“Hmm?” She didn’t look up from the chore of loading fresh bullets into the cylinder.
“Think you could teach me to shoot?”
She looked like she was going to reprimand him for asking something so stupid. But a smile crept upon her face and her head dipped to one side. “Really? You want to learn to shoot?”
Arthr averted his gaze, and his chest started to tighten. “I, uhh . . . Yeah. I thought, you know, with all that’s happened so far, I mean, I don’t really know much about it but . . . You know, maybe I should learn, or something?”
“Poetic reasoning.” She snickered. “Well, I don’t see any harm in it. Just promise me you’ll be more efficient with my bullets than you are with English.”
Arthr stammered. “W-wha?”
A stifled snicker in her throat. “God, you’re adorable. Get over here.” She went to the bag beneath the closer tree and again began to rummage through it, favoring her right arm. A moment later, she drew a second gun out of her bag. She cracked the cylinder open, checked something toward the rear of the barrel, and then returned to where Arthr stood. “Here,” she said, holding it out to him.
He hesitated before accepting the weapon. The gun was a wholly different beast than the silver revolver that she used. It had a polished wooden grip, and was forged out of smooth, black metal. The barrel was an odd shape—it had three elongated ovals cutting through the middle, and the top and bottom of the barrel each had a set of what Arthr could only think of as blocky teeth. It looked like a weapon from the future. “What is this?”
“This is a Chiappa Rhino. It’s a three-fifty-seven, like my SP. I bought it for myself a couple years ago, but never really used it.”
Arthr turned it over in his hands. It was heavier than he’d imagined, likely owing to its solid metal construction. He ran his thumb over the sheer edge of its hexagonal cylinder in imitation of the gesture he’d observed Annika make several times before.
“Open it up. Can’t shoot without any ammo.”
“R-right.” He tried to push the cylinder open. When it didn’t budge he began looking for the release lever. It should be around here, right?
“It’s on the left,” Annika said. “By the hammer.”
“Uhh . . . ” Even though he knew the word, he had suddenly forgotten what it meant in the context of a gun. There were so many mechanical parts he didn’t even know where to—
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Annika reached over and gestured at the mechanism at the rear of the revolver. “Repeat after me: hammer. It’s what you cock.”
“Right, sorry,” he said, embarrassed. Trying to regain his composure, he sucked a deep breath and slid the release lever down.
“Push the cylinder to the left.”
He followed her instruction, and the cylinder swung open.
“Great. You’re a goddamn natural at this. Now, pick your poison: thirty-eight specials or . . . You know what, I don’t know why I’m asking you. I’ll just load you some wadcutters since this is your first time.” She took the Rhino from his hand and walked over to the bag leaning against the nearby tree. After a moment, she pulled out a handful of cartridges. She chambered the rounds with a practiced hand, spun the barrel once, and closed it again before returning and giving it back to him. “Alright, let’s see what you can do.” She slipped the earmuffs off from around her neck and placed them on Arthr’s head for him.
Everything went silent. The only sound was the shifting of internal fluid forces and the beating of his own heart. The earmuffs were just a little painful, but he was not about to complain. Annika stepped back and leaned against a stunted eucalyptus. Her brown eyes were intense, exposing. It felt like she was trying to dissect him with her gaze. Arthr swallowed hard, and the sound almost deafened him. He filled his lungs, slowly, and blew out his nervousness. He lifted the Rhino in his right hand and squinted down the barrel at the target on the tree.
A muffled murmur came from his left. He looked toward Annika and pushed the earmuffs aside. “What?”
“I said use both hands, Rambo.”
He nodded, again feeling embarrassed, and slipped his earmuffs back on. Way to go, Arthr, he thought. Though she’d just been shooting one-handed, he wasn’t going to make an issue of it. He again set his sights on the target and raised the revolver. His thumb went to the hammer and he pulled it back, though it put up a heavy resistance. After he felt it click, the hammer fell back into its resting position. Puzzled, he glanced over to Annika, who just nodded. He shrugged it off and put his focus back where it was needed. He stared down the sights, lined up his shot, and squeezed the trigger.
