Arthr thought again of the board of departures she’d been staring at, and it all began to fall into place.
Annika smirked. “6:45, Los Angeles bound. 7:20, Seattle bound. Now, here’s a chance for you to redeem yourself, spider-boy. Which of those two buses are your sisters on?”
It was Arthr’s turn to smirk. “Good thinkin’. We know they’re on their way to Manix, which is in California, so that means they obviously took the Los Angeles bus at 6:45.”
“Wrong.”
His confidence buckled. “H-huh?”
She closed her eyes and rolled her head back in thought. “They still have five days to get to Manix. And while you were brilliant enough to remember that Manix and Los Angeles are in the same state, you forgot one thing: Spinzie and Kara took off running as soon as Ranger Stupid mentioned Elizabeth’s name. They know we’re after them. Taking the bus directly to California is exactly what they want us to think they’re doing. In reality, they’re on the bus bound for Seattle, because it’s a misdirection that doesn’t compromise their deadline.”
“That’s brilliant! But, wait, aren’t you always talking about how stupid Spins is? What if she didn’t think of any of that, and just went right to LA?”
“Oh, please,” she spat. “She may be stupid, but she’s not a moron. She thinks she’s clever, and that’s how I know I can beat her at her own game. In the game of cat and mouse, nobody out-cats Annika fucking Crane.” She fished the phone from her pocket again. “But I have to admit, I’m getting awfully sick of fifty-fifties. Westington was a bust, and we picked the right bus station first, but now we can’t take chances. Even if I’m wrong about them going to Seattle, it doesn’t matter. No rules say we can’t bet on both horses.” She dialed a set of numbers she must have gleaned from some table or poster somewhere and then pressed the phone to her ear.
A few moments passed. “Hello, Goldline’s? This is Elizabeth Bordon, FBI. I’m investigating a missing person’s case. Please transfer this call to the acting manager of your Los Angeles branch.”
By the end of the third day in the cult, Amanda had observed a number of dark rites and rituals as part of their inauguration. Ever cautious, she always made a point to watch from the periphery, jotting down notes in her old composition book. When Zurt had asked why she would not join in the letting of the tainted blood, she’d answered that she first needed to internalize the reality of Raxxinoth’s teachings, a blanket statement so canned that she was shocked when it took. And now she stood writing, Chelsea shaking on one side and Kyle standing cross-armed on the other, his watchful gaze upon the figures convulsing about the fire in the Hall of Grand Ceremony.
“I hope you’re learning something useful,” Chelsea said as the mass of huddled robes and paupers ahead reached a frantic pitch in their dancing and shouting.
“I’m learning enough.”
“Seriously? You’re not just saying that to convince me that this is all somehow worth it?”
Amanda finished a stroke that completed a crude sketch of the arrangements about the bonfire. “Well, maybe.” She lowered her voice. “But I think I figured out the point of this bloodletting thing, anyway.”
Chelsea seemed to pale as she drew attention to the ghastly sight at the fire ahead of them. “And?”
“They’re cleansing themselves of the past. Of the Yellow King’s rule. By burning the blood tainted by the old order, their hearts will refill them with the blood of the Malefice. I think. It’s hard to make sense of so many conflicting sources but . . . ”
“A-hai, Urn-ma Nemo!” the dancing figures chanted. “A-hai, a-hai!”
“Are they going to make us do that, too?” Chelsea asked.
Kyle grunted. “I imagine they may try. They seem to want us involved. If not now, then soon. And if we want them to think we’re invested in this, then . . . ”
Chelsea shuddered. “But what if we don’t do it? Are they going to . . . They aren’t going to kill us if we refuse, are they?”
Kyle snickered. “Don’t worry. The old man thinks I’m his long-lost son and Amanda’s my daughter. And he seems to be second in charge of the whole enchilada. Nobody’s going to hurt us when we’re this damn connected.”
Chelsea made a low note in her throat and nodded. Amanda thought she looked like she was about to cry again. She was quiet for a moment longer, and then she gasped. “Oh, fuck. Mandy, I just realized something,” she said, voice wavering. “Didn’t your grandfather say the cult no longer serves the Yellow King?”
