"You attacked us," said Solovet in a steely voice. "And now whimper when you must suffer the consequences."
"Whimper?" snarled Lapblood. She and Mange crouched to attack. Solovet's hand flew to the hilt of her sword.
Gregor didn't understand exactly what was going on, but he could tell things were about to get ugly.
Ripred stepped between the seething rats and Solovet.
"Tides turn, Solovet," said Ripred quietly. "Remember this moment when your own pups cry with hunger and the plague stills their hearts. Even now, your grandson lies behind glass in the hospital."
"And what of my granddaughter, Luxa? Where lies she, Ripred?" spat out Solovet.
"I don't know! But you must set it aside, Solovet, or go back and tell your people to make their graves. At this moment, we have great mutual need!" said Ripred.
Gregor never knew how Solovet would have responded, because at that moment the horns began to blow. The warning came from the tunnels leading away from Regalia. A dozen humans on bats appeared and headed across the arena for the tunnels.
"What are they blowing that for? No rats are invading," said Ripred in a puzzled tone.
"There must be some threat, or they would not give the signal," said Solovet.
"But who would be attacking Regalia now?" said Vikus.
The answer came out of the tunnels. It was a bat with a bright orange coat that Gregor had never seen before. Something was wrong with it — its wings beat erratically and it was careening around in a bizarre fashion.
"It is Icarus! But what ails him?" said Nike. As Icarus swooped down over them, Gregor saw the purple bumps oozing fresh blood into his orange fur, the white tongue wagging from his mouth, the delirious look in his eyes.
"It's the plague!" he cried. "He looks just like Ares does!"
Icarus twisted in the air, his wings fluttering out of sync, and then lost control. A general cry of alarm went up as the bat plummeted straight down at them.
CHAPTER 9
As Icarus hit the ground, Gregor could hear the crack as the bones in his neck broke. He died instantly. There was no movement except the leaking of blood from the purple bumps.
"Do not touch him!" warned Neveeve. But this was unnecessary since almost everybody was instinctively scrambling away from the bat's ravaged body. Gregor backed into a roach, lost his footing, and fell over it onto his rear end. Two bats collided on takeoff. Only his mother, who was within a few feet of the ghastly creature when it landed, hadn't moved. She was clutching Boots in her arms, rooted to the ground in terror. Gregor got to his feet and ran for her.
"Torch the body!" ordered Solovet.
"No!" shouted Ripred, but three torches had already left the hands of the soldiers above. "No!" Ripred was literally gnashing his teeth in frustration.
"Get out of here! Everyone! Run!" he screamed.
When the torches hit Icarus, Gregor understood Ripred's frantic reaction. The flames had only rested on the fur a moment when a wave of small, black specks began to abandon the dead bat's body.
"Fleas!" cried Vikus. "Get you gone!"
Gregor grabbed Boots, caught his mother's arm, and pulled her onto the back of the nearest bat, who happened to be Queen Athena. Probably you weren't supposed to hop on a queen without asking permission, but this was no time for polite small talk. As they rose into the air, Gregor could see the rats and cockroaches disappearing into the tunnels leading to the Underland. All the humans on the ground had been picked up by bats and were airborne.
The fleas were hopping madly away from the burning bat.
"To the royal box!" called Vikus. "No one enters the city!"
Queen Athena swerved in the air and carried them toward a large, curved section of seats high in the arena. It reminded Gregor of the boxes where the rich people sat in Yankee Stadium. This must be where the royal family watched the sporting events.
As soon as they landed, Neveeve made them spread out. "Put as much distance as you can between one another." Gregor moved away from his mother and Queen Athena, but didn't feel like he could set Boots down. She'd just run off, maybe to the railing of the box, and they were up really high.
His mom started to follow Gregor and Boots but Neveeve waved her back. "No! Move into a space by yourself!"
The doctor opened a pouch at her belt and pulled out what looked like a fancy perfume bottle. It had one of those bulbs on the side so you could spray it. She closed her eyes, pointed the nozzle at herself, and squeezed the bulb. Puffs of yellow powder settled on her skin and clothing. It looked like the same stuff the rats had been scratching from their coats. The flea powder.
Neveeve moved rapidly around the box spraying everyone. "Rub it into your skin, your hair. Cover every inch of your being," she instructed.
When she got to Gregor, he covered Boots's eyes with his hands while he shut his own. He could feel the powder coating his skin. It had a sharp, bitter smell. As Neveeve moved on to his mother, Boots sneezed and gave him a surprised look. "You yellow," she said.
"You, too," Gregor said, working the powder through her hair. "And what letter does yellow begin with?"
"Y!" Boots said. "Y is for yellow!"
"And what else?" said Gregor, trying to distract her as he rubbed the stuff over her skin.
"Y is for yo-yo! Y is for yak!" said Boots. She had never seen a yak, except in her ABC book. Neither had Gregor, for that matter. Probably no one would have ever even heard of a yak if it hadn't been about the only animal that began with a Y.
In a matter of minutes, the entire party of six bats and six humans had been treated with the pesticide.
"I think it is safe now to gather," said Neveeve.
Everyone came together in the center of the box. Below on the field, the charred body of the bat lay in a puddle of water. The fire had been extinguished.
"Bat sick. Bat needs juice," said Boots. Whenever she had a cold the first thing she got was a cup of juice.
"He's asleep now. He can have some when he wakes up," said Gregor. He could never manage to work out how to tell Boots someone had died.
"Apple juice." Boots squatted down and began to draw squiggles in the fine coat of yellow powder that covered the floor.
"Give orders to disinfect the entire field," Solovet called out to a guard who hovered on his bat near the box. "Wait!" The guard stayed as she turned to the doctor. "Will that be sufficient, Neveeve?"
"They must also spray the tunnels that lead away from the arena," said Neveeve. "The fleas will not be able to enter Regalia with the stone doors shut, nor jump so high as the seats. But some may already have escaped down the tunnels and into the rest of the Underland. Any who guard there must be recalled and their skin examined for bites."
"Do as she says," Solovet told the guard.
"What of the gnawers and the crawlers?" asked Vikus.
"No flea could penetrate the coat of poison on the gnawers, and they will not bite the crawlers. They are all quite safe," said Neveeve.
"And those of us here assembled?" said Vikus.
"If any flea reached us, which is doubtful, it is now dead. We must each be stripped and checked for bites by physicians in Regalia," said Neveeve.
"We are not..." choked out Gregor's mother. "We are never returning to Regalia!"
"Please, Grace, I know this to be very unexpected and distressing —" began Vikus.
"We're going home! We came to your meeting! That's all you said we had to do! So you tell that bat to take us home now!" said his mother as she pointed wildly at Nike.