Coffee splattered everywhere as Arthr was thrown forward, and he scrambled to get his seat belt on. As they reversed direction again and screamed down the empty evening road, he noticed Annika muttering to herself, clawing at the wheel as though she wanted to rip the leather covering off. “Uhh, is something wrong?” he asked.
She cackled. “Ho-boy, if you’re asking that right now, then you’ve got a lot of catching up to do, kid. Remedial education won’t even start to cure your problems. But to answer your question, yes, something is wrong. Very wrong. Ranger Stupid said that when he found them, they were calm for exactly as long as it took him to mention the name Elizabeth.”
Arthr blinked at her. “Uhh. Okay?”
“Here we go, spider-boy, math time. Two plus two, why is it significant that the two of them ran at the first mention of E. Bordon’s name?”
The light bulb went on in his head. “I’ve got it! Because they—”
“Wrong!” She threw the gearshift into five, and the engine’s pitch dropped. “Because they know we’re after them now. This just went from a game of tag to a game of hide and seek.” She sneered ahead at the dusk-painted street leading into the mountains. “And I fucking hate hide and seek.”
The mark of the exiled. With saffron dyes I was branded, shamed. But that color, which to my tribe was the sign of omen, I shall weave into a sign of power. If I am to be exiled, vilified in this world beyond your reach, then so be it. But I shall no longer suffer your chains. If I am a pariah, then I shall be the king of all pariahs.
And from the soil, even greater creatures I forge in our likeness. Above the time-buried machinery, structures begin to take form. Carved from the mountains and the bedrock, forged from the artifacts’ strange metallurgy, my city takes shape. It is our home. Our throne. And the children of Raxxinoth go forth from here, bearing a newborn culture upon their backs.
The age of the spider has begun.
Chapter 21
On the Trail
Zurt’s torch burned bright only a few yards ahead. Despite his frail appearance, his old bones still held a shocking agility, and Amanda found herself rushing to keep up with her grandfather as he wove in and out of tight passages, muttering incoherently all the way.
The second day of their cult membership had begun with a long discussion about bizarre esoterica that even Amanda couldn’t piece together. She was beginning to think that asking her grandfather what he knew about the lockdown of Grantwood had been a mistake. The frightful glee that shimmered in his eyes when she posed the question had chilled her to her marrow. She could still hear the words that crawled out over his gums right before he’d rushed out of the vault and led them down to the crypt-like passages below the ancient dormitories: “Would you like to see?”
“Jesus, Mandy, hold up!”
She threw a quick glance behind her. Chelsea and Kyle were just coming around the last bend in the tunnel. “Hurry up,” she hollered to them. “You’re so damn slow!”
Chelsea groaned. “Where are we even going?”
Amanda turned back just in time to see the flicker of Zurt’s torch vanish into a dark recess farther down the corridor. “Hell if I know, now come on!” She started toward the blacker splotch in the darkness. What could he be showing us? What is there to even show?
When she drew nearer the orifice in the left wall, she saw her grandfather up ahead. Taking a deep breath laced with the sting of smoke, she waited at the vestibule for Chelsea and Kyle to catch up before slipping inside. The floor sloped upward for a few feet before leveling off once again. The chamber was large and not entirely natural. There were telltale signs of stoneworking that peeked out from the time-worn walls, and the perfectly flat floor may have been built of the same tiles that paved the undercity proper. A large, dark opening in the floor dominated the center of the dim chamber. Its rim appeared to be artificially carved as well, but the shifting shadows made it difficult to tell for certain.
She heard a breath escape Kyle’s chest. “Incredible. Absolutely amazing. That the city could be so massive . . . ”
Zurt, standing just beside the pit, beckoned them closer with a glance. “Come. Gaze upon the Nothem.”
Amanda swallowed hard, and she felt a tickle of hesitation playing at her ribs. The Nothem. The spiders. She was beginning to hate being right. Hair standing on edge, she inched toward her grandfather with her comrades close behind.
