“What will killing them accomplish?”
“I don’t want to kill them,” Jennifer persisted. “I meant it when I told you that, Andi! But I need them to do something for me. They’ve messed things up, and they have to make things right.”
“So you’ll hurt them, like you hurt Bobbie.”
“Andi, that’s not fair. I don’t have a lot of choices anymore.”
“Have you tried asking them?”
Nakia’s royal Egyptian eyes rolled at that. “Don’t even answer that, Jennifer. Nobody who knew what they were talking about would ask that question.”
“I’m sorry if I’m being naïve,” Andi said. “But I don’t like seeing the people around me get hurt.”
“It doesn’t strike you as a bit strange,” Nakia countered, “that someone who hates seeing pain slices open her own arms on a regular basis?”
Jennifer had to put a stop to this. “That’s not getting us anywhere. Andi, I’m going to try to get this done with as few people hurt as possible. That’s all I can promise. You don’t have to come with us. But don’t try to get in our way.”
“I won’t get in your way, I came here to help! But I won’t…”
“You won’t fight. I get it. That’s fine. You could maybe help out those of us who get wounded?”
Andi seemed relieved at the out Jennifer had offered. “Yes. Okay, I’ll do that.”
“What will you need?”
“Antivenom,” Andi answered. “Lots of it.”
“Eddie must have some in his supplies. I’ll talk to him.” Jennifer turned to Nakia. “How about you? Can you fight with us?”
“I can try.”
“That’s all I’m asking. With you two on board, that’s just about everyone. We only have a few standouts among the warriors here, and I don’t think anything I do or say now—”
“Jennifer Scales.” The voice made them all turn around. Elise Georges was in the entryway to the cabin, the newolf Phoebe at her side. Uncertainty softened her hostile emerald gaze. “Do you have time for a walk?”
The first minute or so of the walk was silent, mutual torture. Jennifer could sense that something had shifted in Elise’s demeanor, but the woman wasn’t ready to express it. Meanwhile, Jennifer wasn’t sure if she wanted to burst into tears, confession, protest, or all three—but she was sure Elise was not interested in finding out which would happen.
As it turned out, the newolf helped break the ice by rubbing up against Jennifer and licking her hand.
“Phoebe likes you,” Elise allowed. “That’s unusual for a stranger.”
“I’m not a stranger. I’m your daughter.”
The woman stopped in the middle of the prairie, where horses and sheep and wildflowers would normally be. “So you keep saying. Would you care to explain how that’s possible? And if you call that thing”—she pointed vaguely back toward the cabin, but Jennifer knew to whom she was referring—“your sister, does that mean I’m her mother, too?”
“No! No, it’s more complicated than that. You have to understand, things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be—”
“Don’t I know it. I’m supposed to have parents, and a brother, and friends. Not a horde of unruly teenagers who barely follow my commands. You’re taking them into a battle in Pinegrove itself, without my permission.”
“You could join us.”
Instead of the immediate rebuke Jennifer expected, Elise licked her lips and raised the collar of her jacket. “Battle’s coming, no matter what I do. If two children tracked you here, the Quadrivium certainly will. And I’m fine taking them on. Relieved, actually. But you know nothing about tactics, kid. You’re about to return to the same battlefield where you got your ass kicked not twenty-four hours ago. You’ll have even less surprise on your side than you did before.”
“Not necessarily. They won’t be expecting all of you. And if you guys didn’t know what a beaststalker shout is, I’ll bet a bunch of them have forgotten, too.”
“Maybe.” Elise began to walk again. “You have obvious skills. You’re not like any dragon I’ve ever seen before. Maybe you could help us…make a dent. Before the end comes.”
“The end?”
“There’s no avoiding it, kid. We’re going to die soon. Me, Eddie, Phoebe, every last one of us. How we’ve stayed alive these last few years, I couldn’t begin to guess.”
“You may have had something to do with it.”
