The Tainted Web (The Godhunter, Book 7)

by Sumida, Amy

  “Yes, my Queen,” Meilyr stood up and smoothed out his tiny black jacket. “I can feel the signal strongly in this room. Shall we start here?”

  “Sure,” I shrugged. “I tried over and over to enter the Internet, treating it as if it were another Aether, but that didn't work. Maybe you can start by explaining to me the way you connect with it?”

  “Ah, I see your mistake,” he nodded as he exchanged glances with the other imps. “It's very like the Aether but you must remember it was made by humans and they think differently than fey.”

  “So their version of the Aether would be different,” I nodded.

  “Yes,” he continued. “When you trace the Aether, you treat it as if it were a living thing. You ask it to help you, you request that it carry you from one location to another. We faeries know that everything has life, that everything must be treated with respect. Humans don't view the Internet as a living thing and so it's not one. It holds magic but the magic is dead.”

  “Dead?” I frowned.

  “Dead like the hair on your head or your fingernails are considered dead. They're still attached to a living being but they are not living, they've given up their life and now are mere instruments. The Internet is like that. It cannot be reasoned with or asked to aid you. It must be utilized, controlled. You have to navigate its pathways yourself, you can't simply jump in and expect it to carry you along.”

  “Okay,” I nodded, “I think I understand but how do I get in it to begin with?”

  “The easiest way to enter,” Meilyr said as he gestured to a closed laptop. “Is through a computer screen. The energy there is already familiar with images and that is what you will project into the Inter Realm, your image. Touch the screen and picture yourself, the energy will accept the image you give it and upload you into the realm.”

  “That sounds painful,” I grimaced.

  “Not at all,” he shrugged. “We're all energy, we just need to shift our energy into a form the computer will recognize. This is human magic so forget your god magic for now and focus on your sidhe and human side.”

  “Sidhe?” I cocked my head at him. “I thought you said it was human magic?”

  “And what is human magic but watered down sidhe?” The imps all smiled at me, well, impishly.

  “Right,” I huffed a laugh, “but I thought the Internet was pure human?”

  “No, I said it was made by humans and so acts as humans expect it to act. It is insentient but it's blood and bones are sidhe.”

  “Do people ever get headaches from listening to you?” I grumbled.

  “Not if they pay attention,” Meilyr walked across the table, his tiny boots tapping the wood, and then rapped me on the nose. “This is important, now focus. See the magic inside you and then project that image onto the screen.”

  “See the magic inside me,” I frowned and as I said the words, my Nahual padded forward inside my chest, making her presence known.

  My Nahual was basically the embodiment of my magic. The term comes from the Aztec religion, where they believed that everyone is born with an animal twin and those with great magic can access this twin, even shift form into their twin. I'd never shifted into my white jaguar but I was okay with that. I had my lioness and the jaguar was changing anyway.

  She'd taken on aspects of my dragon. Something about my sidhe magic surfacing had changed my human magic. Her previously white hide was now tinged red, she had black talons adorning her paws, yellow dragon eyes, and a pair of tiny, dragon wings that were totally useless but very cute. I think the last was a manifestation of my inability to fly, a little nod to my determination to hold my dragon in check and preserve my other magic. If the dragon ever did get loose, my other magic, including the one that bonded me to Trevor, may pay the price. That was an unacceptable risk, so I remained grounded, just like my Nahual.

  Thinking so strongly about her made my vision very clear and I was easily able to project this image onto the computer screen. I opened my eyes when I felt something click, and saw my Nahual roaming across the blank screen.

  “Good,” Meilyr clapped his hands and my men murmured around me. “Now let your magic draw you into the realm. Don't worry, we'll follow you.”

  I closed my eyes and felt my connection with her. It was a bright, shining cord reaching out from my belly. I mentally released my hold on the God Realm and let that line pull me forward. It was a strange feeling, like the tapping of fingers all over my skin and the zip of electricity in my veins. It felt like things had shifted around me without me actually moving.

