Dillard’s eyes brightened, then eased shut; and Finn felt the life leave his friend’s body. It was sickening and magical, disgusting and vile.
Finn cried out.
Chernabog followed the sound, the knife still in his leg. He’d tasted the boy’s blood. He wanted more.
Finn caught sight of the writhing Maleficent, distant now, still under Tia Dalma’s twisted spell. The dark fairy managed to squirm to her knees.
“He awakens!” she called out.
Finn carried Dillard’s body into the dark tunnel.
Behind him the jungle erupted in a deafening chorus of savage sounds: hissing, licking, sucking. Finn felt the world driving him deeper into the tunnel.
* * *
“Psst!”
Finn stopped, but the trembling of Chernabog’s feet pounding the ground from behind gave him chills. There was faint light flooding through joints in the overhead stones, just enough to see, but not clearly. Two shadows stepped forward.
Finn recognized Charlene’s voice. “The tunnel splits ahead.”
“And again after that. It’s a labyrinth,” Willa said, “designed to defeat tomb robbers.”
“Like Escher’s Keep,” Charlene added.
“You’re saying we can’t go in?”
“It’s designed so you never come out.”
Chernabog plugged the far end of the tunnel. He crouched and heaved himself forward, narrowing the distance.
“But if I could find my way back out,” Finn said. “If you two took Dillard and hid in one tunnel while I led it down another…”
“You can’t,” Charlene protested. “Seriously, you can’t.”
“But if I could find my way out and he couldn’t?” Finn hoped to appeal to Willa’s sense of challenge, to Charlene’s sense of adventure. He understood what perhaps they did not: the four of them were not getting past Chernabog. They had to come up with some kind of plan. “I need a string. A really long string.”
Charlene tore her shirt and pulled at the frayed ends trying to start a run of thread, but it wasn’t going to work.
“How are you with spiders?” Willa asked.
Finn could barely see her finger pointing out a delicate spiderweb.
“I don’t love them,” he confessed.
Chernabog was close now—too close.
“If you squeeze a spider gently, it lays its silk.”
“I don’t think I want to know that,” Finn said.
“You follow the silk back,” she said. “He…it isn’t smart enough to do that.”
“You’re crazy!” Charlene protested. “What if it breaks? Or runs out?”
Clomp! Clomp! Chernabog was no more than twenty feet away.
Finn widened his eyes, admitting more light. He saw the large black spider, the size of a lemon, at the lower edge of the web. He cringed, thinking of actually taking hold of it.
The image of Dillard’s eyes, of the light slowly going out of them, flashed through his mind, strengthening his resolve. Finn held his breath and snatched the spider from its web. It wiggled in his hand. He dropped it.
Willa scooped it up and returned it to Finn.
“You’re set,” she said.
“Protect him,” Finn said.
“Go!” Willa said. “We can handle it. Go!”
“Good luck!” Charlene added.
“Nothing stupid,” Willa said, quoting Philby.
Finn squeezed the hairy spider. He felt sick to his stomach. But Willa was right—as always. The silk played out like a whisper of silver thread. Finn stuck the end of it to the nearest wall.
A giant hunchbacked troll in the form of Chernabog stood twenty feet from him. The demon sniffed the air. And again.
It had poor eyesight. Finn realized. Chernabog not only didn’t fit in the tunnel, but he could see only a few feet before him.
Finn dragged his running shoe across the stone floor to make sure Chernabog followed him and did not head toward the girls. The beast sniffed the air again. If he sensed Dillard’s blood…Finn made sure he heard him, made sure to lure him in his direction.
Chernabog grunted and lunged forward with surpris- ing speed and agility, his hand—the size of a catcher’s glove—swiping the air mere inches from Finn’s face.
Attaboy, Finn thought.
Giving the spider a gentle squeeze, Finn touched the silk against the wall of the left tunnel and continued deeper into the darkness.
Chernabog followed.
THE CREATURE WAS a quick learner. He was moving faster now in his pursuit.
Finn arrived at another Y in the tunnel—the third since he’d left the girls. This time he faced descending stairs and more darkness to his left, level and light to his right. He touched the spider silk to the wall, and descended.