A smile crept up on Spinneretta. “Thank you. And thanks for keeping everyone safe.”
Annika returned a warm smile of her own. “Is Amanda awake yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank God, finally.” She staggered to her feet and slipped an arm around her crutch. “I’m going to see her, then.”
“They don’t really want visitors right now.”
Annika was already halfway down the aisle. “Do I look like I care? See you in a bit, min spindeltjej.”
When Annika vanished down the corridor leading to the elevator, Mark chuckled weakly. “The King is dead,” he repeated. “Not completely honest.”
“She doesn’t need to know.” The debate of sleep versus caffeine was short-lived. She took another gulp of the harsh chemical beverage and exhaled through her teeth as it burned her throat. “Besides. I’m not the King. Not anymore. I don’t want any more guilt on my conscience. Fuck, it was hard enough to think of myself as being his daughter.” Her lips curled in a weak, sardonic grin as she readjusted herself upon his shoulder. “I guess I can just be the Yellow Princess, instead.”
“Yellow Princess?”
She giggled, wondering if the lack of rest was making her delirious. “Spinneretta Warren, the Yellow Princess. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“I hope you’re joking.”
“Half and half. Hope that doesn’t bother you.”
His chest shook with a weak chuckle that seemed to twist with the pain in his head and leg. “It doesn’t matter much to me what you are. If you’re a King or a Princess—”
“Or a spider?”
“Or a spider.”
She pressed her face into his neck and kissed him. His other arm joined the first and squeezed her tight, making her heart flutter. Beneath her jacket, her spider legs shook with anticipation; it took all of her will not to cast off her meager disguise and wrap him in her appendages. Though even if she tried, exhaustion may very well have stopped her. And for now, that was just fine.
Amanda couldn’t remember what had happened in the space between the glowing gate and the oxygen mask, but that thoughtless dark was growing more and more appealing. As the molten hammer kept pounding against her ribs and twisting her muscles into lacerating knots, she could only grit her teeth and hope that the codeine would take effect faster. The doctors were in and out, but it was mostly a dizzy blur—a blur broken only by the pounding. At least my heart’s beating, she tried to remind herself. The heart rate monitor at her bedside kept beeping in time with her pulse, and the sound seemed to slice through the pain with a sharp and pervasive cold.
Without anything else to do, she’d spent the better part of the last few hours trying to think up hyperbolic metaphors to describe the pain to Chelsea and Spins when she saw them next, or to her parents when they came back from wherever they’d vanished to. The codeine had just started to set in, weighing her limbs down and warming her with a quiet content, when one of the nurses knocked on her door. It creaked open, and the woman whose name she thought was Carlgrow pushed her head inside. “Miss Lark, you have a visitor. Are you available?”
She grunted. If she tried to speak, the light euphoria clouding her senses might have departed.
The nurse gave her a smile and opened the door wider. There stood the woman from before. Annika. Propped up on a crutch, she nodded at the nurse and limped inside. “Thank you. I won’t take long.”
“See that you don’t. The poor girl needs her rest.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll see myself out when I’m done.”
Nurse Carlgrow gave Amanda a long look. “I’ll leave you two alone. Try not to get her too excited, eh?”
When the door clicked shut, Annika pulled a stool over to her with her crutch and sat upon it with a measure of unexpected grace. “How are you feeling?”
“It’s like the worst period of my life resurrected as a jackhammer on my ribs, which are broken and also on fire,” she said, regurgitating the runner-up for most unique metaphor.
“You sound pretty happy right now. What are they giving you? Morphine?”
“Codeine.”
“God. Poor girl.”
She groaned, pressing her cheek against her pillow. Her eyes fell shut. She knew sleep wouldn’t come, but she was so damned tired.
“You know, I was wrong,” Annika said.
“Hmm?”