  I opened my eyes and saw the same room I'd been in before but it was too bright, so bright that everything in the room appeared to have a halo around it and the things themselves were sharper, clearer, as if they'd been brought into focus so I could see what they truly were. I had the sense that if I touched anything, I'd immediately have as much knowledge of it that the Internet possessed.

  I was also behind the laptop instead of in front of it and I suddenly realized that I couldn't see the entire room. It was like I was standing in a tube of light, a tube that connected to the laptop and then snaked out through the hallway and into Pride Palace. I frowned at the bright fog that made up the walls of the tubes, cutting off the rest of the room from my view.

  “You have only the one connection here,” Meilyr was suddenly standing beside me but there, in his Inter Realm, we were the same height. “So the Inter Realm is limited to a smaller area. If we follow this vein out, we'll be able to see much more.”

  “So we travel through the Aether inside of this?” I smiled at him.

  “Yes,” he nodded as more imps popped into view. “Your connection keeps the path open so we can travel it.”

  “Then we'll be able to actually look inside the Aether,” I walked from the room, following the tube of light toward our tracing point. “I've always wondered what the Aether looks like.”

  “It's a bit overwhelming,” Meilyr spoke from behind me. “Try not to stare too long.”

  That gave me pause and I looked back at him but he only shrugged. I continued on until we reached the hall with the tracing point. Most places in the God Realm had actual tracing rooms but at Pride Palace we had a wall. I guess Nyavirezi didn't want to waste the space. The thing was, there was no wall.

  I stood before a black hole where the wall should have been. It looked creepy, as most pitch-black places do, but I could feel something emanating from it, like an awareness. It knew we were there.

  “This is safe, right?” I looked over at Meilyr, still a little shocked to find his face at the level of mine.

  “Absolutely,” he reassured me. “Inside the Inter Realm we're safe from that which is beyond its borders. The Aether will not hurt you.”

  “Okay,” I swallowed hard and was about to go in when Meilyr stepped ahead of me, putting one foot in the black hole and holding a hand out to me with a smile.

  I smiled back, took his hand, and followed him into the dark.

  Except it wasn't dark. I had to stop a second to keep from reeling back. All around me were images, either static or in motion as if a million home movies had come to life and stepped off the screen. People laughed, got married, played with their children, climbed mountains, did thousands of things that people did everyday, all while objects floated over or through them. Jewelry, cars, money, houses even, things people coveted just swam through it all. The scenes playing out didn't seem to have any boundaries either, they drifted through each other until the whole thing was a dizzying conglomeration of desires, dreams, and experiences. It wasn't just humans either, gods and faeries were featured heavily, adding scenes that were sometimes fascinating and sometimes terrifying.

  I looked away and focused on the end of the tunnel.

  “I told you not to stare,” Meilyr admonished as he pulled me along.

  Soon we exited and our little tunnel expanded out until I couldn't see its borders anymore. I breathed a sigh of relief to be through the Aether. I'd known it
was pure consciousness but I hadn't considered what that meant exactly. I hadn't thought that every magical deed projected there, every result or possession desired, would be left there forever. I hadn't realized that memories were copied from the minds that passed through and gathered like precious jewels to be added to the collection of thoughts and deeds that were already there.

  “Next time,” I let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding, “I'm not looking at all.”

  “Well you can look here,” Meilyr waved a hand to indicate our new surroundings. We were standing in front of some kind of building on a street deserted of people but filled with cords of color glowing brightly. They streaked through the air around us, several of them disappearing into the building while most spread out in all directions. There was a green one right in front of me. I focused on it and saw that there were images and numbers displayed in it, flowing down through it.

  “Each color gives a clue as to the contents,” Meilyr waved a hand at the thread. “Green is usually something to do with possessions or profit. This one appears to be the transactions of an individual's bank account.”

