Serpent's Storm (36 page)

Beside her, my mother sat similarly bound, her once beautiful face slack in the harsh fluorescent light. At first, I thought she was dead because her eyes were so dull and lifeless, but then they welled up with tears and I understood that she was very much alive, just locked inside the terrible grief she was experiencing. I could imagine what she was going through—and I knew the shock alone would be enough to drive anyone a little insane.

“Help me untie them—” I yelled at Frank, but stopped, the words frozen in my mouth when I saw two Bugbear guards waiting behind the office door. I instinctively threw myself down on the floor, out of the way of the punishing violet light emanating from the creatures’ eyes.

But Frank wasn’t so lucky.

Hit with a direct blast, he fell to the floor and started convulsing, his arms and legs twitching as both Bugbears focused their energy on him. Something I’d noticed during my last two run-ins with the Bugbears was that their laser beam eyes seemed to work best on corporeal flesh, not on inanimate objects—which had given me an idea of a way to protect myself. With the Bugbears otherwise engaged, I started crawling toward my dad’s polished brown oak desk.

“Come on, you pricks!” I screamed, trying to draw their eyes as I crouched underneath a large, rectangular plate glass window. “I’m over here!”

Immediately Frank was forgotten in favor of me, the moving target. I crawled as fast as my hands and knees would carry me, sliding toward the safety of the other side of the desk just as the Bugbears unleashed their precision laserlike beams of light. The spot where I’d crouched only seconds before sizzled under their gaze, then the violet light faded as they realized I wasn’t there. They moved to readjust their trajectory, but by then I was safely ensconced behind the thick wooden desk and completely out of their reach.

I would’ve given myself a pat on the back for my quick thinking, but my plan pretty much ended there. I’d bought myself a modicum of safety, but that wouldn’t last very long once the Bugbears realized they could descend on me together and I’d be ripe for the picking. I racked my brain, trying to think of anything I could do to waylay them, but I was at a loss.

Struck with what we’ll call Divine Inspiration, I started ripping the desk drawers out of their cubbies, digging around in each one, looking for some weapon I could use against the Bugbears. Drawer after drawer, there was nothing but papers. Finally, in the last drawer, I chanced upon a stapler and a red blown-glass paperweight.

“They’re coming, Callie!” Clio screamed, having managed to worm her way out of her gag.

I grabbed the paperweight, hefting its bulk in my hand. Maybe I could throw it at one of the Bugbears, and if my aim was good, I could knock it out—

Oh, who am I kidding?
I thought miserably.

I was a softball dropout who couldn’t hit a garbage can with a crumpled wad of paper. It looked like the jig was up; I’d been outnumbered and outgunned and the best course of action was to just hold up the white flag of surrender (in this case it was a red paperweight of surrender) and hope the promethium killed me before my sister Thalia did.

I took a deep breath and raised the hand holding the paperweight up in the air. Suddenly, my arm was enveloped in a red-hot poker of pain as the Bugbears directed their laser eyes at my exposed appendage. I screamed and I dropped the smoking paperweight onto the desktop, my fingers sizzling as I pulled them back protectively to my chest. I heard a loud
crunch
behind me, and I quickly scuttled around to the other side of the desk, stifling another scream when I found myself face-to-face with a dead Bugbear, its eyes black cinders in an otherwise untouched face. I reeled away from the dead body, crawling backward until I was in the safe zone again, then I reached up onto the desk, scrambling for the paperweight—but it was gone.

“Clio,” I yelled, my voice hoarse from screaming. “Do you see the paperweight? Where did I drop it?”

“It’s right here,” she said, her voice so close, I could’ve sworn she was right beside me, and when I looked up I found my baby sister standing over me, paperweight clutched tightly in her hand. “You got them both in one shot, Cal, when their laser eyes reflected off of the paperweight!”

Instantly, I was on my feet, wrapping Clio in a giant bear hug.

“But who untied you?” I said, squeezing her scrawny frame tightly in my arms.

“The Bugbears spelled our bindings,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “They just fell off once you killed them.”

