Slip Song (Devany Miller Series) (38 page)

She climbed the silk and perched on a branch, then jumped at the hook, her silk streaming behind her like a bungee cord. Once through the hook, she let go the thread and shook herself off.

Kroshtuka and his people waited. ‘You will follow my lead now, yes?’ He asked in my mind.

Neutria hissed and raised her front legs in a threat display.
Arrogant.

‘
Yes, you are,’ I said. She hissed at me too, then lowered her legs.

For now, he can lead.

Her annoyance at having to take second-fiddle to him amused me, as did how short-lived her infatuation had been. I wondered when she’d start wanting to eat him.

Kroshtuka yipped again and Neutria and I turned our attention to the group of clan members. He pawed the ground and barked. ‘A small group, traveling fast.’ Then he put his nose down and sniffed. More yips and we were off, pausing only long enough for Kroshtuka to take in the smells he was tracking.

An hour in, Neutria found and killed a wild boar. She injected it with her venom, wrapped up the corpse and hung it in a tree. For later. I wasn’t sure when we’d get back here but Kroshtuka promised her she would have the chance to eat her snack. A few minutes afterward, he found fresh sign and the chase was on in earnest.

There were two men and three women in the group. A big sack lay beside one of the slavers and wiggled, sometimes raising up off the ground before someone noticed and smacked it down. I hoped Nex could breathe in the sack, then remembered he didn’t have lungs with which to breathe. It didn’t make me feel better. He didn’t deserve to be hauled around the countryside in a sack. Bastards.

Neutria wanted to rush them and only just waited for Kroshtuka to get his people in position before she pounced. My spider-self would have made it a massacre but the Wydlings surrounded the witch-folk in a few, well-practiced moves and the smaller group surrendered.

Kroshtuka ripped through the sack using claws and teeth and Nex floated free. His face looked strange, like one side was caved in.

‘What did they do to you?’ And can I punch the bastards in their thieving mouths?

Nex didn’t answer. Probably because I’d forgotten I was a spider and Neutria could only speak inside my head, not aloud. Nex floated drunkenly toward us, one eye the familiar inky black, the other sporting a brilliant red starburst. I winced. Neutria raised a leg and touched him on the top of his head.

He fought and won,
she told me.

Hence the sack. Way to go Nex. I just hoped he could be healed. Though the injuries made him look even creepier, so perhaps he wouldn’t want to be altered.

‘Now we return to your kill, then back to the village for celebration and planning.’

‘
You guys like celebrating,’ I said, forgetting for a second that the last celebration hadn’t happened for everyone.

‘
It is good to celebrate life when we can. Come.’

Neutria enjoyed her meal too much for my taste.

Pig shake.

Revolted and yet amused she’d made a joke, I was torn between laughing and being nauseated.

We were almost to the village when the Carnicus of Nightflowers ambushed us. Neutria attacked a woman with a pistol and caught a bullet in her leg. It didn’t stop her. She ripped the woman’s head off. I was terrified it would be someone I’d met last time around but didn’t get a good look—Neutria was on to the next victim.

She charged at a burly man in brown who I recognized as Yorloff. I screamed at her to stop, then was glad she didn’t when I saw the gleam of an axe in Yorloff’s hands. He swung the heavy weapon at Kroshtuka and missed my hyena man by inches.

Someone flung a net over Krosh. Another man shouted. Neutria darted forward and pounced on Yorloff, knocking him to the ground. She bared her fangs and struck, hitting him hard in the chest. My sense of horror was torn. I’d known this man and he’d been kind to Jasper, Nex, and I. But that had been before. This time he’d almost killed someone I liked and now I had killed him.

“
You will be a fine addition to my collection.”

Neutria spun. Leon stood there, confident and undefended in the midst of the fighting. Neutria jumped at him and he blew dust in her face.

‘
No!’ I shouted.