  “It looks endless,” I looked over at the thousands of other cords. “How do you find anything?”

  “You can search through the threads,” he waved his hand out toward the colors, “or find an access point, usually it's a server, where all the threads converge, and search there. We can travel with them too. If you find one heading to a location you wish to go, you just grab onto it, wrapping both arms and legs around the line, and it will pull you along.”

  “Wow,” I felt my brows rise. “How about finding that energy you thought was out of place here?”

  More imps popped out of the Aether, looking a little like a tribe of red wookiees with their improved size. They reached out towards the streams casually, trailing fingers in them like they were bodies of water.

  “We test the threads,” Meilyr gestured toward the imps, “try to feel him out.”

  Then I saw it, amidst the bright colors lurked marks of sickly green and putrid yellow. I wandered closer and saw the patches spread, poisoning the ribbons they'd infiltrated until the whole line took on the noxious appearance.

  “Nicely done,” Meilyr was beside me. “We think the spider does this.”

  “Spider?” I turned to him in surprise.

  “Yes, the presence always takes the shape of a spider when he's here.”

  “A spider in the web,” I huffed. “How poetic.”

  “Yes, the web,” Meilyr nodded. “He infects the threads with some kind of venom, viruses most likely, but it's not all from him directly. We've never bothered before,” he looked over his shoulder at the other imps and they just shrugged. “But we could follow one of these back to the source and see where the taint begins.”

  “Yes,” I looked down the length of the poisoned thread. “I think we'd better ride the tainted web.”

  Chapter Twenty

  We jumped onto the thread and as soon as my legs wrapped around it, dangling me like a suckling pig over a roasting fire, I shot forward. The thread felt slick beneath my hands and vibrated like speakers playing rock music. I held on tight, watching the scenery around me change rapidly. Then I leaned out and took a look forward to see that we were heading straight toward a cement wall.

  It was a split second before we hit, I barely had time to tense for the splat, but we never made impact. We sailed right through that and every other obstacle that presented itself. The Inter Realm was energy and no matter how solid I still felt, I was not solid. I was simply information being swept along the net.

  “Look,” Meilyr shouted from behind me and I twisted my head around to see what held his attention.

  Ahead of us and to the left was a huge black spider. Its body was the size of mine and covered in bristling hair, its eyes flashed red, and its legs shone like glass as they tapped their way along the threads without being carried off by them. It stopped, one leg waving in the air before it hesitantly. Then it rushed off on a course that would take it directly into our path.

  “He's trying to intercept us,” I called back.

  “He's fast too,” one of the imps behind Meilyr observed and we all looked forward to see that he was already to our thread, his large mandibles opening around it.

  “Jump,” I yelled as I let go of the thread and landed with a surprisingly soft thump on the ground.

  The imps fell around me just as the thread was severed. It didn't fall though, it seemed to pause its flow of information before blinking rapidly and then simply disappearing with a loud buzzing noise, like a hundred moths hitting a bug zapper.

  I got to my feet just in time to see the spider turn in our direction. His eyes fixed on us as he leaped onto a group of threads and tightrope walked his way toward us.

  “We need to get out of here,” I looked at the imps, “unless you guys think we can take him on his own turf?”

  “No way,” Meilyr shook his head as he stared wide-eyed at the oncoming Internet insect.

  “Where?” I shook him until he focused on me and then his eyes shot around us at the collection of threads.

  “That one,” he pointed to a red thread and jumped for it simultaneously.

  We all followed, looking over our shoulders at the arachnid who seemed to be gaining on us despite our rapid acceleration. We flew through buildings, up into the sky, and past a park, while the monster continued to chase us. I cringed as we crossed through another thread but we just went harmlessly through, the thread as insignificant as the rest of the terrain as long as we clung to the one we were riding.

  “End of the line,” Meilyr called back to us. “Cloak yourselves!”

