Dedicated once again to my arachnophobic wife, who I once made the mistake of asking, “What if the doctor said you were genetically spider?”
Helixweaver
The Warren Brood
Book II
Bartholomew Lander
Copyright © 2017 by Bartholomew Lander
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
ISBN 978-4-908656-28-6
First Edition
Design and Typesetting: Corey Mark
Cover: Louis Rakovich, Indigo Forest Designs
Frontispiece: Korinne McKinley
Lunarium Books
Von Gerdesgatan 1
412 59 Göteborg, Sweden
www.LunariumBooks.com
“While those in service of the Primal Ones are sedulous and one-minded, so too are they surreptitious and paranoid—and woe to all men born in the path of those lacking the latter traits. History shall never forget the tragedy that befell Am-Khent, where the cult of the Black Hierophant turned all to ash.”
—Thaddeus Coolidge, Eschatonic Cabals
Chapter 1
The World on the Web
Something throbbed in the dark. Slow and lurching, each pulse buzzed through the void and into Spinneretta’s head. And as the emptiness shifted beneath her illusory center, the thing grew in volume, deep and horrible. It resonated through her in rhythmic waves, ringing from ear to ear and down her spine. The raw sensation pulled her teeth together and ripped a groan of pain from her lungs. Fistfuls of rusted nails, plunging, splashing through her mind. Her appendages shivered, as though aware of some chill she could not perceive. The entirety of her focus was absorbed by that lethargic beating. And as she stared deeper into the static-patterned nothingness, something moved. A nearly shapeless claw grasping, reaching, curling in an autonomous shudder. The sheer shock of the sight pulled her own hand up toward it, mimicking the motion of some other’s volition. Her fingers clasped air, her muscles wound tight, and she screamed.
Spinneretta’s eyes shot open and she threw herself upright, recoiling from the horrific thing she thought she’d seen. Dizzied from the rush of blood from her brain, she kept clenching and unclenching her right hand to convince herself that it was just a dream. The nerves and flesh yielded to her commands, and that meant she was free. Free in a gray wasteland.
A chill raced from her heart to the tips of the spider legs growing from her back as she realized where she was. Stretching away from her in all directions was an expansive plain, rolling subtly like a snapshot of the open sea. The flat stones paving it, dark and light, resolved into a muted static as she gazed toward the horizon where the featureless clouds overhead vanished into a blurred line. Crumbling pillars of dark red stone breached the barren landscape in loosely connected clumps, leaning this way and that with their jagged, capless tops angled toward the heavens.
Stricken by the memory of the previous night, she looked down at herself. The hem of her midnight blue prom dress was shredded, the two longest rips climbing to mid-thigh. Dried blood—her own and that of the yellow-coated guards from last night—was splashed across the garment in mottled patterns of black fire and tie-dye. Beneath the unfamiliar jacket around her, a wet chill clung to the center of her back, right between the lowest segments of her spider legs. She must’ve torn the fabric in the adrenal frenzy of their escape. Guess it wasn’t a dream, she thought as she let out a shallow chestful of air. Great. Just fantastic.
Each breath filled her sinuses with the smell of dust and ozone. And something else. A familiar scent. She nearly jumped as she realized that Mark still lay beneath her, unmoving under her slight weight. She removed the arm propping her up from him. For a moment she just sat there, watching the gentle mist drift over him, its wisps curling and tracing ethereal fingers along a day’s worth of stubble upon his jawline. His lips were parted in a half-grimace, his eyes settled shut and placid. His right arm, bent across his chest, seemed to shake in pain with each breath he took.
“Mark?” she whispered.
“Mm?”
The suddenness of his response startled her. “How long have you been awake?”
“Hard to say,” he answered with a wince. “I’ve been in and out for some time.”
