CHAPTER 164

Tears of joy and relief sprang to her eyes, and she wiped them away before turning around and giving Death a big hug. This, of course, was a huge mistake. It felt like the air had been sucked out of her body upon contact, and he patted her delicately on the back like she might break. Each touch of his hand felt like a jolt to her nervous system.

"We beat them, we won," she muttered into his robes, then shivered. Her teeth were chattering now, and she stepped away from Death. "Shit, I'm freezing."

No sooner had the words left her mouth did she see the cloud of condensation form in front of her and then disperse. Death always left her with a bit of a chill, but this was more than that.

"Um, Lady Beth?" Reggie looked around the living room. "Doesn't it seem far too quiet in here?"

She looked around the front of the house and frowned. Someone should have come to congratulate them already...right?

"Lily? Kisa?" She walked toward the office and frowned at the sight of a rat lying in the boundary of the door. It was on its back and breathing slowly. Further into the office, there were even more of them. It looked like they had all grouped together in a defensive phalanx, but their weapons lay on the floor as if discarded.

"Are they..." Reggie's question went unasked. He stood away from them, as if afraid to know the truth.

"They're asleep, not dead." Beth looked at the door to the parlor with a frown. It was coated in a light green substance that she recognized immediately as chunks of Opal. She took a tentative step forward and something crunched beneath her foot. Startled, she stepped back to reveal the corpse of a scarab beetle, its metallic wings damaged.

"Motherfucker," she muttered, then turned the corner into the lounge.

The room had been destroyed. The statues of Anubis were missing, and most of the artifacts were strewn around the room and broken. Opal's plastic tub was cracked and lying on its side with traces of green, blue, and red slime everywhere. Of Tink, Kisa and Lily, there was no sign.

Her attention was drawn to the middle of the room where the thick marble table was. The top had been moved away from the base, revealing the empty void within. Decorated in glowing hieroglyphics, it held a few loose pieces of rotting fabric that definitely resembled gauze.

The table had been a sarcophagus, and its occupant was on the loose.

With darkness coming, Abella had to rely largely on her ears to track Velvet. The Arachne was making a horrid sound as she ran, something between a growl and a wheeze. If she didn't know better, she would assume that it was a wild animal she tracked and not Velvet.

She could also hear Leeds. The bastard was laughing, but Abella got the impression that he was being deliberately loud about it. He wasn't traveling in a straight line either, and the terrain made it impossible for Abella to land. She could try to outpace the Arachne and crash down in front of her, but that would only work if Velvet decided to stop. If she didn't, it would take too long to get back into the sky and she might lose them both.

A band of shadows burst from the canopy below, but Abella had been watching for just such an event. She rolled to the left, which cost her altitude but caused the shadows to miss. Spreading her wings once more, she used the sudden burst in downward speed to power her new ascent into the sky. The dark bands trailed her upward, but eventually could reach no further. Hands formed on the end reaching for her before the long tendrils retracted into the forest below.

At her new altitude, she could barely hear Velvet over the wind. However, there were a few low-lying clouds she was able to fly through and hide herself from sight. She lost track of Velvet a couple of times, but eventually caught her voice on the wind as she shouted at Leeds.

"Give it back!" she cried, her voice distant.

Give what back? Abella tilted her wings and dropped out of the clouds, mist clinging to her wings and tail. Had Leeds taken something from Velvet? When would he have had the chance to do that? Velvet had been nowhere near the barn when...

"No." Abella was hit by the horrifying possibility that one of the eggs had survived. Had Velvet hidden it from her? Or had she missed one when she broke them?

Distracted, she lost track of Leeds and Velvet. Cursing inwardly, she looked around, hoping to figure out where the two of them could have gone. The sun was officially over the horizon, leaving inky pools of blackness beneath her. Some of the stars had already come out, but it was nowhere near bright enough for her to navigate by.

Scowling, she realized that the treeline wasn't as far away as she thought it was. There was a mountain beneath her, and the topography was immediately familiar. It was the mountain where the Nirumbi lived. Velvet and Leeds hadn't moved out of her range. Rather, they must have gone underground.

She found the clearing from the previous night and landed. There were dead Nirumbi scattered around the entrance. She knelt by one of the corpses and frowned. It had been dead for long enough that it had become cold like the stone beneath.

"Fils de pute." From the entrance, she could hear Leeds' raucous laughter. She hadn't been inside a cave in centuries, the last time being with her clan. It had been after her brother's death, right before her banishment.

"I don't understand why we have to find a new cave." Abella groaned, her hands full of stone. She placed the loose rock into the basket that her mother had brought. The opening to this cavern wasn't big enough for some of the elders to pass through, so it had fallen on the smaller members of the clan to widen it.