Grimalkin sniffed. “I do hope that does not attract anything,” he mused, watching the bobbing light as if it was a bird, just out of his reach. “We are not will-o’-the-wisps, trying to get creatures to follow us, after all. Perhaps you should put it out?”
“No.” I shook my head. “If something comes at us in here, I want to see it.”
“Hmm. I suppose not everyone can have a cat’s perfect night vision, but still …”
Puck snorted. “Yeah, your perfect kitty vision does us no good if you don’t warn us that something is coming once in a while. Poofing away doesn’t count. This way, we can at least have a heads-up.” The cat thumped his tail. “Additionally, you can paint a neon sign over our heads that says, ‘Easy meal, follow the flashing lights.’”
“Or we could use you for bait….”
“Does anyone else hear that?” Ariel a asked.
We froze, falling silent.
183/387
The Briars were never still, always rustling, slithering or creaking around us, but over the thorns and the sloshing of water against the branches, I could hear something else. A faint chittering noise, like claws clicking over wood. Getting closer…
The Wolf growled low in his chest, the fur along his spine beginning to rise. “Something is coming,” he rumbled right before Grimalkin vanished.
I drew my sword. “Puck, get some light back there now.” Faery fire exploded overhead, a f lash of emerald-green, lighting the passageway behind us. In the f lare, hundreds of shiny, eight-legged creatures scuttled back from the sudden light. The tunnel was full of them, pale and bulbous, with bodies the size of melons and multiple thin legs. But their faces, elven and beautiful, stared down at us coldly, and they bared mouthfuls of curved black fangs.
“Spiders,” Puck groaned, and drew his knives as the Wolf ’s growls turned into snarls. “Why does it always have to be spiders?”
“Get ready,” I muttered, drawing glamour to me in a cold cloud, feeling Puck do the same. “This could get messy.” Hissing, the swarm attacked, dropping from the ceiling with muffled thumps, legs clicking as they scuttled over the deck. They were surprisingly quick, leaping at us with bared fangs, legs uncurling as they f lew through the air.
I hurled a f lurry of ice shards at the attacking swarm, killing several in mid-leap, and raised my sword as the rest came on. I cut a spider out of the air, ducked as another f lew at my face and speared a third rushing at my leg. Ariel a stood behind me, firing arrows into the swarm, and the Wolf roared as he bounded and spun, ripping spiders from his 184/387
pelt and crushing them in his jaws. Puck, covered in black ichor, dodged the spiders that sprang at him and kicked the ones that got too close, sending them f lying into the waters below.
“Aggressive little buggers, aren’t they?” he called, yanking a spider from his leg and hurling it over the railing. “Kinda like redcap spawn, only uglier.”
He ducked as a spider f lew overhead, hissing, only to be snapped out of the air by the Wolf. “Hey, prince, remember that time we stumbled into a hydra nest, just as all the eggs were hatching? I didn’t know hydras could lay up to sixty eggs at a time.” I sliced two spider creatures from the air at once, black ichor splatter-ing my face and neck. “Now’s really not the time to reminisce, Goodfel ow.”
Puck yelped and cursed, slapping away a spider on his neck, his hand coming away stained with red. “I wasn’t reminiscing, ice-boy,” he snapped, angrily kicking the spider away. “Remember that cool little trick we did? I think we should do that now!” The spiders’ numbers were increasing; I’d cut one down only to have four others come at me from all sides. They were everywhere now, crawling over the railing and skittering across the roof. Ariel a and I stood back-to-back, protecting each other, and the Wolf was going berserk, bucking and rolling as spiders crawled all over him like monster ticks.
“Come on, prince! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten!” I hadn’t forgotten. I knew exactly what he wanted me to do. It was risky and dangerous and would take a lot out of us both, but if the spiders kept coming, we might not have a choice.
185/387
“Ash!”
“All right!” I yelled back. “Let’s do it. Ari, stay close. Everyone else, take cover now!”
I stopped fighting for an instant, feeling several of the creatures land on me, their slender legs scuttling up my clothes. Ignoring them, I knelt and drove the point of my sword into the wooden f loor.
There was a f lash of blue, and ice spread out from my blade, covering everything. In an instant, it had coated the deck, the railings, the benches, even some of the spider things, freezing them in place. It covered the branches of the thorns around us and spread a thin sheet of ice over the water around the boat. Though the spider things continued to pour out of the brambles, dropping onto the deck, for a moment, there was absolute, frozen silence.
“Now,” Puck muttered, and I pulled up my blade.