Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3)

by Bartholomew Lander

  As the woman vanished into the dark room, Spinneretta curled her spider legs around herself, pulling the jacket tight about her shoulders. She hung her head, letting her falling hair form a barrier to hide her shame. Sounds stirred inside the room, but she didn’t care; her thoughts were screaming too loudly, casting blame inward. When she felt a hand on her shoulder, she jumped. Arthr stood with a worried look where his scowl once rested.

  “Should we head in?” he asked, nodding toward the room. “Got a feeling this is going to take a while.”

  Numbly, Spinneretta nodded.

  Chapter 30

  Torn

  Spinneretta dutifully explained as much as she could to Arthr and Annika. She told them how she’d heard about the revived cult, how Kara had insisted on coming with her, how they’d boarded the bus in the middle of the night. She recounted Cinnamon’s stand-off with the bus driver and their trek across the Colorado wilderness. The details of the Salt Lake City bus misdirection, plain though they were, seemed to make Annika’s attentive silence boil with an invisible fury. When she finally finished confessing the battle at the plaza and her brief captivity with the Vant’therax, Spinneretta fell quiet and awaited the detective’s inevitable eruption.

  Annika rose from her seat without so much as a grunt and began to pace about the room. She clicked her tongue and set her gaze upon Mark, who now sat at the head of the bed. “Well, Mark, is this all true?”

  He nodded. “Precisely as spoken. As far as I am able to tell.”

  Spinneretta watched as Annika continued her pacing, feeling more and more uneasy with each step the woman took. She tapped the tips of her spider legs together. “We need to go after Kara and find her before the Vant’therax or the cult does.”

  Annika showed her a smoldering glare. “Let’s get one thing straight right now, Spinzie: your membership in the fellowship of we is over, effective immediately.”

  She returned the glare. “What?”

  “You’ve lost your privileges of autonomy. I don’t trust you to go to the damn bathroom without running off at this point, so you’re grounded. Benched. Sidelined.”

  She jumped to her feet, appendages spreading in a threatening posture. “You can’t tell me to sit this out! This is my goddamn fault!”

  “Oh, good. At least we see eye to eye on that. You’ve done more than enough damage already. Take it easy. Let Auntie Annika clean up your mess. As usual.”

  “She’s right, Spinny,” Mark said in a cautious but firm tone. “Let her handle this.”

  Spinneretta stared at him, her stomach twisting. “Seriously? You’re taking her side?”

  A shrug pulled at his shoulders. “At present, I don’t think you can do much to help without risking somebody taking you, whether that be the Dawn or the Vant’therax. After all this, I’m unwilling to take such a risk.”

  Spinneretta couldn’t even find the strength to answer him. All eyes were on her. A glance at Arthr’s face told her she was alone in her protest. With a resigned sigh, she plopped back into the chair and folded her appendages around herself, teeth still clenched in defiance.

  In the chair beside her, Arthr fidgeted. “So, uhh. Where do we go from here, then?”

  Mark squinted at the floor. “As soon as Kara is accounted for, all of you are going back to Lake Cormorant.”

  They were words Spinneretta knew were coming, but whose possibility she had refused to acknowledge. Back to Minnesota. Back to obscurity and exile. Stung by the declaration, she ground her molars. “You can’t be serious.”

  “It’s the only way to keep you all safe. From the Yellow Dawn, and from the Vant’therax.”

  “If you think sending us back there is going to change anything—”

  Mark scowled. “Let me speak.” When she fell quiet, he gave a distracted nod and let his gaze fall again. “Sending you back is the only option, Spinny. I cannot risk anything happening to you, or to anyone else. There’s too much on the line for any more pointless risks.”

  Spinneretta huffed and sprang to her feet once more. “So, that’s it? We’re just going to let the cult have their way? Even if we go back, they’re not going to just give up! I came here to fucking stop them from hurting anyone else, not to turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble!”

  Mark stood up, and at once Spinneretta was reminded of how small she was. Even her spider legs, spread in a pose of ostentatious strength, couldn’t pretend to change that. Looming over her, Mark tightened his jaw and spoke in a low growl. “They will be stopped. Just not by you.”

