“Now! Breathe your fire!”
“All right already!” she hissed back. Clearing her throat, she opened her jaws and let loose with the largest inferno she could muster. The flames flooded the cement floor and broke through the barricade opening, where it roasted about a dozen brown recluse spiders the size of lobsters. Their legs seized and curled, their eyes popped out, and their burnt bodies rolled onto their backs.
As the heat and light retreated, Jennifer made out the shadows of at least a hundred more recluses scrambling to take their place.
“Did it work?” Jonathan shouted out from behind them.
“Um, kind of…”
“Keep the fire going!” A swirl of black cape and a smoldering sword leapt forward to meet the onslaught.
“But I don’t want to burn…”
“Breathe!” urged her father. “Beaststalkers can withstand your fire. Working together is our only chance!”
“Fine, if you insist,” she shrugged. As her partner brought down the sword’s point into the cement floor, she let loose with another sheet of flame.
This washed past the beaststalker’s ankles and over the crack where the sword tip pierced the floor. Suddenly, the flames took on a bluish hue and accelerated forward. The new wave of spiders coming into the hall had no chance to react—the blue nova blasted through and carried their ashes back on top of those behind them. For a moment, the clicking echoes subsided, as if those left were uncertain what to do about this combined threat.
Unfortunately, they did not hesitate for long. Jennifer could see them collect themselves and surge forward once again. Otto’s new army seemed endless.
“If he got
my
powers,” she complained out loud, “then
why
doesn’t
his
summoning suck as much as
mine
?!”
“Jennifer!” Jonathan was standing at the corner, looking back down the hallway they had used. His voice had a twinge of panic in it. “They’re behind us!”
“Hold the front, Eddie!” Jennifer wheeled around and raced back down the passageway toward her father and Skip. It was true—Otto must have left a small army of recluses behind to close ranks and overwhelm his enemies. They covered the hallway floor, walls, and ceiling only fifty yards distant. As their legs and bodies ran over the lightbulbs, they cast frightening shadows forward.
“You’ll need to summon help,” Jonathan told her.
“I can’t!” she pleaded. “Every time my wing claw comes down, another pathetic lizard the size of a coin comes out! I’ve never called anything capable of stopping
that
!”
“Think of something!” He smiled at her desperately. “You can’t give up now, ace. We need you.”
Their rescuer’s voice shared her father’s desperation. “They are multiplying! Even with sound and light, I cannot hold them all back for long!”
An idea struck Jennifer. She hissed vapor onto the floor, pushing it as far toward the oncoming spiders as she could. Then she spread her wings, which grazed the wall on either side, and gently sailed toward the new enemies.
Then, as she flew, she kicked the ground with her right
hind
leg as hard as she could.
Although she nearly hit her head on the ceiling from the rebound, she didn’t have to look behind her to know that something had risen up—something large—through the summoning smoke.
“That’s it, Jennifer! Keep going!”
She was only a few yards from the spiders now. Greeting them with a volley of flame carefully mixed with smoke, she sailed into their midst with another
whomp
on the ground. Again, something sprouted—but she didn’t have time to look back and see.
Her next breath sprayed the walls and ceiling, as well as the floor. She looked ahead for an end to the army, but did not see one. Turning back seemed like a good idea now.
She folded her wings and planted a foot down amid the smoke of her last breath. Now she could see her product. A spray of legless bodies had exploded out of the point of impact—black mambas, at least twenty of them. The brownish-gray snakes were twice their natural size and entered the fray immediately, lashing out at any foes that survived Jennifer’s fire.
Wait until Catherine hears about this
! She couldn’t help but grin. She should have known when she first noticed her smaller wing claw that she’d have to do things differently from a normal trampler dragon.
As she looked back down the hall where she had already stomped twice, she saw dozens of other mambas spread out in battle. They were larger and faster than the spiders. They reared up with their black jaws open wide, struck to sever the recluse’s head and legs from its abdomen, then slithered down the hall in search of more targets.
“Jennifer!” Jonathan’s voice echoed down the hall. “We need you back here!”