Amanda nodded, ignoring the stench of miasma growing thicker in the air with each vein opened to the flames. “Yeah, he did.” Surprised you’ve picked up on that much.
Chelsea seemed to grow paler. “And that they want to eliminate all that remains of the King’s rule? Every last trace?”
“Uh-huh.”
Chelsea was quiet for a moment, and her pale lips quivered. “What about Spinneretta?”
Amanda’s mind went blank. She stared at her friend, and every thought in her head turned acidic. The Yellow King. Had his goal not been to unite man and spider as one? If that was true, then . . . Oh, fuck. Had she missed the sky for the clouds? The cult wanted the Warren children. They wanted to eliminate the old order. Could those thoughts have been connected? Could she have truly missed something so important? Panic swelled in her chest. It couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. Her own lips began to shake. “Oh, God . . . ” Trembling, she closed her book and shoved her pen into her pocket under her imparted robe. “Fuck, you’re kidding me. We’re going back. I have to find Zurt. That just can’t . . . ”
Chelsea’s eyes widened in horror. “Oh my God, I was right?”
Amanda shook her head, turning and making her way toward the door leading back to the heart of Ur’thenoth’s eastern wing. “I don’t know.” I can’t think about that, it doesn’t make sense. But it does, and I can’t . . . The idea was unbelievable, but now that it had been planted she was able to see the logic. Why did the cult want the children, if not as the next step in their crusade against the Yellow?
“I have to find Zurt,” Amanda repeated, almost choking on her grandfather’s name. “And get to the bottom of this.” Don’t let me be right, she prayed, finding a chilling certainty in the way the puzzle pieces interlocked. Please, God, don’t let me be right.
Chapter 22
Inevitable
Lulling awake to another rattle of the bus’s axle, Spinneretta wondered how she ever could have cursed nature when the greatest evil conceived by man was the ill-padded seats they’d spent the last day and a half in. They were even worse than Wayfarer’s, which was an incredible feat of engineering.
The relatively high ticket price had kept the riffraff off the bus. With only a handful of other passengers riding with them, she was optimistic they would not be identified. The seats in the back helped, too. Beside her, Kara was curled up around her backpack, sleeping blissfully. One of Cinnamon’s legs was poking out the unzipped mouth and wrapped about Kara’s side in a loose hug.
Spinneretta sighed and leaned her head back against the steel headrest. Just another six hours of this. Despite the best efforts of the traffic jams, they were getting close to Seattle, only two transfers from Los Angeles. That meant they’d get to Manix with two whole days to spare on the countdown.
So why did she feel so sick? At first, she thought it was the repeated lurching of the bus as it slowed and sped up again to keep pace with the fickle traffic. But it couldn’t have been. She didn’t get motion sick. And it couldn’t have been that she was having second thoughts. Right? That the weighty realization of her choice was looming, building, gorging itself upon her uncertainty? She breathed out upon the glass, and the morning-blue asphalt blurred. Something was moving in the shadows of her thoughts, and the dread mounted. What was it she was so damned afraid of?
The cult, for one. But she knew she didn’t have to fear them. The cult needed them alive to present to the King, after all. No. The only thing she
needed to fear was that they wouldn’t uphold their end of the deal—that the cult would release their plague of brain-eating parasites whether she and Kara showed up or not.
She watched her eyelids flutter in her window reflection. Death wasn’t so horrifying to think about either—sad, but not scary. But what about death for Kara? Shivering, as though from a sudden unexpected draft, she looked over at her sister, still curled up on the bag containing their spider beast. Her breathing was placid, the soft hiss barely recognizable over the roar of the road beneath them.
What the hell am I doing? Spinneretta thought. I can’t drag Kara into the pit with me. What kind of big sister am I? Even if it was the girl’s own wish to go, the probability of disaster was impossible to ignore. Though her zeal to end the King’s life had numbed her to that reality’s edge, as they drew nearer to Manix the thoughts now churned in near-opposite proportions. Even if she had to face death, there was no reason for Kara to follow. She still had too much to live for.
But if the King still lives, then she has nothing to live for, except a concealed and hated exile.
