Mark slid over, and she felt the mattress sink on her right side. “Are you alright?”
Her spider legs curled helplessly around her as the burning in her eyes grew more threatening. “Of course I’m not alright,” she said, voice choked by the comforter. “What could possibly be okay? Everyone’s pissed off at me, my sister’s missing, and I’ve made a huge mess of everything.”
“No. No more of that guilt. You made some mistakes, and now we’re going to fix them all, together. Okay?”
“How?”
Mark hummed a comforting note. “Let’s see. We shall find Kara, first of all. She’s a smart girl and wouldn’t let herself be taken. She can survive on her own for a little while. So we will find her and get you all back home safely. Back to your parents. Then, Annika and I will clean up this little civil war the cult has started. Once the Helixweaver is dead and the cult is in shambles, we’ll see what the Vant’therax have in store for us. And if they still seek to prolong the Yellow King’s legacy, then I shall kill them just like the Helixweaver.”
She nodded, listening intently. The confidence in his tone helped to dispel the dark pall that covered her heart. She wanted desperately to believe him. “And then what?”
He hummed again. “And then . . . I suppose I’ll have to come visit you to celebrate.”
She could hear his smile, and it brought a fragile cheer upon her. “I was really looking forward to that before.” As she buried her face in the covers, she felt Mark’s hand on one of her lower legs, which curled in response to his touch. A shiver raced along her spine.
“I’m glad you’re safe,” he said. “You really worried me, you know.”
“Mmph.”
He chuckled. “I must admit that I’m quite impressed.”
“What the fuck about?”
“You.”
She rolled over and gave him her ugliest grimace. “You’re joking.”
His soft expression hardened in the jaw. “Whatever Annika says about you, nobody can deny that you have spirit.”
With a scoff, she planted her face in the bed again. “Spirit. That’s all you could come up with? I thought you were the fucking platitude master.” She breathed out into the fabric, a little calmer. “Do you really think Kara’s okay?”
He patted her shoulder. “I am certain.”
“And you think you and the Vant’therax will be able to find her?”
“As sure as the moon rises.”
She groaned. “Mark?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Say nothing of it. So are you alright now?”
A slow breath. “Nowhere near alright. But . . . I’ll be fine, I think.”
“Good. How do you feel? You must be sore after such a journey.”
“My back feels like I was run over by a steamroller.” A cramp clenched the muscles of her shoulders.
“Here. Sit up.”
Not sure what to expect, she rolled over and forced herself into a sitting position with her posterior legs. She jumped when she felt Mark’s hands fall gently upon her shoulders.
“Relax,” he said.
A small gasp escaped her lips. An almost electric tremor shot through her shoulders, setting her appendages ashudder. She cringed as his thumbs pressed harder and her muscles popped and crunched.
He stopped. “Does that hurt?”
She nodded with a shallow breath through her teeth. “But it’s a good pain. I think.” When he applied pressure again, her sense of coordination went to nirvana, and her head lolled to a limp position. Her special adrenaline began to seep into her blood, spreading a mild euphoria through her veins.
Her thoughts were drawn back in time toward bittersweet memories. That night at Kyle’s. Her birthday. His words to her in the Eleventh laboratory. Their parting. She found herself once more trying to figure out where exactly they had left things between them. That he had stormed out on her that night was a familiar doubt. It had felt so conclusively like rejection, but even despite it they had seemed to grow even closer since. She wanted to ask him where they stood, if this was what friends were for or if it was something deeper. Mark wouldn’t do something like this if they were still purely friends, she reasoned, if only because he knew what it would do to her. But she couldn’t ask. She couldn’t even think about it. As her pain was violently crushed from her body, she just wanted to let herself believe.
Over a couple minutes, Mark slowly worked his way down until he reached a point shielded by her left shoulder blade. He gave the point a gentle knead that produced an audible crack. “Is this it?”
She groaned. “One of ’em. Big one.”
“Alright.” He released her shoulder and pushed his palm against the clicking knot. At once, a cooling tingle penetrated her muscles.
