“Why not? It’s easier to be careful in dresses. You have to be or you end up flashing your underclothes or destroying beautiful fabric. Dresses force you to be on guard.”
He risked a glance at me, eyes twinkling. “Your mind is weird. Come here.”
“Gladly.” And I was glad. Wyatt’s friends were fun to hang out with, even Petra when she kept her fat mouth shut, but Wyatt understood me. With him, I could be myself.
He pulled away from my kisses, laughing. “Cut it out before we end up in a ditch.” I stole a few more kisses just the same, and Wyatt, trouper that he was, somehow managed not to wreck the truck.
Wyatt drove to Avispa Lane and parked in the parking lot of St. Michael’s, a weathered, slightly gothic church that huddled bravely in the shadow of a great, rolling forest, its huge old trees growing wild together, its dark green canopy mocking the fall season.
I walked around the truck to Wyatt’s side, staring at the tangled expanse of piney woods. “Is that the dark park?”
He nodded grimly.
“It isn’t so bad.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” he said almost pityingly as he led me to the church steps, where we sat holding hands in the warm, quickly fading sunlight. Cardinals whistled at one another in the eaves of the church.
“A long time ago in Finland, I got lost in the woods on Easter. When I was five or six. It was freezing, and the snow was deep along the paths. I thought a real witch had cursed me to lose my way, to punish me for pretending to be one of them. So I’m not totally oblivious about how dangerous the woods can be. How misleading.”
“Why were you pretending to be a witch?”
I shrugged. “It was Easter.”
Wyatt fell over laughing. “Finnish people dress up as witches on Easter? I don’t remember no trick-or-treaters in the Old Testament.”
I snatched my hand from his grip. “I don’t laugh at your stupid culture. You and your doors and keys.”
“Come on.” He bussed my ear. “I didn’t say it was stupid. What do I know? Maybe there were witches and goblins at the Passover.”
“Goblins? Who said anyth—?”
Shoko appeared out of nowhere, derailing my train of thought. First an unobstructed view of the empty parking lot, and then Shoko all in green, tossing her long black hair over her shoulder as she strode toward us. “I’m here.”
“How—?”
“Just more of our stupid culture.” Wyatt patted my knee in this condescending way I’m sure he thought was hilarious.
“You can do that?” I asked, preparing myself to be impressed.
“Not yet,” said Shoko, as tall and imposing as I remembered. “We gotta teach him. And then we gotta teach him not to invite civilians into the line of fire.”
And just as mean.
“Come on, Shoko. You used to be cool. You used to take me on hunts before I was even initiated.”
“Well, I obviously taught you some bad habits,” she said, glaring at me. “Let’s get this over with before I change my mind.” She crossed Avispa Lane and was swallowed by the tall pines.
“How can she appear and disappear like that?”
“She’s not. She’s using the hidden doors.” Wyatt flapped his hand when I started to speak. “Don’t get sidetracked by all that now. The sun’s nearly gone. The hardheads’ll be out soon.”
“Hardheads?”
He kissed me. It stung, as though I’d kissed a light socket. “You’ll see.”
When we got into the forest, he was all business, tramping ahead like he knew the way. It was only sunset, but in the woods it might as well have been midnight. Trees loomed in the dark like fairy-tale giants, spindly branches interlacing overhead like fingers twining. I stuck close to Wyatt as he straight-armed the branches aside and led us into a clearing lit with several lanterns emitting a harsh white light. Beyond the clearing, darkness pressed around us, cut us off from the rest of the world; we might as well have been the last three people on the planet.
In the center of the clearing was a hole in the ground bordered with stones. Shoko knelt near the hole, oiling a small pair of metallic pink … maces? Each had a short handle with a single spiked ball dangling at the end of a chain.
Wyatt knelt beside Shoko, unzipped a nearby duffel bag full of blades, and armed himself with a machete and several of his favored push daggers.
“Where are the other Mortmaine?” I asked.
Wyatt looked at me. “What others?”
“She means the foxes and hounds,” Shoko said, rolling her eyes. “And the asshole in a red riding coat screaming, ‘Tallyho!’”
