“No trick. No trap.”
“Right. If there’s two things arachnids hate, it’s tricks and traps.”
She shook her head, partly to disagree and partly to unseat the spots that had settled in her peripheral vision. “I’m not just arachnid, Eddie. I’m beaststalker—like you. Glorianna Seabright was my mother. Your mother was a beaststalker, too.”
“
Don’t
talk about my mother.”
“Okay. So, how about this weather? Looking pretty misty.” She motioned toward the mob of water dragons rolling over the river, through the dome.
“Yeah, they’re back. I liked what they did the first time. I suppose your boyfriend has a new plan, though.”
She shrugged, not having the strength for any more words.
He sure does have a plan. Wait until you see it.
He was directly behind her now; even his careful steps made noise on the first fallen September leaves. She imagined him with arrow cocked once more. Perhaps the bow was put away, and he had blades ready. It didn’t matter. She only wanted to get to the bridge.
He slid an arm under her and lifted her to her feet. “Let’s go.”
As they descended the slope, the mist came up to greet them. Andi wondered whether this thundercloud of draconic fury would recognize her, envelop her, try to destroy her. Did they know Eddie? What would they make of her surrender?
And why did any of it matter to her, even now?
It turned out, they did not care. The broad wings of their obvious leader passed overhead with little more than a distant rumble of meteorological irritation, and the ghostly shapes of thousands of small, winged lizards weaved through the birch and oak as if their haunted forms knew every branch and bush on the riverside.
“Skip will have his hands full,” Eddie muttered. Andi knew he was weighing whether he ought to join the invasion force. Plainly, she was no threat to him. Why escort her?
As if in answer, she lost her footing and stumbled away from him. Her head slammed the earth, less than a foot from a moss-covered rock. Dizziness overwhelmed her, and she spat bile.
“Geez, Andi. Here.” He knelt and lifted her again.
“I’ll be all right once I get off my feet,” she mumbled.
“You
are
off your feet, Andi.” His determination to aid her overpowered her desire to support herself, and she let her body melt into his arms. He carried her, one long arm behind her shoulders and the other under her knees. Though her head lolled back, she could still take in his serious, sparrowlike features.
“You smell like you could use a shower,” she observed.
“Yeah, well, you stink like blood.”
That got her laughing and coughing. “I can see what Jennifer likes about you.”
He did not respond. She found the travel jarring since the way was steep, and he was descending quickly. Beyond his head, she could see the mist lift. In its place, at least three dozen large dragons were in half-V formations.
“Xavier Longtail,” she slurred to no one in particular.
“How much time do they have?”
“I dunno. The Poison Moon—I didn’t even think it would work . . .”
“He’s come a long way since he coldcocked me in the Mall of America parking lot.”
“So have you.” She thought of the arrows he’d been placing near them for months. “Tell the truth—you could have killed us long ago. Right?”
She felt the lift of his shrug. “I guess. I’m not a killer, Andi. I wanted you guys to feel a slice of the fear Jennifer and the others are coping with, every day. I didn’t want you to get comfortable. I wanted you to think. To listen.”
“I should have listened better.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I should have shot better. When I was aiming at him,” he hastened to add.
“It’s okay,” she groggily reassured him. “Not mad.”
They reached the highway, and the aging arch of the bridge loomed to the west. Now that they were out of the trees, they had a clearer view of the dragons that were closing in on the root of the sorcery. The Cliffside Restaurant and other nearby buildings were out of view, and Andi imagined Skip sitting on the roof as he sometimes did. Would he stay out in the open, to watch his sorcery progress? Would he fear the dragons at all?
How powerful was he?
Missiles of fire began to rain down to the east—Xavier’s dragons had begun their attack. Eddie paused and turned to watch, and Andi signaled that he could let her down.
“You can walk into town from here?”
“Eddie.” She held his arm. “Don’t go up there. I don’t think—”
“You’re right, Andi. I could have stopped this. I didn’t realize how dangerous Skip was. I should have had the killer instinct.”
Poor boy,
she thought.
What he means is, he should have been more like Skip. Poor, poor boy.
“I should have been a beaststalker, like my dad always wanted me to be.”
“Your mom wouldn’t want you up there. It’s suicide.”
He didn’t chastise her this time for bringing up his mother. Nor did he show any sign that she had convinced him. “I’m going up there. The sentries can see us. With Dad dead, they’ll be taking orders from Dr. Georges-Scales. They won’t let a girl die. They’ll know you need a hospital.”
“Carry me farther. I’m getting faint again. It’s so far away.”
“Nice try. I’m—”
A piercing shriek blasted the atmosphere, knocking them both to the ground. When Andi looked back up, the enormous spider was no longer there. Instead, where there was once an uninterrupted expanse of afternoon blue, now appeared a dim, smoldering disc of jade.
“I thought it was a new moon,” Eddie observed.
“It is.” She could barely hear herself, she was so afraid to speak.
“So why can we see it?”
“Because we’ll always see it, for as long as we last. Even the dark side.”
“What does it mean?”
Up the highway, over the hill where the Cliffside would be, a collective roar went up. Thousands of streaks of vapor retreated from the fray, pulled away from the earth and toward the moon. Once they were high above the treetops, the gases turned ugly green and dissipated completely. The massive cloud that was Sonakshi collapsed into a chaotic emerald whorl, which came screaming down the road at them.
Eddie pushed her into the ditch and fell on top of her. Moments later, the Sonakshi-twister blasted by, cut a path down the eastern bank, and splashed with an unmistakable death rattle into the chilled river.
Immediately, the waters of the Mississippi began running green, as if sweeping away the corrupted spirit that had inexplicably drowned there.
