“That’s it…” The sound of metal on stone grated through the tunnel like an alarm for any in the vicinity. “Follow me.”
Helen’s words were still fresh in her mind: no hope of finding each other once separated. Arianna watched as the darkness melted around the shape of a Wretched, lean ropes of muscle suspended over bones and wrapped in the thinnest of pale gray skin. Useless eyes—white and beady—were placed behind the gaping orifice that was once a Fenthri mouth. Acidic saliva glowed faintly, oozing between pincers that clicked in excitement, tracking her movements.
A second emerged in her field of vision, followed by a third. Arianna slowly pulled her dagger away from the wall. At the least she’d draw them off Flor, or try.
“Right, then.” She flipped her grip on her dagger, clipping in the second. “Who’s first?”
The beasts hissed the moment she started to speak. Their long claws scraped against the stone, charging for her with gurgling madness. Arianna let out an animalistic roar in reply.
Wretched and Chimera lunged for the kill.
27. Florence
The Wretches chased them on all fours down the tunnel. They hissed and clicked, moving unnaturally fast through the darkness, dotting a trail of glowing saliva that steamed pock marks into the stones behind them.
Florence’s shoulder ached and burned as she struggled to keep her balance in the jostling cart. Will strained against the levers in the back. Helen was rigid at the wheel, trying to keep them on a course she could track in her mind.
“Ari. What about Ari?” She grabbed for Cvareh. He was the only person she could distract with her panic, the only one of the three she could lose her head around. Helen and Will had their hands full enough trying to keep them from dying in a swift and terrible crash.
“We can’t go back that way.” He bared his teeth in a fearsome snarl at the creatures in hot pursuit.
Florence’s hand shrunk away from him on instinct at the terrible look that overcame his face, wild and savage. It was the face of the Dragons Ari had filled her head with over the past two years and one she hadn’t witnessed with her own eyes until that moment.
“Those things are exactly what I’m worried about! Ari’s alone with them!”
Ari, her teacher, her friend, a woman who was a shining and steady light in Florence’s otherwise gray world. She had left someone precious behind in the Underground. Again.
“At this exact second, I think you should be more worried about us being alone with them!” Cvareh shouted.
A Wretch dove from a side tunnel. Cvareh instinctively placed his body between its sharp pincers and Florence. He grunted in pain as he slashed into the creature and acidic blood poured over his hand. With an aggravated roar he threw the body away, and it bounced limply down the cart path.
“Can you not get acid on our only means of transportation?” Will scolded, motioning to where erosion was already weakening the side of the cart, boring holes in the rusted metal. “We’re pretty far from the Holx yard and I don’t think we’ll stumble on another this deep.”
“Why don’t you ask the monsters? I’m sure they’ll be happy to oblige. Or should I just let it into our cart next time?” Cvareh growled in reply, rubbing his knitting flesh.
“Can you all not talk so much? It’s taking a lot of focus to keep us on track!” Helen’s words had both a literal and figurative meaning.
Wretches on their tails, Arianna nowhere to be found, and the only thing separating them from being lost in the Undergound forever was the map that spun madly inside Helen’s head. They were falling apart at the seams, cracking under the pressure. Florence swallowed.
Fight or flight.
The instinct rose up in her, hot and searing under every nerve. She dropped her bag, falling to the floor of the cart with it. Flight after flight, she’d run through life. From avoiding responsibility in the guild, to running out on Will and Helen, to letting them leave Ari now.
“What are you doing?” Cvareh asked as she frantically tried to make sense of the state of their current supplies. It wasn’t much. She couldn’t restock with everything she’d needed in Ter.4.2—there was no substitute for Mercury Town.
“I’m trying to get us out of this mess.” She passed Cvareh her revolver, loading it with three canisters. “Hold this.”
He took the gun skeptically and turned back to the Wretches.
“No, you’re not shooting them. Don’t fire a shot.” Florence dumped one canister over the side of the cart, the precious gunpowder lost to the air whipping around them. It hurt her very soul to see it wasted, but she didn’t have anywhere else for it to go and she needed a blank vessel of some kind.
While she was up, she tried to assess how fast they could be going, but the numbers all blurred in her head. Ari would know what to do, a voice in the back of her mind nagged. But Ari wasn’t here. She was, and someone had to think of a solution, however wild and reckless.
“Helen, when’s the next downhill?”
“Uh…”
“Helen.”