Almost there.
With a flutter of wings, the bats swarm us. I stumble when my foot hits solid ground, and I go down, smacking my knee into the rock. I grunt but don’t have time to worry about it because two strong, invisible hands pull me to my feet.
The bats whirl and dive like a tornado, trying to get at our flags. Diego practically shoves me into the tunnel, which looks like a drainpipe made of corrugated metal. It’s small enough that we have to drop to our hands and knees to dive in.
The second we’re both inside the pitch-black darkness, the bats stop. I mean really stop, not just give up and fly back to their roost. It’s more like the instant we got in here, they ceased to exist.
“That’s one.” Diego sounds annoyingly chipper. I can’t see him. He’s clearly wearing his ring.
One down. Unknown number to go. “Did you lose any flags?”
“No.”
Really weird, talking to nothing.
I blow out a silent breath of relief. I’d hate it if I was the reason he did. “Good. Me neither.” Then I turn to face the nothingness in front of me. This kind of darkness is…suffocating. Like you’ll never see light again. But I’ve lived underground most of my life. Darkness is one fear I don’t deal with.
Inertia is the real killer. That much, I learned the hard way. Starting at my knees, I quickly feel up the rounded sides of the pipe.
But when I get only six inches from the bottom, a shock zaps through me, and I yelp, jerking my hand away. The electric charge lights up what is definitely a drainpipe. I shake my hand, breathing through the pain that is turning to a burning on the side of my palm where it struck. “Don’t touch anything but the bottom,” I tell Diego.
I assume that even though he’s invisible, he can still touch.
“Got it.”
We get moving.
My knee, already bruised from that rough landing off the beams, is not appreciating this at all, but I grit my teeth and try my best not to notice. Not like I have options.
Maybe ten feet in, something grabs me from the side, and I scream as I jerk away from it, right into the side of the pipe. Another zap shoots through my shoulder. The spark lights up the tunnel, and horror sucks the air from my lungs. There are holes in the tops and sides of the pipe and hands sticking out of them to grab our flags or push us into more pain.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “Did you see that?”
“I saw what got you.”
I describe the rest, and Diego groans. “How about this,” he says.
Suddenly, the entire tunnel illuminates, the brightness coming from behind me. Diego’s grin is audible in his voice. “Sometimes the glow comes in handy.”
Thanks to his halo.
I laugh. “I bet sometimes it doesn’t.”
But he has the ring to go invisible, so he’s covered. That halo really works.
“Let’s go fast,” he says.
Fast seems to be the theme here. “Yeah.”
And we go. Even with the ability to see the hands reaching for me, I lose count of how many times I’m shoved into the wall and shocked. I thank my lucky stars for my short hair, which they keep trying to grab but can’t. It’s hard to tell, but Diego seems like he’s faring much better.
I can’t say how long we crawl before light appears ahead of me.
“Almost there!” I shout and go even faster because I want the hells out of here.
Almost there. Almost there.
The light widens as we get closer to the end. A hand shoves at me, and my cheek smacks into the metal on the other side. The shock feels like it melts my cheekbone under the skin, and I can’t help the guttural yell, but I keep going.
Until the instant I feel the Courage flag rip right off my spine with a hard tug, and fear crashes through me so hard and fast that my muscles lock up and I face-plant.
59
Fear Is My Friend
The terror that wants to rip my guts out through my mouth on every scream is crippling, but I manage to take a breath. And then another.
“Did you lose a flag?” Diego asks.
It takes me at least two more breaths before I can force words through a jaw so stiff I could be a corpse. “Give me…a second.”
I focus on breathing. I can see the end of the tunnel, where there is a small light. We’re almost out. And my experiences—years in a place where I was forced to manage my fear or appear like the weakling all the other thieves thought I was—kick in harder with each breath. Thank the gods. Because fear isn’t debilitating. Not when you lean into it. Not when you listen to it for what it is. It’s a warning, your body’s way of telling you to live—to fight or flee or even sometimes freeze so that you survive.
Fear is a tool.
One I’ve been learning to use my entire life.
