Frail Human Heart

by Zoe Marriott

  “You two stay here,” I said to Jack and Hikaru. “We’ve got this.”

  CHAPTER 3

  INCY WINCY

  My dad stepped out behind me and shut the door on Jack and Hikaru’s worried faces.

  The woman stumbled to a halt, staring at us. “Can you see it? Do you see that?”

  I turned in the direction of her pointing finger and got my first look at the danger that was causing the katana’s energy to growl.

  The thing lumbered clumsily down the centre of the road. Its massive, hair-covered abdomen seemed too heavy for the thin, black-and-white striped legs that heaved it forward. The body was black, marked with white zigzags, and had two segments. Mandibles bigger than steak knives rubbed together with a dry, papery sound.

  It was a spider. A spider the size of a Dobermann.

  The creature’s cluster of gleaming black eyes were fixed on the woman. It was slow and didn’t seem very agile, but it never stopped moving and it never looked away. I wondered how long it had been chasing her. Long enough to send her frantic. Long enough to send anyone frantic.

  “You see it, right?” she begged us. “Please tell me you’re seeing this!”

  “We can see it,” I promised.

  “Unfortunately.” My dad’s face had screwed up with revulsion. “I mean, my God, what’s next?”

  “Never ask that question,” I advised. “Can you get her inside? I’ll deal with this thing.”

  “Are you sure? Don’t you want me to—?”

  “I can handle it.”

  Dad hesitated again, giving me another of those searching looks. What was he looking for? What did he expect to see? Whatever it was, he obviously didn’t find it in my eyes. When he finally nodded and peeled off towards the woman, his expression was tense and worried. I sighed, and made for the other end of the street, twisting the katana in slow figures of eight to limber up my wrist.

  The spider took no notice of me at first, just pulled itself steadily along with arrhythmic lurching motions, as if I wasn’t there. Then I stepped into its path – blocking its view of its prey. That got its attention.

  The spider let out a weird sound, a series of oddly mechanical clicking noises. It reared back, and the top half of its body heaved up off the ground. While the front set of legs began to wave in the air, its back legs strained, lifting its body until the bulbous head was nearly level with mine. The razor-sharp jaws clashed together in warning.

  An involuntary sound of disgust popped out of my lips. I was so busy trying not to gag, I almost failed to notice that the back half of the creature was curling up underneath it to point the sharp tip of its abdomen at me. That can’t be good.

  I jumped aside as a stream of greyish web-stuff splattered onto the pavement.

  As a rule, I wasn’t a spider killer. I preferred to catch them with a glass and a sheet of paper and put them outside. But this situation definitely called for an exception.

  I ran around the side of the spider onto the pavement, tracking its awkward movements. It tried to turn and keep me in sight, but those crooked legs were just too slow. I struck from behind, two fast diagonal slices that made the blade flash in the pre-dawn light. Four of the spider’s six back legs parted from its abdomen and slid away with papery rustling noises. The heavy body crashed onto the road. The creature cried out again − a series of dry clicks that rose and fell almost like a human voice speaking. More of the sticky web goo spurted out. I brought the katana down on the most vulnerable point of the spider’s body: the join between the swollen abdomen and the upper carapace.

  The blade severed the creature’s exoskeleton neatly in half. Rusty liquid gushed out, mixing with the pool of web-liquid under the body. The spider collapsed onto the ground, front legs thrashing in its death throes. I waited for it to fall still, then turned to see if my father had come back yet.

  There was no sign of him.

  The street was deserted except for the running woman – who wasn’t running any more. Standing motionless in the middle of the road about a hundred yards away, she smiled.

  Dread dropped into my stomach like a ball of cement. The sword was still humming in my grip.

  “Where is my father?” My voice was toneless. Flat. A killer’s voice.

  “He’s gone. You’re next.” Her voice was different now, too: deeper and more resonant.

  She wasn’t a woman. She wasn’t any kind of human. She was a monster in disguise.

  Sparks crackled to life on the katana’s blade.

  Dad’s all right. He has to be all right.

