Millions of tiny little eyes stared at her. They didn’t blink. They all watched her, and their harsh, quick tongue struck her ears. At first, they seemed to be rising, and then Marim knew that she was sinking. She could feel the cold slime rising around her ankles.
Leave me be! she screamed at them. There was clacking around her, thousands and sharp little clicks.
Wrenched back to her body by pain, she screamed. Her voice reached her ears. Her eyes caught on her father, who stood at the foot of the bed. His features were distant, almost unrecognizable. They all seemed like figures on a screen. There but not real. The torment held them at bay.
This is not how it should be! She screamed, but her voice made no sound. Her lips did not even part. Then for a long moment, the pain in her body, the fatigue, and the ache was enough to blind her to all else.
She heard a child’s cry. My baby. Her vision went black, and she choked on a scream. There was nothing in this blackness, but she could hear their legs shuffling her way. The sweat on her lip was cold.
“The baby, Annabelle, is the key. Keep her safe for me; keep the world safe from her. I know… I know…” She heard her voice echoing in a place far away. The sound separated from her, and she lost interest. What could such a voice accomplish? Nothing. She would sing. So she lifted that faraway voice into a wordless song.
The spiders were close now. They would take Marim away with them. She reached out her hand and felt a single prickly limb. She did not recall that her arms were held down. That was not real. The world back there had no meaning.
“Where are we going?” she asked the shadow spiders around her. Her voice now rang in both places. The baby no longer cried, but she heard distant whimpers.
The creatures all around her did not respond. She heard their answer. She laughed, as light as a child. “Will I die?”
Then the terror reached her, and she whimpered. They were close. She felt their breath on her. She could almost taste the poison of their fangs. It would hurt, this death. They held only inches from her. “No, no, no.”
“Come with us. You will be safe, but you must come now,” a harsh voice said. “We are so few in body now, but you will have good company here.”
“But my child. My Annabelle.”
“She is out of your hands. Follow if you like or stay here with them. They are hungry, and we do not begrudge them a meal.”
“I’m tied. I cannot come,” Marim said. Her arms pulled against the ties.
“Bodies are irrelevant.”
Marim pondered this. The creature was only a voice in her head. She wasn’t certain about the other ones.
“Goodbye, goodbye,” she said once again in a singsong voice. Her decision was made. Maybe somehow, she could find her way back to Annabelle and Darith, but not if she died.
∆∆∆
Ymel slammed a fist into the desk and then with a glance about the room, he straightened his jacket. He disconnected his net-glasses and threw them in disgust onto the ground. No news on Silvia and Halis. Or, he should say not good news. He’d really had hoped for this lead to pan out.
He even had a video feed of Silvia on the planet. But his agents told him they were gone.
No more waiting. They’ve been out there too long. If The Council of Five gets wind of their existence…. No. It was time to start hiring assassins.
∆∆∆
Umbu slipped into the house. The door was ajar, as if to welcome him. He spurned it, wary of such easy entry. He chose instead to pry open a window on the third floor. There he crept inside. He trusted his skin to shield him from view.
Darker than many of his people were, Umbu blended with the unlit interior. His skin was as dark as coal, only paler at his palms and the soles of his feet, both of which he smudged with coal when he worked. Even the whites of his eyes he hid with a dye made from a rare plant.
Tonight, Umbu had taken extra care. Not often did he get a call to take out a murderer who could well have been in the ranks of his guild. Not often, either, did he get to take on a near-mythical creature.
Umbu always researched his hits. His was a gentleman’s guild, not one of those plebeian criminal undertakings. This job demanded more research than any before. Every scrap of information was classified, much of what he suspected had been destroyed. He found the information as much with luck as with skill and perseverance. But he found enough to tell him this kill would be one of legend for whomever took down the beast. The last of the spiders of Revia. Buried in one of the largest and most comprehensive libraries was a reference to a species of creatures that could go effortlessly between the form of man and the form of a giant spider.
The notes were adamant that this race was extinct. Irradicated to the last one was the wording used. No samples taken, no genetic preservation or study. This species, called the Drambish, were said to have a taste for human flesh. They could prey on anything but preferred sentient beings. The humans on their homeworld had fared badly.
When the Drambish had branched out, looking for new worlds to prey upon, the neighboring worlds had wiped them out, not wishing to suffer the same fate. It appeared to Umbu that they had missed one or two.
He was curious to see them, this scholar admitted. Fear also pulsed in his blood. The drumming of his heart approaching either a kill or death was the entire reason for his chosen profession. The notes were incomplete. With such a minuscule amount of information, it was impossible to know who would be the victor in a struggle. Umbu slipped out the door of the room he’d entered. The hallway, like the room, was dark. He crept forward.
Were they asleep? His readings had implied they were mostly nocturnal, requiring less than four hours of sleep.
His hand caught on something sticky that hung in the air. A shiver traveled from his shoulders down his back. His eyes were abnormally adjusted to the dark. Now that he searched, he saw small forms moving along the floor and the banister. A few dark spots hung in the air. Were they watching him?
