Spider's Kiss: Book One of the Drambish Chronicles

by Jesse Sprague

  “It’s nothing,” Silvia said between barred teeth.

  Marim’s thighs hurt from cramping them together.

  Silvia cried out now. Marim was silent, her mouth drawn together.

  Black and red mingled together. Breathing crescendoed harsh and fast. A whimper. Marim’s head fell back against the pillow, sending out a puff of daisy petals. Silvia strained her head upward, her eyes wide and conscious—hateful. A tear slipped from Marim’s eye and rolled unnoted down to the pillow, settling near a lock of sweat-tinged hair.

  A laugh like a sigh, tired and joyful, emerged from Silvia.

  “A boy,” Marim whispered.

  “Havoc,” they said together. And the voice that belonged to neither echoed the name with a million other voices in one.

  ∆∆∆

  Berrick forced his eyes to the staircase at the sound of approaching footsteps. They led Marim by the arms. The two men were as stiff as their uniforms. As if they too had undergone the starching process. They were not men at all but hands and bodies that led Marim away.

  Her hair, loose and untended around her shoulders, was blood-red. Somewhere deep inside she was bleeding, and it manifested itself in her hair. Everywhere else, she was blank and corpse-pale. Her eyes, a flat brown once more, glazed over. Her face, despite the scratches she had deposited on it in the night, was slack in the daylight. She wore her nightdress, now torn from one shoulder. The lace hung free where she had shredded it with her nails. It no longer looked the part of a wedding gown. What was left of her pregnancy weight was covered in the dress, leaving her resembling the slip of a girl she’d been not too long ago.

  “She’s stranded, halfway between here and there,” Darith commented.

  As usual, Berrick could not tell what lurked behind the boy’s dark tones. Nor could he see his face. Neither man looked away from the girl being led across the entrance hall toward the door. One look, one word from her and Berrick would rip her from the hands of those neat, pompous men.

  Just look up, baby. Give us some sign you’re in there.

  “How can they take her?” Count Cortanis asked. He did not understand.

  “Two months is not enough to condemn her to that place,” the countess added. “She has a chance yet to recover. She is so young and well-bred women do have troubles with childbirth. You must give her more time.”

  “Call this to a halt, Darith,” the count said.

  “I granted them the right,” Darith said. “Why would I call anything to a halt?”

  “She’s your wife. How could you?” the countess asked. “Have you no concern for the family name?”

  “She’ll be safer there. We can do nothing for her here,” Berrick said.

  “I’ll never understand…” the count began.

  Darith cut him off. “You don’t need to. I’m aware of your limits, Father. Aware of how delicately you treated your own wife. Your opinions mean nothing.”

  Berrick tuned the rest out as the men led Marim past him.

  Marim stared passively straight ahead as she passed them. She smelled of daisies. Darith brought them to her room. Every day, Marim sat by them and every night, before ripping at her flesh, she tore the flowers to shreds. Berrick cleaned the mess in the light of morning. The first time Berrick had mentioned the mental facility the words had tasted like acid.

  From the start, Darith maintained that Marim was never coming back. The traumatized boy talked about not being able to feel her inside his mind. Berrick tried very hard early on to disbelieve Darith’s stark predictions on Marim’s account, but nothing looked out of her eyes, and she would do herself real harm eventually. After the initial month of her raving, Berrick bode his time with Darith until they could legally send Marim away.

  The starched men led her from the house. Count Cortanis and his bitter-faced wife followed to see the girl loaded in the car. The countess gave the healthcare workers instruction on how to leave the property without being noticed.

  “Look at them,” Darith said. “One might assume that genuine feelings motivated them. But it’s just the shame of their daughter-in-law being institutionalized. Never admit weakness. Anything but that.”

  “They aren’t perfect, Darith. No parent is.”

  “You don’t know them at all, do you? You’ve known my father for twenty years and you don’t know a damn thing that makes him tick.”

