“Oh. That’s the best kind.”
“Did Primus hurt you?”
She waved her hand. “Who cares? What I want to know is . . . what sort of things will you do for me? For someone you care about?”
“Last,” I said, glancing at the cracks spreading over the rock.
“Shh,” she said.
“Luvic . . .” I pointed to the wall.
The rock groaned, and a million cracks spread. It looked like a window that had been hit by a bat. One touch, and all the cracked glass would shatter.
“What is that?” Luvic asked.
With all Last’s conjuring, I’d untied every knot in the area. Apparently, I’d also untied most of the prison’s remaining knots. The thin line had become a shoestring.
“It’s the Clarks’ monster,” I whispered. “The one that devours. I think it’s about to break free.”
A noise as loud as a steel column hitting rock thundered through the chamber. The walls shook, and the floor vibrated. I covered my head as grime and gravel rained down. Then I covered my ears. A giant, horrifying wail ripped through the catacombs. The hunger and hate of it tore through my bones.
Luvic swore. He looked at me, and I knew he remembered the monster who’d caused my second death. He’d never seen it, but he’d tasted my terror.
An explosion blasted the rocks free. Luvic threw out his hands, conjuring a shield of water. Last thrust a wall of mud to slow the shrapnel. I ducked, dodging the jagged stones that flew through the shields.
When I looked up, I was standing at the edge of a gaping, ten-foot-tall mouth of absolute darkness.
I was wrong.
All those years, I’d thought I’d known what lived in the Clarks’ catacombs.
I’d thought I’d seen its hunger, its madness, its evil.
I’d been wrong.
I’d only seen the unhatched larva. The tiny, mindless, hungry worm that searched for food and went back to its mother.
The monster I’d been terrified of for nearly my whole life was a weak gray dusk compared to the midnight darkness that stood before me.
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t?—
The monster swarmed, intent on swallowing me whole.
“Run!” Last screamed.
Luvic grabbed me and shoved me ahead of him.
We ran.
83
Horror had a taste. It was the metallic bite of battery acid and the brittle tang of epinephrine squeezed through a shivering heart. The scent clung to the back of my throat, choking all reason and calm, until I was infected too.
Horror wasn’t an emotion; it was a disease.
Once you were inoculated, it ravaged you with fever until you expelled fetid, fear-soaked sweat, pungent, scalding tears, and wretched tuberculosis sobs.
I tripped over a jutting stone, and Luvic grabbed my arm and shoved me in front of him.
