“W-what do you mean?”
“I mean, do you feel like your brain is in one piece?”
She blinked at him. “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
Mark’s face drew closer to hers. His pale eyes studied her, and she felt her cheeks beginning to warm. “Because,” he said at last, “that was magic you used with that portal.”
“Magic?”
He nodded. “I may not know what you did, but I do know that it was magic. Now, are you sure you’re feeling alright?”
“Y-yeah, I feel fine,” she said, trying to wrap her head around his words. Magic?
Mark’s lids settled closed, breaking the fatal contract their eyes had made. “Something very strange is going on, then.”
“What do you mean?”
He righted himself. “I’ve heard of certain individuals naturally learning to use magic before. Trivial cantrips, the odd case of divination. Minor magic, the kind that does no more damage to the brain than a shot of whiskey. But you opened a rift between worlds. Anybody born without an innate gift for magic would have died from the mental strain before the first hint of a portal had formed. Even I collapsed after moving the two of us five feet, and I may as well be immune to the mental damage aspect of magic.”
She stared at him, mind spinning and trying to weave a logical pattern from those strands of thought. “Maybe I just have a natural talent for magic, then?” The idea was absurd. It had to have been some fluke. She had never even considered the possibility of magic until Mark had arrived, and the only evidence suggesting she had such a gift was an isolated case.
“It is difficult to deny that possibility,” he said, startling her with how serious he sounded. After a moment, he clapped his hands once and looked back at her. “Well, let us get going.”
Chapter 3
Stranger Still
Mark and Spinneretta walked on. The innumerable stones littering the wasteland began to thin as the hills rose, allowing the hard earth beneath to peek up at them. From under the vanishing desert pavement, organic gray stalks began to appear, pushing their way skyward. The largest stalks grew to a few feet in height. Some ended in fat bulb-like structures, while others appeared to have already bloomed. Those that were open had five knuckled branch-stalks spreading radially from their tips, between which hung thick webs of white fibers.
“Are these trees?” Spinneretta said as they passed by one of the low stalk-bushes. The webbing between their branches resembled cotton candy spun from mold, or . . . She gulped. Silk?
Mark bent in close to one of the specimens and examined the thin strands running between its stalks. “I’ve never seen anything like this at all.” He looked across the top of the hill, where more of the strange fungal bushes grew from the exposed earth in haphazard clumps. The hill beyond, too, was dotted with their gray-white nets. “This is quite the world you’ve brought us to.”
Revulsion of the thing gnawed at her stomach. She shook her head, feeling uneasy, and began to walk toward a small formation of stones a short distance away. “I think I need to sit down.”
When she reached the stones, she hopped atop the largest and sat, allowing her feet to dangle from the edge. She tried not to look at the sick white things that peppered the landscape.
Mark followed and sat at the base of another large rock. “Are you feeling alright?” he asked.
She stared into the mist- and cloud-shrouded horizon. The irregular broken pillars on the plain had faded from view. “I don’t like this place.”
“You are such a strange girl. After opening a portal to another world, it is only when you discover some odd plants that you begin to act disturbed?”
“That’s the problem. I keep feeling like I’m going to wake up from this, like it’s just a weird dream. I should be terrified right now, but for some reason this place just seems so . . . familiar. This shouldn’t be something I can just take in stride. Maybe I’m just too used to things being all screwed up.” She curled one of her spider legs in front of her and gazed at the gleam of the pale sky reflecting off her chitin. Whatever star illuminated their trek had grown darker since they’d entered the hills. Night would be upon them soon, assuming such a thing existed in this barren realm. They didn’t have time to wander forever.
Spinneretta hopped down from her perch and turned to face the boulder. She placed her hand against its surface, feeling the dusty age of the object. “Think it’s about time to try this quote-unquote magic again.” Her spider legs unfurled. Her teeth clenched. She howled a sharp note as her legs dove toward the boulder’s surface and the muscle memory was initialized. Like the mechanical arms of some infernal machine, her legs carved the mist-sign into the rock. The last vertical line sent a gnashing pain through her brain, as well as her leg. It was a grinding, electrical sensation not unlike the assault of a dentist’s drill. Her thoughts went blank for a moment as she recoiled from the rock face, hand again drawn to her head.