They laughed, revealing an irritating rapport.
“It’s just us,” Wyatt told me. “If the Mortmaine knew about this, about you, they’d disown me. We’re lucky to even have Shoko.”
“Damn straight,” she said, swinging her shiny weapons like nunchaku.
How Wyatt had managed to get close enough to Shoko to have sex with her amazed me. She was like her maces—pretty but deadly. I backed away from her, nervously eyeing the blur of the spiked balls, so busy keeping out of her way that I nearly fell down the stone-bordered hole.
I dropped to my knees beside it and peered into earthy-smelling darkness.
“Don’t worry,” Wyatt told me. “Only Shoko and me are going down the tunnel.”
“Is that where the hard hats are?”
“Hardheads,” Wyatt corrected. “And yeah.”
“How many are there?”
“About fifty.”
I stared at him. “Three against fifty?”
“We know what we’re doing,” said Shoko. “Relax.”
I studied the array of weapons spread between the two of them. Of them all, Shoko’s were the cutest. “Do you have any more of those pink maces?” I asked her.
“They’re flails, not maces,” she said. “And you’d only put your eye out.” Shoko strapped her metallic pink flails into a holster at her waist. Then she picked up a wooden club covered in spikes. “This is a mace.”
As I reached for it, Wyatt intercepted it and said, “Never mind maces.” He handed me a short-handled ax.
“I want a mace.”
“But you need an ax.”
I took the arm-length weapon and swung it experimentally; it was surprisingly heavy, the blade sharp but pitted and worn, as though it had been put to serious work.
“What about a gun?” I asked. “Or a bazooka?”
Shoko said, “We don’t use guns.”
“Why not?”
“Same reason you don’t wear jeans,” said Wyatt. He held up his push daggers. “It’s easier to make one of these than a bazooka.”
Wyatt and Shoko were so cool and together, I decided to put my fears aside and imitate them. “So,” I said brightly, “what’s the plan?”
“Shoko and me go down through the tunnel.”
“And where do I go?”
“You got the easy part.” Wyatt pulled something from his pocket and threw it to me. “Drink that.”
He’d tossed me a small vial fizzing with a clear liquid, like seltzer. “What is this? More chemistry?”
Shoko said, “It lures the hardheads to you so that they’ll take you into their lair. While they’re busy with you, we can get the drop on ’em.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “Busy with me how?”
“They’ll be taking you to their queen,” Wyatt explained. “Like a gift. That’s why you’ll be able to take her out—easy access.”
“You want me to destroy the queen?” My blood zinged at the idea. “Do you think I can?”
“Absolutely,” said Wyatt. He squeezed the back of my neck and touched our foreheads together.
I thought of Rosalee, the look on her face after I’d told her about tonight. “Okay!” I drained the vial in one gulp and nearly choked on the burning sweetness within.
“Better spray her now,” said Shoko, tossing an aerosol can to Wyatt.
He
took me by the back of the neck again and sprayed me head to toe with a warm, sharp-smelling substance.
“Hey!” I tried to dodge him, but he was quick and thorough. “What are you doing?”
“This’ll counteract the stomach acid,” he said. “So it doesn’t burn you alive.”
“Stomach acid?” I finally managed to pull away, only to fall over backward into Wyatt’s arms, an insidious creeping numbness inching over me, a stiffness that was frighteningly unnatural.
Wyatt lowered me gently to the ground. “Make sure you hold tight to that ax,” he said.
I knew I was holding it—I could see it in my peripheral vision, the ax head laying against my chest—but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t feel anything. “What’s happening?” The words fell strangely from my stiffening lips.
Shoko said, “You’re dying.”
“What?” It sounded more like Whuuuunn?
“Did we forget to mention that part?” Shoko waved her hand. “No worries. You drank an infusion of ghoul’s delight. Drink too much, you’ll be a corpse for real, but in small doses it just mimics death, so that you’ll look and feel and smell just like a fresh corpse.”