  Darith held the spider-child in his arms. The baby was as pink-faced and plump as any human infant.

  The baby squalled. Berrick saw the creature and knew the spider by its already black eyes. For two months, he had awaited a moment alone with the evil beast. But even if he had it, would he have the bravery to do what needed to be done? Monster or not, it was his grandchild. How could he judge the Cortanis?

  “You meant to murder her. You still do,” Darith said. His hold tightened on the child, and he pulled back.

  “Yes.” Berrick hadn’t realized till then that he was reaching to take Annabelle. He lowered his arms. Today was not the day. The more time passed, the more his attempts felt like a shallow fraud. One night, he had stood over her crib when Darith and the wet nurse had been absent, a pillow clutched in his hands. And what had he done? Nothing.

  “I would’ve stopped you.”

  Berrick looked at the wheeled chair that Darith sat in. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  “So now you will go after Silvia and Halis and try to slay them.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think you will succeed?” Darith smirked.

  “No.” But what other choice was there? He had less than a month left in sabbatical left. After that, he either had to return to work or risk having his status revoked, and with it his clearance. “Do you think you would have succeeded in stopping me?”

  “I know I would have,” Darith said. Then his arms extricated themselves from the baby’s body. He spoke a word that filled the air with silent noise. His long fingers moved on the air as if he scooped sand. Annabelle lifted from his lap and hung suspended. Then Darith’s hands moved to the side of his chair.

  A whisper of gray tinged his skin and his eyes darkened. Darith levered himself up. Another word exploded from his lips. Had the sound blown in another direction, perhaps the house would have fallen around their ears. Instead, Darith stood.

  Though his muscles must have been weak, the boy remained standing and moved his arms to take the spider. “And when you fail with the spiders who hurt Marim, I’ll follow you and see that they meet a messy end.”

  Darith sat back in the chair. His face was pale and drawn, and his hands shook.

  Berrick had seen magic like this before. Because he knew Silvia, he did not question Darith’s abilities. “Why not go now?”

  “I’m not impatient. And I have Annabelle to look after.” Darith glanced at the baby. “She’ll probably be one of them. But just think, perhaps instead she’ll be something more. Forged like a sword, there’ll be no weapon of greater power.”

  “She isn’t your child.”

  “She is.” Darith looked up into Berrick’s eyes. His gaze was hard, not starched, but genuine inflexible strength. “There will be another child out there, and that child will be mine in the way you mean. But it’ll also be Marim’s in the way that Annabelle’s mine. There are two children and four parents, and each belongs to each. We are all caught in the web together. You cannot remove anyone without tearing the web into pieces.”

  “Makes no sense,” Berrick snarled.

  “Go chase them. That’s your part in this—a bloodhound bound for failure.” Darith waved a hand, a smirk plastered to his face.

  Berrick turned and strode out the door, Darith’s laughter on his back. The car that held his daughter headed down the long driveway.

  The countess wept, though she had never liked Marim. Berrick hated siding with the sullen boy, but the only worry that woman had was for her image. The count placed his hand on Berrick’s shoulder and said nothing. There was nothing to say. Words
were dry and empty. Vengeance did not dry up and melt away on Berrick’s tongue. He’d locate the spiders, and he would destroy them. If he was not irradicated in the process, he would return and kill the one spider he’d left behind.

  “I’m going off-world.”

  “Must you talk of this now?” the countess cried.

  Berrick clenched his fists. Her child was safe and sane inside her home. He’d ignored her judgments once before, pretending he hadn’t known she’d told Marim that Polly had asked for her fate. How had no one killed this nasty woman by now?

  “You’ll have to resign,” the count said.

  “Eventually,” Berrick replied. “I should have resigned four years ago. But my clearance will be of help where I’m going.”

  “Do you recall how happy you were when the position vacated and we got you an interview? Odd, looking back. So much hope back then, so much belief and faith.”

