Page 79 of Flock Around and Find Out

Because I hurt him.

I thought about how I’d reacted to Kelvin, how hard Kelvin had worked to fix the situation, to wait for me. Was I being the unfair one? Was I expected too much from Harrison too fast?

I curled into the blanket and put the sweater back over my eyes, trying to ignore the light, the questions, the uncertainty.

Whatever the reason, whatever it meant, I couldn’t do anything about it right now, not until I got back from this fucking place, not until I solved the immediate problem.

The rest would have to wait.

With that acceptance, sleep finally came.

Chapter Nineteen

I woke to a sound that my brain couldn’t identify.

No, wait, it wasn’tcouldn’t,it was wouldn’t. It was like seeing something that was just too fucked up to even consider it could be real. It was like if humans suddenly saw a huge face in the sky speaking to us—we’d find a reason to believe it was a hoax just because we really fucking hated the idea of it being true.

We were excellent at lying to ourselves, after all.

So the skittering, the tiny little taps against stone that echoed through the cave was far too telling a sound for me to think deeply about. Instead, my brain protected me and told me it was the wind. It was anything other than what it sounded like—which was a million little spiders all rushing toward me, all creeping around me, close enough that it sounded as though they crawled just above my head.

When something brushed my cheek, I knew I couldn’t ignore it anymore, no matter how nice that seemed.

Instead, I forced my eyes open, wishing immediately I hadn’t.

The crystals in the cave had changed, still glowing, but now the teal shone bright while the others dimmed. It bathed the stone, tinting everything that color.

Of course, staring at the color was just an easy way to ignore the huge fucking centipede-like creature that spanned the length of the cave, curled around itself like a game of snake. It was made of joints that didn’t make any sense. Nothing about it made sense, in fact. It was the same teal as the glowing crystals, and I would have sworn its eyes were gems as well. Near the face it had mandibles that came away from its cheeks, and more legs than I could count lined down each side of its long, agile body.

Just when I thought this nightmare fuel couldn’t get any more disturbing, it reared back, using the end of its body as a counterweight, so it stood upright, tall enough that it could have easily looked Ruben in the eye.

Yeah, fuck this.

I didn’t like randomly calling for help, but I was pretty sure a huge crystalline bug creature was so outside of my wheelhouse it wasn’t even funny. This wasnotwhat I was cut out to deal with. I was made for other jobs—like eating a lot of tasty food, or mouthing off against things larger than me—but certainlynotfor fighting huge bug-like critters.

“A little help?” I called out.

The thing swiveled its head like an owl, the clicking of the parts moving even more unnerving.

“What the fuck is that?” Kelvin asked, the first to rush in. Despite his seemingly careless words, his attention had already locked on the thing, his eyes redder than before. He might seem casual, but he was ready to deal with the problem at hand.

“You said there was nothing in here,” Ruben snapped at Porter.

“I said nothing had moved here in weeks. There was plenty of residual energy. I have to assume that beast hibernates here for long periods.”

“Can we skip the science lesson?” I asked. “This isn’t a fucking documentary. We don’t need commentary. What are we going to do about it?”

“Try to come this way,” Ruben said. “Move slowly, inch by inch. If you don’t seem like a threat, it might let you pass.”

I did as he said, moving in the smallest shuffling steps I could, my hands down to show I wasn’t doing anything threatening. For the first time, I was thankful I seemed pretty harmless. It shouldn’t have any problem with me, right? “Nice bug,” I whispered, my voice soothing, as though I could talk it down from the ledge of wanting to bite my face off.

Except, before I got more than a foot or so, it twisted in a wide jerk, those legs working in tandem to move it around. It came closer but didn’t attack, instead closing off my path, further placing it between me and escape.

“Got another plan?” I asked. “Because this one doesn’t seem to be working too well.”

No one responded right away, making me think that, no, they didn’t.

And it wasn’t so much a question of how to kill it. The truth was that I’d bet they could easily rush in and tear the thing apart—no problem. The problem was more that it could probably do a lot of damage before they managed to get hold of it.

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