“Where are they?” Charlotte asked through her clenched jaw. Finally, her right hand was freed too, and she began rubbing at it with her other hand. It felt so good to move.
Jorge began at her right ankle. “Far enough away. I’ve scared Lusian enough to be out for a few hours to stock up on light blood,” he explained quickly. “They are at a safe distance away.”
“But you will be punished when Lusian returns and finds me gone.”
“I don’t care. He keeps blathering about
freedom
, and
liberation
, and this and that!” Jorge shook his head. “I’m not any more free in this house than you are.”
Her first ankle was free, and he began working on the other one in silence for a few moments. Charlotte couldn’t believe all that he had said to her. She watched him with the same curiosity and reverence as he had probably been watching her up until this day.
Finally, her left leg was free and she slowly shifted so she sat up on the bed. Bending joints that had been otherwise straight for so long was very painful, though it was nice to be free. She wound each ankle around a few times, and bent in half so that her spine could stretch.
Jorge reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out something she instantly recognized. Her whistle. He held the little silvery, dangling thing out to her and she reached for it. “Sarah instructed me to give this to you when we finally met our window of opportunity. She said it would protect you from that which is coming.”
Charlotte studied it as it twinkled in her hand. “But why? When Valek gave this to me, he said it was just an ordinary whistle. That there was nothing enchanted about it.”
“Surely you must know Sarah better than that by now. She always takes precaution.
Always
. She would never leave you unprotected, Charlotte.”
Charlotte gazed wide-eyed at him. “So she knew Lusian would do this to me?”
“Not exactly. But she’s smart enough to know that something would go just a tad wrong when one human is left alone with a gaggle of the world’s most irresponsible heathens.” Jorge flashed a fanged grin.
She wrapped her hand around the whistle as she dangled it from her neck, remembering the inscribed words
We will rise
and the carved image of the phoenix. How was one pathetic little mortal going to find one Vampire in a world full of magic and monsters? Charlotte had a new thought. She smiled back at Jorge.
He abruptly ceased his grin. As she expected, he’d heard her latest thought. “Oh, no,” he countered. “No, Charlotte. That is between you and Valek. If I change you, he would surely decapitate me!”
“But Jorge, it just makes sense! I could find Valek so much more easily if I were like you!”
“Forget it, Charlotte.” Jorge’s forehead crinkled. “You will find Valek exactly the way you are now,” he concluded and sat on the edge of the bed again. He leaned in closer to her, taking either sides of her face in his hands. “I want you to take Třínožka and that little rag doll with you. You can do this. You are more powerful than you think you are.”
“Can’t you go with me? Lusian is going to stake you when he gets home anyway. You know it.”
“It would be too complicated if I went. We’d have to constantly stop to hunt for light magic…not to mention what I’d need from you.” He dropped his gaze uncomfortably. “Besides, Vampires are still so heavily discriminated against. I’m more trouble than I’m worth, trust me.” He chuckled.
Charlotte frowned. She had never seen this side to the bookworm Vampire, so easygoing and charming…and talkative. It was as if she didn’t know him at all. She really liked him and lamented she hadn’t allowed him to be more of a friend sooner.
Jorge glanced over his shoulder for a split second and then back down at her. “They’re returning sooner than I thought they would. It seems Lusian has somehow picked up on my plan. I can hear it in his mind, even at this distance. I’ve collected these for you, at least. I found them in Lusian’s room. You’ll need them.” He handed her a small, lavender pouch. “We should fetch the Spider.” He lifted hastily from the bed.
“Wait,” she ordered before he could dash away.
He stopped, looking at her expectantly.
“I still do not understand why you are doing this for me. You’re risking your own life for mine. I just can’t imagine why I’m suddenly so significant to you.”
His lips twitched, as if he was about to say something, though he only grinned at her. He shrugged his shoulders. “I told you, Charlotte. You’re a hero. After reading about so many heroes in all of my books, I think you’re my favorite. Valek needs you,” he concluded before whooshing out of the bedroom.
