Silvia pulled her foot back and kicked Berrick in the ribs. Berrick’s eyes clouded and his brain struggled to overcome the agony in his leg, to fill his aching lungs with air and find some explanation, any explanation, for what had just happened.
When Berrick’s vision cleared, Halis leaned on Silvia’s shoulder. The darker man’s arm dripped blood, and a crimson stain spread across his shirt.
“You’ll make the calls needed to get our papers ready. Now,” Silvia said. Her black eyes broached no argument.
“A spider… Darith said he was attacked by a spider.” Berrick gasped in pain.
“Get up and call them,” Halis said, a sneer in the place of his characteristic smile. “We need you alive, or you’d be dead right now. We don’t need your daughter.”
Berrick pressed his back against the wall and forced himself up. Silvia’s eyes flickered. Halis held on to her, but he recovered his smile.
How much did he trust the count? On leaving, he’d provided instructions to take Marim and the boy to another planet to hide them if he didn’t return. He looked into the cold dark eyes of Silvia and Halis.
“Give me a goddamn phone,” Berrick said.
Halis let go of Silvia’s shoulder, and she walked across the room. Halis held his side and smiled.
“No one has shot me before, you know,” Halis said. “Be proud of that. You’ll have scarred me. Silvia won’t thank you for that.”
Berrick spat at him. Halis laughed.
Silvia returned with one of the old-fashioned phones favored on Yahal. She held the receiver out to Berrick. “No tricks, Berrick. The only ones who get to play games are Halis and me. This is our gambit, and we’ll succeed.”
She took Halis’ hand and led him back to the bed. Berrick considered running, but he still remembered the power of her stare.
Berrick looked over at Henri on the ground. His hand was gray, as if he’d been drained of all his blood. He didn’t move, and he didn’t breathe. Berrick felt nothing looking at the corpse. Brother or no, Henri had opened the door that had put Marim and Darith in harm’s way. He’d earned his end. But to die like that… and they knew where his Marim was. They’d marked her.
He’d left his badge behind. What difference was there between this illegal deed and the one he intended? As long as it kept Marim safe? But a queasy churning competed with the blinding pain at the thought of using the badge he’d built his life around to betray that system.
“Make the call,” Silvia said. She was looking at him again as she perched on the edge of the bed. Her hair fell down her back like a black flame.
“Whose life’ll you drain for your next spell if I don’t?”
“I have more reserves than you could dream. Make the call. I’m tired of your games.”
Berrick lifted the receiver and dialed. His fingers were numb. He made three phone calls, talked to numerous people, and chatted with a good number of them. He did all this with her eyes on him. The cold crept out of her gaze and drained him. When at last he hung up the phone, she dropped her eyes.
“When will we have our papers?” Silvia asked, using one long finger to prop up her chin. The bracelets jangled on her slender wrists. Their gold shone on her pale skin.
“A week, maybe two,” Berrick said.
Silvia stood and walked over to him. “Then that is how long we will stay with you. Or more accurately, how long you’ll stay with us.”
“I’m not staying here,” Berrick said.
“You’ll not be out of our sight until we’re on that ship, Berrick,” Silvia said. “We could come with you to your home and sleep in your bed… but that puts us under the same roof as Marim.”
“We’ll stay here,” Berrick said through gritted teeth.
“Didn’t you have a son once, Berrick?” Halis said from the bed. “I read about it, I think. He died a while back in some tragic accident. It was all over the papers.”
Berrick glared at the grinning man on the bed.
“Ah yes, a shooting, it was.” Halis continued. “The boy was shot twice in the head, once at point-blank range, after he was already dead, then dumped off a cliff. Two days until your police force found his cold, broken body. Wasn’t that the story?”
“Yes, dear. You have such a wonderful memory. I never would have recalled that.” Silvia glanced at the bed. Her white teeth flashed in a smile before she turned back to Berrick. “Was there ever an investigation?”