“What’s the matter?”
As her mind recovered from the shock, the pain in her foreleg took center stage. She stuck the chitin tip between her molars and bit down to ease the pain. “It’s the same as before. It’s like it’s getting repulsed by something, and it’s just hitting me right in the damn brain for it.”
“Hmm?” Mark stood and walked over to her. “Move aside. Allow me to see.”
She did as requested, her heart still pounding from the shock. She watched as Mark bent over and brought his face to within an inch of the sigil. His eyes closed, and he laid a hand upon its design. For a few moments, the only movement was the breeze gently rustling his hair. “I feel something,” he said. “It is subtle, weak. But there is indeed something there. Deep beyond. Like a coin at the bottom of the sea.”
The analogy struck her at once as queer. “Huh? But, what is it? Magic?”
His chin dipped in a small nod. “Aye. But it is not normal magic. It is older, primordial. I’ve never seen anything quite like this.”
“See? You can see it?”
“In a word.” His eyes fluttered. “It is a lattice, or a mandala. It spreads through the air and the ground, everywhere. Its material is . . . ” He opened his eyes and studied the engraving once more. “It seems to be made of the same energy as the Flames of Y’rokkrem.”
“The Flames? What are . . . ?”
As though lost in thought, he raised one arm toward her. A sphere of blue-green fire sparked between his fingers. It was an orb of suspended plasma, stark shadows beneath a flowing exterior. They grew along his arm and blazed, a kaleidoscope of roiling spectrums and dimensions. The vibrant-yet-dark aura mesmerized her with its haunting beauty. She hadn’t had the time to appreciate it when Mark saved her, and now her curiosity was growing with each slow lick and sputter of its tendrils. “What are they?” she asked.
He looked at her through the pulsing perversion of light. “The Flames of Y’rokkrem,” he said, “is the spell that confirmed my place as the Chosen. Even among those who are magically attuned, invoking the Flames is an impossibility. Until I was born, the Vigil had abandoned all hope that the Flames were anything more than a legend whispered of in the Liber Vaporum.”
She neared a step, forgetting all about her mental shock the minute before. “What would happen if I put my hand in them right now?”
“Nothing. Unless I wanted something to.”
She looked up at him, trying to gauge his expression. Her morbid curiosity got the best of her. She reached out her arm and slowly brought it close to the edge of that bright, dark fire. A moment of hesitation, and then she pushed the tips of her fingers into its shimmering mass. She had expected it to burn her, or maybe repel her hand away. Instead, an abnormal chill sank into her skin. Goose bumps raced along her wrist and arm. “What the hell?”
“I’m not a very good mystic,” Mark said, “so I don’t know how to explain it. I can make the Flames do almost anything I want, within certain physical limits. I can force them to approach the temperature of true
fire to burn a wound closed, or I can deflect kinetic forces. They give nearly absolute control of all within their field. It’s one of the few ways that magic can be used to destroy a soul.”
The way the Flames seemed to pass right through her skin, muscles, and bone was unnerving. The chill they carried permeated her flesh, and a sense of deathly dread flowed along the outer layer of those slow-moving tongues of green luminescence.“Destroy a soul?”
“One of the most sought-after abilities by the deranged cult-fathers of the Vigil. There is no weapon more psychologically powerful than that which can eternally remove a victim from the cycle of death and rebirth.”
Death and rebirth. The way he talked about it made it sound like reincarnation was a proven fact, one the rest of the ostensibly normal world was not yet privy to. She made a note to ask him more about souls later. Right now she was too distracted by the cold fire roiling along her fingers, chilling them, prickling them with thousands of frosty needles. The plumes left dark, shifting hues over her skin. She couldn’t pull herself to look away until the Flames vanished again, with just as little fanfare as when they’d appeared.
“Let’s say I really do have an innate gift for magic,” she said. “Could you teach me to use that?”