A shiver of embarrassment started in her stomach and blazed up to her cheeks like wildfire. She stood pendulously to her feet, her spider legs spreading to balance her ascent. “You could’ve said something, you know.” She turned away and looked off at the too-near horizon of gray. “I, uhh . . . I didn’t think you’d mind. I mean, you were out cold, so I thought, you know, might as well not sleep on the hard ground, right?”
A dry sound, not unlike attempted laughter. “I do not seem to recall complaining.” Mark shifted into a sitting position, and one hand batted at his messy brown hair. “And I had little mind to deny what comfort it gave you. Especially after last night.”
The unspecific reference to the yellow-coated kidnapping attempt and her ill-advised invasion of the urbanmythic San Solano facility sent an unwelcome montage of the previous night’s events dancing through her mind. “Does that mean you’re not mad at me anymore?”
“Mad?” He winced again, his left hand curling into a fist at an unseen tremor of pain. “I do not recall any anger. Not toward you, in any case.”
“You seemed angry enough when you showed up to save me.” Who was saving whom was still an unsettled issue, she reflected. “Are you about ready to tell me what the hell that was about last night?”
Mark sat there for a moment, craning his head back and forth as if trying to loosen the muscles in his neck. “I think we have more pressing matters to discuss,” he said. “Such as, what is this place you have brought us to?”
Spinneretta eyed the masonic symbol etched into the top of the highest of those bloodstone pillars, under whose shadow Mark sat. The sight of its curves and overlain angles sent a spike of dreaded recollection through her. Her spider legs curled to hover around her shoulders and hips. “I told you everything I know. And that’s just a name.” Zigmhen. The World on the Web. How she knew that name, she could not begin to speculate.
He nodded with a visible effort. “Aye. You said as much. But you must forgive me for asking again. Knowing so little as a name after opening a portal like that . . . ”
The insinuation dove under her skin. “Look, I said I don’t know, alright? This place freaks me the fuck out as it is without having to think about what it is, okay?” The words left an aftertaste of remorse and wet sand. She studied the way the solemn monoliths protruded in their clusters, pretending to search for some hidden symmetry in them. “Sorry. I’m just . . . ”
Mark sighed. She heard him shuffle and slowly stand. “It’s alright,” he said. “You needn’t speak of it.”
Spinneretta imagined his pale brown eyes upon her, and her stomach tightened. “How’s your head feeling?” she asked, desperate for a distraction.
“Better than it was. Though still raw from the exertion.”
She was quiet a moment. Her mind went to the cold fire that had purged her of her vein-splitting injury. “And your arm?”
“Worry not about my arm,” he said in a dismissive tone. “You have something much bigger to worry about.” She turned over her shoulder to meet his gaze, and Mark flashed her a weak smile. “Your mother is going to rip you to shreds when she sees what you did to that dress.”
She frowned. “Now’s not the time to develop a sense of humor.”
He chuckled a hollow sound an
d swept his eyes away from her. “Forgive me. I thought the mood could use some lightening.”
Patience worn to nothing, she wheeled about. “Well you’re damned straight it could use some lightening! Going to prom would’ve been bad enough had those yellow-coats not shown up, and getting yelled at for trying to save you from whatever they had in store doesn’t leave a good taste in my mouth, alright? Pile onto that the running and the symbol and the portal, and the, the this!” Her spider legs leapt from under Mark’s jacket and gestured at the wasteland around them. “I’ve never been so confused about anything in my life, so you’re goddamn right the mood could use some lightening!” She gasped for breath, and the heat in her chest began to fade as the misty air soaked the spiracles in her legs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean . . . ”
“No,” he interrupted. “There is no need for you to apologize. Though perhaps we should now consider returning home. To be honest, I don’t much care for the look of this place.” His gaze was fixed upon the clusters of red-black spears rising from the mist-touched desert pavement.
Spinneretta nodded. “Yeah.” As she scanned the white-gray horizon, she thought she felt something scraping against her mind, like a trace of a headache, or a creaking joint that wasn’t there. She told herself it was her imagination and focused on the stone pillar nearest them. Its red surface was darkened to a blood-brown by the dim light filtering through the clouds. “Suppose the sigil works both ways?”
