When he was at last satisfied that Spinneretta and her siblings could never set foot in this cursed land again and that the seal would last as long as the stars overhead turned, he focused upon the spatial ink-blotch hanging in the air above him. Dark nebulae and clouds of nothingness streamed behind the liquid-magic membrane. He could almost hear the whispers of the creature that awaited beyond. Steadying his mind and steeling his resolve, he vanished into the portal to A’vavel, where Raxxinoth was once bound in black flames.
Chapter 46
Long Live the King
Awestruck, Annika watched as Kara’s mist portal churned, curtains of mesmerizing vapor dancing like seductive serpents. Cries from some distant realm clattered against her eardrums, and shadows cast by invisible horrors slithered from beyond spacetime.
For a few moments, there was nothing. Kara hunched there, impatient, her spider legs drumming across the stone. “Come on, come on!”
Then, the mist seemed to collapse into itself a little. The swirling grew faster, and a great rushing sound reverberated through the cavern. The fog burst, disgorging two figures that hit the ground and tumbled where they landed.
Chelsea gasped. “Spins? Arthr?”
Annika took a half-step back in surprise. “Oh, thank God in hell.” That made her three for three on the spider whelps.
There then came a third rushing sound. A flash of light from within the mist scattered the tendrils of vapor. The fog gate dissipated, and Kara stared at the vanishing portal for a moment. “What the?” Her confusion then disappeared along with the fog, and she gave in to her tired joy. “Spins! Arthr! Welcome home!” She scuttled across the floor to where Spinneretta lay and leapt on her, wrapping her in a tight hug.
All three spider children were safe, it seemed. But a chill blossomed in Annika’s core. “Wait a minute. Kara, where’s Mark?”
Spinneretta started upright and shoved Kara off her. She looked around, eyes drifting from face to face. Her gaze settled upon Annika and Amanda, and she began to shake her head. “No. No, where are we? We can’t be here, we can’t be!”
Annika scoffed at her. “For being the pioneer of portal magic, you’re awfully incredulous.”
Kara blinked at her sister. “Spins? Are you okay?”
Spinneretta turned to her, a look of desperation on her face. “We have to go back! Mark’s in trouble!” She moved across the ground a few feet, and then her spider legs began to carve the portal sigil into the stone floor.
Arthr sat up beside her, rubbing his head. His gaze drifted around, but his expression remained blank. “Jesus, what the hell is happening? And what are you guys doing here?”
Annika growled. “Goddammit, Spinzie. We have to go. There’s no time for—”
Spinneretta ignored her. She let out a shout as she slashed the last vertical line of the sigil. Her whole body shook, and one hand went to the side of her head, eyes wide. “What? Shit. No, shit, why?”
Arthr again painted Annika and the rest of them with a confused look, as though he’d forgotten who they were. “How the hell did we get here? And where is here?”
“There’s no time for stupid questions,” Annika spat. “On your feet. We have to go, now.” The sound of footsteps charging down the connecting tunnels was growing louder by the moment.
But that damned Spinneretta, in a naked panic, again carved the symbol into the ground. And, again, she shook and grabbed her head as the sign was completed without a trace of mist in its depths. “Why won’t it open?” she yelled. “Why won’t it fucking open!?”
Chelsea’s lips shook. “Spins?”
“Who gives a fuck why it won’t open?” Annika shouted over her shoulder as she made her way toward the slope leading down to the exit passage. Amanda’s steps were labored, and the girl’s body was still heavy on Annika’s shoulder. “We need to get out of here, and—”
“No one leaves!” a voice from the shadows rang.
Everyone started and turned toward the source. Chelsea let out a chilling shriek. In the center of the cave, the shadows coalesced into a puddle of darkness on the ground, and a yellow figure rose from the oily mass.
It was a young man, covered in the same black chitin scars and growths of the Vant’therax. His robe was a deeper color than Faul’s, rich and brilliant even in the low light. Two hulking chitin appendages, malformed and bulging with unnatural muscle, grew from one shoulder. Rows of sharpened teeth stood in a wide grimace, and a single emerald eye—the same color as Amanda’s—glistened with an insane fury.
