The Spider Children (The Warren Brood Book 1)

by Bartholomew Lander

  For a moment, Simon just stood there. The drone of machinery beyond the walls filled his stomach with despair. Everything was falling apart before his eyes. He stared into Gauge’s empty eyes and forced his lips into a scowl. “Somebody knows,” he admitted at last. Something flashed behind his eyes, and a hooked pain began deep in his brain. He could only cringe as he felt Gauge probe his mind for the statement’s nuance. The Vant’therax’s eyes bulged. At once, a wave of revulsion broke against the assembled robes. Angry mutters and hisses started from the ones in the back. The robes advanced until they were upon him.

  Gauge’s face was now mere inches from Simon’s own. “What did you just say?”

  Simon clenched his teeth, breathing out against the scent of decay flowing from Gauge’s maw. “Somebody got to Morton. Knew who he was, or what he did. I took care of him before he could say too much, but I was still too slow.” Another rancid breath filled his chest. “And that means we may soon need to vanish.”

  Pure rage shone in Gauge’s eyes. “Do you understand how much you’ve jeopardized, you slime?”

  “I understand better than you, beast!” He curled his free hand into an unconvincing fist. “This person, this woman, knows about the children of the Fifth. She knew of the doctor’s little genetically spider ruse. And with her digging into us, it’s clear that everything is in danger of collapsing.” His breath steadied. Confidence and command returned to his voice. “If news of the children of the Fifth breaks, then we will forever lose them. Not only that, but if we are thrown abruptly into the spotlight, then even the Eleventh Project may be revealed and destroyed.”

  Gauge snarled. “This would never have happened if you’d permitted us to—”

  “Silence!”

  The Vant’therax fell quiet. The murmuring and hissing of the others died out, and soon the distant churning of the generators below erased the sound completely.

  “Now,” Simon said, a livid calm coming upon him. “You bastards listen closely: you win. We’ll take the children of the Fifth, and then we’ll disappear. Whether it’s by the Fifth or the Eleventh, the Yellow King will have his Coronation. And you will have your souls. I only ask for time. We must be careful. More careful than ever, or this was all for nothing.”

  “You tell us we have won,” Dirge said with a sardonic hiss, “and then tell us we are to be more cautious than ever before. Even you must see the contradiction.”

  “If we act now, we risk drawing connections between the Warren family and our operations. Even if the father was to vanish as well, that creates a link back to us. We must tread cautiously, though purposefully.” He held his tone steady, and left no room for argument.

  At last, Gauge backed away from Simon, nodding in concession to the other robes. “Very well. But this time we will be the ones to act. We will leave nothing more to your incompetent gunmen.”

  Simon surrendered a nod of his own. “I accept your terms. But in the meantime, you all have another job: find and murder the woman named Elizabeth Bordon.” He projected a mental image ripped from Morton’s last moments to the insectoid man-things and impressed it upon their collective conscience. “Find her. Kill her. Leave no traces.”

  A grunt of acquiescence stirred his mental channels. Then, just as soon as they’d appeared, the robes were gone in a flurry of tenebrous haze. Simon was alone once more. The realization of how close he’d been to death was not lost on him. As the adrenaline receded, he privately wondered if Project Zero wasn’t a mistake.

  Simon then remembered the phone that weighed his hand down. In a rush, he lifted it again to his ear, but not even the hiss of silence on the other line answered him. The purple man, whatever he’d wanted, had hung up.

  “Kara, are you kidding me!?” May shouted from the direction of the living room, prompting Mark to look up from the onions he was chopping. The dividing wall blocked his view of anything other than a pair of half-obscured spider legs. “There’s web all in your hair! How many times have I told you to leave the freaking owls alone?”

  “But I was hungry.”

  May sighed. “I swear, I’m not going to go up and clean any more of those feather-pies after today, you hear me? Now I want you to go and wash off before dinner.”

  The young girl grumbled. “Fine.”

  As Kara skittered up the stairs, Mark couldn’t help but smile. The warmth of family. A bittersweet thought. He cringed as the wave of onion vapors lashed at his eyes. There was something nostalgic in there as well; he hadn’t chopped onions since he’d lived with Aunt Sylvia. He’d never thought he’d feel that particular sting again.