The woman shook her head. “I’ve taught these children how to kill. And they’re good at it. And we know how to survive, how to hide. But lead them? They don’t turn to me when they’re hurt. They don’t turn to me when they’re afraid.”
“The mother I know is exactly the kind of person folks go to when they’re hurt.”
“The mother you know isn’t here,” Elise snapped. “What the hell do you want from me?”
Jennifer silently cursed the tears running down her cheeks. She had sworn to herself she wouldn’t cry. “I want you to come with me. If I’m going to die, I want my mother there.”
“That’s the attitude that will get you killed.”
“So come along and teach me different.”
“It won’t make a difference. Whether you succeed or fail, no one will ever know. The world will keep spinning. People will keep dying.”
“I know better than that. And if you had grown up differently, maybe you would know better, too—”
“I grew up differently enough from these kids to learn something valuable,” Elise growled. “Everything is born for no reason, limps through life for no reason, and dies for no reason. You can’t control the gears of death. But you can, if you’re willing, throw your body into them before your time. If that’s what you want to do, then do it already!”
Hearing these words come out of her mother’s mouth broke Jennifer’s heart. She sank to the ground and pulled Phoebe close to her. “Why did you ask me out here?”
As if snapped out of a nightmare, Elise threw her head back and sighed. “Yes. I asked you out here. I thought about doing so earlier today, so that I could kill you and end this nonsense.”
“So have you changed your mind?” Jennifer found she didn’t care anymore. The Quadrivium was too strong. Her father was dead. Her mother was twisted beyond recognition. Why drag what few friends she had left into a suicide mission?
“That depends,” Elise replied, “on what you can tell me about this.” The woman reached into her coat pocket.
“What you were teaching the others caused a lot of light and noise,” Elise explained as she pulled out the object. “Phoebe was restless, so I took her for a walk near here. We were at the edge of the woods just over there when she suddenly broke away, running off despite my commands. You can imagine, it’s hard to stop a newolf who gets a notion. She rousted a couple of wild hornets’ nests—yes, they’re alive and well in November around here, and I have a couple of nasty stings to prove it!—and I finally found her snuffling at this on the ground.”
Jennifer was barely listening; instead, she was clambering to her feet and checking the pocket of the jacket Eddie had lent her that morning. There can’t be two!
Elise continued in a whisper. “I went over and picked it up. Almost immediately, I felt…”
Jennifer retrieved a mirror image of what Elise held out—a frail, silvery starburst from a moon elm that no longer existed.
“I felt,” Elise managed through quivering lips as she rubbed the edges of her own leaf, “like I was missing something. I’ve lost so much in my lifetime, but this was like losing something worse.” She looked up at Jennifer. “Do you think you can help me find it?”
Jennifer’s jaw tightened as she struggled to keep her face composed. “Oh, yeah. We’re going to find it. Tell you what: Let’s start with you showing me those hornets’ nests.”
CHAPTER 17
Monday
Getting everyone in vehicles to Pinegrove wasn’t difficult, though it did involve some grand theft and automo
tive know-how. By the time morning twilight came, they had embedded themselves in the snow-frosted forest on the southwest fringe of the town, with the high school grounds just a few miles away. Nakia’s teeth were chattering and Andi seemed depressed, but everyone else looked grim and prepared under the moonless sky.
“I just want you to know,” Evangelina murmured in Jennifer’s ear as they took position, “that I still don’t think this is going to work.”
“Hey! You helped with The Plan this time. And so did Elise and Eddie.”
“The Plan is still flawed.”
“The Plan is strong, like bull. You love The Plan and you know it. Now get to work.” She turned to Elise. “Our new friends’re still with us?”
“Y-yes. They seem to have kept up with the convoy.”
“Great. I’ll, um. See you out there.”
The woman stared back for a few seconds. “If you die,” she finally said, “how would you like to be buried?”
“Thanks for the rousing speech, General Patton. You know what? Just leave me to rot. I don’t want to be any trouble.”
