As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  She understood on a level beyond that of mind that if she could re-create herself from the most microscopic of components, then she was no longer bound by the shapes she’d known. She was no longer bound by anything. She knew this now . . . and so did Jack.

  She dropped her hand, and the link was dropped with it as well. She stepped back. Jack heard a dry cracking sound, and from Brigid Casey’s back sprang a quartet of membranous chitin wings, like those of a dragonfly but as wide as a billboard.

  She leaped into the sky, her wings churning against the air with a deafening buzz. The downdraft sent Jack to his knees, sent them all to their knees.

  The surviving agents tried to blast her with the freeze cannons, but she quickly flew up and out of range. They pulled their sidearms, but the bullets that hit her simply ricocheted off her chitin armor as she hovered above them, circling.

  “What’s she doing?” asked Ross. Even his voice had been reduced to a humble whisper.

  Jack had no answer. What Brigid Casey’s plans were—for them or for the world—were hers alone to reveal. She threw back her head, letting loose a scream that dwarfed all that had come before. This was not a scream of warning, not even of rage. It was a scream of triumph.

  The throb hammering Jack’s mind instantly increased a thousandfold. He was in the heart of a tornado and at once had the sick realization that although she had reached into his mind, it was not only his mind she’d touched this time. She had touched the minds of countless others.

  The earth began to tremble as if she had summoned an earthquake. And Jack knew with grim certainty that what she had summoned was far worse.

  Shapes began to emerge from the soil all around them, clawing their way to the surface. Jack could hear clods of dirt being shoved aside. Asphalt and brickwork cracking. And when they finally burst from their earthen prisons, he saw them for what they were. They may have been able to sink their illusory hooks into everyone around him, but not Jack. Not ever again.

  He saw them for the boneless terrors they were. His old enemy. He could feel them, feel them the same way he had felt her. He was as connected to them now as they were to her. And they were rising from the earth in the thousands.

  He realized in a flash that what he had fought so hard to destroy here less than a year ago was only a fraction of the number of the horrors that slept beneath this city. They’d simply been waiting for someone to wake them. They’d been waiting for her. They’d been waiting for their Queen. And she’d come home at last.

  She rose into the sky, New Harbor’s downtown directly in her path.

  And her legions followed.

  Forty-Nine

  Molly Harbou had just finished picking up her order at Ming Chang’s Famous Wok, the only decent Chinese joint in a ten-block radius of her studio apartment. She’d ordered the usual, chicken breast with steamed broccoli and a side of brown rice, hold the cookie.

  On her way back, she planned to swing by the sole reliably functioning DVD vending machine in the neighborhood and, with any luck, score a rental copy of the newest Nicholas Sparks movie. She couldn’t remember the title exactly, but she’d enjoyed all the others so much, why would this one be any different?

  The stories were okay, and the dialogue was, too—if a bit cheesy—but it was the men she was always willing to shell out a buck for. The beefcake those Hollywood hacks pulled in was always guaranteed Grade A. So what if the actors had all the expression of carved Greek statues, just so long as they also had the physiques to match.

  She was already halfway to the machine when she spotted them. Almost an army’s worth of men so beautiful it made her brain hurt, marching past her without so much as a single glance in her direction.

  • • •

  Bob Bartlett was one lucky man by his own reckoning. He counted six large and change as he wheeled away from the basement steps of his weekly poker game.

  Bob had only two vices: poker and women. Tonight he’d scored on the first. Why not press his luck and see if he couldn’t score with the second, too?

  Axis, his old haunt on the strip, was long gone, but New Harbor still had a few watering holes that weren’t just stomping grounds for University fuckwads. Heck, there was one right around the corner. He had plenty of cash to burn, and if it took a hundred dollars’ worth of booze to weasel his way into some sweet thing’s honeypot, he’d pay it.

  He didn’t have to travel all the way around the block, however. Within five steps, Bob had stumbled across a vision of beauty who made every woman he’d ever lusted after look like a wart-covered troll.

