Jungle Freakn' Bride (14 page)

With that in mind, she knew what she needed to do next
,
o
r at least needed to attempt.
Striding into the stone chamber
housing the bed
, she knotted the towel around her as she headed straight for the door out of there.
Sure
,
a wet
,
clingy length of fabric
wasn’t real clothes, but it sure beat her previous nakedness. Before they could exit the bathing
chamber and catch her, she left, choosing a direction at random as she jogged. Yes, cowardly as it sounded,
she r
an
away
even if something inside her head screamed at her to go back.

Why are we leaving?

Because she didn’t trust herself not to give in to the pleasure they kept promising.

But they’re ours.

What an odd idea
.
Why on earth would she think she owned them?
Besides, she couldn’t stay
.
S
he had a life, a job, family waiting for her back home.

You’re going the wrong way,
her inner voice chided.

Anywhere that didn’t have them
tempting her at every
turn
was right if you asked her.

There is danger
where you’re going
,
her consci
ence
again
warned
.
Turn around.

Turn around and put herself back in their clutches? Not likely
. S
he’d take her chances with the ruins. If they wanted her, then they could damn well find her, and she wouldn’t make it easy.
She took the first side passage she saw, then another, her bare feet making only the
faintest
whisper of sound on the stone floor.

Turn back. You’re being stupid.

Hey
,
whose side are you on anyway?
S
he
nearly
snarled at her insistent inner voice.

She could practically see
her conscience
recoil indignantly
,
but at least it
finally shut up and went off to sulk in a corner of her mind.
Talk about strange. She’d never had that happen.

Behind her, s
he heard a shout, muffled by the thick stone pressing around her. She clamped her lips shut even as part of her sought to reply.
She increased her pace.
Left, right, she lost count of the turns she took in her flight, amazed that she could run and navigate the dark so easily. Never before had her vision seemed so sharp. Despite the grey light filtering through cracks and slits in the walls,
the gloom hung thick, yet
she didn’t stumble or smack into any walls, her feet landing with a precision that bordered on uncanny.

Any other time, she might have questioned her sudden agility, or the fact she’d jogged for quite some time and had yet to feel out of breath, or any strain at all on her muscles.
The further she traveled, the more the dust of age and debris filled the space
;
t
umbled stone here
,
b
locked passage there. The bones and
desiccated
remains of small animals litter
ed
the floor.
Most disturbing of all
,
though
,
was the number of cobwebs stringing along. Forget the small
-
sized variety she was used to from back home. The webs she began to encounter spanned feet, then entire doorways, the sticky strands reaching out and clinging to her skin. She brushed them aside, unable to stop a shudder as her imagination tried to picture the size of a spider capable of spinning something that size.

God, I hate spiders.
She did. It was one thing she and her sister shared
–
a deep repugnance of eight
-
legged freaks. Of course, she’d had to deal with her fear early on in the expedition as anything less than huge just didn’t seem to exist in the jungle. There was something wrong, in her mind at any rate, about spiders that splattered if squished. And if you could see its fangs… Shudder.

So when her conscience began to yell that danger lurked up ahead in the form of really big arachnids, she ignored it.
Stupid
overactive imagination. Like she needed it trying to convince her to turn around when the
place was obviously chock full of them. It wouldn’t stop her, not when she could just about sense at least one of her captors closing in behind. She put on a burst of speed and practically flew
,
bare feet
slapping on the rocky floor
.

Tossing a glance over her shoulder during
a
straight stretch, she just about stumbled as she thought she saw something scurry,
disturbing the hanging nets,
something big.

That’s it, no more bug
movies.
With the side passages blocked with thick skeins of web, she had a choice of fight her way through, possibly disturbing the owners
,
or go straight. She went straight and burst into a vast chamber. Or at least she assumed it vast, hard to tell given the thick layers of webs crisscrossing the place.

Despite her need to flee, her steps slowed.
Then stopped. Even she couldn’t ignore the fact that
trapped
in the dust veil
before
her was the skeleton of a human
,
a
human stripped of meat
and skin
leaving only bone behind.
Totally disturbing.

Treading carefully around it, she pushed deeper into the room, skirting the sticky strands that sought to clutch her. A distant shout
,
though
,
sent her in to panic mode, and she jogged as she
swerved around
the various stretches of spider silk, their net
s
draw
ing closer and closer until she veritably had to tear her way through them.

Or tried to. The deeper she went, the more sluggish she moved, the strands not breaking easily, their sticky grip slowing her movements until she couldn’t take another step.

