Give the Devil His Due (The Sanheim Chronicles, Book Three) (27 page)

Quinn left Carol explaining the situation to Buzz and started running as fast as he could uphill. It was like walking in quicksand. The snow was now at least a foot and a half deep and each step was harder than the last.

“Janus!” he shouted again.

Quinn could barely see five feet in front of him. He looked behind him and saw that Carol and Buzz had vanished into the all-encompassing white.

“Shit,” he said to himself. If he wasn’t careful, he was going to lose everyone.

He pressed ahead through the snow, periodically calling out to Janus and Elyssa. He didn’t have time to address his own clothing needs, but tried to focus on the immediate task at hand. The wind seemed to blow right through him, though. There was ice on his sleeves and in his hair. Where his nose dripped, the snot froze in place. He had a sudden image of Jack Nicholson frozen in the garden at the end of “The Shining.” He tried to block it out.

“Janus!” Quinn shouted again.

He couldn’t understand why Janus or Elyssa weren’t turning around or waiting for them. Surely they must see how risky it would be to split up? With relief, Quinn saw a dark shape emerge from the snow ahead of him. Finally, someone had some sense. He looked back down the mountain.

“Buzz! Carol! I found them!” he shouted.

But when he turned to look up again, Quinn screamed. The shape coming toward him wasn’t Elyssa or Janus. He didn’t know what it was.

As soon as it heard Quinn scream, it dropped into the snow and scurried in his direction. The thing almost disappeared into the powdered snow around it. But Quinn could glimpse the movement of black, insect-like legs. It was coming right toward him.

Quinn turned to run, but he never had a chance. The thing moved with incredible speed, darting to the left and right in erratic movements. As Quinn tried to run, he stumbled and fell into the snow.

The thing jumped on top of him before he could stand up. Quinn lifted an arm to fight it off, but one of its eight legs slammed his arm down. Quinn opened his mouth to scream and it used another appendage to cover his mouth.

Quinn was seized with a terror he hadn’t known since the Headless Horseman tried to run him down. He could barely comprehend what was in front of him. It looked like a giant spider, with eight large, hairy legs. Instead of a spider’s body, however, there was the torso of a human being, except covered in black scales. The face was mostly humanoid but had eight eyes that seemed to look everywhere at once. Its mouth was a slit with two pincers that were covered with black ichor.

Quinn tried to kick it off in a blind panic, attempting to gain some kind of leverage over it. He let out a muffled scream. The thing’s eight eyes all focused on Quinn. An expression passed over its face that looked like annoyance.

“The Dullahan will be quiet if it wants to live,” the thing said, the pincers on its mouth dripped black goo while it spoke.

The creature spoke English, but its voice sounded more like a person gargling than speaking. Quinn could barely make out what it was saying. He tried to scream again and bucked his body in an effort to get out from underneath it. The thing looked around again and then back at Quinn.

“The Dullahan does not understand,” the creature said again. “The sons of Carman have two of your friends. They are trying to find the Dullahan.”

Quinn’s confusion must have shown in his eyes.

“The Damhán Alla will let the Dullahan up now,” the thing said. “But it must agree not to scream.”

The spider-creature tentatively lifted its leg off Quinn’s mouth. Quinn lay there motionless, gazing in horror at the creature above him.

His body sagged in relief when it crawled off him and then looked at him expectantly. Shivering from the cold and freaked out by the monster in front of him, Quinn stood up, never taking his eyes off it.

“Come,” the thing said. “We must hurry.”

“Where?” Quinn asked.

Two of the eyes on the spider’s face rolled while the others all managed to look frustrated.

“To save the Dullahan’s friends before they die.”

*****

Except for his strange companion, everything around Quinn was a sea of white. The snow was a couple feet deep and his clothes were frozen against him.

“Where are they?” he asked the spider-creature.

“The Dullahan will follow me,” it replied.

It bent down into the snow and almost disappeared. Then it abruptly stood up again and turned toward Quinn.

“But the Dullahan will be quiet,” it said. “The Dullahan will not shout or Dub and Dother will kill its friends.”

Quinn didn’t recognize any names and didn’t care. He looked around for Buzz and Carol, but didn’t see them.

“I need to go back for the others,” he said.

“No,” the spider-creature replied. “The Dullahan will come now or his friends will die.”

Quinn sighed but felt he had no choice.

“Just take me to them,” he said.

The thing disappeared into the snow again and began moving uphill. Quinn could barely make out where the spider-creature was except that it would periodically stop and lift a single appendage into the air, apparently waiting for Quinn to find it. When Quinn caught up, there would be another flurry of movement, a brief flash of black in the snow, and then it would reappear again ten feet in front of him.

Quinn first suspected that he was being led into a trap. Perhaps Janus and Elyssa weren’t really caught and this creature was leading him away from them. It didn’t take much imagination to conjure up images of an underground cave where it could spin a web and slowly devour Quinn. Certainly, the creature looked evil enough. Just glancing in its direction was enough to freak out Quinn. He wasn’t particularly afraid of spiders, but he found them repulsive. He thought of Shelob from
The Lord of the Rings
and shivered.

As he kept trudging through the snow, however, Quinn thought less about a potential trap. In fact, he thought less about anything at all. The cold was numbing his brain and each step was harder to take. When he looked to the side of the path, he now saw a steep drop-off. It occurred to him that if he fell, he would either quickly freeze to death or slide right off the mountain and plummet to his doom.

After what felt like ages of playing catch-up with a giant human-spider hybrid, the thing suddenly pulled itself out of the snow.

“We are close,” it said, and Quinn watched the ichor slide down its scales. “I can smell Dother.”