The Rhino kicked hard against his grip. The loud report, though muffled by his ear protection, was harsher than he’d expected. His first shot hit dead air, but he didn’t fret; he knew what to expect now. He pulled the fickle hammer back, again straining his thumb against its weight, and fired a second shot. He emptied the remaining five rounds, somewhat clumsily. In the end he hit nothing, except for the last two shots which grazed the tree on which the target hung.
He peeled the earmuffs onto his neck, a small glimmer of pride tingling in his chest. Hell yeah, he thought. First time, and I even managed to come close. He smiled and looked over at Annika for approval. “Well, how was that?”
She whistled. “Honestly, that was pretty damn awful.”
He felt his pride crack in two, but he covered the sound of it shattering with a forced laugh. He pasted on a sarcastic smile. “Hey, go easy on me. This is my first time, after all.”
“Yeah, that line might fly with girls with low self-esteem and lower expectations. But it won’t fly with me.” She smirked. “Remember: there’s nothing endearing about a man without experience.”
Arthr sputtered and found himself unable to respond. The smile on Annika’s face said her word choice was deliberate. She was toying with him. He shook his head, heart beating a little harder. “I, uhh . . . I’m sorry.” His lungs swelled with another breath that failed to calm his nerves. “Can I try again?”
“You’d better. I couldn’t respect someone who thought that was an acceptable place to stop.” She smiled again. “I suppose I should start giving you some actual tips, though.”
“I . . . Yeah, I think I’d like that.”
“Then snap to attention and get ready, because class is in session. The first item on the curriculum is loading your own wadcutters.”
Spinneretta stood upon the balcony, watching the makeshift shooting range on the hillside come to life. The pall that had lingered ever since hearing about the murders and lockdown in Grantwood still hung all around her, and only seemed to grow heavier every time a gunshot split the evening quiet. With each shot, her spider legs twitched a little, but even that couldn’t rouse her from her spiraling thoughts. She kept thinking about what Annika had said at breakfast the previous day. Worst-case scenario, it could be Golgotha’s purging of Arbordale all over again. That phrase had stuck in her mind like a splinter, and the more she thought about it the more it bothered her. But why? Why had those words stuck with her, and why did it make her heart feel like it was made of lead?
It was then, as she was watching Arthr take his shots at the eucalyptus tree, that it hit her. Perhaps it was the chill in the air, or perhaps it was the vague omen of rain clouds off over the distant mountains, but she recalled at once the night she and Mark had been trapped in the pavilion at Peninsula Park. He had told her the story of Arbordale’s fate, and of his own involvement in the end of the Lunar Vigil. And he’d said something else that night: I have never told anyone this story before.
He hadn’t hesitated to tell her that, but the fact that Annika had known the name Golgotha seemed to directly contradict that claim. Had Mark lied to her? But, she was quick to remind herself, there wasn’t necessarily any evidence that it was a lie. After all, whole townships did not just disappear without people knowing. Just how well-known had the doom of Arbordale been? And even discounting that, Annika could have
pieced it together herself, right? She was a detective, after all. And yet, at the same time, Spinneretta couldn’t bring herself to believe that a cult like the Lunar Vigil, which had up until its demise thrived upon secrecy, been known to anyone outside of that town unless . . .
A cold breath saturated her lungs and spiracles. Unless he told her. Bothered by the incongruence of what she believed and what she wanted to believe, she slipped back inside Kyle’s house and went off to find Mark. She had to get an answer before that splinter in her mind grew roots.
She found him in the second-floor study. In what seemed a familiar scene, he was leaning against the bookshelf, a book called Spider Silk fanned open in one hand. The low light of the fireplace turned his profile a blazing orange, and the scent of smoke and firewood crept into the gaps in her spider legs. As soon as she was through the doorway, Mark looked up from his book with a faint smile. “Good evening.”
“Evening. Have you been hiding in here all day?”