Even though the corner was far away, she could easily make out a flash of brilliant light and heard a short beaststalker shout. It hurt, but it wasn’t enough to stun her. Trusting her new army to guard this front, she glided over them and rejoined the others.
Otto had been busy in the junction room. Despite the eight-legged bodies strewn all over the hallway entrance, it seemed that there were more alive than ever. Beaststalker tactics were failing—Jennifer guessed that they were better at mighty duels with singular beasts than holding off swarms of mindless intruders.
“Get down!” Jennifer ordered. She sped through the air behind a stream of smoke and fire. Her father ducked just in time to avoid getting burnt and clobbered. In the space between him and the retreating beaststalker, Jennifer slammed both hind legs into the smoke-covered floor. She felt snakes lift off in her wake as she vaulted over the beaststalker and landed on the other side, pounding the ground with both feet again.
Eighty-odd new serpentine soldiers slithered by her side and went right into battle.
There were even larger spiders now—none nearly as huge as Otto had been, but certainly sergeants in the field. They were gray wolf spiders with black stripes, and unlike the recluses, they leapt instead of crawled.
Jennifer focused her attention on these as they popped out of the junction room. She swung around and zapped each with her tail as they entered the hall, knocking their fiery corpses back into the junction room. One or two of them were caught in midair, mandibles poised to strike. The snakes shattered the ranks of smaller spiders, and soon the others were able to join and help her. The beaststalker’s sword swirled through the air, bolstering the serpent line where it weakened and grappling with those wolf spiders that kept away from Jennifer.
With Jonathan shouting the all-clear in back, and seeing the resistance collapse before them, Jennifer finally surged into the junction room.
It was a shallow dome, perhaps thirty yards in diameter and ten yards high. A paved stream of rainwater cut the floor in half from left to right, and another stream came from directly in front of them to form a T in the center of the room.
There was a large pillar of stone jutting out of the water at the joint of the T. A ceiling shaft above it led high above, letting a tiny bit of daylight through. Other than that, the chamber was dingy and dark. The construction felt different from Otto’s hidden lair; it was probably built by the town decades ago.
The mambas slithered over the floor and over the streams, mopping up the last few spiders. Before long, all they could see or hear was dripping and rushing water. But they could not truly see the far side of the room, and this worried Jennifer.
“Do you think he stayed behind to fight?” she panted. “I don’t know,” Jonathan grunted as he lay Skip down for a moment. “He may have felt the army he left behind was enough.”
“It almost was. Eddie, do you see anything?”
“Stop calling me Eddie,” the voice behind the helm snapped. “No, I don’t see him. But that means nothing.”
Jennifer realized the voice sounded like a young
woman’s
—not a young man’s. How stupid of her! She should have noticed from the start.
“Susan?!”
The beaststalker turned, but then a couple of things happened at once.
First, a blazing salvo erupted from the top of the stone pillar. Streaks of fire coursed through the entire chamber, roasting the snakes they hit and lighting up the surprise on Jennifer’s face. She heard her father shout in pain behind her.
At the same time, the top of the pillar bent a bit, so that it arched over the surprised beaststalker. A spindly, hairy leg whipped out and struck its target in a shower of sparks. The warrior crumbled to the ground.
“
Susan
!”
Jennifer launched into the air and straight at the top of the pillar. It was obvious who was there, hidden behind an aged-brick camouflage pattern. Another talent he had inherited from the Ancient Furnace! Jennifer was incensed at herself for not considering the possibility.
Her aim was true. Unprepared for her physical assault, Otto took her full force in the mandibles and cried out as she toppled him from his perch. In a clutter of wings and legs, they fell off the pillar together and into the murky stream below.
The dirty water was deeper than it looked. Jennifer could barely see the arachnid body that pushed against her, but she did not care. This thing had kidnapped and hurt her father, stolen her blood, tried to put her in a coma, nearly killed the son who had tried to save her, and now was taking shots at her best friend. Enough was enough.
