“Yes, ma’am.”
“Thank you. Have a great evening.” She turned and made her way back toward the police barricade, beyond which her car and the spider-kid waited. Arthr raised his hand as if to call her attention to him, a gesture so patently unnecessary it was difficult not to roll her eyes.
“Find anything out?” Arthr asked.
“Only that they were here. Get back in the car.” She made her way to the driver’s side and got in. A headache was kneading at the base of her neck, but the glove compartment’s stash of Advil was already empty. As Arthr let himself into the passenger seat, Annika blew out a frustrated sigh. “Slippery little insects. I have to admit, I didn’t expect Spinzie to be aware enough of her surroundings to notice an unscheduled stop.”
“They must’ve been pretty desperate to jump, eh?”
You don’t fucking say? “Seems like it.”
Arthr nodded in a self-satisfied manner that Annika had come to associate with the corporate bigwigs that always ended up in control of her paycheck. “Well, what do we do now?”
She crossed her arms and sank into her seat, posture slipping. “Here’s the facts: Spinzie and Kara jumped off that bridge. And there aren’t any bodies because—newsflash—they can just cling to the structure like lice and avoid detection. Saw the scratches on the side myself, fresh ones, just like you’d expect to be made by two idiot spider-girls dragging their legs across the cement. They may have disappeared, but we know where they disappeared. We know they’re trying to avoid detection. I already have a few ideas about which way they’ll be moving. All we have to do is track them.”
“But what if they tried to throw your tail again? I mean, shit, if they bailed out of a moving bus to avoid capture, then they know we’re close behind, right? And if they know that we know that they—”
“You’re thinking too hard about this, kid. Whether they know we’re after them or not is irrelevant now. They still have a schedule to keep if they’re going to make it to Manix before the damn cult’s deadline. And even if they did manage to give us the slip, that just means our mission becomes checking every train station, bus stop, and fucking boat landing in this town until we figure out where they’ve been. Nothing has changed. The strategy is the same. Their lead just keeps shrinking.”
Jamming the key once more into the ignition, Annika started the engine. “You can run, Spinzie, but you can’t hide.”
When Amanda explained to Chelsea and Kyle what she’d learned from her grandfather, the two of them went pale. Amanda had hoped she wouldn’t feel the same sense of nauseous dread when she recounted the tale. No such luck.
Chelsea shook her head in disbelief. “They’re going to kill them?”
“Looks like it.” She slid past her friend on her way to the set of cubbies on the opposite wall. “But Grandpa’s gonna take me to meet their leader, this Nemo guy. I think I can learn a lot from him, and maybe even get him to call off the hunt for Spins and the others. And he wanted you to come, too, Kyle.”
He stared at her without speaking.
Chelsea grabbed Amanda’s arm. “Mandy, don’t tell me you’re actually going to meet the wacko? What the hell do you think you’re going to accomplish?”
Amanda shook her head and brushed her bangs out of her eyes. “Getting answers. Failing that, evidence.” She turned around, but Chelsea grabbed her shoulders and forced her around to face her again.
“Answers?” Chelsea spat. “Fucking answers?”
“Yeah, I think that—”
“No, fuck answers, Mandy! We have to leave! Every minute we stay here is another minute at the mercy of these murderous lunatics!”
Though she could hear the frightful reason in her friend’s voice, Amanda just kept shaking her head. “Leave? We came here to find answers, and if we leave now we’re giving up our only lead. Chels, you can’t tell me you don’t believe after all this. You know that I’m right, that these are the freaks responsible for Grantwood. If they get the chance, they’ll do it again. And even if they’re after Spinneretta’s life,” her skin went cold at the thought, and her hair stood on end, “they’re still our only link to her. If we just up and leave, then we lose that! We’re back to square one. And then Spinneretta’s the one at their mercy.”
“There’s another way,” Kyle said.
She turned to him, startled. “Huh?”