He chuckled darkly. “Even if you do have a gift, the odds I could teach this to you are vanishingly small. Occultists have spent their entire lives studying and attempting to invoke the Flames. None succeeded. Most either died or went mad from diving too deep into arcane esoterica. That is not to say I could not teach you other forms of magic, however. In any case, we must first determine whether the potential to use magic exists in the first place.”
“You can do that?”
He nodded. “It’s none too difficult, though I’d prefer to wait until I’m feeling a little better.”
“Fine by me.” A shiver tickled up her back. She tucked in deeper into Mark’s jacket, hoping Mark himself wasn’t too uncomfortable with the growing chill. It was almost too dark to see now, and the fungal bushes nearby were little more than blurred suggestions. The light of the Flames of Y’rokkrem still seemed to flicker on the edge of her peripheral vision. “I could really go for something to eat right about now.” A tall glass of water would be pretty great, too.
“Perhaps those strange tree-things are edible.”
She shook her head, mouth dry and filled with an awful taste. “No way. My guess is poison. Let’s keep moving. There’s gotta be something alive and worth eating in this place.”
After washing her body of mud, sweat, and blood, Annika dried herself off on the undersized motel towel. It was a process that took a little longer than she was used to, as her injured arm left her to accomplish the task with a single hand. She changed into a pair of old jeans and a plain blue blouse, gave her hair a preliminary attempt at drying, and then emerged from the steamy bathroom.
The dry, cool air of the main room was bracing, and she breathed an exaggerated sigh. Through the dark curtain of her wet hair, she saw that Arthr had curled up into a fetal position between the beds. She clicked her tongue and was about to demand he man the hell up, but then thought better of it. Kid’s not used to stuff like this, she reminded herself. No need to push him. Instead, she turned her attention to where Kara sat upon the nearer of the beds. “Kara, sweetie,” she said with a smile. “Wanna do me a huge favor?”
Kara’s face lit up. “Sure!”
She lifted her right arm a bit, cringing at the deep pain in her bone. “Wanna wrap this up for me again?”
“Of course!”
Annika dropped down onto the bed while Kara moved to retrieve the wooden switch that had fallen upon the floor. She returned with it a moment later and aligned it against Annika’s forearm with the care of a physician. Annika helped hold it in place with her good arm while the spider-girl began forming a ball of thick, syrupy resin in her mouth. After a few moments, Kara brought four of her spider legs to her tongue and began to pull the thick goo into individual strands. Her legs moved in a hypnotic rhythm, stretching the strands between each pair of legs in turn until the resulting fiber was no thicker than a human hair. She then set about wrapping the off-white silk around Annika’s arm and the switch. Within a minute and a half, the tight web envelope around Annika’s arm had been rebuilt.
“Hrow’z rhat?” Kara asked, words muffled from the gob of unspent resin.
Annika flexed her fingers, drawing them into a loose fist. The tight binding made the movement harder than normal but blunted the pain significantly. “That’s great,” she said with a smile.
“Rh’kay.” Kara swept one of her legs and severed the leftover strands of silk. She hopped to her feet and walked over to the small wastebasket in the corner of the room, where she spat out the remaining amber-colored precursor.
Annika moved her right arm, once again impressed at how much better the flexible web-cast made it feel. “You’re the best, Kara.”
Kara giggled and fidgeted. Between the beds, Arthr sat up and leaned against the frame of the bed behind him. He looked like a sea-sick sailor. The juxtaposition struck her at once. They were both still children, but then why was Kara so calm and collected? It defied reason in a way she found particularly puzzling. “You feeling alright?” Annika asked him in an overly gentle tone.
He shook his head a little and glanced around the room. “How long are they going to take?”
Annika stood and walked to the table where she’d folded her trench coat before her shower. “Beats me. Shouldn’t make us wait too long. Just relax while you can. Kick your feet up. Don’t worry about ifs and whens. I’ll take care of everything.” Her hand crept into the coat pocket and drew out her phone. A swipe brought the screen to life. It was just after midnight. “You two might want to get some sleep. We’re moving as soon as Mark and Spinzie get here.”
Arthr shook his head. “I won’t be able to sleep,” he said. “Not after this.”