Spinneretta’s stomach twisted, and her clouded senses sharpened. Her aura expanded. A misty chill coalesced and raced along her skin, breaking contact with the spell as it passed. She glared at Mark over her shoulder. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
He looked at her in shock, eyes darting momentarily to his hand. “I was . . . just going to . . . ”
She turned back around, tucking her head into a loose net of tangled legs. “You’re not allowed to do that healing shit on me, remember? I won’t let you take on any more of my problems. Especially something so trivial as some muscle pain.” The memory of opened veins sent a frigid line running down the length of her right forearm. She couldn’t let him do it again. Not after how much he’d already suffered for them.
Mark shifted behind her, opening the gap between them. “Forgive me.”
The coil of anger in her stomach unwound, filling it with a nervous tingling. “But, you could keep doing what you were doing a minute ago,” she said. “I mean, i-if you want.”
For a moment, he said nothing. He then slid closer to her once more. “Very well.”
She shivered when she felt his hands on her shoulders again. When he began massaging her, she couldn’t stop herself from groaning. She didn’t think she’d ever been as sore as she was at this moment. Her shoulders and back had it the worst, but every part of every limb was in agony. Her nerves screamed as Mark’s fingers and knuckles ground away the tightness. Cracks and clicks—which she was reasonably certain were not good sounds—punctuated each movement of his hands. She groaned again, despite her best efforts to suppress the sound. “Fuck. You’re the best.”
The heat on her shoulders and the heat in her stomach seemed to swell. She felt the pounding of the Instinct grow stronger with each beat of her heart. God, she’d missed him. Perhaps it was mere teenage infatuation, or perhaps it was her Instinctually amplified hormones screaming for reckless abandon; whichever the case, she knew she was dangerously close to the border beyond which the Instinct would take over and the embarrassment at Kyle’s would repeat itself.
Her face burned. Fire roared in every joint in her legs, which now sat trembling in a tight weave before her. Her skin prickled with smoldering needles. The taste of the room came into stark clarity, and her pulse accelerated. Each throb of her heart pounded in her stomach and ears and legs.
“Uhh, Mark?” she said.
“Hmm?”
She put a hand on his arm, stopping him from continuing. Even that filled her with a toxic longing. “Uhh. Do you have your phone with you?”
“Of course. Why?”
“Do you mind if I use it to call my parents? And, you know . . . tell them I’m sorry for everything?”
He nodded. “You needn’t even ask.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the device. He held it out to her and she cautiously accepted it. It was a fat, old, stubby thing with a small monochrome screen backlit by a yellow-green glow. With its thick rubber buttons, it more closely resembled a remote control than a cellphone.
“Thanks,” she said. “I’m just going to step outside a second for this. Is that alright?”
He gave her a sideways look. �
��You’re not going to go running off after Kara, are you?”
“No, of course not. I just need some fresh air. And a bit of privacy.”
He nodded. “Do you promise?”
“I promise.” She just needed a little space, she repeated to herself. She stood, legs sorer than ever, and made her way to the door. She snatched Mark’s jacket from the table and slipped it on. Her fingers wrapped about the knob and she paused. She wanted to ask him if he was seriously going to leave her alone, to trust her to stay put. But she couldn’t. If she forced that conversation, she’d forever have to deal with the consequences. She didn’t doubt him, and he didn’t doubt her. Things were perfect just as they were. With a slow breath, she turned the handle and let herself out.
Breathe deep the poison, you soulless insects. Bathe in the clouds of acid as they explode around you. You thought to hold my forces in check within this valley? Now, it shall become a mass grave, a testament to your treachery. And from this day forward, none shall dare speak of the Vale of Kalka’thorum.
Your skin burns with the acid clouds’ kisses. Your pores fill with blood and burst. Your tongues melt into liquid chunks, and your organs boil within you. And as you stumble and thrash your death throes, you fall among the carcasses that flood the valley. Your flesh paves the scar. And high above, I watch without pity as you die. Were my soul not so dead, I’d delight at your suffering and agony, your torture. But still I feel nothing, even as I see your skin liquefy and your vestigial eyes erupt from their caverns in fountains of putrid jelly.
