Helixweaver (The Warren Brood Book 2)

by Bartholomew Lander

  She bit her lip, an unsettling despair again blooming in her heart. “You’re putting a lot of faith into that happening.”

  “You did it once,” he said, taking his wadded shirt from her and slinging it over one shoulder. “Ergo, you can do it again. I’m certain of it. Tomorrow, we should explore the other side of the mountain range. Mayhap we will find a renewable source of food to last us until you are strong enough to get us home.”

  She nodded, though everything was just a little numb. The sun, or whatever it was, must have been going down, for the light from high above the monolithic walls had grown thin and pale. Soon it would likely be pitch black within the shadowed city. “Alright. Fine. And, I promise I’ll do my best.” No matter how ridiculous your theories of magic are. The only thing that mattered was getting home. She had to remember that.

  “That’s the spirit.” Mark patted her on the shoulder and made his way toward the other side of the fountain, toward the wall where the fungal bird still sat perched. “Now, perhaps you’d like to join me for some experimental cuisine.” The encroaching darkness receded in a flash as the Flames of Y’rokkrem boiled into vibrant, deathly wisps in his hand.

  Spinneretta just hoped to Christ it tasted better than the land-dolphin.

  When Ralph left the doctor’s office and returned to the waiting room, he found two other patients but no sign of May. Still pressing the gauze into the stinging pain in the crook of his elbow, he approached the reception desk where the disgruntled woman was scratching notes onto a form. “Hey, have you seen the woman who was with me before?”

  She didn’t look up from whatever she was scrawling. “We had her removed because she started yelling for you,” she said. “Probably outside somewhere.”

  “Yelling? Did something happen?”

  The woman frowned, adding ten years to her apparent age. “Don’t know. Didn’t ask. I don’t talk to people without any regard for the rules.”

  Ralph blinked at her, not catching the meaning of her aggression, and turned to leave. When he opened the door to the hallway outside the waiting room, he found May leaning against the wall, thumbs busy typing on her cellphone’s keypad. Her gaze shot up to him and her mouth fell open. “Oh, thank God you’re here!” she said, shoulders slumping. “Something’s wrong, something happened at home!”

  “What? What do you—”

  “The kids, they’re at a motel somewhere or, or something, I think that’s what they said. Arthr and Kara are there, they’re with some woman named Annie. But they don’t know where Spinneretta is, and I guess she was with Mark and they vanished or, or . . . That man in the coat, he must’ve come back. That’s what Kara said, but it was more of them and they had guns, and I think that woman saved them or is helping them or—okay, look, I don’t know all the details, but we need to go and—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Ralph said. He put his hands on her shoulders, and immediately found that his elbows were shaking. His stomach clenched with a growing horror. “Take it easy. Calm down, take a deep breath. Tell me what’s going on.”

  The pattering of the rain faded seamlessly into the drone of one anchor’s report blending into the next. Annika sat with her legs propped up upon the desk, staring past the phosphor pixels and into the vacant soul of the latest guest upon the electric stage.

  “So far, the police have not named any suspects in the murder of Simon Dwyre, CEO of the Golmont Corporation,” the reporter on the TV said. “We have it on good authority that the police are taking this case extremely seriously and are leaving no stone unturned as they search for clues. Images from the news helicopters circling the Corporation’s main office building indeed show a full-force response coming out from our men and women in uniform. Our reporters on the ground—”

  Annika smashed the power button on the remote control, cutting off the jabbering woman. A dull pain rolled through her broken arm as she did so. She sighed through her teeth, spinning the cylinder of her revolver in her left hand. “Time’s running out. We need to get moving.”

  Kara looked up from the unmarked book she was reading on the bed. “Why? What’s going to happen?”

  Annika stopped the cylinder and clacked it back into place. “This wasn’t Mark’s doing. If he had completed what he set out to do, he’d be back by now. We can’t keep waiting around for a no-show. NIDUS won’t give us that luxury.” A moment later, there came the tinny sound of heavy metal from a low-fidelity speaker somewhere in the room. Annika snapped her head toward Arthr. “That your phone?”