Getting out of the bed proved to be a little more complicated than Charlotte imagined. Putting one leg over the side of it before the other, she found the room began to tilt steeply to the right, and she felt as if she might fall backward onto the mattress. A sharp stabbing pain began at her temples. This was in no way an effect of her addiction, but rather a condition of her dehydration, weakness, and exhaustion. She closed her eyes tightly for a minute and waited for the contents of her brain to shift back to their normal places.
Quickly, she opened the small, velvet pouch by its drawstrings. Just as she thought, there in her palm was a collection of about a hundred of Sarah’s chocolate beads. She popped one into her mouth, chewed, and swallowed. And then another, and another. She must have eaten nearly a dozen before she started to notice the strength replenishing inside her body. It seemed Lusian had been keeping her right at death’s door. She gripped the edge of the bed, the cool, cotton sheets bunching up between her fingers. She needed a moment to herself—silent. Closing her eyes, she took in a deep breath of air. This was it. It was time.
“Charlotte!” Jorge’s voice called fervently up at her from downstairs.
Staggering, she pushed herself from the bed, arms outstretched before her as her legs wobbled. She could do this. She
could
go find Valek. She could.
Charlotte stepped one foot forward.
For that’s how all good quests begin
, she thought. She reached back into the velvet pouch and scooped out three more of the chocolate beads and swallowed them. Lusian was very smart. The strength returned more to her legs as she began journeying out of the room and down the staircase.
“Charlotte!” Jorge called for her again from out of Valek’s office.
She turned the corner, sprinting down the hall to find the bookish Vampire leaning over the blockaded burrow opening in the floor. He squinted down the dark tunnel as though he were searching for something. He pressed his lips together as he looked up at her.
“I’m not hearing any thoughts down there. The coven is returning. I hear them just over the Occult border. They’ll be here in minutes. I’m not sure your Spider friend is going to make it.”
It felt like claws squeezing instantly around Charlotte’s heart as all of the air in her lungs vacuumed out and into the room. What did Jorge mean by that? Was Třínožka dead? Though she stared silently at him for a few moments, her mind was spinning a million miles an hour. There was no way her faithful Spider friend was dead. Charlotte collapsed to her hands and knees. “Rip out the trappings in the floor!” she begged. “Please!”
Jorge clutched two of the metal pieces on opposite ends from each other. She could see that Lusian, or whoever had committed this, had done a thorough job as the ends were buried deep in the dirt foundation under the floorboards. He continued to tug until the metal started to give. The jagged ends ripped from underneath Valek’s floor, pulling out chunks of dirt and wood with it. Jorge grunted as he released the rest of the heavy entrapment and tossed it to the other side of the room. He looked at Charlotte expectantly.
“All right. Go down there. See if he’s okay, and leave as soon as you can. I’ll hold them off up here.”
Charlotte took a moment, just looking at him. There were so many things she wanted to tell him. She decided she only had time for a simple “Thank you.” She wrapped her arms around him and he returned the embrace after a moment of hesitation, resting his cool cheek on the top of her head.
“You can do this, Charlotte,” he whispered.
Unable to imagine what the consequences were going to be for setting her free, she could only nod her goodbye to Jorge. If she opened her mouth, it might have opened the floodgates. In spite of the breaking feeling in her chest and the salt tears gathering in her eyes, she turned her back to him and lowered herself deeper into the burrowing hole.
Carefully feeling around the dirt sides of the tunnel, she proceeded carefully. Her toe caught the end of a protruding tree root and she used it as a step. The drop was fairly steep, and she wasn’t sure just how far down the bottom was. Looking up, she saw Jorge gazing at her just over the rim. He waved silently at her as she continued to descend, slipping into the dark shadows of the Spider’s home. The sound of bending metal caused her to look abruptly upward again, only to see Jorge refastening the bars to the hole. That trick was probably meant to buy her a little more time. She dug her nails deep into the dirt walls to find anything she could cling to.
Eventually, as she continued, she couldn’t see the house above her anymore. Though she didn’t stop moving, she did try her best to quiet her breathing to see if she could hear what was going on above. There were a few faint noises, but they were fairly indecipherable to her. Nothing sounded violent yet. She knew she had to move a lot faster, however, and quickly she peered down to what was beneath her. It was still too dark to see the bottom of the tunnel, but climbing down at this rate would take way too much time.
