Page 177 of Cherish

The same thing starts to happen with his claws and his tail as well, until every part of him looks like some kind of human/monster meant to terrify small children—or anybody else.

Except, apparently, for the bees, who take one look at him—and the honey I now see on his hand—and head straight for him like their stingers are on fire.

Trapped as he is between his human and dragon form and slowed down to the speed of cold honey, he’s a sitting duck for the bees and whatever horrors they want to rain down on him.

I glance down at the vial in my hand that now has a blob of honey sliding down the inside of the glass, and I slam the cork on top and shift into my gargoyle form. In my stone form, I’m completely impervious to beestings, so I throw myself in front of Flint and the attacking bees.

The noise is horrible, their buzzing so incessant that it makes it impossible to concentrate or even think. That doesn’t stop me from trying to bat them away with my open palm, but it does prevent me from coming up with any kind of plan on how to deal with the attack. Add in the fact that Flint is also batting them away—without the benefit of being stone—and all three of us are in a world of hurt, something that Hudson must notice right away.

Because the next thing I know, all of the bees currently attacking us disintegrate instantly. I barely register that we’re free before Hudson screams—a horrible, spine-chilling sound that has my heart stuttering in my chest—before falling to the ground a few feet from the water’s edge, clutching his head in his hands.

96

You Can Run but

You Can’t Hive

“Hudson!” I scream, tearing around the tree toward him. “Hudson, are you all right?”

But he doesn’t answer. He’s too busy clutching his head and writhing on the ground.

At first, I don’t understand what’s happening to him—he’s destroyed stadiums, poofed thousands of shadow bugs in the Trials, fought off gargoyle skeletons night after night and never had this reaction. It always hurts him to use his power, to experience all of those lives—one of the many reasons I hate for him to have to do it—but not like this. Never like this.

So what’s different about a bunch of bees? What makes getting inside them so impossible for him?

“Hudson.” I want to fall to the ground beside him, cradle his head in my hands, but I’m still clutching both vials and he’s writhing too much for me to get close.

He just keeps moaning, over and over, “Souls. Souls. Souls. Souls. Souls.”

And that’s when it hits me. These bees do more than just protect the honeycomb. They make the honey. The honey is what we’re here to get, Celestial Dew, the thing that somehow will break apart two bound souls. And if the honey is Celestial, then it’s not a stretch to think the bees that make it are, too.

“Oh my God,” I breathe, and my stomach twists like a braided rope. In disintegrating the bees, Hudson has put himself inside the mind of an ancient, Celestial being.

Fear swamps me as I wonder if there’s any coming back from this. Is there any way for his mind to let go of what it saw? What it felt? Or will he suffer with this kind of pain forever?

Just the thought has my stomach twisting again, but I do my best not to show it as I glance around the meadow. Hudson isn’t the only one suffering right now.

Jaxon hasn’t managed to drop the honeycomb yet, and a whole new set of gigantic bees is swarming him from all directions. Flint is trying to help him, but he’s being swarmed, too. Both men have giant welts forming from beestings all over their exposed skin, eyes puffing up and nearly closing, hands swelling up like catcher’s mitts. And still, the bees keep stinging them over and over and over until Flint stumbles to his knees.

I rush over to help bat the insects away, careful not to touch the honeycomb in Jaxon’s hand, but there are too many.

Macy and Remy race to us and begin weaving spells in the air. Spells that form protective barriers around Flint and Jaxon that shatter almost immediately. Spells that fling bees back a few feet, but they never scoop many, and the few they do catch seem to only get madder when they fly back. In fact, absolutely nothing they do seems to have any real effect on the bees.

Eden is using her ice breath to try to freeze as many bees as she can. And while the cold does seem to repel them for a few seconds, the moment they manage to get out of the ice stream, they swarm again.

Heather has picked up a stray branch and is putting her years in middle-school softball to use as she swings for the fences. But more bees are coming than she has any hope of swatting away.

Then again, there doesn’t seem to be much any of us can do against these bees.

Even worse, before my horrified eyes, the bees go from swarming only Jaxon and Flint to stinging all of my friends, and their tortured shouts fill the air.

Hudson is still on the ground, face pale, jaw clenched in pain. He’s not yelling now, but I don’t know if that’s because the agony has lessened or because he doesn’t have the energy to cry out anymore.

A glance back at Flint has a scream welling in my throat, and I rush to swat at more bees. He’s stopped shifting, and his entire face is swollen with huge welts until it’s nearly unrecognizable.

His jacket and shirt are ripped from long minutes of giant bee parts batting against them—legs, wings, antenna, stingers. All of them are so huge and sharp that they cause damage wherever they touch—which is everywhere, judging from the fact that every place his skin is exposed is swollen with enormous, pus-filled stings.

His neck, his hands, his chest, his abdomen, and even his non-prosthetic leg are three or four times their normal size with pus. I let out a scream when even his knees can no longer support him and he falls to his side, unmoving.

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