Alissa looked at Ruta again and the DJ was nodding at her, nodding in approval. Yes, the DJ seemed to be saying to her. Like the spider spinning his web for the unwary fly, she said, the blood is the life.
Alissa didn’t recognize the quote, but it sounded familiar and it sounded like something a goddess would say.
A calm descended on Alissa, and she knew what had to be done. She knew she could never go back to the girl she’d been before she’d read the codex. She’d tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge and hadn’t spit it out. There were forms to follow, rituals to perform. The goddess, she was sure, would give her a second chance to earn her place.
Thank you for showing me the way, she said to Ruta, and then she turned her back on her. The DJ’s role in the drama that was Alissa’s life was finished. Her role as the goddess’ messenger had been fulfilled.
Chapter Five
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire—Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”
At first, no one noticed Alissa as she moved toward the makeshift bar where the altar had been. The music was so loud that no one heard the crack as she broke two bottles of Patron Silver and let the tequila drain like blood onto the moth-eaten carpet that covered the floor of the apse.
‘Great fucking party dude!” yelled a guy dressed like a gladiator as Alissa moved past him, the broken bottles clutched in each hand like a pair of daggers.
She thought his name might be Wayne, but her mind was filled with spidersong, and mere words no longer registered in her brain.
She spotted Tyler in the middle of a scrum of writhing bodies, picking him out by the heat signature thrown off by his flesh.
He felt rather than saw her come up behind him, and when he turned around, Tyler saw the broken bottles in her hand.
“Alissa, what the fuck?” Tyler hissed as he scrambled backwards, out of the reach of her hands, which had become glass claws, implements to pierce and hold and puncture.
She was calm, so calm, as she felt herself transform. Transmogrify. Transmute.
Transcend.
The word formed in her consciousness, spoken in the spidersong that filled her brain and told her what she needed to do in order to claim her destiny as a daughter of the red spider.
She raised her claws and her vision doubled, then doubled again so that she saw not two hands, but eight legs, and they were all tipped with bright shards of light that sliced through Tyler’s chest like wire through cheese.
It was only when his blood began to spurt, hot and coppery and thick with life, that the dancers around them realized his death throes were not feigned and not special effects staged as part of the show.
Panic developed like a Polaroid photo and spread throughout the church in the time it took to scream.
Alissa lifted Tyler’s skewered torso in two of her strong arms and threw him across the length of the apse onto the altar.
His body was snared by a web of electrical cables that powered Ruta’s turntables, and his weight pulled the plugs out, bringing the music to a halt.
And that’s when the chaos really started, because a spark from one of the cables jumped onto the tissue paper of a goodie bag that had been left on the altar, and it ignited with a whoosh.
Celia was nearly crushed to death in the mad stampede that followed, but Devin, who’d been rolling hard on the excellent X provided as party favors, grabbed her and threw her out a window as a hungry tongue of flame licked at the tinder-dry pews.
As the others ran, Alissa danced, the dying Tyler her unwilling partner as she wove a web of death from the spider silk extruded from the spinnerets on her body.
“I feel your scream,” Alissa said to Tyler, who could no longer do anything but feel the agony of his approaching death. “I feel it vibrate in every atom of my being. The thrum of it resonates in my abdomen, the taut hum of it is music to my spider soul.”
And then Alissa laughed, and although the sound was too high-pitched for human ears, it was a laugh that sent shivers to the bones of the forest creatures that heard it.
Then she plunged the jagged glass into her own neck from both sides, causing great gouts of blood to fountain from the gaping wounds. She was the red spider, and all cringed before her. Even as she died.
Chapter Six
The itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the water spout.
Down came the rain and washed the spider out.—Traditional nursery rhyme
Engine 24 responded to the fire, but by the time they arrived at the church in the woods, the only thing left to save was the basement. In the flickering firelight, the partygoers milled around like wraiths, shocked into sobriety by what had happened but unable or unwilling to get into their cars and drive home. The fabric of their reality had been torn, and the ragged edges weren’t lining up, no matter how hard they tried to piece it back together.
One of the hired zombies kept circling the smoldering wreckage, his bloodied prop scythe clutched in both hands like a security blanket. When one of the paramedics tried to take it from him, he swung it like a real weapon and the hard, sharp-edged plastic sliced right through the medic’s jacket and left a bloody line behind in his skin.
“Shit!” the paramedic yelled, and reflexively slugged the zombie before one of the other zombies managed to wrestle the scythe away from both of them and wandered off into the woods, where he found a quiet stump and sat down to lick the plastic clean.
He was fucked up on horse tranks he’d bought with his hundred-dollar fee and feeling no pain.
The cops showed up with the first of the parents who’d been summoned by phone calls and texts. Phone-trees that were usually reserved for prayer offensives were activated, and word spread fast. It was Sarah-Jane’s mom who called Alissa’s mom to see if she’d heard from her daughter. Her mom hadn’t been too worried until Katie called too, saying she’d heard about the fire and couldn’t get in touch with Alissa.
