Mega Worm Apocalypse

TWENTY ONE

A cold wave of panic fell over Nat like a tsunami – Gaisgeil was gone.

Not just gone from her side.

Gaisgeil was gone – from her mind.

Her breath came in fast and sharp bursts. Her chest ached. It was hard to breathe.

"Nat?" Justin walked beside her, their shoulders touching as they followed the nightmare blank-faced girl, the boy taking up the rear. They were being lead through the halls of a massive, dark mansion, the opulent size and gaping halls doing nothing to keep the claustrophobia at bay. "Nat!" he said again, more sharply.

"I can't feel her," Nat gasped. "I can't feel Gaisgeil."

"Nat," Justin hissed, "you gotta focus now ok? I need you to focus."

Focus. She couldn't. Not on anything but gaping, painful emptiness in her where Gaisgeil used to be.

The girl turned to face them. "Yes, focus please. We don't want you to miss the next phase of our victory."

Our victory. Whatever victory this girl thought was coming, it wasn't hers. It was the worms. The girl had lost whatever battle she'd fought, the blood staining her shirt was evidence enough of that. But the girl was no longer who she'd been before. The girl was one of them now, one of the Whole. A puppet moved and spoken for by a creature of evil. The girl who'd once been inside that body – she was lost somewhere in the dark now. In the dark with the Whole. Frightened and alone and not sure how to break free.

Just like Nat had been. Before she found Gaisgeil.

The girl lead them to a large dining room, a pair of empty plates on the long oak table, a couple of overturned chairs. And at the head of the table sat a boy – as blank of humanity in his gaze as the other two. But with an heir of confidence, of authority, that would have made Nat feel sick if she wasn't so worried about Gaisgeil.

There was a clicking on tile – the sound of massive claws, and Nat could smell the creature before thundered into the room like a mountain – the saber. The same one that had come for them in the fields.

The unicorn's absence was a throbbing, aching pain in the core of Nat's soul, and she doubled over, clutching her middle as her mind stretched and strained, trying to find where Gaisgeil had gone.

"Where is Gaisgeil?" Nat growled. "What did you do to her?"

A sound poured from somewhere deep in the saber's throat - like boulders through an endless canyon. Nat shuddered. It was laughter.

The girl turned. "Gaisgeil has undergone some...improvements."

Nat felt the words like a punch to the gut. Her worst fears realized. Gaisgeil had been changed. The Whole had taken her under again. And this time, Nat wasn't there with her, not there to help her navigate the dark, to pull her up to the light.

Not yet anyway.

She looked around the room, at the dead eyes of their captors, the impatient twitching of the saber's right ear. She knew what writhed and wormed inside all of their skulls, in the meat of their minds. The parasites.

She'd seen them, a long time ago at Second Chance Ranch. Seen their nests where they wriggled and slurped in a fluorescent mass of mayhem and evil.

She didn't see them now - but by the looks in the eyes of the kids and their sabers, she knew the nest couldn't be far.

Or worse.

The boy at the table watched her. His eyes had a flicker of something more than the others - a focus that burned into her. The way they all faced in his direction, the saber at his back. The boy was in charge here.