“No,” Halis said. “Odd thing for the wife and son of the police chief, no? You’d almost think you already knew who’d committed the crime and chosen not to accuse them.”
Berrick glared at both of them.
“Wasn’t your wife with your son?” Silvia asked.
“During the attack, she was,” Halis said when Berrick stayed silent. “Pretty thing, very like her daughter. They have the same eyes. They didn’t shoot her in the head, though, would’ve been a pity to destroy that face. I’m glad they didn’t. They found her—”
“Shut up,” Berrick said. How they’d found Polly shone in a bitter cold cutout across his mind, bloody, three gunshot wounds and numerous stabs. The coroner had said she’d been alive for all but the final shot.
“Hmm, actually, I think he’s right, my darling,” Silvia said, taking the phone from Berrick. “We must fetch a doctor, or one of you will bleed to death.”
Chapter 8
Tears & Blood
The darkness crept into every crack of the room, kept at bay by a single bedside lamp. Darith stirred in the semi-darkness. He felt the night in his bones. It called to him in the same way he’d been called as a child to leap into the lake’s deep water. Only he didn’t want the pleasures the night offered him. Warm blood and screams. He felt Marim’s fear riding the air, drew the shaking of her hands into his lungs. Her nearness spoke to him past walls and doors, and the closer she came, the more urgently he felt her confusion.
Like a wraith, Marim entered, red hair strung with daisies from the garden, and her face as pale as the moon in the darkness. A nightshift covered her body, offering little in the way of modesty. She stared at him with her eyes huge and frightened and reached her arms out, a daisy chain hanging from her fingertips. The promise of her dangled in front of him, so different from the promise of the dark.
Darith tried to go to her. Then he lay back with a short, harsh laugh.
She went to him and laid the flowers in her hands on his head, a child’s summer crown. Darith ripped the carefully twined stems from his hair and tossed them at the wall.
“Outside the funeral parlor, your hands twined in mine,” Marim said, her eyes stripping his anger away. “You sat in the grass with me and braided flowers to lay on Petyr’s coffin. I loved you then, and I love you now.”
Marim clasped Darith’s hand and laid her head on his chest. Her body was soft and warm. Her breasts flattened against him, and every breath pressed her body into his. The promises her flesh made were well-crafted lies.
He shoved her away and stared at her face. There was a time he would have enjoyed having a well-bred woman come half-dressed to his bedchamber, but what was he now? He was nothing. Even the shadowy magic he’d practiced for years had left him. He was powerless. She knew it, or she wouldn’t come.
“You didn’t come in here to offer me love I can’t use.”
“Something is wrong,” Marim whispered. She let her voice drift off into the hungry arms of the night before she continued. “I hear the voice inside me and there’s nowhere for me to run. No one believes me… but you, you were there. Please, tell me you feel the changes.”
Fear. That was all he saw in her pretty face. Had their wickedness not tempted her as it had him?
She sat up by his side. In the dim light of the moon, he watched her move. She took his hand and pressed it to her heart. It beat, pulsing against his hand.
“My blood is telling me there’s something wrong,” Marim said. “I’m not mad. I’m not.”
“You are mad, and
so am I.”
At the trembling of her lip, Darith pulled her against him. He held her there. Her hand curled into a little ball on his chest. They took a breath.
“They say I went back to the party, and that I danced. I don’t remember that. All I recall is the night, and now… tonight has the same pulse. My blood sings and I’m scared.”
“They’re morons. They say a man did this to me.” He smiled into the night; he knew the night understood the joke. The darkness heard him. “The funny thing is, there isn’t any pain… I don’t remember any pain the whole time. Pain would be something real. Something to hold on to. Otherwise, it’s all a dream.”
“Oh, if only it were all a dream. And we’d wake up among the roses. And it would have been only us out in the garden.” She smiled as she shivered against him. “We’d wake up in the sunlight.”
