Spider's Kiss: Book One of the Drambish Chronicles

by Jesse Sprague

  Berrick barely caught the last words over the buzzing in his mind. Then the buzzing faded and somewhere in the distance, he thought he heard a little boy’s giggle. All was black.

  Chapter 19

  Timing

  The hospital lobby was vacant except for a few banged-up teenagers and a withered woman coughing into a kerchief. Red’s white leather gloves slid across the counter as he inspected the tinted glass separating him from the receptionist.

  “Her name was Allison, but she might have come in under the name Lilly. You’d remember her if you saw her: pale, incredibly attractive.”

  “No last name, sir? Our records…” The woman trailed off as Red lifted a hand to his face, as if repressing a tear.

  Playing emotions ran against his nature, but like he always told the girls, “In our line of work, you have to do everything perfectly, even the things that are repellant.”

  “I could ask. Hold on,” the woman said.

  Her heels clicked as she walked away and Red leaned against the counter. The lobby was sparse, lined with row upon row of white plastic chairs. Gods-awful choice of color for a hospital. He wondered how often they were smeared with red. Only a few moments passed before the clicking returned.

  “She was here last week. Some sort of mental breakdown but no bodily injury. Her boyfriend took responsibility for her legally when he picked her up. I wish I could give you a contact number, I really do, but policy on that is strict. You understand.”

  Before he could debate with himself if he should bother with getting the number, the doors behind him burst open, letting in a wail of both close and distant alarms. Emergency vehicles. A woman walked in, supporting a thin man with blood dripping from his eyes. Behind them, the previously vacant parking lot was busy with arriving people and several emergency vehicles with doors opening. One gurney was already being pushed around the side of the building.

  Red stepped aside to make way for the stream of injured.

  “The witch took my eyes! The witch did it!” someone screamed from a stretcher as it was pushed inside.

  A story emerged from the screams and whimpers of those filing into the lobby. Red cursed to himself. Wrong choice. He should have followed the boy to find the Drambish. And now it might be too late. Something had happened with the Drambish woman.

  Luckily, it didn’t look sexual, which implied that none of these people would be infected. A whole dimension to the problem he didn’t need.

  At the very least, he could concentrate on finding Allison. He strode from the room into the lot and tried to calculate how long it would take to reach town. Too long. Whatever was happening would have reached its conclusion by then. So what? Go to the space-train station? No, he had to catch them before they reached the train or The Brothel would get them. They were the only chance he had at Allison.

  A string of invectives left his mouth as he strode to his car and slipped inside. Once inside the cool interior, he forced a deep breath into his lungs. Allison was alive or had been. Whatever else, that was more than he’d feared. But before he went racing to town in a futile effort to find her…

  Red tapped a red button on the back of his ring. A pleasant buzz denoted a connection had been made. “Glory?” he said.

  A moment later, a voice made of sunlight invaded the sterile cracks of his mind.

  “Mr. Red? Everyone’s looking for you. Are you all right?”

  Sweet, young Glory. The newest of the girls. He smiled at the concern in her voice. He could have called any of the eleven agents. The Agency was kidding themselves if they thought a single one of the girls was more loyal to the corporation than to their trainer. He’d made damn sure of that. But Glory, lovely little Glory, was madly in love with Allison. She had been since the first day she’d set foot on The Agency’s space station. More time in The Agency would have stamped that out of her. He’d been planning to rid her of that weakness himself, but she was still new, volatile and emotional.

  “I’m in no danger, but Allison is in trouble. I can’t stay on the line and risk them listening, so pay attention. They tried to kill her. They failed. You need to make them think they succeeded. Prepare the girls. Whether or not I return with Allison, I’m going to need all of you.”

  “Of course, Red. Bring her home.”

  ∆∆∆

  “Silvia.”

  Blood coated her hands, sticky and half-dry. She moved her fingers, listening to the jagged, wet protest as her fingers pulled apart. My blood and Halis’. I left him. I did this.

  A red, five-pointed print stared up at her like a star from the surface of the table. Silvia touched the bandage at her shoulder, her mind ceaselessly prodding at the hole of Halis’ absence. She felt only a hungry numbness.

  “Silvia,” Darith said.

  A day later and we would have been gone. The bloody handprint mocked her. Human blood. Human failure. She should have seen this coming.

  Pale hair slipped over her shoulder, bringing back a half-forgotten face. A blonde woman with sea-green eyes, a gunshot wound through her skull. Silvia recalled the hungry numbness inside; she’d felt it then too.

  “Mommy! Mommy!”

  “Do we need the girl?” A male voice.

  “Yes. Bring her. Shut her up first.” Ymel, his voice even there, leaking like her mother’s face into her consciousness.

  Silvia made a fist with her sticky fingers.

  “Silvia!”

  A sharp tug on her chin brought Darith into view. How long had he been there? Tears filled Silvia’s eyes, blurring her vision until his face could have passed for Halis’. He held Havoc in his arms and handed the child over to her.

  “We must go,” Silvia said, Havoc’s warmth beside her in his carrier, a searing reminder that she had more to lose.

  “Were you aware there’s a one-eyed crazy woman in your closet?”

  “Oh, that would be Allison.” Silvia slapped the tears from her face.

  “Gods!”

  “Why was she in the closet?” Silvia asked.

