Helixweaver (The Warren Brood Book 2)

by Bartholomew Lander

  You wanted something to distract you, the back of her mind laughed in derision. She glanced again at the worn cover of the manual. God had given her a distraction, but he missed the part where she wanted to distract herself from frustration. She bit her tongue and opened the manual to the first page. The cover creaked against her thumb. If she made any sudden movements, it very well could have snapped off. UNIX, huh, she thought. I’ll show you I’m not a quitter.

  Her father had taught her how to write simple programs in BASIC and C++, and she had on several occasions returned to the study of speaking to the computer gods. But as the night wore on she found it was of little use to her. Though she considered herself a relatively adept technomancer, the first chapter of the UNIX guide challenged everything she knew.

  And after struggling for close to an hour with the simple tasks of navigating the file system, she admitted defeat and turned off the fossilized computer with a shout of rage. What garbage, she thought. Why can’t God ever let me win?

  The night eventually yawned into morning. From the sea there rolled a thick fog that coincided with the break of civil twilight. Mark stood upon the balcony, his gaze fixed on the color of the sky just above the horizon. It was lighter than it had been last night. At some point he must have nodded off, for he couldn’t remember anything between the fall of evening and now. He could only be thankful that no dreams had dared to intrude. He didn’t think he could handle them. His mind was a pincushion of conflict and regret. Spinneretta’s furious outburst was already a whole day in the past, but his thoughts kept reconjuring the scene in acidic clarity.

  Stop thinking about it, he thought. Things are better this way. The further she stays from me, the better. Though he knew it was true, it was hard to bring himself to believe it. It had been selfish of him to let her any closer than arm’s length in the first place. If he’d just kept his damn distance, everything would have worked out. His plan would have worked, Simon Dwyre would be dead, NIDUS would have fallen, and he would be back on Lily’s trail.

  I have never told anyone this story before.

  He hadn’t expected that handful of words to come back and bite him so ruthlessly. But, as the feelings in his gut were keen to remind him, this was the way things were meant to be. He had always been alone. The friendship he’d briefly shared with her, though enjoyable, was fundamentally unnatural. This had to be the universe’s way of snapping back into its proper shape, lest he forget his place and his purpose. The purple sky loomed overhead, and the dark sea stretched endlessly onward. The sun’s rising glow had begun to chase the shadows from the land. Y’rokkrem’s waxing gibbous had vanished many hours ago, taking with it the modicum of comfort that came from staring upon its deathly grandeur.

  “Knock-knock,” came Annika’s voice from the door, breaking him from his trance.

  He straightened up, trying to hide his alarm. “Good morning to you,” he said. “You are awake early.”

  “Somebody’s gotta keep an eye on our variables.”

  “Variables?”

  “The arachnologist and the arachno-dog.”

  “Ahh.” He was in no mood to consider either of them. “Is everything still in order?”

  Annika sighed and walked over to the edge of the balcony. She crossed her bare arms and leaned against the wooden rail. “I’ve started getting some paperwork together, in case we need to move on to Plan Z. I’m going to call in a couple favors, but it takes time to get new social security numbers in the system. We might be waiting a while on the kids’ documents.”

  He nodded, not truly listening. “Good. Have you been watching the news?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “No major change. They’ve begun releasing the names of those confirmed dead in this so-called Norwegian Killer’s bloodbath. But you’d think the takeover of a whole town in California of all places would garner a bit more attention. Last I heard, the county sent some law enforcement to try to break the blockade. Think we can both imagine how that ended.”

  Mark nodded. “I shall trust your judgment on whatever you decide to do.”

  Annika was quiet for a few moments. “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong or are we going to have to play twenty questions?”

  He stared deeper into the creeping mist, hoping it would take away her curiosity. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  She gave him a long, penetrating look. “I haven’t seen you this distant in ages. Surely you don’t think I was oblivious to that comatose look about you all yesterday. Come on, let me in. What’s going on in your head?”

  Mark said nothing.