He rolled his shoulders and slowly stood from where he sat on the bed. His knees cracked a dry sound. “There’s another way we can find them. Can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. All we have to do is find the person who made them disappear in the first place. If we find Annika Crane, then we can find out where she put them up.”
“Annika Crane,” Amanda repeated, remembering when she’d heard Kyle speak the name at his house.
A cool distance came to Kyle’s expression. He crossed his arms and gazed into the wall. “I don’t know exactly where to find her, but I at least picked up some details while they were staying at my place. The woman’s a detective. As of then, she was living in New Jersey, I think. Don’t know if Annika Crane is even her real name, but how hard could it be to find a detective in her early twenties given the state? Hell, could hire another private investigator to find her if we really had to. That’d sure be a better idea than sticking around with these fucking weirdos. Hell of a lot safer, too.”
Amanda had been ready to reject the idea, and yet . . . If they found the detective who had made them vanish, surely they could convince her to share the information, especially since the spider children’s lives were so clearly in danger. Kyle was right—there really was another way after all. And it actually sounded like a solid plan. She began to nod at him. “Yeah. You know, that sounds like a good idea.”
Chelsea sighed in relief. “Oh, fuck. So you mean we can finally get out of here?”
She frowned. “Not yet. Not until after I’ve met with their leader. If I walk away from this now, then all of this was just a waste.” She tried to find some comfort in her own persuasion. “Yeah. If I can find out something—anything—that could help us, then there’s no reason not to. And either way, we can leave afterward and go searching for this detective. That sound okay?”
Chelsea wrinkled her nose and parted her lips, but her protest never made it farther than her tonsils. Her hands slid off Amanda’s shoulders, and her arms wove into a bow. “Do you promise?”
“Of course. I don’t much like this place, either.” She turned back around and crouched before the cubbies, beginning to sift through the small pile of paraphernalia she’d collected during their stay. Beneath a few sheets of notes she’d taken, she found the silvery hilt of the ritual dagger her grandfather had entrusted her with. She took it, ran a finger along its edge to ensure it was sharp, and then slipped it under her belt where the dark robe would hide it. As she turned back around, she caught a worried look on Chelsea’s face. “Just in case,” Amanda said quickly. “Just don’t want to go in empty and . . . Never mind.”
“Think a knife is going to protect you from anything?” Kyle asked.
She looked over to where he was standing. “It’s better than nothing.” Her voice squeaked a little, and she coughed in an attempt to cover her warble of fear.
“There’s nothing to be so afraid of. I’m coming with you, remember?” His voice held a hint of pride.
Amanda shook her head and drew her cult robe tighter around her. “I-it’s nothing. I mean, it’s just a one in a thousand kinda thing. In case, you know, they try to sacrifice me or . . . ” Her tongue clicked, and a nervous chuckle slid off of it. Even she found it unconvincing.
“Well, that settles it. No way am I letting you go on your own.”
“What? No, you don’t have to. I couldn’t ask you to. This has nothing to do with you, anyway.”
“You said Grandpa requested my presence as well, didn’t you? Besides, if something happens to you, then my inaction’s on the chopping block when judgment day comes around. I’ve been
around long enough to know that bad things only happen to pretty young girls.” He gave a humorless chortle which suggested his words held some inobvious meaning.
“Well, I mean. If you really want to come, then I won’t stop you.” Despite the quiet relief, her heart was still racing.
Kyle nodded and showed her a smile that reminded her of her father’s. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to you after all this. You still need to find your friend, right?” He ran a hand through his messy, graying hair. “Are you going to be alright here by yourself for a bit, Chelsea?”
She glanced up at him. “I’ll be fine, I think.”
Amanda patted her on the shoulder. “Relax, nobody will bother you.” Her mind, meanwhile, was orbiting the unshakable thought Zurt’s lecherous grin had implanted. Though she couldn’t let herself appear so weak as to need assistance, she was thankful Kyle had offered his protection. She looked up at him and batted at her messy bangs again. “Well, shall we?”
