The Spider Children (The Warren Brood Book 1)

by Bartholomew Lander

  “All I know is that you have crazy magic powers and belonged to some cult.” She turned completely about to face him and found a lonely distance in his posture. “Especially if this is my own blood we’re talking about—”

  “Eleven generations does not blood make,” he bit, startling her with his abruptness. After a moment, his shoulders sagged and he gave her a forlorn look. “Forgive me. But you are better off knowing as little of them as possible.”

  “I’m certain.”

  He blinked at her. “Certain? Of what?”

  She took a deep breath, but her heart defied her attempt at calming it. “That I want to know.”

  Mark must have got the reference, for he let out a slow breath and looked away.

  “You never told me what happened to them all,” she pressed, a childlike sense of wonder eclipsing all reason and respect. “Don’t I have a right to know?”

  He nodded, not making eye contact. “I never told you about what happened, and there’s a reason for that.”

  She shuddered. “Which is?”

  “Which is because it’s a story I would give anything to forget.”

  Spinneretta was apprehensive, yet more morbidly curious now than ever. They were familiar words. They were words that resonated on some basic, familiar level. She said nothing, and waited to see if he would continue on his own.

  His whole body stiff as a statue, Mark stared off into the rain for a moment longer before turning to her again. His pale eyes shone with a cold severity that terrified her. “Very well. If you would know what became of the Lunar Vigil, then I shall tell you. However, I have never told anyone this story before, and you will surely think differently of me afterward.”

  Doubting her own intentions, and yet enraptured by the promise of the tale, Spinneretta listened as Mark began to speak.

  Chapter 19

  Blue Moon

  Before its end, the town of Arbordale had been nestled within the rolling Catskill Mountains of New York, surrounded by thick groves of eastern hemlock and American beech. The town was home to just under two hundred people. For better or worse, it was here that Charles Edward Warren had planted the roots of the Lunar Vigil three hundred years earlier.

  The sinking June sun cast its light through the stained windows of the Warren clan’s esteemed library, filling the air with a starfield of dust. Mark often found himself watching the dust swim to and fro in the evening light, for it captured his imagination in a way the Vulgar Latin of the Vigil’s collection never could. Today, it was the Liber Vaporum that eluded his interest, as so often it did. The lunar secrets contained within, the likes of which would have set even a layman gibbering from disbelief and bemusement, bored him terribly. Listlessly, his eyes always seemed to draw toward the endless shelves stacked with books collected from every corner of the Earth, written in languages both extant and deceased. Any one of them would have been more interesting to him than the damned Vaporum.

  But more often he found himself staring into the tall glass case in the center of the eastern wing, which contained the most startling of the library’s esoterica. Contained within was an artifact the Vigil revered above all but the Key to Manilius. It was a great stone slab, a timeless relief carving dredged up from amid Precambrian sediment. Its only intact face showed a waning gibbous, from whose bulge grew a claw-like growth composed of jagged, bladed angles. From the serrated center shone crudely etched rays, meant perhaps to represent the deathly glow of The Tree Which Splits the Heavens.

  And as Mark stared into its surface, taking in the indescribable age of its etchings, he heard a noise that should not have been. It was the sound of glass scraping wood, slowly and painfully. It came from beyond the aisle devoted in equal parts to astronomy and astrology. At once, Mark’s attention sharpened. He should have been the only one in the library at this hour, and that sound betrayed human intention. Springing to his feet, half of him just yearning to remove himself from the draining aura of the Liber Vaporum, he marched toward the source of the sound. When he looked down the length of the dusty aisle, which the day’s candles had long since left dim, he saw a young girl climbing in through one of the windows along the far wall.

  As her feet touched down and her back assumed a stealthy hunch, Mark wondered what she was doing there. The arching windows were not meant to open from outside, and that she’d managed to get in through one was a mystery unto itself. But her presence was a far more pressing concern, and he made no attempt to conceal his footsteps as he neared the mystery girl. “Hello,” he said.

