Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3)

by Bartholomew Lander

  “You know, most people consider Johnnie Walker Black Label one of the better tasting Scotches available. Makes me wonder what you’ve been drinking if this is so unpalatable.” She gave him that damned knowing look as she took a slow sip from her own glass. “Perhaps I should call your mommy and ask her?”

  “N-no, there’s no reason to do that!”

  She guffawed, almost spilling some of her drink. “God, you’re adorable. I’m obviously not going to ask May about your nonexistent drinking habits.”

  Face hot, Arthr forced another sip of the liquor down. He’d make himself like that taste; he wouldn’t let Annika think of him as a kid. He coughed a little more, and when her face lit up in laughter again, he knew. This was the night he was going to tell her how he felt.

  It didn’t take long for him to begin to feel funny. His third cup was the worst tasting yet, but he’d long since ceased caring. He felt dizzy, like the whole world was subtly rocking from side to side, flowing around in a liquid state. He no longer had to pretend; everything Annika said was absolutely hilarious, and he had a hard time finishing the third cup without spraying it everywhere amid his spasms of laughter.

  “The hell are you laughing at?” Annika asked, her own chest shaking from whatever joke had been set to linger in the air. “I’m serious.”

  Arthr shook his head, trying to contain himself. “I don’t even remember what you said.”

  She guffawed again—a sound so lovely that Arthr could think of nothing other than that sound. It was sweet music, plucked straight from the harps of angels. His cheeks flushed. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Though it had been at least a whole day since she’d showered, she still smelled amazing. The warm trace of strawberry shampoo wafted over him. The smell of it exhilarated him, made him dizzy from the rush of blood. Her radiant cheeks and the subtle suggestion of cleavage beneath her fresh blouse pulled at his attention, and he felt his restraint breaking down. It was now or never.

  Emboldened by the Scotch, he puffed out his chest and widened his posture. “Hey, Annika,” he said, trying not to slur his words. “I’ve gotta get something off my chest.”

  Her smile vanished instantly. “Oh, God. I know what you’re going to do, and I’m telling you now: don’t.”

  He grinned at her—a smile he focused on keeping rigid and manly. “Nah, you don’t know. But you will. I can’t keep this hidden anymore.” He leaned forward. “Annika, I think I’m in love with you.”

  Everything went quiet. Annika’s disappointed, tired expression didn’t last long. Her cheeks flashed red. She closed her eyes and began to laugh. Hysterically. “That’s so cute!” she cried. “That you didn’t think I knew that already. And just put it out there like that!”

  Arthr nodded a little, trying not to betray the flutter of confidence in his chest. “You knew?”

  Instead of answering, she just laughed harder, doubling over and grabbing her stomach. “I knew? Oh, God, that’s priceless! I’m so, so sorry to have to do this to you.”

  His smile melted from his face. Gravity pulled the edges of his lips down toward hell. “What?”

  Wiping a tear from her eye, her uproar subsided. “Look, you can’t seriously expect me to entertain the idea of dating or doing anything at all with you, really.”

  Stunned, he felt his stomach drop and twist. “What do you mean?”

  Annika sighed. “Well, first of all, you’re, what, twelve years old?”

  “I’m fifteen!”

  “Uh-huh. You do realize I’m twenty-two, right?”

  He scratched at the sleeve of his jacket, if only to distract him from his blazing cheeks. “Y-yeah, I knew you were somewhere around there.”

  “And you haven’t considered the possibility that some people—namely me—may have a problem with that?”

  He shook his head, unable to believe what he was hearing. “I mean, I might be young, I’ll admit that. But I’m mature for my age.”

  A hearty, incredulous laugh rang through the air. “Oh?”

  “Y-yeah!” He shook his head, feeling hot from something other than the whiskey. “I’m tough, I’m caring, and I know how to treat a lady. I mean, you and I have a lot in common, and I can’t picture myself with anyone else.” It was hard to say. He knew he was grasping at straws at best, and blatantly lying at worst.

