them down. Then bring them back here and I’ll cut the cocoon off so we can get out of here.”
They nodded, and I bit my lip as I watched them fly away from me. I wanted my wings back. I was tired of watching everyone else do things I ought to be doing. I was tired of being carted around like a child when I could have been flying.
J.B. and Nathaniel had a quick, quiet conference as they reached the cocoons. Beneath them, the monster shifted in its sleep, grunting and snorting, and we all went still.
The creature didn’t seem like it was waking, so J.B. positioned himself next to one of the cocoons. Nathaniel cut the thread with his sword and J.B. caught the person easily. I saw his mouth move, reassuring whoever it was, and he flew toward me.
Nathaniel was right behind him. He stopped only for a moment to whisper something to the person who remained.
J.B. landed just ahead of Nathaniel. “It’s Samiel,” he said, laying my cocooned brother-in-law on the ground. Samiel was contorting inside the web.
Nathaniel put another person next to him. “Jude,” he said briefly, and went back for Chloe.
I bent close to Samiel. “Samiel, you have to lie still for a minute. I’m going to cut you out, and I don’t want to cut you.”
He stopped moving. I placed the blade at his shoulder and carefully used the tip to lift away the tightly wound thread. Then I sliced through on a diagonal from his shoulder to his hip, and hoped I missed all the major arteries.
Once I’d loosened the thread, Samiel burst out of the cocoon like the Hulk bursting out of his clothing. He looked wildly around, and J.B. grabbed Samiel before he could go tearing through the cavern. He made Samiel look at his face.
“Nathaniel’s getting Chloe,” J.B. said.
I repeated the procedure with Jude, who looked very annoyed once he emerged.
“Never even heard it coming,” Jude said. “I think it only makes noise if it wants to.”
“Uh, yeah, I think so,” Beezle said, and pointed.
We all turned. Nathaniel was hanging in midair, his wings flapping just enough to keep him there. He held Chloe in his arms, and she was deathly still. Very likely she had fainted inside the cocoon, which was a mercy given her intense claustrophobia.
The reptile-mammal thing had silently risen from its sleep and drawn its head level with Nathaniel. It watched the angel and his cargo with orange-yellow eyes, the pupils slit like a snake’s. Its mouth hung open, full of shiny fangs. Those fangs were only a few feet away from Nathaniel and Chloe. The monster and Nathaniel were both frozen in space, staring each other down. It was almost as if they were silently communicating.
“Get out,” I said to the others.
“Don’t have to tell me twice,” Beezle said, lifting off from my shoulder.
“No,” J.B. said, his voice strained as he struggled to hold Samiel in place. Samiel had gone wild as soon as he’d seen Nathaniel and Chloe so close to the monster’s head. “We all stay together.”
“Yeah,” Jude said. “Whatever you do, we’re in for it, too.”
“I was going to distract the monster so that Nathaniel and Chloe could get away, and then I was going to run down the passage,” I said.
“We’re not trying to kill it?” Beezle asked, hovering in the air next to me.
“I’m not going to try to kill anything that big or that old without magic,” I said. “Besides, I don’t need it to be dead. I just need for us to get away.”
“Hey!” I shouted. “Hey, over here!”
Jude and J.B. shouted as well. Jude even picked up a heavy bone that looked like a human femur and tossed it in the direction of the creature.
Neither the monster nor Nathaniel moved. I was again struck by the sense that they were somehow communicating. Or that Nathaniel was being…
“Hypnotized,” I said.
“Non sequitur,” Beezle said. “We’re trying to distract the monster here.”
“We can’t distract it, because the monster is trying to hypnotize Nathaniel,” I said.
Samiel broke free of J.B.’s grasp, which was inevitable. Samiel was amazingly strong, stronger than most supernaturals.
However, Jude was amazingly fast and grabbed Samiel’s ankle, pulling him back to the ground as Samiel tried to fly to Chloe.
Jude punched him in the face.
“Quit it,” Jude growled. “Do you want to get her back, or do you want her to be eaten?”
“Then stop and think,” Jude said. “Or at least do what Maddy thinks.”
I turned away from them. I didn’t want to see what else Samiel might say, what other truths he might reveal in the heat of anger. It wasn’t the time for hurt feelings. But it did hurt. I’d always thought Samiel loved me unconditionally, that he didn’t blame me for Gabriel’s death. I guess it just proved that, as everyone kept telling me, I needed to stop taking people at face value. I was the only person I knew who wasn’t any good at deception.
While all this was happening Nathaniel and the monster remained locked in their silent communion.
“Why is it taking so long?” I wondered aloud.
“Nathaniel’s resisting,” Beezle said. “That’s pretty impressive, considering he’s got no magic right now.”
“How can you tell?”
“If he wasn’t resisting, then it would be over by now. And since the monster wasn’t responding to us, it must be unable to get out of the spell until its victim is hypnotized,” Beezle said.
I looked at the monster, then at Nathaniel and Chloe, and I had an idea. “Are you willing to bet my life on that theory?”
Beezle looked uncertain, an expression I’d hardly ever seen on his face. “Why? What are you going to do?”
“J.B.,” I said. “Can you put me on top of the monster’s head?”
14
“NO, I CANNOT,” J.B. SAID.
“Cannot or will not?”
“It’s the same damn thing,” he said. “You’re crazy if you think I’m going to let you do whatever you’re thinking of doing.”
“I want you to fly me up to the top of the monster’s head and drop me there, and then I’ll stab it through the eye,” I said.
“And now that I know your plan, I am definitely not helping,” J.B. said.
“I thought you weren’t going to kill it,” Beezle said.
“That was when I thought it was distractible,” I said. “It’s not, so I’m going to kill it. Or at least injure it horribly enough that it won’t be able to chase after us. And if you don’t fly me up there, Jacob Benjamin Bennett, I will climb up to the top of the monster’s head from its tail, and you can stand there and watch me.”
“She threw down the middle name,” Beezle said.
“You’d do it, too, just to piss me off,” J.B. said.
“No one else has a better idea. You’ve got the wings; I’ve got the sword.”
“It’s a goddamned freaking miracle you’ve survived this long,” J.B. said, and he scooped me up.
