Sweet oxygen flooded her lungs. Her head swam. Focus returning, she wrapped two more legs around his knife-hand before he could pull the blade free. The Instinct boiled through her. With a violent surge of force, she snapped both of his wrists. Air tingling in her lungs, a newfound strength pulsed in her legs. She drove her invading legs deeper into his sides. It was all or nothing. She called forth all the remaining power lurking within her. The mists around her coalesced into the Wine. Tendrils of cold vapor rushed around her in a tightening spiral, billowing and twisting about the Cheshire Man.
He scowled down at her. “You’re wasting your time. Do you think you can evaporate this shell as you did my other? Matter is matter, and your resistance is no matter at all! You think your magic-breaking power will nullify my strength? I have nothing to fear from you now, Urn-ma Nayor!”
Blinking back tears from the pain racking her mind and chest, she showed him a mad smile born of the King. “No. Not Nayor. You’ll fear me.” She opened her mouth wide and shouted. “Mark! Do your soul thing!”
The Cheshire Man’s eye widened. He snapped his head over his shoulder toward where Mark lay. Spinneretta’s gaze followed his. Her prayer was answered. He moved. Though the fog hanging between them was thick, she saw when Mark looked up at her. Their gazes met. Although he was barely conscious, he seemed to recognize her mortal danger. A scowl of impossible determination overtook him.
Mark gritted his teeth and rose, first to his knees and then to his feet. One hand hovered just over his clamped left eye. As he regained his balance, he showed her a dark smile. “With pleasure.” He wobbled once, and the Flames of Y’rokkrem flickered. A renewed rage overcame his features, and the Flames exploded into a malevolent blaze in his palm.
The Cheshire Man gave a feeble shriek. He tried to pull away from Spinneretta, but her sharp limbs embedded in his sides and wrapped around his crushed wrists trapped him in place. She slid her legs deeper, maintaining her hold. Like burning amber, his eye gleamed with anger and fear. His entire form flickered. Spinneretta opened her screaming mind, and the whorling mists intensified. His spell of teleportation flickered, consumed by the Wine.
“No!” he shouted, “release me at once!” His form continued to fizzle and fade, but her mists disrupted each attempted escape. He pulled hard against her grip, but she locked her joints. One hand on his knife, one trapped beside her throat, he could not escape her hold. Her last two unoccupied legs lashed out and wrapped his neck in a crushing grip. He thrashed, trying to dislodge the appendages in his sides. But her plated legs were steadfast, immovable. “Release me, malapert child!” he spat. “Release me this instant!”
Disregarding the molten pain swelling behind her eyes, she opened the exhausted gates of her mind and flooded the Cheshire Man’s body with the fog of magic-destroying hatred, scattering the ambient magic force within him. His cries grew angrier and his thrashing more violent as the last remnants of his magic were dashed by the power of the King.
Mark lurched closer step by step. The Flames in his hands smoldered with a hatred brighter than ever before. Blue-green ghosts haunted the creeping mists. This was the end. This was their phantasmagoria.
“Wait!” The Cheshire Man howled. His arms shook in their frames. The footsteps drew nearer. A crackle of unmagic sparked off his arms, and his shrieks grew louder.
Mark was upon him. The Flames of Y’rokkrem sputtered and flashed as he pulled his blazing hand back.
“No! Stop!”
“The Gate is closed to you,” Mark said. “The Void awaits!”
Mark plunged the Flames down into the Cheshire Man’s back, and at once the man’s cries ceased. A violent blue flash ripped through his body, and he went rigid. The mists ceased their swirling. The demonic glow of his sole amber eye died out. His fingers, now lifeless, relinquished their grip on the knife embedded in the fallen pillar. It took a few moments, but Spinneretta dug deep for the strength to dump the specter off her and onto the ground. And as he struck the earth, his body and clothing shattered as though they were brittle ceramics. The gray chunks of stone-like material that remained lasted for only a moment before crumbling into an ancient dust that rose in a steaming cloud.
And at last, the mists were silent.
Spinneretta gasped a sigh of relief and rolled off the shard of stone, clutching her chest. “Fuck.”