  The girl started, and a small yip of obvious fear accompanied it. When she turned to face him, Mark could better make out the details of the intruder. She was tall, fair-skinned, and had dark hair that fell loosely around her shoulders. Her facial proportions multiplied by her breast size made her a couple years older than himself, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. She was not of the Lunar Vigil; he had never seen her before.

  The girl fumbled over her words as she stared at him. “I, I’m . . . Uhh . . . ”

  “Perhaps you would like to tell me what has brought you here,” Mark said, dipping his voice as low as he could.

  “I’m sorry, I-I’m not . . . I didn’t mean to—”

  “You must realize what danger you have put yourself in by coming here. Explain yourself.”

  Tears came to her eyes and she sniffed. “I . . . M-my best friend disappeared recently. A week and a half ago. Her brother said that he saw some, uhh . . . some suspicious people the night she vanished. I wanted to see if maybe . . . ”

  “If maybe she sequestered herself in a library? Do not try my patience with falsehoods, girl. Tell me why you have come here.”

  A spasm shook the girl’s shoulders, and a look of absolute terror overcame her. Her legs half-dipped, and it must have been will alone that kept her upright. “I . . . have to find her.” The fragility of her voice undermined her determination. Was she trying to muster some false bravado? A blind person could see how terrified she was.

  Mark held her gaze for a moment, allowing her story to sink in. “Where come you from?”

  “I’m . . . from over Beaver Kill,” she said, failing to mask the fear choking her.

  He took a deep breath. Beaver Kill. Have you lost your mind, Victor? The outskirts are off limits. Exhaling, he conjured all the malice the Vigil had up until then instilled him with. “Then return whence you’ve come, and never again intrude.”

  Her eyes shimmered with moisture. “You’re just . . . letting me go?”

  “If you leave right now, I shan’t tell anyone that you were here.” He narrowed his eyes and sneered. “Now get thee gone!”

  The girl seemed to be paralyzed, though it did not take her long to remember her survival instincts. She turned and, with a practiced agility, vaulted through the window and vanished into the beech groves surrounding the library, uttering not a single word as she left.

  Mark walked up to the wall and eased the window shut with a grating clack. He exhaled a tortured sigh. God damn you, Victor, he thought. It’s bad enough that he’s resorting to kidnapping, but now he isn’t even being careful about it. Does he want us to be discovered?

  Victor. The right hand of Golgotha, and Mark’s half-brother. The man had great power to flaunt within the Vigil, and he made a point of pissing Mark off as often as possible. It must have been jealousy, Mark thought. The latest string of kidnappings was just the latest in a long history of jabbing at the favored child of Golgotha.

  Taking them from just over Beaver Kill, he thought incredulously. God damn you, Victor.

  At dinner that night, Mark relayed his encounter with the girl to his aunt, Sylvia, his uncle, Laurence, and his older sister, Ellie. The revelation that someone had been snooping around the Vigil’s library, among other things, visibly disturbed everyone at the dinner table, save the six-year-old Lily, who had trouble following Mark’s grown-up words.

  “I’d hate to think this timing any more than coincidence,” Sylv
ia said. “What proof have you that she truly was searching for her friend, and not for a certain Key?”

  Mark picked at the mashed potatoes on his plate. “Are you suggesting the girl was a spy for Golgotha?”

  “A spy for Golgotha is more probable than a girl without sense, in these days. Especially with the blue moon so near.”

  “Then why should Golgotha search for the Key within the library?” Ellie asked, a bored look on her face. “Does he believe the thieves filed it among the old seafarers’ tales and mold-damp scripture?” There was a knowing hint of humor in her tired voice. Golgotha had been leaving no stone unturned in his search for the missing Key to Manilius, and the idea that he’d even begun rummaging his own private archives in search of it was one deserving of ridicule. The Key, as they all knew, was safely hidden within the tawny chest of drawers in the hall, where Golgotha would never find it.

  “You said she claimed to hail from just over Beaver Kill?” Laurence asked.

