they are, I believe they have tricked us into taking this path in order to regain the Rocenz. Right now they are raising some sort of bridge from the bottom of the Moat.”
I couldn’t have spoken if I wanted to. Al my inner girls were running around like disaster victims, some screaming mindlessly, some weeping. Even Granny May was pacing frantical y while she bit her fingernails like she hadn’t eaten for a week. I felt Vayl, Zel , Raoul, and Astral arrange themselves behind me, readying themselves for the fight, protecting me from yet another attack. Lotus was just pacing, muttering, swearing at anyone who seemed easily blamed. I didn’t want her to distract me.
But when she fel over the cat, I was suddenly grateful, because it reminded me of what Astral had said to me before our descent.
“Don’t look!” I yel ed as I continued the work. “They’re not real y spiderhounds. I was right! The one with yel ow eyes
“Turn around!” Vayl cal ed as Raoul bel owed, “Face the gate! The alpha’s eyes are transforming into snakes!”
Believe it or not, I was relieved to hear that I was right. Gorgons have this odd code of honor.
They’l kil you, oh yeah, in about three hundred different ways, starting with the whole paralyze-you- withtheir-steely-vision trick. But they wil not attack unless you’re facing them. So I knew that as long as my people kept their nerve I could continue cutting the cords that had connected the
Only a few remained, and my inner girls—having received at least a short reprieve from certain death—hacked those free like a bunch of slayers out for a midnight run. When the final connection snapped they cheered as the locks fel from the cel that Teen Me and I had trapped Brude in. The door creaked open to reveal his ghostly form standing in the middle, head down in defeat, arms hanging loose at his sides as he faded into mist. The moment the final droplet disappeared from my mind, a shimmering form began to take shape just on the other side of the gate.
It wasn’t a clean transition, like a beam-me-up-Scotty moment in which the traveler arrives even cleaner and tidier than when he left. As I worked on the E, Brude began to convulse. Wounds appeared on his chest, arms, legs, even his face.
My sight came back first. Then my headache disappeared, along with the bleeding from my ears and nostrils. As I put the final cut into the gate, I felt a satisfaction like an actual weight leaving me, though no physical burden could’ve been as hard or heavy to bear. On the other side of the twisted metal dog, the last image of Brude fel to his knees, so roundly defeated I wouldn’t have been surprised to see him beg for mercy. But he just knelt quietly and waited the three beats it took for his fate to catch up to him.
I pul ed the Rocenz away from the gate. Staring proudly at me, he said, “You could have been my queen,” as his skin, his hair, even his eyebal s began to leak fluid like a faulty radiator. As the thick pink liquid flowed into the ground, smal beetle-like creatures with barbed tongues and pincers at the ends of their tails scuttled out of their holes to slurp it up, and then to explore the source of their unexpected snack. They swarmed up Brude’s legs while his body steadily shriveled, melting into their mouths like a finely cooked pork roast.
When the creatures reached his chest it got hard to watch. But I reminded myself of what this
I waited until nothing was left of Brude but the elements his body had been made from. Then I reached out to Vayl. “He’s gone,” I whispered.
His hand tightened on mine nearly to the point of pain, clear communication of the depth of his relief. “You are free.”
“Not quite,” said Raoul. “I’ve been watching the gorgon out of the corners of my eyes. She’s raised a bridge.”
Lotus sounded close to hyperventilation when she said, “It’s made out of scum-covered skeletons. Oh my God, oh my God, oh my—” I put my hand on her arm, squeezing hard enough to make her stand stil .
I said, “Skeletons with souls trapped inside, Lotus. The souls of people who’d made themselves into doormats in the world just so they could manipulate the strong into doing their dirty work for them. Now they’ve discovered how eternity feels about those who let others trample them just so their families and friends wil be forced to shoulder the load.” She drew a sobbing breath. “I don’t want this.”
“No.”
“It’s not too late?”
“Lotus, you deserve better than this, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“Then act like it!”
She dropped her face into her hands, and I thought she was crying until she began to report on what she was seeing from the corners of her eyes, “The bridge is wide enough for a couple of cars to pass, but the footing wil be iffy. It could work to our advantage. Or not. My guess is that as soon as it’s completely clear of the Moat, the gorgon and her slave wil start their crossing.”
“Her slave is a werewolf that hasn’t yet changed,” Raoul told her. “He’s moving so slowly you’d almost think he likes his man form better. Also, just so you won’t be surprised, Jaz, the alpha’s nest of spiders is now the gorgon’s necklace of scorpions.”
Zel turned to Helena and sighed. “I’ve never fought a gorgon before, have you, dear?”
“No, but you’ve told me how to kil scorpions and snakes. And surely they can’t be any tougher than strangling a krait.”
“You got yourself a point there. We wil just think of her as a nest of nasties and fight her that way.”
Nice to know the cowboy and his immigrant bride had a plan. As for me and my vampire? He smiled down at me. “It looks as if our training is about to pay off, my dear. Shal we make the CIA proud?”