  “Who is she?” Darith’s sharp, staccato words snapped at her like the jaws of a small dog.

  Good. She needed the pain to focus.

  “She came here to kill Halis. We neutralized her. We must bring her with us. She’s pregnant.”

  “We can’t go anywhere. There are agents paid by The Brothel all over the station, scanning for your DNA. If you’d gone, you’d just have walked into their hands.”

  “They would have taken us back. He’d be alive,” Silvia said. Then the memory of her mother’s brains splattered across the ground returned. “No, they would have killed us both. Our very existence is a crime they perpetrated.”

  “About that… How is it you lived when the infection left you?”

  “It’s not an infection. It’s a gene… and because I’m human—or was once. Like you, I was blessed with the spider, not born to it.”

  “But you can change into a spider.”

  “Magic, in order to…” Silvia choked back a sob. “So I could be more like Halis.”

  “Do they know you can energy bend?”

  “Mr. Ymel does. His men do. They couldn’t tell anyone else for risk word of yet another illegal mutation getting out. Underlings won’t know.”

  “So, I could simply alter the scanner?”

  Silvia shrugged. She’d never tried something like that, but theoretically… it’d work. And what did it matter?

  “If that’s true, can you change into anything or just a spider?”

  ∆∆∆

  On the screen, red hair spilled over Marim’s shoulders in untamed knots. Strands cemented into clumps by drool slapped stiff and brittle against her face as she jerked erect. Dry lips parted and a throaty laugh emerged.

  Ymel shrank back when she lifted her finger and pointed. Her black eyes, shot with swirls of brilliant fire, registered his movement and her lips curved up in a smile.

  “Your house of sticks will burn,” she hissed, the sound comi
ng out slightly fuzzy through the speaker. When she spoke again the voice that issued forth was clear and male. A nasal baritone filled with hate. “Halis is dead and they are coming for you. Bloody eyes, bloody ears, bloody hands and red, red across the sky. You thought you’d get away with leaving us in chains, but we are coming. I will feast on your screams.”

  “Shut it up!” Ymel said.

  Marim laughed again before lying back and closing her eyes. A red trickle ran, like a tear from her eye. A single drop fell to the table.

  Ymel trembled as he stared in abject horror at the girl’s prostrate form. One thing was clear. If Halis was dead, then his plan had gone awry.

  Chapter 20

  A Dog & a Baby

  The line looked endless. Lee-San half-listened to the people boarding the space-train as he scanned them, telling each it was a special security scan. No one objected, not since the topic on everyone’s lips was the incident downtown a few hours earlier. Lee-San had called his wife when he’d heard, just making sure. She hadn’t been downtown and neither had their children.

  After that, he hadn’t paid much attention.

  A couple approached. They looked nothing like the descriptions of the criminals, but that didn’t matter. His job was to scan everyone.

  The woman, a pale sickly thing, was asleep in a wheelchair, a bandage over one eye. The man that pushed the chair was little more than a boy. Poor kid. From the look of it, he was strapped with an injured wife and a child. Too young for that.

  Lee-San explained the scan, and the boy nodded his head. He even reached out and touched the scanner before Lee-San could jerk it away. Once safely out of reach, Lee-San ran the scanner over the pale girl, making sure to do so on the right side of the chair. Tied to the handle of the left side was a huge white dog. The creature looked foul-tempered if ever there was a foul-tempered canine. Beautiful creature, though.

  The girl was clean.

  He scanned the man. Clean.

  For a moment, he considered scanning the baby in the carrier on the right arm of the chair. But he decided against it as the dog snarled.

  He waved the couple and their dog on board.

  Acknowledgments

  Spiders’ Kiss has taken the scenic route to readers, and has therefore been in the lives of my family and friends far longer than they might prefer. I thank all of them, including my son, who sacrificed more of Mommy’s attention than he wanted for books he won’t even get to read for a half dozen years!

  I should also individually thank my husband, who has always liked this story and hassled me to actually do something with it. And then there is my dear mother, who has read everything I’ve ever written… except for this story, which she can’t stand. Thanks to both of them for their support, but also for reminding me (by liking and disliking very different stories) that much of reading is subjective and to never take any single defeat too hard.

  The book has finally ventured out into the world, and people outside my home deserve credit for that. Spider’s Kiss wouldn’t exist without the encouragement of early readers, including Rachael Horwitz, Heather Coyle, David J. Thirteen, and Robert Novak. Their belief in both me and my “sexy spider” story helped me keep faith.

  Last, I need to thank the people who helped me shape this story into something more than the mess that poured from my mind. Tracy, Ligia de Wit, and Harpalicus (who was my first reader and deserves a stiff drink) all contributed indispensable work to making my story into something worth viewing. In this same line, thanks should also go out to my wonderful cover artist Stephanie Mooney, my editor Amy McNulty, and to the Seattle Scribblers, who helped me polish the blurbs and crystallize some of my final ideas.

  About the Author

  Jesse Sprague has been writing dark speculative fiction as a way of exploring ideas that don’t fit neatly into our world since her college days as an English Literature major. She has previously published several speculative short stories, including stories in the Once Upon Now anthology by Gallery books, Seattle Crypticon’s Decompositions, and stories in several anthologies which can be found on Amazon.

  Jesse can be found on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JesseSpragueauthor/ and her website jessesprague.com.