by Nazri Noor
The trouble was the price they commanded. I figured this time I would make my way in and actually ask what they wanted as an offering. Having Carver’s support meant that he might be willing to shell out some cash to track down the very rare and very expensive reagents the Sisters typically demanded, like spun gold, and lace crafted by a woman gone blind.
I looked to either side of me, checking that I was as inconspicuous as could be. Not that it mattered much. After the stores closed, Silk Road was pretty devoid of shoppers and pedestrians, anyway. All I had left for company were the pale glow of streetlights and the faint rush of an evening breeze as it blew through the district’s colonnade of trees.
“Right,” I said to myself softly, keeping my backpack, and therefore Vanitas close to my body. “Here we go.”
I didn’t go, still hesitating, remembering the stifling fear and suffocation I experienced the last time I squeezed into the alley to speak to the Sisters. But this was about the Eldest, and the fate of humanity, I told myself. Don’t be such a little chicken.
“Right,” I murmured again, sucking my breath in, making myself as physically small as possibly so I’d fit into the alley. I turned sideways, took one step to the left – then launched straight up into the air.
I yelped, panicking, as something tugged on my leg and whipped me upside down. The world went spinning as I dangled in place, as more of a strange, invisible rope worked its way around my ankles, then my knees, and all the way up to my elbows. Within seconds I’d been hog-tied and wrapped in fine, strong threads that were too dangerously close to my neck. They were sticky, too.
“Okay,” I said to the Sisters. “I’m sorry I didn’t come with an offering. I promise I’ll make it up to you. What do you ladies want? Just put me down and I’ll go get it.”
Silence. I wriggled, as best as I could, barely making any headway. I could jiggle around as much as I wanted to – I wasn’t going anywhere. The blood was rushing to my head, too.
“Any minute now,” I said. “Please? Hello?”
Something wasn’t right about this, and I was liking it less and less by the second. I knew that my backpack was bundled up nice and tight, too. No way I could tip Vanitas out and get him to cut me free. Ah, but the shadows. I looked around, and up at my feet.
It was risky, but really my only option. I could call on the Dark Room to send blades to cut the ropes binding my feet. I would, of course, fall right on my head and potentially break it open, but if I timed it right, I could fall into the shadows instead, shadowstepping into the Dark Room’s safety, and –
What the hell was that?
As I struggled and writhed, something as thick and as sharp as a spearpoint nudged my ribs. I strained my neck to look down at the weapon poking me. Wait. That wasn’t a spear. It was a leg: spiny, black, and bristled. A huge spider’s leg.
Oh. Uh-oh.
“Hello, sweetling. It has been a while.”
I blinked, and there she was, hanging upside down before me, which is to say, right side up from my perspective. It was Arachne, the queen of spiders, once the world’s greatest weaver, now one of the world’s richest sources of rare and hidden knowledge. Which clearly didn’t bode well for me.
“Oh. Hello, Arachne.”
“Dustin Graves,” she began to say. Arachne blinked all eight of her eyes, the simple biological act of it somehow filling me with so much dread. “Do you remember our bargain from some time ago? From a time, oh, before you decided that you valued the wisdom of the Sisters over the counsel of your good friend Arachne?”
“I – hmm, let me think.” I was fighting to keep my voice calm, not to panic in spite of the rush of blood to my brain – and in spite of the fact that I was seconds away from being envenomated by a spider-woman the size of a small truck. “It had to do with payment, didn’t it? That you were going to collect on your services from then on, since the last favor you did for me.”
“Very good.” Arachne smiled, the jade green of her teeth glinting in the streetlight. “Then you remember.” She frowned, and the world seemed darker. “Then you also understand how I must feel about this. You went to the Sisters for their aid, once. You paid their price. Now you seek them again, instead of Arachne. You spurned me twice, sweetling.” She tilted her head, her eyes glinting with menace. “Now what has poor Arachne done to deserve such poor treatment?”