When she was close enough to make out the yellow tinge that stained Zurt’s eyes, the man thrust the torch away from his body, illuminating the walls and bottom of the pit. “Behold.”
She suppressed a terrified gasp, and Chelsea let its twin free. Down in the pit stirred dark, leathery shapes that thrashed and coiled in response to the light’s invasion. So frightful were the contortions that she did not at first realize she was looking at human beings convulsing in rapture. Their bodies were covered in dark, fleshy holes, and those whose faces she could see wore expressions of blissful numbness. Her stomach rolled in revulsion.
Chelsea’s breath trembled. “What are these?”
Zurt grinned. “The new Hives. Urn-ma Nemo carried the sacred Nothem in his mind when he escaped captivity, and from them they have multiplied. We have seen them rebound from the very edge of extinction.”
Amanda shivered. “What are the Nothem?”
Another rotten smile. “They are the original spiders. Those birthed from the body of Raxxinoth. Those who never diverged from their original design. They are the secret weapon of the Dawn.”
One of the men neared the edge of the pit and clawed at the crumbling wall, pale eyes rolling in independent directions. Amanda could make out the fleshy holes in greater detail. She saw that the gaps between the man’s collarbone and neck were almost entirely empty, save for thin, sinewy bridges that grew between them. It was like his body was made of Swiss cheese, and some of the eyes had melted partially shut.
“I’m certain you know, my dear,” Zurt continued, “that the Nothem are parasitic. But what Repton never realized was their greatest power. Those touched by Raxxinoth, those blessed enough to bear the title of Helixweaver, are able to control the Nothem’s thoughts, and their hosts’ by extension. You asked what transpired in Grantwood. Do you understand now?”
Shaking, Amanda nodded. She’d suspected as much from the book, but seeing their effects with her own eyes brought a sick burning to her throat. Her stomach felt like a nest of maggots—an image far too apt for her own sanity. “The Nothem infected the brains, didn’t they? And the, the Helixweaver then . . . ” Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of her grandfather’s arm. The splotches and pits that ran up its length. She’d noticed them upon meeting him but hadn’t any clue what they meant. Now, her eyes circled the event horizon of the largest, a dime-sized pocket that must have gone all the way to the bone. What the fuck? Her insides quivered. What the fuck, what the fuck?
He turned to her and seemed to realize what she was staring at. A broad smile split the skin beneath his dark green eyes. “The most loyal are allowed to bear the mark of Urn-ma Nemo’s command, to feel oneness with his blessed mind. Will you accept the gift?” He extended his arm toward her and made a fist that tightened his muscles. From out of those holes, three tiny spiders erupted, like pus from a bursting abscess.
Amanda recoiled a step backward. Chelsea screamed, and Kyle made a noise not unlike a choking dog. Holy shit! It took a concerted effort not to vomit up her modest cornmeal breakfast. Spiders—all those holes were filled with colonies of those parasitic creatures. Hives, he’d called the things in the pit. Apt, if grotesque. Air stagnant in her chest, she let out a wavering breath that shook her shoulders and made her knees wobble.
Zurt chuckled a dark sound and brought his arm closer to her. The Nothem scuttled into the palm of his hand, inches from her face. They were black, shiny in the torchlight. Primitive, half-formed with no visible thorax. Just a bulbous body and a tiny protrusion of a head riding upon eight legs. “Will you
not accept the mark of the elite?”
Half-paralyzed with fear and disgust, she could only shake her head and slide one more step away from the man. “N-no.”
He groaned a low note. “I sense the fear in you. You have not yet come to accept the full extent of Urn-ma Nemo’s truth.” His voice held a note of pity, an almost condescending acceptance of her cowardice. “Very well. You still have much to learn. But in time, you will surrender yourself to Urn-ma Nemo, body and soul. Of this I am certain.”
In response to some unseen signal, the spiders scurried up his arm and vanished beneath his matted hair. His eyes then moved vacantly to the bodies shuffling in the pit. “If you are not yet ready for the greatest blessing, I must wonder. Do you see the beauty of it all yet?”