There is not even satisfaction in this massacre. All I feel is hollowness. Hatred.
Chapter 31
Gethsemane
After some shoutful negotiations at the front desk, Arthr followed Annika into room 117, around the corner from where Mark and Spinneretta were staying. Annika had been fuming over the price ever since she forked over her credit card, but Arthr was too distracted to pay much attention to her rambling. After all that had happened, after all Spinneretta had told them, how was he supposed to feel anything other than dread? He felt like he was stuck in a two-bit thriller so obsessed with hackneyed twists that even a scholar of cinema couldn’t piece together its tangled web of incoherent plot points.
And yet that was life. If he was to remain a relevant fixture of the family, he’d have to figure out the whole Yellow King connection sooner rather than later, lest his sister mock him for his ignorance. Not my fucking fault, he steamed at the imagined attack. It’s not like I’m the one hearing voices.
The door banged open, and Annika whistled a low note that roused him from his thoughts. “Well this brings back memories,” she said, surveying the room. “Haven’t seen a room this gross since Grantwood.”
Arthr swallowed hard as he remembered the whirlwind those days had been. As Annika deposited her belongings on the corner table, Arthr collapsed upon the bed, torn between the relief of having found his sister and the fear that came with the knowledge of the reformed cult.
Annika sighed. “Welp, all we can do is celebrate the small victories, eh?”
He blinked up at her. “Huh?”
She closed her eyes, clear irritation tugging at her cheeks. “Not a good listener, are you? Whatever.” She shrugged and started for the door. “Be right back.”
A shiver of terror unexpectedly took over Arthr’s shoulders, and he sat up as quickly as he could. “Wait, where are you going?”
“I saw an ice machine in the lobby.”
The door opened and then clattered shut. With that, he was alone. Just him and his thoughts. A deadly combination.
He flopped back onto the bed and stared at the ceiling. Motel brown; it had been a while. Stuttering breaths flowed through his nose as he tried not to think. Just six months ago, he’d been happily living a normal life as a teenager, hanging out with his friends, hitting on hot chicks, picking fights for the sport of it. What the fuck had happened?
His spider legs twitched of their own accord. For a single moment, they were like alien structures grafted to his body. For that moment, he forgot how to move them. Nerves stunned into a frightful paralysis, he could only stare at the limbs steepled over his chest.
A full quarter of my blood is the Yellow King’s, Spinneretta had said.
Guess that goes for me as well, he thought, only partially understanding. But how was that possible? The claim had gotten less attention than it deserved. His time with the Repton Scriptures had been limited to one day in Lake Cormorant when Spinneretta had been at the library. He’d slipped into her room and found the tome upon her desk. The yellow canvas cover, with its title scratched in faded black ink, had seemed so innocuous, like a prop in an amateur film, incompatible with the horror their lives had become. He’d glanced through the pages long enough to discover only two things: that Spinneretta had left a galaxy of sticky notes across nearly every page, and that each depiction of the famed Yellow King resembled their own anatomy to a frightful degree.
If the thing in that book was genetically connected to them . . . But that thought was abstract. It was hard to seriously consider such a thing. Hell, what would it even mean to be related to the Yellow King? It may have just been denial, but it was impossible to wrap his mind around it. And yet Spins has clearly accepted it. What’s the deal with that? Am I the problem? He sighed. God, I hope Kara’s okay.
The door banged open again, and Annika barged in with an infectious laugh on her lips. “Back!” She triumphantly held up a small plastic bucket heaping with ice.
Arthr stared at her, shaken by her sudden reappearance. “What’s that for?”
“What do you think it’s for?”
As she stepped inside, Arthr saw a dark bottle and an ornate glass clutched between her slender fingers. He grinned at her. “Ahh. I see you came prepared.” God, that probably sounded lame.
