Page 112 of The Catacomb King
But they weren’t. They were definitely rain.
Which meant the drought was over.
Because, I realized, the Monarch had had His sacrifice.
Not from me. From Hades. Who had killed his own father.
The Monarch had accepted Hades’s sacrifice. In exchange, He had ended the drought.
He had also resurrected my mother.
In other words, He had completed the Vizeking’s ritual.
And now He would have his meal.
Mütte
The King’s carapace bubbled like batter on my mother’s cast-iron pan back home, that time when I was ten years old and my mother had scrounged and saved for three months to buy enough sugar to make griddle-cakes for my birthday.
More legs punched out of the King’s carapace. Spider-legs. Goats’ hooves. Eagle talons. Bat wings.
It was Calix who shocked me back to myself. He broke away from us and ran at his soldiers. He waved his arms at them and bellowed, “Retreat! Get out of here! Go, go, go!”
But the War Police were too numbed by whatever the Vizeking’s lackeys had done to them.
Lightning-fast, the Monarch pulled the King’s discarded body upright. He sprouted a thousand eyes where the King’s human eyes had been. Mirrored fly-eyes. Snails’ eyes on stalks.
Then He took an enormous, bloody bite out of His own arm.
Elke and I gasped. We pushed back. But the Monarch had more arms where that came from. Even as the King’s spider-fangs dripped muscle and blood, three more arms shoved out of his body to take the chewed-up arm’s place.
Hades was so close to shore. I dove forward to grab him and fell on my face. My broken hips. They wouldn’t carry me.
Hades gasped my name. The moment he was on dry land, he scooped me up. The jostling was excruciating, but I had never been so glad to be in his arms.
“Your Godship!” cried the Vizeking at the Monarch. He raised his arms joyfully. “Welcome! May I present an additional sacrifice for your delectation.” He swept his arm around at the shore full of soldiers. Calix cried out in grief and horror. The Vizeking added, “As a symbol of our devotion.”
The Monarch’s eyes pointed in all different directions. It took Him a moment to fixate on what the Vizeking was pointing to.
And when he did, His attention slid off the soldiers immediately.
And landed on me.
A voice like a thousand avalanches boomed, “Mütte.”
Calix and I clapped our hands over our ears. Hades flinched wildly, but he was forced to listen to that horrible voice or else drop me, and he wouldn’t drop me. Elke recoiled.
My mother whispered, “I told you.”
Hades broke into a run. I reached for my mother. Elke seized her and ran after us, hot on our heels. But Calix hung back. He wouldn’t leave his men behind. Just like — I had to admit it — he hadn’t left me behind when I’d been kidnapped.
I screamed at him. He threw me one anguished, determined glance.
And then he turned his back on me.
Hades slowed. He glanced back and rolled his eyes. “Thatguy?” he demanded, sounding like no one so much as Calix himself.
“He’s my best friend!” I shrieked. “Or he was before he became a warmongering dick! No, don’tyougo get him!” Iscreamed as Hades started to hand me off to Elke. “You think I want you eaten either?”