On the bed, Kara crossed her spider legs across her torso. “I’m not tired yet.”
Annika gave the girl a weak smile. “Well, whenever you get tired you can take whichever bed you want. I’ll take the other.”
Arthr raised his sea-sick eyebrows. “What about me?”
“You can sleep on the floor.”
“How is that fair?”
“I’m joking. You can shove in next to your sister.”
“No way!” Kara said. “I called it!”
For a brief moment, the boy looked like he was about to cry. Then he shrugged his shoulders and sighed in acquiescence. “Whatever. You need it more than I do.”
“How kind of you,” Annika said. Satisfied the matter was settled, she turned her folded coat over and found her holster. Her fingers wrapped around the smooth grip of the revolver within. She pulled the gun free and held it up to the light to inspect it. She then sat down on the bed beside Kara and began to buff out a blemish that caught her eye on the barrel.
“That’s, uhh . . . That’s a pretty cool gun,” Arthr said from the floor.
She shifted to face him and showed him a proud grin. “Ruger SP-101, three-fifty-seven magnum, double-action. May not be the biggest or the baddest, but this old girl’s never let me down. You know anything about guns?”
He scratched his head as he readjusted to sit atop the opposite bed. “Uhh, yeah, a bit.”
“I was being facetious. I’m sure you don’t know anything about guns.”
He started, as though he’d been slapped. “N-no, I mean, like, I’m not an expert or anything, but I do know a little,” he said. His face said that a little was a gross overstatement.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “A little, huh?” I’ll play your little hyperbole game, kid. She pulled the drawer of the nightstand open and withdrew a small, unmarked box. “Well then, think you can tell me what these are?” She opened the lid with her thumb and showed Arthr several neat rows of golden, flat-nosed bullet casings.
“Uhh, yeah. Those would be . . . uhh, three-fif
ty-seven magnum . . . bullets.”
“Well, to your credit you’re a good listener. Just a tidbit for ya: just because it flies out of a magnum doesn’t make it a magnum. These are thirty-eight specials. Hundred twenty-five grain jacketed hollow point.” She gathered a small handful and opened the cylinder of her revolver. The familiar motion felt utterly alien in her left hand. She began to slide the bullets into the chambers one by one. “Now, you have any idea why someone might want to use a hollow-point cartridge instead of a full metal jacket?”
Arthr’s gaze was locked to her fingers. He shook his head, cheeks beginning to glow red.
Annika snapped the cylinder of the Ruger closed. “Full metal jacket rounds often over-penetrate. Instead of piercing, hollow points flatten and stop so all the kinetic force goes into your target. That way you don’t have to worry about what’s behind them. Two birds with one javelin.”
He nodded, expression comatose.
She paused as an odd thought crossed her mind. “Wonder if FMJs would’ve cut through that thing’s plating.” She ran her thumb over the grooved cylinder of her revolver, thinking. Then she thrust the loaded revolver back into her holster, laid the folded coat across the bed, and got to her feet. “There. Next time you say you know a little about guns, you won’t be lying.”
Abashed, Arthr just nodded.
“Annie,” Kara said, “when are you going to tell us what’s going on?”
She stretched her arms over her head. “If my explanation on the way over wasn’t enough, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know tomorrow. I’m too tired to get into that now.” Already the witching hour, and no sign of Mark and Spinzie, she thought. First Spinzie doesn’t show up at the park, and now this. Something’s wrong. If they don’t show up soon, then I’ve got a feeling we’re all going to be between a rock and the deep blue sea.
Mark and Spinneretta’s search for food did not last long. They kept walking in the same direction over hills and through troughs infested with more of the strangely skeletal bush-things. And as night fell, casting an all-encompassing blackness over the mountains above and wastelands below, stranger still the landscape grew. Like fireflies igniting their bioluminescence, so too did the strands of webbing strung between the ash-colored stalks begin to glow, nodules of light hanging in self-contained galaxies. Like so many things, there was a haunting beauty to them, but no time to appreciate it. Unable to continue on without light, they stopped at the top of a hill and attempted to claim some rest.
Helixweaver (The Warren Brood Book 2) Page 3