I released her and stared down at my dastardly handiwork, my heart slamming nervously inside me. I looked around, half expecting a few Harvesters to show up with condemning countenances, butterfly nets unfurled as they made ready to disparage me for committing two more murders. Yet after a few minutes when no one had arrived to collect the souls of the dead, I decided to proceed as if the Bugbears had committed suicide (which they had,
kind of
) and chalked the whole thing up to blind luck.

Still, the joke about Death being the worst mass murderer in history, well, it wasn’t really a joke. All you had to do was look around at the legacy left there in that office by one Death, a little luck, and a paperweight.

“Who’s that?” Clio asked, her gaze fixed on Frank, who lay unconscious in the middle of the floor, his hair and muttonchops singed by the direct contact he’d had with the Bugbears’ powerful laser eyes. His face appeared innocent and peaceful in repose, but I knew it was all a front, that underneath the handsome exterior lurked the soul of a snake.

“That,” I said, pointing at Frank, “is a son of a bitch.”

“Whatever you say, Cal,” Clio replied, looking dubiously at the handsome stranger.

“He’s another wannabe Death like me and Daniel,” I continued. “And he’s super bad news.”

“We should tie him up,” Clio said, grabbing a lamp from a side table. “Use the power cord to bind his hands.”

It was nice to have Clio in my orbit again. Her brain moved much faster than mine, meaning she could figure out the solution to a problem in record time—she was great to have around in the middle of a crisis situation.

At Clio’s suggestion, I dragged an expensive metal standing lamp over to where Frank lay prone on the ground and used the cord to tie up his feet. It wasn’t perfect, but between my handiwork and Clio’s, we got Frank’s lanky body secured.

Our next order of business was to figure out what to do with our mother. She hadn’t moved from her spot on the couch since I’d killed the Bugbears, and it didn’t look like she was going to be coming back to reality anytime soon. I debated leaving her where she was but quickly discarded that notion, not trusting that Frank wouldn’t find his way out of his bindings and hurt her.

“We could take her to the cafeteria,” Clio suggested. “That’s where they’re holding most of the Death, Inc., employees. At least she’d be safer there.”

“You’ll both be safer there,” I said, kneeling down in front of the couch and taking my mother’s hands in my own.

“No way,” Clio shot back. “You’re not leaving me in the stupid cafeteria like I’m some kind of baby. I’m going where you go.”

I wasn’t going to argue with her. Not because I wasn’t right, but because she was smarter than me and would win any argument she trapped me into.

“Fine,” I said as a wave of fiery nausea hit me so hard I had to close my eyes to fend it off.

“What’s wrong with you?” Clio said, concern written on her features, but I only shook my head. I didn’t have time to go into specifics, and besides, I knew she would only freak out if I told her the truth, and I needed her functioning on all cylinders to help me get our mom down to the cafeteria.

“Just something I ate,” I said, ignoring the irony of those words. “Just . . . help me get Mom out of here.”

I turned my attention to my mother, trying to catch her eye, but her gaze was fixed inward, lost in some inner dream world where my dad was still alive and Thalia wasn’t evil incarnate. I didn’t know how much time I had left before the promethium breached the jewel’s exterior and took full effect, but I at least had to try to get through to her while I still had the chance.

“Mom,” I said, rubbing her freezing hands in mine. “I know that you’re hiding in there because you’ll fall apart if you come out, even for a second.”

“We should really jet, Cal,” Clio said from the doorway, where she was keeping watch over the hall.

“Just a minute,” I said to my sister, then I instantly felt bad about sniping at her and apologized. “Sorry, just, please, give me a minute, okay, Clio?”

She nodded, watching my face intently for some sign as to what my damage was.

“Mom,” I continued. “I just want to tell you I’m sorry. About Dad, about me, about everything . . . and that I love you. And I promise, if I get any say in what happens here today, I’ll make the Ender of Death pay for what he’s done to you.”

I paused, my throat constricting.

“And that’s all.”

I leaned over and kissed her softly on the cheek, then I swung back around to face my sister.

“Let’s get her out of here.”