As that thought swelled and shook in her mind, static cut over the bus’s old intercom system. “Ladies and gentleman, thank you for riding Goldline this morning. We are going to be having a brief stop at Crosier in just a few short moments. Please remain on the bus. Our regularly scheduled stop at Venear will proceed as scheduled at 11:30.”
Spinneretta started awake. Crosier? It wasn’t a name she’d heard before, and she’d pored over the itinerary as soon as she’d had it in her hands. Rose Gulch to Denver. Denver to Selera. Selera to Venear. Venear to Portland. Portland to Seattle. There was no Crosier in there. She grabbed Kara by the shoulder and began to shake her. “Kara. Kara, wake up.”
A groggy noise came from her sister’s throat. “Mmm? Wha?”
“Wake up. We’re stopping.”
The roar of the road grew louder as their bus began to pass over a long bridge suspended above a grid of highways below them. Spinneretta nearly choked when she pushed herself up against the glass and peered ahead to where the bridge ended. Behind a mosaic wall of traffic, she saw that they were approaching a bus terminal bearing Goldline’s hideous logo. The red and blue lights of a pair of patrol cars flashed against the dark walls of the building. Knives plunged into her stomach. “Oh, shit. This is for us.”
“What?” Kara leaned against her and grabbed her shoulders. “What do you mean?”
Spinneretta shook her head, eyes pinned to the police cruisers pulled up alongside the terminal at the end of the bridge. “This isn’t a scheduled stop. We’re not supposed to stop until Venear. She found us, somehow she fucking found us!”
Kara’s eyes went wide, the sleep dispersing. “What? How?”
With a shaky breath, Spinneretta got to her feet. “I don’t know. We have to go, now. Follow me.” Sidling out into the aisle, she slung her bag over her shoulder. She made her way down the aisle toward the middle of the bus, Kara right behind her.
“Ladies, please stay in your seats. We will be departing again shortly,” called the driver over the speakers.
Calling us out? Not too subtle, are you? She cast a nervous glance outside the windows at the scenery and counted the gaps in the bridge’s guardrail. The rumbling of the engine and the road formed the beginning of a nauseous tremor.
“Ladies. Remain seated. We will be stopping in just a moment.”
Afraid not. She came to her target: the large window between two rows near the center. She looked over her shoulder, scanning the seats. None of the passengers were paying her any mind. Kara crept up behind her, Cinnamon’s backpack slung over one shoulder. The bus driver’s eyes glared at her from the oversized rear-view mirror. Spinneretta slid up to the window. The cars and the scenery rushed by. It was now or never. Her fingers wrapped around the red handle of the emergency exit.
“Ma’am, return to your seat this minute or you will be removed from—”
She cranked the lever upward. The metal frame cracked and popped as it released the glass. She threw her shoulder into the window, and it swung open. A howling wind blasted in, blowing her hair back and ruffling her jacket. Panicked shouts emanated from the passengers as they realized what she was doing, and curses from the driver flowed over the speakers.
Spinneretta looked over her shoulder at Kara. “Get ready to scuttle, now!” Without giving herself time to think, she vaulted up and out the emergency exit. And with that, she was in the wind. The sound of screeching brakes split the air. The ground sped by beneath her, and the Instinct took over. From beneath Mark’s jacket, her spider legs unfurled and prepared for impact. She struck asphalt, her legs creaking, and momentum threw her into a hard roll. The world spun, and then her legs reclaimed control. A car horn blared in her ear. Ignoring the pain and the noise, she hurled herself forward, between the gaps in traffic, toward the railing of the bridge. She gave only a brief look behind her to make sure Kara was safe and following. “Over and down!”
She jumped up onto the rail. As the crisscrossing bridges and highways below invaded her vision, she was disgusted to remember that she was apparently afraid of heights now. Perhaps fifty feet down, the grid of overlain overpasses resembled an Escher painting, only with early morning commuters as far as she could see. But there was no time for fear, no time for vertigo. As soon as Spinneretta had perched upon the concrete railing of the bridge, she turned and dropped over the edge. She twisted herself around and rappelled down and along the side, appendages desperately ferrying her toward the bottom lip fifteen feet below. Above her, Kara cleared the edge and clung to the side.
