Black Howl
Page 20

There was nothing for it. I needed help. There was no way I’d be able to free all of these people and herd them out (screaming, no doubt) under the watchful eye of the spiders. The creatures appeared to be dozing right now, which was the only way I’d managed to escape detection.
I was about to step out quietly when a movement about halfway down the room caught my eye.
The familiar silvery wisps that indicated a soul rose from the body of a young woman in her mid-twenties who’d just breathed her last breath. There was no Agent present but me, which meant that this death was not a part of the natural order.
I unfurled my wings and blinked out of sight. I just hoped the spiders wouldn’t be able to see me anyway. I’d learned the hard way that some supernatural creatures can see through the Agent’s veil.
I flew over the heads of the other prisoners and touched down softly next to the woman’s body. Her soul was emerging much more slowly than a soul usually did, and it was twisting and writhing as it came.
Usually a soul looks just like a mirror image of the living person—except, you know, see-through. But this soul didn’t seem to know what it was supposed to look like. The pieces of her face kept scattering and re-forming, and even then the result didn’t look quite right, like a digital image missing some pixels.
Despite her indistinct features, I could tell her eyes were wide, staring up, her mouth open in a silent scream. I thought she was reacting to the trauma of the machines, but I realized a second before it landed on my head that she was watching one of the giant spiders descending swiftly and silently. I stumbled away as the spider picked up the dead body and began to wrap it in silk. Her soul struggled in terror, trying to break free of her mortal shell.
Oh, no, I thought.
I hurried forward, praying to the Morningstar that the spider wouldn’t detect me. I couldn’t let her soul in its already terrified state get stuck inside the silk, still attached to her body as the spider began to eat it.
The stink of the spider’s rotten breath and the miasma that poured off it filled my nostrils. I gagged, covered my face with my sleeve and hoped Lucifer’s sword would cut through the ectoplasmic cord that held this poor woman’s soul to her body.
I usually use magic to cut the soul since my mother’s dagger had melted in the flesh of a dragon on my front lawn a couple of months before. But I worried the spider would notice magic being performed under its nonexistent nose, and I didn’t have time to do the usual ritual and offer the woman a choice.
I crept closer to the spider busily wrapping up its prey. The soul was struggling, pulling on the cord that bound her to her body. I lifted the sword and struck a clean blow just under the spider’s jaws.
The soul broke free, screaming, the incorporeal body dissolving and re-forming in her panic and confusion. The spider immediately dropped the body and made a high-pitched chittering noise. I guess it had noticed something, after all. It didn’t seem to see me, because I stood frozen in place less than a foot away from its fangs. But it knew something was wrong, and its chitter had notified the other blood-bloated monsters dangling over my head.
They lowered quickly to their companion, and I saw stars for a moment. I hoped I wouldn’t pass out from panic. If you are a moderate arachnophobe, the last place you want to be is in an enclosed space with three spiders the size of CTA buses. Actually, after this I was pretty sure I’d be a full-on arachnophobe. Forget moderation.
The spiders began to click and hiss at one another. Since proximity was making me hyperventilate I backed away slowly, holding the sword in front of me and trying to make my footfalls as soft as possible. It seemed that I might be able to get away and get help.
Until the heel of my boot knocked into the leg of one of the wooden chairs. The person in the chair toppled sideways and, separated from the machine, began to bellow at the top of his lungs.
The first spider screamed and bounded forward in a giant leap to the place where I stood, invisible still.
I didn’t have time to run or to think. I saw the spider’s huge, hairy body above my head, coming down on me, and I jumped back and pushed the sword into the spider’s crazy multifaceted eye as it landed.
The spider jerked, screeched, thrashed its legs on the floor. I set my feet and yanked the sword free, leaving the spider to its death throes. The blade was unharmed, but some acidic goo had run out of the spider’s eyes and burned the top of my right hand and the cuff of my coat.
“This is why I can’t have anything nice,” I muttered. “Including hands.”
The other spiders, quite aware that someone was in the warehouse who was not supposed to be, reared up on their silks a few feet—the better to survey the area with, one assumed. I was torn between running to get help and trying to defeat the other two spiders. I worried that a lot of innocent bystanders would be harmed if I stayed and tried to take the spiders out.
Thinking it would be safer for the prisoners if I went out and returned with backup, I resumed my slow backward walk.