Mark was at her side at once. “Spinny, are you okay?”
Relief tempered by panic, she peeled the tattered robe from her shoulders. When the wet fabric flopped away, she felt the cold mist invading her wounds. The robe hit the ground, and she was left staring at her blood-drenched hands. A shiver shook her. She couldn’t move. More blood flowed from the searing pains in her chest, and the vertigo grew stronger. “Holy shit.”
“Spinny, come here.” His voice shook. It couldn’t have been a good sign. He slid in beside her and brought his hand toward her chest. A blue glow surrounded his fingers, and Spinneretta at once recognized the spell of healing.
“N-no,” she gasped, swatting his hand away with one of her legs. A tongue of mist carried the Wine along her leg and scattered the spell.
Mark’s eyes bulged at her. “Spinny, what are you doing? You’re going to bleed out if you don’t let me heal you!” He reached for her chest again, but she blocked his hand with two of her legs.
“No. I’m not letting you take this on yourself. I won’t let you. You’ve already been hurt so much. So I’ll bear this pain for you, Mark. I’ll—”
“This isn’t the time to be selfless, Spinny! You’re going to die if you don’t let me—”
Her breathing grew shallow. “Burn it.”
“What?”
“Burn the wound shut. Like you did for yourself.”
He stared at her blankly for a moment. “You can’t be serious. I couldn’t do that to you. I couldn’t hurt you like that.”
“Hurry,” she gasped. “This isn’t the time to be selfless.”
Mark’s pale eyes grew damp as he stared into her face. She saw his hesitation, but when his gaze fell to the blood pouring down her chest, his hand flashed with a feeble Flame. “Spinny. I’m so sorry.”
She shook her head. Everything felt like it was receding, racing away from her at the speed of light. The sound of blood plopping against the earth filled her stomach with nauseous terror. “Hurry.”
“The pain will fade.” With that, he brought his hand to her breast, and an even brighter pain eclipsed her senses.
She threw her head back and screamed. Her shoulders drew inward, and her arms and legs curled in a desperate attempt at quelling the agony. Her skin crackled and sputtered; she could smell her blood and flesh burning. Teeth bared and nails carving into her palm, she thought of Grantwood and the gentle rolling waters of Widow’s Creek. She thought of Kara and Arthr and Annika, and of her parents. They’d be so relieved. And there she found a joy that exploded from her lungs with each strain of her tortured voice. She was alive. Mark was alive. They’d won. And no physical pain could ever take that away from her.
The Flames vanished, and the murderous heat licking at her chest grew cold. Spinneretta doubled over, hand immediately drawn to the site of the cauterization. Her shirt was ruined, covered in bloodstains. The frayed edges of the incisions smoldered from the directed burn. The smell was unbelievable, rank, primordially foul. When she forced herself to look upon the result of Mark’s handiwork, she found the flesh melted shut over the mouths of her wounds, thick blisters sealing the scars.
She let out a shaking breath. Her head swam, and adrenaline saturated her bloodstream. One hand took hold of Mark’s arm, and she threw herself against him. When her chest pressed against his, it felt like the Flames had returned. But she just dug her face into his neck and grinned. “Thank you,” she muttered. What else could she say? Her spider legs wrapped around his shoulders, and she inhaled his scent. The stench of singed flesh and fabric hung thick in the air, but together they were the smells of life, of victory
.
“Spinny, why must you be so stubborn?” One arm curled around her, and she felt a weary eagerness when he pulled her hips closer to him.
She tightened her legs’ grip. One hand slid up his arm and around his neck. “Mark, I—”
“I cannot fathom this chain of events,” a voice said.
Spinneretta started. She rolled off of Mark and fumbled into an unsteady hunch. She threw her gaze to and fro, searching for the source of the words. It was no hallucination. By Mark’s own reaction, she could tell he’d heard it, too.
“I do not understand at all.” The words drifted on the breeze and echoed directly through her mind. “For thousands of your Earth years, I have plotted and planned for the day the vessel of Heu Rin would throw wide the gates of A’vavel. Absolutely everything came together in the end. How could it be that the thing which undoes my work is none other than chance? Incalculable the odds that you should be reborn as the seat of Nayor’s soul. Were it for not that . . . ”
Spinneretta gritted her teeth and glared into the mists. “Alhazred’s razor, jackass. Attribute not to chance that which can be stirred by the Primal Ones.”
