The Spider Children (The Warren Brood Book 1)

by Bartholomew Lander

  He smiled at her as she entered. “Good evening. It has been a while, has it not?”

  She said nothing. She walked over to the couch and collapsed face-first onto the faux-leather upholstery. She breathed in deeply and stretched her spider legs, letting the comfortable synthetic aroma fill her lungs and spiracles.

  “Have you finally decided to forgive me?” Mark asked.

  She shook her head against the pleather. “I’ll never forgive you. But I was lonely, so you get to keep me company until I’m tired enough to sleep.”

  He chuckled. “It would then seem that things are back to normal, aside from you never forgiving me.”

  “I guess so.” She rolled onto her side and stretched half of her spider legs toward the ceiling until she felt the joints pop, and then curled them back around her.

  “Have you met your date for the promenade yet?”

  “Nope,” she said. “Not going with him.”

  “What?”

  “The terms of the bet were crystal clear. Losing the bet just means I have to go. You never said I had to go with the person who asked me.”

  “A loophole? Interesting. Though it is a shame after all the trouble your friends went through to set you up.”

  “You don’t seem to get just how disinterested I am,” she said.

  “Are you going with your friends, then?”

  Spinneretta sighed. “That’s the plan.”

  “How are you planning on arriving?”

  “Don’t know, don’t care.”

  “Would you like me to walk you there?”

  Her heart attempted to leap out of her throat. “Wh-why?”

  “Given how uninterested you seem in the event, I wouldn’t put it past you to neglect figuring out transportation. And as I’m to watch over everyone after your parents leave, I would likely be held accountable were something to happen to you. Especially were you to walk there alone in the dark.”

  Spinneretta held her breath. Okay, so maybe she’d lost the bet. Maybe she lost her chance to get Mark to teach her what this magic thing was all about. And maybe she was trapped into attending the idiot prom. But the walk there didn’t need to be so bad, at least. It was more a consolation than the dress, anyway. “Yeah, alright,” she said, deciding not to dwell too much on spilt poison.

  “Very well. I look forward to it.”

  For a short while, neither of them said anything further. Spinneretta rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling, already feeling her unease evaporating. It was upsetting how lonely avoiding him made her, but the loneliness was not the worst symptom of self-imposed isolation. The worst was that it afforded her time to consider things she did not want to think of. The lyrics of songs and the words printed on pages would tangentially remind her of something, and that would be the first step down a slippery slope.

  The immediacy of the fight, the magic, and the bet had made Spinneretta forget the shadow of doubt enshrouding her own origins, and even Kara’s near kidnapping. If Mark and that horrible detective had found anything, she’d been completely cut out of the knowledge. But maybe that was because there was nothing to find. A cult dedicated to some ancient spider myth . . . it was absurd. But then again, why had hearing about the tale of the Yellow King sent off such chilling alarms of recollection? Such thoughts would come at the first tinge of unease, at the first illusory twist of shadow out the corner of her eye.

  The idea of magic alone, which grew more sinister in concept when she dwelled upon the evidence alone, opened the door to countless new interpretations of the universe, of history, and of man’s understanding of science. It invited the acceptance of additional forbidden realities whose implications were far more unwholesome than that of a healing miracle. If magic was real, then who was to say the story of the Yellow King and the ancestor of all spiders, Raxxinoth, was mere fiction?

  “You’re unusually quiet,” Mark said, rousing her from her thoughts. “What are you thinking about?”

  The question seemed to perfectly address the anonymous nervousness and apprehension that had been seething and twisting in the back of her mind. “I’ve been thinking, you know, about that story of the Yellow King and Raxxinoth.” She shuddered as she spoke the latter name. “What if Raxxinoth really exists? What if he’s another one of those Primal Ones you talked about? Like the Y’rokkrem the Warrens worshiped, I mean.”

  He was silent for a moment. “That’s certainly a possibility I’ve considered.”

  She shuddered. “I’m . . . I’m just trying to wrap my head around the whole concept, I guess. And what happened to them, anyway?”