  “Looks like you’re having some trouble,” May said with a laugh from the doorway. “Want me to take over for you?”

  He shook his head. “No. I can endure it.”

  She giggled. “You know, there’s no need to force yourself. I can get Spins to cut them if they’re too much for you.”

  “That is quite alright. There’s no need to interrupt her homework on my account.”

  May hummed and looked him up and down, a spark of amusement dancing in her irises. “You’re quite a masochist.”

  “I don’t like to give up, is all.” But goddamn did those vapors sting. This must’ve been some breed of hate-onion; he couldn’t recall any of the onions at Sylvia’s hurting quite this badly. He couldn’t even force his eyes open a sliver, and had to navigate the knife by touch alone.

  “Well, let me know if you change your mind, okay? Spins is really good at chopping onions. That’s an important life skill, you know.”

  “Uh-huh.” Is this thing made of pure acid?

  As May sauntered back to the living room, Mark wiped his eyes on his sleeve, hoping for some relief but finding little. From the living room, the sound of the evening news droned on atop some generic patriotic tune.

  “Back from weather to the local news, this is Channel Seven Evening News with Jerome Regal,” the anchor spoke in a dry tone. “Tragedy struck late last night when local obstetrician, pediatrician, and general practitioner Charles Morton was found dead at Grantwood Memorial Hospital.”

  May gasped. “Oh my God! Morton? That’s our doctor!”

  Startled, Mark set down the knife beside the half-chopped onion and walked into the living room, where May stood in front of the TV, hand clasped over her mouth.

  “Staffers at Grantwood Memorial confirmed that Charles Morton appeared to have suffered a heart attack. He was rushed to emergency care where he was pronounced dead. Morton’s family was unavailable for comment and has requested privacy during this trying time. As the man has touched so many lives in Grantwood and beyond, it’s little wonder the level of public support we’ve seen since the story broke just a short while ago.”

  May shook her head. “Unavailable for comment? He’s dead, just back off you vultures!” She wiped a tear from her eye and shivered. “God, I can’t believe this. He may as well have been a part of the family.”

  Mark’s phone began to ring in its tin-can tones. Head swimming, he slipped silently back into the kitchen and started toward the hall. When he’d gotten almost all the way to the back door, he pulled it from his pocket. Annika’s number blinked in dim green pixels on the screen. He took a deep breath and answered. “Hello—”

  “Don’t say anything. Not a damn word. Just cough once if you can hear me.”

  Confused and unnerved, he did as instructed.

  “Okay. Good. Now, I need you to meet me at my motel. Not a word to anyone, that house is bugged to hell, constant surveillance.” An unsteady breath came through the speaker. “Now hurry up. Things are getting insane. Annika out.”

  The connection cut out with a dull click. His heart began to beat faster. The house was quiet, aside from the sound of the news in the living room and May muttering to someone no longer there to listen. Heart attack. Don’t tell me this is what Manhattan Diplomacy is all about. Taking care not to let his footsteps echo, he turned the handle of the back door and let himself out, shu
tting it softly behind him.

  When Mark knocked again upon Annika’s motel room door, it shot ajar immediately. From the sliver of darkness, she glared at him with tired, crow-marked eyes. “You’re late as usual,” she spat. “You weren’t followed, were you?”

  The question stunned him, and he instinctively glanced over his shoulder toward where he’d come from. “No, I—”

  “Good, then get the fuck in here.” She grabbed him by the shirt, but this time it was with a greater insistence than before.

  The door slammed shut behind him. Jarred by her demeanor, Mark scanned the mess of a motel room. It was much as before, but more disorderly. Papers covered by pictures covered by papers. Leaning stacks of documents defaced with illegible scrawl and notes. The wall where she’d used Isaac Piedman’s face for target practice was bare, save for a map emblazoned with the word NIDUS and covered in yellow and red pins.

  As Mark took in the room’s new décor, Annika drifted toward the desk. “You can’t imagine what’s going on,” she said, breathlessly. “I can’t imagine it either. This is big—Jack and the Beanstalk big. I knew things had to be crazy for anything like a spider kid to exist here, but the rabbit hole is filled with piranhas, as they say.”

