by Amy Cross
Looking at my right hand, I see that the venom has already eaten away most of the flesh, leaving bare bone exposed to the air. The pain is excruciating but I don't have time to react as another leg smashes toward me, just missing and instead striking the wall with enough force to shake the entire room.
“Absalom!” I scream, ducking out of the way. “Help!”
I turn to run, but the spider uses one of its legs to trip me, sending me tumbling to the ground once again. This time I manage to hold onto the sword, but at the same time I roll over another patch of venom and immediately feel a searing pain around my waist and chest. Crying out, I struggle to my feet and look down to see that patches of my shirt have been burned away along with significant chunks of flesh, exposing section of my ribcage.
A shadow falls over me, and I turn to see the spider's fangs slicing toward my face.
Raising the sword, I slash at the creature, striking close to its eyes and then falling back, desperately scrambling for safety. I have no idea what part of the beast to strike next, but I figure the underside of its body would be a good place to start. A moment later, as one of its legs moves toward me, I realize I should try to immobilize the damn thing first, so I swing the sword as hard as I can manage, finally cutting the creature enough to make it briefly recoil.
Still holding the sword, I try to ignore the pain in my chest and hand as I focus on getting a proper strike.
“I know you're not real!” I stammer. “You can't be real! My father helped send you all to hell!”
I step back as the spider lunges at me, but when I try to slice at its head I miss. Instead, the sword glances helplessly against the stone floor and I'm forced to step out of the way as the creature towers over me, preparing to strike again. Just as I'm about to turn and run, however, one of its legs crashes into my waist, slamming me into the wall. I drop the sword again, although I quickly manage to pick it up. Before I can turn, however, I feel an excruciating pain digging into my chest from either side, and I look down to see that the spider's fangs have gouged into my body and are now embedded through my left breast and right shoulder, grinding against my ribs. I let out a cry of pain as I struggle to get free, but I'm quickly lifted up from the floor as the spider moves back.
“No!” I scream, trying to turn and strike at its head but stopping as I feel a burst of agony running through my chest. There's blood in my mouth now, overflowing and running down my chin. “Absalom! Stop this thing!”
I turn again, but although I swipe at the spider's eyes with my sword I'm not quite able to reach. Seeing the pit nearby, I realize that we're headed that way and that I'll be unable to fight back once the spider gets me into its lair. I try yet again to turn all the way, but every time I move I feel the spider's fangs slicing deeper into my body as more of its venom burns my belly and legs.
Breathless and starting to lose consciousness, I realize I only have one more chance to kill this thing. I might not be able to save my own life, but at least I can take the spider with me.
Turning, I ignore the pain and the sensation of my chest being ripped open, and instead I focus on facing the spider's eight dark eyes. For a moment I see my own reflection, but I quickly slice forward with the sword, driving the tip through several of the eyes and directly into the creature's brain. Letting out a cry of anger, I draw the sword back and then attack again, this time slicing through the rest of its eyes and then twisting the sword once the tip is deep inside its head. I close my eyes as I feel the fangs loosening their grip, and then suddenly I fall, landing hard on the stone floor and dropping the sword. With my eyes still squeezed tight shut, I lean forward as pain surges through my body. I once read in the Book of Gothos about spider venom being able to eat away at the flesh of a vampire, and I can feel something spreading through ever fiber of my body, starting to consume me. I thought Absalom was simply trying to train me, but now it's clear he put me to the ultimate test and I failed. If this is how I'm going to die, it's pathetic.
Finally, I let out another cry of pain.
And then someone starts clapping.
I wait a moment, before realizing that the pain has faded. Opening my eyes, I look ahead and see not a spider but, instead, Absalom standing just a few feet away. As he finishes clapping, he reaches out to help me up.
“Well done,” he says with a faint smile. “Once you stopped trying to save your own miserable life and focused on killing the spider, you actually did remarkably well.”
Looking down at my chest, I see to my surprise that all my injuries have miraculously disappeared.
“I showed you your greatest fear,” Absalom continues. “I actually thought it might be a vision of your father, but apparently your subconscious mind is far more fixated on the spiders. That creature wasn't real at all, it was all in your head. Next time you won't be so lucky.”
“I...” Ignoring his outstretched hand, I stumble to my feet, still feeling an echo of the pain in my body. Pushing past him, I stagger to the edge of the pit and look down, only to see that it's empty. There aren't even any chains. “That thing was all some kind of hallucination?” I whisper, shocked by the idea that I could imagine something that seemed so real. I turn to him. “Not one second of it was real?”
“Don't start thinking you're done here,” he replies. “I just wanted to show you that sometimes you need to fight without holding anything back.”
“I never hold anything back.”
“What about when you're trying to save yourself?” he asks. “One thing we learned in the war was that quite often it's impossible to kill one of the really large spiders without laying down your life at the same time. That's the reason there were so many casualties on our side.”