  “To the Primal Ones?”

  “Yeah. You said there used to be a lot of them, right? If they’re so powerful, then why aren’t they around anymore?”

  The folder in Mark’s lap snapped closed, and he carefully placed it aside. “That’s a tricky question, for the few sources that touch on the subject are generally incomplete or hazardously translated.”

  “And what do they say?” she asked, curiosity overriding that niggling doubt that told her she was better off ignorant.

  “The most well-known source purports that in addition to the Primal Ones, there was another race of entities that existed in the early universe. They are referred to as the Outsiders, for they came not from this universe. It is said that they became involved in a war against the Primal Ones. Because of them, most of the Primal Ones vanished, and those that didn’t were imprisoned.”

  “Imprisoned?”

  He nodded. “I’m afraid I have scant details on how they were sealed away, though it is clear that they were. The Barrier you felt before is the force that holds Y’rokkrem’s seal in place. That is the only prison that I’m specifically aware of.”

  “So there are others? That exist now?”

  “If you know where to look you can find evidence suggesting that, even from their prisons, the Primal Ones exert subtle influences on people and events. There are only a few that I know by name, however. Y’rokkrem, the Tree Which Splits the Heavens; Tsun-Guar, the Dweller Below; Ozmahesh, the Writhing Malefice, the deceiver who walks among men and bends them to his will.” His face became hard and expressionless. That intensity lingered for a few moments before he recovered, as if from a bad smell. “Forgive me. It’s easy to get sucked into those kinds of thoughts.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said. The things he said awakened a forbidden chain of morbid and alien ideas in her mind. It fueled a dangerous curiosity in her that challenged her to press for further answers. That curiosity, however, had to be restrained. Imagining the things he said was difficult, but each fact that she cautiously added to her worldview shifted her paradigm further and further. The subtly malign implications of those astral prisons and whispers from beyond time chilled her, made the shadows boil and dance on the edge of her view, and threatened to haunt her dreams with shapes too horrible for imagining. “So, do you think Raxxinoth is one of them?”

  “Worry not about things that matter not. Whether Raxxinoth truly exists, or whether your father truly has spider DNA or not, in the end none of that matters. What matters is that you’re here and that you’re you.”

  She was going to protest his latest trite encouragement but decided against it. In a way, stale though his words were, they were grounding. She’d probably never learn the truth of her origins anyway. If she could never know the truth, what was the point in worrying about the possibilities? Between an obvious lie and a horrible impossibility, maybe ignorance really was the safest alternative. She swallowed her swelling anti-platitude rant. As it went down, her stomach calmed. “You’re right,” she said. That was enough for now.

  The sun was already down over the endless woodlands of Parson’s Grove. Upon the top floor of the Golmont Corporation building, Simon sat alone in his office. One hand clutched his cellphone with unsteady fingers as he listened to the report on the other end. He exhaled, and his lungs trembled. “Are you certain?” he whispered.

  �
��Yes, sir,” came the reply from the Marauder.

  “Have you told any of the others yet?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then don’t. For now, this will be our secret.”

  “Affirmative. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes. There remains the matter of this Elizabeth Bordon woman. Is there any evidence that she’s been moving?”

  “Negative, sir. We’ve been able to find no trace of her. As far as Klein’s men can tell, nobody has tried to spread any word related to Grantwood or any of the principal players in NIDUS. As for Bordon herself, she may still be lurking around somewhere.”

  Simon nodded, afraid that taking another breath would scatter the fledgling hope that swelled in his chest. “As I thought. Very well. That is all. Defer to Blackburn for your next orders. We need to keep this locked down.”

  “Yes, sir. Over and out.”

  The line went dead, and Simon folded his phone back into itself. His palms were sopping with sweat. The tall window overlooking the twilit pines of Parson’s Grove beckoned him to his feet. He searched the horizon, taking inventory of every curve and angle of the sea of trees. Gauge, he intoned into the flickering mental network behind his eyes. Dirge.

