I was less worried about the reptile-mammalian thing than I was about the fact that Samiel and Chloe had entered different passages.
“We have two choices,” I said. “We can all stay together and go after Chloe, then come back here to try and find Samiel after we retrieve her.”
“And the second option is that we divide forces,” Nathaniel said. “The answer is no.”
“I second that,” J.B. said.
“It’s impractical for us to move like one big amoeba and leave Samiel alone,” I said.
“I’ll go after Samiel,” Jude said. “And then I’ll find you. I can follow your scent easily enough.”
“Thank you,” I said, keeping my eyes firmly on his face. His clothes were somewhere in the woods. “I’m going after Chloe. You can go with him or go with me,” I said to the other two, and I started jogging down the tunnel on the left side.
“I don’t think it’s good for you to be friends with Jude,” Beezle said. “He enables your bad decisions.”
“No,” I said. “Jude trusts me, which is more than I can say for anyone else.”
“I trust you,” J.B said, running up on my left.
“You just don’t think I can do anything without you there to keep me safe. And that’s what Nathaniel thinks, too,” I said, as the angel silently joined us. He ignored my jibe. “Nothing to say?”
“A wise man knows when to keep his own counsel,” Nathaniel said.
“And you know that nothing you say will stop her, anyway,” Beezle said. “Wait—I just realized we went down the tunnel of the freaky combination animal thing. I don’t want to go down this tunnel. I want to go with Jude.”
“Too late,” I said with a lightness I did not feel. The monster could be eating Chloe right now. “Look at it this way. You’ll be able to see something very few have ever seen.”
“That’s because they’re not alive to tell us about it,” Beezle muttered. “You know, I’m not much of a let’s- make-discoveries-for-science gargoyle. I’m more of a watching-science-on-TV-while-eating-pan-fried-noodles gargoyle.”
The cave was lit by the same trails of light that were in the main passage. After a while I noticed that the walls were also covered in some kind of white fluid, and that my boots were no longer crunching over rock. The ground was covered in the same goop.
Beezle noticed it the same time I did. “Once you start seeing viscous liquid, it’s time to turn around before you get put inside a cocoon and eaten at a later date.”
“Should we leave Chloe inside a cocoon to be eaten at a later date?” I asked. I slowed my steps, moving more cautiously now that there were obvious signs of the creature.
Beezle muttered something that sounded like, “Better her than me, and she eats all the pancakes, anyway.”
“All the more reason to get her back,” I said. “She’s the only person who can give you a run for your money at the dining room table. And Samiel would be heartbroken if anything happened to her.”
“Fine,” Beezle said. “But when we’re encased in goo, I’m definitely saying I told you so.”
Nathaniel stopped, holding up his hand. “Shh.”
He tilted his head slightly, listening. “We are nearly upon it,” he said softly. “I can hear it moving.”
“Chloe?” I asked, afraid to hope.
“She is still alive,” he said. “I cannot vouch for her condition.”
“I can’t hear anything,” J.B. said.
“Nathaniel can,” I said, moving as carefully and quietly as I could. Even when trying to be silent I sounded like a lumbering bear next to the other two. Nathaniel’s footfalls were so light I had to check to make sure he wasn’t floating above the ground.
“When did he get bat ears?” J.B. asked.
“It’s a long story,” I said.
J.B. looked between me and Nathaniel. “Yeah, I bet.”
The tunnel appeared to continue on straight ahead of us for hundreds of feet.
“Where is it?” I asked.
Nathaniel shook his head. “It is nearby. With every step we take, its movements become louder.”
We walked a little farther. Nathaniel was very insistent that he could hear the creature, but there were no corridors or rooms off the main passage.
I stopped in the middle of the cave, looking all around. “Something isn’t right here.”
“You mean besides the fact that I’m hungry and there’s no food to be found?” Beezle said.
“Yes,” I said. “Nathaniel can hear the creature, but we can’t see it, and there’s nothing ahead of us but more tunnel. So there’s got to be some kind of entrance to another room or cavern that we can’t see. Beezle, did you lose your abilities when we entered the cave, too?”
“Yup,” Beezle said. “I’m just like a regular person now, no special gargoyle X-ray powers.”
“You’ll never be just like a regular person,” J.B. said.
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment,” Beezle said.
“I wouldn’t take it as such,” J.B. said.
I ignored their byplay and reached toward the wall. I had a suspicion and I wanted to see whether it was valid. Nathaniel grabbed my wrist.
“Do not touch that,” he said. “You do not know what kind of effect it may have on a human.”
I shook my head at him. “I’m not sure it’s there at all.”
Nathaniel narrowed his eyes at the substance coating the cave. “You think it’s an illusion?”
I nodded, and shook off his hand. I placed my palm on the wall of the cavern.
For a moment it seemed that my hand would become trapped in the fluid, which had the substance of craft glue. Then I put some will and some force behind it, and my hand passed easily through the wall, and the rest of me with it.
Nathaniel grabbed my other hand before I disappeared, and J.B. lunged for Nathaniel. All four of us slipped easily through the wall, which wasn’t really there at all.
I wished we had stayed put.
“So that’s a reptile-mammalian thing,” Beezle said. “It’s certainly…large.”
We were in a massive cavern, similar to the one where the nephilim had been imprisoned in the Forbidden Lands. At the far end of the cavern, blessedly away from us, was a gigantic creature coiled in a ball, sleeping. It had roughly the body shape of a lizard, the diamond-shaped head of a snake, and its body was covered in shaggy fur like a woolly mammoth.
Between us and the monster were piles of bones. Piles and piles and piles of bones, stacked higher than I would have thought possible.
“How long has that thing been here?” I breathed.
“It must have eaten everything that’s ever come through the passage for thousands of years,” Beezle said.
“Where’s Chloe?” J.B. said, squinting. “Are those bones?”
“I’m going to be so happy when you get your glasses back,” I said.
“There,” Nathaniel said, pointing toward the ceiling.
Three human-shaped cocoons hung there, suspended by thin strands of webbing. All three cocoons were wiggling, indicating that the person inside was still alive and trying to get out.
“I told you that once there was viscous fluid, there would be a cocoon,” Beezle said triumphantly. “Although I’ll tell you that I don’t want to know where it gets the thread for the cocoons from. That thing is already weird enough as it is.”
“Where did the other two come from?” I asked.
“It’s Jude and Samiel,” Nathaniel said. “Can’t you hear Jude?”
Now that he mentioned it, I could. The wolf’s voice was muffled by the webbing, but it was definitely him.
Chloe, Samiel and Jude were directly above the sleeping whatever-it-was. The monster didn’t seem to have been disturbed by our presence or our whispers, but that couldn’t possibly last.
“Well, at least we’re all together again,” I said. “I think the only option is for the two of you to fly up and cut