“I did a little digging yesterday. And I was wrong to doubt you. I’m sorry. But, more than that, what I wanted to say is, you impressed the hell out of this girl. I’ve never seen somebody so dedicated to finding a friend. Or so skilled at it. Whatever you turned up, that’s some mighty impressive research you did. And to get stabbed twice like that and still hold on for as long as you did. That’s nothing to blow your nose at. That’s damned heroic.”
“Whatever.” She didn’t know anything about heroism. All she’d done was get an innocent man killed. How was that admirable?
“It’s not your fault, you know.”
Amanda jumped a little. She immediately regretted it when her abdominal muscles rioted in response to the movement, tensing and squeezing the throbbing wounds. “Huh?”
“I’m sure you blame yourself for Kyle. And I’m going to tell you right now: don’t. It’s a waste of good living.”
Through heavy lids, Amanda searched the woman’s face. It was calm, but not calming. How could she possibly say something like that with such confidence?
Annika slid her stool a bit closer and leaned in toward her. “When I was around your age, a lot of people died because of me. And I blamed myself for it, just like you. Take it from me: it gets easier. You get over it. You take a step away from the corpses of the past and learn to forgive. That’s step one.”
“The hell are you even talking about?” Amanda’s eyes were wet. Her lungs began to quake, and her side pulsed with each subtle motion. The dark behind her eyelids grew, and she tried hard not to sob as the memories swelled like a blood-filled sack. “I’m the one who brought him there. He didn’t have to die. If it wasn’t for me, he’d still be . . . ”
Amanda felt a hand on her shoulder. It was warm and soft, but as it glided over the mass-produced texture of her hospital gown she thought she felt a roughness, as of time-worn calluses just out of sight.
“I don’t want to take up your time,” Annika said. “Healing starts from within. But if you really blame yourself, and if you want to make amends for it, there’s a way.”
A crisp patter of paper opened Amanda’s eyes. She was staring into an unfocused sheet of something right in front of her. She moved one leaden arm toward it and numbly took the object: a business card.
Annika scooped her crutch up from where it leaned against her stool and made for the door. “I want you to do something for me, Amanda. I want you to live your life. Get good grades. Eat ice cream whenever you want it. Date boys your parents hate. Feel guilty if you want to. But above all else, I need you to think. Think about what happened in that cult, and the role you played in ending their reign. Think about what good you’ve done, and what good you could do from here if you put your skills to the proper use. And the day you turn eighteen, I want you to call me. You and I are birds of a feather, Amanda. And I’ve got a wing for you if you want it.”
With that, the woman opened the door and let herself out.
Amanda’s thoughts churned silently beneath the codeine fog. She stared at the business card in her hand, and her unfocused eyes at last deciphered the text upon it. Annika Crane, it read, Private Investigator.
Arthr thought he heard a voice calling his name. It was distant, just loud enough to rouse him from the stupor that numbed his brain and dulled his senses. The voice was soft and kind. Was it Spins? No, it sounded wrong. But then who was it?
The question was a strange one, because as soon as it vocalized itself in his mind it lit his entire body on fire. Pain spread from the center of his spine out across the whole surface of his skin. His mind woke fro
m standby. The whole-body burning grew brighter, searing his nerves and grinding at his bones. A dry moan seeped from his lungs, twisting his neck left and right in hopes of dulling the pain. Everything was white. Was this heaven? If so, God must’ve been a real asshole to not take his damned pain away from him.
A small gasp came from beside him. “Arthr?”
He opened his eyes, and the unformed brightness came into blinding definition. A migraine started in his forehead and worked its way down his spinal cord. A tiled ceiling. He saw a cluster of tubing and strange machinery off to one side with wires leading into his body. Then he saw two faces above him: Kara and Chelsea.
“Arthr, you’re awake!” Chelsea yelled.
“Ahh! Welcome back, Arthr!” Kara nearly leapt for joy, her crystal blue eyes shining with light.
“Hey.” It was all he could manage. His face flopped against a sopping wet pillow. The machine beside him featured a screen with a jagged waveform that rose and fell with his heartbeat. A bunch of the wires and tubing ended at his arms, and a half-empty bag of blood hung on a rack not far from his bedside. Ahh. I see. That probably isn’t good.