  She was on him in an instant. Her hot, sucking mouth wet on his neck. Bob’s folding green fell to the street, forgotten. So did his body once it was drained of blood.

  • • •

  Florence Levenda’s dog, Bix, had once again dragged her into the night for yet another sniff-and-pee stroll around the block. She loved the little guy, but he could be a real “shit tzu” sometimes—as she’d joke whenever the opportunity presented itself.

  As she waited for Bix to lift his leg against a lamppost, Florence heard a grinding hum, like the sound of a swarm of bees ten miles wide. She looked up, and past the softly glowing orb of the streetlight, she spotted what had to be a bird of some kind silhouetted against the silvery night sky. It moved in an odd zigzag pattern, like a hummingbird or a dragonfly—both of which it was far too large to be.

  Another sound joined the first. It was the steady thwop of a helicopter rotor. It shot across the night, on a determined course right for that shadow high above her. The bird or whatever.

  Bix barked, and Florence saw a flash of fire from the nose of the helicopter. Then she heard the ringing report of gunfire an instant later. Then came an ear-shattering scream rending the night. She ducked down, clutching Bix close and shutting her eyes. When she opened them, it was to see the helicopter falling from the sky.

  • • •

  As Marc DuPrix clocked out for the night, he couldn’t stop thinking about Ashland Thorne. It had to be fate that she’d popped back into his life just weeks after Victoria had all but dropped his heart into a Waring blender. It just had to be. Although she had yet to call him back, he knew it was only a matter of time. He’d already run through countless fantasy permutations of what their eventual date would look like, each one more outlandishly romantic than the last. This time, he was going to get it right.

  He shouldered his satchel and headed down the front steps of the Copperwaite Library. The stark shadow of Drakewell Tower hovered above him, and just as he hit the sidewalk, he caught sight of her.

  “Ashland!” he called. But she did not turn. Maybe she hadn’t heard him. He called out again. “Ashland! Ashland, it’s me, Marc.”

  But she just kept walking, eventually disappearing around the far corner, headed toward Drakewell.

  Marc huffed to catch up. He rounded the corner and spotted her. She wasn’t going into the tower; she was climbing the outside face of it! And climbing right along with her were hundreds of others. Every single one of them an Ashland Thorne.

  • • •

  Agent Gorshen banked the helicopter around the far side of the six-spired roof of Drakewell Tower.

  “Don’t get too close!” barked the gunner. “You saw what she did to the other chopper.”

  Gorshen had. They’d watched the whole thing happen from just half a mile away. The lead helicopter had gotten within firing range, and the anomaly had knocked it out of the sky as if she were swatting a gnat. There was no way Gorshen was going to get anywhere near something that could do that to her, or the agents in her care, if she could help it.

  Moments before takeoff, they’d fitted one of the last remaining freezers to the useless barrel of the helicopter’s nose gun with little more than baling wire and prayer. The plan had been for the lead helicopter to draw the anomaly’s attention with tracer rounds. Then, while she was distracted, they would blast her with the freeze cannon and send her hurtling to earth in a neat
ly frozen package. They could scoop up the remains and put them in a containment unit before she had a chance to pull that resurrection stunt again.

  The plan had changed when the first chopper went down in flames.

  They’d kept a safe distance since, relaying reports back to Agent Ross as they followed the anomaly. And then they’d hovered just at the height of the tower’s four copper clock faces and observed.

  “Any sign?” Ross’s voice crackled over the common channel.

  “Negative,” replied the gunner. “No. Wait. I think we’ve got movement in the belfry.” He swiveled the freeze cannon toward the tower’s open upper reaches, locking on the shadow lurking there.

  Now they were just waiting on orders, hovering, burning fuel at a gallon a minute. It was around that time that Gorshen noticed movement on the front face of the tower. She shifted the chopper a bit closer, and then a bit closer.

  “Gorshen! What are you doing?”

