Page 30 of Beware of Hodags

“No!” I cry, rushing forward, mindful that I don’t know how many traps Mirk’s family have dug out here with their special chewing teeth but I need to reach Shepard.

I keep having these crazy visions of Mirk’s people forgetting that they left the giant spider equivalent of an oven on and they’re moments from coming back to their burrow where they’ll find a hodag at their mercy.

Skidding to a stop at the burrow’s mouth, the moonlight reveals a beautiful, naked man about ten feet below me, bathing him in silver.

He’s wedged next to a spider only a little smaller than Mirk.

There’s a mass of flattened, sticky webbing along the burrow’s sides and at the bottom.

Towering tapered legs are curled tightly to the spider’s body.

The spider appears to be dead, its abdomen deflated.

The smell of blood is strong, splashed along the walls or floor of the pit—and the blood doesn’t belong to the spider. It smells like Shepard.

Shepard is staring up at me, face drawn. His eyes are searching me over, his concern for me plain.

But I’m fine. I’m worried about him. The battle he must have had in the dark with this eldritch horror…

My face twists. He has to be a pincushion of spider bristles. When he shifted some would have dropped but if these giant spiders are anything like tarantulas, their burrows are littered with urticating hairs as a form of home defense. To lie naked in basically a pile of them…

“Hey, Rach,” Shepard calls up to me, and against all odds, I can hear a smile in his voice .

“Hey, yourself,” I gasp out, my throat tight. Struggling to breathe, I drop to my knees and stare down at him, so upset. Because his blood on the air is making my skin prickle and my stomach a little sick.

“You okay?” he asks me.

Me. As if I’m the one squeezed in beside a monster that clearly tried to kill me.

“Yeah. Just need a minute,” I tell him, my breath choked. Then I deflect. “How bad are you hurt?”

He exhales in a gusting rush. “My wrist was broken. Fixed it with a change, climbed up—and I fell, breaking it again. And again. It’s been kind of not fun here. How about you, sweetheart?” He’s gripping his forearm, keeping it slightly elevated, staring up at me like he’s memorizing my face.

If it hurts, that’s bad. Hairline fractures heal up with almost no pain, so when he says he’s been breaking it, he means he’s been falling and getting compound fractures.

“Hey,” he says softly, trying to smile. “Wipe that look off your face. I’m alright. Is there a giant killer spider after you?”

“Not sure,” I tell him. “Someone showed up and provided enough of a distraction for me to slip around him, so this should be the part where we pull off a daring escape.” I shove to my feet, feeling jittery.

“Like if we were in a movie and not stuck in a motherfrigging cranberry bog owned by Shelob’s grandson?” Shepard asks incredulously.

“See, I didn’t know that Shelob was the name of a horrible, terrifying monster spider. Someone—maybe my mate, who apparently knew all about it—should have clued me in.” I struggle to suck in a breath. “Think if I find some rope, you can grab it with your teeth?”

“Someone should have read Lord of the Rings. And yeah, that might work. Know where any rope is?”

“Nope,” I puff out worriedly, pacing anxiously around the burrow in lurching steps. I drop down to my knees again, trying—and still failing—to catch my breath. “I was hoping you’d say you had some in your truck.”

“I’ve always carried jumper cables,” he offers. “Twenty foot.”

“That might work!” I leap to my feet and take off, making it four or five running steps from the burrow.

“But they’re not in my truck,” he calls out in lament, stopping me in my tracks. “Not at the moment anyway. I keep them in my toolbox, which I took off today so I could chase that blinker problem.”

Throat burning, lungs itching, I walk back to him and peer over the side of the burrow again, gripping my throat. Trying to massage it.

He sighs. “I meant to get the toolboxes back on but I figured I had some time. For some reason, I didn’t see this coming,” he says, looking around at his prison.

Leaves crackle behind me, making me tense.

Below me, Shepard growls.

“RACHEL?” Dylan hollers.

“Who’s that?” Shepard asks, voice going guttural as his body starts to change.

“The dogcatcher,” I pant, stressed. “But I think he’ll help me. Hang on.”

“No!” Shepard cautions. “Rachel—”

But I’m already sprinting for Dylan. “Careful!” I heave out, warning him. “There are spider traps out here!”

Dylan grunts, sounding unimpressed and remarkably unworried. “I’m wearing thermal night vision goggles with an infrared output capability of nine.”

“Okay... I don’t know what that means…”

Branches snap as he stomps closer, ridiculously unafraid of falling into any burrows. “It means I can see variations in the heat signatures along the ground. Warmer spots indicate cradle knolls, pits, or cryptid burrows. ”

“Oh. Do you have rope?” I ask, feeling winded as I approach him—stepping cautiously, because I don’t have thermal night vision goggles with an infrared output capability of anything.

“Of course,” Dylan says, and he reaches along his thigh where, yes, he does indeed have a length of coiled rope affixed to some utility type belt he’s rigged himself with.