Dirt won’t hurt me.
But it did and she fell, the magic dropping her to the ground. Her legs just gave out. No matter how hard she or I tried, we couldn’t get her limbs to function. We both had to watch, helpless, as one man grabbed Nex and another tightened the nets around Kroshtuka.

Then Leon pulled a pistol and shot one of Krosh’s clan members. The fight went out of the rest.

‘No!’ I shouted again, wanting to change and kill the bastard. Neutria kept me still, her will more focused, and therefore stronger, than mine.

It took four guys to get Kroshtuka in one of the wagons and only two for Neutria. She was big but didn’t have a lot of mass. ‘Let me change. Damn it, Neutria, let me out!’

Not yet. Watch. Wait. Plan.

‘
If they do anything to Kroshtuka, I’m not waiting or planning anything. I’ll be destroying.’

Yes. We will destroy them all. Soon.

The bloody images in my mind frightened me. ‘Not all. Some of them are our friends.’ I wouldn’t kill Quorra or Sharps or Alton. In fact, I really hadn’t wanted to see Yorloff dead. Only Leon.

Especially Leon.

They put us all in the same wagon, outfitted with cells, the black and red wagon I remembered from our last time with the Carnicus. I’d wondered what it had held. I guessed fate had decided to assuage my curiosity. Kroshtuka was panting heavily, but otherwise unable to move. Leon must have coated him with the same dust he’d used on Neutria. At least Krosh wasn’t bleeding this time. There wasn’t any Cyres to heal him and Jasper was still in Odd Silver. ‘Kroshtuka?’

His voice in my mind was a high tension wire, thrumming with anger. ‘They killed Dynal. Just left his body lay on the plain as if he were waste.’

My heart hurt for him. ‘I’m sorry.’ He didn’t respond. He was stewing and I didn’t hold out much hope for Leon that he would live through any future encounters with Kroshtuka. I wondered if I could reach Tytan, then dismissed that thought. No way would I put him into danger unless I had to. I didn’t need to lose anymore people. Of course, if things got desperate, I would have to do something. I wouldn’t lay here and let the asshole kill anyone else.

After they’d loaded a few more paralyzed Wydlings in the third and fourth cages, the wagon lurched and we were on our way. Each of them had a fine coating of dust on their fur and none of them could move except to pant or roll their eyes.

I sank down into my control room to fiddle, wanting something to blow the dust away, figuring that without it, we wouldn’t be paralyzed anymore. I decided a modified protection bubble might work, built inside of me and expanded. If it worked, it would remove the dust from Neutria’s body and deposit it away from her.

It worked, but not like I thought. The energy in my bubble ignited the dust, causing it to fizzle and pop like tiny fire crackers, filling the room with a brilliant second of light and noise.

When the fire died, Neutria twitched and her legs moved.

‘
Be careful,’ Kroshtuka said. ‘He has eyes in here.’

We looked around the room but didn’t see anyone who wasn’t in a cage. I activated my Magic Eye as Kroshtuka spoke again.

‘The witchball on the wall. Won’t work out here in the Wilds for light but if he has its mate, then he can look in on us. That’s a magic that the Wilds can’t touch. What happens in the presence of one ball is shown in the other.’

The idea that Leon could spy through the ball made me feel sick to my stomach. Had he been watching us last time? I thought back to our wagon, trying to remember if there had been a witchball in there. I couldn’t remember but the idea that he’d seen the kiss between Jasper and I or heard Nex and I talking made me sick.

Neutria shot a strand of silk from her spinnerets and snagged the witchball. She dragged it back to her cage and, with her legs and web, put the ball into a silken pouch.
Let him spy through that.

‘
Nice work.’

The wagon stopped. Neutria gathered her feet under her and rose as the door opened and Leon filled the opening. “You shouldn’t be moving, chythraul.”

Neutria hissed, raising her forelegs in challenge, her fangs out and dripping venom. It was a pant’s shitting sight but Leon was either too cocky or too crazy to get it.

