But suddenly Cheney was there, back on his feet and attacking from the other side, lunging wildly at the vulnerable legs, ripping and snarling as if gone completely mad. The attack caught the centipede by surprise, and it curled back on itself, jaws snapping at this new attacker. As it did so, it spread wide the plates on Sparrow’s side. Seeing her chance, she scrambled to her feet and rushed in with the prod and jammed it deep into the opening just behind the head, the prod on full power, the trigger locked down. The centipede jerked as if it had been slapped by a giant hand, and Sparrow could see flashes of electricity spurting from inside the plates and could smell something terrible burning. Cheney was down again, his strength gone, his back toward the wall. But the centipede had no time for Cheney. It had lost all interest in anything but ridding itself of the prod, which was lodged now between its body sections.
Sparrow didn’t wait. As the creature thrashed across the floor, fighting to dislodge the prod, she snatched up the spare that had been resting against the wall next to Owl, powered it on, and charged in again. It was a more dangerous effort this time, the centipede’s body twisting and jerking wildly, its nervous system gone out of control. One wrong step and she would be pinned beneath it. But she would not be turned back now. She ignored the blows she took from the spiky legs, ignored the blood in her eyes and the pain that racked her body, and found an opening midway back in the spiky body where she buried the prod all the way up to her hands between the plates. The centipede reacted at once, writhing in agony all the way back across the room. Jammed against the wall, it convulsed, shuddered once, and lay still.
Sparrow stood in the center of the room, a roaring in her ears that she couldn’t explain and the smell of death and blood all around her. She bit her lip against the tears that threatened to flood her eyes. She would not cry.
I did it, Mama, she thought.
She hurried across the room and knelt beside Cheney, flinching at the angry look of the wounds that covered his body. She was aware of Owl wheeling over to join her and of little Squirrel bending close as she cradled Cheney’s big head in her lap, smoothing the rough fur coat with her hands and calling his name softly, over and over again.
“Cheney, Cheney, don’t die,” she pleaded.
That was how Hawk and the others found them only minutes later when they burst through the door.
*
IT WAS IMMEDIATELY apparent to all of them that pleas alone weren’t going to be enough to save Cheney. The centipede had bitten him repeatedly, and his system was flooded with poison. Owl did her best to draw it out, siphoning and then cleaning the wounds, injecting the big dog with antitoxins to slow or stop the sickening, but even so his condition steadily worsened. The wounds were too severe and the poison gone too deep. Cheney was hanging on by a thread, but his life was slipping away.
Hawk sat with him in the darkness of the underground, holding his head and letting the dog feel his presence. Cheney was conscious, but he wasn’t responsive. His eyes were glazed and dull, his breathing thick and ragged, and his strength sapped to almost nothing. He barely acknowledged Hawk. There wasn’t anything Hawk could do for him, but he refused to leave him alone, even for a minute. This was his fault, he kept telling himself. He had been careless. He had missed all the signs that should have warned him of the danger. He had left the underground too poorly protected. He had failed in so many ways, and Cheney was paying the price.
It was midnight by now, the underground silent and the other Ghosts asleep. They had cut up the centipede and hauled all the sections into the bedroom where it had broken through the ceiling— Owl’s bedroom—and then closed it off. Tomorrow, they would have to begin searching for a new place to live, but it was too late to do anything tonight and they were all exhausted. Most of them had stayed with Cheney until Hawk ordered them off to bed. Sparrow had stayed until she collapsed. How she had kept Owl and the others alive against a thing as monstrous as that centipede was something Hawk would never understand.
He knew she was a tough little girl with the heart of a warrior, unafraid of anything, but he had no idea how she had survived this. Even with Cheney to help, it seemed impossible.
He stared off into the room’s darkness, thinking that nothing should seem impossible after today. The world he had constructed, the family he had gathered, the life he had invented for himself— they were all falling apart. He didn’t know if the centipede was the fulfillment of Candle’s vision or if something worse was looming on the horizon, but he did know that their time in the underground was rapidly drawing to a close. He didn’t feel safe in the city anymore. If things like this centipede were corning out of the earth, then it was time to get out.
Not that there was any guarantee it wouldn’t be worse elsewhere. In fact, it probably would. Unless he could find the safe haven he had seen in his dreams. Unless he could make the story of the boy and his children come true.
Cheney, Cheney.
He stroked Cheney’s big head and watched his flanks rise and fall heavily.
He wanted so badly to help him, to do something— anything—that would make him well. But he didn’t know what to do. He knew that if Owl couldn’t do anything, there was little chance that he could. He had no medical skills. He had no experience with poisonings. But the fact of it didn’t stop him from wanting to try. It didn’t change the cold, empty feeling that had settled inside.