Chapter 183
They were only halfway to Poland when the news came from Corrival. Just a simple message, nothing more.
'Spiders stormed Germans. Took knife. Everyone dead.'
When they landed in Poland they found that information was slightly faulty. They had only taken Valkyrie's fake Dagger. And not everyone was dead. Just most of them. And not everyone was on the same page about who did it. No one suspected Tanith's cover and no one was really allowed to suspect the Dead Men as they were in America and no one really knew about them splitting up for this mission. That had left a gap in who to blame seeing as the German Sanctuary and all its allies were only interested in saying Ireland wasn't under attack from Spiders and telling the world they had been attacked by Spiders would wound their pride so…
They were claiming hitmen did it for the Irish Sanctuary. Representatives from almost all Sanctuaries across the world were threatening to come together to form a Supreme Council, which was only different from a war council in name. Irelands allies were being suspiciously quiet also, and that was making Valkyrie uncomfortable. Thank God they still had Meritorious with them to tell the other Sanctuaries to keep the peace for at least for a few more weeks, but it didn't look as if it would hold them back for much longer.
Valkyrie had hoped for more time.
It was with a heavy heart they stopped to refill in a rundown looking airfield and deboarded. They were all stiff and looking forwards to getting to the hotel to sleep the day away before snatching the Spear and leaving. Valkyrie sighed, pausing her walk with her arm over Nadia so she could wrap the other around her sister's waist, the bag with the two God-weapons safely on her back. Tanith looked up at her and smiled tightly.
"Not too long now," Valkyrie whispered.
"Yeah," Tanith sighed, clutching her bag closer like that would help satisfy the need to hold her baby again.
Their hotel wasn't far from the beach where the hermit with the Spear was but still far enough away the Spiders shouldn't find them if they were in the area. Valkyrie was fairly confident in their info on how many Spiders there were – a big group in America, a few hundred or so, a medium group in Europe but all scattered around, not many in Australia or Russia, but fairly large in Africa and Asia. They were imagining around five thousand actual Children of the Spider. One area of worry was of if there were secret Spiders in Australia no one knew about, but they were not in a position to check. In their area of Europe right now they could be confident they could sleep the day away without fear. Once night came that could change.
"Where should I sleep?" Wilhelm asked her, holding his three bags like it pained him and trying to stay on his laptop while walking.
"Pick a room."
"We only have four rooms," he frowned.
"Find a sofa then," Valkyrie raised an eyebrow at him. Nadia took Tanith's hand and pulled her quickly into a room with no window. "We have to bunk together. Be glad you're not on the floor."
He turned to Aurora, who glared and slammed her door shut. He turned to the Monster Hunters who quickly jumped through a doorway and closed their door. Valkyrie backed into her room as Wilhelm looked up at Frightening with wide, scared eyes. Frightening looked down at him with a smile.
She closed the door.
"These people are crazy," Valkyrie sighed, finding Tanith laid on her back at the end of the bed and Nadia checking her phone to find the nearest laundromat. "Are you going to be okay, Tan?"
"Yeah. We'll only be here for a day and then we'll be in England for the Sword and I can go see her again," Tanith said, staring straight up at the ceiling. "You know what's even worse? I was pumping this morning, in the shitty tiny plane bathroom, 'cause someone was in the bedroom, and that Wilhelm guy almost walked in on me. I forgot to lock the stupid door. I started crying, Val. I'm falling apart."
"No, Tan, you're not," Valkyrie said immediately, joining her on the bed and resting an arm over her stomach in place of a hug. "I mean, think about it rationally. Physically, you're at least ninety percent of the way back to how you were before the pregnancy. And in that last ten percent, we'd include, like, two percent achy abdomen and eight percent bleeding nipples. And although being away for Laila is really hard, at least your nip's are healing a bit, right?"
"Yeah, I guess," she said forlornly. "I just want to see her again. It's really hard. It was kind of fun at the start to have some time without breastfeeding and worrying over spilling the milk since I can't keep it here anyway. But now I just really want to hold her again and it's killing me. I don't know if I should have done this."
"What about calling your mum?"
"She'll be asleep."
"Try it anyway. She'll understand," Valkyrie encouraged.
It took a little bit, but they got Tanith to video call her parents and it turned out they were awake and her brother was there also, bonding with Laila. Valkyrie and Nadia left to do some washing for the team as Tanith's mum was saying that Laila was struggling to sleep without Tanith and Ghastly, which seemed to comfort and upset Tanith.