  “I need to believe in something again. Can’t live this way. I have to fight, or I’ll wake up one day and be just like the rigid bastards who took my family.”

  “I try to be a good man, Berrick, but you were always better at it than me. I won’t ever break free, but I do wish you luck in it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

  “I will.” There was no other option.

  Chapter 4

  A Path

  The station was sterile despite the hordes of people who traipsed through each day. A slight stink of bleach hovered in the air. The last time Berrick had entered an interplanetary hub like this was when he’d taken his family to DelRion to see the dinosaurs. Petyr had been about five then. The station hadn’t changed an iota. But Berrick liked the locale better this round.

  He felt lost in the crush of people. In the steady stream of humanity, he almost shook free the thoughts that stalked him.

  The windows that looked out to the shipyards had no animations. After crossing traffic, he sat down in front of a window panel to stare at the starry sky. Great ships occasionally blotted out his view of the vast expanse of glittering stars and endless black. His mind wandered from star to star and escaped, sometimes for a minute at a time, the lingering memory of Marim birthing a monster.

  Memories arose instead from years before of his wife laughing as Marim and Petyr stood against these same windows, their flushed faces plastered to the glass. I failed them. The old mantra took over, but now it boasted a new line. I failed her.

  Twice before, he’d been in the station and those moments echoed. The first with Polly, her belly big with Marim. Berrick thought then that he had landed the job of a lifetime and Polly had beamed with pride. Both had been filled with dreams of the wonders in store for them. Moving back to Yahal had been a dream for them, a promise of a bright future. That was before the real world had come crashing in. Before Polly’s dreams of a big family had been squashed by complications in Marim’s birth and she’d learned that the technology that had stood any chance of helping her conceive again was illegal on Yahal.

  The second visit had been only months before Polly’s choices had caught up to her. Looking back, Berrick should have seen the signs. Weight loss, dark circles under her eyes, hands constantly fidgeting. Why hadn’t she told him? Had she thought he’d condemn her, choose the letter of the law over his family? If he’d seen, could he have saved them? Would he have even believed that the world he loved, the values, could condone the thing that had been done? The punishment for violating the laws exceeded anything he could believe was necessary.

  This time, he was alone, leaving Yahal. The land of opportunity and peace hadn’t worked out for him. Why not give violence and self-destruction a go?

  He’d spent all morning thumbing through news headlines for the nearby planets, looking for something to lead him to Halis. Even having given up his job, his security clearance still gave him access to a great deal. But so far, the glittering sky told him about as much about where to proceed as the news.

  “Mind if I sit?” The voice was young and girlish. A timbre that reminded him of Marim before the spider mess. When Berrick looked over, he expected a girl his daughter’s age, maybe younger.

  What he got was something else entirely, something that elicited a burst of terror. She was delicate as a piece of handmade lace and so pale, she might have been translucent. Her eyes were an awe-inspiring pinkish purple. The oddity was not what scared him, though her coloring did remind him of an ill-fated albino rat Petyr had once owned. The disquiet that rose in him came from her beauty, which if anything, exceeded Silvia’s.

  It was no coincidence, a woman like that was standing there.

  When no reply was forthcoming, she sat. A woman of her physical caliber didn’t expect no as an answer. Probably hadn’t heard the word her entire life.

  She smiled with her colorless lashes fanning her cheeks. “I know you, sir. You’re Yahal’s police chief. Trehar? Correct?”

  “Not anymore.” Berrick’s hands trembled, longing to reach out and comfort her. His mind held back. She was dangerous and too beautiful to trust. The ticket stub in her frail little hand was a white splash across her black leggings. The plastic stub was displayed perfectly for him to view. He doubted that was an accident, even though there was no proof to back his opinion. “You’re not coming from Yahal. How’d you know me?”

  “My employers have dealings in many places. Mr. Trehar, if I may, trust me when I say your suspicions of me are unfounded.”