He slipped silently into the next room and stood, letting his eyes adjust to the forms. Before he could fully identify the dark shape in the corner, a light turned on. He’d accustomed himself to sudden change. It didn’t do to be blinded by a light coming on.
The woman who sat in the chair was a far cry from the picture he’d built in his mind. Her black hair was stained with blood. Her full breasts thrust up against the lace gown she wore, which was no less sensual because her stomach was ripe with child. She stood with the grace of a snake. Were spiders so graceful? He had never noticed. They certainly were not this beautiful.
Her white dress fell to the floor, covered in pearls and delicate lace. He had never liked the look of pregnant women, not even his wife, though his memories of that time overflowed with fondness. Women with child were swollen and awkward. She was neither. She dressed like a bride in glaring white. Her arms were almost as pale as the dress. Only her hair falling in unconstrained waves was as shadowed as he imagined her soul.
“Will you have a drink?” this vision said. The hand she lifted was studded with glittering rings. She moved over to a cabinet before he could find a voice.
“You cannot seduce me,” he said. “I know what you are.”
“And I know what you are.” She poured two drinks. Hair obscured her face. “You want me dead because they’ve told you I must die.”
“Your beauty might have stopped me, Silvia, but that you’re a Drambish, a killer of humankind.”
“Am I? Drambish, hmm.” Silvia lifted her face to him and took both drinks up in her hands. “I’ve never heard that word before. Nor am I a killer.”
Umbu said nothing, but he took the drink. He did not sip the clear liquid. She sipped at hers. Her mouth parted beautifully. Her insides glittered like one of the jewels on her fingers. He wanted to protect her, not harm her. The feeling that overcame him made no logical sense, but it was as solid as the floor beneath his feet.
“Drink,” she said.
He took a sip.
“Now let me tell you your options,” Silvia said. “I am telling the truth when I say I’m not a killer. I respect you and your profession. I acknowledge that there are people who should die. Perhaps I am one of them. My partner is a killer, and he does deserve to die. You’ll not kill him. I wouldn’t let you, and in any event, you wouldn’t prevail. So you have two options. You can leave here as you arrived, that is alive and secretly, or you cannot leave here at all. We’ll kill you. Make no mistake, there’s no third option. I don’t die, and neither does Halis.”
A large, but not unnatural, spider crawled up the skirt of her dress and stayed there.
“What if I leave and return, and that time I take you by surprise?”
“You could try. You would fail.”
Umbu believed her. He did not want her to die. He also knew if he returned without taking out his mark, he would have no life. They would kill him if she did not. One did not take a mark and fail without forfeiting honor or life. Slowly, he lifted the laser pistol at his side. His hand did not shake. He knew he would never get to fire it. The single clack behind him told him that Halis had been there all along.
One long, hairy leg thrust through his spine and emerged in his stomach. He dropped the gun. His eyes never left her. She sipped her drink as the other’s teeth sank into his throat. When he slumped to the floor, Silvia set down the glass. As his life fled with his blood, he heard her speak.
“No challenge at all. I don’t even think he intended to shoot me.”
Black as the night and pale as a star, she curled against the spider’s hairy hide. They lay together, and her hand of starlight stroked his abdomen.
“You smell of lust, and no man wishes to kill that which he desires,” the night whispered to her in a hiss of his voice.
Umbu tried to drag himself to the side, perhaps stanch the blood. His limbs didn’t work. Had there been a poison in the drink she’d given him? Or something from the spider itself? It didn’t matter. He had no choice but to sit there and hear her nonchalant voice and the spider’s voice that moved through the blackness of the mind. Unspoken yet heard.
“They have found us, my love. We must flee. Where will we go?”
“Nowhere. We’ll wait here and catch them all in our web. We’ll consume every morsel.”
She moved her hand to her stomach. “And this one? He is too small to defend himself. For his sake, we cannot let them come at us.”
“We can forge more. We will forge more.”
Silvia jerked up. Her hands formed into claws, but she struck at nothing. Umbu felt nothing, not hate and not pity. Lethargy had crept into his thoughts. What did he care what became of them or the universe? He was going to die. After a moment, that didn’t bother him either.
“The other one remains behind. You do not worry about her. For Annabelle.”
Silvia laughed then. In her laugh crawled millions of hairy, eight-legged creatures. “Marim will keep it safe—that’s a mother’s desire.”
“And I’ll protect you and your child. Nothing will come at you here. I’m not ready to move on.”
“I do not fear for us, you and me. But he’ll be defenseless.”
“No child of ours will ever be defenseless.”
Chapter 3
Madness
The sides of the meeting room curved, turning the room into a bullet-shaped oblong of blue steel. Nothing broke the sleek, metallic curve except for a table with three chairs on one side and a lone seat on the other. The furniture was across the room in front of the single flat wall. The legs of the chairs and table had been built at a slant, so they sat evenly on the curved floor. Two of the three chairs at the far side of the table were filled with two elderly gentlemen.
