Kingdom Keepers VI(100)

Chernabog was no climber. His cloven hooves slipped on the stairs and kicked Finn, sending him flying. Finn held on to the spider, but landed awkwardly, spraining his right wrist while attempting to break his fall.

Chernabog swiped at Finn, connected, and plastered him to the wall.

Finn dropped the spider. It scurried away before Finn could recover it.

The beast struck out again—a cat toying with a mouse. He sent Finn to the bottom landing, then slid down the stairs after him.

His head aching, Finn tried to navigate the darkness. There was no light at all. It sounded as if Chernabog was groping around in the dark for him. With each blow, the beast loosened the rocks. Sand and dirt rained down. Dust spread. Finn coughed.

Some faint light seeped through.

Chernabog roared. The tunnel shook. Finn covered his ears. Chernabog lowered his horns and lunged at Finn but missed as Finn dove to his left into a pile of bat guano.

Finn spit the disgusting taste from his mouth and crawled away from the beast in a crab-walk. He needed to take advantage of his smaller size, agility, and speed; he also possessed an enormous reserve of anger-derived strength eager to be released, a power that filled him to bursting.

Standing, Finn darted left to right, causing Chernabog to slug the stone wall with his fists and groan with each miscalculated blow. The blows were delivered with the force of a pile driver, cracking the rocks and undermining the thousand-year-old construction. An overhead stone dislodged several inches.

In the dim light, Finn saw Chernabog more clearly. If he’d been a child before the ceremony, he was a man now. His grotesque head, all bull and bat, looked massive, a pink tongue dangling from his jaw. He kicked out and caught Finn, smashing him into the opposing wall.

Finn’s hand fell onto another hairy spider. Grimacing, he picked it up, squeezed, felt for the silk.

Chernabog pivoted and roared. Finn crawled through the beast’s parted legs, elbowed the beast on the backs of its knees. Chernabog kneeled, and Finn drove his right elbow like a spike into the back of the bull’s neck. It was like hitting brick, but the thing cried out and fell forward. Finn kneed it in the spine, forcing it to arch its back; he then dropped another elbow. Knee, elbow. Knee, elbow. With each blow, Chernabog sagged farther forward.

Finn Whitman, defeating a giant.

The beast threw an elbow of his own. Finn hit the wall so hard, he couldn’t see. The spider tried to escape. Finn touched its silk to the stone and hurried deeper down the tunnel. Another hit like that would be his last.

This tunnel was narrow and low-ceilinged.

Finn put some distance between him and Chernabog, but clawing and scratching sounds told him the beast was moving.

With each lunge forward, Chernabog’s back worked against the ceiling stones, unsettling them. More sand and dirt rained down, clouding the air.

Chernabog’s growls grew increasingly strained and vicious. Finn touched another spot of spider thread to the wall, wondering if he’d be alive to follow it out.

He entered a wide but low chamber off which ran three additional tunnels—each in the center of a wall, just like the one through which he’d come.

The chamber’s floor was sticky with mud.

Chernabog approached.

Finn froze. Which tunnel?

He chose the middle, touching the spider silk to the stone.

In the dark, he ran face first into a wall. Trapped.

A dead end tunnel about ten feet long. If Chernabog pinned him here, he’d be torn limb from limb and eaten.

Chernabog burst into the chamber, swinging his clublike mitts.

The chamber offered him more room than a dead end. Finn charged out to face the beast. Needing both hands, he dropped the spider. It scurried away. Finn felt a sharp pang of loss.

How many times had he crushed a spider? How could he suddenly miss one?

Chernabog faced him, panting, lips still stained with Dillard’s blood.

He swiped.

Finn ducked. He spotted the knife protruding from the beast’s leg. Lunged for it.

Chernabog caught him on the side of the head. Finn saw stars. Staggering to the side, he planted his hand into the gooey mud. Another blow. Finn collided with the wall, the wind knocked out of him. A tunnel entrance to his right offered escape, but Chernabog maneuvered to block it and the others. The beast cocked its head, seemed to be considering whether to end Finn or toy with him for a while.

Somewhere inside, Finn knew he still had untapped strength. His head spinning, his chest aflame, he lacked the will to find it. In the battle of the boy against the beast, the beast had won. Finn hung his head.

Chernabog’s hoof moved and crushed the spider. His spider.

Killed so easily.

Like Dillard.

It came from somewhere deep inside, like lava to a volcano, venom to the snake. His muscles swelled, his mind knotted. Finn charged. He hit the beast in the gut, drew the knife from its thigh and heaved it over his head. As Chernabog bent forward from the pain, the knife entered his chest. The beast roared so loudly, Finn’s ears rang.