Slip Song (Devany Miller Series) (26 page)

The goat bleated. I snuck a glance and saw Mina tossing red paint at it. Looked bloody but the goat was led away unharmed.

“No use wasting good stock to impress the gods of the hunt,” whispered the old woman.

Made sense to me. The conch sounded again and Grumpy left the circle. Everyone went back to eating. “That’s it?”

“We keep them short and simple. The rituals, anyway. Celebrations are more important.” Her toothless grin made me respond in kind.

Kroshtuka finally appeared, looking confident and competent. He stood near the fire and waited, his eyes on me. I finished my food, not knowing how long the hunt would take and unwilling to go hungry. When I was done, I walked over to him, my traitorous eyes admiring his body.

“Are you ready to hunt?”

“
Sure. You ready to lose?”

He laughed.

“What are the rules?”

“
We hunt for the white stag. His territory expands beyond the Dreaming Place to the north.”

Ha. I’d been right about that being north. “Okay.”

“We change at the gates. I will not interfere with your change or your hunt. You will not interfere with my change or my hunt. Understood?”

“
Basically, no cheating.”

“
Right.”

“
And no matter what I turn into, no one will try to kill me?” I looked around at the group gazing back at us, their eyes eager and interested.

Kroshtuka raised his voice and addressed the crowd. “Will you all vow not to harm this woman, no matter what form she takes?”

“How scary could she be?” one man asked, looking young enough to be in high school back on Earth.

“
That’s not the question at hand.” He leveled a stern look on the boy who flushed and ducked his head. “Do you all vow?”

“
We do,” the crowd said, with few variations. No one said nay.

“
Does that satisfy you?”

“
I guess.” I had a sudden fierce wish I could change into something beautiful or graceful like a panther.

Panther weak. Dumb. Spider strong. Sneaky.

Sneaky’s good, I told her. We need to win.

She chittered.
Do you want to win?

“
Yes!”

Kroshtuka raised his eyebrows.

I shrugged. “Let’s get this over with.” I did want to win. I did. And if I sneaked another peak at him, well, I was only human. Right?

Not so human anymore. Spider. Skriven. Fleshcrawler. Powerful.

That too.

The gate was just a wooden archway with lodestones on each pole. Only Kroshtuka and I stepped through the barrier. As soon as we did he began to change. I swallowed hard, glanced back at the crowd and then let go of the controls.

Neutria came forward. Pushed. Aggressive, strong. I cried out when the pain hit and the transformation started. Bones cracked, skin peeled. I didn’t know how much was reality and how much was imagination on my part. As she came forward, I fled to the back of her mind, a tiny blip in the multifaceted awareness that was Neutria.

She heard gasps and a scream. Turning on fleet, quick feet she raised her front legs high in the air, spreading her mandibles to show off her fangs.

‘Neutria, stop. We need to find the white stag, remember?’

Yes. Free. Hunt. Mate.

The slyness in her voice made me mentally drop my head in my hands. Oh god.

And then we were off. I only caught a glimpse of Kroshtuka’s speckled pelt before we were past him, plunging into the forest in search of our prey.

-EIGHTEEN-

Kroshtuka streaked through the trees, his agile body zipping fast between the tangles and brambles. I worried about Neutria for about two seconds, until she climbed a tree and ran along the tops, her nimble legs able to find purchase on the smallest branches. When in doubt, she used web to bridge gaps and we soon outpaced our competitor. ‘Fast isn’t necessarily better,’ I thought at Neutria, hoping she hadn’t forgotten our goal.

Be quiet. Let me hunt.

Being the passenger wasn’t fun. I didn’t like having my suggestions dismissed out of hand or being told to shut up as if I were a two-year-old.

I am hunter. You are distraction.

Right.

She didn’t feel excitement the way I did―all dials lighting up―but when she spotted a flash of white I knew it. It was a zing of satisfaction and superiority that felt like joy to me, even framed in such an alien way. We descended in stealth, Neutria’s feet clinging easily to the bark, her spinnerets easing her body through the branches.

The stag stood with ears cocked. A feather dropping would startle him. Neutria could have been made of stone. Her multifaceted eyes allowed her greater detail of the stag’s surroundings. Trees bounded him on three sides but to his left a vast grassy plain stretched as far as Neutria’s eyes could see. That was a lot of space for him to run.

He won’t get the chance.

She waited with the eerie patience of an experienced hunter until the stag decided he must have been hearing things and lowered his head to the green clump of grass at his feet. Neutria eased down a few more inches, freezing again when the deer’s ears flicked.

A noise brought the deer’s head up again. His reddish brown eyes swiveled as he tried to figure out where the threat was coming from. Neutria scanned the area again and we both saw the hyena sliding through a thick bunch of berry bushes. Had he made the noise? No. A squirrel took that moment to drop to a branch and chitter at Neutria. The stag bolted and before I could even shout, Neutria launched herself to the ground.

Kroshtuka streaked by us, his muscular body eating up the distance between him and the fleeing animal. I urged Neutria to go faster, concentrating on the heart inside us, concentrated on opening up its power so that she could draw from it. We gained but the stag and hyena still outpaced us.

‘Can’t you shoot him with your web? Trip him up?’

She ignored me, which was fine and dandy except it wasn’t her body on the line if we lost. Kroshtuka leapt just as the stag made a desperate sudden zag to the left. The hyena missed the deer by inches and the mistake gave Neutria a chance. She cut the stag off and pounced. The stag trumpeted in fear, scrabbling, his hooves sliding in the leaf litter. He slid and Neutria caged him with her legs. I could hear the stag’s frantically pumping heart and smell his rich, warm blood. Neutria crouched to bite the stag when something hit her from the side and sent us tumbling.

