Shad Hadid and the Forbidden Alchemies by George Jreije

Author:George Jreije [Jreije, George]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-07-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

I read online that Jeita Grotto is a system of hundreds of underground tunnels,” said Hayati. “By my approximations, getting lost could mean it takes us up to thirteen years or 4,745 days to find one another.”

“And why do you think that’s the right thing to say as we are entering the tunnel?” asked Sarah.

Using the light from my friends’ phones, we navigated a rocky pass. I wasn’t scared to lead the way. After all, I’d been through dark walkways like the one beneath the Alexandria Academy. The difference was that here, I had to watch out for the one thing I hated worse than heights and necromancers . . .

Bugs.

I ran a hand over my curls every few moments just to be sure no spiders could hop onto my head. Once in a while, I’d stop and shake altogether so that nothing clung to my soggy clothes either.

“Why are you dancing?” asked Hayati.

“Shad must be doing the grotto shuffle,” said Sarah sarcastically, passing by me. “We have to hurry. My phone’s nearly out of battery, so yours must be too.”

“Not me,” said Hayati. “My older sister taught me to always be prepared, so I always keep a power bank in my pocket to charge my phone, just in—”

Donny snatched it with his outstretched hands. Holding it out of her reach, he asked, “You had this the whole time and didn’t tell us? I needed this charger a while ago! Not to mention, we could have chucked it at a necromancer’s head when we were fighting in the forest. These things are heavy!”

“Give it back,” she demanded. “It does not belong to me!”

Donny kept his arm raised until Hayati kicked his leg and he buckled, dropping the case and phone. The light from that phone beamed up to where the ceiling looked to be shaking. We all quieted as, gulping, we realized that wasn’t the ceiling at all . . .

“B-B-BATS!” I screamed.

All at once they descended on us. I dove to grab the power bank and motioned my friends after me as the hairy flying monsters chased us down the cave. Sarah shouted something ahead, but I couldn’t hear over the screeching animals or the sound of my own screaming.

All three of us rushed toward her, but Sarah’s phone light went out and when I arrived at where she’d stood, my heart sank to find nothing. Sarah had vanished and, worse, the cave broke into three separate passageways. Hayati motioned to the one on the right.

“I see a glow from that one,” she said.

“It has to be Sarah,” I agreed, throwing Hayati’s charger to knock away a lone bat zipping toward me. Looking back at the many more flapping their way down the tunnel, my chest pounding, I gasped, “They’re gaining on us!”

We followed the path to the right. But as we tried to slide through all at once, we squished together and jammed the space. Hayati shoved me out of the way and vanished as bats swarmed my head.

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