“Okay,” I blurted. “I’ll level with you. I was afraid of the exact price you’d request. It was a big ask, okay?” I had to choose my next words very carefully. Sure, entities had less power outside of their domiciles, but spiders lurked everywhere in the world. Arachne didn’t need to expend much effort to summon a few hundred of them to bite me, fill me with their venom, maybe even eat me from the inside. Jesus, why do I do this to myself? “I know that your children do excellent work, finding the information you request, but I needed answers, and fast.”
All eight of Arachne’s eyes narrowed, scrutinizing me with their cold, insect intellect. “Very well,” she said.
The strand of spider silk binding my feet snapped. I crashed to the ground, my restraints loosening enough to let me reach for the back of my head and rub it gingerly. I looked up, pouting at Arachne, who was still burning holes through the back of my skull with a glare that dripped with displeasure.
“State your request,” Arachne said coldly. “I will handle this. Forget the Sisters.”
“Look,” I said. “I’m sorry I turned to the Sisters over you, Arachne. I meant no disrespect. It’s just that – ”
“I have heard your reasons, Dustin Graves.” She smiled in a way that was far too saccharine, even for her. “Now. State. Your. Request. Arachne will find the answers you seek. And for a lower price, too.”
I watched her cautiously, hanging upside down on the strand of supernaturally strong silk that attached her to – seriously, where was the web even anchored?
I was brutally aware that she could move lightning quick at a moment’s notice and impale me with any one of her eight sword-like legs. In the back of my head I reminded myself that part of my new thing was to stop pissing off entities so much. Time for damage control, I guess.
“Right. Okay. The Eldest are wearing the walls of our reality thinner and thinner, and I truly think that the only chance I have in this fight is to seek patronage, from one of the entities of darkness and night.” I looked up at her, realizing that my words were sincere. “I need your help finding the Midnight Convocation.”
Arachne smiled. “Is that all? I can help you with that quite easily. But you do know the price you’ll pay for patronage, don’t you, sweetling? You understand the cost of wearing the Crown of Stars.”
I nodded, my lips pressed tightly shut. It was a hard pill to swallow, and the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to discuss it.
“And you must know that I will also extract my price. A fee, for services rendered. Not an exorbitant one, oh no. Not for our little sweetling’s sake.” She grinned. “But one that will be very difficult to pay all the same. Oh. Very difficult indeed.”
“I – what? Difficult? Just for the Convocation’s location?”
“Ah, but this is the price you must pay for breaking poor Arachne’s heart.”
I stopped the corner of my mouth from twitching as I studied her. I knew she wasn’t that hurt. She was just being vengeful. Scratch that: she was being an entity. It was all part of their nature, to be fickle, to be a little mad, a little cruel with the humans they called their playthings. But Arachne had done so much for me in the past that some part of me felt bound to fulfill her wishes.
“Fine,” I said. “Okay. I’ll take the deal.”
“Splendid!” Arachne steepled her fingers together. “Now, as for the Midnight Convocation. You must take a trip, away from Valero. That is where they will gather, on a full moon. You are amenable to a small vacation, yes?”
I was, sure. But that was convenient. Too convenient. I needed to leave the city, anyway. It made me itchy
. It made me suspicious.
“There has to be a catch,” I said. “There always is.”
“But of course there is, sweetling. The Midnight Convocation is where the lords and ladies of darkness gather, to plot and to plan, to focus their power. And among those entities is Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night.”
I squinted at her, hating where this was going. “And your price?”
Arachne smiled, her fangs like polished shards of the finest jade. “I demand a lock of her hair.”
Chapter 17
Damn it. I knew Arachne was going to milk me for all I was worth, but a lock of a goddess’s hair? Not just any goddess, either, but the Greek deity of the night. I’d never even met her, nor did I know anything about her temperament.
Was she going to hand it over willingly? Fat chance. Anyone who knows anything about magic would already be careful about going to a barber or a salon, much less willingly giving away a lock of their hair.