A yelp from behind us. Shouts. A curse. Neutria fought with the netting that wrapped and tangled her legs. Her fangs slashed at the material, cutting a few of the strands. Her legs slid out through the hole and her body followed, then she whirled on the humans who dared try capture her. She lifted her front legs high and clacked her fangs.

“
It’s free!”

“
Net it again.”

She skittered away from the next net thrown at her but someone came at her from behind and had the webbed ropes on her before she got fully turned around. She began slashing again but was tumbled to her back. The men made quick work of securing her legs together, dodging her fangs as they tied her down.

‘Don’t panic,’ I told her. ‘As soon as they’re distracted we can change and I’ll slip the ropes.’

Kill. How dare they interfere with hunt. Kill them all.

“It’s a fucking Archaeon! I’ve never seen ‘em out of the swamps,” an excited male shouted. “This thing’s gunna make us rich.”

“
We’ll see. If it don’t kill us all first.” The voice of reason. “What about the hyena? How badly is he hurt?”

The heart I didn’t have skipped a beat. Oh god. What had they done to him? Neutria wriggled and earned a sharp kick in her side that made her hiss. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t see Kroshtuka. Spiders didn’t have necks and the way they’d downed us, we couldn’t see more than the knee high grass, a bit of sky, and a pair of legs.

“It’s the leader of the duallies, ain’t it? That big hyena what’s been harrying the wagon trains through the Anwar. He has a bounty on his head.”

My worry for Kroshtuka grew. To Neutria I said, ‘We have to do something.’

We will wait. Strike when they are asleep.

‘
We might not have that much time.’ I thought about forcing a change but didn’t want to reveal myself too soon. They might think I was just an assassin spider and not take all the precautions they would if they knew the spider could become human.

“
Take her to the Wing. She can fix him up for market. He’ll fetch a pretty penny if he lives.”

“
Hell, even dead he’ll bring coin, if for nothing more than a coat for a rich witch-folk.”

The men laughed, then we were being dragged, bumping across the uneven ground to a wagon. They tossed the ropes around a cross bar that jutted out over the wagon bed and hoisted us onto the back. Kroshtuka’s limp body was tossed up beside us.

Blood sprayed from a wound in his side and soon soaked into the boards beneath him.

I should have slept with him, I thought, hysteria creeping into my thoughts. We wouldn’t have gone on this stupid hunt and he wouldn’t be laying beside me, dying.

Stop. Stupid human. Be still. Be ready. Wait. We will get a chance to kill them all.

Be still. Wait. I wanted to scream. Wanted to explode out of this body and fry them all with power from the heart. As if it recognized itself in my thoughts, the heart pulsed. It swelled in my mind as I concentrated on it until I had sunk deep inside it. Underneath us, the wagon jounced but I barely felt it. When I’d first seen the heart it was an eponymously shaped crystal, warm in my hand. Inside the thing as I was now, I could see that it wasn’t a crystal at all but a vast control room with lights and buttons, levers and cords. Excitement crashed through me. I could learn to use the heart, I just had to figure out how to work it.

Ahead of me I saw a slick controller, its hand grips well used. In front of it was a screen and a map of the worlds. Seeing it, I recognized what it was. These were the controls I used to make hooks. Well used and intuitive. Arsinua was right. I’d burned the right pathways for hooks and here I could see my mind’s idea of what that efficiency and knowledge looked like.

Excited, I spun around, hunting for the place where I’d opened up the heart’s full power and fried a bad guy. It took me a second but I found the blackened plastic and warped metal that burst from the central column running through the middle of the heart. Oh. The sight of the destruction scared me. I’d been killing myself using the power that way. I’d have to figure out something else, something less self-destructive.

Still, it was exciting. I knew where to start now and just needed to learn the controls. Of course, there were a million different buttons. Would I fuck myself up if I just started flipping and pushing?

The hyena whimpered and my awareness expanded away from the heart. The wagon was stopped. We hadn’t gone that far, had we? ‘Neutria?’

You left.

‘
What?’ But she didn’t answer because there were people surrounding the wagon, talking loudly, some prodding our body and exclaiming over our size.

A blonde with wispy hair and a vacant look in her eyes stumbled into the side of the wagon from a rough push between her shoulder blades. She sang in a high, unfocused voice. Her skin was a map of bruises and scars. I looked at her with my Magic Eye and saw broken strands of pale grey energy waving around her. Cyres?

Oh god. She’d been damaged, so much worse than Jasper.

‘
We have to do something, Neutria.’

She didn’t answer me. Cyres extended her hands to Kroshtuka, covering the hole in his side with her delicate fingers. A soft glow emanated under her hands. The hyena whimpered again and she shushed him. “It’s all right. I can make you better.”

Her eyes flicked to Neutria’s and she stared. “Do you see me? I see you.”

“
Shut up and heal the hyena,” a man said, slapping her in the back of the head with the flat of his hand. Her head whipped forward and almost smashed into Kroshtuka’s side. She shook it off but stayed hunched over the side of the wagon.

“
Heal, doggie. Heal.” She blew at the wound and the golden glow scattered. Some flew into the air but more fell onto Krosh’s fur and melted into his skin. I held my breath—even though I knew that I didn’t have lungs to hold the air at the moment—and watched the hyena’s chest for movement. He’d been breathing so shallowly before I’d worried he was almost dead. The steady rise and fall made me thankful. He would be okay.

‘
That was amazing,’ I said to Neutria.

“
Thank you,” Cyres replied.

I eyed her. Had she heard me? No. She couldn’t have. I was inside a spider for heaven’s sake. I didn’t have a brain or brain waves.