  Her anger faltered, ground to dust by his words. “You’re . . . You’re actually going to fight them? Like the Vant’therax want?”

  He nodded gravely. “They may be our enemies, but I’ll take the devil I know over the one I don’t. They wouldn’t have turned to me unless they were desperate.”

  “But they admitted they’re not going to give up their ambitions, Mark! Don’t you understand what that means? As soon as you’ve helped them defeat the cult, they’re going to turn on you and try to take me and Kara themselves!”

  “I am aware of that.”

  Spinneretta was about to rattle off a supporting argument, but his acquiescence choked her. “You, you are?”

  “The possibility is prominent in my mind. But I no longer fear the Vant’therax. It is this Helixweaver that I fear. They spoke of him now serving the Writhing Malefice, and that is something that I cannot ignore.”

  She shrugged at him. “And just what the hell is the Writhing Malefice?”

  His upper lip twitched. “It is a name oft ascribed to Ozmahesh, another of the Primal Ones. From time to time, cults dedicated to his worship appear throughout history. The most infamous among them is the cult of the Black Hierophant, which was responsible for the razing Am-Khent in Egypt over two thousand years ago.”

  Spinneretta renewed her shrug with an indignant frustration. “Oh, well that just fucking changes everything, does it? Look, I don’t care if Satan himself is involved in the cult, they are my burden! The Dawn is my responsibility!”

  A sharp glint came to Mark’s bloodshot eyes, and a crease ran across his brows. With a tired blink, he leaned toward her. “And just how do you figure that?”

  The question cut through her prepared rhetoric. She fidgeted. “I . . . They’re just my responsibility, okay? Like Isabella. They’re . . . ”

  Mark pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “Listen to me. You cannot keep insisting on shouldering the blame for everything. You did not kill that creature. You put it out of its misery. Its death—”

  She growled, shoulders tensed and fists clenched. “Stop. Calling. Her. It.”

  His tongue hung there a moment. “Fine. Her death sentence was handed down by NIDUS before her birth, just like all of their other specimens and subjects. You cannot blame yourself for having mercy upon her, Spinny. That guilt serves no use.”

  “It’s more than that!” she shouted, posture shifting to a commanding stance. Shoulders wide, legs sturdy, she looked Mark right in the eyes. “You understand, don’t you? A full quarter of my blood is the Yellow King’s. We’re his . . . ” She drew in a deep breath, recalling once more what Silt had told her. Her mind again bumped against her aura and drew out a cold trace of invisible mist that ran along her forearm and drifted over her fingertips. “I’m his daughter. And that means if anybody is destined to put an end to this, it’s me. If anyone has the power to—”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Arthr said from behind her. The whole room fell silent as Spinneretta and the others turned to look at him. He sat there dumb for a few moments, looking at each of them in turn. With a nervous chuckle, he eased himself to his feet with his spider legs. “Like, who cares whose blood we share, Spins? I mean, I’ll freely admit I don’t understand much about the Yellow King and Raxxinoth or whatever . . . But does it really matter that we’re his children? Like, really? What does that change? We’re still just as human or inhuman as we’ve ever been. How can y
ou be responsible for any of what’s happened? That’s all on the cult and the Corporation and the Vant’therax and the King. Right? Existing isn’t a sin.”

  Spinneretta gave her head a dismissive shake. “I’m not so sure.” She turned away from the three pairs of eyes now studying her, her spider legs clacking about her chest nervously. “There’s this . . . voice. In my head, sometimes.”

  No sound. Not even a snicker from the pompous detective.

  Mark’s posture loosened and his left foot glided half a step closer to her. “A voice?”

  She immediately regretted bringing it up. “It’s not a real voice, I guess. But sometimes, I don’t know where my thoughts are coming from. Like, it’s my own voice, but the thoughts themselves are alien to me.”

  Arthr gave another nervous chuckle that churned the silence. “Oh, great. So this is all because you’ve gone fucking nuts, huh?”

  Mark gave him a sharp look before pulling his attention back to her. “And what does this voice tell you?”