The spiders screamed and dropped toward me with frightening rapidity. I didn’t know what gave me away until I looked downward and saw my boot prints in the slippery blood pouring from the spider’s body.
“Sometimes I wonder if J.B.’s right about me Three-Stooging my way through life,” I said out loud.
There was nothing to do now except stand and fight and try to limit collateral damage. The man I knocked over was crying himself hoarse because of his separation from the cameras.
I lifted off from the ground as the spiders landed on the floor near the body of the dead one. I swooped over the head of the nearest eight-legged monster and then arrowed downward with the sword pointed in front of me. I pushed the blade up to the hilt into the spider’s body. As I did I shot electricity through the blade and into the spider. I was getting really good at that spell.
There were the smells of flesh cooking and blackened blood, and the spider went still as its insides were fried.
I yanked out the sword and turned toward the other spider, but it was gone.
10
A WHISPER OF MOVEMENT, THE FAINTEST OF CLICKS. I looked up and saw the other spider mere inches from me. I leapt backward off the electrocuted spider. Well, okay, it was a lot more like an awkward motion in which I tumbled ass-over-elbows and landed hard on my side in a big icky pool of spider gore. Lara Croft I am not.
The last spider landed on the body of its compatriot with a triumphant chitter, and then it realized I wasn’t there.
I pushed to my feet, discovered the sword had gone flying somewhere and I couldn’t see it. I tried to raise my arms to shoot nightfire at the spider and noticed something else. My right arm hurt like hell, and it was hanging at an awkward angle.
“Dislocated shoulder. Awesome,” I said through my teeth. It hurt.
The spider leapt toward the place where I’d landed in blood. I shot upward on my wings, threw nightfire at it with my good arm. The nightfire bounced harmlessly off its hairy body. All I was really doing was giving away my position as the spider threw webs and swung closer and closer to the source of the blasts.
Throwing nightfire and flying all over the place like a demented pinball wasn’t doing any good. I hung as still as I could, moving my wings only just enough to keep me aloft. The spider paused, suspended on its string, twisting in the air and looking for me. I made barely an eddy in the thick cloud of miasma that blanketed the air.
We were in a far corner of the warehouse, well above the prisoners bound to their chairs below. Glancing down I realized we were above an open space. The closest prisoner was several feet away.
Nightfire didn’t work, and the sword was missing. That left something a little know-it-all gargoyle had once told me—Most things don’t like fire.
I reached down into the place where my magic flickered and pulled on that source of power until it ran in my blood. It passed through my heartstone and was lit by the flame of the sun.
The spider screeched, and I knew it could see me lit from within. It swung toward me, intent on its prey, its blood-stinking jaws wide for the kill.
The flames raced inside my veins, down to the tips of the three fingers of my left hand, and exploded out into a giant fireball that entered the spider’s mouth.
The effect was instantaneous. The spider burst into flame and crashed to the ground, screaming the whole way. It thrashed and kicked feebly, smoke pouring from its body. The smell was horrific.
I took a minute to appreciate the fact that I was no longer in immediate danger of being eaten alive by a giant spider. Then I realized the flaming spider had set a nearby table on fire and that the fire was spreading, thereby putting all the captives in danger.
“Because that’s what fires do, Maddy,” I said to myself. “They spread.”
I flew to the ground and looked around for a fire extinguisher. I didn’t find any, nor did any internal sprinkler system kick in. This building was definitely not up to code.
It was just possible that I was getting a little hysterical. The room was already growing hotter and the smoke was scorching my throat.
The priority was to get the prisoners out, but I knew from my experience with the wolf cubs that this would not be an easy task. As I crossed the room to the people nearest the source of flame, I heard banging. It seemed like someone was trying to break down the door into the warehouse. I turned toward the pounding, nightfire at the ready.
The door flew open with a crash and J.B. came through, along with dozens of special-forces Agents. The cavalry had arrived.
J.B. took in me, the dead spiders, the prisoners and the flame at a glance.
“Get those people out of here!” he shouted.
The Agents poured forward, cutting the prisoners’ bonds and pulling the people from their chairs. The air filled with the sounds of screams.
“Get the cameras, too!” I shouted, running forward to help. I saw something winking in the firelight and stopped to pick up the sword. I shoved it back in its scabbard and began gathering cameras with my working arm.
J.B. reached my side. “Why are you taking these? Get out of here.”
“The machines are important. I’m not sure why. But we can’t leave them here.”