  A silent weight pressed upon the room, though only for a few seconds longer. The sound of rushing air and crashing water came, and all at once the yellow robes of the two Vant’therax appeared reflected in the great window.

  “Something has happened,” Dirge said. “Are we to move?”

  Simon closed his eyes and let his lungs expand. “Soon. It seems the opportunity has revealed itself.” Even with his eyes closed, Simon could feel the smiles blistering across their inhuman faces.

  “Then, you shall at last allow us to act directly?” said Gauge.

  Simon chewed his lip. With the Bordon woman at large, it was only a matter of time before NIDUS’s activities were brought to light. They no longer had anything to lose. “You will act exactly as I direct you. As you two have been the most insufferable, it will be you two who will act to take them.” Here he felt a shiver from behind the flickering psychic projections.

  “You will only allow the two of us to move?” Anger simmered in Gauge’s voice. “Do not underestimate what the King’s children are capable of.”

  Simon sneered at their reflections. “Are you suggesting that you and your men cannot handle mere children without assistance? The others have their duties. We must prepare to depart.”

  “And what of the rest of NIDUS?” Dirge asked, his columns of eyes blinking rhythmlessly. “Surely they will not abide this betrayal.” The violent smile on his lips said he didn’t mind.

  “With the Coronation at hand,” Simon said, “NIDUS is no longer of any consequence to us. They’re only interested in the monsters of science, so let them build their own without our blessing. When news breaks of what happened here, they will shoulder the blame.” A euphoric shiver worked through his arms, and his hair stood on end. “By then, we will be in Zigmhen. And you will at last be granted your souls. Now, prepare your men to move.”

  “Very well,” Gauge said with aplomb.

  The grin on Dirge’s lips shook and grew. “We shall not disappoint you, sir!” With that, the two vanished in a swirl of shadow, back to the recesses of the NIDUS complex.

  Simon kept his thoughts upon his breathing to quell the excitement that filled his heart to the point of bursting. He dared not think too long upon the promise of the coming Coronation. If the Vant’therax knew what he really planned, they would likely have killed him where he stood. “Mark Warren.” This, and only this, did he allow himself to think aloud. Once they’d left NIDUS to the care of the earth, it would be his endgame. And when he revealed to the Vant’therax that the Coronation and their reward would have to wait, he would give them the final ultimatum: those who opposed him would die, just as Zay had. And those loyal who remained would be the only ones to witness the Coronation of the promised newborn.

  Yes, the Coronation was coming. But not in the slag-stained impurity that their forbidden science alone had birthed. It would come as Simon had so long dreamed: in natural, beautiful perfection. And Nayor’s reward to him would be supreme.

  When the dreaded night of June seventh arrived, Spinneretta got to relive the horror of her dress-shopping-induced trauma. Although the two hours of what her mother referred to as prep-time was shorter than the shopping fiasco, it still stretched on for endless ages.

  “Hold still!” her mother said as her brush jabbed at Spinneretta’s eyelid. “And unscrunch your face, you’re just making this take longer.”

  “I promise you that’s not my intention.” After the hour and a half it had taken her mother to get her hair just perfect, Spinneretta had insisted she could apply her own makeup. But May would not have it. “Are we done yet?” Spinneretta asked as May brushed another light layer of eye shadow on.

  “Just about.” May giggled proudly. “Okay, give the mirror a look.”

  Spinneretta opened her eyes and gave the mirror a half-hearted glance. “Looks great, are we done?”

  “You’re not even looking! Look at the damn mirror!”

  She sighed and once more looked at her reflection. As she studied it, she was actually impressed. Her mother’s work was subtle, and not at all the gaudy markings of harlotry she’d had nightmares of over the preceding weeks. She could scarcely recognize her own hair, which was in a half-up half-down style. It was a pleasant surprise how little the light blush and eye shadow had obscured her identity. She was still uncomfortable, but at least her mother seemed intent on complimenting her existing features instead of spreading the slop on thick. “Okay, fine,” she confessed. “I think it looks good. Happy?”