"God, being a mother seems really hard," Nadia cringed, handing Valkyrie the big bag of washing.
"We don't have to worry about that for a long time yet," Valkyrie smiled, wrapping an arm about Nadia's shoulder.
.*****.
The Spear
Valkyrie sent Frightening and the Monster Hunters to the hermit on the beach, watching secretly with Tanith besides her to see how it went. With the use of some gadgets and Frightening punching the hermit right off his feet and into a rock, they got the Spear.
It didn't take more than two seconds longer for Valkyrie to notice three small, little spiders scurrying along between the cracks of the rocks she and Tanith hid behind. No more than a second after that for there to be hundreds streaming from the crack.
Valkyrie cried out and Tanith jumped back, grabbing Valkyrie's shoulder to pull her back too. Frightening and the Monster Hunters heard them and started running but they were held up by another stream of spiders crawling out from underneath the rocks and forming a black mass flowing quickly towards the men. Frightening used the Spear to slash at the spiders, disintegrating them in long swipes, but millions more took their place. Valkyrie and Tanith didn't have nearly as strong a weapon and chose instead to run to the water where the spiders couldn't follow.
"Come to the water!" Valkyrie shouted.
Gracious glanced at her but they didn't come towards them. Valkyrie splashed into the waterline and looked back, seeing Gracious, Frightening and Donegan getting closed in on by not just the regular spiders, but also some Children of the Spider who were coming out from the streets and prowling towards the beach with big grins. They hadn't been looking to take the Spear before them – they'd been waiting to corner her team.
"Oh, shit," she heard Tanith breath, and then threw herself into the mayhem, staying close enough to the water to escape the normal spiders while thrusting her sword into the nearest Spider – and some of the larger normal spiders. Valkyrie sent the prepared password to the rest of the team hiding nearby, and then charged her magic into her hands and began blasting Spiders trying to sneak up on Donegan.
The fight went on and on. She felt herself start to sweat, concentrating hard on her magic and what she was hitting, trying to keep an eye on her whole team – only for the stupid hermit to try and kill Frightening. Within a moment both of their bodies were covered in spiders and the Spider's laughed maniacally as even more of them came out of the streets to take the place of their dead, wounded and unconscious brethren. She couldn't do much other than keep throwing her white energy at anything big that got near them, and sigh in relief when Frightening roared and shook the hermit and the spiders off of him, slashing at the ground around him and then at a young Spider running headfirst towards her.
"We need to leave!" She shouted. She had no idea how.
Thank God Gracious had a plan. He pulled something out of his coat and threw it in the air and Valkyrie, although she had no idea what it was, had enough sense to duck her head and shield her eyes.
It went off with a soft pop, and so much light filled her vision she thought she'd pass out. Her ears popped, her body felt light, her stomach sank so low she thought she was going to pee herself. It was a strange and unwelcome feeling.
As soon as the light passed, her training kicked in. She opened her eyes and assessed the damage, knees wobbling dangerously. The little spiders were still on the sand, a few twitching but not really moving. The Spiders were on the ground screaming and writhing, as was Tanith. The others had all covered their faces and were stumbling away from the beach.
Valkyrie heaved and threw up into the water. She stumbled forwards and stepped onto the thick mass of spiders right out of the waterline, feeling them crunch under her shoe, and almost threw up again. She spat and made her way to Tanith just as some new little spiders began creeping out of the rocks. It was just a few but it was enough for her to feel the fear. They only had a few more seconds of sensory overload before they were fucked again.
She picked her sister up – just throwing her over her shoulder like an unresponsive rag roll – and did her best to stumble despite the weight towards the others.
They had no time to go back for their stuff, they just flagged down a taxi. Frightening threw the driver out onto the street, helped Valkyrie set Tanith into the car, they all got in and drove away. She just hoped the others had gotten to the plane and hadn't been overrun either.
"Where's your bag?" Gracious asked, looking at her fearfully.
"Nadia has them," she said, ignoring his question and answering what he really wanted to know. "I switched the bags."
"Thank fucking Christ," he whispered, putting a hand over his heart. "If we lost the other two weapons, I'd have killed myself."
"Yeah, well don't get too comfortable. If they attacked us here, they might have attacked Nadia, Wilhelm and Aurora. Let's get in the air before we start celebrating."
Another down, one to go!
Lord Duck the Second: I'm glad it's sorted for you! I'm happy you are enjoying the chapters recently, I've been getting back into the groove of writing and all the reviews I get really help motivate me :)