  “Annika, are you alright?”

  Her shoulders shook as she tore through the papers. “I just haven’t slept since that doctor’s head exploded yesterday.”

  Mark started. “Doctor? You’re referring to Morton? His name is all over the—”

  “News? Ha!” She spun about, a shower of loose paper dancing from the desk like leaves in a whirlwind. “Yeah, they’re calling it a heart attack. That’s not it at all. Right as he was about to spill the keys to the kingdom, bam, crunch, his head just starts bleeding. He died right there, and his blood was filled with these fucked up spider-looking things. Said this guy, Clearwater, was watching him. It’s going to sound nuts, but I think his brain was infested with these things and, willing or not, Morton was a host, a puppet to this NIDUS.”

  He shook his head, unsure which facet to question first. It was the repetition of the stark word on the map that seemed the most pressing. “NIDUS?”

  “Ho, you mean you don’t know about NIDUS? You’re not a member? They must be pretty exclusive then.” A tired laugh at her own joke. “NIDUS. From what I learned from Morton before his brain turned to mush, it’s some secret organization or cult that’s somehow responsible for these hybrids you’ve found. It’s some kind of huge conspiracy. The mayor of Widow’s Creek, most of the city council for here and Mount Hedera, we’ve got police chiefs, some kid named Tanner this Clearwater fellow apparently despises. That they managed to cover up Morton’s death so quickly means they’ve gotta have others on the inside of the hospital—this is a conspiracy on the county level at least, perhaps even national or global. Also, look here.” She scooped a large, glossy image from the desk. “Check this out.”

  Mark stared at the image. It was a night-vision photo of a group of four coated men in a small clearing in the woods. At a distance of perhaps a hundred yards, they stood about an unmarked vehicle with strange equipment surrounding it. Watching them from nearby was a robed figure with cowl drawn. The image of the robed thing sent a shiver up his spine. “What is this?”

  “That’s an image I took last night while I was poking around that neighborhood you’ve been staying in. Turns out, they’re a surveillance team. They’ve had that house bugged and watched for God knows how long. Luckily they were too distracted by the sound of May showering to notice me. Got a few more good pictures of the facial regions on a couple of ’em, and on a hunch ran them against a database of—oh to hell with it, the point is those two fuckers were another pair of inmates at that prison. Like Piedman, their records simply end when the prison was abandoned. And as for that robe . . . ” Her face seemed to grow paler. “I can’t explain why just yet, but I think it’s one of the prototypes.”

  “Prototypes?”

  “Of the hybrids. In another image, you can see some weird anatomy that’s not human. And what’s more, this mysterious Clearwater character claims he created them. I know how to solve for X, Mark.”

  He gave her a long look. “How do you know all of this? And who is this Clearwater? There’s a lot you’re not telling me, I fear.”

  She turned once more to the desk and rummaged through the drawer. “Let me tell you a little story. As I was leaving the hospital, I bumped into this weird-looking guy in a purple suit that seemed to know more than he should’ve.” She pulled out a small tape recorder and held it up like it was the cure for cancer. “Gave me this, told me to give it to you.”

  “To me?”

  “Someone’s gotta turn up his hearing aid. And yeah, I opened your mail, sue me. Had to check it for bombs and transmitters. I don’t know who this guy was, but this is really something.” With a click, she depressed the rewind button. A high, grating squeal unwound itself from the speakers. It stopped when it hit the end of its reel. “Sit down, ’cause if you don’t, this thing’s going to knock you off your damn feet.”

  They then listened to the tape. Mark had no idea what to expect going into it, but it soon became apparent that they were listening to a recording of a phone call. He listened in silence, all the while Annika kept her tired but intense gaze on him. In a second conversation, he heard presumptuous discussions of himself, of the Yellow King, and of a creature called the Overspider—an appellation surely meant for the creature named Raxxinoth spoken of in the Repton Scriptures and Al Azif. He heard talk of rebellion, of insurrection by creatures called the Vant’therax.