“Thanks!” I breathe, rushing forward to meet him. But when I reach him and take hold of the neatly figure-eighted rope he’s holding out to me, he catches my wrist.

His headlamp hits me square in the face, blinding me.

“What are you?” he asks, holding me fast. “I know you’re not a werewolf.

But that’s the closest supernatural I know of.

I wouldn’t have believed anything like you existed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.

What else is out there? Were you born this way or bitten? Are there more of you?”

“Let me go,” I warn, my voice a puff of air, as low and quiet as I can make it, hoping Shepard won’t hear that I’m asking to be released—and rightly deduce that I’ve been caught.

The bellow that erupts from the ground behind me proves he has excellent hearing.

Dylan jumps. His grip tightens on me painfully, making me bite back a yelp. “What was—” he starts.

He stops. He stares down at the ground behind me, frozen.

I spin around as much as his restraining hand will let me and drop my gaze too, dread filling me.

The headlamp affixed to Dylan’s head must be sitting at about a forty-five-degree angle. I extrapolate this based on Mirk’s earlier advice that this is the sweet spot for catching the reflection of wolf spider eyes.

All around us, eightfold times a thousand, maybe thousands and thousands, the forest floor is lit up, glittering with diamonds.

Spider eyes.

Thousands and thousands of spiders are watching us.

A scream claws its way up my throat .

Is an army of arachnids really worse than a barn-sized spider? Yes. Somehow yes, this is a new level of terrifying.

I think it has something to do with the sentience in their many, many frightening eyes. But maybe it’s the sheer amount of them. More spiders than I’ve ever seen in my life, all at once. So, so, so many spiders.

As they begin to skitter toward us, I lose it. Insensible with panic, I waste what breath I have, screaming at the top of my burning lungs. My shrieks rival a troop of chimpanzees being attacked by a prowl of jaguars.

Shepard roars in response.

Wildly ignorant, Dylan is almost unfazed. “Whoa,” he breathes. “That’s unusual activity…”

“Let go of me!” I manage in a high, shivery voice, scratching wildly at his hand still locked around my wrist.

“Nuh-uh, Cryptid, you're coming with me,” he states, dragging me with him as he backs up—

A nightmarish carpet of wolf spiders skitters forward, the whole forest floor in front of us moving in lockstep.

I wheeze a silent scream this time.

“This is creepy,” Dylan breathes, not seeming to notice or care that I'm flailing in his grip like a trapped animal, overpowered with fright. If he doesn’t let me go, I’m going to bite him.

Before I can commit to just that, ginormous spider legs spear down between us, neatly wedging us apart. Almost apart anyway. Dylan still doesn’t let me go. Instead, he emits an impressive holler of shock.

Fangs drop between us and sink into his upper arm. He screams.

I scream too. Audibly. Almost as loud as Dylan does.

His restraining hand goes nerveless, releasing me, and I stumble back, landing hard on my butt before I manage to scramble away, hysterical, racing on my hands and knees away from all the little spiders until I get my feet under me enough to run .

Spine tight and shivering, I risk a look over my shoulder, and as the colossal spider closes around Dylan, it looks even bigger to me than it did back in the barn. I shudder.

Dylan keeps screaming.

I’m going to guess that thermal night vision goggles with an infrared output capability of nine aren’t fun to wear if a giant spider captures you.

Wheezing, I look down at my fist, which is aching. It’s the death grip I’ve got on the coiled rope. I have the rope! Either Dylan experienced a split-second change of heart and gave it to me, or he was too startled to hang onto it—but somehow I have what I need.

I don’t question it. As Dylan continues to scream in a high, terrified wail, I abandon him and run from nightmare-Mirk, racing back to Shepard.

It’s not far, yet all the running I did to get out here has caused a small problem.

And the panic isn’t helping. My trachea simultaneously itches like a wild thing while also feeling like it’s being squeezed in an angry giant’s fist. My right lung especially feels like it’s lined with glass, and if that were the case that’d explain why it’s burning and hurts so bad.

I’m really gasping for air now… but I don’t feel like I’m getting any oxygen.

Asthma. I’m having the mother of all asthma attacks. I’ve always had asthma, it and other breathing issues run in my family—but I’ve never had an attack this serious. I have an inhaler swimming in the bottom of my purse, but my purse is currently in Shepard’s truck. One problem at a time.

I’ve reached the spider pit. Shepard is in hodag form, and he’s so much bigger now than when he half-turned himself for me on Saturday.

Seeing him at his full size… he’s a behemoth.

Before, he was only a monster from the torso up.

This time I’m treated to the view of all his thickly built limbs—including his tail, which has a row of spikes just li ke the ones along his neck and back.

He would be terrifying to meet in the woods if I didn’t know him.

I do though. And Shepard is looking up at me in concern. It takes me two tries to force out words. “Watch out,” I wheeze. Trying to suck in enough oxygen to stave off the white spots flooding my vision, I throw him one end of the rope.