Breath still short, she could only follow his gaze and shiver.
“We are servants to such grandeur, the scions of the cosmic birth. Where the layman sees mountains shaped by storms or cities built with blood and sweat, the enlightened see beyond the ripples in our pond. We see the stone. We see the ancient truth, the astral knowledge that framed our order. And when all men have been touched by Urn-ma Nemo, and at last the final remnants of the King’s legacy have been erased . . . ” A more violent expression came upon him and he licked his lips. “At long last, when all minds have been touched, mankind will be one with Raxxinoth. Just as the Writhing Malefice wished.”
Her mind was spinning, trying to connect the dissociated threads of thought and information. What was she supposed to do with this? How was this going to lead them to Spinneretta? This wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting. All this knowledge just ate away at the enamel of her worldview. Brain parasites, wanton and carnal subjugation, servants of ancestral and unseen beings. This wasn’t what she’d signed up for. This was vile, animalistic, demonic.
And yet Amanda knew that this was just the first layer of the mystery. Beneath the outer skin of the Hives and the Nothem, there lurked yet darker secrets—secrets that, if unraveled, could mean the difference between survival and extinction.
Zurt’s eyes narrowed to mere slivers in his face. “Does that answer your question?”
She could only nod, tongue heavy and inert.
“Then allow us to return. We have much more to discuss, and much more to prepare you for, child.”
If this was the worst of what she was to see, she knew she’d die happy. But she knew, too, that the universe was none too kind.
Just over an hour after Annika received the ranger’s call, they arrived at the town of Rose Gulch. From the snow-capped mountains in the distance to the luxuriant oceans of trees that filled in the gaps between buildings, Arthr found the town indistinguishable from Westington.
As soon as they screamed past the ornate, sun-faded sign reading Welcome to Rose Gulch, Annika plucked a series of buttons on her GPS, bringing up a number of red beacons on the map. “Alright, let’s start with the obvious: Spinzie and Kara have a deadline, and that means they’re going to want to get out of town as soon as possible.”
“Right.”
“Especially now that they know Annika fucking Crane is on their tail, they’re going to be jumping ship like a Titanic survivor at a key party.”
“Uh-huh.” Key party?
“Which means, more than likely, they hopped on some kind of public transportation to get as far away as possible before we could get here. This crap-town has two bus stations and no trains, so we’ll take a look there first.”
Arthr nodded. Annika had a way about this stuff, and it made him feel like he had nothing to contribute to the search. “But how will we know they’ve been there? I mean, I’m sure these companies aren’t supposed to just give information out about their customers, you know? So how are you going to find any clues?”
“Depends on who’s working the desk. If a man, sister Bordon’s tears. If a woman, Agent Bordon’s death glare.”
Arthr shook his head. He wasn’t convinced, but he probably couldn’t voice his opinion without earning another screaming. He put his chin in his hand and stared at the GPS. Their arrow was slowly gliding toward the first of the two red beacons.
It did not take long to arrive. The bus station was little more than a one-story cube, no larger than the local McDonald’s. Above the front door was an old sign that simply read Rose Gulch Bus Co. Its brown plaster facade bore a striking resemblance to the DMV back in Grantwood, and Arthr was stricken by memories of waiting in line with his mom back when he was unable to resist being dragged along on errands.
After pulling into a parking slot, Annika clicked the engine off and lingered a moment longer, eyes drilling holes through the front door. “Whatever you do,” she said, “don’t say anything. Alright?”
A tinge of resentment crawled along his throat at the repeated instruction. “Yeah. Got it.” Is that seriously all you can ask me to do?
She cracked the door and hopped out, leaving Arthr to follow on his own. Annika approached the door and threw it open with altogether too much force, making the welcome bells clatter discordantly as they banged against the glass. Stunned by the display, he ducked in behind her and tried not to get in her way as she walked through the empty lobby toward the service counter.
