Banshee Worm King: Book Five of the Oz Chronicles (29 page)

A terrible thought came to me.
 
“You kissed me.”

He nodded.
 
“I
did.
 
I did.
 
You are just so... charismatic, Oz
Griffin.
 
How could I not?”

“What do you want from me?”

He held up Nate’s drawing.
 
“I want what your Storyteller wants.”

“What?”

“For you to turn.
 
To
be what you were meant to be once and for all.
 
To join me and help me take back what is mine.
 
To give me the source.”

“I am Creyshaw,” I said.

He laughed.
 
“You are
many things, Oz Griffin, but the only one that counts is the Délon you.”

I pulled on the rope and screamed in frustration.

“You can break that rope, Oz Griffin,” the Pure said.
 
“You just have to become who you really are.”

I felt myself begin to warm up.
 
My blood was getting hotter.

The Pure sniffed the air.
 
“There it is,” he said with a sickening delight.
 
“You’ve found it.”

“Let me go!”

“No,” he said slapping me.

The pain felt good.
 
It felt warm.
 
I needed the
warmth.
 

He slapped me on the other side of my face.
 
“Wake up, Délon!
 
Wake up!”

The anger was building and my blood was beginning to boil.
I heard the strands of the rope snapping and cutting into my wrists.
 
I was bleeding.
 
I wanted to bleed.
 
I wanted to make others bleed.
 
Bostic.
 
I wanted to tear the skin from his body.

“There are those eyes.
 
Those beautiful Délon eyes.
 
Those
beautiful dead eyes.”

The rope broke and I brought my hands forward.
 
My skin was purple, the pale lifeless purple
of a Délon. I stood and stared at the Pure.
 
I was flooded with hatred for him, but I didn’t want to kill him.
 
I wanted to serve him.

“Welcome home, Oz Griffin,” the Pure said.
 
“Are you ready to fulfill your destiny?
 
To be who you were always meant to be?”

I thought about his question.
 
“I am.”

He pointed to the cave.
 
“Kill those humans.
 
All of
them.
 
It’s time you eliminate everything
that makes you weak.”

I felt an odd sense of joy that he wanted me to kill the
humans.
 
I did not bother climbing down
the tree to the ground.
 
I leapt over the
handrail and landed like a cat on the ground.
 

“Once your humanness is behind you, your future is
limitless.
 
The world belongs to the
ruthless, Oz Griffin.
 
Ruthless is what
you have always done best.
 
We are here
because of your ruthlessness.
 
This is
who you are.
 
Nothing can stop you now.”

I climbed up the trail to the cave.
 
Délon blood was rushing through my
veins.
 
I wanted my legs to carry me
faster, but I also wanted to savor every moment thinking about killing the
humans.
 

Standing in the mouth of the cave, my Délon eyes did not
need to adjust to the darkness. I could see perfectly.
 
The entire interior of the cave was
moving.
 
Tilting my head and focusing on
the shadows, I could see what the movement was.
 
The walls and ceiling were thickly covered in climbers, like bats hiding
in the darkness.

I stepped inside the cave and the climbers went
berserk.
 
Some jumped to the cave floor
and charged me at full speed, while others charged me from above.

The first wall of climbers reached me and jumped me,
covering nearly every inch of my Délon body.
 
They dug their tiny little claws into me.
 
I stomped the ground and threw my arms out to
my side. This sent most of the climbers soaring backwards and exploding on
impact with the cave walls and floor.
 

A second wave of climbers descended on me, and I disposed
of them in the same way.
 
More waves of
climbers came, and they were all dealt with easily.
 
I started to wonder why I had refused my
Délon side before.
 
I felt invincible.

I kept moving forward and entered a chamber.
 
The ground was crawling with Banshees.
 
They moved like waves, and if I didn’t have
my Délon vision I might have thought the movement was water sloshing
about.
 

Dead center stood Bostic holding a torch.
 
“Oz?

“Bostic,” I said with a voice that wasn’t mine.

“Holy crap, you went full on crazy purple on me.”

“Where are the humans?”

“Humans?”
 
He tilted
his head from right to left.
 
“You mean
your friends.”

“I mean the humans.”

“They’re here. Don’t you worry your pretty little
spider-leg head about them.”

“Where?” I yelled so loud the cave wall cracked.

“Okay, okay, let’s not get too excited.
 
Look to your left over there on the ground,”
he said pointing.

I looked to my left and he whistled.
 
The mass of worms cleared away and revealed
Tyrone lying as still as possible.

“He’s alive.
 
I just
advised him not to make any sudden movement.
 
I only got so much control over these Banshees, you know.”

Tyrone looked up at me and hid his shock at my
appearance.
 
“Help,” he said barely
moving his mouth.

Bostic whistled again, and the worms crawled back over
Tyrone.
 
“They’re all here.
 
Just as still and alive as angry boy is
there.”

“What do you want?” I asked.
 
I wasn’t interested in the least, but I
thought I would play his game.

He laughed.
 
“You.
 
I want you.”

“Why?”