Annika shifted Amanda’s weight. She drew her revolver and put three deafening shots into the robed thing’s chest. But in response to the shots, the thing surged and swelled toward her. A violent flail of its arm sent her and Amanda to the ground. The stone surface struck Annika hard. Pain raced up and down her spine. Amanda rolled four feet from where she landed.
The robed thing groaned, clutching his chest. Blood ran down his arm, staining the folds of his tattered robe. “You again,” he hissed in a high voice. A wave of his arm sent a hail of blood droplets splattering across the floor. “How I loathe that we keep meeting one another. You are just another obstacle. Bordon. Thorn in my side!” He threw himself toward where she lay on the cavern floor.
But another yellow blur moved to intercept the attack. The whole cave rumbled from the force of the two blows meeting. When Annika’s shaking vision steadied, she beheld Faul standing between her and the demon robe.
“Nemo,” Faul snarled. “I hope you are prepared to die.”
Nemo. Annika swallowed hard. The infamous Helixweaver finally shows his face. She whirled her legs and sprang to her feet with a practiced step. Her free hand snatched the knife from her ankle-strap. She retreated two steps, eying the beasts in the robes. “Chelsea, tend to Amanda!”
Chelsea jumped in shock, and then obediently made her way over to where Amanda lay on the ground.
The Helixweaver, arm still straining against Faul’s raw strength, began to cackle maniacally. “Faul. The final Vant’therax. How I’ve waited. How I’ve longed for your blood.” The two monstrous spider legs growing from his shoulder poised, and then struck. Faul’s whole body trembled. Blood sprayed into the air, his robe fluttering from the force of the impacts. Nemo cackled. “Like the others, you are no match for your new king.” One chitin appendages coiled around the Vant’therax’s neck. Then came a loud crunch.
Kara shrieked. “Faul!”
“Die in obscurity!” Nemo thrashed, and another blow sent Faul’s limp body to the ground.
Annika’s blood went cold. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kara priming herself for an attack. “Kara, help Chelsea with Amanda!” she yelled, jerking her head over her shoulder. Kara halted at the command. “I think this one wants me.”
Nemo shook his head violently from side to side. “And who greets me upon my return? I have all the children of the old order. And you, Bordon.” He licked his lips. “I am surrounded by those I wish to kill.” He stalked forward, his eye on her. “I will take my time and enjoy the others. But for all the pain you’ve caused me, I will have your blood first.”
Annika scowled. She pointed the barrel of her Ruger dead center of Nemo and gave her knife a quick spin, putting it in a reverse grip. Orienting the edge toward her target, she slid backward, daring him to attack. “All of you, get through that tunnel downslope,” she said over the Helixweaver’s shoulder. “I’ll put this thing out of its misery and catch up with you.”
Nemo seemed amused by the command. “And where would you have them run in my domain?”
Annika bit her lip, sliding another step away from him. She could see Arthr trying to drag Spinneretta off the ground on the other side of the room. “Go! Now!”
Kara was still for a second as she wrestled with the order, but then her spider legs wrapped about Amanda’s frame and shifted her weight partially off Chelsea. She and Chelsea stared at the hulking robe in fear, as though they expected him to turn heel and po
unce upon them. But when he just kept his gaze upon Annika, they turned and slunk toward the slope and the tunnel to freedom down below.
And yet behind the Helixweaver, Arthr continued fighting with Spinneretta, trying to force her up off the ground. “Spins, come on, we have to go!” he was saying. Every couple seconds he threw a terrified glance up at Nemo’s back. “We’re in way over our heads here, Spins, we have to go! This is our only chance!”
“I can’t let him do this,” Spinneretta said through her teeth. “If I don’t . . . then it’s all going to . . . ” Her spider legs resisted Arthr’s grip, trying to carve the sign into the earth again.
Arthr went pale. “What are you thinking? He’s going to kill us, we need to get out of here!”
“Then go!” Panic wrenched her voice to a high tone. “Leave me. I have to stop him!”
“I’m not letting you throw your life away after all this!”
Annika’s jaw quivered in fury. “You fucking morons! Do you want to die!? Get through that tunnel before it’s too late!”
Nemo chuckled a slimy sound, drawing steadily nearer with his slithering steps. “They will not escape me no matter where they go. Do not deceive yourself. You all live for exactly as long as I allow it.”