  “Look, I get that you think you’re hot shit, kid. But you don’t impress me. Maybe you make all the girls at school wet with a smile, but that’s just because they don’t know better yet. I do. Sorry, but that’s that.”

  The hollow feeling encompassing him grew more helpless. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “You really want to go there?”

  “Yeah. I do. Because I don’t understand why you won’t at least give me a chance.”

  She stopped halfway through a sip of Scotch. With a resigned sigh, she placed the glass upon the table and folded her hands together. For a moment she was silent, her lips kneading words unpronounced. And when she finally looked up, her eyes flashed with a harshness he had not seen since the battle at the Golmont Corporation. “If you want to ignore the fact that you’ve barely hit puberty, I can think of dozens of reasons why you would be an unsuitable partner. Not the least of which is the fact that I am not attracted to you in the slightest—though that should be where the parade ends.”

  His stomach coiled again, as though he’d taken a hay-maker to the gut. “I mean, I, I know that I may be a freak to you. It’s not like everyone has spider legs like me, but—”

  “Oh, I promise you, it has nothing to do with your legs. I can see how you’d be pretty hot to someone younger than I, but that boat has sailed. No point in discussing it. Moreover, you’re an unapologetic sycophant. A yes-man that cares too damn much what everyone thinks of him. You’re all talk and no walk, and worse than that, you’re a coward. A completely spineless wimp without an adaptive gene in your body.”

  “I am not!”

  She smirked. “What have you done?”

  “What?”

  “Since this whole thing began. What have you done that wasn’t sitting in a room crying? Spinzie and Kara have both taken down Vant’therax when their backs were against the wall, Mark cleaned up a regiment of goons, and my contributions to keeping your kin safe are self-evident. What have you done to help out?”

  As he reeled, searching for an answer, Annika’s solemn snicker cut short his train of thought. “If you’re having trouble coming up with an answer,” she said, “I’ll give you a big one: you almost got us both killed in the Vault. Even after I taught you how to shoot, you couldn’t even pull the trigger. And why? Because you value some imaginary morality more than your own life? Or perhaps you’re simply too scared of what people would think of you if you committed the mortal sin of murder. Even against a monster. Even in self-defense.”

  The chilled barbs of the accusation sank into Arthr’s chest. He felt himself losing control of his temper. “So not wanting to kill people makes me a coward?”

  She shook her head. “No, Arthr. Killing doesn’t make you a man. But letting yourself be killed without fighting back makes you subhuman. I’ve seen you under stress, more than I’d like to. And in those times, all you do is shake in fear. Without even a survival instinct, you’re useless.”

  “Useless?” He stood up, throwing his half-full cup to the floor and splattering caramel fluid across the carpet. “I am not useless! You take that back right the fuck now!”

  Annika leaned back in her chair, her expression placid. “I’ll take it back the instant you show me you have a spine.”

  He seethed. The warm comfort he’d felt when looking at her departed, and he was overcome by a denial-birthed fury. “Take. It. Back.”

  “No. You are a child, Arthr. When you grow up, I believe you will be an admirable spider-human being. But for now, you are a child, pampered and ill-prepared for the real world. I’m out of your league.”

  Molars gnashing together, he growled
. “Fuck you.” He spun about, nearly tripping over the corner of the bed, and stormed out of the room. He slammed the door shut behind him, and the sound reverberated through his skull and then settled into a low, hideous ringing.

  Everything spun around him as he stomped down the covered hallway. The alcohol made his steps clumsy, but he forged on until he came to the parking lot. Drawing full breaths into his overheated lungs, he stormed and swaggered around the building, determined to burn off his rejection.

  Useless, he thought. Useless? I’m not fucking useless. I’m just a victim of circumstance. I didn’t want any of this. How is it fair to hold me to such a ridiculous standard? You want a guy who doesn’t flinch at killing people? Good luck, asshole. How many psychopaths are there on the dating market? That’s what you want, go and get it, see if I give a shit!

  He rushed past a middle-aged woman sweeping the walkway, and half-feared he’d knock her over. Luckily, he avoided her by a hair, but even that small victory just made his blood burn hotter. Useless. Useless. You think I’m useless?

