The Call - Michael Grant [10]
Grimluk heard things moving from behind him, more than one thing—several things, maybe as many as six. Or some other very large number.
He crouched and did not move. If he could have stopped the very beating of his heart, he would have. For the creatures that now emerged into the light of the princess’s perfect form were monsters.
They stood as tall as the tallest man (five feet, three inches). But they were not men.
Like huge insects they were, like locusts that walked erect. They moved with sliding steps of bent-back legs and planted clawlike feet. Jointed arms stuck out from the middle of their foul, ochre-tinged bodies. And a second set of arms, smaller than the first, emerged from just below what might be a neck.
And the heads…smoothly triangular, with bulging, wet-shining eyes mounted atop short stalks.
They were hideous and awful. And from their midsections—not waists so much as precarious narrowings—hung belts that held varieties of bright metal weapons. Knives, swords, maces, scrapers, darts, and all manner of objects for stabbing, cutting, slicing, dicing, and chopping.
Grimluk hoped they were simply well-equipped cooks, but he doubted it. They moved with an arrogant swagger, not unlike the way the baron moved—or would have, had he been a very large grasshopper.
They gathered around the princess, illuminated by her own light.
For a moment Grimluk feared for the girl. They were a desperate, frightening bunch and looked as if they could make short work of the red-haired beauty.
But the girl showed no fear.
“Faithful Skirrit minions, do you bring me news of the queen, my mother?” she asked.
“We do,” one of the bugs answered.
“Good. You have done well to find me. And I will hear all you can tell me, gladly. But first, I hunger.”
This news caused a certain shuffling and backpedaling among the Skirrit.
“Hungry?” their spokesman or leader asked with what must be nervousness among his kind. “Now?”
“One will be enough,” the princess said.
The Skirrit captain pointed his two left-side arms at one of his fellows. “You heard the princess,” he said.
The designated Skirrit drew a deep breath and released a shuddery sigh. Then he bent his long legs and knelt down. He bowed his triangular head, and his ball eyes darkened.
And then the princess, the beauty beyond compare, began to change.
Her body…her form…
Grimluk had to clap both his hands over his mouth to stop the scream that wanted to tear at his throat.
The princess…no, the monstrosity she had become—the evil, foul beast—opened her stretched and hideous mouth and calmly bit the bowed head from its neck.
Green fluid spurted from the insect’s neck. The headless body collapsed with a sound like sticks falling.
And the princess chewed as if she had popped an entire egg into her mouth.
Grimluk ran, ran, ran, tripping and falling and leaping up to run again through the black night.
He ran, shrieking silently in his mind, from the terror.
Six
Mack’s parents always asked him about his day at school. But he’d never quite believed they cared about the actual details. At dinner that evening he put his theory to the test.
“So, David, how was school?” his father asked as he tonged chicken strips onto his plate.
His parents called him David. It was his actual name, of course, the name they’d picked out for him when he was just a slimy newborn. So he tolerated it.
“Bunch of interesting stuff happened today,” Mack said.
“And don’t just tell us it was the same old, same old,” his mother said. She passed ketchup to her husband.
“Well, it definitely wasn’t the same old, same old,” Mack said. “For one thing, some ancient dead-looking dude froze time and space for a while.”
“How did the math test go?” his father asked. “I hope you’re keeping up.”
“That wasn’t today. That was Friday. Today was the whole deadish guy suspending the very laws of physics and speaking in some language I didn’t understand.”
“Well, you’ve always done well in your language classes,” Mack’s mother said.
“Plus, it seems I’m Stefan’s new BFF.”
“A B and two Fs?” His father frowned