As Kyle stepped out into the hall behind Amanda, for the first time in a long while he felt certain about the future. Even the shuffling robes and squalid thralls they passed in the corridor couldn’t bring down the hope that swelled in his heart. By the end of the day, their diversion into this underworld would be a memory. And he found that he no longer cared what happened after that.
When they’d first arrived, he’d begun to feel something long lost. Seeing Amanda walking ahead of him, he almost felt like a father again. Even if he was little more than a bodyguard to these suicidal girls, for the first time in untold years he felt important, like he could make a difference. And the bitter undertone to that feeling, which had flowed beneath his every waking thought since his divorce, came back stronger than ever before. He’d had everything, and he’d selfishly squandered it, alternatingly chasing after and being haunted by his past.
He was now glad he’d put out his damned report, for it had led him to this epiphany. And he now knew exactly what he was going to do to get his life back on track. He was going to get the girls out of there, and then one way or another they’d find the Warren family. He’d prove to the world that they existed, but not for the good of his career—it was for their own good. Once the world knew of the miracles they harbored, the cult would be unable to continue their secret hunt. All at once, the cult’s activities would be brought to a new light—a revealing, shuddering, abominable light that would see their wickedness punished. But whatever happened to the cult, he’d put the safety of May’s brood before all else.
There was danger in obscurity. No matter what happened to his career from here, he was going to see them off as atonement for his sins. And then, once the world knew, he would apologize to May. To Ralph. To Carol. To Eileen. Even if his ex-wife and daughter never took him back, he’d at least make peace with himself by laying to rest the hatred that haunted him.
And where the shards of his life would end up then was anyone’s guess. Wherever it was, it had to be better than living as a puppet, hollow and meaningless.
Arthr had never seen anyone as confident and relentless as Annika Crane. At each of the four bus stops prior to this one, she’d attacked the staff with an unwavering determination. She was like a beautiful actress, to whom even the most impossible tasks were trivial. And now, she had talked their way into the back room of Pacifica Transit, a bus station the same as any other.
In the dark room, where the air reeked of cigarette smoke, the acting manager and Annika were hunched over a monitor showing security footage from earlier that evening. There was no mistaking it. The video on the screen showed Spins and Kara purchasing a pair of tickets at the counter.
Even in the low light of the staff room, Arthr could make out the way Annika’s eyes narrowed at the sight. “Where were they headed?”
The manager glanced at the timestamp on the display, and her fingers began clattering at the keyboard. A minute later, she licked her lips and turned the monitor to face them. “Purchased at nineteen-seventeen: one adult and one child to Salt Lake City, on the Western Fortune Line.”
Annika’s hand coiled into a fist, and several of her knuckles popped. “Salt Lake City, huh? Looks like Spinzie isn’t done trying to throw our tail. Thank you for the cooperation, ma’am. May I ask one further question?”
“Certainly.”
“Can you give me the bus number and itinerary for that line?”
“Of course.”
A few moments later, the manager had printed a sheet of densely packed information, and the two of them were out the door and back in the lobby of Pacifica Transit.
“Spinzie thinks she can run,” Annika seethed, “but now we’re only thirty minutes behind her. We can beat the bus. We can beat them to Salt Lake City and catch them before they can even get off.” A mad glee came to her eye. “Come on, hurry up.”
As Arthr sped up to match her pace, his eyes fell upon a poster stuck to the window just beside the front door. He paused. The Carnival Sword, it read. Come Celebrate the 401st Festival of Niiza. The brightly colored fireworks and designs upon the poster, he realized, would not have gone unnoticed by Kara as they entered and left the bus depot. And if Kara had seen the poster, she must have at least broached the idea of going. But at the same time, even Arthr knew there was no way they’d have actually gone. They had limited money and no time. And yet the image of that poster stuck in his mind for some reason.
“Quit staring off into space and hurry up!”
He started from his daze and nodded automatically. “Sorry.”