With her wings and claws occupied with his eight squirming appendages, she used the only weapon left—her mouth. Her jaws snapped out once, twice, three times. On the third try, her teeth closed on the spider’s head. She could feel her fangs sink into a gelatinous mass—an eye?—and heard Otto’s gurgled scream. Knowing his mandibles were open inside of her jaws, she let loose with the fiercest underwater whistle she could manage.
Ten rings of fire raged through the water, boiling it as they passed through Otto’s mandibles and into his tortured head. He wasn’t pushing anymore—he was panicking.
She felt his body lift up out of the water in a mighty jump and hung on. They burst out of the water together and vaulted high into the air before landing squarely on the slippery stones in a heap, side by side, with a grunt.
Before Jennifer could even gather herself, there was a silver flash, a soft
ploonk
, and the clink of metal against stone.
She looked up. The beaststalker had been waiting. Her sword pierced Otto’s abdomen about two inches from Jennifer’s own gray belly. The blade had come down with such force, the point was stuck into the stone beneath the gigantic body. Once again, Jennifer thought of the pinned butterflies in science class.
Getting up, she saw the armored shape slump with exhaustion against the fallen enemy. “Susan, you okay?”
Otto’s croaking voice caught their attention. He spat his words through torn and burnt mandibles. Dark blood pooled under the junction between his reddish yellow abdomen and black head.
“You fools,” he grated. “You’ve got no idea what’s coming.
This is not over
.”
“It is for you,” Jennifer replied. She grasped the hilt of the beaststalker’s sword with a trembling wing claw, yanked it out of his abdomen, and ran it through his head.
He shuddered, and then his legs curled in.
“
Give me that
!” The beaststalker’s fury as she snatched the sword away surprised Jennifer. Without another word, she brushed Jennifer aside, leapt over the stream, and stormed over to where Jonathan and Skip sat huddled against the wall. After a brief check of Jonathan’s burn (it covered his arm, but wasn’t serious), she lifted the unconscious Skip onto her shoulder, blanket and all, and carried him back to the opposite side of the room, jumping over the stream once more as if she carried nothing at all.
Jennifer noticed Geddy sputtering on the bricks edging the stream. She had forgotten he was on her back throughout the entire fight! With a quiet word of comfort, she gently picked him up and laid him on her shoulder.
“Hey, wait up!”
Everyone else was already halfway down one of the rough-hewn tunnels that carried water into the junction room. There was a narrow ledge on either side of the stream, and before long they were all in the utility room Jennifer and Skip had first entered. While the other two carried Skip up the ladder, Jennifer simply flew up the shaft until the cool air, sunlight, and scent of lilacs were on her face.
Landing on the field by the culvert and looking upon the edge of a town she’d never thought she’d see again, Jennifer smiled. But before there was time to enjoy their escape, the beaststalker wheeled around and was upon her.
“
Young lady, you are in a heap of trouble
!
What kind of idiot rushes headlong into an enemy lair with no plan, no confirmation of what she’s even facing, no backup strategy
?
You live in a world beyond all conceivable luck that your damn gecko knew enough to follow you to your cell and then come back for help—he obviously makes a smarter lizard than you do
!
Hey
!
Are you even listening to me
?”
The beaststalker could have been forgiven for not being sure: Jennifer’s expression was lost somewhere between stupefaction and discovery. The voice was clearer to Jennifer now … all too clear. A woman, yes—but this wasn’t Susan at all. With a move even faster than the beaststalker could track, she brought her wing claw up and lifted the helm off.
“
Mom
?!?”
Elizabeth Georges-Scales shook her honey blonde hair out. Her emerald eyes were smoldering with anger and laced with tears. “
Jennifer Caroline Scales, do you have any idea how abysmally stupid you are
?!?!”
Jennifer dropped the helm and hugged her mother. She didn’t let go until she had morphed back into the beaststalker’s daughter.
The ordeal in Otto’s lair, combined with her unusual morph and the shock of discovering what her mother was, exhausted Jennifer. She went to sleep that evening and didn’t even stir through the next day.