Page 107 of The Catacomb King
The King took notice of Elke out of the corner of his eye. He stopped. Turned, ponderously. Began to slosh over to Elke. Raised a hand to smash her against the wall.
Elke jumped out of the way. She skittered in little circles on the wall. But she couldn’t get any closer to us, and she was still twenty feet away. The walls were too steep, the opening above our heads too high. She climbed upward, out of the King’s reach, but that only put her farther away from us.
For a beat, nothing moved except the King, who was hammering on the wall so hard I was afraid Elke would fall off.
But then, a moment later, Elke tossed a skein of spider-silk at us.
Every chaosgötter in the room gasped. The Vizeking, his lackeys. Even the King appeared appalled.
Elke’s face, far away, was as red as the Vizeking’s clothes. But she kept going, spinning out the skein. The King got hold of himself and jumped to smash her again. But Elke was too dextrous. She dodged him and kept going. When the King landed back in the Lake, a wave smashed into my face like a sack of bricks. I spluttered and clung to Hades and the candlestick and searched around desperately for Calix. He was bobbing away.
The end of Elke’s skein floated over to him just before he was out of reach.
Calix grabbed it, shuddering. At once he tossed it to me. I almost flinched, too. It was sticky, almost resinous. But that only meant it would be better at doing what I needed it to do.
I tied Hades to the candlestick so that his head would stay above water. Wincing, I tore off the end of the rope, hoping it wouldn’t hurt Elke.
Then I threw the skein back to Calix.
“No!” Calix yelled. “What are you doing? Come here!”
“Get them to shore!” I screamed at Elke. Elke hesitated, obviously wanting to stay back to help me and Hades. My panic surged — and with it, anger.
Without meaning to, I pitched my voice up to a roar. “DO AS I SAY!”
Elke obeyed.
I didn’t have time to feel bad. The King’s back was still turned. I thrust my hand through the crown like it was a bracelet and dove into the water.
I prayed to any god, all the gods, even the dreaded Monarch, that the undertow would whip me where I wanted to go. Just one more time.
And it did.
I smashed into the King.
Sacrifice
Ispluttered. Sucked down water. Coughed it up. My lungs burned. I scrabbled at the King’s carapace for purchase, but it was as slick as oil. In an instant I was whipped underwater again.
I almost lost hold of the crown. Blindly I grabbed for it in the water. Its dagger-sharp points sank into my hand. I hissed at the pain and again as the icy water bit at the edges of my wound. But I slammed the crown points-first into the King’s carapace. They sank in like a pick into a rock face.
The King roared. His attention was jerked away from Elke instantly. He slammed one of his human fists into my face.
I felt the flesh of my face split. Heard, rather than felt, the bone crunch. One more hit like that and I’d be dead.
I grabbed the King’s arm, wrenched the crown out of his body and smashed it in again. Higher up. This time, I hauled myself out of range of the King’s fist, although I was just an instant too slow. The blow landed on my thigh. I screamed as the bone cracked.
But I was high enough up now to get my fingers into the ridges of his carapace.
I ripped the crown from his body a second time and climbed. The crown, and the King’s body beneath my feet, were slick with his blood. In the strange blue light of the Lake, the King’s blood was neither red like mine nor green like Mackr’s had been, nor black as I might have expected of a creature half-absorbed by the god of Chaos. It was rainbow.
The King stopped trying to punch me. He floated in the Lake.
I paused my climbing. I searched wildly for what had made him fall still. The Vizeking? No, the Vizeking was standing in the same place, looking enraged. Elke or Calix? No, Elke was nearly at the shore. She had reeled Calix and my mother up with her silk and cocooned them so that only their heads stuck out. Calix looked disgusted and furious and scared shitless. For half a beat I worried that the Vizeking or his lackeys would try to stop Elke when she reached the shore, but they were all focused on me. Me and their King.
Hades was still unconscious. From here, I could not be sure he wasn’t dead.
The King’s body was thrumming.