Amid the cries of the battered wind chime, she marched up to the counter and slammed her palms on its surface, a gesture almost too convincing to not be authentic. The young zit-faced man with a tangle of frizzy hair on the other side started at once, his training-enforced words of welcome silenced by her cries. “Please,” Annika said, “you have to help! Did two girls come in here in the last hour or so?” Her voice cracked. “I need to find my sisters. They’re both short, blonde and brunette, eleven and seventeen.”
The clerk seemed shocked by her near-hysterical tone. His eyes darted to Arthr and then back to her. “T-two girls? Yeah, they were here, but I—”
A sob tore through her voice. “Please, you have to tell me where they went.” The desperation in her tone sank into Arthr’s heart like a knife.
With an uncomfortable glance over his shoulder, the clerk began to scratch at the back of his head. “I-I’m afraid our policy is not to reveal information about our customers. But, if they’re missing and you’ve filed a report with the police then . . . Uhh, I don’t know, I mean, if you’d like, I can go get my manager and you can talk to him? If your sisters are missing, that’s clearly serious and we might be able to—”
She sniffed and wiped at her eyes. “Yes, please.”
As soon as the clerk vanished through the door to the office, Annika’s posture straightened and her eyes dried. “Fucking policies. I’ve had it up to here with privacy laws.”
Arthr couldn’t help but stare at her. The way she just switched between perfectly calm and heart-wrenchingly hysterical was incredible. “So, what are—”
“Uh-uh-uh. No talking.”
He shut his mouth, a bitter taste clinging to the roof of his mouth.
Annika sighed and tapped her foot, staring at the sparse board of departures. Arthr began to study it as well, unsure what he was looking for but still impressed that such a small bus company had buses going as far as Seattle and Tampa. On the other hand, their buses could have just taken passengers to connecting depots serviced by more popular and well-established companies. That would explain why half of the destinations were in state. Boulder. Fort Collins. Denver. Colorado Springs.
After a few moments, the door to the office creaked open and Annika resumed her sobs. A middle-aged, skeletally thin man in a red blazer emerged with a clipboard in one hand and the frizzy-haired youth behind him. “Ma’am, I’m told you’re looking for your lost siblings.”
With a high-pitched whine, Annika nodded.
The manager frowned. “Very sorry ma’am, but I hope Doug here didn’t get your hopes up. Company policy does not allow us to reveal information about our customers, even in a case like this. However, in the event that the information required is relevant to an ongoing investigation, we do h
ave procedures in place. I recommend you go down to the police station and file a report if you haven’t already. You can have somebody there contact us and we’ll do whatever we can to help, but we cannot give out any information without at least an ongoing investigation. Do you understand?”
Annika sniffled and nodded again.
The man’s stern expression softened. “Good. I’m terribly sorry, and I hope we can help you once the police are involved. Have a good day.” He turned and sneered at the young man behind him. “It’s just company policy. Shouldn’t need me to regurgitate it for you.”
“Sorry, sir.”
“Don’t bother me again.” The manager vanished through the door, and the young man looked like he’d been punched in the stomach.
With tears still running down her cheeks, Annika turned and made for the door. Arthr cast a nervous glance toward the desk, and then followed her without waiting to see if the clerk had any additional words for her.
As soon as they were outside, Annika’s posture again righted, and she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “Ugh. I knew I should’ve gone with my instincts and done Agent Bordon. Criminal investigations. Fuck.”
“Am I allowed to speak now?”
She flicked her hand dismissively at him. “Do what you want.”
He breathed a sigh. “So, what are we going to do? If they won’t tell us where they went, then does that mean we’re going to the police?”
“Fuck the police. We got all the information we needed.” She opened the driver door and plopped into her seat.
Arthr climbed into the passenger side, trying to make sense of the apparent contradiction. “What the hell? What information could you have gotten out of that?”
“The park said they encountered the girls at 6:10. It’s 8:25. And given that pizza-faced clerk’s reaction, we definitely know they were here. So, if they were here, they must have been here between 6:10 and 8:25, which means there are only two buses they could have left on.”
Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3) Page 28