“I can only hope.”
“Then hope hard, because here we go.” She peeled Mark’s jacket back from her shoulders and extended her eight appendages to their full length. She laid her hand against the surface of the stone pillar. It was cold, unwelcoming. Her spider legs grew tense as she called to mind the dreamborne sigil that had brought them there. Muscle memory went to work. Her legs dove toward the pillar and began to extract a shape from a series of swift cuts across the stone surface. A sharp V framing an oval, eight rays shining beyond, an upward facing crescent, and an upside-down T splitting the sigil in half. With the last vertical stroke of the T, the sigil was complete.
All at once, the nerves in her neck and head seized. Something struck the front of her mind. Axons blazed, and an electric shock raced through her brain. A gasp on her lips, she staggered a step back from the sigil, one hand instinctively rising to her temple as her spider legs curled around her shoulders.
But the pain lasted for only a moment. She then found herself standing there, gazing into the symbol, wondering what had just happened. The chitin tips of her legs rang from the violent excavation, and her joints rattled. But the symbol just stared at her. No yellow light, no mist. Just silence. “What the hell?”
Rocks shuffled along the ground as Mark dragged his feet over to her. “Nothing?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, but . . . ” Why? The surreality of the question struck her at once; why was it unusual that the symbol hadn’t birthed a portal? It had been no more than a fragment of a dream until the previous night, when all at once that phantom certainty had gripped her and compelled her to carve it into stone. Now, that phantom certainty was draining. “Did I . . . draw it wrong?”
Mark leaned closer and examined the sign. “No. As sure as the moon rises, that’s it.”
“How can you be so sure?” It’s not like you’ve dreamed about this damn thing your whole life.
“Call it a very strong feeling. In any case,” he said, righting himself again, “if your fog-gate isn’t going to work for now, then we may as well start moving.”
“Moving? Moving where, exactly?”
“I know not. But we have no reason to stay amid these ruins. I don’t much care for them. They remind me of gravestones.”
She shuddered a little as she eyed the enigmatic pillars stretching into the distance. “I don’t care for them either, but why leave?”
He rolled his shoulder, and a loud pop rang out. “Because it seems you cannot open the portal again. Perhaps you are still too tired or . . . in any case, we may find something that enlightens us. If not about how to return home, then perhaps about what this realm is and how you have brought us here.”
Another shiver left a trail of goose bumps along her naked arms. She wasn’t sure how much she wanted to know about this place. On an impulse, she very nearly attempted to draw the sigil in the stone again, but memories of the strange mindshock stopped her. “Yeah. Alright, fine. I’m probably just tired or something, like you said. Can always try again later. It got us here, after all.”
Mark crossed his arms, cringing as he touched his fresh burn scar. “Indeed. If you have no preferences, I vote we head toward those hills,” he said, gesturing into the distance. “Having a good vantage point never hurt anyone. And mayhap we’ll find some rock that’s more receptive to your touch.”
She looked into the distance and narrowed her eyes. “I guess it would be a good opportunity for you to finally tell me what the hell happened last night. No distractions this time.”
A slow nod. His eyes were on the ominous peaks far in the distance, where the gray clouds cast even deeper shadows over the mistscape. “I think you’ve got some explaining to do yourself, Spinny.”
From the wreck of the Warren home, through the thick groves bordering Old Grantwood, and all the way back to the warm glow of civilization at the Spruce Road turnoff, Arthr and Kara followed the trench-coated woman. It took two hours, and Arthr was reasonably certain they’d crossed their own path at least once on the way, but he wasn’t complaining. He was just glad to be alive after his encounter with the gunmen and the robed monster. What was it that Annika had called it? A vanta something-or-other. Whatever it called itself, the whole incident had uprooted his sense of security and well-being; he didn’t give a damn where Annika was taking them now, just so long as nobody there wanted to kill them.