You can do so much damage with even just a strand: curse someone, bewitch them, bind their power, and even worse. What if Nyx refused? Did Arachne expect me to steal it right off her head?
Damn it.
I stood outside my dad’s house, my finger hovering stupidly over the doorbell even though I’d already pressed it five times in the past five minutes. He wasn’t home, that should have been so obvious.
Norman Graves might have been out for one of those poker nights he liked to have with the other guys who taught at his high school. Or maybe he was out on a date. He’d mentioned that he was giving the online dating thing the old college go, and I was happy to hear it. I missed mom – every day I missed her – and dad did, too. But he deserved to be happy.
I got on my haunches, digging through my backpack to find a loose scrap of paper, anything to write a note I could slip under his door. Nothing. Vanitas grunted moodily when I knocked him aside by accident. I looked back up at the darkened house.
Maybe I could shadowstep in, then leave a message when I got inside. I threw my hands up. Fuck it, I could just text him, right? He’d be mad that I didn’t personally say goodbye before I left Valero, but hey, he was the one out on a theoretical hot date with my hypothetical future stepmom.
I shrugged on my backpack, pivoted on my heel, then stepped off the front porch, watching dad’s front lawn and trying to figure out the best patch of shadow I might use to enter the Dark Room. I was done for the night. I’d given Carver a call, told him that I knew where to head for the Convocation, and within minutes he’d made the decision to send Gil and Sterling to come along with me. I wasn’t about to say no. Meet them at the bus terminal, Carver said, so that was where I directed my energies as I spotted the perfect shadow and prepared to enter it.
Then it happened. A flash from the sky distracted me long enough that I raised my head, searching for the source of the light. Fuck. No fucking way. A small, white dot was suspended in the air just ahead of me on the street, and it was steadily growing, widening into one of the rifts that the shrikes used to invade our reality.
I fumbled through my pockets, my hands shaking as I struggled to unlock my phone, then scroll through my contacts for Carver’s number.
Then a searing blast of crimson light rocketed from out of the night sky, a pillar of shimmering brilliance as thick around as an old sequoia, slamming into the fledgling rift. The rift exploded into shards of white nothingness – but the crimson beam continued its swan dive towards the earth.
And towards me.
I had no time to sink into the shadows, barely enough time to dodge. I twisted my body, toeing off of the asphalt in an attempt to leap out of the beam’s path, but it wasn’t enough. I gritted my teeth as I jumped, prepared to lose the entire left side of my body to the scorching shaft of light screaming towards me.
Then something the size and speed of a runaway car smashed into my body, flinging me out of the path of destruction.
The air crashed out of my lungs in one huge, painful gust. The unidentified object that had appeared out of nowhere put a deep, cold ache in the bones and muscles precisely in my side where it had hit me. I slammed heavily into the ground, eating a mouthful of dirt.
But it was better than being where the beam had struck. An explosion smashed the asphalt, cratering the street and sending out a massive boom that shattered the air – and the nearby street lamps, and a bunch of car windows, as well as the enormous block of ice that had saved my life.
Wait. A block of ice?
I coughed as I reached for my side, hissing when my fingers made contact with the raw, bruised flesh just around my ribs. Footsteps rang across the asphalt, and I would have panicked if I hadn’t known that it was Herald, somehow miraculously come to assault me bodily with a literal iceberg in order to save me from being annihilated by an actual orbital strike.
“What the fuck just happened?” I yelped. “What the fuck was that?”
“That,” Herald said through gritted teeth, “was the Heart.”
He knelt by my side, his hand swirling with coils of purple mist as he directed slow, delicious pulses of healing magic against my bones and my muscles. I sighed in relief – then yelped in pain when Herald cut me off from the healing magic and smacked me upside the head.
“I knew I would find you here, you idiot,” Herald growled, his glasses glinting menacingly in the moonlight. “Carver said to head straight for the bus terminal, didn’t he? You have limited time to get this done. But do you ever listen?”
