The creature made no movement. She couldn’t tell if it was listening, or if it was too distracted by the pain of having its mouth smashed apart to do anything. But time was time, and so she kept talking, her conviction growing.
“This is the only way you can feel in control, isn’t it?” Her thumb flicking over the cylinder of her Ruger sent a shiver of anticipation up her arm. “You were born as nothing more than a radio. A moment in control is a moment of escape; a moment you can enjoy. On your own, you can do nothing. You are, and always will be nothing. A sad existence,” she said without a hint of fear nor pity in her voice, “isn’t it, Mr. Dwyre?”
A moment of hollow silence fell, and the creature before her made no attempt at movement nor speech. The flesh around its lifeless eyes pulled together into a scowl. She smiled to herself. Bullseye. She pulled the hammer back, raised her revolver and aimed it at the man masquerading as Gauge. “I may not be able to kill you,” she said, “but as long as you feel pain, I don’t have to. I’ll drive you out of that goddamn body, even if it takes every bullet I have.”
In defiance of her boast, Gauge exploded forward, vocalizing a liquid blasphemy with its destroyed tongue. Annika pulled the trigger, sending a bullet into its chest. The shot staggered it, but for only a moment. Annika’s eyes went wide and she once more thumbed back the hammer. Adapting to the mathematical futility of a shot to the creature’s chest, she lowered the barrel and fired. The shot scraped the side of its knee, and the leg buckled mid-stride. The creature’s robe swam in the wind; though the fabric shielded her mark from her eyes, the form about which it billowed gave her the target she needed.
She fired again. This time, a howl exploded from the creature’s lips as its kneecap shattered. The sound was like a chorus of woodland creatures being flayed alive in unison. A dark red splatter painted the undulant fabric where the bullet ripped through.
With a clack rendered silent by the lingering report of the previous shot, Annika snapped the cylinder of her Ruger open and struck the ejection rod, dumping the spent casings to the mud-paved earth. Her left hand dove into her coat pocket and withdrew a fistful of bullets. With a trained, mechanical hand she began sliding cartridges into their chambers.
Then the thing attacked. It moved with a bestial surge she hadn’t anticipated. She snapped the cylinder closed, but there was no time to aim. Gauge unfurled the plated leg-like fingers of its clawed deformity and swiped at her. Annika leapt backward. She felt a rustle of wind as the sharp tips flew past the skin of her throat. She raised her gun in both hands, but no target presented itself. Then Gauge’s heavy shoulder crashed into her, throwing her from her feet and sending her into the wet undergrowth. The packed dirt knocked the wind from her lungs as though it were concrete.
Annika looked up in time to see the thing lifting its claw once more. She rolled hard to the side, and the mud squelched as those spikes pierced the earth beside her head. She raised her revolver again, aiming at the looming yellow shape above her, but another swipe of its deformed hand tore it from her grip.
Gauge curled the fingers of its claw and made a putrid noise that must have been its continuing attempt at speech. It was mocking her. It reached down toward her, and she reacted by slamming her heel into the side of Gauge’s left knee. She felt a nauseating crack as her foot smashed through the thing’s damaged kneecap. The leg buckled, and there was another howl of pain as its clawed hand flew to the aid of its twice-smashed joint.
Seizing the chance, Annika flipped herself over and lunged across the slick undergrowth for her gun. Her first lunge fell short when her right arm, still rattled from the force of metal on bone, gave beneath her. Come on, not now Annie! She pushed herself up on her elbows and made a second lunge to cover the remaining distance.
There was a spectral rustle above, and Gauge swept down on her once more. In a formless dance, like a tornado of smoke, Gauge’s good leg slammed into Annika’s right arm, pinning it against the packed mud. Her fingers stretched, mere inches short of her revolver’s barrel. The thing above her made another guttural noise in its ruined mouth. She imagined the cold droplets falling on the back of her neck as the liquid remains of its putrescent tongue. The meaningless noises became more fierce as it ground its heel relentlessly against her arm. There was an internal shift, and then a cracking sound rumbled through her ears. An incredible pain eclipsed her senses.