By the time they slunk along the side of the Motel Santa Fe, the straps of his bags were about to saw through his shoulders, and he was ready to strangle Kara if she didn’t stop humming that damned jump rope song. They climbed up the asphalt stairs, and Annika all but kicked the door to room 203 open. “Here we are!” she announced.
Beyond the door, the dim room opened like a casket. Two custard-yellow beds peeked out from the dusty interior. Mountains of paper sat in disheveled clumps across the desk and carpet, which was an unsavory shade of motel-brown. Arthr wrinkled his nose. “We’re holing up here?”
Annika glared over her shoulder at him. “Something wrong with it?”
It may have been the motel’s grungy exterior painting his expectations, but the dirty yellow lamplight seemed to bring out ancient grease stains smeared across the wallpaper. The splotchy carpet looked like a veritable morass, home to innumerable tribes of uncatalogued diseases and wild venereal parasites. “This is . . . ”
Annika scowled. “Well, if I knew the spoiled spider-boy was expecting a cushy hideout, I guess I’d have sprung for a room at the damn Ritz. I suppose you’d like a place with an attached spa and round-the-clock butlers.”
Stung, he shook his head. “N-no, that’s not it.”
“Then get the hell inside and stop looking suspicious.”
Snapped from his brief bout of germaphobia, he shuffled through the doorway without another word. Kara followed him, without any of his reservations, still humming that melody. Annika slipped in behind her, slammed the door, and threw the deadbolt in a single smooth motion. “Get comfy,” she said, “but not too comfy.”
Arthr let both bags—his own and the one he’d packed for Spinneretta—down in the corner. Relief tingled through his shoulders. As he peeled his jacket off and released his spider legs, a nauseous feeling clawed at his stomach. And it had nothing to do with the dubious cleanliness of the room.
Kara, giggling madly, threw her own jacket off and hopped onto one of the beds, bouncing a couple times before coming to a rest. “Yay! What now, Annie?”
Annika took her fedora off and placed it on the nightstand between the be
ds. “Now we wait.”
“What for?”
“Your sister and Mark.”
Kara’s big blue eyes shimmered with doubt. “But, isn’t Spins at prom?”
“Not unless something went very wrong.” Annika dipped her chin. “And since she didn’t show up to meet me, that’s not outside the realm of possibility. Worst-case scenario, we may need to improvise.”
Kara hummed and nodded as though she understood. “What about Mom and Dad?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll let them know what’s going on. Eventually.” Annika glanced over at Arthr. “What’s eating you?”
He shook his head. “Nothing,” he lied. “I’m fine.”
“That’s the palest fine I’ve ever seen. You look like a corpse.” She walked over to him and raised her silk-wrapped broken arm. “Lend me your leg a sec, will ya?”
“Huh?”
She clicked her tongue. “Cut me out of this.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He let one of his spider legs wander to the woman’s arm. He drew a straight line through the silk with its sharp tip, being careful not to hurt her trench coat; it must have been an expensive prop, and he didn’t want the responsibility of replacing it. When he had cut through the fibers, the off-white wrapping fell free, and the switch Kara had bound her arm to dropped to the carpet.
Annika cringed and gave him a pained smile. “Thanks, sweetie.” She patted him on the shoulder with her other arm and walked toward the bathroom, beginning to remove her coat.
Kara once again started to bounce on the bed, giggling. As if sensing his unease, she stopped a moment later and flopped onto her stomach, spider legs perched on the edge of the mattress. “Y’okay, Arthr?”
His insides rolled. “I . . . think it’s just hitting me now how close we were to dying back there.”
“Yeah, you’ll get used to that,” Annika said, leaning her shoulder against the bathroom door. “Anyway, I’m taking a shower. Both of you stay inside. If anyone knocks at the door, check who it is. If it’s not Mark or Spinzie, don’t open it. ’Kay?”
Helixweaver (The Warren Brood Book 2) Page 1