  He thrust his hand into a pocket and nodded with a startled look on his face. “Yeah.”

  “Good timing. Give it to me.”

  Arthr drew out the device, an old, black flippable model. After a moment’s hesitation, he tossed it into her waiting grip. She glanced at the stamp-sized screen on the outer chassis. Dad. With a flick of the wrist, she flipped it open and lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello, this is Arthr,” she said.

  A pause. “Hello?” came a male voice.

  “Hello, is this daddy?”

  “Who the hell is this?”

  “Annika Crane, private investigator. I’ll take it you’ve heard the rumors from your wife.”

  “You’re damn straight I have,” Ralph said. The voice was angry, but its edge blunted by some indigo shade of emotion. “What the hell’s going on?”

  Annika rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. “I’m getting pretty tired of repeating this story. Some armed goons from the Golmont Corporation’s parent-corp-slash-secret-society went to take your children. I got them out of there with a few nicks and bruises, so you don’t have to worry about that. Only thing is, your little Spinzie is missing along with Mark, and we have no idea where they are.”

  Ralph paused. “Golmont?” A ragged breath seeped through the speaker. “So May was right. You did lose her.”

  “Why does everyone focus on the fact that we’re one spider-hybrid down, instead of the fact that your home was wrecked by wannabe soldiers of fortune? Whatever. I’ll say it once, so listen closely: I’m sorry. Well, sorry that your stupid daughter got lost on the road of life, as it were. If she’d had the sense to follow instructions, we’d all be sitting in a Tijuana saloon sipping margaritas right now. Except Kara, I guess. It would be pretty irresponsible to let her drink.”

  “What the fuck are you even talking about?”

  She sighed. “Look, I don’t have time to go over every detail. All you need to know is that Simon Dwyre is dead, and your daughter and Mark are currently unaccounted for. But aside from that, everything is peaches and sauerkraut here in Grantwood. What we need from you is a place to stay out of town until things have calmed down.”

  Another weighty pause. “Out of town?”

  “Yeah, you know. It’s that place that isn’t Grantwood. If there are armed men kicking down your door, this isn’t exactly a safe place to be.”

  “If it isn’t safe then why are you there!?”

  “I’d be glad to abandon your oldest daughter if you’d like. Frankly, she’s the only thing stopping me from taking your kids barhopping in Mexico. Figuratively. Anyway, we need someplace that’s safe where we can hide your miraculous little bundles of love and poison without attracting the attention of the cult that wants to steal them from you. Stop me if I’m going too fast. I don’t give a damn who you consider safe. Whether that be family, friends, whatever; that’s n’here-there. Think it over, enjoy your medical services, and call me back when you can give me a name and address.”

  “And you think we’re just going to stay up here while you screw around in some dirty-ass motel?”

  “Hate to break it to you, but thanks to Simon Dwyre and his machine gun go-go dancers, you don’t even have anywhere in Grantwood to come back to. Not to be fatalistic, but you don’t have much of a choice but to stay where you are until we have a plan.”

  A longer pause followed, and Annika heard the man take a shaky breath. “Let me talk to my kids.”


  When Ralph hung up after confirming Kara and Arthr were okay, he felt his spirit drain into the ground. For a moment he just stood there, disoriented, trying to get his bearings.

  “What the hell do we do?” May asked, shaking.

  He bit his lip and turned away from her. “She said to stay here. Don’t know who the fuck she was, but she wants us to stay here.”

  “Sounds like a pretty easy way to keep us from saving our kids to me.”

  Ralph shook his head, hating himself more with each minute movement he made. “No. If she was dangerous to us or them, she wouldn’t have called us.” His blood pressure was already beginning to rise. He kept thinking about what this Crane person had said. The Golmont Corporation’s parent corp. Secret society. If there was any further doubt about their deception, it had been blown away with a metric ton of dynamite. He put his head in his hands. “We can’t go,” he said. “We have to stay here.”