She dropped into the chair beside their modest table, dexterously delivering all three objects to the surface. “Observant. Haven’t had a drink in days. With all this talk of little victories, it’s whiskey time!” She nimbly scooped three perfect cubes into her glass and flicked the top off the liquor. The bottle seemed to levitate with the grace of her touch. She poured whiskey over the rocks of ice until the glass was a hair over half full, and then lifted her eyes to him with a wry smile. “You’re not going to make me drink alone are you?”
Those words banished the moisture from his mouth. Was she really asking him? Uncertainty drew his spider legs into awkward, tangled pairs. “Uhh. I probably shouldn’t.”
Annika scoffed, lips on the rim of her glass. “For all your bravado, you’re no more a man than your sis.”
His face ignited into a furnace. A deep breath to calm the nerves and cool the skin. Actually, maybe two or three would do the trick. “You know what. Yeah. Alright. I’ll have some.”
She gave him an amused but doubtful look, eyebrows arched high above her shining chocolate eyes. “Oh? Are you sure you’re old enough?”
He puffed his chest out. “It’s not like I haven’t drank before.” Beer, anyway. The mental amendment didn’t make it feel any less like a lie.
Annika tapped her fingers across the surface of an upturned, ivory-colored bathroom cup that sat nearby atop a set of hand towels. “Had Scotch before?”
“Y-yeah.” It took a conscious effort not to add the word totally.
With a giggle that rang with equal parts suspicion and amusement, she grabbed the bathroom cup and scooped a few ice cubes into it. After filling the cup, she passed it to Arthr. Her knowing gaze upon him, she lifted her glass again to her lips. “Cheers. To stupid Spinzie not getting herself killed.”
Arthr peered into the caramel pool, watching the motion of the ice cubes clinking against one another. The color of the cup made it appear somehow filthy, and the smell hit him like a hammer. “Uhh, yeah. Cheers.” How bad could it be? Just drink it.
He closed his eyes and threw the drink back. An overwhelming semi-sweetness filled his senses, turning t
o a bitter bile taste as it permeated his mouth. He almost gagged, but he forced himself to swallow three full gulps of the Scotch. A harsh burn scorched its way down his throat and into his stomach, expelling an oaky miasma into his sinuses. His gut turned with the woody taste; it was never so obvious that a liquid was not meant for consumption. He coughed, his tongue extended in a vain attempt of casting the vapor from its surface. It tasted like he’d pounded back a tumbler of drain cleaner.
As he coughed and gagged on the drink, Annika erupted in laughter. “Oh, you lying sack of shit. You have so never had Scotch before.
His throat burned with each expulsion of air. “I have.” Another coughing fit shook his chest. “Just none this strong.” The words left his tongue twitching from where the pungency still pooled.
“Seriously? It’s only eighty-proof. This isn’t even the good stuff.” Her sardonic smile grew wider. “Sure you don’t want to cut that with Coke or something?”
He managed to clear his throat in time to answer her. “I’m good.”
“The tears tell a different story.”
He shook his head defiantly and thrust his cup out toward her. “Refill.”
Annika just laughed harder. “Don’t push yourself, kid.”
Kid? He felt his face growing hotter, and he glared up at her through the blur. “I said give me more.”
The mocking sarcasm in Annika’s expression seemed to depart. He saw something glinting in her eyes that he hoped desperately was admiration. The corners of her perfect lips rose in a smile. “Fine.” She accepted his cup and poured another layer of Scotch over the rocks before passing it back to him. “Here’s a tip: sip it, don’t shoot it.”
He nodded. “R-right. I must’ve just forgot.” Smooth. Real smooth, jackass. As per her advice, he tried sipping. The slow mouthfuls were far, far worse than the huge shot he’d gulped down. It slammed him with the full force of the sickly sweet smoke flavor, and the burn he thought would be diluted by the lower quantity was instead amplified by the scorching remnants of his first cup. Though he shook a little from the repulsive taste, he managed to avoid coughing again.
Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3) Page 41