  Annika hummed a contemplative tone and strode to the other side of the balcony, knees locked and hands folded at the small of her back. “Fine. I’ll decode your silence, then. My detective’s intuition speaks: something happened between you and Spinzie.”

  He showed her no reaction to her conclusion.

  “You’re not a very emotional person, you know,” she said. “Not normally, anyway. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice anything when you started acting like two passive-aggressive school girls?” She lowered her voice. “What happened?”

  He stood there a moment, and thought of the mist. It reminded him of the Web, of the wispy tendrils that clung to the ground of that outer world, and of the vapor that seethed forth from the portal. “I told her about everything that happened to me,” he said. “Back in Arbordale, I mean. And I told her she was the only person I’d ever told that story to.”

  Annika began to nod. “An odd thing to say. You wanted to make her feel special?”

  “I was just . . . I don’t know. She took that pretty seriously, I suppose. But she imagined a contradiction in it when you brought up Golgotha’s name.”

  She snickered. “Well, I don’t know what you expected to happen. You were asking for trouble, telling her something like that. Should’ve had a lawyer look over your wording.”

  His lungs tingled with the brisk morning air. Salt stung his nostrils. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I shouldn’t have been so liberal with the truth.”

  Annika narrowed her eyes at him. “Being liberal isn’t your problem. Seems to me she wouldn’t be mad at you unless you neglected to clear up that confusion. If you were so liberal with the truth, why didn’t you tell her the whole truth?”

  He grimaced. “Because I promised.”

  “You promised?”

  He nodded and let his head hang in sorrow. “Remember?”

  Annika was quiet for a beat, and then gasped. The sound was like ice water dripping down his neck. “Oh my God, you can’t be serious. After all these years you still—”

  “I don’t break promises, Annika,” he snapped. “I can’t.”

  She sighed. “Well, I suppose that explains why the girl loathes me so. Partly, anyway.” She was quiet a moment, and took to picking her nail. “I guess I should thank you for keeping that promise all this time. But right now it’s doing you a lot more harm than good.”

  “So be it.”

  “Do you want me to talk to her for you?”

  “No.” The breath in his lungs grew shallow. His fingers tightened about the railing. “Let her think what she wishes. Things are better if she stays mad at me.”

  “Better? By what metric?”

  “This is the way things are meant to be. Always has been.” His next breath tried to betray him, but he swallowed it. “I need you to do something for me, Annika.”

  “Well, you know that your wish is my command, so . . . ”

  “I’ve kept that promise for all these years. Now I want you to keep one for me. Promise me that you won’t say anything to her. Promise me you’ll just leave it be. Just leave everything as it is.”

  A wet scoff splattered into the air. “I never asked you to keep that promise. You jump to conclusions and expect me to see it as a favor?”

  “It was, wasn’t it?”

  “In a manner of speaking. But I think things would’ve been
more fun if more people knew. Would’ve made my seventeenth a bit more exciting, anyway.” Her eyes drifted shut. “Are you sure about this, Marky? Are you this eager to push her away?”

  The question stung, but he’d already made up his mind. “I am.”

  “Fine. Have it your way. I promise I won’t say anything to her.”

  He nodded and closed his eyes. “Thank you, Annika.” It hurt to say, and it was going to hurt a lot more before anything felt better. If she hated him, then it would at least keep her safe. If only Ellie’d had the sense to stay loyal to Golgotha, to sell him out at the first sign of treachery.

  Annika flashed a too-cheerful smile his way. “Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it, then.” She stretched her good arm and returned to the door. And then she paused, one hand on the doorknob. “Need anything?”

  “No.”

  And with that, she turned the knob and let herself inside.

  When the door clicked shut behind her, Annika’s false smile vanished. Sorry, Mark, she thought. Unlike you, I don’t really give a shit about promises.

