Banshee Worm King: Book Five of the Oz Chronicles (32 page)

“Yes it was,” Lou said as she started to cry.
 
“You could have all been home.”

“Dude?” Gordy said, “Say it ain’t so.”

“All of us wouldn’t have been able to go back,” I
said.
 

“No,” Lou said, “just everyone who should go back.”

“Who wouldn’t have been able to go?” Wes asked.

Tyrone answered before Lou or I could.
 
“Lou, because she’s not real.”

A white hot flash of anger came over me.
 
“Shut up!
 
Don’t say that!”

“Why not?” Lou asked.
 
“It’s true.
 
I’m not real.”

“You are to me,” I said.

“But that won’t help you get home,” Lou said.

“I’m not going back without you,” I said.

“You have to...”

“All right,” Wes said, “Let’s just everyone settle
down.
 
What’s done is done.
 
We need to set our sights on what we need to
deal with now.”

“Which is?” Tyrone asked.

“How do we un-Délon Oz?”

“Cold,” Tyrone said.

“We can worry about how cold it is later,” Wes said.

“No,” Tyrone said sounding irritated.
 
“The cold. Remember Devlin?
 
We put him in the walk-in freezer at the
convenience store and the Délon just... exploded.
 
He was Devlin again.”

“That’s right,” Wes said.
 

“Where are we going to find a walk-in freezer out
here?”
 
Gordy asked.

“We don’t need one,” I said.
 
“I know a place that might be cold
enough.
 
But we’re going to need some
Myrmidon meat to get there.”

Seven

It was evening by the time we got to the side of the
lake.
 
We made a detour to the Myrmidon
camp first.
 
I was elected to make the
200-yard trek from the platform to the camp because in my Délon state I was at
least twice as fast as everybody else.
 
I
made it to the camp ahead of the worms and stepped in the discarded guts of a
Myrmidon that acted as worm repellent.
 

I carried twelve pounds of Myrmidon body parts back to the
platform and broke the news to everybody that they would need to cake their
shoes with Myrmidon meat and carry some of it with them just to be safe.
 

We all stood on the shore and watched as the water sloshed
about.

Wes stuck his hand in the water and said, “It’s cold all
right, but it ain’t walk-in freezer cold.”

“It is at the bottom,” I said.

“And how do you know this?” Tyrone asked.

“I’ve had the pleasure.”

The egg guarder casually breached the water and then
slipped back under.

“Ah,” Gordy said, “What was that?”

“That’s what makes this...” My gut tied in knots and I fell
to one knee.
 
The Délon part of me was
trying to kick the human side of me out of my body.
 
It was a miracle I had been able to hold
together this long.
 
“That’s what makes
this so much fun,” I said regaining my composure.”
 
I turned to Tyrone. “Give me your knife.”

He pulled it from its sheath and handed it to me with no
questions asked.

I waded into the water knee deep.
 
“If I’m not back up in 20 minutes, leave.”

“Twenty minutes?” Wes asked.
 
“You grow gills?”

I dove into the water and didn’t bother moving slowly to
avoid alerting the guarder.
 
Let it
know.
 
I needed a fight.

I dove deeper and deeper, moving towards the center of the
lake as I did.
 
I hadn’t grown gills, but
apparently Délons could hold their breath for a long time.
 

The guarder flashed in front of me and knocked into
me.
 
It was testing to see if I was
really there or not.
 
I let it know I was
by jabbing the knife into its side as it passed.
 

It curled around and came for me again.
 
Instead of retreating, I swam straight for
it. It opened its mouth, and I was happy to see that it was more than big
enough for me to fit inside. It worked with the Taker Queen. Why not now?

The worm recoiled a bit when I swam into its mouth. It was
used to chasing down prey.
 
It had no
idea what to do with something that volunteered to get eaten.
 

Once it shut its mouth, I jammed the knife into its flesh
and started cutting.
 
The blade moved
through the fatty skin with ease.
 
The
worm barely realized what was happening to it.
 
I had sliced through the inside of its mouth a good three feet before it
even reacted.
 
It started twisting its
body and jerking its head.
 
I kept
cutting.
 
An eight foot incision.
 
I slammed against a row of teeth.
 
Twelve feet.
 
I heard a splash and knew it had surfaced and dived again.
 
Soon, I had cut around the back of the worm’s
mouth.
 
It stopped moving, and I could
feel it sinking to the bottom of the lake.
 

When it came to a sudden stop, I knew we were resting on
the bottom.
 
I kicked at the roof of the
mouth over and over again until the incision tore open and I could swim
out.
 

Looking down on the dead guarder, I realized that if the
blade had been just a little longer, I would have cut the worm’s head
completely off from the inside.
 

The chill of the water hit me as I swam for the egg
huts.
 
My body started to ache beyond
belief.
 
My skin was cracking and I could
feel it getting tighter.

I entered an underwater hut and surfaced.
 
The ache had shifted to an icy burn.
 
I was numb.
 
I opened my mouth and heard my skin rip when I did.
 
