Liv huddled on the bench seat, her teeth wanting to chatter.Erik had only put her down once on the mad rush to the garage, at the end of a long hall with suits of armor between regular pillars on either side.It looked just like a movie set, but the armor was all dented and broken in varying, horrifying places, the edges of each rip, gouge, or puncture blackened with age.
Stay here, Erik had said softly, and she had, but not because she wanted to.
No.She’d stayed right where he placed her, tucked behind a pillar, and watched him bolt down the hall, meeting a tide of those horrifying half-spider, half-vegetable things with their bulbous crimson eyes, because she was too scared to move.Jake had also stayed, a few paces in front of Liv; his gun only spoke once, roar-lighting the entire hall with a millisecond flash that made every bristling hair, every slavering tooth, every faceted gleam of those terrifying, bulbous, utterlywrongeyes stand out.
He’d shot the one that had somehow gotten past Erik.
Even if she’d wanted to run away, she couldn’t have.Her traitorous, cowardly legs had fused into trembling sticks and she simply stared, incapable even of screaming.
Even that wasn’t as bad as the half-seen shapes beside the car as they rocketed down the driveway, the necklace on her chest giving a strobe-flash to illuminate every single one in pitiless detail.Jake had almost run over Ignatius at the great iron front gates, barely slowing the vehicle enough for the older man to pile inside.
Erik had his eyes closed like Ignatius, and the sudden certainty both he and the grey-haired guy were corpses sent a violent shudder down her back.Her hand flashed out, pawing at the door release; the lever moved obediently, but without any click of opening.
Child locks?Seriously?A cold, jagged laugh boiled behind her breastbone, as whipsaw-hysterical as Mika’s after the car accident that icy long-ago December, both of them just out of college and looking for jobs.A bad patch of ice on a freeway onramp, a spin, both girls without a scratch even though the front end of the car had folded up accordion-style…
The rancid chuckle rose hot and acid in her throat, sounding suspiciously like a whine.
“Don’t,” Erik said, harshly.“Please.”
Liv stared at him, trying to stop the sound, swallow it, stuff it back inside her chest.Ignatius stirred, a gleaming sliver showing under his eyelids.“Hurt,” he husked, and coughed.“Is she?Hurt?”
Oh God.Liv’s jaw dropped, and the sound died in her throat.Why the hell was he asking abouther?
She couldn’t stop thinking about the dry rasping sound the spaghetti-tentacled thing in the window made, the hideous smell, the spraying of thin, weird, greasy blood.And then thespiders, only they weren’t properly arachnoid, not with their bodies studded with horrifying vegetable growths?—
“She’s fine.”Erik turned his head a fraction.They were on a two-lane country road, streetlights passing regularly but further apart than in the suburbs.“Physically, at least.”
“The longest night of the year,” Jake said grimly.“Of course.”
“You… both… did well.”Ignatius shifted slightly, and the lines around his mouth deepened.“Following?”
“Not that I can sense.”Erik’s hand, loosely cupped in his lap, twitched like he wanted to reach for something.“Liv?”It was the first time he’d really used her name, and her gaze jumped from his dirty fingers to filthy face, to the window past him, back to his hand.“I know you’re scared, but it’s okay.Just tell me, do you feel any more of them after us?”
How in the fuck should I know?Irritation stung, a welcome heat through the numbness.Andscared?Oh, boy howdy, scared was not the word.
Terrifiedwas more like it.She’d read about people’s hair standing up from fright, and the sensation was so much like tiny insect feet all over her that a vision of the spiders reared up inside her head again, their legs bending in the wrong directions and their scuttling in random arcs sending a jolt of pain through her heavy skull.
“She in shock?”Jake let the SUV slow, and the idea that maybe he was stopping made a gush of sweat break out all over her.
“Don’t slow down,” she heard herself gasp, ragged as if she’d been suckerpunched.“For God’s sake, don’t stop.”
“It’s all right,” Erik grabbed her wrist, and Liv realized she intended to scramble forward, between the seats and into the front, because maybe their doors would unlock and she could wriggle past.“Calm down.Calmdown, Liv.Stop it!”
She couldn’t kick out the back windows with bare feet, but Liv was about to try, pitching violently aside.
“Keep her contained,” Ignatius rasped.“And, Erik?”
“Yes—oof.”He exhaled hard as her elbow sank into his midriff, but Erik had her arms trapped in short order, and she found herself smooshed against his chest.His shirt was in tatters, his armored jacket only slightly better, and the drying creature-blood on him stank.“Shhh, Liv.It’s okay.Sir?”
It is goddamn wellnotokay!Liv wanted to scream, but she had no air.The panic was back, robbing her of breath and hope, and the stuff on him wasblood; it wasmonster blood.
And now it was getting smeared all over her, too.
“She has anoneiros.”Ignatius wasn’t breathing right.Every word sounded painful.
Erik paused, but maybe that was only because she was still trying to writhe free of his grip.“Made in the old way, sir.For Yule.”
“A traditional gift.Miss Stellack, please…” Ignatius coughed, a dry cricket-whisper, and the thought that he was maybe dying filled her with both unsteady glee and howling fear because nobody should be killed by those terriblethings.