  But he was. It was impossible to deny that reality. He’d harbored such toxic thoughts for far too long. She was right. He was all talk. All he could do was boast about hollow achievements and paint himself as a man. He was no man. Men didn’t need their sisters to beat up their bullies. Men didn’t tremble in the face of death. Men didn’t get rejected.

  Annika didn’t need him. Spinneretta didn’t need him. Even the cult that made him hadn’t needed him, and all because he’d been born the wrong fucking gender. None of it was fair, and he cursed God and Satan and Hermes and Ganesha with each livid breath he expelled. And Raxxinoth, that goddamned deity. And the Yellow King, whose blood ran through his veins. If they hadn’t existed, he wouldn’t have been put through the wringer. If they’d never been born, he’d have had a shot at being normal, at being a hero—a man! It was their fault! It was all their fucking fault!

  As he came around the corner, into the rear parking lot, he stopped. His meandering thoughts of stinging hatred went quiet. There, in the parking lot, back pressed against the great fiberglass olive tree, was Spinneretta. He stood there for a moment, certain the alcohol was causing him to hallucinate. What’s she doing out here? Heart pounding in his chest, he slid carefully back a step and around the corner again so as not to be seen. From his hiding place, he watched, concerned, as Spinneretta stood up.

  Spinneretta had always imagined the desert being hot at all hours, but she found herself shivering as the dry wind whipped over the ground, carrying the scent of dust from afar. A chill-ache ripped through her collarbone and down her coiled spider legs, making her tuck deeper into Mark’s jacket. She made her way over to the fiberglass olive tree, which held the half-functional neon signage, and sank down to the ground behind it where the wind would not reach her. Setting her back against the rough bark of the fake tree, she let her eyes drift closed for a few moments.

  Her heart was pounding. Her face was hot, and the air couldn’t quite satisfy her greedy lungs. What was happening to her? The pounding in her head from the Instinct wouldn’t go away. She felt her resolve weakening as that knocking reverberated through every muscle in her body. Her raging adrenaline-infused hormones, or the Instinct, or whatever was causing her to heat up with such a crazed, single-minded abandon was too strong to ignore.

  But even when she did manage to look past the burning of her skin and the boiling desire that plagued her thoughts, all she found was confusion. Everything was confusing. In the blurred space between their arrival in the plaza and waking up alone in the motel room, everything had changed. The cult that now threatened the world were the servants of the Helixweaver. The Helixweaver wanted to kill her. But the Vant’therax—the closest thing to a nemesis they’d had up until then—wanted to protect her. What the hell was that? The entire situation and its implications were intangible, ever-shifting; it was like trying to see eye to eye with Gilbert’s All is Vanity. Little wonder her body was trying to eclipse that with the mundane, the primal.

  With a sigh, she returned her attention to the task at hand. She clicked a random button on Mark’s phone, and her eyes were assaulted by the screen flashing to life. She squinted at the pale glow behind the buttons and began searching for his address book. What was she going to tell her mom? Or dad? She supposed she’d need to apologize for running off. Beyond that, she had no idea what to say. Would her parents scream her ear off over it? Would they be relieved?

  She found the button that displayed Mark’s modest list of contacts, a list made up of only five names arranged alphabetically. Annika. Isaiah. May. Ralph. Spinny. How lonely it looked. Her own list of contacts was no better now, made up only of her own blood. It had been at least a bit longer back in Grantwood. Amanda. Chelsea. For a brief time, Will. As the pain of nostalgia clouded her vision, she couldn’t help but wonder if she was doing the right thing. Could she really rely on Mark to put an end to the Yellow Dawn? Could she trust the Vant’therax not to betray him? Could she convince herself that Mark could defend himself if they did? Counting pixels in her mother’s name, her mind drifted.

  She went to press the call button on the phone. Her thumb pushed down where it would have been on her own device. The screen shifted, black and green blocks rearranging themselves. Mark’s SMS outbox appeared.