“Don’t.” Darith turned his head to the side, away from the woman who lay against him. Her leg rested on his, but he couldn’t feel her silky skin. Her entire body draped carelessly against him, and that couldn’t mean anything to him. Marim slid up his body, and her thigh rested on his stomach. She cradled his head against her small chest.
“If we wake, we’ll wake together, Darith,” she said, “and if we sleep, we’ll do that together as well. Even if I could leave you, I wouldn’t.”
Tears slipped from Darith’s eyes, but before he could stifle the well of emotion bubbling up, Marim’s lips brushed the tears from his cheek.
“Please, let me shelter you for once, Darith,” Marim whispered.
“My loving mother has visited me once. I suppose I should be thankful for the consideration. Do you know what she asked? She wanted to know what lovers I’d taken in the village, in hopes she could locate some bastard brat. She said it like I ought to be grateful to her for taking the time.”
Marim held him as he wrestled back self-pity. Her hair fell against his face, and it smelled only of her. He remembered darker scents that came with the night.
Inside his mind, the lurking image of a spider moved, mandibles quivering. She gasped.
“You see it too?” he asked.
“In my mind, but it’s so real, like it’s touching my thoughts. Will it eat me, Darith, and leave only my body?” Her fingers clawed at her face.
Darith gripped her wrists and stared at the tiny scratches on her cheeks, more lining her neck. Whatever she was feeling, it was not the same as it was for him. He longed to go into the night, but there was a wild terror in Marim’s hazel eyes.
Neither of them moved or breathed as the web spread and the spider crept forward. Darith tightened his hold on her, and she clenched her fingers as she held him. Then Marim hissed a deep, guttural sound.
“Leave us!” she cried. “You are not welcome here.”
The image stayed, and Marim wept.
“Why won’t they go? They want to consume me… they whisper, whisper all night long. Only the daylight drives them from me.”
Darith pulled himself up with his arms and held Marim against him. He glared at the wall, poured all his anger out against it, and the stones shook. A shiver of power woke in his body.
“Go,” he said, releasing the tiny spark of magic into the word.
The spider melted away like wax. Marim lay in his arms, quivering.
“I will go insane,” she wept. “I will be lost to this terror growing inside me.”
“If anything comes for you, it must face me,” Darith said. He pressed her to him until it hurt. She cried softly but did not try to push him back. His hold loosened, and his hand slid down her back.
She tilted her head up toward him. Her eyes were full of tears, and her mouth parted. Inside her was blackness. Darith kissed her, and she shied away from him for a moment. Then she kissed him back, her small mouth pressed to him. He felt everything then, experienced parts of himself they had told him he’d never feel again. He took her in and drank her pain from her lips. She gave freely.
The night sighed outside the window. They held the night from each other, intertwined till morning. They lay there until the first light of dawn streaked the sky. Then, without a word, Marim stood. She didn’t look at Darith. It took her only a few steps to get to the door and then she was beyond his world. Even had he desired, Darith couldn’t follow her. But he wasn’t watching her—he watched the morning come.
∆∆∆
The morning light, a flare of cheerful orangey-red, caught in Silvia’s hair and was doused there. She sat at a vanity table with her long, red-black hair piled on top of her head. Next to her familiar reflection was the image of a bespectacled man. She rose and swirled toward the door where the doctor she’d called for Halis and Berrick waited. Her starched black dress clung to her waist, and her hips swung.
Dr. Trarsius hovered in the doorway, his eyes riveted on her slender form. It was hardly a triumph for her to entice men. To use them. They were easy and seduction was not an art she wished to pursue. With a lowered gaze, perhaps a demure hand resting on her chest, she could have changed the doctor’s hostile gaze into something different.
The power is mine. The idea repelled her. That was the only difference between her and the whores who groveled for coin in The Brothel. How could she retain any pride if she stooped to their level?
“I’ve bandaged them up. I’ve done all I can, but you need to get them to the hospital,” Dr. Trarsius said.
