Nocturne Valley Library

6: Loss

I blink and suppress the urge to throw up as we appear on the sidewalk several yards from the warehouse. Fade steps back and goes over to Lucy, who is sitting on the sidewalks edge. She lifts her head and groans.  "Teleporting is rough."

Fade chuckles. "You'll get used to it, Luce. "

"Will I? 'Cause I feel like I've been stretched into nothing and then thrown through the cosmos."

"Yeah, that's kinda it," Fade replies evenly.

Then, I feel Aerik's pain. I cry out and sink to my knees, my own body hurting. I feel tears trickle down my cheeks, and I look up at Fade and Lucy. They are both there, looking down at me.

Lucy rests a hand on my shoulder.  "Charli? You okay?"

I shudder hard. "I - I think she's killing him. And somehow, I.... I can feel it."

"Where are they?" Fade demands.

"I don't kn-know," I stutter. "Oh, gods, he's hurting so bad. Ah, fuck. I ... can't..."

"You got this, Charli. Sense his location, use your bond. I know you can do this."

I close my eyes, focusing on this weird psychic link between us, and then, I feel it. He's trapped in a cocoon. And she's getting ready to eat him, swallow him whole. He's injured, she's used one of her long, thin, spindly legs to pierce his chest. If he doesn't bleed out first, he will be eaten alive.

"Aerik," I whisper. "I love you."

Fade suddenly grabs me, and then, the world drops out from around me. I'm flying, moving so fast I can barely breathe. When I open my eyes, Fade, Lucy, and I are in another abandoned place, but this time, it's a house on the northern end of the Shadow District.

We are in the living room, but I can tell they're in the basement. I don't wait, even though my head's spinning, I run down the stairs.

The sight I see is awful.

The room is covered in thick cobwebs, and perched in the corner of the ceiling, sitting in her web, is the Spidermaiden. She holds a cocoon in her arms, and she beams as she sees me.

Her red eyes flash, her pale upper half showing signs of having been injured from whatever fights occurred before now. She grins at me as I stumble, nearly falling over.

Aerik is still alive, his face the only part of him visible through the webs. The pain and panic in his golden eyes scares me more than I thought possible. I run toward the corner, but that's when she speaks.

"Come to watch the show? Or join the meal?"

Fade appears, leaping down from above and behind the Spidermaiden, but somehow, she senses their arrival. Spinning faster than should be possible in her web, the Spidermaiden lashes out with one of her legs, the barbed tip impaling Fade through the chest.

I scream, and suddenly, that burning pain in my back I'd been ignoring comes back full force. I gasp, tears in my eyes. The Spidermaiden throws Fade down to the ground.

"Luce! Lucy, help!" I cry. I kneel beside Fade, as the bitch of a Spidermaiden laughs.

"Who will you save, little Librarian?"

"Save ... him," says Fade. Before I can say anything to them, their reddish amber eyes close, and their breaths stop.

I scream in rage, and that is when shadows burst free of my body, slithering up toward the web. But she raises her hands, and the shadows part like a black curtain.

"Aerik, hold on!" I cry.

"Go, Charli, please!" he shouts.  "I love you."

The Spidermaiden chuckles as she lifts him into her arms once more. Lucy runs into the room, and gasps when she sees what I am seeing.

"Goodbye, lover boy," says the Spidermaiden. Her jaw distends, and she tilts her head back. I glance at Lucy. Who is frozen. I then strike, my shadows bursting free and slicing into the Demon spider. But she doesn't even react, not even as her black blood sprays on the ground.

"Go, Charli! Go! Run! I love —"

Those are his last words, as the Spidermaiden swallows Aerik whole.