She turned and ran.
Dianna,
she thought.
It has to be Dianna.
Only she had never seen Dianna do anything like this.
Evangelina?
Possibly—she didn’t really know that twisted spawn too well. She seemed more like a brute-force sort of threat than a fancy-towering-wall-of-mist sort of threat.
Jennifer Scales.
The thought shook her, even though it made no sense. If Jennifer had a trick up her sleeve, she would have played it long ago.
Unless killing her father unleashed something, removed all restraint.
As she crossed the highway and neared the Cliffside Restaurant, she spared a look back at the mist. Its tendrils were already visible again, and they curled around the stars as if capturing them before blotting them out.
“Skip,” she called out even though he was too far to hear. “Skip!”
By the time she reached the restaurant doors, the Saltin siblings—all six of them—were at the windows, looking outward. They were in arachnid form of course, thanks to Skip.
And thank goodness for that—we’re going to need their best powers for what’s coming our way.
“Can you tell what it is?” she asked them. “Is it Dianna Wilson?”
The brown recluse wrinkled her mandibles. “This does not smell like sorcery. It smells like . . . like . . .”
“Like dragon,” one of the two sun spiders hissed.
“How can that be?” the other asked. “No dragon can do this!”
“Jennifer Scales might be able to.”
The recluse backed away from the window and spat. “The dragon-stalker girl? That makes no sense. She’d have attacked long before now. Waiting a year suggests planning. Dragons do not plan.”
“That’s a fascinating theory, Auntie . . .” Skip snapped his fingers as he entered the dining room from the office. “Auntie-whatever-your-name-is. ‘Dragons are dumb, they can’t plan, we’re supersmart, rah rah rah.’ I think my dad thought the same thing, before she and her mom kicked his ass.”
“Show your elders more respect,” ordered the thick-legged baboon spider.
“Bite me, Uncle Ugly.” He examined the scene out the window alongside them. “Look, guys—it doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is Andi here has given us time to pull together and fight it. Thanks, Andi.” He flashed her a charming smile, and she forgot how upset she had been with him in the Dead Bird Office.
“So what do we do?”
The elders laughed at her question. “What do we do,” repeated the spindly harvester among them. “We fortify! We weather the storm, wait for it to pass, learn from it, and counterattack when the time is right. On our terms.”
“Arachnid Tactics 101,” Skip said. His gaze remained outside. “I doubt it will work here. Whatever that mist is, it knows us. Which means it knows arachnids. Which means it knows we will want to hide. Better to fight it, test its strength, and learn something more useful than how to duck. Andi, I’ve got two swarms ready. You want to send them?”
“Sure.”
“Great. If the rest of you can stand with us, we can focus on the center of the weather front—there’s a shape forming there, if you look—”
He was talking to an empty room, except for Andi and her sad smile.
“They left right after your ‘Arachnid Tactics 101’ remark. I don’t think they like you very much.”
“Probably why we never had Thanksgiving dinner all these years. Fuck it—we don’t need ’em. Get outside, learn what you can, and have a song ready. I’ll be there with the swarms in sixty seconds.”
He headed for the basement. Soothed by his confidence, she went back through the flung-open doors and faced the massive front.
It was approaching the highway, and the trees on the other side sparkled with moisture. There was a sound she could hear now—a pattern of hisses not unlike rain smacking a sidewalk in summer. She closed her eyes—then opened them nervously, then forced them closed again—and listened for the music.
There it was—rhythmic, ancient, deep. Familiar and exotic at the same time, she found she could almost hum along . . . but not quite.
What the hell is this?
It was making a new melody now, something dissonant. A piece was breaking off, a rogue line of tiny notes . . . now another, in harmony with the first . . . and another . . . and another dozen . . . the volume was reaching painful levels.
Her eyes opened, and she gasped.
“Skip, hurry!”
He was beside her in an instant, and she could feel the swarms following. “Go, go, go!” He hollered over the rising wind.
Voice cracking at first, she sang. Only the thousands of two-dimensional creatures passing under her feet could hear or understand the words. As each particle of swarm touched her, it began to glow with new power. Her song became stronger, and the creatures more agitated. More raced by to touch her and share in the power she offered.
“Take them out!” Skip ordered, and the smoldering multitude flowed from her and spread across the damp grass.
What faced them on the highway was now an army of miniature dragons. Andi would have thought them almost cute, if it weren’t for two things: (a) she had heard their song, and (b) they were gathered in the shadow of what was left of the mist—an enormous dragonlike thing, with wings more vast than buildings.
The insect swarms rushed at them, their glow intensifying. Andi knew they would explode quickly and violently—
perhaps we should get inside,
she thought, judging the distance. She tugged at Skip’s sleeve.
The moment the first creatures touched the pavement, the dragon army lifted as one, clearing the nearby treetops and letting the colors of the sunset briefly through. Being as close as they could get and still trapped in two dimensions, the insectoids mindlessly triggered, blasting each other apart. The explosion was indeed impressive, and Andi felt the heat of it as the shock wave reached them. Small chunks of pavement sailed by their heads and cracked the glass of the dining-room windows. They staggered backward, into the restaurant.
Then the entire mass of dragon flesh and misty weather lowered itself, unharmed, onto the broken highway and extinguished the sunset again.
She was terrified and thrilled.
We can’t stop them!
“Shit.” Skip grabbed her hand. “Got any other tunes to try?”