“If that had been real -”
“You'd have died sooner,” he adds, interrupting me. “If the spider had been real, the venom would have been stronger and it would have been deployed more quickly. The spider would have won, Abby.”
I shake my head.
“Unless you can accept that,” he replies, “you fail this test.”
Taking a deep breath, I realize that he's challenging me to admit to my weaknesses. “Fine,” I say firmly, picking up the sword again. Every bone in my body is hurting, but I don't have time to rest. “Show me how I can be better. Show me how I can save my brother.”
“Maybe you can't.”
“Then show me how I can try.”
Emilia
The image flashes briefly into my mind: a vast palace, the same palace from my dreams, resting on a dark and rocky plain far from any world I've ever seen before.
As quickly as it comes, the image fades.
“Where?” I whisper, opening my eyes and looking into Jonathan's fevered, pain-addled face. “I need more. Where is that place?”
“Go to hell,” he sneers, hanging limply from the ropes as blood runs from numerous cuts, trickling down his naked body.
“That wasn't enough,” I reply. “There has to be more.”
He shakes his head.
“You barely showed me any more than I knew before,” I continue. “All I saw were a few mountains. You might not realize it, but there's something else in your mind, there has to be!”
“I'd rather die,” he whispers, trying to raise his head to look at me but lacking the strength, “than give you what you want.”
“Spoken like a true vampire,” I reply with a faint smile. “I'm glad to see that your instincts are starting to grow, but I'm afraid I can't accept your answer. I shall simply have to take the information from your mind by force.”
He opens his mouth to reply, no doubt to tell me to go to hell or something similar, but I don't have time to indulge his pathetic attempts to resist. Instead, I reach my thoughts into his mind and push deeper than ever, searching for anything that might remotely be linked to Karakh. I see images of his pathetic human life, of his childhood and his time working at the library, but such things are of no interest to me as I root around for the secrets left hi
dden deep in his psyche. Eventually I find the same images of Karakh that I saw before, and I linger for a moment to relive those thoughts and search for any more information. There are mountains in the distance, rising high into the night sky, but they're not enough to tell me where Karakh is hidden.
After a few seconds, I break through to another layer of his thoughts and I'm able to curl my consciousness through the wrecked, empty halls of the Karakh palace itself. There's still nothing here that tells me where the palace is hidden, but it feels good to witness my ancestral home, even if I know that it's nothing more than a memory implanted in the mind of a foul and base creature. Slipping deeper into his mind, I try to draw back and see the palace from a greater distance so that I might better judge its location. I can feel Jonathan pushing against me, trying to resist, but I'm far too strong and instead I follow a path that seems to lead to a darker part of his consciousness, until suddenly -
Gasping, I open my eyes.
“See?” he whispers, his voice filled with pain. “I told you, there's nothing more.”
“But there has to be,” I reply, terrified at the thought that I might have failed. “The information about Karakh's location should be in your mind, but it's almost as if -”
I pause.
No.
Please, no...
Getting to my feet, filled with a sense of panic, I take a step back as I start to realize the truth.
***
“Impossible!” Keller snaps, turning to me with anger in his eyes. “Go back down there and try again! Or do you want me to speak to your father and tell him you've failed?”
“I haven't failed,” I say firmly. “I found all the information in his mind, but only half of it is there. I think...” I take a deep breath, aware that he won't like what I'm about to tell him. “I think that instead of the information being planted equally in Abby and Jonathan's minds, there was some quirk of biology that meant it was divided in two. Half the information is in one of the twins, and half is in the other.”
“That can't be true!” he sneers.
“Why not? Because it's inconvenient? Because it makes things harder for us?”
He mutters something under his breath, clearly furious at this latest development. “So you saw nothing of use?” he asks finally. “His mind doesn't contain the information we need?”
“I saw Karakh,” I reply. “I saw it more clearly than ever, I saw it resting near a set of silver mountains beneath a vast night sky. I saw dust and rocks on the ground, and vast canyons.”
“That doesn't narrow it down,” he points out.
“I saw...” Thinking back to the image, I try to search for anything else that might help. “I saw birds in the sky,” I continue. “There was life in the area, and I think they were seabirds, so it must be a coastal region.”
“What world?” he asks. “We can't go searching every possible coastal region in the eight known worlds! Even if we did, Karakh might be hidden somewhere further away.”
“We need to get the other half,” I tell him. “I'm certain that if we combine what I found in Jonathan's mind with what was hidden in Abby, the picture will become much clearer and we'll know the precise location of Karakh.” I wait for him to reply. “Either that, or we just have to set off and do our best with what we've got.”
“Your father won't be happy about this,” he replies. “He wants results, not excuses and more promises!”
“I guess it's a good thing that Abby escaped from you earlier,” I point out. “If you'd succeeded in killing her, we'd be in a much worse position.”
Sighing, he heads over to his desk and opens the top drawer, before taking out a small wooden box. “You've obviously done everything you can,” he mutters, lifting the lid from the box and taking out a silver scalpel, “but before we start trying to get hold of Ms. Hart, I need to be absolutely certain that you've left nothing in Jonathan's mind.”