  May blinked at him. “Jesus, what are you talking about!? We have to go.” She grabbed his arm with an urgency Ralph had never seen before. “Right now. We’re going to them.”

  He took her hand. “No. We just need to wait. Just wait for the results of the test.”

  “Are you listening to yourself?” she said. “Our kids are in trouble and you’re more concerned about another damned blood test? Get a hold of yourself!”

  “I’m so close,” he said. “It’s all coming together.”

  Tears glistened in May’s pupils. “What is?”

  “The truth.” He pulled his glasses off and rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “The Golmont Corporation, goddammit. It was them the whole time.”

  “Ralph!?”

  He raised a hand toward her. It felt indescribably heavy. “Just wait. Wait until the test. I have to know. I need the closure.”

  Her palm struck him across the face. “Dammit, get a hold of yourself!”

  A tear hit his eye, but he barely felt the burn of the slap. He rubbed his cheek, if only out of habit, and gave her a long, tired look. “So you’re going to drive back to Grantwood and . . . What? I’ve got a pretty strong feeling that what’s-her-fucking-name isn’t planning on giving us their whereabouts even if we ask her. She wants us to stay here. She wants us to give them somewhere safe to go.”

  “Safe to go? We’ll go to the police, then!” she spat. “We go to the media! We . . . ”

  He just shook his head. “I hate to say this, but we’re totally in the dark about whatever’s going on. Whether she’s telling the truth about what happened or not, right now I don’t think there’s much we can do but wait.”

  She scowled. “What are you giving up so easily for?”

  “Just, just give it a little bit of time. Let me think. Let me think about this. We still have to wait for the tests.”

  May scoffed. She leaned her head against the wall and quietly began to sob. But Ralph was lost in his own thoughts. The answers he’d been seeking hid somewhere in the crisis. He had never been closer to the truth. And if he didn’t find it now, he was certain it would vanish into the mists of time.

  Chapter 10

  What Lies Beyond

  Spinneretta woke early. At least she thought she did. The cycle of day, twilight, day, night made it hard for her body to tell when she should be ready for the day. She compromised by snacking on the charred leftovers of their alien-bird dinner while soaking her aching feet in the warm waters of the fountain. No thoughts. Only placidity, quiet, and the imagined swirling of humid air currents.

  When Mark awoke and emerged from the tomb-like hovel they’d slept within, Spinneretta was glad for the escape from her mental exercise. She was certain that something was stirring around her, but the stronger and more tangible that force became, the sharper and clearer the grating sensation from beyond the sky grew. Quit worrying about nothing, she chastised herself as she got up to meet Mark. It’s just brain damage from the portal.

  “Good morning to you,” Mark called across the plaza as he made his way over to her.

  “And God’s morrow to ye,” she answered, waving with two of her appendages. “What’s the plan for today?”

  He pointed off toward a column-flanked street growing from the plaza. His shirt, crumpled by unsightly wrinkles, sagged in directions that defied gravity. “I propose we search the lowlands on the other side of the mountains. We can explore half a day’s out and still make it back for dinner.”

  She wrinkled her nose. The taste of the leftovers still covered the roof of her mouth. Even liberal application of the torch hadn’t been able to purge it of its rotten-egg-and-mold taste. “Great. Is the end of the pass far?”

  “Not very. Are you prepared to depart?”

  “Nothing to hold me up, is there?”

  He smiled and attempted to brush some order into his messy hair with his fingers. Something about the gesture was too cute for its own good. His pale brown eyes found hers and she jumped, terrified that he’d heard her thoughts.

  The corners of his lips flickered momentarily into a smile. “Then let us go.”

  Mark and Spinneretta trekked through the winding alleys of the mountain city, following the suggestion of contour in the towering cliffs above. Though their path was bathed in the blue-tinted light of the unseen star overhead, there was no warmth. The ground began to sink beneath their feet, and soon the flat-worn stone paving broke into discrete slabs set into the natural slope. Ten minutes from the plaza, the ravine opened, taking the portholes and branching streets with them. The mountains there ended abruptly, and a wide plain broke upon them like a tsunami.