  “Time for mascara!”

  “Nope. That’s enough. I don’t want you to ruin a good thing.”

  “Spins, you only get one prom. You don’t want to waste it by not being the most gorgeous one there.”

  “If I lose another bet I might have to go again anyways. Besides, I don’t think I have to worry about being the most gorgeous one there.” Her spider legs twitched as they protruded through the carefully sewn openings in the back of her gown.

  “Nonsense, you look lovely! Now here comes the mascara plane!”

  Spinneretta yelped again. “Nope!” She leapt from her seat, almost knocking the brush from her mother’s hand.

  May shook her head and sighed. “You’d be happier if you weren’t so stubborn all the time, Spins. Sometimes it’s okay to just let life happen.”

  “That’s a weird way of saying keep being my doll.”

  “Let me mascara you or you’re grounded.”

  The threat so bluntly spoken left Spinneretta little choice, and so she submitted herself to the continuing psychological torture.

  When her mother finished, Spinneretta was surprised at the result. Far from the imagined globular heaps of mascara, she found her eyelashes only slightly thicker and infinitesimally longer. The contrast and interplay between her eyes and eyelashes were, she was loath to admit, actually attractive. But the words makeup, attractive, and myself did not make sense when combined in her head—it was absurdity, a fantasy. “I still don’t like this,” she said. “I feel so artificial.”

  “And you’ll be the most beautiful girl at the dance!” her mother beamed. “I just wish you would have gone with a boy instead of your friends. It’s almost a waste like this.”

  Spinneretta sighed, averting her gaze from the mirror and trying not to think too hard about the unmotherly thing she’d just heard. “Whatever. Are we done now?”

  May hummed a quiet note and took a step back to evaluate her work. She nodded her head once and gave a thumbs up. “Perfect! And just barely in time, too! We’ve gotta get going.”

  “I’m going to wash this all off the instant you’re out the door.”

  “I’ll boil you alive,” May sang as she walked to the bathroom. “Are you guys going to be okay here by yourselves for a couple
days?”

  “I think we’ll manage.” Spinneretta stood up and stretched her appendages out, nearly jumping as she felt the long-unfamiliar sensation of draped fabric brushing against her legs. “Do you need any help with anything?”

  “No, it’s fine,” her mother said from the bathroom. “You can go and get ready or whatever. You’ve got more time than we do.”

  Spinneretta bit her lip. That wasn’t exactly what she’d wanted to hear.

  Spinneretta felt like a porcelain doll that would break at the slightest touch. She wanted nothing more than to hide in her room, so that’s just what she did. Between Arthr’s certain mockery and Kara’s expected gushing, there was no foreseeable benefit to staying downstairs.

  After wasting some time at her computer, staring at her half-finished family history report and plucking at the strings of a Visual Basic practice project, a knocking came to the door. She groaned a little, fearing that the makeup reaper had come for a second pass at its creation. “Who is it?”

  “Me,” came her father’s voice.

  Surprised, she hopped to her feet and opened the door, hoping that he was alone.

  Ralph stood there with a wide smile, a proud glint shining in his russet eyes. “And there she is! God, I can’t believe you’re actually going to prom.”

  “Neither can I,” she said, walking back toward her chair. She flopped down into it and wrapped her spider legs around her midsection. “I’m surprised Mom let you come up and see me, what with how protective she’s being about this whole thing. It’s like it’s her freaking prom. If she wants to go so bad she can go in my place, right?”

  He chuckled. “She’s actually the one who sent me. Amanda’s dad’s the one giving you a ride home, isn’t he?”

  “That sounds familiar.” At least she thought it did. The last week had passed in a dread-stained blur; she was just going through the motions, waiting for this damned evening to come and pass.

  Her father considered her with a somewhat sad air. It deepened the creases under his eyes and he began to nod. “Well, why don’t you extend the invitation to those two to stay over tonight?”