She clasped his hand in both of hers and began a new melody. Her songs were not usually this strident, but she knew she needed something rapid and strong. Skip jumped at the electricity coming through her grasp, then he understood.
The poison she created in him was potent enough to mottle his skin green. He smiled at her and began to change.
He chose a plated scorpion form, fifteen feet from pincers to stinger. Viscous goo dripped from his armaments, and his mandibles sizzled.
“Go get ’em, tiger.”
He charged them, scuttling faster than a cheetah could race. A new song came from Andi now—not of poison like the last one, but of speed and power.
The throng scattered above his head at first, adopting the same tactic it had with the explosive swarms. This did not work for long, as Skip began spitting a hail of projectiles from his deformed mandibles. A dozen of them fell screaming, their faces and eyes smoking with corrosive fluid.
A voice, deep and mysterious, dropped upon them like unhappy rain.
Unnatural child, your ways are out of balance.
We must cleanse you now, with the fire of the seas.
Andi had only known dragons who could breathe fire. What happened next therefore astonished her—and certainly surprised Skip.
The cloud of dragons lowered again, and a thousand jets of steam blasted his exoskeleton. Skip screamed and scuttled back. The boiling gloom followed him, and Andi suddenly realized that she was in everyone’s path.
“Get inside, get inside, get down, get down, get down!”
She did what he said, diving into the restaurant and scrambling across the dining- room floor on all fours. He skittered in behind her, and the ferocious hiss followed.
The large windows burst, making Andi scream. She dragged Skip through the kitchen doors. The wooden furniture in the dining room was warping, and dozens of the tiny dragons were fluttering in, unharmed by their own breath. Their flashing silver eyes tracked her like a formation of sharks locking in on prey.
They hunt like this,
she realized.
Deep in the ocean. They heat the surrounding water, cook whatever they find—schools of fish, sea monsters, whatever—and serve it up right there.
Skip was back in human form, gasping. Ovals of boiled skin were sloughing off his arms and face. She could heal him—but only if they survived.
We need to leave.
She rushed him through the kitchen and into the back pantry. Three or four of the dragons were right behind them, knocking into pots with their wings and slapping utensils off the counter in their frenzy.
“Andi, there are no windows in this room! We’re trapped.”
“Hush. Hold that shut.” Kicking the door closed behind them, she breathed deeply, pressed her hands against a bare spot of wall, and hummed.
Skip dragged down plastic shelves of canned goods and piled bags of flour on top of that. The knob turned, and he grunted with the effort to twist it back and lock it. The hollow metal door shuddered with the weight of several slams. Steam leaked under the door onto Skip’s ankles, and he screamed.
Hang on, baby.
She hummed, pressing her fingers into the cement. The solid wall gave way, and a portal opened. It was nothing much—a tiny bit of folded space that still belonged to this universe. It would not last forever since she had borrowed it from elsewhere, and elsewhere would need it back before long. But right now, it would have to do.
The steam stopped, and a cooler, sparkling formation of vapor was slipping through the door.
“Skip, now!”
She squeezed his fingers and drew him into the New Space. It snapped shut behind them, leaving them safe in darkness.
They stayed there as long as Andi felt they could, perhaps an hour and a half. She had let the space float—no sense in trying to enter the same room they had left, since the dragons (if they had any brains at all) would be waiting there for them. By the time they exited, they were an hour’s or so walk deeper into the woods behind the restaurant.
They climbed the nearest tree together, until they were high enough to see the restaurant and surrounding buildings, about five miles away.
The weather had brightened slightly, though the sun had lowered itself farther since their escape. Specks of dragon hovered loosely around the massive mist dragon as it lumbered through the woods immediately surrounding the restaurant. They were still searching.
“It won’t take long,” she whispered to Skip. “Even if Dianna’s not helping them, it won’t be difficult for them to find us again.”
“Mom’s not with them,” Skip grumbled back. “Why would she risk herself?”
“Still. I can’t keep making voids for us to slip into. That sorcery took a lot out of me.” She could still feel her heart pumping hard. “We should get moving.” Anything to put as much distance between themselves and
their
selves as possible.
“I can’t believe it.” He was gritting his teeth as he looked at them. “These things may actually bitch things up for me.”
She stroked his hand. “They won’t have the element of surprise next time. C’mon. We’ve—”
“I’ve got to counterattack.”
?!?
“What I saw in the birds convinced me I could succeed,” he continued. “I thought I might have a few weeks to prepare everything. I don’t. I don’t have a few days. Maybe a few hours.”
“Skip—”
“Don’t try to argue with me, Andi. Did you see that gigantic flock of aqua worms? I need all the power I can get! I need everything I can yank from anybody who’s not me, and I need it right now.”
“But the ritual—”
“Is my only chance. It’ll tie me to the moon.” He looked to the skies; the new moon was invisible, but he knew where it would be hanging. “And once I have the moon . . .”
“But we don’t even know if it will work!”
“It’ll work. As long as I can find my uncles and aunts . . . it’ll work.”
“What, you
want
their help now?”
“Andi, my love. I can’t do it without them. Can you communicate with them, get a message to them, wherever they ran off to?”
Her eyelids softly closed. “Each of them still has a song. They’ve scattered. I can get them together again. Where do you want to meet?”
He thought quickly and pointed. “The abandoned convenience store about two miles down the road.”