“We’re going to have to hurry, so we get one stop for food and bathroom. After that, you’re outta luck until Salt Lake City. Got it?”
“Y-yeah, okay.” He hurried after her, determined not to impede their search any more than he already had.
Chapter 24
God Disposes
Zurt led Amanda and Kyle over the great bridge spanning the cavern city and down through the staggered, hanging structures that dripped down the walls. At the bottom of the third such reverse-tower, a door opened to another bridge that led to a network of snaking caverns. Amanda wasn’t sure if the lack of other cultists in the hewn tunnels should be reassuring or distressing; either way, Kyle’s wide posture and sturdy demeanor were enough to keep her at ease.
At last, they came to a stone door adorned with the ancient script she’d come to associate with the murals lining the inner halls. After sliding the heavy slab open and revealing the dark mouth beyond it, Zurt stepped aside and gestured them toward it. “Urn-ma Nemo awaits within. Enter.”
Amanda froze as she peered into the deathly stillness beyond the threshold. It was no different than any of the other such chambers scattered throughout the underground complex, but the air inside tasted different—heavy, sinister. She looked over her shoulder at Kyle, who gave her a reassuring shrug. She turned and slipped into the chamber, pulling her robe’s hood up to conceal her features, lest they excite the ruler of the cult.
As she and Kyle stepped inside, the door clattered shut, choking off all external light. For a moment, all she could see was a pair of dim specks floating in the dark. As her eyes began to adjust, those specks resolved into a pair of low-burning torches standing aflank an elongated blotch in the blackness. Drawing nearer, she soon found details emerging from the featureless void. The blotch was a toppled statue, the likes of which she’d seen a hundred times before in the city above. And upon its side, a yellow patch seemed to shiver and shake. A robe. The Urn-ma.
A breathy hiss flowed forth from the shape. “Come. Kneel.”
Heart pounding in her stomach, she stopped where she was and did as commanded, sinking to her knees and lowering her gaze to the floor. A scuffling sound beside her indicated Kyle was doing the same.
After settling into her gesture of humility, she dared to look up. A harsh crunching sound came from a white shaft of bone thrust between the man’s jaws, which he was gnashing upon like an animal. Nemo pulled the bone away, revealing that one end had bee
n gnawed to a point and glistened with saliva in the torchlight. “So, you are the granddaughter of Zurt,” he said, his high voice dripping with hunger. “It is an honor to at last meet with you.”
As Amanda looked upon the yellow robe shifting on that improvised throne, the dying light of the torches terrified her with the shadows they invited. Beneath the Urn-ma’s drawn cowl, she could make out his features. He appeared young—perhaps no older than she was—but the dark and heavy bags beneath his eyelids and the sharp lines etched into his face made it hard to judge with any certainty. His hair was wispy, long, and matted against his greasy, pale skin. Black patches here and there grew in shiny, scaly scabs. His eyes—she gasped a little, her heart hitting a single gallop. Green? Could that mean . . . ?
Nemo slipped from the statue and flowed to his feet. He drew closer to her one step at a time. Panic gripped her heart when his silhouette shielded her from the light of the torches. The yellow-robed thing crouched down and reached out one hand as though to touch her face. She jerked away, determined not to let his skin contact hers. One of her hands reached into the folds of her robe and found the hilt of the dagger tucked into her belt. Her fingers wrapped about its polished handle. If he tries again, I draw it. I can do it. But the thundering pulse in her veins disputed that resolve.
Above her, Nemo frowned, his filed teeth protruding. He growled and retracted his arm. Amanda feared he would try again to caress her, but to her relief he instead receded back to the statue. He flopped down, and as the robes of his sleeves billowed about him, Amanda caught sight of the thick patches that covered his forearm. Could that be . . . chitin?
“Very well,” Nemo said. “It would be improper of me to begin without proper introductions.” His voice held no hint of irony nor shame. He gave a throaty chortle as he replaced his words with the shaft of bone once more. “Speak your names,” he spoke around his chewing.
Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3) Page 31