
His lips twitched in an attempted smile, and then his eyes rolled and he dropped like a stone.
No one moved for a long beat and then the guys rushed forward as one and hauled Drayton onto the largest sofa.
I wrung my hands. “He made it. He actually made it.”
Drayton’s face was covered in grime, his hair was coated in dust, but even in this state he was beautiful. His chest rose and fell evenly, alive, here. He’d found his way back to us.
A hand fell on my shoulder. “That’s Xavier, Serenity. Not Drayton,” Orin said softly. “We need to be wary; we can’t let our guard down completely, not yet.”
I exhaled and nodded. “Yeah. I know.” I cupped Drayton’s cheek and leaned in and pressed a kiss to his forehead before stepping back. “Lock him up. We’ll speak to him when he regains consciousness.”
Shades of Midnight_an Urban Fantasy novel Page 15