“Only for the last hour or so.” He snapped the book shut and fitted it into a waiting gap in the rainbow of contiguous spines on the shelf. “I’m glad you’re here, Spinny.”
She started. “You are?”
“Aye. There was something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.” He crossed his arms and set his gaze into the smoldering log in the fireplace. “I have been thinking. About that sigil of yours. And the power that you may or not have.”
Spinneretta didn’t say anything. She was in no mood for the topic.
“It has been bothering me ever since we escaped. It would have been incredible enough for you to open a rift between worlds. But if my test was accurate, and you indeed have no magical potential at all, then it should have been impossible for you to bring us to the Web, as you called it, in the first place. Moreover, the fact that your sister evidently possesses the same ability strikes me as utterly improbable. My first thought was that you had both inherited the power from your father’s side. But that is impossible. Aside from some rare sensory artifacts such as the Sight, knowledge of spells cannot be passed by blood. Though your lineage has a rich history of magical potential, if in spite of your blood you yourself have no—”
“I want to ask you something.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Hmm?”
She steeled her stomach. “Before we talk about any of that. I have something I need to ask.”
For a moment, Mark did not speak. He just considered her with a confused and concerned expression. As the fire snapped and popped, he nodded toward her. “Of course. What is it?”
She took a deep breath. “I just . . . I know it’s stupid. But I really wanted to ask something about the Lunar Vigil.”
A shadow of hesitation weighed his eyes. “Of course. What would you wish to know?”
Another breath. Her stomach was already twisting into tight knots. But she’d come this far; there was nowhere to go but forward. “I was just wondering. About what happened after you left.” One hand played with the hair near her scalp, and she made a conscious effort to halt her fingers’ nervous twitching. “I mean, you basically said that between you and Golgotha, the whole town was destroyed, right? But, a whole town doesn’t just vanish without people noticing, right?”
“Ahh. You are asking of the fallout, as it were.”
“Y-yeah. I suppose I am.” Her lungs couldn’t get enough air. Christ, Spins, calm the hell down. You’re overreacting, and about nothing, no damn less.
“Well,” Mark said, “I cannot speak of the matter as it may be understood now. But after leaving, I stayed in and around Albany for a time. And in the time I stayed there, I heard the razing of the town and the surrounding wilderness blamed on forest fires. It took weeks for any traces of the town to be discovered, however; for a while, it was simply thought to be uninhabited wilds.”
“Uninhabited wilds?” Her heart began to sink. “You’re telling me nobody knew about the town?”
“Nobody would be disingenuous. We occasionally had outsiders moving in from other places, so they must have heard about it from somewhere. I suppose the clan did a good job keeping us unknown.”
Another too-hot breath seared her lungs. “What about Golgotha? Was he well known?”
Mark chuckled. “That would rather defeat the purpose, would it not? Nobody beyond the borders of Arbordale knew of him, to the best of my knowledge.”
Her hands were numb. The dark, traitorous thoughts she’d tried to squelch were growing louder, more incessant. “Do you remember the night we spent in that park?” she asked, discarding the logical shouts from her brain to drop the subject before she waded too deep into the morass. “When you first told me about Arbordale?”
He gave her a weak smile. “Of course, I do.”
Another deep breath. Her nostrils stung with the scent of hickory. She’d never hated that aroma more. “When you started to tell me that story, you said that you’d never told anyone else before.” For a solemn moment she stared into his eyes, trying to hold back the shiver that worked its way up and down her spine. “Was that true?”
“Of course it was.”
Spinneretta found the serene smile on his face somehow mocking. But her self-control held despite the screaming in her lizard brain. “If that was true . . . How did Annika know what happened in Arbordale?”
Mark’s smile began to fade. “What do you mean?”
Her teeth grew tight. She felt her molars grinding against one another of their own accord. “She called it the purging of Arbordale. She even knew the name Golgotha.”
His smile vanished altogether. “Ahh. Yes. I suppose that wouldn’t make much sense to you, would it?”