  “Aye, that’s what she said. Makes one wonder how long Golgotha has been taking them.” He referred, of course, to the sacrifices. They’d grown more numerous and violent than ever as of late, but the thought that Golgotha and his inner circle were no longer bothering to show care in their selection of the moongifts lent an even greater dread to the old man’s ambitions.

  “Can’t be too long or we should have heard something,” Ellie said. She again sounded bored, and one hand absently played with her dark brown hair.

  Sylvia began to scrape a plate of leftovers into a waiting tin. “Poor girl.”

  Mark looked up from his plate at her, and was surprised to see her on the verge of tears. It must have just been the lighting; no one in this family was capable of caring about others. He scoffed at himself, thinking that analysis too cynical even for him. It was not pure selfishness, but concern for Lily, that had brought them all together. Sylvia and Laurence and Ellie had all forged their sordid alliance against Golgotha following Mark’s first successful ascension, an event still unknown to his power-hungry father. It was a bitter thought; how many of those sacrifices were expressly intended for Mark’s own growth? To awaken the dormant moongod, to shed the slag from your core, as Golgotha so often said.

  As Laurence stood and began to scrape his own leavings into storage, he rumbled a low sigh. “Must be hard losing your best friend and not even knowing why.”

  “Mommy, what happened to her friend?” Lily asked, blissfully ignorant of the implications behind her own words.

  “Nothing, sweetie,” Sylvia answered. “Now eat your vegetables.”

  Lily, once again taciturn, obeyed her mother and began picking at her string beans. Lily had no idea how lucky she was, Mark reflected. Mark’s induction into the cult had occurred on his third birthday. While he had no explicit memories of it, his mother had told him that it was truly tragic to see the induction of one so young. Before his mother’s untimely death, Mark had come to believe she was the only one in the clan with their head on straight. Perhaps that was because she was not a Warren, and was no more than a prisoner of Golgotha’s endless search for the Chosen. Her last days had been spent trying to protect him. And only now that he was older did he understand why. All he had to do was look at Lily, with her blond locks and bright eyes. His mother’s eyes. After dinner, she’d probably go back to her room and play with her toys or draw in her coloring books—luxuries Mark himself never had. He envied her innocence.

  Three nights later, the second full moon of the month rose over Arbordale. The blue moon saw the Lunar Vigil gathering at Calvary Hall, the colonial-era chapel that served as the desecrated citadel of Golgotha and his inner circle. As Mark left Ellie, Sylvia, and Laurence behind to slink up to the altar, where tradition indicated the Chosen was to stand, he looked to and fro at the dark robes and drawn cowls lining the walls and pews. There must have been sixty members in attendance. He was perfectly happy to admit he knew only a handful by name, many of which were still considered true Warrens by his father.

  After the latecomers of the congregation had gathered, the ever-pompous Victor strode to the altar with his cousin Barnaby right behind him. They were the right and left hands of Golgotha, respectively, and they always carried themselves with a bombastic air of ceremony. Spreading his arms toward the arched ceiling of the cathedral, Victor addressed the crowd in a booming voice. “Allow now the shadow of Y’rokkrem to fall across the lands.”

  And all fell silent in reverence of The Tree Which Splits the Heavens. In the custom of the Vigil, the Observance of the Blue Moon began with a recitation of the Lunar Oath, a meaningless poem Mark had never cared for, and the Sanctification of the Points. When the formalities were at an end, Victor took his position in the center of the hall and addressed the congregation.

  “Tonight, we children of the moon welcome once more the luminous face of Y’rokkrem. As the last rays of the sun bleed dry the immoral horizon, we turn invariably to the east, to the land where the first Golgotha entered into his covenant with The Tree Which Splits the Heavens and received the blood of his kin in communion. We turn to behold the Gate, to witness the glory of the end!”

  The congregation broke out in scattered shouts of hail and amen. Mark bit his tongue as he watched the cold grin beneath Victor’s jagged nose twitch. He loathed that smile.

  “But before the recitation of the ceremonial passages and the Scribing of the Sign, we have an announcement of great import.”

  “Lord!” exclaimed a man in the back. “Have ye found the Key?”

