Bishop tested the roaches’ speed and the distance at which they heard the music, for Smythe’s sake. We got up to a comfortable forty-five miles per hour, and I could only imagine how our procession must have looked from the outside.
An ice cream truck that had seen better days, blasting a noise that fell between a cat fight and the death of a stringed instrument, while dozens of man-sized roaches scurried in our wake.
I was going to have nightmares about this for years.
Since Bishop had things under control, I checked in with the sentinels and then with the cleaners. Anca had drawn surveillance duty on the OPA side of things while Lisbeth and Milo kept an eye on the city for me. They didn’t have full control of the cameras, like Bishop did from his command center, but they could make do. Especially with Remys on the ground.
Please don’t let this blow up in my face.
I really did not want to have to explain to Linus how I let this happen if it all went sideways. Don’t get me wrong. The Giant Martian Roach Parade that Swarmed Atlanta would make a fantastic creature feature. I would totally hit a matinee for that. But I would prefer making Linus proud to making him wonder if I had been inhaling bug spray to dream up this cockamamie idea.
Baying rang out all around us, the pack at work keeping the roaches on the straight and narrow. I caught glimpses of Midas here and there. He was keeping an eye on me, and yeah, it made me all warm and gooey inside like caramel brownies fresh from the oven to know he was there if I needed him, but I tried not to read more into it than that.
No more surprise visits from Remys let me hope that meant the coven situation was under control. They might require more time to mobilize than we first thought. Or maybe they were too confused by the bug parade to figure out how to counter it before we nuked their supply chain. A girl can hope, right?
We made it two-thirds through our route without incident, and I started feeling, dare I say it, confident.
Big mistake.
Huge.
That tiny spurt of optimism was all the encouragement required for doom to settle across the land.
As we exited the city, bound for the “refuge,” a yelp set my heart pounding.
“How much farther?” I leaned over Bishop’s shoulder. “Can we go any faster?”
“About three miles.” He coaxed a blip of speed out of the truck. “This is all I got.”
Another outcry caused my sweaty palms to slip off the seat. “We’ve got company moving in fast.”
No Remy magically appeared with an update, and One wasn’t answering her phone.
That couldn’t be good.
“There,” Bishop announced. “That’s where we’re headed.”
I’m not sure how I expected a roach sanctuary to look, let alone a fake one, but this was a gaping hole in the earth. Literally. It was a pit with a thick reddish-brown ring crusting the upper edge.
“What is that for?” Smythe wondered. “It’s rather large to be left open like that.”
“Time to unload.” Bishop slammed on the brakes. “Smythe, take your gear to the far side of the hole.”
I helped load him up, and he trotted off with Eustice at his heels. Bishop waited until the music picked up on Smythe’s end to kill the sound in the truck. I plopped down into the passenger seat and waited for Bishop’s grand plan to unfurl while Ambrose went to investigate the ring around the pit.
“Smythe lures them to him, they fall in the hole, and then we trap them in a circle and blow it sky high.”
As Bishop spelled it out, Ambrose relayed his surprise over discovering crystalized necromancer blood.
Linus was forever tinkering, as the modified pen burning a hole in my pocket attested to, but this was next level genius if it worked. Dangerous as hell if it fell into the wrong hands, depending on the power of the necromancer who donated the blood—in this case, likely him—but still an extremely cool example of the inner workings of his mind.
The crystals could prove invaluable for setting quick and dirty circles when relying on the modified pen or a brush and pot of ink would take too long. Dry granules would also work on uneven surfaces better than a wet medium. Assuming the desiccated form held as much power as the liquid.