“What are you going to do?” I ask, shocked by the sight of the scalpel as he limps toward the door.
“Something I should have done from the start. I'm going to cut him open and -”
“No!”
He turns to me. “No?”
“I mean...” Pausing, I realize that my panic is unfounded and unbecoming. I should have no hesitation about letting Keller cut Jonathan's head open, but at the same time I feel as if I have to find another way. “Let me try again. Let me -”
“You've done enough,” he replies, interrupting me. “I'll scrape the information from his head and confirm that you're right, and then we can think about finding Ms. Hart.” He stares at me for a moment. “I know you have inappropriate feelings for Jonathan. Don't bother to deny it, I can see it in your eyes, your hatred is flagging and in some ways you actually admire him. I haven't told your father about my concerns, and I'm choosing to assume that you simply admire him as a worthy opponent. I'd hate to be proved wrong.”
“I don't admire him,” I reply, even though his words ring true. “I just...” Staring at the scalpel, I realize I must put aside my weak feelings and focus instead on getting what we need. “Do you need assistance with the procedure?”
He shakes his head. “It shouldn't take long. I know you're right, Emilia, but I have to check for myself. You understand that, don't you?”
“Of course, but... Will he die?”
“Don't ask such foolish questions,” he replies. “Your concern for the vampire is a very worrying development.”
I watch as he limps out of the room, and it takes all my strength to keep from rushing after him and begging him to leave Jonathan alone. After all, I'm quite sure that if I spent more time down there in the vampire's mind, I might be able to gain a little more insight. Then again, as I head over to the window and look out at the dark city, I know deep down that I could spend the rest of eternity in Jonathan's mind and I still wouldn't find what I need. The rest is in Abby, which means Jonathan is no longer useful to us, which means he can be discarded.
Suddenly I hear him crying out from the basement far below, and I close my eyes as his screams become louder. I can only hope that death delivers him swiftly from too much pain. Or that I can find the strength to stop caring.
Abby Hart
Stepping out into the courtyard, I immediately see Absalom sitting in his usual spot, although this time there's no newspaper in his hands. We've spent the past twenty-four hours doing nothing but training, and while my body feels as if it's about to fall apart, I can tell that he's starting to suffer too. In fact, he doesn't even seem to have noticed that I'm here, so I'm able to get all the way over to him before he finally turns to look at me.
“How do you feel?” he asks.
“Like hell,” I mutter, taking a seat next to him. “You?”
“A little worse than that.” He winces as he leans over to pour me some tea, and then he thinks better of it and leans back. “You'll have to serve yourself, I'm afraid. It has been a while since I felt so... invigorated. I must admit, I'm a little out of shape.”
“So what's the verdict?” I ask. “Am I ready to go and save my brother?”
He shakes his head.
“But it's been twenty-four hours,” I point out. “They could be torturing him!”
“I'm sure it's much worse than that,” he replies. “Abby, I imagine they've already got what they wanted from him. He's almost certainly dead by now.”
“No. I refuse to believe that.”
“You never knew he existed, not until all of this happened.” He pauses. “You don't know this brother, you've never met him, you have no personal attachment to him whatsoever. Have you considered just forgetting about him and focusing on more important matters?”
“Such as?”
“Such as the fact that the spiders might very well know the way to Karakh.”
“You think I should just forget about my brother?” I ask incredulously. “After you just spent the best part of a day training me so I can go after him?”
“I wasn'
t training you specifically for that,” he replies. “I was training you because I could tell you were woefully ill-equipped to face any real threat at all. You couldn't keep bumbling along like that, I should have started this process sooner, but now that you're here, we need to focus and keep going. You can be a great warrior, Abby, but only if you accept help and dedicate your life to your training.”
I shake my head.
“Your human life is over,” he adds. “All that ridiculous work with the police, your days as a medical examiner, your friendships with people like that Mark oak... You can't go back.”
“Who said I wanted to go back?”
“I can see it in your eyes.”
“You can't see a damn thing in my eyes.”
He smiles. “You're at a turning point, Abby. I'm sure it would have been pleasant for you to have continued playing with humans, but I'm afraid the world just won't leave you alone. If the spiders know how to get to Karakh, they won't waste any time.”
“So I have to get there first?”
“You have to ensure that they don't re-establish their old homeland. If they manage that, their power will grow rapidly.”
“So I have to sacrifice myself,” I point out. “That's what the second Book of Gothos says, isn't it?”
He pauses, before nodding.
“And prophecies can't be broken,” I continue, feeling a shiver pass through my chest. “If there's one thing my father's life taught me, it's that.”
“You can still choose the path you take to get there,” he replies. “The past twenty-four hours were just the start of your training, Abby, and you passed. Barely, but you still passed. Frankly, I didn't think you had it in you, but now the real work begins. You're going to come with me to -”