A few seconds later, winged forms began dropping from the sky. Most crashed into trees, groaning. It was an awful, screaming, thumping hail.
A few yards away from Andi and Eddie, the enormous shape of Xavier Longtail slammed into the pavement with a sickening crack. His golden eyes stared blankly at them from beneath a bleeding skull, and poisoned vapors trailed from his black nostrils.
CHAPTER 37
Susan
“Susan! Open this door or I’ll boot it off the hinges!”
Nothing. Susan’s new digs were still weird, still isolated, and still had that view of the big dumb willow tree under which she and Gautierre had had that stupid picnic.
“Susan! I know you’re in there! You’re always in there!”
And why,
Jennifer wondered,
am I knocking? What’s she going to do, call a cop? What’s a little breaking and entering to my reputation?
“The neighborhood,” her friend observed, opening the door, “is really going to hell.”
“Tell me.” Jennifer pushed past her and walked into the boo-hoo-Gautierre’s-dead digs. The scene was almost exactly as it was the last time.
Same stale smell. Same stupid sleeping bag. Same battered backpack. No toilet-paper rolls, but two Kleenex boxes.
“Gah, it smells like a wolverine’s butt in here.”
“That’s nice,” Susan replied. “Who’s dead now?”
Jennifer paused, and Susan bit the inside of her cheek.
Shit. Maybe her mom.
“Well. Um. Nobody you were close to, anyway.”
Good. Not her mom.
Susan let the resentment swell back up.
“Listen, I—”
“Need my help.”
“Yeah. Because I—”
“Don’t remember a single thing about the last conversation we had in this room.”
“That’s not—”
“Going to change a thing. Nothing has changed, Jenn. Except I’m in dire need of highlights. But who cares? It’s not like there’s anyone to look pretty for.” She paused. “Did I tell you I lost a tooth? Woke up and found it in the sleeping bag, like I was seven again, and hoping to get a buck from the Tooth Fairy. I’m getting scurvy. Isn’t that hilarious?”
“Hilarious isn’t the first word springing to mind.” Susan looked as bad as Jennifer had ever seen her, except maybe the circles under her eyes were bigger and darker. And scurvy? Losing teeth? Ye gods. For the first time, she hoped her friend was just in a funk and not losing her sanity.
How much more can she take?
Jennifer wondered.
Who’s dead now . . . ?
That was getting to be the question of the day. Fight and get stomped, or just get stomped, but sometimes it was hard, really very hard, and maybe getting stomped wasn’t so bad.
At least, she could understand why Susan would find that a less awful alternative, even if she couldn’t let her friend give in to it, not for one more day or one more hour. “Why didn’t you come see my mom, dumb-ass? She—”
“Is overworked and saving lives on about forty seconds of sleep a night.”
“Yes, but for you—”
“She’d drop everything, and another life would be endangered, and for what? To tell me I need to eat grapefruit? I’m aware, Jenn.”
“Susan, I’m not going to argue with you. I am in full agreement: everything sucks, all the time. But we have to pull together on this.”
“As opposed to everything we’ve done for months? In case you haven’t noticed, Jenn, none of it worked. Nothing at all works. We. Are going. To die. In here. And it would be really great if you would go away and let me rot in peace. Go away, Jenn. And take your bad news with you.”
“Susan. I so don’t have time for this.”
“Run along, then. You—hey. Hey!”
Her oldest friend, her finest friend, her very best friend, had taken her by the shoulders and lifted her until they were eye to eye and nose to nose. “You are going to help me, Susan, if I have to yank out all your other teeth to get you to do it. Pull your head out of your ass, stop sniveling about a boy—”
“Hey!”
“—and look at the goddamned moon! Skip is going to kill
everybody
, is that penetrating through that thick self-involved selfish pissing and moaning sniveling poor me poor me crybaby skull of yours?”
“Your shrill penetrating voice is the only thing getting through my thick skull.”
“I need you, dumb-ass! Get your
thumb
out of your
rear
and
help me
.”
There was a long silence as the two friends eyeballed each other.
“Your breath,” Susan said at last, “is unbelievably bad.”
“Toothpaste is gone. Mouthwash is reserved for certain medicinal purposes.”
Both girls almost started to laugh, remembered they were furious at each other, and deepened their frowns instead.
“This is about Skip, then.”
Jennifer nodded. “Dianna told my mom and me. It’s this completely horrible thing called the Poison Moon.”
“Why is it always something like the ‘poison moon’? Why not ever the Kitten-and-Ball-o-Yarn Moon, or the Cotton-Candy-Sprinkled-with-Marshmallow-Bits Murder Plot?”
“Seriously.” Jennifer explained what Dianna had told all of them.
“So come on. I need you.”
“All right. Unclench your hands from my fragile shoulders before you snap me in half like a damn wishbone.”
Jennifer felt blood rush to her face. The entire time she’d been running down Poison Moon 101 for Susan, they’d been nose to nose as Jennifer clutched her shoulders like they were anchors. “Uh. Sorry.”
“I’ll admit you have a point—that green moon is a total bummer.” Susan rubbed her shoulders. “But why do a broadcast on it? Surely, the world has seen it. It’s, uh, the moon.”
“They don’t know why it’s green. They don’t know that the cause is lurking out there . . . where they can reach him. They don’t know what it all means.”
“Huh. Okay.
That
, I’ll tell the world about. Why should I be the only one hideously depressed and waiting for death’s sweet embrace.” She paused, her eyes narrowing. “Skip deserves to have his ass kicked for choosing green. Also, I’ve decided, someone should do something nice for you. Since. You know.”