Dawn looked toward the large mountain with wild colored ropes draping off it.‘Dawn must warn Kit of great terror infuture.’
I almost didn’t want to respond to her. I wasn’t sure what more I could take on this night, but my survival instinct had kicked in.‘What’swrong?’
Again my feathered friend looked at the mountain.‘The mountains are waking up, and when they do, they’ll behungry.’
My eyes widened as bile lurched into my throat. I had to swallow it down in order tospeak.
“What?” I said aloud.Did she just say the freaking mountains are waking up and they’re …hungry?
‘Is Kit upset?’She stepped closer, kindness showing in hereyes.
‘Yes, Kit is upset, but not at you. Just try to explain what you’re thinking. How can mountains wakeup?’
Maxine was bleeding out and Dawn was talking nonsense. I was trying and failing to keep my grip onreality.
‘You call tall ones ghouls, yes?’sheasked.
I nodded.‘All the aliens on this planet that eat humans are ghouls to us,yes.’
Her eyes saddened, suddenly darker.‘Mountain is sleeping ghoul. Wakes up every twenty Earth cycles toeat.’
I was sure I was going to black out. A wave of darkness passed before myvision.
I was almost too scared to ask.‘What… what do theyeat?’
‘Meat. They eat human, ghoul, Galadria—they don’t care. Eat one hundred fifty humans a day for a year, and then go back tosleep.’
Oh fuckme.
Four
After Dawn droppedthe giant sleeping ghoul bomb on me, she said she had to go help a friend andleft.
“Thatthingis a sleeping ghoul?” Ronnie whisper-screamed, never taking her eyes off Maxine’s shoulder. Mercifully, the bleeding had stopped, but Maxine had passed out due to the blood loss. Ronnie had hung a bag of O-negative to help, but passing out in the Dream Wars wasn’t good; if she didn’t wake up soon, she’d be at risk for acoma.
Ronnie had closed the artery, and was now working on the tendons and muscle. It was making me kind of sick, but I couldn’t look away. I was too freaked out that Maxine was going to die, and somehow my staring at her breathing chest would keep heralive.
I looked over at the giant mountain. I wasn’t sure why I didn’t notice before, but those colored ropes were definitely hair. Those earthquakes before were those giant things waking,breathing.
“Yep,” I answered Ronnie, then shifted my attention to Damien. “Damien, can this dome hold up to a giant ghoul the size of a mountain?” Iasked.
He looked at the huge mountain. “No way. They’re too large for the plasma shields to stand up to them. And the data dump might not affect them either. I’m notsure.”
Isighed.
“So when it wakes up in the next few hours, days, or weeks, what’s the plan?” Nox askedme.
Oh yeah, I’m in charge of this shit show. Fan-freaking-tastic.
I shrugged. “Run for ourlives?”
Josephine had been watching me keenly the whole time. “Your friend said they eat any kind of meat, right? They don’t have an alliance with the otherghouls?”
I nodded. “That’s right. Dawn said they would even eat her. They can toss back a hundred fifty humans in one day,apparently.”
Josephine nodded, patting Jeremy’s back to soothe him. He’d been shuffling his card deck anxiously while watching Maxine with wide terrifiedeyes.
“So we bring him a sacrifice. When he wakes up, he’ll have a meal of half-starved ghouls at his disposal. Let these mountain ghouls take care of our problem,” shesuggested.