“Because everyone and everything else wants you.
 
You’re some kind of golden boy bargaining
chip... or should I say purple boy bargaining chip?”

“And what do you expect to get for me?”

“Anything I want.
 
The Myrmidons were going to give me 100 of their own kind for you.
 
Do you understand?
 
They were offering themselves up as cattle
just to get their hands on you.”

“They don’t want me,” I said.

“I beg to differ.
 
They were pretty damn clear on that point.”

“They want the Source. I am not the Source.”

Bostic tilted his head to the right.
 
“I don’t think you got the slightest idea
what you are, boy.”

“You’re wrong about that.
 
I am Délon.”
 
I stepped down onto
the chamber floor, squashing a worm in the process.
 

“Now don’t do anything rash,” he said nervously.
 
“One whistle from me and my Banshees will
tear into you like pigs on a bucket of slop.”

“Then I will have no value to you.”

“Well, now that is true, but I will be alive and given a
choice between you alive and me alive, I’ll go with me every time.”

I kept moving towards him.
 
The worms suffered as I did. “Where is the girl?”
 
When the words came out of my mouth it
startled me.
 
Why had I asked about the
girl?
 
What difference did it make to me
where she was?

“The girl?
 
Oh, right
the girl.
 
Your girlfriend.
 
I almost forgot.
 
She’s here.
 
Want to see her?”

I should have said no, but the word yes fell out of my
mouth.

Bostic whistled twice this time, and a group of worms in
the back cleared away.
 
“Stand up, girl.”

I saw her stand, wiping the gook from the worms off her
exposed skin.
 
She caught a glimpse of me
and gasped.
 
“What are you doing,
Bostic?”

“I ain’t doing nothing.
 
He asked to see you.”

“No, I mean why is a Délon here?
 
Don’t tell me you’re trying to make a deal
with them.”

“Deal?”
 
He
snickered.
 
“Honey, don’t you recognize
your boyfriend when you see him?”

“Boyfriend?”
 
She
craned her neck forward and focused through the darkness.
 
“Oz?”

I did not respond to her.
 
In fact, I forced myself to look away from her.
 
For some reason I couldn’t hold onto my anger
while looking at her. “There will be no deals made.
 
I am not a bargaining chip.
 
I am Délon.”

“You don’t seem to understand there, Mr. Oz Griffin.
 
I don’t care if you’re purple and nasty now.
I will have my worms eat your friends if you don’t agree to give yourself up to
me.
 
It’s as simple as that.”

“Not if I kill them first,” I said rushing him.
 
I clasped my hand around his throat before he
could whistle.
 
He dropped his torch and
placed both hands around my wrist.

“Oz,” Lou said.
 
“Stop!”

I kept my grip around Bostic’s throat, but shifted my dead
eyes to her.
 

“Don’t kill him.
 
You
can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s holding the worms back. I don’t know how he’s
doing it, but they obey him.”

“She’s right,” Bostic said through smashed vocal
chords.
 
“They’ll all die.”

I squeezed a little harder. “I don’t care.”

“You’ll die, too,” he somehow managed to say.

I eased my grip slightly.

“I don’t care how big and strong you are now, the worms
will eventually get you.
 
There’s too
many of them.
 
You saw what they did to
the Myrmidons.”

He was right.
 
I
would die.
 
If I died, I could not serve
the Pure.
 
I eased my grip even more.

A flash went off in my head.
 
Nate’s drawing.
 
I was holding something.
 
The egg. “Where’s the backpack?”

“What backpack?” Bostic asked.

“There,” Lou said pointing to the cave wall behind me.
 

I looked over my shoulder and saw the pack sitting on an outcropping
of rocks.
 
I turned to her.
 
“Bring it to me.”

She moved carefully through the mass of worms.

I felt the muscles in Bostic’s jaw tense up, and I knew he
was about to whistle.
 
I tightened my
grip again to stop him. “Okay,” he said with a wheeze.
 
“Okay.”

Lou made it to the backpack and turned to bring it to me
when a worm as big as a man stretched up to investigate her. She put her hand
over her mouth to muffle her scream.

“Call him off,” I said to Bostic.
 
“No tricks or I snap your neck.”

He breathed awkwardly and let out a short whistle.

The large worm immediately retreated.

Lou continued to me and held out the pack.

“Open it,” I said.

She did as requested.

“Give me what’s inside.”

She reached in and pulled out the egg.

Bostic’s eyes widened and I tightened my grip before he
could say anything or whistle.

“Hand it to me.”

She reached out. I didn’t take it right away.
 
I studied her face.
 
There was something about it that unnerved
me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was.
 
As I reached for the egg, the word “beautiful” popped in my head.
 
It was a strange word to my Délon brain.
 
It sent waves of pain through my skull.
 
When I touched her hand, I saw us sitting on
a wagon being pulled by Phil and Ryder. I saw Nate in his baby sling around
Lou’s shoulder.
 
I saw her looking up at
me and telling me about her grandmother seeing the magic in people. My knees
buckled a little, but I regained my composure and took the egg.