  As the tape ran into the blank, Mark could only sit in silence and ponder the exchange. Annika at last moved from her position and fetched something else from the desk. “There’s more,” she said. “I woke up this morning and found another tape on my nightstand.” Her lips became thin. “I don’t know who the fuck that purple dude is, but he isn’t normal. I don’t know if we can trust him, but . . . you may want to hear this.” She changed out the tape, rewound it, and pressed play.

  Another phone conversation began, but it was quickly interrupted by the sounds of rushing air, and then the confrontation began. Gravelly, crackling voices argued with the speaker who Mark now understood was named Simon Dwyre. They spoke of Doctor Morton’s death, their impatience, and what this development meant for them and the rest of their organization. The message ended with a bone-chilling demand for the death of Annika’s most-used alias.

  The tape ran again into silence. Annika and Mark just stared at each other.

  Stunned, Mark could scarcely find the strength to speak. “Who is this Dwyre?”

  “He’s currently the CEO of the Golmont Corporation, a big tech firm in town.”

  “And the employer of Ralph Warren.”

  “Yeah, I know. Think I didn’t piece that together already?”

  No surprise there. “Then, that leaves this Golmont Company, the medical firm, these vanished prisoners, and alleged prototype hybrids. All connected by this NIDUS organization and Dwyre-Clearwater person, who appear to act as agents of the legendary Yellow King and his spider god.”

  She closed her eyes and rested her head in one hand. “That’s about how I see it. Minus all that hocus-pocus shit. That’s your area of expertise, after all.”

  It was too much. There were too many puzzle pieces, each so apparently random in aspect as to have no relation to the others. “What does it all mean?”

  Annika intertwined her fingers and stared at where they met. “That depends on whether or not this purple phantom is worthy of being trusted. In all your culty wisdom, I was hoping you’d know something about him. Heard some stories, you know. The Purple-Suited Asshole of Gainsborough, or something like that.”

  He shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest inkling.”

  “Then that makes this more complicated. Whoever he is, he knows too much about both sides of this damned coin. Too much about us, too much about NIDUS. And I have a b
ad feeling about him, Mark. This could be some kind of trap to draw us into the open.”

  But Mark hadn’t that impression at all. That the strange man on the phone had mentioned his own name to Dwyre seemed to suggest that, if anything, the trap was being baited in the opposite direction. His mind was already churning. In any case, Spinneretta was in danger, and her siblings along with her. If the Warren home was truly under constant surveillance, and this CEO-turned-cult-leader was now on the lookout for an opportunity to take the children for whatever nefarious ends he’d engineered . . .

  Mark chuckled a low sound and absentmindedly traced one finger up the length of his burn scar. “Draw us out into the open, huh? We’ll see who’s drawing whom out. We need to act fast, and I believe I have a plan.”

  Annika was quiet for a moment and then gave a bubbly laugh. “Oh, you are so cute when you’re hatching your evil schemes. I know the way these turn out; no matter what happens, somebody’s going to be cursing your name when this is all over, aren’t they?”

  He gave her a meager smile. It felt like suicide. “That’s fine. I’m used to it by now.”

  Chapter 15

  The Rhodes Reckoning

  The morning of May seventeenth arrived, and the buzzing excitement permeating the student body of Grantwood High swelled as the promised hour approached. The surreptitious whispers and building tension, bafflingly unnoticed by the instructors who held the future in their inattentive hands, wore upon Spinneretta’s sanity. Why does anyone give a damn about Arthr and his ego? she asked herself more often than she wanted to. Doesn’t anybody have anything important to do? It could’ve been that she was still distracted by all the rumors of cults and kidnappers and whatnot, but deep down she knew that she was just pissed off at Arthr for being, well, Arthr. At lunch, her friends avoided the topic, though she could see in Chelsea’s eyes that she was bitter at having to miss the all-important fight.

  When Spinneretta got home from school, she only intended to stay for a few minutes. Arthr would be home soon after her. She had to escape before he had a chance to dance in self-exaltation about the evening’s fight. She dropped her bag off in her room and changed into something lighter for the balmy summer’s looming heat. Although the weather report promised rain in the evening, she didn’t expect to be out that late. Once she’d changed into her teal tank top, she threw her olive jacket back on and headed downstairs.