  I won’t lose him, too.

  Her smile widened as she watched me approach, like a patron in a restaurant as the waiter rolls the dessert trolley to her table. In my mind I drove the hilt of the katana into her stomach, then brought my elbow down on the back of her neck, and finally applied my boot to her face until she told me where my dad was and that he was OK.

  A second before I reached her she threw her head back. Mechanical clicking sounds rolled from her mouth. I staggered back as a swollen spider’s abdomen burst out of the bottom of her black overcoat. It was dingy white, and the size of a hatchback. Six segmented white legs unfolded, lifting her from the road. The monster rose until her upper carapace towered six feet above me. Her human arms stretched and grew. Thrusting out of the sleeves of the coat, they reached the ground and then turned back on themselves. The jagged white limbs were each longer than my whole body and tipped with a curving, razor-sharp claw.

  She bowed her head slightly, dark hair falling over her face in long, lank coils.

  “They call me Jorōgumo,” she said, with a hint of ceremony. “Mother of Spiders.”

  I darted forward, bringing my flaring blade sideways for a clean slice at her front leg. She twitched it away. I ducked under it and thrust up at the vulnerable joint of her body hidden beneath the remains of the overcoat. She was gone before the sword could make contact, skittering backwards onto the pavement with a lightning-fast, alien movement. Her taunting laugh echoed down the street.

  “Where. Is. He?” I stalked after her. “What did you do with my dad?”

  “What do you think?” she asked. Her tongue flicked out to caress her lips. “Were you listening when I introduced myself? I am a spider, after all.”

  No. No. She’s lying.

  There hadn’t been time for her to kill him and suck out his blood. He would have fought her – I would have heard the struggle. He was too strong to go down that easily. She was just trying to shake me, mess with my head.

  “Oh, I was listening.” I drew near her again. “I’ve just sliced up one of your babies. How do you feel about that, Mother of Spiders?”

  Her upper body moved in a jerky shrug. “Eh. I can always have more.”

  She lurched forward, one of the massive forelegs slicing at me. I dodged, and the claw-like foot smashed into the road, sending chips of tarmac flying. I reversed the blade to strike at the limb – and saw her abdomen curl up. I abandoned the strike, skidding to the left as a string of white web-stuff thicker than my arm squirted past me. The movement brought me straight into the path of her other foreleg, forcing me away from her again.

  “Some mother you are,” I sniped.

  She bared her teeth at me. “Some daughter you are.”

  The spider-woman manoeuvred sideways, driving me back. She was so much faster and more agile than the small one. I needed to concentrate if I didn’t want to get skewered, but my gaze kept flitting past her, desperately searching for any sign of my father.

  What had she done to him?

  I won’t let go again.

  Something barrelled into my side. My knees went out from under me and I hit the edge of the curb with a bone-jarring thud, rolling instinctively. A striped black-and-white leg stabbed at my chest. I rolled again – and tipped into the gutter.

  A spider the size of a Great Dane landed on top of me, its hairy abdomen crushing my legs. Chattering mandibles lurched towards my face. I thrust my
katana up between us. The mandibles clamped on it, and the blade flared white-hot. The spider made an anguished clicking sound. It wrenched backward, trying to jump off me and drag the sword out of my grasp. The flames seared its face. One of the bulging black eyes popped with a loud snap, showering me in goo. The stink of its burning flesh was rancid.

  Long legs thrashed around me as I jammed my hand up under its thorax, trying to push it off. It lifted a couple of inches – and I felt the abdomen fighting to curl up between us and spray me with web. Hurriedly I let its body drop and grabbed one of the legs. Bristly hairs abraded my palm as I twisted the limb up, trying to snap it off. I would rip the thing apart bit by bit if I had to.

  I had to find my father.

  A booted foot slammed into the spider. The sharp blow knocked the katana’s burning blade free of the locked mandibles and drove it into the side of the monster’s head. The spider shuddered. The boot kicked again, and the spider flipped off me and landed on its back. It curled up into a ball, legs twitching.

