Chapter 18: Knell

Rhys's P.O.V:
Well...cobwebs were the first thing in my 'what-you-find-in-your-potential-mate's-basement' list. A lot of them.
Now I'm not one of those people that get all whimpery and panicky at sight of tiny microscopic bugs that can hardly cause any trouble for an almost immortal shifter, but..., "Is it me or do these spiders look a hell lot like Tarantula's?"
Mikalya's voice, when it came, seemed to be miles ahead of me in this dark, deserted basement with the only source of light that of the open trapdoor and stairs that seemed to lead straight to hell.
"They don't look like tarantulas", she said, the sound of water dripping from the ceiling prominent in the background. "They are...tarantulas."
Holy shit!
Not caring where the stairs ended, I jumped down the remaining stairs, but found the jump relatively short and thankfully, not leading to the fiery pits of Hell.
"I thought you were supposed to be an Alpha?" Right now, I didn't care about her sarcastic tone.
"Yeah and those were little bird eating monsters whose bite hurts like hell!"
"Rumors," she stated. "Their bites are usually neurotic, very rarely somatic and people don't die of their bites. It’s the infection that occurs later that becomes the real cause of death."
A sudden flare of binding light and then the entire basement was flooded with it, allowing me to have a good look of my surroundings.
Stone. Just like the houses, this basement was made of stores as well. Dark grey and shiny, probably granite. Several heavy metal boxes lined the walls with a small stretch forming a tunnel and disappearing into the dark. At the centre of the room was a huge table partially covered with a dusty piece of cloth and the open area having a detailed map of the Himalayas and its borders with the neighboring states.
Though when I looked at Mink, my heart literally leapt out of my chest for she seemed to be engrossed in a conversation with those hairy legged bitches! I've heard that a lot of shifter around the world could communicate with other creatures but this had to be the first and the creepiest one I've ever experienced.
Five tarantula's in total, each the size of my hand, two sat on each of her shoulders, two on her arms that she had folded in front of her and one seemed very comfortable lying on her chest. All dark and hairy and ugly brats!
And as if they heard me, two of them turned towards my direction, making me break out into sweat. Then Mink made a sound at the back of her throat and all of them jumped in sync, from her body to the wall and disappeared into the tunnel.
"I thought they couldn't make cobwebs. That a rumor too?" I asked following her to the centre table.
"No. They just aren't the only spiders around here, usually the others stay in hiding in fear of being eaten," she removed the cover releasing a cloud of dust that would have caused me to cough my lungs out if I hadn't covered my nose first. And when the dust settled....
"Fuck! Is that a grenade launcher?"
"And a few hundred AK47’s and a few snipers,” her voice was more than a little smug.
"How on earth did you get a hold of these? I thought you said your pack wasn't planning to attract anyone?" I asked, angry that she had kept this much hidden from me. If those two dickheads didn't plan on invading this land using high tech gears, which I wonder why I didn't think of first, she would have never mentioned any of these.

Mink's P.O.V:
"First of all, these are the Himalayas; it's the border line to all neighboring countries that have military stationed on every nook and cranny they can get their hands on. I keep rotating a couple of my people in those camp for training purposes. They keep a low profile, learn what they can and then train the juveniles. No one notices them and neither do they notice when a couple of weapons get lost, they just assume that it's lost along with the other soldiers who are dead. No one gets harmed." I explained to him.
I know he's probably boiling inside with this piece of news but I would have never shared it with him if we weren’t in danger of being attacked in a couple of days. We've been living here alone and undisturbed for ages and these people just had to interfere because they found out that most of my packmates were females. Pigs. That's what they are and I can defend my pack from them without any help from potential mates.
This was a bad idea. Telling him about my past was a really bad idea. Now he thinks I'm obliged to tell him every secret my pack has kept without disclosing any of his own. I mean, what do I even know about his pack? How much do I even know him? Aya was wrong, I'm not the only one who needs to step forward, he has to do the same. No relationship works one way and that's probably something he has never learned. Looks like we have reached a dead end already.
I wouldn’t even have brought him here if I’d known he’d have such a testosterone filled reaction but I guess it can’t be helped. He was a male shifter Alpha and this was their usual behavior. What mattered was that we select the weapons that we’ll be using to fight off the hostile forces and get this war over with. It’s been seventeen years since the last time I’d walked into a battle field and it had cost me someone very dear to my heart. My Abhay. But that was not something I had the pleasure of reminiscing at this moment. There was a war awaiting us and if I didn’t do something fast, it could get real ugly.
There were a lot of misconceptions about spiders around the world along with some true facts. But what really mattered for me was that they had the best working network of communication, next only to crows and snakes. And most importantly, nobody paid attention to spiders the way they did snakes and crows. And that’s what I needed at the moment, for them to finish their job unnoticed. I couldn’t count on technology at the moment, which is why I have to do this the old fashioned way.
"But why didn't-"
Crows. Several of them cawed at the same time before they all fell eerily silent. Their noise echoing off the walls as it came through the tunnel.
"Now what was that?" Rhys asked exasperated as he looked at the darkness of the tunnel. It was a secret escape passage that led outside the main pack house and into a safe house in the Greater Himalayan ranges. Only my pack members knew the way as it was a part of training. Anyone else would be lost within ten minutes.
"That", I said looking at Kushal who had raced down the stairs as soon as he had heard the call. "Was a knell."
But for whom, only time will tell.