“Ghoul’s delight? Is that what you bought at the herbal shop?” That’s what I wanted to ask, wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. My lungs were no longer under my command.
Wyatt’s face hovered above mine, studying me so passionlessly that I couldn’t help remembering what Petra had once said, about how nothing came before Wyatt’s duty.
I hadn’t realized that included my life.
“Hardheads love fresh meat,” he said, actually smiling at me, “but they can’t feed it to their queen. She’s a carrion eater, and the only way they’ll feed you to her is if they think you’re dead. Hanna?”
“Damn,” Shoko said, out of my line of sight. “Already? How long’s it been?”
“I think it just kicked in.” Wyatt put his head close to mine. “Ghoul’s delight wears off in, like, fifteen minutes, so once you’re inside her body, hack your way free with the ax. When the queen’s toast, the others’ll be easy pickings.”
Shoko leaned over me, her hair falling into my face, though I couldn’t feel the dark strands. “Okay, she’s ready. Let’s go!”
Wyatt and Shoko disappeared from view. I was alone, without even my own heartbeat to keep me company.
What I had instead were flies.
They landed on my open eyes, their busy little bodies blotting out the trees. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run, but I couldn’t. I was worse than alone. I was helpless.
A rhythmic thumping resounded beneath me, like someone beating the ground with a sledgehammer, shaking me. I couldn’t feel the shakes, but the trees above me, the sky, seemed to be shuddering. As I sucked in my last few breaths, a terrible smell filled the air. I recognized it this time—the smell of death. Melissa had taught me well.
What if a zombie horde was rising up from the ground beneath me? Was that what all the thumping was about?
Jesus.
And then they were bending over me. Not zombies … things. Veiny, cone-headed creatures with the bluish-gray skin of an asphyxiation victim. They studied me the way Wyatt had, passionlessly, with their white, lidless eyes. The stench emanated from them, from their huge, gaping mouths.
And then the view changed. The dusky sky disappeared, replaced by soil and rock as the cone-headed things, the hardheads, dragged me beneath the earth.
Chapter Nineteen
The scuffling crowd of hardheads herded me through a narrow black tunnel that eventually opened out into a massive cave. Weird shadows, dull and greenish, bent and rippled along the cave above me.
The hardheads had to be carrying me on their backs. None of them had arms, only many, many legs, like spiders or centipedes. They scurried forward on either side of me, crawling over each other in their haste. One of them crawled over me, briefly surrounding me in a cage of wriggling, misjointed legs.
The crowd of hardheads carrying me stilled, and my view tilted sickeningly from the cave ceiling to a widening hole, twice as wide as I was, a hole that grew bigger and closer as I fell into it.
A dark blue space enclosed me; I heard the rushing of fluid like an ocean. I could feel—heat and damp, an unpleasant squeeze and deposit. Then another squeeze and deposit, as though I were being birthed and rebirthed into one hellish, wet pit after another.
I could move, so I thrashed within the deep blue pit, and the ax in my hand bit into something soft.
The ax.
I gripped it in both hands and hacked into the cocoon of slick meat surrounding me, gasping, sucking in a fetid, animal stink. I hacked an opening wide enough for fresh air to waft in and tantalize my newly functioning lungs. I forced my head and shoulders through, and finally I was free to the waist.
An unearthly chorus of insectile chittering greeted me. The greenish cave was full of motion, hardheads scrambling to and fro like cockroaches caught in the light. Actually the hardheads looked more like fleshy scorpions than insects, only instead of tails curling up from their bodies, their cone-shaped heads did, whipping to and fro on the long stalks of their necks like malevolent wrecking balls.
Wyatt and Shoko flew among the creatures, attacking them while simultaneously defending themselves against the hardheads’ rock-breaking skulls. The two of them moved with such quick, easy grace that, if not for the spurting blood, they could have been dancing.
Wyatt, his fists curled around the handles of his push daggers, stabbed one hardhead after another in the neck or back, while Shoko bashed them on the backs of their curved necks with her swinging flails.
“Hanna!” called Wyatt, far down below me, alien in the green light. “Kill the queen!”