Make sense to me? To me, as opposed to anyone else? “So? How would she know about all that if what you told me was true?”
He was quiet. Again he looked into the glowing hickory log. His pale eyes caught the sparks and turned into distant pools of magma. “I don’t think I should speak about that.”
A wrench flew into her mental machinery. Her composure cracked. “Talk about what? That you lied to me?” Her anger began to boil; her higher mind tried unsuccessfully to calm her with thoughts of butterflies and waterfalls.
Mark gave her a puzzled look. “I did not lie to you, Spinny. What would I have to gain by lying to you about that?”
“You tell me.” She sucked a cool breath into her stomach in a vain attempt to extinguish her rising temper. “It’s not like this would be the first time you’ve kept shit from me, you know.” Calm the hell down. Just calm down. This isn’t Spinneretta. This isn’t you at all.
A silent moment unfolded. Mark’s eyes fell closed. “I know I haven’t been open with you about some things up until now. And for that, I apologize. I do hope you will forgive me. But what I told you was the truth. You really are the only person I have ever told that story to.”
In a glorious flash of emotional fusion, her self-control collapsed into a point of untold density and erupted. “Well, which is it!?” Mark started at her outburst, but whatever he was going to say was blown away by her next stab. “How stupid do you think I am, Mark? If you didn’t tell her, then why the fuck does she know about it? Something doesn’t add up here, and you’re not going to stand there and tell me that it does!”
His eyes went wide. “I . . . I cannot say.”
“You cannot say? What the hell does that mean?” She was nearly shouting now, and with each word her spider legs reacted. “Does that mean you don’t know, or you can’t tell me?”
A meaningful pause. “I cannot tell you.”
“And why the fuck can’t you tell me that, huh? Is me not knowing some part of another bullshit plan of yours!?”
Mark raised both hands in a gesture of calm, of alliance. “It’s nothing like that. It’s merely because I made a promise.”
“Oh. Of course. Mark doesn’t talk about Annika. I forgot you’re honor bound to leave me in the dark about that. Is that promise an umbrella for everything that has to do with t
he two of you?!” Calm down, Spins. What are you doing? Just calm down.
Mark’s eyes seemed to widen. His face was markedly paler now, and she hated what that said about her. What was he seeing in her? How did she look? The part of her that cared was crushed under a glacier of indignation. “I’m going to ask again,” she said through her teeth. “Please, Mark, just be honest with me.” She looked him in his pale brown eyes. “Was it a lie?”
His jaw twitched, and she could hear his inner-conflict in the moment of silence that preceded his answer. “No.”
She turned away from him. A hot sigh billowed from her quivering lungs. Her chest heaved. “You really don’t think much of me, do you?”
“Listen, I—”
“You listen!” Her spider legs began an aimless locomotion about her. She drew a few hot breaths. Her tone softened, masking her resentment. “I don’t care if you lied to me about the story, Mark. I don’t care if somebody else knows about that. I care that you’re lying to my face about it right now. I don’t know what you could have to gain by lying to me about it. But that lie is just so trivial. If you can’t even be honest with me about something as meaningless as that, then how am I supposed to trust you about things that are important? Things like NIDUS and this whole exile of ours. Especially after you used me and Arthr and Kara as bait for your plan.”
Clearly disarmed, he took a step toward her. “Spinny, listen to me—”
She threw her gaze over her shoulder at him. “Don’t call me Spinny!” His expression, like a warped mirror, reflected all the fury that must have shone in her eyes. Mark was silent, and each moment in that span was a gust from the bellows. She’d never felt so betrayed in her life. Without another word, she slammed the door behind her, leaving him standing in the firelight.
Holy shit, Spins, her brain told her. What is the matter with you? What are you doing? Her breath came faster now, and each huff brought less satisfaction with it. She stared at her hands as she stormed down the hall, and their shaking had traveled up to her shoulders by the time she reached the stairs. What is happening to you? This isn’t Spinneretta. This isn’t even something Chelsea would do.
Helixweaver (The Warren Brood Book 2) Page 23