Alright. Don’t panic. It’s just some spider webs. If I just take a deep breath and work myself free one limb at a time, I can get out of this.

A ca
l
m, logical plan until
,
before her disbelieving eyes
,
a spider, more like a monster, with eight hairy legs, a million ruby eyes
and a
wicked set of fangs lowered itself on a thick cablelike strand. The size of a large dog
on steroids
, she could have sworn the nightmarish freak grinned at its foolish blonde dinner.
Holy freakn
’
shit.

Escape
and pride
be damned. Carlie did what
any too
-
stupid
-
to
-
live heroine did in a horror
flick
when faced with
certain
death
. She screamed
her lungs out
for help
.

*

Not
too
far behind his bride, Acat heard her
shrill cry and cursed himself not only for not keeping a closer eye on her
,
but also because maybe had he
finally reveal
ed
the truth to Carlie
, they could have talked instead of her running
. He’d hoped that after her erotic response in the bath, she would finally tru
s
t them, or at least not attempt to
flee
. How wrong of him.

She not only fled while he and Chaob argued over what they should do next, she fled deep into the heart of the ruins where old magic held sway, and where things best kept hidden lived.

While m
any theories abounded about the demise of Mayans, none came close to the truth. His ancestors, or at least those who claimed to serve the old and wild gods, dabbled with things best left alone
like d
ark magic
. Playing with
old magic
that should have remained hidden, they
released things they could not comprehend or control. Not that they lived to regret it.
It was only by the sacrifice and bravery of a few that their mistakes were contained, hidden in the bowels of places, ruins like this one.
And Carlie ran straight in to the heart of the evil.

Damn it.

Despite her head start, they almost caught up to her, but not before she made it to
T
he
S
pider’
s lair.
And by
The Spider
, he meant, the
behemoth
,
the
ancient
mother
of all arachnid
s
.
Even the jaguars knew
better than to visit that place,
knew better and yet still
did. Among the boys
,
it was considered a rite of passage to visit the lair and emerge
unscathed, perhaps with a trophy
.
Of course, they knew what to expect
when they came for a visit
.
Carlie didn’t.

So when she screamed, he threw on a burst of speed, retaining his human form
for battle. N
ot so Chaob. Flipping to his feline side, he sped past Acat and dove in to the chamber.
Acat
entered only steps behind him.

Just as disturbing as he recalled, the
massive chamber
was still a mishmash of webs, old and new, traps for the unwary.
A tomb for the unlucky.

Acat
didn’t immediately spot his bride, but he could hear her, bravely facing her fear
–
with words
–
silly woman.

“Stay back you eight
-
legged monster. God, what I wouldn’t give for a
super-sized
can of Raid,” she cried.

He caught the tail end of Chaob as he slid through the path she left, and followed.
Ignoring the high
-
pitched squeal, that of a baby and not the mother
, thank
t
he gods
, Acat sped past his friend as he battled the
minor
arachnid
– minor for this place
,
at any rate
–
and headed straight to his wide
-
eyed bride.

“Oh thank
G
od, you came.” Why couldn’t she look so happy to see him when she wasn’t in danger?

Hiccupping
in fear, she didn’t fight him as he tore at the strands holding her prisoner. On the contrary, as soon as her hands got free, she clutched at him, finally embracing him.
Just his luck it took extreme fear for her to hug him tight. Sweeping her off her feet,
Acat
whirled with his burden just as Chaob struck a deadly blow to the bulbous fiend.
With a final hissing wail, the spider sank to the ground, but Acat knew better than to celebrate, and he cursed in his mother tongue as all the webs in the room shook and shivered.

The death didn’t go unnoticed.
Something big came. And it wasn’t happy.

Even though the doorway they’d come through wasn’t far,
it seemed
acres
away
,
especially as drops of
ominous
green fluid dripped from above,
melting through the silk,
landing to sizzle
viciously
on the stone, pock
-
marking its already scarred surface.

In killing one of the young ones, they’d woken the mother.
Acat chanced a brief glance upward and his cat chuffed a warning.
Get out.

No kidding.
The
dark shape overhead
, bigger than a house, shadowed their dodging movements. Fearful Carlie would see it
and panic,
he held her head tucked against his shoulder as Chaob led the way,
snarling and swatting at the small army the mother sent to precede her.
O
utnumbered
by the unnatural creatures, whose bite contained poison,
they’d need speed and cunning to escape this room. And even then, they’d have to run for their lives.