By the time Alissa’s parents got to the woods, the reporters were there, and the story the kids were telling didn’t make any damn sense at all to the parents.
The police were inclined to think that drugs were responsible for the wildly incoherent stories of spidersong and bloody death, but since one of the survivors was the mayor’s daughter, they kept their opinions to themselves.
As near as anyone could figure, only two people had died in the fire: Alissa and Tyler.
“It’s a goddamn miracle,” the fire chief said to a reporter from the local NBC affiliate, and almost immediately asked her not to quote him. Tyler’s father—known as “Big Ty” to friends and foes alike— would not take kindly to that description of the event that killed his son.
Not that any of the first responders had a clear idea of what exactly had happened.
The only two adults on the scene were a chemistry teacher who claimed he was there to chaperone the event and was only in costume to “make the kids feel comfortable” and the DJ, who seemed to be in some sort of a fugue state.
The cops figured Wisnicki was some kind of perv, but lost track of him after a paramedic took him aside to treat his burned arm. They couldn’t get anything useful out of Ruta, either. She had taken up a perch on the hood of a police car where she watched the action and chain-smoked until she ran out of cigarettes, and then she just sat and stared at her hands and hummed “Itsy Bitsy Spider” while chuckling to herself.
She knew that her whole collection of records was nothing but a pool of molten plastic at the heart of the burned church, and she was all right with that. People who did medical billing for a living didn’t need a humungous collection of vintage vinyl. Not when they could stream all the music they ever wanted.
She had emerged from the fire with her life, and that seemed like a gift she hadn’t earned. She wasn�
�t going to ask for anything more.
The other survivors weren’t much more coherent than Ruta, and finally the cops took everybody’s names and told them to go home, that they’d catch up with them later.
One girl wearing a scorched Cleopatra costume had handed her a burned bag of junk to the fire chief on her way to her car. “A keepsake,” she’d said, and the smile she gave him chilled him to the marrow.
Drugs, he thought. This is going to turn out to be about drugs. The chief had seen the aftermath of a lot of meth lab explosions, and that made a whole lot more sense to him than the gibberish the kids had been spouting about seeing giant spiders in the fire and hearing unholy screeches in the flames.
Fucking drugs.
***
Grant Halsted, a probie with a bad acne problem that had earned him the unoriginal nickname “Pizza Face,” was rolling hose when he saw the half-burnt hymnal lying on the ground by the rear wheel of the pumper rig. Curious, he’d picked the book up; and as he did, he felt the weight of it shift in his hands, and suddenly he was no longer holding a book but something that looked more like a scroll.
What the fuck? Grant thought. And then in his head he heard a woman’s voice saying his name, telling him he had been chosen.
The voice told him that what he held in his hands was the key that would unlock the rest of his life. You are mine, Grant Halsted, the voice said, and he knew the voice, for he had dreamt of the goddess his whole life but had never dreamed that she would grant him her favor.
I am yours, he said, vowing fealty, and the goddess was pleased. He felt a great sense of well-being come over him as he noticed the livid red bump on the back of his left hand. He had felt a bright spark of pain earlier, but hadn’t realized he’d been bitten by a spider. As he looked at the bite, he knew that it was a sign of the goddess’ love.
“Hey,” he said to no one in particular. “Anyone want to head over to McNellie’s?” It was too late for dinner, but the place was open until 2 a.m., and if they hustled, they could get there before it closed and nosh on bar snacks.
Two guys who didn’t even know Grant’s name looked up. “I love their sweet potato fries, man,” one said.
The other firefighter nodded in agreement. “First round’s on me,” he said. “Good call, bro,” he added.
As he scratched the small red spider bit on the back of his hand, the probie smiled. A lot of things were going to be different from now on. Now that he possessed the Codex.
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Read more by Kat Parrish
The Shadow Palace Trilogy
Bride of the Midnight King
Daughter of the Midnight King
The Midnight Queen
The Ostrander Witches Series
Deus Ex Magical: Ostrander Witches #1
Mother Nature: Ostrander Witches #2 (January 2021)
Magically Delicious: Ostrander Witches #3
Under No Illusion: Ostrander Witches #4 (February 2021)
The Magic Touch: Ostrander Witches #4 (March 2021)
The Misbegotten series
Tales of the Misbegotten: An L.A. Nocturne Collection
Misbegotten: L.A. Nocturne #1
Rezso: L.A. Nocturne #2
Witch War: L.A. Nocturne #3
The Howl series
The Howl
The Howl 2
La Bruja Roja Series
Magic in the Blood: La Bruja Roja
Santa Muerte: La Bruja Roja #2
About The Author
Kat Parrish is an internationally bestselling author. A former reporter who prefers making things up, she writes urban fantasy, paranormal romance, horror, science fiction, and every genre in between. Born into a military family, she has lived in seven states and two European countries and would sign up to colonize Mars if she weren’t so fond of warm weather. She lives in the Pacific Northwest near a haunted cemetery and several waterfalls.