  “Nothing. I mean, not in so many words. It’s just . . . fragments of thoughts, pieces of ideas. Sometimes I feel it stirring. Laughing. I mean, I don’t know if I’m going crazy or if it’s the stress of everything catching up to me, but . . . ” Her entire frame shook as her lungs ran empty. She took a breath and tried to hold it steady. “But when I feel it, when I think those alien thoughts, it just somehow proves that it’s all on me. That it’s all my fault, and that I’m the only one who has the power to make everything right. I don’t know if that makes any sense to you guys, but I can’t explain it any better.”

  Leaning against the far wall, Annika whistled a low note. “So the two-fathered spider-girl has started hearing voices. Queer as a clockwork pear, you is.”

  Spinneretta ignored her. She straightened her back and spread her twitching limbs around herself. She stared into Mark’s concerned expression. “I can’t leave this as it is. This blood, this voice, this guilt . . . Those things are all I have, and until the Yellow King is dealt with—”

  “Nobody is going to be dealing with the Yellow King,” Mark said in an unusually stern tone. “If he is truly moving all these pieces from beyond the curtain, then what do you think you could possibly do to stop him?”

  She stuttered as her thoughts scrambled for an answer that wouldn’t further implicate her of insanity. Even claiming herself heir to the King’s anti-magic was insufficient, for it was only a half-answer on its own. “I don’t know. But I do know that I can stop him.”

  “Spinneretta, I believe that you believe that. But reality is not so kind. You killed a Vant’therax in that lab, and while that is admirable the Vant’therax are not Chosen. They’re just biological abominations. The Yellow King, however, may be more than a mere Chosen. If he was truly birthed by the spawn of Raxxinoth as an avatar, as the Repton Scriptures claim, then his power could be far greater than even mine. Were we to fight him, it would be like challenging Raxxinoth itself. There is absolutely no precedent for anything of the sort ever occurring, not in the Repton Scriptures, not in Al Azif, not in any of the literature I’ve ever read.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and a shiver spilled all the way to the tips of her coiled legs. “Then I will create the precedent.”

  Annika pushed herself off the wall. “No, you will not. After everything you’ve put me through, I’m not going to let you get yourself killed for no reason.”

  Spinneretta swept her legs in front of her. “No reason? Is killing the Yellow King not reason enough for you?”

  Annika shrugged with a scowl. “Hate to break it to you, Spinzie, but I don’t give two raindrops in hell about the Yellow King.”

  Spinneretta felt tears of frustrated rage seeping from behind her vision. “Don’t you get it? He wiped out an entire race of his own creations in the Web, and he could do the same thing here if given half a chance! And these cults are off to a great start, wouldn’t you say?” She shook her head, trying to keep herself calm, but the anger just kept bubbling out. “As long as he lives, his cults will do his bidding, and people will keep being hurt and killed! How can you not understand that?”

  “Cut the bullshit,” Annika snapped. “You don’t care about those people.”

  Spinneretta gasped. “Wha—”

  “You only care about others when you can find a way to blame yourself for their misfortune. That’s what makes you tick: guilt. As long as you have guilt, you can feel responsible for something, which is more freedom than you’ve ever been given. So let’s call the devil by his name and get it all in the open: this is nothing more than a messiah complex.”

  The words were a blow right to her solar plexus. “Messiah . . . ?”

  Annika walked slowly over to her. “That’s right. You have this weird and quite frankly absurd belief that you are somehow destined to make a huge difference in the world. That one day you’ll overcome the guilt that’s held you down for so long and scream defiantly at the sky that you are alive and that you matter. But that’s not how this movie ends, min spindeltjej.” Her voice had cast off all snark; it was low and soft, almost motherly. “You’re not a god, Spinneretta. You’re not even a Chosen like Marky is. You’re just a girl. You’re in over your head, and you’re the only one here who can’t see it.”

  Stunned, she looked at Arthr and then at Mark. Everyone was staring at her, and whatever knee-jerk reply had pooled on her tongue was lost. Two pairs of brown eyes, and one pale tan. Could they all have been seeing the weakness that she was unwilling to admit existed? “But, I can end this. I can—”

  Annika nodded. “Yeah. You can. By admitting that you’re in over your head. That you need our help.”