  The day passed in a numb blur for Spinneretta. Like the last, she spent it staying away from anyone and everyone, which was easy enough with her family caught up in their own webs of confusion and doubt. The only notable event occurred when her mother asked her to explain again about Zigmhen, the World on the Web. Spinneretta had brushed her mother off, feigning mental fatigue to keep from speaking with her. She felt bad about it, but it wasn’t a conversation either of them needed right now. Her mom was busy trying to take care of Ralph, and though she loved May it was painful to speak to her. It was an unwelcome reminder of the home they’d left behind, of the precipice they’d all plunged over together. And so as night fell, Spinneretta again found herself alone in the study.

  She’d passed her eyes over the titles of the innumerable volumes as a way to distract herself. She’d even thumbed through one of the old volumes of the Journal of Arachnology, but found the articles so dry that her mind could not help but wander back to Mark and to the dripping disgust that tarped her mind. For a short while she’d just stared at the dinosaur computer with a reserved fury, but she couldn’t go back to it. It provided no stimulation to distract her from her thoughts.

  Spinneretta had all but conceded to the universe that she was the sole problem. Whether Mark had lied to her or not, even assuming the purest and most malicious intent on his part, she didn’t know how much longer she could go on being mad at him. Try as she might to resist, she was growing more and more eager to cast her anger aside and just go back to the way things were before she ruined what friendship they had. Just apologize, cut her losses, frame her tantrum as a mental breakdown due to all the stress. Surely he would forgive her. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t bring herself to lie like that after how she’d acted, and admitting the truth would have been so much worse.

  The tips of her spider legs glided across the surface of the chair she lay in. Her fingers played with strands of hair, and soon worked their way to the swollen flesh of her wounded arm. The smooth silk of Kara’s web was still soft, its texture distracting. The only sound was the scratching of her legs over the chair’s upholstery. She lost herself in that tactile escape, killing her thoughts with the empty noise.

  A while passed, and then there came a knock at the open door. Spinneretta glanced over her shoulder and found Annika standing in the doorjamb, a grave look on her face. Jaw growing tight, Spinneretta looked away and tried to focus on her spider legs scraping the chair, or her fingers kneading her wound. Just what I need. Her stomach rolled, and her appendages strained against their own joints, trying to contain her anger at the woman. There was a loud clack as the door shut. Then came Annika’s footsteps.

  Spinneretta felt the woman close in on her personal space, but wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledgment. She didn’t look up even when Annika placed a glass on the table beside her. It was a stout glass with a diamond-cut pattern, filled halfway with a deep amber liquid.

  “Drink it,” Annika said in a severe tone. “It’s time for some girl talk.”

  A smoldering breath invaded Spinneretta’s clenched teeth. Go away. Just leave me the hell alone.

  “Drink it,” Annika said again.

  Spinneretta gave her a sidelong glare, irritated at the brazen disrespect for her silence. “What is this?”

  “Bourbon.”

  Her gaze floated back to the glass. “I’m underage.”

  “I won’t tell your parents.”

  “And what makes you so damn sure I want any in the first place?”

  Annika flopped into the armchair opposite Spinneretta’s, her own glass held steady as she lowered herself. She took a slow sip. The hint of a harsh, deep smell began to flow in the air. “Laying it on pretty thick, Spinzie. I get it. You hate me. No need to try so hard, I get it. So just drink the bourbon so we can chat about how unfond of one another we are at this moment in time.”

  Spinneretta said nothing. The polished color of the alcohol seemed to shimmer with an almost invisible viscous coating. At least it gave her something to look at.

  Annika sighed. “Alright, fine. You don’t wanna drink? Don’t want to talk? Fine. Let’s make this interesting, then.” Her whole body moved, and a metallic click cut the air of the study.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Spinneretta saw the woman beginning to load a number of shells into her revolver. She jumped, and one of her spider legs banged into the table beside her. “Whoa, what the fuck are you doing?”

  Annika slid the third bullet into place. She thumbed the cylinder into a loose spin, clacked it shut, drew the hammer back, and pressed the barrel of the Ruger to the underside of her jaw. “I can tell that you hate me,” she said, “so here’s your chance to take a literal shot at me, min spindeltjej. You take a drink, and I’ll pull the trigger.”