Annika bit down hard on nothing. The edges of her molars held back a scream. The sharp line of agony running across her cracked forearm pulsed with each heartbeat. That scream was defeat; if it escaped, despair would push her into the chasm from which there was no return.
A slur of loose vowels spilled from Gauge’s mouth. The human hand of the monster seized her broken arm and pulled her up from the ground. Even his normal arm possessed an impossible strength, and as soon as her feet found the ground they had lost it once more. Suspended by her broken arm, her entire body became a weight pulling against its own existence. She ground her teeth with all the force she could muster just to suppress that scream; she wouldn’t give the monster the satisfaction. The creature stared into her, its eyes resembling dead, expressionless orbs in a rotting lunar wasteland.
When the thing opened its mouth to mock her again, a thick slurry of blood and pulverized tissue trickled from the corners. She thought she saw shards of smashed teeth scattered throughout its gaping cavern. What it was saying didn’t matter; even if it had been speaking verbose, articulate English she wouldn’t have heard it.
Beyond the thing’s shoulder, Annika caught a glimpse of the spot by the tree where Kara had fallen unconscious. She was gone. Good, she thought. At least this won’t be for nothing. She couldn’t see where Arthr had fallen, but Kara wouldn’t have just left him there to die. Probably. No matter where she tried to place the blame for this trainwreck, she took comfort in the fact that, to some capacity, she’d succeeded. As long as Kara was safe, Gauge had lost. Dwyre had lost. That was victory for Mark, and thus it was victory for her. And so Annika answered the godless creature’s splattering words by baring her clamped teeth in a defiant smile. “Is this the best you can do? I’ve had menstrual cramps more memorable than this.”
The corner of Gauge’s mouth twitched. It raised its claw-like right hand and pulled it back. For a moment it just floated there, threatening. If it meant to terrify her through anticipation, it’d done a miserable job, for she was already checked out. Whatever it did to her now was just a formality. Up until the moment of her death, she’d continue to jeer and mock the man behind the curtain, giving him not so much as a whimper for his troubles.
Bringing the silence to its fruition, Gauge thrust that claw toward Annika’s dangling form. She refused to flinch, resolving to leave her eyes open until the scenery was stripped bare and she awakened on the other side.
But the blow that should have taken her life never came.
As the claw flew toward her vulnerable midsection, Gauge’s momentum was cut abruptly short, as though the arm had struck an invisible wall. Its arm then snapped backward. The motion threw his shoulder back with enough force that his balance was compromised. Annika fell from his grip back to the hard, wet ground, the smell of drenched soil engulfing her. She watched the robed thing stumble several feet away from her, its legs struggling to reclaim their footing. It spun about, its claw-arm stretched out before it.
A moment of confusion. Then, a shuffling of the leaves brought the twilight’s dying rays across them. From Gauge’s claw-arm there stretched a series of thin, glimmering strands. They were nearly invisible in the darkness, and led from its arm to the large oak tree that stood in the center of the grove. There, a girl sat perched upon the lowest branch like an arachnid gargoyle. In her legs, she held the reins of silvery web that had saved Annika’s life.
Annika’s mind flashed to the horrible scene from before, the image of Kara flailing her legs in helpless circles around the man-thing’s arm as it beat her unconscious. She now understood; that flailing hadn’t been
the helpless gesture she’d taken it for. It had been tactical, calculating.
Gauge made a harsh growling noise in its throat, followed by another aural blasphemy from its split tongue. Annika looked up at the young girl and shook her head. Run, just leave while you have a chance, she wanted to scream, but she couldn’t.
The sight of Kara perched upon that branch moved Annika’s heart. It was not the mere act of Kara’s rescue, nor was it her defiance; it was the severity that she saw in the girl’s eyes that so moved her. The girl’s eyes seemed to burn with determination. They were the calm, confident eyes of a cat stalking its prey, or an owl diving for a kill. There was no doubt; there was no fear. Those eyes were certainty. Those eyes were conviction. Those eyes were ancient.
They were hunter’s eyes.