Annika’s retreat was bringing her closer to the rocky slope downward. Rocks clattered behind her from the girls’ footsteps below. Her gaze shot to Arthr and Spinneretta one final time, and she cursed them with her eye before setting her sight back upon the Helixweaver. You wanna die, be my guest. I’ve still got living to do. “You man enough to make the first move, boy?”
Nemo’s face twisted. With a porcine squeal, he rushed for her.
Annika ducked to the side. A long arm whistled just past her shoulder. She swiped with her knife, drawing two sharp slashes in his flesh. Blood erupted over the yellow sleeve, and a fresh tatter split the fabric. Another attack flew in. His other fist nearly connected, but she opened the gap with a hop backward. Before he could recover, she charged back in, adrenaline driving her attack. A flurry of fluid swipes carved into his chest. With a wide swing, she buried the knife hilt-deep in his neck.
Nemo made a throaty bellow and flailed at her with his chitin limbs, but she’d already ripped her knife free and retreated out of striking range. Blood sprayed from his severed artery. But a purple flicker danced at the base of the fountain. A black sheet grew over the wound.
She gave her head an incredulous shake. “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” She leapt back a step. The ledge was only a few feet behind her. A momentary glance down and behind revealed Kara and the others by the tunnel exit, unmoving. Even Cinnamon stared up at her, a goddamn spider-deer in headlights. They were just waiting, watching. “Get moving, already!” she yelled. “Don’t worry about me!” I’m surrounded by morons!
“Send them running,” Nemo said, “scattering like roaches. Can you not hear their footsteps drawing near? Will you choose death by my hands or theirs? In the end it matters not.”
She glided another inch backward, drawing away from the hungry thing in the robe. She gave her knife another spin, hoping the flourish would keep him distracted.
Nemo’s laughter frothed out of his mouth in a blood-tainted foam. His eye was on the knife, so she gave it another twirl and took another half-step back. The ground dropped away beneath the heel of her boot. Nemo opened his mouth wide and hurled himself at her. Her reflexes answered. She raised the barrel of her Ruger, crushed the trigger back and—
The air cracked. It was not her gun, but a blast of hard air slamming against her chest. Her shot never even went off. A blinding white pain washed away her perception as the magical attack seared her nervous system. The next thing she knew, she was falling. Her hip slammed into one of the stones littering the slope, and she started to roll. Jagged chunks of rock became a flurry of hard blows pummeling her legs and ribs. She heard the ringing of bullets falling from her pocket and spilling out down the slope behind her.
When she finally came to a stop, her body was almost in too much pain to move. She willed herself to action despite the blunt trauma and magical heat blazing through her body. With a great effort, she crawled an arm-length across the ground. Her hands found the butt of her revolver and the hilt of her knife. Something wet ran down the side of her face. Shit, I hope that’s just a shallow cut. Dizzy, she looked back up the slope.
With a murderous grin on his face, Nemo stood atop the high ground, the tatters of his yellow robe stirring.
“Annie!” Kara said, struggling to support Amanda’s weight as she scuttled to Annika’s side. Cinnamon rattled, following right behind her.
Annika spat a mouthful of blood-tainted saliva to the gravel, gagging on the taste. Well, that’s probably not a good sign. “Get out of here, you idiots. He’s going to kill you too if you don’t—”
“We can’t leave you here, stupid!” Kara yelled. “We’re in this together!”
“Now is not the time for noble sentiments, Kara! Amanda and Chelsea need you to be just a little bit selfish for once in your life!”
“I’m not leaving you here!”
“How very generous,” Nemo said from atop the slope. The space before him began to shimmer, waves of heat rippling between his curled fingers. He extended his hand, and Annika could feel the air stirring with a growing ethereal force. “The Dawn comes. Now die.”
“You motherfucker!”
Before the spell could fire, Arthr appeared from the shadows of the upper ledge. With a great heave of his shoulders, he struck. The Helixweaver recoiled from the attack, his hand flailing to one side. The air cracked, and the wall above and to the left exploded, raining dust and stone particles upon the room. In the wake of the chaos that eruption unleashed, Arthr wrapped his arms around Nemo’s throat.