Quinn looked around, but saw only white.

“Where?” he said through his frozen face.

The thing didn’t bother responding. Instead it dropped back into the snow and headed off to the left. The snow pounded Quinn’s face. He couldn’t think straight. Where was he following this thing? And why was he trusting it?

Because I have no choice
, Quinn realized.

That was abundantly true. Since he’d arrived in hell — or the Land of the Dead, or whatever it really was — he had never been alone. Now as he turned around on the mountainside, he realized just how isolated he was. He was an idiot to separate from Buzz and Carol. The three of them at least should have stuck together. Now he was lost in a white ocean. He could no longer tell where the ground ended and the sky began. He didn’t know where he was or how to get back to where he had been. Quinn felt tired and drained. The smartest idea at that moment would be to lie down and wait for the others to find him. As soon as he thought about it, it seemed like a great plan.

The creature was suddenly in front of him.

“Why doesn’t the Dullahan follow?” it said. Quinn took a moment to even process what it said.

He looked at it in a stupor.

“Sleep,” Quinn responded. “I have to sleep now.”

Eight eyes in front of him blinked in unison.

Maybe this thing isn’t even real
, Quinn thought. Was it possible he was following a delusion? Could that happen? He had heard of that happening when people entered… the word escaped him. Hyper? No, that wasn’t it. Hypochondria? That wasn’t it either. His brain was too slow and he couldn’t concentrate.

While he was still trying, the creature in front of him began dancing. Or that’s what it seemed like to Quinn. Its legs were moving together. He suddenly felt a string touching him, then another. He watched as the creature seemed to throw a rope around him.

It’s spinning a web around you, you idiot,
Quinn thought.

But he realized it too late. He tried to scream, but there was already a web across his mouth. The creature wrapped up Quinn in a hurry, but it didn’t put him in a complete cocoon. Once it had his arms and legs secure, it simply dropped him back into the snow and started to drag Quinn behind it.

He tried to grab anything, but he couldn’t move. He couldn’t call for help either. The creature had effectively immobilized him.

It was a trap
, Quinn thought.

But it didn’t make any sense. Why not wrap him in a web in the first place? Where was it taking him? Quinn couldn’t see anything, and tried to move his head to get an idea of where he was going. The only advantage he had from five minutes earlier was that at least his brain was waking up. Hypothermia. That was the word he was searching for. He had been going into hypothermia. But the web wrapped around his body seemed to protect him from the cold. Even his face no longer felt quite as frozen.

Quinn noticed the sky wasn’t white anymore. He lifted his head as much as he could and realized he was being pulled inside a cave. His earlier fear that the thing was luring him into some underground lair now felt completely justified. He had visions of it completing its web and then slowing draining the life from him. He would never see Kate again.

The creature stopped dragging Quinn. He watched it walk ahead into the cavern. For a moment, it disappeared entirely. Quinn had another dark thought: perhaps it wasn’t alone. What if Quinn wasn’t just food for this thing, but for several of them? He wasn’t just lunch, he was a banquet.

But the creature scuttled back a few minutes later, still alone. It crawled over to Quinn and looked at him.

“The Dullahan is warmer, yes?” it asked.

Quinn tried to nod his head. As he did so, the creature suddenly started stabbing its legs at him. Quinn fought the urge to scream and fight it, realizing it was cutting the webbing away. Once his arms were released, Quinn pulled some of it off himself. Much to his surprise, Quinn soon found himself entirely free again. He opened his mouth to speak, but the spider shook its head.

“No,” it said. “Dother will hear. It hears human voices very well. Dub and Dother are inside the cavern. They have your friends. You must take your form.”

Quinn looked confused.

“What form?” he whispered.

Several of the spider’s eyes rolled this time.

“Your form,” it said. “You are the Dullahan. Become the Dullahan.”

Quinn at first had no idea what he was talking about. He had never heard that word before. But it didn’t take long to figure it out.

“The Horseman,” he whispered finally. “You want me to become the Horseman?”

The creature stared at him, and Quinn had the distinct impression it thought he was incredibly stupid.

“Yes,” it responded. “The Dullahan. Now.”

“I can’t,” Quinn said. “I died. I’m not the Prince of Sanheim anymore.”

The spider looked confused.

“This can’t be right,” it said.

“It is,” Quinn said. “If I could be the Horseman, why would I be freezing to death on this mountain?”

The creature seemed to consider that.

“We will discuss later,” it said. “This is most inconvenient.”

Quinn didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. A giant spider-human had just told him it was “inconvenient” he couldn’t turn himself into the Headless Horseman. When had his life become insane?

“We need a new strategy,” the creature said.

It thought for a moment, then it froze in place. It looked toward the tunnel in front of them. Without warning, it leapt away from Quinn, and he watched as it scrambled up the wall to the ceiling. Before he could say anything, the spider went deeper into the tunnel and disappeared into the dark.

“Okay,” he muttered to himself, still keeping his voice low. “I guess I’ll just follow you then.”

Quinn looked back the way he had come. He no longer thought the creature was trying to hurt him. It was clearly helping him, but why? And against what?

He wished he had a knife or, better yet, the Horseman’s sword. He would have settled for any kind of weapon. Instead he was wandering deep into enemy territory with no knowledge of what he was facing or how to fight it. He didn’t even know where his one unlikely ally had gone.

He walked into the tunnel, careful to make as little noise as possible. It reminded him somewhat of the cavern where he’d first emerged into this world, only the walls were covered in bluish ice. He might have felt cold, but it was much warmer compared to the blizzard outside. He saw what seemed like a light off to the left and headed that way. When he rounded a bend, he saw them.