“How are you feeling?” Kara asked. “Are you okay?”
He groaned and tried to roll one shoulder. A sharp pain ripped through his muscles and he abandoned the gesture. “Fuck. What happened to me?”
Kara leaned over him, eyes bulging. “You don’t remember?” At her side, Chelsea grew a little pale.
His thoughts wound backward, trying to figure out how he’d gotten there. “All I remember is . . . ” His mind brushed against something dark. Then something yellow. He swallowed hard. Nemo. The Helixweaver. A violent, acidic upheaval rumbled up from his stomach. The agony came first as a dry but familiar nerve pain near the base of his legs. Then came the wet crunching as the leg was torn off.
Sweat beaded along his skin. He tried to flex his legs under him. One by one, they gave lethargic twitches as the muscles contracted. One, two, three, four, five. Guess that explains why it feels like I’m lying on broken glass. But that didn’t explain everything. It felt like his shoulder had been ripped open, and both his hands felt different. They were heavy, tightly bound, like they’d been assembled wrong. He tried to wiggle a finger, and a sharp pain responded. “The fuck. Don’t tell me my hands are broken, too.”
“The doctors said so,” Chelsea said. “Said they’d never seen so many metacarpal fractures before. Arthr, do you really not remember?”
He tried to lift his neck far enough to get a look at his hands, but he gave up halfway through the effort. “No.”
Kara’s legs writhed around her. “It was awesome! You stabbed that spider monster in the neck and then you took on like forty Websworn all by yourself! And then that cult leader guy showed up, and you straight up beat him to death with your bare hands! You’re a freakin’ hero!”
“What?” He coughed, a pain ringing in his chest and shoulder. “Are you sure? That doesn’t sound at all like me.”
Chelsea shook her head. “It’s true.” When Arthr turned to look up at her, he found her eyes glistening with tears. “You saved us all.”
He stared at her. Her soft features were dreamlike. He only vaguely remembered her even being there in the caves. But now that Kara mentioned it, the pain in his fists seemed so specific, like it was trying to evoke some memories that had been buried beneath blood loss and shock.
Then, a moment of lucidity came. Arthr gasped. “Kara! Cover up your legs! What are you thinking?”
“It’s fine,” she replied. “There’s no reason to hide anymore. I went on TV and everything.”
“You what?” The words made only tangential sense, but she seemed confident in their validity. He didn’t have the energy to think about it one way or another. “Well, shit.” The pillow was soft, but not soft enough to ease his throbbing headache. “Guess that means it doesn’t matter what the doctors know now, huh? Don’t suppose either of you asked if my legs will grow back?”
“Arthr,” Chelsea said, voice cracking. She put her hand on his shoulder and a warm shiver spread through him. “This is all my fault. If I could’ve just stopped Amanda from . . . ”
Something tingled in his chest. “What are you talking about? Don’t be stupid. This isn’t your fault.” That belongs to the King, doesn’t it? Guess I understand something after all.
“Oh!” Kara gasped, one hand slipping into her pocket. “Almost forgot. Annie wanted me to give you this when you woke up.” She produced a note and handed it out to him.
Annie? His hands refused to move, and so he shifted his weight painfully to one side and unfurled a pair of his remaining spider legs. They were as heavy as lead and felt like they were pierced all over with rusty nails. With a great effort, he clasped the paper between his leg-tips and brought it close to his face. His eyes had difficulty focusing on the blurry smudge, but it soon resolved into three lines of supple handwriting.
Fine. I take it back. You’re not useless.
But don’t think this changes anything.
I’m still way out of your league, kid.
—A.C.
His stomach tingled as he read the words. If he had the strength, he’d have stood and pumped a fist defiantly in the air. Fuck you, I told you! You’re outta my league, huh? I’m afraid you got that backwards; I’m out of your league! How do you like that? His heart thundered with a long-moribund pride, and the EKG beside him morphed in response.