The wind rustled by her. A low moan became the backdrop to the ceaseless bleating of car horns. She kept her eyes on the textured surface and desperately tried not to think about what was happening. Her spider legs ached as they stitched and threaded her downward escape. Ten feet to go. Five feet to go. Soon her legs found the end of the wall.
Spinneretta gripped the lip of the lowest support beam with four of her legs and swung herself beneath the bridge. Gravity kneaded at her stomach as she fell—for just a moment—into free fall. In a panic, she grabbed onto the exposed metal struts on the underside with her free legs and hands. Her muscles heaved. When she at last released her grip of the side, she twisted her body until it was flush against the bridge’s belly. Panting, she hung there for a few moments and listened to the honking horns and the wailing of sirens above. The whole structure vibrated with the passing vehicles, and the chitin-metal connection seemed to amplify each grating motion. Below, the greatest portion of passing motorists was obscured by structural supports, but the sight of the colored beads peeking through the gaps made her dizzy. When Kara poked her head down from the side, Spinneretta breathed a sigh of relief. “Come on!” she shouted, beckoning Kara toward the underside of the bridge.
Kara swung her backpack around to her front and gripped it with two of her legs. She then made an effortless transition to the metal latticework of the bridge’s underside.
Spinneretta’s spider legs began to move, and she allowed the base Instinct to drive her locomotion, legs clinging to and releasing the crossing beams as she crawled. Her heart threatened to expel itself from her mouth, but she kept scuttling forward, hooking her legs and fingers through gaps and around rungs as they came. Kara, meanwhile, followed with such natural movement that Spinneretta had the crazy thought that her sister was mocking her.
When they came upon a five-foot deep cavity in one of the sturdy concrete support pillars, they crawled inside to catch their breath. Spinneretta went as deep as she could and then slumped down, chest heaving. Adrenaline surged through her, and her pulse pounded in her eardrums. Her muscles were tight and sore from the exertion. Her head was swimming. She was dizzy and nauseous, and worse than that, the realization of what had just happened was beginning to grow. She was forming connections, unwholesome ones, that cast a shadow over her already doubt-stricken state of mind.
Bes
ide her, just inside the safety of their concrete cubby, Kara flopped down against the wall. She was breathing heavily, her eyes wide and dilated. “That. Was. Awesome! Wasn’t it, Cinny?”
Sinking down to her haunches, Spinneretta buried her head in her knees. “That’s it. We’re fucked.”
Kara unzipped her backpack and let the disgruntled Cinnamon poke her head out. “Huh? What do you mean?”
Spinneretta’s spider legs quaked. She turned her gaze to the underside of the bridge above them. The chill of the shade tempered the heat thundering in her veins. “Annika knew which bus we were on. She knew where we were going. I thought we’d be able to just slip away but . . . She predicted it.”
“You’re talking about those sirens? How do you know that was Annika?”
“Why else would we be stopping here? Why else would the police have been waiting there? She must have told them we’d run away, and what bus we were on. That’s the only thing that makes any sense.” She lurched to her feet, her spider legs vanishing again under Mark’s jacket, and leaned against the back wall of the cubby. The cold concrete surface felt good against her flushed skin, but the worry ran too deep to dispel.
Kara began to scratch Cinnamon behind her ears. The Leng cat answered with a low purr. “So . . . What do we do now?”
Spinneretta shook her head, hating the way her burning lungs felt. “I don’t know. We’re going to have to start again. Find another way, another plan. We need time to think. But right now we have to wait. Just wait. Two girls don’t jump off a damn bridge without drawing attention. Police are going to be searching the area, so we have to lie low here until the coast is clear. And then, we’ll figure out what to do.”
Amanda found Zurt within a meditation chamber attached to the lower dormitories. The Websworn—the tribalist descendants of those sealed beneath Grantwood during the alleged Norwegian Killer incident—had come to learn she was not to be questioned, and so she was allowed free access to the normally forbidden room. There, she found her grandfather sitting cross-legged before a roaring bonfire.
Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3) Page 29