The Agency’s owners. One a gray-haired scientist with thick spectacles and large sausage-like fingers. The other a tawny-skinned gentleman, his head shaved and shined till it formed a reflective surface. The third chair, Mr. Red’s chair, was empty.
Allison walked down the center of the floor, her metal-tipped heels singing as they brushed the floor. She strode directly behind the lonely chair facing the men and set her hands on its back. She leaned a slight portion of her weight against the chair back, nothing more than an indication she’d stopped.
Do the other girls ever sit down? Or is the seat simply to demonstrate the inequality between the seated men and the agents who faced them across the table?
“Have a seat,” said the gray-haired man, Johnny, as he liked to be called. Though Allison had done a little research and found his birth name, she’d never say it aloud.
“If you command, I’ll kneel,” Allison replied, making no move toward the chair.
“As it has ever been,” Johnny said.
The shiny-headed bald man, Lord Wassem, rarely spoke, and he didn’t now. His steel-nailed hands rose and a cascade of clicks rang into the room as his fingers drummed on the tabletop.
“Tradition is both a garland and a chain. In either event, it demonstrates our role.” Allison could ask why she was there but assumed they wanted to retain the reins of the conversation. Her silence demonstrated her docility. See, the unspoken words said, I expect nothing from you, demand nothing. I only obey.
There were two things they could want from her—either to hand her another role, an assignment of some sort, or they wanted a report on the new girl.
“You are getting on well with Glory?” Lord Wassem asked.
Not even a question. Then they did want to feel powerful, to know she would answer without being asked. This was usually a game they played with inexperienced operatives. They already know they own me.
“Glory is strong. She has a streak for empathy that Red will stamp out, but she is settling in admirably.”
“Yes, Red can handle her now,” Lord Wassem said.
An assignment then, since the comment implied an end to her brief mentorship. Too bad. Talking to Glory made her feel almost human, gave her something she was allowed to care about.
“Red is a magician. A sorcerer of sorts,” Johnny said.
They were dwelling on Red, and he was absent. I’m being tested. Allison’s heart thudded, and she forced it to slow, lest the slight movement of her chest give her away. Red would have noticed. These two might not have the skill, but wisdom dictated not testing their abilities.
“If you are the art, he’s the craftsman.” Johnny leaned forward, his thick glasses making his eyes huge and bug-like.
“But I’m not art, merely the paintbrush. The work my hands do on your behalf, that is the art,” Allison replied.
“Which places us as wealthy patrons of the arts,” Johnny said.
Lord Wassem’s fingernails pounded on the table.
“Or the talent, the inspiration of the artist,” Allison said.
“We have a minor masterpiece that craves your brushstrokes.” Johnny released a file from his net implant to hers.
Lord Wassem shoved a file across to her.
Allison opened the physical folder. A face stared out at her. Allison stared back as she read through the file in her implant. Skin a color she’d never seen in nature, a color like smoke, a deep velvety gray. Despite the man being attractive, something lurked in the gaze that made her hope the assignment wouldn’t involve sex.
“Halis Black,” she read aloud after a onceover of the entire file. A kill job? She read the information again, but nothing new appeared. No second page. No secondary assignment. “Track his movements. Report back with an emphasis on whom he sleeps with and what happens to them. After reporting back, kill him.”
She didn’t phrase it as a question, but everyone knew it was. She waited for the interjection, the complication. They hadn’t wasted her skills on a simple kill job for decades.
“The body must not be found,” Lord Wassem said.
I can read the file. Allison smiled. “Disposed of discretely. Destroyed.”
“Go. Pack. You leave tomorrow,” Johnny said.
Allison picked
up the picture and, holding it between two fingers, she walked back across the room.
∆∆∆
A scream ripped across the daisy-strewn night. Marim’s red hair splashed like blood across the pillow, shredded petals from Darith’s daily gift of daisies dotted the bed. Her eyes stared, filled with a vague, blind terror. Her nostrils flared. She smelled them on the night air. She felt his fingers, but even more than that, Silvia’s distant pain ravaged her. It was so like another pain she dimly remembered. Her fingers clenched on the sheets of her slender, hard pallet.
After the first single shout of fear, she was silent amidst the voices that crowded in around her. They held her snug away from the pain and darkness. She clenched her legs closed as if she could trap it inside her. The being that came belonged to another, housed in another’s womb.
Another born, good. We will fill the earth again, the voice in her head said. It was like a chain against her, binding her to Silvia’s torment and weighing her down in the blackness. Not just a child, a god. He will teach humanity to kneel.
Silvia’s hair splashed out like a nighthawk’s talons, and it struck a pillow somewhere worlds away. There was sweat between her breasts and it trickled down along the line of a rib. The beast moved. Marim let out a laugh that was more like tears than laughter.
He comes, the destroyer, the redeemer, the voice chanted.
Silvia swore. Her hand struck out and, somehow over lightyears of space, Marim recoiled from the sharp tear of a nail on her cheek.
“It’s nothing,” Silvia said between barred teeth.
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