My ears popped, not once, but three
times.
 
Each time was more painful than
the last.
 

I crawled up the embankment and heard my bones crunching as
I did.
 
It felt like I was being ripped
in half and trampled to death all at once.
 

I screamed and the mud dome shook.
 
There was a high-pitched whistle right before
I felt my entire body explode.
 
Purple
goo flew everywhere.
 
My spider-leg locks
ejected out of my head like darts and embedded in the dome ceiling, even
impaling some of the climbers hiding in the shadows.
 

I turned on my back.
 
I had made up my mind this was where I was going to die, but at least I
wouldn’t die a Délon.
 
I was human again.

I lay in the freezing water on the embankment and thought
about all I had been through to that moment.
 
Pepper was gone. Valerie, too.
 
They would be alive if I had taken the Pure’s deal.
 
Archie and April.
 
My mom and dad.
 
There was a list a mile long of people that
should have mattered enough for me to take his deal.
 
But I didn’t.
 
I turned my back on them, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat if it meant
I could keep Lou.

What about Kimball? I heard a voice in my head ask.

Kimball.
 
I’d even
turned my back on my own dog.

I still owed that stinking worm for killing my dog.
 
The worm with the half moon scar.
 
I grabbed two eggs and quickly submerged.

I broke the surface of the water in the middle of the lake
holding an egg in each hand.
 
It made it
difficult to swim, but I somehow managed to make it to the shore.

“It worked,” Gordy said

I was shivering severely.

“Worked too good,” Wes said.
 
“We gotta warm you up now, boy.”

“No time,” I said through chattering teeth.
 

Some climbers surfaced thirty feet off shore.

“Oh, lordy,” Wes said.

“Lou,” I said handing her an egg.
 
“Stick this on the end of an arrow and fire
it across the lake into the tops of the trees.”

She took the egg from me with a scowl and did as I asked
without saying a word.
 

“Now what?” Wes asked.

“Run.”

***

Wes was the last of us to climb up the tree onto the
platform.
 
I found myself shaking
uncontrollably.
 
Lou reluctantly rubbed
my arms with the palm of her hands in an effort to warm me up.
 
It didn’t work.

“And what in the hell are you doing with that thing?” Wes
asked pointing to the egg.

“I need it.
 
There’s
one last thing we have to do before we leave.”

“And that is?”

“Kill that white whale.”

He squinted as his brain worked to process what I’d just
said.
 
When he got it, he rolled his
eyes.
 
“Are you serious?”

“Never been more serious.”

“Haven’t we been through enough?”

“No,” Lou said, “Oz is right about this.
 
We have to kill that worm.”

Ajax hooted in agreement.

Ariabod pounded his chest.

“And how do we know it’s not one of those dead worms back
at the Myrmidon camp?” Wes asked

I paused and then said, “I know.
 
It’s back at Bostic’s treehouse waiting for
its king to feed it.”

“What treehouse?” Wes asked.
 
“You burned it down.”

 
“Doesn’t change the
fact that those are its feeding grounds.”
 
I started down the walkway when Wes called out.

“We don’t even have weapons.”

I felt for Tyrone’s knife on my belt.
 
I had lost track of it in the egg hut.
 
It was most likely on the bottom of the lake.

“I do,” Lou said holding up her crossbow.

“And how many arrows do you have, little girl?”

She held up her entire stock of arrows.
 
“Two.”

I continued down the walkway.
 
“Two is plenty.”

I heard the others following me.
 
Wes brought up the rear and I could tell by
the sound of his heavy deliberate footsteps, he was not happy.
 

When we arrived at the zip line platform, I tugged on the
cable.
 
It was still attached to
something, but I could feel that it was a weak connection.
 
The cable wouldn’t take much weight at
all.
 

“What’s the plan?” Tyrone asked.

“Climb down and walk,” Gordy said.
 
“We got more of the Myrmidon meat to hold the
worms back.”

“We’ve also got this,” I said holding up the egg.
 
“Their interest in this trumps their distaste
for Myrmidon.
 
We walk on the ground with
this, we won’t get two feet.”

Ariabod climbed up the closest tree, grabbed the thickest
branch and catapulted himself to the next tree.
 
He found a thick limb on that tree, sat on his haunches and clapped his
hands in our direction.

None of us knew what he was trying to tell us.
 
None of the humans, anyway.
 
Ajax got tired of us trying to figure it out
and took the egg out of my hand.
 
He
walked to the edge of the platform and tossed it.

I ran after it, barely stopping before falling off the
platform.
 
“What are you doing?”

Ariabod stretched out his incredibly long arm and snatched
the egg out of the air.
 

Ajax jumped up into the nearest tree, traveled through the
tree tops and positioned himself about fifteen feet ahead of Ariabod.
 

Ariabod tossed him the egg and then moved through the tree
tops to move fifteen feet ahead of Ajax.

Ajax tossed him the egg and moved fifteen ahead of Ariabod.

We watched them continue this game of catch until they
disappeared into the fog.