Page 68 of Jay's Silence

So tactical. Don’t split the party.

The four demons stopped the moment Rehan’s body vanished from view. We’d made it another twenty feet before the human riot line hit them. Their silver-blue magic drained out of their flesh. They fell to pieces and decomposed like a time elapse on a nature documentary.

The police line halted, bewildered by a battleground void of anything but retreating Orcs, giving us the few seconds we needed to escape. Instead of running, our little group came to a halt. I couldn’t see over my mate's tall fucking heads, but the sound of a metal manhole cover hitting cobblestones made my heart skip.

Og dropped into the hole.

“No-“ I started to say, but Lux was already on Og's heels. “Shit.” I clenched my fist. At least anyone tracking our invisibility spell would be useless now.

Rehan and Tyson stilled, waiting for me to go next. The colors of the world started to bleed back as our distance from Og destroyed his invisibility spell. I thought I’d fucked up taking them to Club V. This was a hundred times worse.

And, if I was right, exactly where Marduk wanted us.

What the fuck did he have to do with any of this?

Several police officers shouted and pointed towards us.

I swallowed hard. “There’s a second London under London. Scales on, claws out. Trust no one but find a mage.”

It wasn’t enough. I could have spent the last year preparing them for Under London, and they’d still be in the dark.

Don’t split the party.

My dragons needed to stay together - even without me.

I didn’t say another word and dropped into the unknown.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

OGDEN

The moment I jumped through the manhole, magic tingled across my skin. An unmistakable barrier, too much like the one we put around our island, hesitated to let me through. I hovered, before an odd popping sensation made the pressure in my ears squeeze, and I dropped.

As I fell, my connection to Jay diminished. Terror shot through me, and I flailed like a fledgling. I could do nothing to fix it. I had no control. My scales instinctually covered my body to protect me from whatever was at the bottom.

I badly wanted to open my wings, but before I could decide how vast the darkness around me was, I hit a rock and dirt scattered floor, feet first. My legs jarred, and my joints creaked. I rolled to spread out the impact. Seconds later, Lux, also covered in scales, landed in a heap, letting out a painful bark.

I pulled him out of the way and prepared to catch Jay. But when I looked up, only the solid ceiling of a cave, covered in thick white webbing, filled my vision. Whatever hole I fell down was gone. My connection to Jay was barely a thread now. Bile rose in my throat.

I jumped first. I separated us.

Precious seconds ticked by and Jay didn’t fall into my arms. An odd, mournful moan came from my left, and a thick slapping followed by a hissing chitter forced me to take in my surroundings.

I’d expected to be in some tunnel system, either a sewer or a passageway from the underground public transportation that crisscrossed London. Instead, the textured walls looked like a cave. Moss clung to the sides, and little waterfalls dripped, hidden under more spider webbing. The smell hit me next: some mixture of rotting meat and oil.

The chittering came again, and what I thought was a low-hanging rock in the ceiling moved. Distinct legs stretched, each one covered in spikes and goopy balls of orange slime. The massive spider dropped a foot and slightly swung on a rope of webbing as thick as my fist.

“Whatsss do wwwe havvvesss here,” it hissed, the sound echoing around the cavern.

Lux pushed to his feet and pressed into my backside. Some of my terror receded. Lux. Someone I trusted, someone who loved Jay. As long as we worked together, we could fix this. But we hadn’t worked together. Not since I spend the night sucking his dick. We hadn’t even talked about it.

Tyson’s roar split the air. Unlike Lux and I, the fire dragon landed with one leg bent and one arm down. It looked cool as hell. He stood, still covered in Orc blood, and his wings sprouted from his back. With a massive leap, the fire dragon shot into the air, only to hit a solid ceiling. Instead of bouncing off of it. One of his wings caught in the spider web. He thrashed, and the entire web shook.

Before he tangled his wings further in the sticky web, Rehan’s massive scaled body materialized exactly where Tyson hung, and the two crashed to the ground, leaving a small crater and a cloud of dust in their wake.

“Sssssss, four of you,” the voice hissed, clearly unhappy. “And covvvvvered in scccalesssss. My ssssbeautiful websss.”

Jay wasn’t with us.