Spinneretta and Mark continued searching through the ruined halls for an exit, but the labyrinth betrayed no sign of releasing them. The pulsing hum from somewhere in the complex had grown louder; whatever it was, it hadn’t been within that great gulf. It was nearer to them now, beating, sending painful echoes through her skull. But the footsteps behind them were getting closer still. That fact wouldn’t have bothered her so much if Mark’s limp hadn’t become so prominent. At first she thought it was her imagination, but now she was certain he was limping. His left leg took shorter steps, and whenever he shifted his weight to it she could smell him biting back against some concealed agony. But despite that obvious pain, he kept running as fast as he could.
Soon, a source of flickering light ahead caught their attention. It was brighter than the decrepit fluorescent tubes above, and its insistent shining gave them the greatest hope yet that they had found a way out. That the branching halls on the left and right had ceased to appear was of no concern compared to that prevailing hope. They continued running toward that shimmer, closing the distance as the footsteps echoing behind them grew yet louder. When they reached the source of that light, however, those hopes fell dead to the ground.
Far from an exit, what they found open before them was a complete dead end. The tiled floor of the hall leading to the terminus had been stripped bare, revealing a rough layer of gray stone beneath. The chamber that opened before them, beyond the walls of the ruined complex, was another natural cavern. Spinneretta recalled the terrible foreboding of the gaping hole from before; this wide, asymmetrical stone grotto had to be another part of it. But this time, burning artificial lights illuminated the ancient stone. In the center of the chamber, a large, excavated pit lay open, its straight walls plunging twenty feet down into the porous rock.
Mark came to an unsteady stop. “Damn!”
Spinneretta halted behind him, her eyes drawn to the gaping pit in the center of the room. She estimated the rectangular opening at around thirty by forty feet. Metal scaffolding climbed along its sides, about which a series of temporary lighting fixtures stood. Her eyes glimpsed unnerving geometry within that pit. Sharp, angular chunks of discolored stone jutted out from sections of the exposed wall, and broken formations rose from the bottom, their symmetry implying an artificial origin.
She shook her head in a panic, trying not to look too closely at the excavation. She scanned the walls and ceiling, looking for any passage out. There was nothing. The rough edges of the cavern were pocked with small holes and depressions, but nothing larger than a baseball. The walls rose to a high, tapered ceiling infested with stalactites. “What now?”
“We haven’t much choice,” Mark said. “We either make a stand or take a gamble.”
She looked up at him, her heart pounding. “A gamble?”
He nodded solemnly. “I can try to move us both through space.”
The phrase lingered in her ears, and then her heart leapt. “Wait, you’re saying you can teleport us?” The word sounded wrong coming out of her mouth. “Why didn’t you do that in the first place, then?”
“Because I’ve never tried to move anyone other than myself before. I don’t know what will happen, or if it’s even possible.”
She considered the choice, the sound of approaching footsteps growing more definite. “What if we fight them? If you can stop bullets, then—”
“Stopping bullets has a price. I can take a couple of those coats if I must, but not that many. Not that many, and certainly not here without any cover.”
It was not what she’d wanted to hear. The thought that someone who had miraculously appeared and killed two guards with no visible effort couldn’t take a few more of them was dissonant. But she was not going to question his judgment now. “Fine,” she said, fear gripping her tighter with each vibration of the encroaching mob and throb of that alien pulse in her head. “Get us out of here.”
He bit his lip and nodded, not turning from the pit that lay open before them. He reached out and grabbed her shoulder. Before Spinneretta could react, he pulled her off balance and put his arms around her. She opened her mouth to say something, but the roaring aether erased her words. A deathly green energy bloomed from somewhere, and after a moment they were surrounded by it. The shifting prismatic wisps washed the world away, and all she could see was Mark’s stark silhouette against the twisting and rolling space around them.
She became dizzy. There was a snapping or pulling sensation that rippled through her body. Her physical awareness and form collapsed into a burning green singularity. Spacetime turned inside out around her. All of space was a mirrored wheel, and the two of them were the axle about which it spun—and it was spinning fast. The sensation was nauseating; she had become liquid in a centrifuge. It was like riding the tilt-a-whirl at the carnival, if that tilt-a-whirl was larger than the known universe and faster than the expansion of time.