Black Slumber by Helen Scott
Genre: PNR RH
Copyright © 2020 by Helen Scott
Cover Design © JM Rising Horse Creations
Editing by CB Editing Services
All rights reserved.
About
After centuries in the Black Sleep I’ve woken up to find my uncle, the regent, calling himself king. When I rise to the throne will he step back like he’s supposed to or put up a fight?
I get the answer I’m looking for when a mage attacks during a royal court event, cursing me to never be able to feed again. Just when I’m about to give myself to the sun everything changes and I know I’ve been betrayed on the deepest level.
The only question that remains is can these men that saved me from the sun help me take back what is mine?
Chapter One
Don't miss your opportunity to get a F*R*E*E book from Helen when you reach the end of this collection. Watch for the Reader Magnets links!
Blair
Blood dripped down my face. I wasn’t sure how long it had been doing that, but awareness was creeping in. I swallowed reflexively, trying to breathe through the searing pain burning its way through my veins. The sweet nectar flowed into me, coating my throat, bringing strength and life back to my body. It was delicious, and all I wanted was more.
Each pulse of the ruby liquid was a reminder that I had been dead until a moment ago, and each pulse brought me knowledge of the changes within the world at large. Dead might be a slight exaggeration. Dormant was probably a better description. Officially we called it the black sleep. It was the deepest sleep we could go into, a protective kind of hibernation. I should have been asleep for one hundred years if my court was waking me at the appointed time.
“Blair, sweetie, can you hear me?” My cousin’s voice seemed to echo around my head.
“I can hear you, Kyra,” I croaked.
“Oh, thank heavens,” she breathed, and I could practically see her fanning herself with relief even though my eyes weren’t quite ready to open yet.
“How can you say that? We both know there’s no such thing as heaven. If there were, we would be abominations. We’re vampires, for crying out loud,” I whispered, each word harder than the last.
“You don’t know either of those things,” she said snootily.
I wanted to snap at her and tell her exactly what I thought, but a queen was reserved, a rock in a storm, and I needed to be that now. Showing weakness was not what my father would want, especially not when I only recently awoke. Time passed. I wasn’t sure how much, but I heard Kyra leave and return multiple times. Talking was too much effort, though, at least when I was still so leaden with sleep.
The more I drank, the stronger I became. It was simple biology. All I wanted in that moment was to drain multiple people dry. The problem was that waking up from the black sleep meant that I could only drink the blood of another vampire. Such was the royal way. I wanted to groan in protest, but I had a sense that I was being watched, so I kept my reactions to my own thoughts locked down.
When I was able to open my eyes, I found a raven sitting on the base of a window that had been left open. The bird watched me with altogether too much intelligence. As soon as I stirred in my bed, it flew away, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that someone, not something, had been watching me.
“You’re up!” Kyra’s singsong voice called out as she came waltzing through the door with bags over her arm that could only contain clothes, although they didn’t look nearly big enough for the dresses I was used to.
This was the part I’d been dreading, playing dress-up and smiling for all the people who came out to celebrate my rebirth day. Ugh. All they wanted to do was grovel at my feet so I w
ould give them a place in my court, which wasn’t going to happen.
“I have risen, yes,” I replied, smoothing the front panel of the dress I’d been wearing when the black sleep had pulled me under.
“I’m glad to see that you have enough energy to already be up and around. There’s a lot to go over before the All Hallows Eve party tonight.”
Vampires had always had a flair for the dramatic, and so it was no surprise that we liked our reawakening parties to coincide with the closest holiday. Apparently for me that was All Hallows Eve. Unexpected, but not unappreciated.
“Why is the ball so soon?” I asked, trying to hide my irritation.
“You’ve been waking slowly for the last few days. This was the latest my father would allow the ball to be scheduled. He didn’t want to wait months for Yule. He’s eager for his rest,” she said as she hung the bags with care.
Everything looked familiar but different as I looked around.
“Where are the bathing implements? I shall prepare myself.”
Kyra chuckled. “We have things called showers now. All you do is turn a handle, and water falls from the ceiling for you to bathe in, and you can use as much of it as you want. Here, let me show you.” She moved toward a small room off to the side of the bed chamber.
I followed, feeling the scratchy linen fabric moving against my skin. I was eager to be rid of it. I hoped that if they had mastered the art of bathing such that they had water falling from the ceiling, then they had softer garments as well. A woman could dream.
“Like this,” she said as she touched the metal handle, swinging it around to one side. “It gets very hot, so be careful.”
Her tone got under my skin. Treating me as though I had been asleep for millennia instead of a mere century was not the way to win my favor. And I knew she wanted to be sure she won my favor even though we had been friends while I grew up. Everything was different now. We were adults, and on top of that, I was the future queen.
A Cursed All Hallows' Eve Page 5