  Spinneretta blinked at the screen for a moment. Ahh, crap, she thought. Wrong button. Where’s the back button on this fossil? But by the time she recovered from her brief confusion, she noticed something that halted her search. Her name was the only one on the list. It shouldn’t have been surprising; he wasn’t exactly on the bleeding edge of technology. But at the very top, where the cursor had landed, she saw something that triggered a buried memory: a timestamp from the night they’d left Lake Cormorant.

  The memory hit her all at once in vivid clarity. She’d received a message from Mark before she’d left. At the time, she’d ignored it, unwilling to let him convince her of her folly. Now, her stomach quivered, and before she realized what she was doing something moved her to depress her thumb over the central button on the keypad. The gesture summoned that unread message to the screen. It wasn’t a violation of privacy, she was quick to tell herself; it was intended for her in the first place. But when she saw those words spelled out in jagged, pixelated letters, her breath left her.

  “Goodnight, Spinny. I love you, too.”

  Her mind went blank.

  In that moment, the only things she was aware of were the vague sense of unreality and the reinvigorated Instinct exploding through her with each beat of her heart. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, the broken camel that disbanded the caravan, the disbanded caravan that collapsed the empire. Her vision fogged over. An absolute certainty came upon her: she couldn’t go back to the motel room. If she went back to where Mark was, she knew that what frayed strands of her inhibitions remained would dissolve. She would recklessly abandon her ambitions, her guilt, and her responsibility. She would, in due course, come to accept this fragile, imperfect life she was born into. And that was something she could never allow.

  Though Annika and Mark had spoken reason into her, it was a reason poisoned with ignorance. They did not understand the Yellow King, not in the same way she Instinctually did. In the end, nothing had changed. Nothing would ever change. Fate would keep turning, a laughing wheel of fatalism. And she knew she was the only one who could break that wheel.

  Everybody has something only they can do, she remembered the fortune teller at The Carnival Sword saying. A role only they can play.

  She couldn’t give in to temptation. She had to complete the mission she’d set out to accomplish, for she was the only one who could. It was for the best that Kara had escaped; at least her little sister wouldn’t be dragged further into her burden.

  Spinneretta lifted herself to her feet and turned to face the fiberglass olive tree. She laid her hand upon the surface. If the Order of the Yellow Dawn had no interest in delivering her
to the sovereign of Zigmhen, then they were of no use to her. If they would not bring her before the Yellow King, then she’d go on her own—and this time, Mark and Annika would be unable to follow her. Unable to stop her. She’d left her family in Minnesota with the expectation she’d never see any of them again. She was grateful she’d been so blessed as to see Mark and Arthr one more time.

  Tears stood in her eyes, and she fought to control them. They would just make it more difficult. She couldn’t bear to think of leaving Mark without so much as a goodbye, but she had no choice but to swallow that gob of sorrow and embrace her life’s purpose. She had to end the story of the Yellow King and his brainwashed followers, no matter the cost.

  Even the voice in her head, dormant for the better part of the trip, awakened to her thoughts of determination. You cannot be serious, it seemed to say, sentiments expressed through deep and layered thoughts. You know that you will not kill him.

  Go to fucking hell, despair, she thought back with an acidic edge. If you’re not with me, then you’re against me. And you don’t want on this bitch’s hit list.

  Her spider legs unfolded around her. She clenched her jaw, eyes alight. Her spider legs flew into the face of the imposter tree and began to carve. The V took shape, and the hanging oval was quick to follow. Eight rays sliced the border of the V, and an upward-facing crescent crowned the center. With a final garish stroke of her legs, she painted the downward slash that completed the inverted T.

  For a moment, she just gazed at the mist-sign. She placed her hand over it, tears finally beginning their journey down her cheeks. She’d just vanish here. The only trace she’d leave behind was the sigil of the King in that olive tree, a last signature at the place of their final furtive rest. The sigil was a one-way door, she now understood. Once she entered, there would be no returning from the Web. She would either die for her mission, or succeed and spend the rest of her days alone in the desolate wastes of Zigmhen.