Last stood, snatched a plastic-wrapped muffin, and then frowned at me. “Well? Come on.”
I looked at Primus and the Clark.
The Clark sent a paper-straw, hissing breath through his dry lips. “Go. You’ll work until the creature is free. The leggerock knows and has promised you’ll stay until it is released. Do not pause. Do not rest. Do not tire.”
The last time I was here, I’d cleared millions of knots. The beast was barricaded behind a medieval dungeon, a tortured tapestry of illusion. It was impenetrable to everyone but a lockpick. It was the most exhausting, most trying thing I’d ever untied. By my estimate, I still had millions more knots and at least fifteen hours to go before the creature was free.
It was going to be a very long day.
However, I wished it could be longer. I wished the day would never end. Because when it did, the monster would be freed.
I pressed my hand to the cool wooden table and stood, sending a frightened, urgent tap along the rope that connected me to my brother. He’d come when I’d called at Rockefeller. Would he come again?
And more importantly, would he want to stop the monster?
The Clarks insisted it would defeat the Smiths. Maybe Jacob wanted the Smiths to die too.
I stopped tapping and pulled back into myself.
The Clark’s smile grew. “When the creature is freed, it will devour the Smiths. You and my son will face the Smith abomination. You will prevent his conjurings, and my son will send the Smith creature back to hell. Do you understand?”
I nodded. “Free the creature. Stop the Smiths’ conjurings. Primus wins the crown.”
Primus looked on me with bold approval. He snaked his hands behind his closely shaved head and smiled.
I stared at him, wondering if he was truly crazy enough to think he’d be able to wear the crown without having won it in the games.
But what did I know? Maybe in all the Clark archives, there was a history that told of a usurper who’d managed to challenge the crown and plop it on their own head.
Or . . . he truly thought he’d been the one to win the games, and Finn was the pretender.
I suppose, if the duel hadn’t actually finished, and Finn died before it was done, then Primus might believe he was the winner.
I wouldn’t risk a thousand painful deaths for the possibility, but I also wasn’t a Clark.
They’d done plenty of mad things through the centuries.
“Take note,” Primus said, as Last clasped my hand and tugged me toward the tunnel, “I won’t win the crown. I’ve already won it. Tonight, we’re reclaiming what’s mine.”
As Last and I hurried down the bone-walled tunnel, the creature moaned happily at my approach. I shivered and couldn’t help but think Primus was wrong. We weren’t reclaiming what was his. We were unlocking a nightmare, and all of us would be lucky if we survived the night.
77
“I bet you’re wondering why I’m not with my husband,” Last said, picking at her soggy muffin. She pulled tiny pieces free, rolled them between her fingers into a sticky ball, and then flicked them to the dusty ground. When an unfortunate cockroach scuttled to her lure, she conjured a stone fist and smashed it. She’d crushed six so far, and their exoskeletons let off a musty, wet-cardboard odor. Although that smell might have been the bran muffin.
“Not really,” I said as Last’s stone fist chased after a fleeing cockroach.
“Gotcha!” she crowed as the cockroach splattered over the stone floor.
I ignored the crunch and the fetid scent and wiped at a drop of sweat rolling down my forehead.
The creature behind the wall was growing impatient. It paced, scraping at the stone, madness and hunger pressing against the backs of my eyes until my vision was bloodied in blacks and reds.
We were deep in the catacombs, where the air was so heavy and stagnant it choked on itself. The tunnels had sloped gently downward, the bones in the walls shading from white to gray to dust. As the tunnels constricted, the fist-like pressure of the creature’s malevolent hunger increased until I felt crushed beneath its grindstone weight. The stone feel scraped over me and ground against my bones, urging me on.
Couldn’t Last feel that?
Couldn’t she feel the madness and the malevolence?