“So you instructed yesterday.” She raised one hand and held it as if to block his notion from reaching her. “I don’t intend to.”
“Ma’am, your brother may very well be in danger of losing his life. A wound to the side like that…” Dr. Trarsius stared plaintively into her eyes, and his voice trailed off.
“My brother will live,” she said. She placed her hand on the doctor’s shoulder and looked directly into his eyes. They were of a height. He broke the gaze and stepped back a pace. Silvia allowed herself a smile at his discomfort. “I do not wish for official attention to this little fight. The two parties are amicably inclined now, and we have no desire to deal with any legal proceedings.”
“Yes, miss,” Dr. Trarsius said.
“You’ll come again just before supper time and see to them. You’ll be compensated.”
“So you keep saying,” Dr. Trarsius said. “But this has gone above my standard fee.”
Her lips parted and she could practically taste his blood filling her mouth. That wouldn’t do. They needed him and there were other solutions to his impatience outside physical harm. It was hard to remember that. Since childhood, she’d been expected to help Halis kill. Now that she was free, unless she willed it, she never needed to kill a man.
Her hand slid down her side, and he followed its journey. “A retainer for your silence? Follow me.”
She stepped deeper into the chamber and walked around the bed. From a small bedside table, she picked up a wallet. She withdrew a single bill, running her fingers along it. The taint of her pheromones would follow him this way. She lifted the bill and brushed her lips over it. She might not want to seduce him, but for their safety, she needed to have some sort of hold on him. After the contact, she placed the bill in his palm.
How she longed to be on a civilized world, where they didn’t cling to nostalgia for paper money. Somewhere… clean. But for the moment, Yahal’s backwards values served her purposes.
He looked down at the cash.
“Enough to cover your pains, and it’s only a token of my appreciation.” She moved around him, her skirts dancing on the floor. She had him cornered between the bed, the wall, and her. How odd to corner a man, look at the fear in his gaze, and know she didn’t have to play bait until Halis pierced the man’s heart. Without Mr. Ymel ordering her, she could let him live. “I thank you for your time.”
She moved back across the room, freeing him. He walked past her out the door.
Silvia watched him leave through halls lit with sun. It poured through the open drapes and traced over the walls with its care
free fingers. The morning paraded across everything, but when Silvia walked by, she held darkness close around her like a shawl. The web that stretched out from her created shadows that, though unseen themselves, seemed to dim the light. When the sunlight slid over her, it made no difference.
She entered the master suite and shut the door. Halis lay in the next room on the bed, his eyes closed, his face abnormally pale. With a casual glance to Berrick where he lay propped up among pillows on the chaise lounge, Silvia lifted her skirts in her hands and ran to Halis. She kneeled as one in prayer by his bedside and took up his hand.
“My darling.” She sighed.
“It’s just blood, Silvia.”
Her gaze accused him of lying, but her mouth said nothing. The morning light cascaded over her now. There was too much of it for it to be held off even by the web of darkness that clung to them both. The brightness found no fault in her face, no blemish on her skin. Tears slid down her cheeks unheeded; except for the droplets, there was no sign from her that she wept.
Halis lay in front of her, his arm wrapped up tightly in a new white bandage and beneath his shirt, there was another wrapping for his side. Her hand slid over the bandage on his arm and then she touched his side. The tears continued to travel from her lashes down her flawless skin. Halis sat up with a wince, propping himself up on his good arm.
“Stop wallowing,” Halis said.
She wiped the tears away just as casually as she had unwittingly shed them. “I’m sorry. It was my foolish game. You never should have gotten hurt.”
“You cannot steal a spaceship, nor can you fly one. Your games, as you call them, were necessary. I shouldn’t have been so careless with the gun. Be lenient with both of us, my queen. This is one of few real interactions with the world you’ve had. How were we to predict, without any experience, how our actions would ripple out?”
Spider's Kiss: Book One of the Drambish Chronicles Page 8