The nauseating sensation, however, was short-lived. Only a moment after the terrible twisting had begun, the liquid-mirror surroundings snapped back to normal, dumping the two of them back to the stone ground. Spinneretta’s hip was the first thing to hit the ground. As she sprang to her feet, ignoring the ringing pain in her bones, she swept her eyes through their surroundings. Frigid air tainted her lungs, and the panic returned heavier than ever before. They had moved not even five feet from where they’d stood; they’d only inched themselves closer to the great pit.
Beside her, Mark grasped at the side of his head, his teeth bared in pain.
“What happened?” Spinneretta asked.
Mark cringed. “No good. Should’ve known this wasn’t the time for experiments. It’s over, I can’t do anything.” The helplessness in his voice was alien to her, but even worse was the underlying hint of hysteria creeping into it.
She glanced over her shoulder down the hallway. A small swarm of lights shone in their direction. Her stomach twisted. They were out of time. She shook her head, trying not to give into hysteria herself. “What are you talking about? What are you talking about, just get up! We don’t have time for this!”
“Time,” he said, beginning to laugh. “Time, there’s none, and there wasn’t time in the first place, goddammit! You just had to come back! Why couldn’t you just do what I told you to instead of ruining everything?”
She glared at him in disbelief. Biting back the rejection she felt, she grabbed at his shoulders with arm and leg alike and began to shake him. “Come on, we need to go, now! They’re coming!”
He barely budged from his crouch. “You don’t get it do you?” His tone was grim, and the hint of an accent now distorted his vowels. “That’s the end.” A hysterical laugh slipped from his lips, and his face twisted momentarily into a visage of agony. “We cannot run, we cannot fight, we cannot hide, that’s the end of it!” He shuddered, and something halfway between a growl and a scream escaped his mouth.
“What are you even talking about? We’re going to both die if we don’t do something! Get up!” Spinneretta tried to pull him to his feet, straining her arms hard against his weight, but he fought her. The guards were too close; she could make out distinct human figures now in the hallway. The sound of their boots pounding on the c
racked tile floor now swam with voices. At any moment they could open fire.
“I can’t do it,” Mark said. “Forgive me, Spinny. It isn’t your fault; it’s mine. It’s all my fault. Now get out of here. I overdid it. I can’t move with my leg like this. It’s up to you now, so if there’s a way out then stop wasting time and run!” The anger in his voice was apologetic, laced with a desperation she had never heard before. It was a desperation which terrified her.
“I’m not leaving you, you idiot! Why do you think I came here in the first place!?” She glanced over her shoulder at the yellow-coats, who must have been within fifty yards. They meant to take her alive; she was sure of it. The voice on that radio had ordered them not to harm her. It was Mark whose life they meant to end. But they couldn’t risk firing while she was so close to him. That’s the only reason they were still advancing. Her breath came faster, and her pulse took off, accelerating to match the beating that throbbed through the stone walls at her. Whatever was wrong with Mark, she couldn’t leave without him. Anything was better than that. Death was better than such a despicable return to cowardice. She had left him once this evening, and she would not do so again.
The Instinct was still burning hot and bright in her veins. She had not come so far, risked so much, to have these novice security guards steal her Mark from her. If they wanted to take him, they’d have to go through her first.
They’d have to get close—at least close enough to ensure a clean shot between the two of them. When they entered the hollow chamber she’d charge. One, two, three, four—their numbers didn’t matter. She’d charge and tear them open. She’d split them apart with those cruel weapons she’d been born with. She’d rip and tear and gouge and impale them, and let the scent of their cowardly blood stain this God-forsaken pit for the remainder of eternity.
But that was hopelessly optimistic. Orders or not, no man would watch his comrades get slaughtered by a monster and just stand there. If it were only a few men she could have done it. But with this many, her chances were pathetic. Worse, if she moved too far from Mark, she wouldn’t be able to shield him. This was life or death, and she couldn’t afford to entertain such reckless fancies.
The Spider Children (The Warren Brood Book 1) Page 45