  She stared into Annika’s face. The sincerity she found sank into her core.

  “Here’s the facts, min spindeltjej: you’ve jumped headfirst into an Olympic-sized fuckfest. And all you’ve managed to do is wedge yourself between two batches of crazies intent on duking it out for the blood-prize of, well, you. And in the process, you’ve put your beloved sister into a sinking bathtub.” Annika shrugged, a look of utter loss coming upon her. “Where does this end? How many people who love you are you going to ransom for your damned guilt?”

  That did it. Spinneretta’s resolve liquefied. Her chest heaved, and her limbs went limp. She just stood there without a word, thoughts spiraling down a dark chasm in her mind.

  With a small sigh, Mark sank back down onto the bed. “Listen, Spinny. I don’t understand what these voices in your head are. I barely understand anything in the grand scheme of things. But you need to understand that you’re not alone in this. You have your family. You have me and Annika. You will never be on your own in this ordeal, and we will never leave you. Whatever problems or threats there are, we will face them together.”

  A half-chuckle forced itself out of Spinneretta’s throat. “You’re still an endless well of platitudes.”

  “Forgive me. I am not very skilled at expressing myself without them.”

  “I know.”

  Annika slunk away from Spinneretta and leaned against the wall once more. “I still think you’re a waste of skin,” she said. “But I’ll stand by what Marky says. I’ve put too many resources into keeping you guys safe to just leave you to rot on your own, as tempting as that may sound at times. So how about we make a deal? We’ll handle Kara and the cult. You relax and try to enjoy living for once in your life. Okay?”

  Spinneretta looked her in the eyes. The sternness in her expression made her feel smaller than ever. Lips trembling with treason, she shrugged her shoulders. “Okay.”

  Arthr breathed a relieved sigh. “Oh, thank God. So we can finally put this behind us?”

  “Yeah.” It wasn’t like there was anything else she could do, anyway. Not without turning her friends into her enemies. If she ran off on her own again in a vain attempt to solve the problems born of the cult, Mark and Annika would just chase her down. Annika could track her, and Mark could move through spacetime like it was nothing. They wo
uld catch her, no matter how many times she tried to run. No amount of confidence or guilt in the world could erase that feeling of helplessness. With a resigned groan, she fell back into her chair.

  For the first time since arriving, Annika smiled. She stretched her arms above her head and started toward the door. “At any rate, I’d better go to the front and get a room for me and the spider-boy for the night.”

  Arthr started. “Huh? Me?”

  “Yep. I think we all need our rest. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”

  “No, I-I mean, that you and I . . . ?” The words tumbled from his mouth like ineptly tossed juggling pins.

  “These two need each other now more than ever,” Annika said. “I don’t think you want to get between them, unless you’re into that kinda thing. And that means you’re stuck with me. Let’s go.”

  “R-right.” He hopped to his feet and followed her toward the door.

  Spinneretta’s cheeks blazed, but she was too exhausted to protest Annika’s crude implications. Appendages tight around her midsection, she just focused on stopping the burning in her eyes and face. More than the despair of being unable to accomplish her original goal, a new, hideous emotion emerged from her sea of thoughts. How could she have let the phantasm of the King blind her to the guilt that was happening right around her—to the pain of her family, Annika, and Mark? Kara was missing. Her precious sister may have already been dead, the price of her own misguided fixation on revenge. She felt like throwing up. Her whole body was aprickle with needles of self-judgment.

  When she heard the door slam shut, she was stricken by the silence that remained. She was afraid to meet Mark’s gaze, but was unable to stop herself. She gave a weak shrug. “What? Why don’t you say something?”

  He was quiet for a moment. “I am attempting to read your state of mind by your posture and expression.”

  “I’ll save you the trouble. I feel like shit.”

  “Would you like to talk about it?”

  She slumped to her feet and drifted toward the bed. “Everything’s already been said. There’s nothing I can say that’ll change anything.” She collapsed face-first into the covers. The edge of the bed bit into her sore thighs. Her shoulders felt like they’d been worked over by a tenderizing mallet, and mini-cramps throbbed in her back. All those discomforts combined were nothing compared to the pain in her soul.