“How do you know about that?” I muttered, still winded.
“They’re called cell phones, Dust. You may have heard of them.”
I blinked, confused. “When the hell did Carver give you his phone number?”
Herald frowned. “Are you kidding? Ages ago, when we all met up for that seafood dinner. We talk, swap notes on spells sometimes.”
“What the – how did I not know about this?”
“It’s not like we talk about you.” Herald shrugged. “Why would you need to know?”
“You guys don’t talk about me?” I said, weirdly crestfallen.
“Shut up. Not the point.” Herald gave me his hand, pulling me up off the ground. “Come on, we have to go.”
“One more thing. How did the Heart find me?”
He shook his head. “They aren’t Scions for nothing, Dust. They’ve given up on tracking you for the moment. They know you’re hiding. So they’ve changed tacks. Now they’re tracking the rifts, and whenever one appears, they blast it with a beam of energy from right out of the sky. Just like you saw.”
“Like an orbital strike,” I said. Just as I thought, too.
“Correct. They just need an approximate location. There’s a specially constructed room somewhere in the Lorica. It’s the nerve center. The Heart’s chamber. If enough Scions gather there, if enough of them channel their forces into the Heart – ”
“They blow shit up wherever they want, whenever they want.” Damn. The Lorica didn’t play around. “You saved my life, dude.” I dusted off my clothes, brushing blades of grass off my jeans. “Thanks.”
Herald nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose, his expression grim. “Wouldn’t have been the first time. Come on. Bus leaves soon.”
“I can make it to the terminal on my own.” I raised an eyebrow. “It’s okay. I’ll get there safely, I promise. No more detours. Not after that – whatever the hell that laser was.”
Herald dug his heels in, then raised his chin, doubling down. “Nope. Gotta make sure you get there in one piece. Carver said so.”
“What are you, my bodyguard now? How much is he paying you?”
“Sterling and Gil are meeting us there,” he added, ignoring me. “Let’s go. The Wings will be here any minute to check on the aftermath.”
He tugged on my jacket, and, somehow feeling entirely helpless, I tagged along.
“I could shadowstep us there in a minute,” I said.
“Quit bragging,” Herald said. “I don’t want to ris
k getting killed in that death chamber you call the Dark Room.” He pulled tighter with one hand, then adjusted the straps on his backpack with the other.
Wait. His backpack?
Was Herald coming with me?
Chapter 18
“Yes,” Herald droned. “I’m coming along. How is this a surprise to you?”
It wasn’t, at that point, since we were already on the damn bus. But it was pretty weird at first, considering Carver had specifically pinpointed that I was going to be traveling avec vampire and werewolf. Asher was pretty disappointed about being asked to stay behind, but I had to agree with Carver on that one.
This was way too dangerous to have someone as powerful and as valuable as Asher being with us on the field. The Lorica was already scouring the city for me. We didn’t want to give them a twofer bonus if they did end up killing me, then capturing Asher in one fell swoop.
“So Carver put you up to this, right? He doesn’t trust me enough to take care of myself, so he asked you to come and provide support. Warding, maybe, keep me extra hidden from the Eyes.”
Herald leaned his chin on his fist, staring out the window. “Nope. Came on my own.”
I blinked, my gaze flitting from his face to the scenery rushing by outside. “Didn’t know you cared,” I said, chuckling.
“I don’t,” Herald grumbled. “I just don’t like the idea of my friends dying. Especially the dumb ones who can barely take care of themselves.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s said to me,” I mumbled. Herald chuckled, still staring at the landscape.
Sterling and Gil sat side by side a couple of rows behind us. Gil was snoring quietly, a cap pulled halfway over his face, and Sterling’s fingers smashed away at a device he held in both hands. Was that a gaming console? Huh. Asher’s influence, I guessed.
I dozed off a couple of times, my head lolling about, and more than once I woke up with a bit of drool running down my chin. The second time it was because the bus had stopped moving. We’d made it, then. Silveropolis.