  I cast the glamor that made me invisible, just as I was thrown from the line but I was still in the Inter Realm. Meilyr was right in front of me until he placed his hand on the back of a laptop and disappeared. I hurried over to it and placed my hand as he had done. I instantly felt the pull of reality, of solid form and mass, and I let it bring me back to my true form.

  Everything seemed a little duller but it was comforting, like coming home to a quiet house after spending the day at the carnival. The Inter Realm was just a tad too much for me.

  I took in my surroundings quickly, searching first for a door and then heading for it before I fully registered what was happening in the room. When I did, I stopped in my tracks and gawked for a second.

  There was a woman in a cat costume but not like a sexy kitty with a nose and whiskers painted on her face, no she was wearing a bright pink fun-fur suit, like the kind you'd expect to see at a theme park. It covered her completely and the only way I even knew it was a her, though her kitty did have super long eyelashes over its eyes, was because she was moaning like she was in the throes of an orgasm.

  She was on her side, a pair of large underwear discarded next to the pallet she was stretched out on, with a laptop in front of her. Beside the laptop, a spherical web cam sat, focused intently on her as she rubbed herself, or rather her costume, and moved her limbs in ways that I was sure she thought was erotic.

  I didn't know whether to laugh or scream.

  I chose instead to leave the room quietly but quickly, hoping the image of her wouldn't haunt me too long. Once out of her room, I found myself in a small hallway which led to a set of stairs, which in turn led out of the apartment building. When I finally stood on the street, I breathed a sigh of relief which almost became a scream when I felt a little hand take my own.

  “My Queen?” Meilyr whispered. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, Meilyr,” I sighed. “Let's use the Aether to trace home. I don't think I can handle another trip to the Inter Realm quite yet.”

  “Yes, Queen Vervain,” he agreed. “I too wish to stay away from the web until I know how to kill the spider.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “It was a spider?” Blue asked in horror. Funny that the Father of Vampires would be squeamish about arachnids.

  “A big blac
k one,” I smiled at his disgusted face, “with a hairy body and pincers.” I made a clinking noise as I held two fingers splayed to either side of my mouth and tapped them together to mimic the spider.

  “Horrible,” he declared while I laughed.

  “Did you find anything else out?” Thor asked, and I when I looked over at him, my heart sped up.

  “Just that he's poisoning the web,” I cleared my throat and looked away. What the hell was this about? I hadn't felt attracted to Thor in over a year. “He cut us off before we could follow the thread any further.”

  “Which means you were on the right track,” Thor nodded and I stared at the perfect angle of his jaw.

  “A spider?” Teharon looked as if he hadn't heard a single word past the one that began with S. “You're sure it was a spider? Not just a monster that may have appeared to be a spider?”

  “It was a spider,” I frowned at him. “I've seen a lot of beings that most people would consider monsters and that was just a spider, nothing special about him besides his size and I think that was due to the Inter Realm, the imps were the same size as me so I'm pretty sure you can be whatever size you want in there.”

  The imps nodded in agreement and I looked over at them with a new realization.

  “Do you guys want to be taller?” I asked as gently as I could.

  “Oh no, my Queen,” Meilyr looked back at the other imps and they twittered mischievously. “We like our size, it helps to be small when you want to be sneaky, but it's fun to be larger sometimes. The Inter Realm, it lets us see what it's like to be different.”

  “Yes,” I frowned, “to be different. You could be anything you wanted in there, right? Is that why you looked more like you belonged in Star Wars than Faerie?”

  “Yes,” Meilyr shrugged, “we could even look like you if we wanted. You can be whoever you want to be online.”

  “So why is he a big black spider?” I wondered.

  “Because gods aren't as free to alter their appearances as humans and fey are,” Finn said, running a hand through his short black hair. Everyone looked at him. “What? Just because I was lucky in the looks department,” he waved a hand out at the rest of us, “a lot of us were lucky, doesn't mean we each don't long to look like something else after hundreds of years in the same shells.”