  “Need a hand there?” asked a familiar voice.

  I rolled to my feet, gaping like an idiot. It was really her, all in one piece, neat and tidy as ever. I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Rachel! Are you OK? Where have you been?”

  She gave me an Are You Serious? look. “How about we catch up later, Xena. Is that your dad?”

  “Where?” I whipped around.

  Relief made the world spin dizzily around me. It was him. He was alive and, judging by his expression, seriously pissed off. Several globs of web goo plastered him to the side panel of a van parked on the street. His whole right arm, one leg and his upper left arm were immobile. Another piece of web was stuck over his mouth, but he’d managed to get his left hand up and was working at it. His sword was still stubbornly clenched in his trapped right hand. I leapt forward to help.

  He ripped the spiderweb gag off. “Look out!”

  Behind me, Jorōgumo let out another clicking cry.

  “Get him off there,” I said urgently, giving Rachel a hasty push towards where he was trapped. “Quick.”

  I turned back to face the monster.

  A tide of spiders crawled over the houses behind Jorōgumo, washing down onto the pavement. They ranged from house-cat-sized to nearly as big as the one Rachel had just nuked. There were dozens of them.

  Way, way too many for me to hold off alone.

  The katana seemed to tremble in my hand, energy throbbing. I could call on the power of the sword’s first true name – Shinobu’s name – but what if that broke the blade’s intelligence free again? The baby spiders surged around their mother’s legs and scuttled across the road straight at us.

  Jorōgumo grinned.

  My eyes flickered back to Rachel. She was sawing at the web with my father’s sword. “Hurry up.”

  “I am trying,” she snapped.

  “Mio, run!” my father ordered. “Get back to the house. Rachel, you, too.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Me neither, so shut up and help me,” Rachel told him.

  The spiders kept coming. I braced myself.

  The front door of my house flew open with a crash.

  “Yippee ki-yay!”

  Hikaru shot down the steps and into the road, his tail whipping at the air. A spray of lightning bolts zipped away from him and hit the first line of spiders. A large one popped, messily. Jack skidded out after Hikaru, slamming the door behind her. She clutched one of my mother’s wicker shopping baskets in one hand, and there was a glass bottle in the other. Her arm went back like a cricket player’s. She pitched the bottle straight at Jorōgumo.

  The spider-woman dodged. The bottle hit the ground next to her and burst into flames. Jorōgumo shrieked as fire licked her legs. Several of the smaller spiders went up with a loud sizzle.

  “Go get her, She-Ra!” Jack yelled at me.

  Behind me, Rachel laughed. “It’s Xena, Jacqueline. Xena!”

  I saw Jack’s face light up with joy as she heard her sister’s voice. Hikaru whipped his tail again, driving the sea of spiders back towards their mother. His mouth was set in a mad grin of effort and elation.

  OK, time to try something really stupid.

  I charged Jorōgumo.

  Spiders crunched under my feet as I leapt from back to back, picking up speed. When I hit the edge of the road, I jumped, putting everything I had into it. With a mad war cry, I flipped in midair and landed on Jorōgumo’s back. The impact travelled through her body like a piledriver. Her spindly legs buckled.

  Weird clicking sounds almost deafened me as I seized the back of her overcoat to hold myself steady and brought the katana straight down in a powerful one-handed thrust, aiming for her waist – the narrow point where the torso met the abdomen.

  The blade went through the spider-woman’s chitin armour like a warm finger sinking into melting ice cream. I dragged the sword sideways to inflict maximum damage. She convulsed, legs jerking and flailing. I let go of the coat, spread my arms for balance and kicked. My boot thudded solidly between her shoulder blades.

  With a crack, Jorōgumo’s upper carapace separated from the hairy abdomen. Her human-looking torso toppled down onto the tarmac. The rest of her body juddered and then collapsed, almost throwing me off. Down in the road, the baby spiders let out shrill sounds as they saw their mother die.