Ears still ringing from the deafening burst, Annika shouted upslope. “Arthr, you fucking idiot! What are you doing!?”
“I’m saving you!”
Nemo’s shoulder bashed into Arthr’s jaw, and the boy lost his grip. He fell and landed in a half-crouch. Still reeling from the blow, Arthr rose and charged. The monster’s fist found his stomach, and the ghastly sound of ribs breaking echoed through the cavern. With a feeble scream, he crumpled to the ground.
“Arthr!” Chelsea yelled, her voice high and panicked. Beside her, even Kara seemed to be paralyzed by fear.
Annika cursed under her breath and raised her revolver. Nemo’s head sat right at the end of her sights, but autonomous tremors of pain shook her wrist. Fear chilled the tendons of her arm.
Nemo looked down the slope at her. One of his frightful chitin appendages curled around Arthr’s neck and lifted him into the air. The boy struggled, gasping and sputtering, his spider legs flailing desperately. With a deliberate lethargy, the robed horror leaned in close to him. Arthr’s will to fight seemed to drain as he came face to face with the devil in the robe.
Annika’s hand shook violently. If she took the shot, she might have killed Arthr as well. She crawled another arm-length forward to get a better angle, but her ankle sent a sharp nerve pain through her body. She cringed, breath cold and poisoned with fear. Fuck. It’s probably twisted. With little improvement to her angle of attack, she found herself helpless but to watch.
“You,” Nemo said, his tone quizzical. “Anansi. Why are you here? Why have you come? I had even forgotten that you existed. Look at you. Child of the false order. Child of the King. And yet, you are utterly without purpose. Not even the profaners of Raxxinoth needed you.” He smiled a mouthful of rotten teeth. “So then, why did you come here? Did you see our announcement and believe we had any interest in you whatsoever?” Nemo reached out and grabbed the base of one of Arthr’s flailing spider legs. There was an audible crunch as the plates of chitin buckled. Arthr let out an anguished cry and began to thrash and kick. His other spider legs jabbed and flailed as he tried to break free.
“You think yourself a child of the spider?” Nemo said. “You are nothing!” His
grip tightened. Fragments of Arthr’s chitin broke and slipped. A blood-curdling scream washed down the slope and crashed over Annika and the others. Nemo licked his lips with a sadistic growl. Then, in a swift, brutal motion, he ripped the leg off.
Blood gushed down Arthr’s back, and his scream became nothing more than a feeble whimper. Annika and Chelsea and Kara could only watch in horror. Annika’s stomach rolled, a chill starting from the core of her being and flowing all the way to her gun. Her arms turned to rubber. The taste of stomach acid burned her esophagus as the brutality of the scene dawned upon her.
Air seething between his teeth, Nemo leaned in close to Arthr again. He held the quivering, severed spider limb up before his eyes. “You don’t deserve these. You don’t even have a use for them.” The leg gave a final autonomous shudder as the Helixweaver shoved it between his teeth and chomped it in half. Sharp fragments cut Nemo’s grimacing lips as it broke apart. Blood and pulpy tissue burst through the cracks, and the remnants of the demolished leg fell to the ground.
With a furious growl, Nemo reached out and grabbed another of Arthr’s flailing legs. He tore it off with another nauseous crunch and hurled it to the ground. It danced upon the stones, blood running freely from its stump. Arthr managed not even a whimper; he just shivered, breath erratic. Nemo ripped a third leg off and made a spectacle of smashing its shaking joints in his fist. He rubbed his crimson-stained fingers together and scowled at Arthr. Disappointment made his eyelids sag. “Will you not fight? Will you not even cry? Have you so little spirit that you can’t even die with dignity?”
Annika tried to raise her gun but it was too heavy. Beside her, Chelsea covered her mouth, a strained scream stifled between her fingers. Kara’s whole face was pale, deathly.
Nemo’s eyelid began to twitch. “The others, deplorable creatures though they are, have at least shown me tenacity. But you, Anansi, can give me only a hollow stupor. How arrogant of you to believe yourself worthy to stand before me.” With a limp swing of his hooked appendage, Nemo cast Arthr over the edge of the slope and sent him rolling down the embankment. “Bleed out. Die as you lived, Anansi: torpid, without even a pretense of worth.”
Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3) Page 63