  Her effortless assessment of the inner workings of his mind did nothing to reassure him. “And who’re you?”

  “I’ve been known by thousands of names. Given our current entanglement, you may have the name my mother gave me: Allison. It’s no conceit to say if I wanted you on your knees, you would be licking the floor.” No bravado blared in her words. If anything, there was a trace of a plea in the silence of her breath.

  “Say what you came to say.”

  “You’re looking for Halis. So am I. My job’s to see him in the dirt and I’m unmatched at my job.”

  “Hired killings are illegal.”

  “So are vendetta kills.”

  “I won’t help you find them.”

  “Of course. You don’t know where he is.” Allison set an unpunched ticket down on her leg and spun it so the destination faced him. There was no mistaking this gesture. “I do.”

  Why does she keep referring to him as if he’s alone. Why hire someone to kill Halis and not Silvia? “You know where Halis is?”

  Allison nodded.

  And why would a hired killer help me get to Halis?

  Once again, Allison either read him like a book or had some ability to access his mind. “Despite rumors, I have a heart. It doesn’t matter to my agency if your hand or mine starts the decomposition process, as long as Halis dies.”

  “And Silvia?”

  Allison’s shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly, and her breath hitched. If he hadn’t spent a better portion of his life looking for tells, he never would have noticed his words had upset her. Certainly, when she spoke, there was no hint.

  “My employers sent me for one person.”

  “Turn around, Allison. Regardless of any crimes you’ve committed, you don’t stand a chance against Halis. Not if information is being withheld from you. They aren’t human; they are something else. They are monsters.”

  “All the more reason for you to go there. Mr. Trehar, what I’m about to say will sound crazy.”

  “Spit it out. I’m accustomed to crazy.”

  “If I get there before you and Halis doesn’t wind up in the ground, find Mr. Red. Tell him I know it’s a trap. Tell him I don’t regret anything and none of this is on his shoulders.”

  Before Berrick could answer, she was on her feet and gliding away. He jotted down her odd words in his evidence journal. A death request deserved to be honored, even if he didn’t understand the meaning. Once he committed the words, he started to weigh the pros and con
s of following her to the Veesp moon colony.

  ∆∆∆

  Marim? Marim? Darith prodded outward with his mind. The maze of dark strands inside him spoke to him. He felt all of them pulling at him. Silvia’s eyes sought him. They often did, but this time he, too, traversed the web. At first, his movements had been random, just scurrying away from the dark-eyed witch. But once the fear left him, it no longer felt entirely like a web to trap him.

  A road ran in the web. And somewhere along the twists and turns, Marim waited.

  Darith ignored the grating voice of the web as he moved. He wanted only one thing.

  He walked toward the dark light of his wife. Her physical body lay in front of his knees, her dark, vacant eyes like a vortex into the underworld. He held on to the memory of her running to him, warm from the sunlit gardens, and falling into his arms. The sun in his dark life. She’d believed in him. Loved him regardless of his merit. He wouldn’t give up on her.

  “We need her. We’ll not give her back. She is ours.”

  The Marim who sat at the heart of the darkness looked up. Her body never twitched. Stuck in the web, her image was eyeless. She smiled at him. Tiny black legs wiggled between her teeth. One minuscule spider escaped her mouth to crawl over her lip.

  He clung to the sunlight she’d once brought him, hoping somehow the remembered rays could warm her. More spiders squirmed loose from her smile.

  “I hate them, Marim. Our daughter is the only reason I stay now. I’m strong, not meant to play nursemaid to you or her. Your father seeks Silvia and Halis, but I can find them. I’ll kill them. Wake up. I can’t leave Annabelle or you. Wake up. Just wake up.”

  The Marim in the web wept blood tears, and he moved to hold her.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  Her body moved. Her bony physical hand tightened on his and something stared out at him. It wasn’t Marim. A vile gurgling poured from her throat, setting free a puff of smoke. After taking his hand back, Darith understood.