I hadn’t seen them before, standing out sharply on the backs of her hands and on her silky temples, lavender and green.
A dark place, a long time ago, the smell of blood. I clenched my back teeth and tried to keep the flashlight steady. We were almost done. Home stretch. Just... get the spell, get back out, wait for the gate to begin to show itself, shut it. Lock it.
The sense of company in the hallway faded abruptly, as if blown away by a sharp wind; I turned my head, seeing nothing in the dark, but in the silence, far away, there was the distinct sound of screaming, as high as a whistle. Sweat broke out on my forehead. Where had they gone? What was the screaming about?
Something screeched so loudly that I dropped the flashlight, scrambled to pick it up while Johnny muttered against the wall. The walls or floor shook from invisible impacts hard enough to make us sway in place, followed by a string of words in the Old Tongue, far away but easily recognizable, freezing my blood in my veins. “The shit was that? They found us?”
“Sounds like it.”
I spun sideways and got my back to the tunnel wall, one hand on the flashlight, one hand on the cool ceramic, feeling the sharp edges of the writing under my fingertips. The entire place was shaking now, irregularly, as if someone were pounding on it with their fist. But the Sumerians had built the place strongly, and nothing came down on us. Clicks and clunks sounded behind me as Johnny worked on the locks, cursing quietly, either unbothered or not actually aware of the continuing commotion. Golden flecks swirled around her head in the half-dusk of the flashlight’s reflection. The carvings on the friezes seemed to crawl, their edges crackling with blue light, like static electricity on a dry day.
“One more,” she said. “Gonna need some blood though.”
“You might be able to get a whole bunch of mine in a minute,” I said, watching as greenish, sickly light began to fill the blind corner, shadows overlapping, bumbling, as if it were unused to enclosed spaces, or limbs, legs, gravity.
“Well, if you’ve got any to spare sooner than that...”
I peeled a hand away from the wall, picked quickly at a scrape on my arm—a bright flare of pain in the just-knitted flesh—and held it out, still trying to keep my back protected. She gingerly dipped her index finger, then touched it to a part of the door that, I saw with shock, was actually moving—slowly, but detectably, turning, like an embedded gear.
The blood stuck for a second, then dribbled down, and there was a heavy thump as something moved deep inside it. Pink light shone out, brighter than the flashlight, illuminating the hallway behind us at last. It was filled with horrors, more legs and eyes than anything should have had, antennae, tentacles, other things that weren’t either, but mostly teeth—lots of teeth. I swallowed a reflexive scream, and spun back to Johnny.
The door wasn’t opening, but the turning stone had sped up. It wasn’t going to be fast enough. I stooped and picked up the shovel just as the first thing leapt, connecting not with the end but with the wooden haft, slapping it against the wall. It lay stunned for a moment, and something else jumped, shooting out a long, ropy tentacle to grab the shovel.
“Ha! Saw that coming, motherfucker,” I shouted, dropping the flashlight to get both hands on the shovel, connecting with the glistening limb, the metal slicing almost through it, clinking musically against whatever it had that passed for bones.
“Holy shit,” I said dazedly, adrenaline making everything buzzy and distant. “They’re like, fuckin, uh, Jell-O. Johnny, look, they’re like Jell-O.”
“Nick! Get in here!”
“Can’t. Too many of these, uh, jelly mofos.” Something was reaching for her ankle where she knelt in front of the half-open door, which I wouldn’t have fit through anyway, not yet. I brought the shovel down, cutting through the limb and sending up sparks where I hit the floor. They all screamed in unison, almost making me drop the shovel. A white light wavered into my face and away—Johnny picking up the flashlight. I felt her, or something, pull at my t-shirt.
Something dark dropped in front of my face, a glimpse of red eyes, and there was a tearing pain in my shoulder. I heard its teeth rip into fabric and then flesh, not the pain at first of being