“
Is it because you’re a bug?”

Not a bug. You are a bug. Less than a bug.

He was careful not to get too close to any of the cages in case any others were awake and willing to take a swipe at him through the bars. “You’ll fetch a pretty bit of gold if you don’t tempt me to kill you.” His gaze dropped to the witchball and sighed. It was as out of reach as the American flag was on the moon. “What I don’t understand is why a chythraul is so far from home?”

Magic danced and whirled around him—chaos in lights. A ribbon of energy flared away from Leon, glancing against the fur of a stunned panther. Its leg warped, changing into the long leg of a deer. The panther screamed but Leon didn’t react. He’d gone away in his head. Like before, when he’d caught me outside the tent. The magic flared brighter, lightning strikes that mutated whatever they struck, drips that fell to the floor and danced in the wood of the floor.

He was a nuclear reactor in meltdown.

‘
Kroshtuka, can you move? Krosh? This guy is going to explode.’

He heard the panic in my voice but couldn’t move. And I didn’t know if I could blow the dust from him the same way I’d cleared Neutria of the taint.

Then Leon’s sister eased into the wagon, her face wary. The magic bent backward, toward her, and her aura soaked it up. “Leon? We aren’t in a good place to stop and we need you to find the backroad.”               Her voice was low and sing-songy, the same voice you’d use to soothe a wild beast.

He didn’t respond. His magic crackled and snapped, loud in the tiny wagon.

“Leon? Inna is worried about you.” Her voice held an odd note. A lie. Neutria could see and hear it.

The name caught his attention. He didn’t snap out of it all at once but turned his head in the slow, deliberate way of a turtle sunning itself on a rock. When his eyes met hers, the stiffness left his shoulders. “What are you doing here?”

“The oxen are spooked. There’s an aurora about two miles to the left of us and Zed says it feels like it’s coming this way. We need to get on the backroad and get out of here.”

He nodded again though I didn’t think everything was soaking in. The important part got through, though. “Right.” He didn’t thank her and didn’t look our way again, just shoved past, knocking her into the wall on his way by. “Watch them.”

He slammed the door and Sharps pushed herself away from the wall. In minutes the wagon lurched and we were on our way again. She glanced over her shoulder at the door as if she expected her brother to burst back in, then walked to my cage.

Her too serious, too young face leaned close to the bars. “Devany. You’re back.”

-TWENTY-EIGHT-

‘
I need to change,’ I told Neutria.

Not safe.

‘I can’t talk to her as a spider. And she knows who I am. Which means she’s part of this weirdness. I have to talk to her.’

Neutria didn’t approve. This time the change hurt like a mother but change I did. I lay panting, aching on the floor of the cage for a moment, trying to make my brain stop freaking out over the pain and concentrate on the girl in front of me.

“I wasn’t sure it was you,” Sharps said, awe in her voice.

“
You weren’t sure?”

She shrugged. “I could see your sig, it’s strange. And watching you change … “ she shook her head. “That was amazing. You have to make sure my brother never sees you. He would do everything in his power to keep you in a cage for the rest of your life.”

“Thanks for the warning.” I crossed to the bars and wrapped my hands around them. “How do you remember me? I mean, you haven’t met me yet.”

“
But I did meet you.” She held up a locket, the one Ann had given me. She passed the necklace through the bars.

“
How did you get that?” 

“
I found it in your wagon after Leon brought us back to the Carnicus, after the fight. It had fallen in a crack between the bed and the wall. When I touched it, I remembered.” My confusion must have shown on my face because she said, “Time breaks don’t happen often. I don’t think there’s been a case of it in years, though Yorloff tells,” she paused, swallowed. “Told a story about a traveler who wanders time trying to find her lover.” A smile plays around her lips. “He only sings it when he’s in his cups. I figured it was his way of coping with the loss of his wife but mayhap it was real.”