The voice of demise seemed to consider this. “Interesting.” The Writhing Malefice chuckled, a sound devoid of the sinister malice it had come to embody. “Though you have ruined my plans forged over millennia, I must thank you. For you did something that no human has ever done before.”
She snarled. “Which is what?”
“Surprised me. Entertained me.” The monstrous unvoice faded in volume. “Perhaps I must take back what I said to you earlier, Warren. It can never be said that mankind cannot amuse. Indeed, if I am to wander for another aeon in this prison, then I am glad we chanced to meet. In return, allow me to tell you something interesting.”
Mark shifted beside her. He was half-crouched, face scrunched in pain as he tried to follow the sound of the voice.
“The girl you seek. Lily. You may find her in a town called Balsam, not far from Brattleboro, where you ended your search. Find her, Warren,” it said, now a mere whisper in the breeze, “for without me to guide her, I cannot say what will happen.”
The last traces of the Writhing Malefice’s voice faded to nothing, and again the mists fell silent.
With a small gasp of relief, Spinneretta’s muscles gave up. She collapsed onto the ground, soaking deep breaths into her lungs. With a great effort, she rolled over onto her back, exhausted and yet ecstatic. “Holy fuck, it’s over,” she muttered, one hand hovering near her seared chest. “We did it.”
Mark began to move again. Chuckling a joyous sound, he crawled over to where she lay. He leaned in close. Before her exhausted mind knew what was happening, his lips found hers. The kiss was gentle, exploratory at first. But as soon as she opened up to him, it deepened. It was a hungry insistence that she’d first felt in Kyle’s living room.
A wild heat raced through her. She tasted the metallic tinge of blood as he slid his tongue over hers. The taste was utterly intoxicating. He pulled her closer, his hand on the small of her back. With the exhausted Instinct limping to life, her spider legs coiled about him, pressing him into her. She grabbed the back of his head, slipping her fingers into his hair. Though she tried to contain herself, she moaned into his mouth. Desire shivered down her spine, radiating along each of her limbs. Their heartbeats echoed and cried out for one another. The Instinct filled her stomach with something that for the first time in so very long was neither despair or fear.
And above the rolling mists, the black sky bent overhead. Each beat of Spinneretta’s heart sent a dozen hot nails hammering through her eyes, but she didn’t care. She was in Th’ai-ma, her kingdom, and the worries of Earth were a million light-years away.
The dirt- and sand-tainted desert air breathed new life into Kara’s spiracles. It was an incredible scent that spread an almost nostalgic comfort through her whole body. The sun was rising, and the heat of the day began with a vengeance. She’d never been so happy to be in such a crappy place.
A hundred feet down the alluvial fan, on the edge of a desert road, the paramedics were loading Amanda and the unconscious Arthr into the ambulance. Barstow Community Memorial, the stenciling on the side read. Kara didn’t know where Barstow was, but she hoped it wasn’t far. Beside her, Chelsea sat upon a loose pile of ageless rocks, dry heaving and choking down breaths like her life depended on it.
After a few minutes of heated discussion with the paramedics, Annika limped back over to where they sat, nearly tripping over thatches of desert weeds. “They have no room for us,” she said with a disgruntled sigh. “We’ll need to taxi there.” She drew her phone from her pocket and began to dial a number. “Damn everything. This is just about the worst-case scenario in which we still make it out alive.”
Kara looked up at her but didn’t bother to ask the question on the tip of her tongue. The nausea was too compelling, and now that they’d escape the immediate threat of death, the pain of her broken limb was starting to drive her crazy. She wanted nothing more than to just keep breathing deep chestfuls of fresh air, if only to keep herself from vomiting.
Annika crossed her arms and jerked her head over her shoulder toward the ambulance. “Those two. They’re going to be admitted to the ER. Obviously. That means we’re going to need a way to silence not only the paramedics but the doctors, the nurses, reception, the whole fucking hospital. And that’s assuming nobody thinks to upload any images to Facebook.”