  Spinneretta could not help but gasp. In stark contrast to the endless wastes and barren hills they had crossed to reach the barrier of the mountain city, the vast expanse before them was alive. The leaves of a blue ivy-like plant covered the greatest visible portion of the ground beyond the ravine’s mouth. Between the creeping, thorned branches, teal blades of forked grass grew in uneven patches. Farther in the distance, tall drill-bit stalks rose from the ground in forests topped by flat white pods. A river, running perhaps from the same source as the warm fountain’s spigot, cut across the flatlands. At a distance Spinneretta could only estimate as some number of miles, a number of dark scars in the life-blessed ground ran parallel to the river’s course. As those scars grew nearer the horizon, the deep shadows cast into the gullies seemed to grow out of their depths, clawing their way into the air in what must have been an optical illusion.

  The most impressive part of the scene, however, was the creatures that lumbered far in the distance. From where they stood, she could make out three hulking beasts: long, slender white bodies that gleamed in the sunlight, ending in ribbed petal-mouths. They could only have been the same species as the land-dolphin they’d eaten the morning before. The one they’d served for breakfast had been a mere juvenile, for the ponderous creatures in the distance were huge, fifty feet long at the very least. Spinneretta tried to speak, but her dry mouth just twitched silently. The awe of looking upon alien ecology with her own eyes nearly overcame her. It was like stepping back in time and witnessing the reign of the dinosaurs.

  From beside her, Mark gave a low chuckle. “I do hope that creature’s mother is not vengeful.”

  “What the hell is with this place?” she managed at last. “We just came from a goddamn mountain fortress on the edge of a wasteland, and now there’s plants and white whale-things everywhere?”

  He nodded and gestured behind him. “These mountains probably act as a natural barrier to the ecosystem. I did not notice any rivers where we broke through, and the sparsity of life reflects that.”

  She let her gaze drift upward to the boundless blue sky. Not even a hint of vapor stained its hue. Now free from the shadows of the fissure-city’s depths, she could at last see the star that bestowed its light upon them. It was small, brilliant blue, almost inoffensive to the eye. It hovered fifty-degrees off the horizon, where low and unimpressive mountain ranges seemed to grow from the bed of life mi
les and miles away.

  “It seems we needn’t worry about finding food to eat here,” Mark said. “Without resorting again to the fungus bird from last night, we should be able to find something edible.”

  Spinneretta didn’t say anything, and a pang of helplessness shook her chest. They had water. They had food. They had shelter at the city. They could feasibly live here, in the Web, for the rest of their lives. Never again seeing her family. And if she couldn’t learn to harness whatever magical power she had, that possibility became inevitability. What kind of future would they have here? Her mind flashed to a far future, a crazed and hopeless vision. Cast out of the Garden of Eden, her and Mark acting to repopulate a world bereft of civilization. A shiver forced its way through her bones, and her balance faltered for a fragment of a second. She discarded the mercurial thought, lest it arrest the entirety of her focus. She wouldn’t let that happen. Her mind at once went to work pulling and shaping at that nameless force that she was still convinced was her mind coping with despair. The damp feeling of the air moving at her will, even if it was her imagination, made her feel just a little better.

  “Come,” Mark said. “Let us explore.”

  Were it not for how sore her feet were, Spinneretta may have found the dream-like journey pleasant. While far-removed from any place she’d been on Earth, there was something comfortable about the teal ivy-covered prairie. The screeching caws of those fungal birds overhead could have been the sound of a hawk gliding over the flat expanse. The white behemoths could have been the ancient buffalo on the American plains in some forgotten aeon of history. Even the drill-bit trees, oddly primordial in their simplicity, were perhaps not so alien as she had once thought. They passed a stump of one such tree, and she had found that the fibrous remnants of its trunk appeared to be made of a porous wood.