  But the gunner’s words fell on deaf ears. Gorshen’s eyes and soul had locked on who was crawling up the outside of that tower. She knew that she had to be with him. Even if that meant plowing right into Drakewell. They would be together then, together forever.

  • • •

  Beth watched as Agent Sands pressed two fingers to her earpiece.

  “Agent Ross,” Sands said. “Reports are coming in that the anomaly has barricaded itself on the top of Drakewell Tower. It looks like the other creatures are guarding her. And . . .” Her voice went soft. “And we just lost the second helicopter.”

  They stood gathered in the central yard of the Division compound. Ross sucked in a deep lungful of air. “I want a full assault. Gather as many agents as we can. We’ll go in in waves.”

  “It won’t work,” Jack said. “You know it won’t. You’ve seen what she’s capable of. It’ll be like Asbury Park all over again.”

  “Do you have a better suggestion?”

  “Yes,” Jack answered. “Let me go up there. We communicated once. We can do it again.”

  To Beth, it seemed as if Ross might actually be entertaining the idea.

  At least until Jack added, “But I go in alone.”

  “Unacceptable.”

  “I could have stopped this right here if your trigger-happy goons hadn’t ruined it. Don’t let your pride get in the way this time, Ross. Give me a chance. And when I come back down—if I come back down—you can have what’s left of me, okay? I’ll even finish that game of Go if you want.”

  Ross’s gaze fell to his shoes. He clenched his jaw and set it. “No.”

  “Ross—”

  “I said no. We need better than some tenuous ‘mind meld.’ We need—”

  “I know I can get through to her.”

  “Not good enough.”

  “Ross, listen—”

  It happened in a flash. Beth saw Jack’s arm shoot out, lengthening, just as Brigid Casey’s had, and morphing into a grasping tendril. She jerked back in horror as she watched it wrap around Ross’s throat and force him to his knees.

  “Is this good enough?”

  This is not happening. This is not happening. Thisisnothappening. Nothappeningnothappeningnothappening— A pistol shot rang out just behind Beth, breaking her terrified awe. The shots ricocheted off the hard chitin scales that had instantly formed around Jack’s body.

  Ross almost smiled. “Jack,” he said calmly, “you’ve been holding out on us.”

  Fifty

  The gray monolith of Drakewell Tower jutted into the New Harbor sky like an upraised hand, each spindly spire a finger scraping the clouds.

  A contingent of Division agents surrounded Jack. Ten times the number that had initially been stationed at the New Harbor complex had been scrambled and rushed in over the past hour. Ross told him that more were coming by the minute.

  They’d cleared the area, using typical Division subterfuge to divert all police attention elsewhere. Every agent stood at the ready, salt and pellet pistols in hand, should Jack fail. Every last vial of gas he’d produced was also in their possession—for all the good it would do them.

  Agents Ross and Thorne stood to his left, Beth alone to his right. She reached out and gripped his upper arm, squeezing it for comfort, perhaps even for luck. He’d seen the horror in her eyes when she’d first witnessed his transformation. If she feared him now, if she was repelled by what he’d become, she was hiding it well.

  He turned to her. “When this is over, we’ll get those croissants.”

  A sob-soaked laugh spilled from her. She met and held his gaze with a look as determined as his own. She reached up to caress his cheek. “I lo—”

  “Time enough for that,” Jack said, taking her hand, “when I come back down.”

  Beth nodded and let go.

  Jack walked up to Drakewell’s massive mahogany doors and pushed his way in without so much as a polite knock.

  Inside the vestibule, the air was still, but it reeked of copper and earth so strong it sent Jack’s head spinning. The creatures were everywhere. He didn’t need to see them; he could sense them. He sensed them in his mind. Like the hum of a high-tension wire, their very being betrayed their presence to him.

  He stepped into the tower’s central chamber. The low ceiling of the vestibule gave way to a hollow column that stretched for tens of stories, all the way to the upper reaches of the tower and its fabled carillon. Jack knew that if he didn’t succeed, Drakewell’s famous midnight chimes would be New Harbor’s death knell.