I grabbed one arm and Clio took the other and together we lifted her from the couch.

“Boy, she weighs a lot for someone with bird bones,” Clio grunted as she slid her hand underneath our mom’s armpit. I did the same and we started hustling her over to the doorway. Clio was right, though—for someone so tiny, the woman weighed a ton in deadweight.

“How’re we getting her over that?” Clio said, gesturing with her chin to where Evangeline’s body lay blocking the exit.

“We just step on her,” I said. Evangeline had made her own bed and now she was gonna have to lie in it.

“All righty, then,” Clio said, stepping onto Evangeline’s spine with a sickening
crack
. “This is just gross, Cal.”

“No kidding,” I replied, repeating the same
crack
ing step once Clio had made it over to the other side.

We hustled our mother down the nondescript hallway, her weight pulling at my shoulder as her high-heeled shoes caught at the Berber carpeting. Our mother had always been small, but the shock of what’d happened to her seemed to have shrunk her density down to black hole-sized proportions.

We got to the elevator and Clio slammed her fist into the down button. Immediately, the door slid open—it’d never had a reason to descend back to the lobby after Frank and I had used it—and we climbed inside.

“What floor?” I asked, my gut churning, the fire pouring down my intestines and up my throat.

“Twenty-seven,” Clio said without having to think about it. I’d forgotten she’d interned at the Hall of Death and therefore knew her way around the building.

“Twenty-seven it is, then,” I said, grappling with my mom’s body so I could press the button.

There was a shudder and then the door started to close.

“I hate to do this to you, kiddo,” I said suddenly—and then I shoved my mom’s body toward Clio, the deadweight pinning my sister against the wall as I slipped out the elevator door. I hadn’t wanted things to go down that way, but Clio had left me no choice. I needed her and my mom out of the way in the event I died and they lost their immortality. Then, at least, when I was gone, they had a shot at getting away before Thalia could dispose of them for good.

As soon as the elevator door had closed, I ran back down the hallway and, ignoring the burning in my stomach and throat, crouched down beside Evangeline. I stuck my face right up in hers and screamed:

The woman’s broken body shuddered and she opened her eyes, her dilated pupils inches from my own.

I grabbed her ear and twisted, eliciting a pathetic keening noise from somewhere deep in her throat.

“Had enough?” I growled as she swallowed back a terrified sob. “Now tell me where she is.”

She blinked back tears as I released her ear.

“Hall . . . of . . . Death,”
she hiccupped.

“Are you lying to me?” I said, grabbing her smooth scalp in both hands and lifting her head off the carpet. She squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would make me disappear.

“You better not be,” I whispered, leaning down so my lips were against the cartilage of her ear. “Or I’m gonna come back here and break all the bones in your face,
capisce
?”

“Yes,”
she slobbered into the carpet.
“I . . . understand.”

I dropped her head back onto the carpeting, leaving her to gag in her own spittle. My aggression spent, I stumbled back down the hallway toward the elevators, using the wall to hold myself up. I was getting worse, my body going haywire with the effects of the promethium, and time was not on my side. I was seriously starting to doubt I’d be able to get to Thalia before I kicked the bucket.

Relief washed over me when I reached the bank of elevators, my hands raw from gripping the wall so fiercely. I was convinced that if I could just get into the elevator car, everything would be all right. I jabbed my finger into the call button, leaning against the wall for support as I waited for the elevator to come. I stood there, my stomach roiling as I was hit by another wave of fiery nausea. My eyes swimming with tears of pain and humiliation, I dropped to my knees, clutching my belly.

“I don’t want to die, God,” I said, looking heavenward. There was no reply—but then I hadn’t really expected one. I wasn’t looking for an answer; I just wanted my opinion duly noted.

The elevator door finally slid open and I fell inside, crawling into the back of the car as the door closed like an accordion behind me. I used the wall to hoist myself back onto my feet, my face pressing into the cold metal to steady myself. I’d been to the Hall of Death before with Jarvis and I knew there was a trick to getting the elevator to take me there. I racked my brains, trying to remember exactly what buttons Jarvis had told me to press the last time.