Perenelle remained perfectly still, although her every instinct was to fight against the web, to tear it apart, to allow her aura to bloom and crisp it to blackened dust. She kept her mouth clamped tightly shut. She had fought monsters and seen creatures from the darkest edges of mankind’s legends, but she still found the thought of a spider crawling into her mouth absolutely repulsive.

The Old Spider’s head swiveled, and a long leg rose, hair gently blowing as it tested the air. “Prepare yourself,” Areop-Enap said. “They’re coming. So long as the web remains unbroken, you are protected.”

Perenelle was now completely sheathed in a thick cocoon of white silken spiderweb. She had worn the finest silk before, but this was different. It was like being tightly wrapped in a soft blanket, incredibly comfortable but slightly constricting. The web was thinner around her mouth and eyes, so that she could breathe and see, but it was like looking through a gauze curtain. She felt a jolt, and suddenly she was hoisted up into the air and tucked into a corner. A wave of black spiders immediately swept over her, securing the cocoon tightly to the walls and the metal girders that buttressed the house. From her new vantage point, she could look down over the room to where Areop-Enap squatted in the middle of the floor. Perenelle realized that the dark carpet beneath the Elder was a mass of thousands-maybe even millions-of spiders. The floor rippled and pulsed under Areop-Enap, which was facing north, toward Angel Island, now lost in early-morning mist. Shifting in the cocoon, Perenelle strained to look in the same direction. From her perch she could see out over the water. There were storm clouds massing on the horizon, thick and blue-black; she expected to see them spike and flash with lightning. But through the silk covering her face, she saw that this cloud was twisting, turning in on itself… and it was racing closer. In less than a dozen heartbeats, it had flowed over the north end of Alcatraz.

And then it started to rain.

There was no roof on the ruined Warden’s House. Thick black drops fell out of the cloud and spattered against Perenelle’s web cocoon… and stuck.

And the Sorceress abruptly realized that these were not raindrops-they were flies.

Huge bluebottles and houseflies, squat fruit flies, narrow horseflies, soldier flies and robber flies rained down over the island, hitting and sticking to her web cocoon.

Before Perenelle even had a chance to call out in disgust, individual spiders were darting across the web and had commenced wrapping the struggling flies in silk.