  Above him in the tower’s spiraling balconies, Jack spotted countless creatures spidering in the shadows. He saw them as they were, in their true shape. Not only saw them, he felt them. His old enemy had no pull on him, not anymore. And something in the back of his mind, some instinct, told him that they would not attack. That they were welcoming him.

  He’d come prepared to fight, but as he climbed flight after flight, the creatures only watched, parting for him as if he were royalty, as if he really were Kander’s Monarch.

  • • •

  Finally, he reached the twenty-second floor and its open-air carillon. Past the low balustrades that ringed the upper deck was nothing but space. Past that, a two-hundred-fifty-foot drop.

  He looked to the center and knew that no bells would chime tonight. The belfry had already become home to a new hivelike mound. Far larger than the one destroyed in Asbury Park, it took up half the room and was growing by the minute. He watched with detached fascination as creatures willingly lined up to become entombed within. One by one, they pressed themselves against the mound’s papery skin and melded into it.

  She no longer had to hunt them; he knew that deep inside, the way he knew more and more about her—and them—with each step he took closer to the mound. She was sharing all of this and more with him. And she was doing it through their unique chemical communication. When she’d resurrected herself, she’d come back with more than just the knowledge of how to control her own form; she’d also come back with knowledge of how to control them.

  She sat atop the apex of the mound. Her eyes sparkled in the darkness. She’d shed her wings and now appeared as just a young woman, clad in nothing but the night. And as he watched, her face began to change. Her mouth lengthened into a long, sharp needle formed of that same chitin-like material. And with her eyes still locked on Jack, she jabbed it deep into the husk beneath her.

  She was feeding on the venom. He knew that. And not only that, she was showing him how it was done. How he, too, must partake of this sacrament. Jack felt himself moving toward the mound. It was useless to resist, and he knew it.

  He felt his own mouth begin to stretch into a stinger, the same as hers. And before he realized what had happened, he’d jabbed it through the papery hide and directly into the venom sac of one of the still-living creatures trapped within, guided by an instinct he could not yet comprehend.

  The venom rushed into him. His new body devoured it greedily. This was no longer an addiction. This was sustenance,
his life’s blood. He drank and drank, until he knew the creature inside had been bled dry. And with each pull, he felt the power inside him growing.

  Finally satiated, he pulled back. His face once again became his own. She was there, standing right in front of him, her arms outstretched in welcome. She led him to the edge of the open balcony, and together they looked out at New Harbor and the world beyond.

  They could remake it together, her gesture seemed to say. And all it would take would be for them to clean the slate. For them to wipe it all away. Humanity had had its turn, and now their time had come. A new world awaited, and it could start right here. The future for them would be as boundless as the stars they were destined to conquer.

  Jack felt her hands reach for him. The soft tips of her fingers found his temples, and once again, he was in her mind—and she in his. He saw her past. Not in flashes but with blinding clarity.

  Jack saw the horrors she’d endured at the hands of Lascarre. Jack was with her for every betrayal, every ounce of pain that she had suffered was also his. He was there when Lascarre had grown scared of his creation and had her entombed in ice. And he felt that paralyzing cold that had held her bound for almost a century—and he knew now that she’d been awake for every agonizing second of it.

  And as her memories flowed into him, he knew that his own were also flowing into her. Memories of Sarah. Of the hunt. Of his own imprisonment and experimentation at the hands of Wilcox. They were the same, her thoughts seemed to say.

  Except they weren’t. Along with her memories came others, those of the slaughter she’d partaken of, the blind rage, and the vengeance she’d wrought. Jack felt his hold on his own memories—of Beth and the love they shared—beginning to slip away.

  No. They were not slipping away. They were being drained. She was draining him of the last dregs of humanity. The cleansing she’d envisioned would begin with him—and would end with the world.