Charlotte weighed the decision to jump, freezing for a moment as she clung to the walls. Looking down, she tried to gauge through the darkness how much farther she had to go. There wasn’t much choice. If she didn’t move more quickly, they’d catch her for sure. Her heart slammed hard in her ears as she made the snap decision to push herself from the wall with her arms and legs stretched out, scraping through the dirt. Clods of earth and tree roots collapsed from the sides of the tunnel down around her, only slightly slowing her fall as she plummeted. Something crashed hard into her from the bottom, causing her to collapse and tumble down through a different, much less steep, tunnel. Charlotte saw nothing as she rolled, various parts of her body bumping against stones packed in the floor, until she found herself suddenly stopped and sitting completely upright with her legs straight out in front of her.
It took a moment for her head to stop spinning. She shut her eyes tight, burying her face in her knees to recover from her disoriented state more quickly. Finally, the sick, swimming motion stopped and Charlotte stood, gazing forward down the abyss. She hadn’t ever seen this entrance to Třínožka’s home before. It wasn’t all lit and warm like the main entrance in the forest used to be. She recalled the first time she’d seen that one—lined with warm candles that invited her in from the freezing rain one evening months ago.
“Hello?” The only sound that answered her was the sound of water dripping over the stones.
This tunnel was dismal. Dreary. It seemed entirely black and gray in the dense shadows as her eyes began to adjust. Enormous patches of glimmering, silken Spider webs clung to the corners of the tunnel. Charlotte began forward again, the stuff not failing to cling to her, especially to the material of her dress. She tried to pull it off, though it stretched relentlessly as it stuck to the palm of her hand. Desperately, she wiped the stuff on her dress, which only made matters worse. And what was more, in the dim light of the long cave, Charlotte could make out a few dozen tiny, long-legged spiders crawling up out of the web material. She let out a stifled shriek and tried to shake the creatures off. Quickly giving up, she proceeded on her journey, remembering the need to escape quickly.
Leaning forward, she strained her eyes to see farther down the long passage. She continued on, though absolutely nothing about it seemed familiar. And it seemed too long of a walk to Třínožka’s burrow, which had only been just around the back of her house. Where was this taking her? Glancing behind herself, Charlotte found that the curve up the tunnel to her house above had disappeared and she was now gazing down an infinite opposite direction. This was impossible! It was as if this tunnel were an enchanted maze of sorts, changing each time she turned her back. She had no other choice but to press forward, so she did.
Dirt crumbled from the ceiling of the passage down over her, and she decided it was only a matter of time before the entire thing caved in. Perhaps she should pinch herself in the event she was experiencing another nightmare. She might wake up in the bed with Lusian looming over her once more.
“Třínožka!” she called out as she continued to put one foot in front of the other. “Mr. Třínožka! Where are you?” Another massive clump of dirt collapsed over her head and she coughed out the bit that had gotten in her mouth. She rubbed the stuff out of her eyes and glanced over her shoulder again. “Edwin!” Jorge had been wrong. There was no way she could do this alone. Charlotte wrapped her hand around the whistle strung from her neck and remembered the words Sarah had uttered to her a while ago—
When the night is at its blackest, you know that it is just before the dawn
. But in Charlotte’s case, which was better—the night or the day?
A new thought appeared in her mind, the little whistle glimmering under her grasp in the lack of light. She pulled the thing up on its chain, looking wondrously in front of her and wondered exactly what would happen. She pressed the tip of it to her lips and blew, the familiar, musical sound emanating all around her. It seemed to travel limitlessly down the long, dark space. It twinkled its enchanted note until it eventually faded. And Charlotte waited.
“Charlotte?” A familiar, velvety voice called out to her. “Charlotte, where are you?”
Charlotte gasped and glanced behind herself instantly upon hearing that voice. Lusian was coming after her. Her heart jump-started in her chest. If she wanted to escape, it was time to run. However, now that he was hot on her trail, running would be an attempt in futility.