This actually provoked a small grin. “See you out there, then.”
The hundred or so arachnids guarding the observatory were not stupid, Jennifer supposed. They knew about Jennifer and Evangelina, so they were scattered more evenly over a wider area. They also would suspect the two of them would not be alone, so they had increased their overall numbers.
What they did not expect, however, was a missile from above, directed right in their midst.
She chose a spot just fifty yards from the observatory as her target. As she plummeted, she held her breath and prayed like mad that the cocoon of fire building around her would do something—anything—to absorb the impact of her landing.
The results were spectacular. She didn’t see them because she was deep in a crater of her own making, but she figured from the screams and fireworks that she had caused a bit of commotion. Before she even got up (with sore hindquarters, but no other injury), she whistled through her teeth for her bodyguard.
The horde had already been waiting for her signal, and it rushed in from the northern skies with the roar of a thousand buzz saws. Elise and Jennifer had found not just one nest of hornets in the woods near her cabin, but ten. Perhaps they were a strange mixed breed or descendants from the beehives Crawford Thomas Scales had once faithfully maintained. Or perhaps they were a rival species that flourished once the competition had gone. Either way, they obeyed Jennifer fervently. A swarm the length of a pterodactyl’s wingspan came crashing down next to Jennifer’s crater.
Before the werachnids could regroup, their third and greatest surprise came: The early dawn bore down as if the sun were riding a locomotive into town. With a quick shift to human form, Jennifer watched the warriors advance upon the observatory from the forest’s edge. Elise led them, riding her newolf Phoebe, screaming louder through her sword than any of them. Her daughter felt no small pride, and a twinge of remorse at the thought that in a different Pinegrove, years ago, a similar group of beaststalkers must have adopted the same tactic against her own ancestors. She wondered if Glorianna Seabright had found her own motives so blameless.
No time for philosophy! She readied her daggers and took up a position near the hornets. The swarm had not suffered at all during the barrage of beaststalker shouting. Every arachnid around them, however, was in incredible pain. Scorpions and spiders curled up and shrieked under the glare of pure light. Many of the smarter ones thought to shift back to human form.
And that was when Evangelina descended upon them.
RUN!
She shouted to the terrified guards around her, sending a new shock wave rolling over them. And run they did.
Jennifer had given her sister strict orders. No killing, unless there was no other way. While she knew she couldn’t change Elise and the warriors who followed her, Evangelina was special to her: The two of them were the last dragons. They would follow Xavier’s values and the values of their ancestors and show the world what dragons could truly be.
Despite the growing hunger she had sensed, her sibling appeared to enter the fray with a smidgeon of restraint. The lingering light and noise from the beaststalkers did nothing to faze her. She could be, as Jennifer had learned before their own fight, blind or deaf at will.
The hornet dragon stung and chased away those few that withstood Evangelina’s thought weapon, driving them south toward the school.
“Look to the air!” Elise called out from Phoebe’s back. She had ended the newolf ’s charge some distance from the observatory and now swung back to ensure a secure flank to the north. A dozen of her warriors kept up with her, pushing back their bewildered enemies and hacking at those hairy limbs that dared get in the way.
Jennifer followed Elise’s voice and saw a sight that made her swallow hard: A dozen bulbous shapes flew through the air toward them, aiming for the center of Jennifer’s small force.
Only ten landed alive. Eddie’s quiver was now low two arrows, but he quickly pulled another from behind his back and readied a third shot.
Nakia got to his target before he could fire, plunging her claw into the head of a deep blue jumper with white markings. Jennifer felt a bitter pang as she watched the friend she knew as a gentle lover of newolves and fun cars disembowel a fourth spider that tried to leap on top of her.
“Bitch,” she heard the troubled scorpion spit. Then, “Die. Die, already!”
She hadn’t wanted it this bloody or this personal. Wasn’t there another way to get past these spiders?