  Spinneretta’s turbulent thoughts went quiet, and from the silent depths echoed a single raging thought. “Are you out of your motherfucking mind!?”

  Annika’s eyes flashed above a manic grin. “Maybe. Let’s give it a shot and find out. Drink it.”

  Spinneretta couldn’t look away from the mad glint in the woman’s pupils. “No.”

  “Why not? You obviously hate me, so why not play the odds and try to make me disappear? Let’s just cut loose all those little social inhibitions that stop you from doing what you really want to. That is what you want, isn’t it?”

  Spinneretta shook her head, her whole body trembling in shock. “No.”

  “Come now, don’t try to deny that you just despise me. So, if you wish I’d disappear then just roll the dice. You have a three in five shot of getting your wish, so what’s the problem? Just one little sip is enough to do it. Drink it. Cut loose.”

  The pounding in Spinneretta’s chest raged louder, heavier, until she thought it would choke her. Breath strangled, she broke the spell of the woman’s eyes and turned back to the bookcase. “Put it away,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Just because I hate you doesn’t mean I want you dead.”

  A few moments passed in silence. A sigh finally crested Annika’s pursed lips. “You really are no fun, you know.” She pointed the barrel toward the bookshelf and dropped the hammer with a dead click. Spinnetta’s heart nearly exploded. Though the hammer fell on an empty chamber, all of her limbs jerked in fright. Annika cracked the cylinder open and dumped the trio of bullets back into her palm. “Relax. I cheated. Parlor trick, nothing more.”

  Spinneretta stared at her in disbelief. Great. It’s bad enough she’s insufferable and saccharine, but now she’s insane, too. Her anger began to seethe, and so she turned away for what she intended to be the final time. The tips of her legs continued scratching the chair’s surface, more desperate than ever for an escape.

  “You’re wrong, you know,” Annika said with an eerie calm. “Mark really wasn’t lying to you. He really hasn’t told me anything.”

  The simmer in her blood began to roil. �
�If he sent you to just keep repeating that same lie then I’m not interested.” The words stabbed at some part of her. The question of whether she was being petty or not again crept to the forefront of her mind, and it was hard to deny the damning answer.

  Annika grew quiet, and soon Spinneretta made the mistake of breaking her oath by looking back. When she did, she found a pair of dark eyes glaring at her. “You’re not very good at connecting the dots. You’re so busy acting like the victim of your own soap opera that you can’t see the writing on the goddamn wall.”

  “Look, I totally appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Spinneretta said, voice thick with sarcasm. “But I’m not interested in listening to you trying to cover for him ad nauseum, alright?”

  “Ho-ho! The girl throws around the Latin, but is still too stupid to add two and two.”

  “I said I’m not interested in—”

  “You’re not interested this, not interested that. Not everything’s about you. If you want to mope around about your imaginary problems then go ahead, but Mark doesn’t deserve your pissy, ill-directed anger. He’s gone through too much already.”

  She scoffed at the woman’s contradiction. “Yeah, you would know, right?”

  “I would,” Annika said, tone growing even more severe. “I’d know a lot better than you would, as a matter of fact.”

  Spinneretta bit her lip and stayed quiet. They were arguing in circles, and it was doing nothing but verifying that Mark had lied. But even that verification didn’t make her feel any better about herself. In the end, what did it matter? So what if he lied? It wasn’t worth it to crucify herself over what he probably intended as a throwaway remark anyway.

  Over another sip of bourbon, Annika hummed a velvety note. “I’ll say it again,” she said in a gentle tone. “Marky didn’t send me. He actually told me not to say anything at all to you. Fitting, somehow. Like you, he’s content just masturbating his own misery. Problem is, I’m just too damn nice to let him do that to himself. Let me ask you something, Spinzie: why do you give such a profound fuck over whether you were the only one Mark opened up to about some story you don’t even remember?”