  Victor’s smile vanished, and his tone fell. “Nay. But soon we shall. For one of our own, on this blue-moon-blessed morn, was visited by the spirit of the first Golgotha!”

  Mark raised his eyebrows at the claim, but the rest of the crowd stirred with an awed murmur that spread from person to person like a plague.

  “That’s right,” Victor exhaled, loud enough to stifle the congregation’s whispering. “And who has the Weeping Man graced with his presence this day, but our own Sylvia Warren!”

  An incredulous shock struck Mark in the center of his chest. “What?”

  “Come, sister, and speak of what the Weeping Man has revealed to you on this morn’s break.”

  The silence deepened as Victor vacated the torchlight of the sanctuary. For a few excruciating moments, only Sylvia’s footsteps and the sound of his own heartbeat pounded in Mark’s ears. She did not even glance in his direction as she took her position and turned to face the gathered sea of robes.

  “Brothers and sisters,” Sylvia cried, “it is as Victor has spoken—upon this morrow’s break, I was visited by a vision of the Weeping Man. In it, he revealed to me the identity of the thief of the Key to Manilius!”

  A great, airy gasp lapped at the walls. Something dark began to gnaw at the lining of Mark’s stomach.

  “The thief is a young girl—the daughter of the Hallström homestead just over Beaver Kill, on the very edge of Arbordale. And what’s more, only three days prior, she attempted to break into the Library of the Vigil, to what nefarious ends I dare not dream! The herald of Y’rokkrem has spoken, and my brothers and sisters ye all know what that decree must entail: the thief of the Key must die!” A cheer rose from the crowd. “Her belly must be slit open, and her entrails offered to The Tree Which Splits the Heavens! Her and her kin!” Another cheer, now deafening.

  Mark stared dumbly at her. The way she stood with her arms spread, just as Victor so often did, was distant and uninviting. He scanned the crowd and found Laurence and Ellie toward the back. Neither met his gaze. Had she already told them? His hands went cold. Resentment stung all over; he felt used.

  But the shouts of approval from the weak-minded crowd boomed from the walls and high ceiling. It was not long before Victor relieved Sylvia of her position, and once again addressed the Vigil. “As she has spoken, so now shall we move in service to great Y’rokkrem, and the herald of the moonrise.”

  Yet another bloodthirsty howl answered.

&n
bsp; “It has been declared: this Hallström harlot will be found tonight, and her soul offered up to feed the Gate. The souls of her family shall be the embers upon which her damnation is sealed!”

  The gathered robes roared in agreement, the hatred in their souls screaming louder than their collective voices could ever hope to. The insanity of their ambitions echoed back like waves upon a blackened shore. Mark’s whole body tensed. Enough was enough. “I shall not condone this!” he shouted.

  At the sound of the Chosen’s voice, the crowd fell silent, leaving only a hum where their voices had before squawked and hollered.

  “Ahh, Mark Warren,” Victor said, his voice dripping with a syrupy relish, “have you anything to add to this discussion?”

  “I shall not condone this course of action,” Mark repeated, keeping his tone steady.

  “Thankfully, O exalted Chosen, you are not required to. Golgotha has already granted his blessing.”

  Mark felt the blood in his face go cold. “No, you cannot mean—”

  A soulless grin answered him. “By the order of the great Golgotha,” Victor announced, “we shall turn this night’s blue moon into a red moon!”

  That gnawing something from before returned, and the chill was nearly too much to bear. “No. You declared a red moon on the last. How many must die for your hunger?”

  “You should be thankful to have such a kind father,” Victor said with a malicious eye. “So concerned is he about your development that he shall keep pouring more and more blood into the rites, even as its donors run dry.”

  “You walk a dangerous path, Victor. Golgotha would offer even you up for sacrifice the moment you outlived your usefulness.”

  The man’s eyes flashed with an insane glee. “And should he do so I’d embrace the edict with honor.”

  “Let those who wish for death be the ones to receive it,” Mark said, fists beginning to tremble. “Leave innocents to their own ignorance.”