Chelsea leaned over him with a suspicious glance, as if trying to read the lettering through the paper. “What’s that?”
He blinked at her for a moment. A smile then came to his lips. With a small flourish that sent blades slicing up and down his arms, he crumpled the note between his legs and cast it off the side of the bed. “It’s nothing. Just some garbage.”
Spinneretta had slept fitfully upon Mark’s shoulder for just over an hour when the jingle of the front door sang to her in its grating chime.
“Spins!” a voice on the edge of hysteria gasped.
Her eyes shot open and she started upright, a spike of pain already hammering her muscles as she did. “Mom?”
Her mother stood in the middle of the automatic door, dark circles beneath her eyes, her disheveled hair resembling a mix between a mop and a broken piano. For a long moment she didn’t move, and then she broke into a run toward Spinneretta.
Spinneretta was on her feet. When May crashed into her, she had to use her spider legs to absorb the force of the impact.
“Spinneretta Eglantine Warren, what in God’s name is the matter with you!?” Her mom wrapped her in a hug that crushed the air out of her. “Do you understand how upset your father and I have been? You’re grounded until you’re twenty-six, young lady!”
She used two of her concealed limbs to open a gap in the hug wide enough for her lungs to move. The pain was filled with love. Something warm and wet blurred her vision. “Hi, Mom. What are you . . . ?”
May looked for a moment over her shoulder. “Annika called us and said Arthr was in the hospital, and . . . Just what were you two thinking running away like that! After all we’ve been through, you know we only have each other. So why?”
She placed a hand upon her mother’s arm. “It’s a long story. But it’s okay now. It’s over. Where’s Dad?”
“He’s parking the—”
Another chime. “Spins!”
Her heart jumped. Right on cue. “H-hey, Dad.”
His huge strides brought him across the room in a matter of moments, and she couldn’t help but gasp when his strong arms pressed her and May against him. “God-fucking-dammit, Spins.” Breathing choked, he stood there shaking with the three of them crushed together. “Don’t you understand what you did to your poor mother? How could you do this?”
“Mmph. I’m sorry.” There was nothing else to say. She’d done what she had to. And in the end, miraculous though it was, she’d lived through it.
“Where’s Arthr and Kara?” her dad asked.
“Arthr’s up on the second floor,” she said. “His condition is stable, but I don’t think he’s awake yet. Kara’s up there with him, along with Chelsea.”
“Oh, God,” Ralph muttered. When he finally released her and May, he took a menacing step past her. A grim foreboding hit her right in the solar plexus. “And what about you, huh?” He was looking right at where Mark sat with his head reclining. “Sleeping?”
Mark grunted. “Merely resting my eyes.”
“Don’t think for a second I’m letting you get away with this. I know this just has to be your doing!”
Spinneretta shuddered. “Dad?”
“Ralph,” May said, “what are you talking about?”
Ralph’s face was red. His posture made him look like a grasshopper trying to appear taller than it was. “Lemme guess. This was all part of some bullshit plan of yours. From the very beginning. You damned cultist. Bet you have some priceless excuse as to why you’re here. What does any of this have to do with you?”
Mark just sat there, not moving.
“Goddammit, you fucking look at me when I’m talking to you!”
Mark’s eyes drifted open, and he considered Ralph with a bored expression. “I hate to disappoint you, Ralph. But I was wrong.”
Her father’s posture shifted. “What?”
“Back in Grantwood. I was wrong. The Weeping Man. He wasn’t just a legend. But you needn’t worry about it anymore. He’s dead now.” He lowered his gaze to Spinneretta. “Your daughter killed him.”
Ralph’s eyes widened. He gave Spinneretta a horrified look, his lower lip shaking. “What? You’re . . . You’re telling me that—”
“Ralph!” May yelled. Her voice sent a chill down Spinneretta’s spine. “Cultist? Weeping Man? You’d better start giving me some straight answers. No more of your lies. No more misdirection. What the hell is going on!?”
Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3) Page 74