“Silence?” Chelsea glanced up from the cool, morning-tinted desert pavement, her face just as pale as when they’d escaped.
Annika just watched as the flashing lights of the ambulance pulled back onto the dusty trail, throwing up a cloud of dirt as it went. “We need to keep their existence secret. And it’s going to be a hell of a lot harder with Arthr almost bleeding out through his legs. We’re going to have to work overtime on damage control here. And I don’t know if even I can do it. By the time that ambulance gets to the hospital, at least a dozen people are going to be in the know.”
Chelsea gasped a little, though it sounded more like exhaustion than surprise. “Secret. So it’s true. That you’re the one who made them all vanish.”
The woman squinted at her. “Hmm? Now how did you figure that out, exactly?”
She choked, her eyes becoming hazy. One of her hands fell atop Kara’s, making her jump. She put her forehead against her knees, sobs beginning to break through her strained voice. “Kyle.”
Kara stared at her, her mouth suddenly dry. “Kyle?”
“You knew him, right? You hid at his house, didn’t you?”
Annika stepped closer, throwing her shadow over the two of them. “How did you know that? What happened?”
Chelsea shook her head. She grabbed Kara, pulling her into a tight hug. Out of reflex, Kara placed her spider legs around the girl’s arms. “Mandy found him because of his report,” Chelsea said. “He came with us. Because he wanted to find proof of you guys, Kara.”
Kara started and tried to ignore the wet spot growing on her shoulder. “He did?”
“But. That robed bastard. Nemo. He killed him.”
Ice shot through Kara’s heart. “What?”
Annika exhaled through her teeth. “Shit. You’re kidding me.” Chelsea just sobbed and shook her head. With a low sigh, Annika turned back toward the horizon, where the fiery glow of the sun was beginning to emerge. “Well, I guess that’s one loose end tied up.”
“Loose end? Loose end!” Chelsea rose clumsily to her feet. “Is that all you can think of? Loose ends? A man is dead! And it’s our goddamn fault for coming here. How is that a loose end?”
“Look, kid. I get that you’re upset. I really do. And while I’m sorry Kyle had to die, in dark times all you can do is look on the bright side. He knew too much and tried to interfere with the Warrens’ lives. He should’ve learned the first time when we ended up at his place: the cult means business, and messing with them leads to tragedy. His death is just
that, a tragedy. But it’s clean. It’s simple.”
Chelsea drew hot, tear-choked breaths. “You fucking heartless bitch! And what about me and Mandy, huh? You’re going to kill us, too? Because we know too much?”
“Dammit, kid. I’m a detective, not a murderer.”
“Do detectives go around thinking of how to turn whole hospitals into neat little bow ties? And what about the people who were mind-fucked into becoming servants of the Dawn? Are they just loose ends, too!?”
Annika raised one palm toward her. “Hey, relax. I said Kyle’s death was a tragedy. What more do you want from me?”
“I want to know why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you made them all disappear. Why you couldn’t just leave them be, leave all of us be, and just fuck off with your detective bullshit!”
“That detective bullshit just saved your damn life, you ungrateful little twat!”
“Great! Fantastic! It’s your fault we ended up here in the first—!”
“Both of you just shut up already!” Kara shouted.
The two of them turned to stare at her. Her hands were sweating. Her neck blazed with heat, and each reassuring crackle Cinnamon uttered just made it worse. It was just like Spins had talked about. Nothing but pain flowed from the existence of the Warren brood. “How many people are going to have to die to keep our secret?”
Chelsea and Annika both looked at her with expressions of caution and sorrow. Annika slid a step toward her, reaching out with one hand. “Kara, listen to me. This isn’t because of you.”
She recoiled, drawing away from Annika’s hand and launching back into a loaded posture. “Like hell it isn’t! What about the people in that cave? They died because of us. The people of town who were part of the cult, their deaths are on us, too. The cult wanted us. They got us, along with all the damage that came with!”
Annika closed her eyes and scowled. “So what?”
Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3) Page 72