  I leapt away from the spider-woman’s death throes. My landing crushed two of the smaller spiders, and I diced two more with a quick two-handed slash of the katana. To my right, Hikaru and Jack closed in, herding the spiders towards me with lightning and fire. My father was finally free, and was quite calmly instructing Rachel on the best way to use his sword to kill the monsters, even as he crushed them underfoot, punched them down and ripped off their legs with his bare hands. Overhead the sun was finally rising above the buildings, casting long fingers of light between the clouds and into the street.

  Within five minutes, Jorōgumo’s army was nothing more than ashes, twitching legs and splatters of goo staining the road.

  “What now, boss?” Hikaru asked tiredly, looking at me.

  When did I become the boss? A quick glance at the others showed them all – even my dad – staring at me expectantly, as if they were waiting for orders. I cleared my throat awkwardly. “Um. I think we’re done here. Showers?”

  To my relief, everyone nodded.

  “You! You can make bacon sarnies to apologize for scaring the crap out of me,” Jack said roughly, grabbing at Rachel and attempting to put her in a headlock.

  Rachel fended her off with one hand, holding my father’s katana carefully away with the other. “Euw, get off. Don’t get spider guts on me!”

  They headed for the house and I took a moment to sag, dazed with relief. We’d survived again. All of us, this time. We were safe. I had no idea how.

  And I had no idea how long it would last.

  CHAPTER 4

  CONTROL FREAKING OUT

  T he water swirling around the shower drain was an odd brownish colour. A mixture of amber Shikome blood from yesterday, a few dashes of rusty spider blood that had soaked through my clothes this morning and quite a bit of my own red stuff, which had dried in my hair and in long streaks down my neck and back. The wound had healed now, but I didn’t need the diluted pink drips trickling over the white tiles to remind me of the Foul Woman’s talons clawing open my scalp. I would never forget anything that had happened yesterday. Never.

  No matter how much I might want to.

  My chest felt tight − heart thundering, breaths rattling painfully in my throat as I fought the deluge of images and sensations that threatened to overwhelm me. Dad’s chalky face. The stench of burning feathers clogging my nose. Shinobu’s eyes…

  I couldn’t keep going back there in my head. I had to get it together.

  Slowly, I managed to bring my breathing under control, tamping the flashback down into some abandoned dark corner of myself. My pulse still felt frantic and thready, and when
I unclenched my hands I found that I’d crushed the bottle of bodywash into a mess of jagged plastic shards.

  When I fumbled the water off and shoved back the shower curtain, my hand, reaching out for the towel, didn’t look like mine. It was too big, the fingers too long, the wrist too sinewy. The sword’s immense explosion of power yesterday had made me grow, again. Everything felt subtly off.

  I didn’t know my body any more. I wasn’t sure I knew myself any more.

  I dried off as quickly as I could. The bathroom mirror was misted with steam, and I didn’t want the reflective surface to start clearing before I got out of there. Izanami seemed to like mirrors. After the last vision I was as clear as I’d ever be about her intentions, and I had a strong feeling that another chat might do me actual physical damage. She was getting stronger. Closer. Just like she had promised.

  Mostly dry, I wrapped a bath-sheet around my chest and tucked it in to hold it in place, then picked up the katana from where I’d balanced him on top of the toilet cistern. A fine film of condensation had formed on the black lacquer of the saya. I wiped it gently dry with a fresh towel.

  Shinobu? I still have you. I won’t let go again. I promise.

  With the katana under one arm, I stepped out of the bathroom – and nearly ploughed into Jack. She stood an inch from the door with one hand raised as if she’d been about to knock.

  “Oh. Hey. Hi!” she said, just a shade too brightly.

  “Hi, Jack.” Once again I was surprised by the dead, flat tone of my voice. I cleared my throat and tried to add a bit more life to my next words. “Waiting for the bathroom?”

  “Oh, no, no, no.” She stopped abruptly and took an audible breath. “Um. I brought you some clean stuff. To wear. Your dad says nothing fits you since you got … you know, embiggened. Here.”

  She shoved a pile of folded clothes at me. I took them with my free hand, clamping the katana to my side with my elbow to try and keep the towel in place.