She changed into dragon form and blew fire in a circle around her, which caused several of the new jumpers to back off. Evangelina held off another surge, a few dozen regathering from the south, by coating one of their number in acid. Not exactly following the spirit of our agreement, Jennifer told herself, but it did scatter the rest of them without hurting more.
With most of the field won, they pushed hard at the observatory.
Here they met the stiffest resistance. A ten-foot-tall horned baboon spider with a clipped front leg and three fat-tailed scorpions of only slightly smaller size pulled back to a small door near the base of the spherical observatory. Inspired by their courage, another dozen or so humans shifted back into their spider forms and tried to make a last stand.
Jennifer kissed her blades and gave them a burst of light and sound. They shuddered but held their ground.
Evangelina pounded on them with her mind. They flinched, but held their ground.
Then Elise flew off her steed straight into the middle of them all, swinging her sword, and they began to falter.
Elizabeth George-Scales, as Jennifer anxiously tried to recall while watching the scene before her, was a caring soul full of optimism and grace who healed the sick and wounded. Elise Georges had a grace of a different kind—the grace of inevitable death as it clears a battlefield, and the grace of a killing blow as it slides past even the tightest defenses.
There was a moment when that grace was nearly not enough. A brown funnel spider lunged forward upon Elise’s blade, impaling itself deeply enough to land a bite on her shoulder before dying. Pulling back in pain, she did not see the horned baboon spider rush forward and lift up its orange and black maw for a killing blow.
“Mother!”
Eddie Blacktooth’s arrow was true, flying straight between the giant spider’s mandibles and emerging from the back of its many-eyed head. The arachnid crashed to the ground in a cloud of snow and dust.
Success! Jennifer congratulated herself on the fact that only Elise appeared to be hurt, with a minimum of werachnid casualties. And Jennifer herself had killed no one. Xavier would have been proud. They had made it to the entrance of the observatory, Eddie’s warriors were scattering the last of the guards, and Jennifer had just located Nakia and Andi on the field about halfway between the observatory and the high school. Suddenly she heard Evangelina’s voice. For the first time, her sister radiated worry.
&
nbsp; Sister! Something is here! It is strong!
This is it, then. The Quadrivium. Edmund? Tavia? One of the other two?
The observatory door opened, and out came a father and his son.
Jennifer had hoped it would not be true after all this time, but she had to believe what she saw. “Oh, Skip…”
But it was not Skip who stepped forward first. Otto Saltin, werachnid and sorcerer, was alive. His chocolate hair was slicked back with sweat, and his eyes bore none of the friendliness he had faked with Jennifer the time they had first met.
This is not over, he had told Jennifer a few months later, with a blade through his belly. She had had no idea how much he meant it.
He saw Elise, peeled his lips back into a sneer, and said a single word.
“Numb.”
Unlike her first experience with Otto’s sorcery, Jennifer actually saw the magic this time. A icy bluish streak leapt from Otto’s lips and slammed into its target. Elise gave a wail and fell to the ground, sword clattering to her side. Otto stepped forward onto her back, pressed her down with his winter boot, and opened his mouth to say another word.
Before it came out of his throat, it was cut by a long dagger—one with a beautifully ornamented hilt carved in the shape of a tiny dragon—that had flown through the air with deadly accuracy.
Andi and Nakia rushed forward to help guard Elise’s paralyzed body. Jennifer stepped up to the dead man who lay next to her and bent down.
“If I had to kill someone,” she told him, yanking her blade out of his ruined throat, “I’m glad it was you.”
She straightened and looked into the eyes of the man’s son, who looked like he wanted a dagger of his own. She knew there was nothing she could say or do that would salvage Skip. And she didn’t want him back anyway.
Expecting him to shift into any one of a number of spider shapes, she raised her knives.
He hesitated, started to say something, and then took a step forward.
Something whistled by Jennifer’s elbow, and then there was a black shaft sticking out of Skip’s right shoulder. He bellowed in pain.
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