Queen? My view of the cave and its inhabitants was limited and would remain so until I got free of this hole. As I attempted to wiggle out, a buzzing screech sounded behind me.
I turned and realized I didn’t have to look for the queen; I was in her, poking up from her school-bus-length back. She was ten times bigger than the others, her cone-shaped head nearly half the size of my own body and glinting with a hard metallic sheen.
“For Christ’s sake, Hanna!” Wyatt screamed. “Kill her!”
I had to laugh at the absurdity of it, my upper body shivering in the coolness of the cave, even as my lower half baked within the queen’s warm body. Might as well ask an ant to kill an elephant.
But I tried. I brought the ax down onto her back.
An ugly screech bubbled from the queen’s sickeningly wide mouth and unnerved me. But when she whipped her head at me, I was ready with the ax; I swung it right at her skull … and the blade snapped clean off the handle.
The force of the blow numbed my hands, and the numbness brought me alive all over, alive and ready to stay that way. When the queen swung at me again—her head wasn’t even scratched!—I took a deep breath and ducked back inside her.
I no longer had the ax, but I had built-in tools—my hands, with their lovely opposable thumbs, perfect for snatching and ripping anything that pulsed. Deep inside the queen, I rediscovered the childhood joy of destruction. With no Lego Space Station or Malibu Dream House to crush underfoot, the queen’s organs made an excellent stand-in.
A long, messy time later, the queen quivered around me and fell, an impact I was cushioned against, encased as I was in her flesh.
I popped out of the hole in her body, the pleasurable zing of destruction still speeding along my veins, but the vibe in the cave had changed; the hardheads shambled aimlessly, their piss and vinegar lost. No fun at all.
Wyatt and Shoko stayed busy, however, picking off the now tame creatures, putting them out of their misery. Sort of. Wyatt was a considerate executioner, usually requiring only one blow to their necks to fell them, while Shoko left several twitching in agony.
I wriggled free of the queen, covered in goo and trying not to stumble in the loose piles of animal bones, wet rock, and mounds of hardhead eggs.
Wyatt bounded over to me, dodging long pillars of color where the stalagmites and stalactites had grown together.
“So how was it?” he asked.
I puked.
Wyatt and Shoko laughed.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s intense, right?”
Shoko swatted me on the back. “Especially once you get past that first stomach.”
I wiped my mouth and reached to straighten my dress out of habit, but it was a slimy ruin; I straightened my shoulders instead. “Do either of you have another ax?”
“Nope,” said Wyatt. “Just this.” He pulled the machete from the back of his pants.
I took it and stumbled back to the dead queen. Her long, whippy neck was surprisingly easy to saw through, considering the hard head it had had to support.
Wyatt and Shoko watched knowingly, like maybe they’d hacked their own share of trophy heads.
I lifted the queen’s head and balanced it against my hip. It was heavy and so wide I could barely wrap both arms around it, but I was determined to carry it home with me, even if I had to roll it through the streets like a barrel.
After destroying all the eggs, we climbed out of the stone-bordered tunnel, and then out of the dark park, crossing the street back to St. Michael’s. The night seemed magically bright after the crushing darkness of the woods, the stars like disco lights, everything abnormally loud, as though the volume had been turned to eleven: Shoko’s slow heartbeat, the click and buzz of gears inside Wyatt that made him tick.
Because he wasn’t human. He couldn’t be.
“So how we gone celebrate our victory, kids?” Wyatt asked at the truck, which glowed like swamp fire in the lit parking lot.
Shoko leaned against the fender like a chick in a lowrider magazine, only way overdressed. “There’s another hive upsquare we can tackle,” she said.
“Hell, yeah.” Wyatt grinned at me. “You wanna help us with the new hive?”
“You killed me.”
His grin faltered.
“You made me drink that stuff. You killed me.”
He rolled his eyes, like my death had meant nothing. It hadn’t, of course, not to him. Robots couldn’t feel. “It only seemed like it,” he said. “And it was just to fool the hardheads. How else were you gone do any damage? You’re not a fighter.”