A Mark Unwilling

by Candace Wondrak

  The rest of the group slowly steps inside, and I take a few seconds to wander. A quaint, two-story house. A lot smaller than the house I grew up in, but I actually like this one a lot better. I’m not a fan of useless space. Judging from the photographs that hang on the wall all along the stairwell, a family of five lived here—two parents, three kids.

  I trace a finger down the lowest collage, wondering why my parents chose not to have any other children. They could have had kids and not sold their souls; kids that would stick around and take care of them when they’re old and grey.

  It doesn’t matter now.

  I head around to the living room, where everyone sits/stands. I motion to Darren and Nat. “Ready? We should get going.”

  Devil Jr. moves into my field of view, blocking everything out with his wide chest. “I am going with you,” he says, serious and stern.

  “No, you’re not.”

  A lone eyebrow lifts. “I think you forget—”

  “I didn’t forget,” I tell him. “I just need you to stay here. If anything comes…” I hold his stare, wishing that I didn’t notice how handsome he is. “…I know you can protect them.”

  “Fetching blood for your pet is a foolish idea.”

  And just like that, I forget his good-looking outer shell, irritated. “He is not my pet, and it’s the only way he’ll survive.” I can tell that he’s about to say something else equally as aggravating, so I hold a hand over his mouth, shushing and stunning him simultaneously. “Whatever you’re about to say, I don’t want to hear it,” I speak, my hand still over his mouth. “You said it was up to me whether or not to bring him along. I didn’t bring him just to let him suffer. I’m going with Darren and Nat—you’re staying.”

  I don’t know how far I can take it, so I quickly let my hand drop and walk to the door. Darren and Nat already went out to the van; David waits for me, arms crossed. He was probably going to lecture me about how stupid this idea is, but his anti-Vampire thoughts must’ve faded when he watched me handle Devil Jr.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone talk to the Devil like that,” he muses, giving me a small grin. The scabs on his ears have started to shrink; the first sign that they’re ready to grow back.

  His words catch me off-guard, and I glance back to my soul’s owner. “What? Him? Oh, he’s not the Devil. He’s the Devil’s son.” When he questions me further, I tell him, “I’ll be back soon. I’ll give you the four-one-one later.”

  As I head out the door, I hear him shout, “No one says that anymore!”

  Funny. You’d think it’d be me saying that to the three-hundred-year-old Warlock.

  There isn’t much to fill David in on. Just a few fights; Josefina refusing to be safe and rest and wait this apocalypse out; me somehow finagling the Devil’s son to do what I want. No biggies there.

  Before I hop in the van and slide its door closed, I hear Deb sprinting out, saying, “Wait.” I poke my head out and watch as the little prophetic girl runs to me. Her fist is closed around something, and she offers it to me. “I think you should take this.”

  I feel a small, round object, cool and smooth. The stone that trapped David. Well, a lookalike. I’m not sure if all the cultists in that group had one, or what.

  “It activates whenever any non-Human steps over it. But to do so, it has to be on the floor, and level.” Deb shifts as she whispers, “An earth spell from a Witch my ancestors caught.”

  I like her apocalyptic cultist family less and less as the days go on.

  “Thank you,” I say, sticking it in my pocket. “Any other hints or tips before we go? Anything you might’ve drawn out?”

  She shakes her head, her red hair flying every which way. “No. I haven’t drawn anything that could help you.” In a fast movement, she hugs me. “Be safe.” And then she pulls away, waves, and runs back to the house.

  Well, that’s weird. All this hugging is going to give me hives.

  Sitting cross-legged, I say after closing the van’s door, “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Darren nods, starting the van and heading toward our destination.

  I tug at the rubber floor. It makes sense that Cloud knows someone in the hospital. Not every Vamp had a Sape, and I’m sure the Sapes weren’t passed around like a water bottle. Logic says that the blood from the Sapes is better, fresher, and the blood from the hospital bags are good, but could be better—like meat, forgotten in the freezer for a few months. Not the picture of freshness.

  Ew. I shouldn’t even be thinking of blood in those terms. Blood is not food. Not for me.

  “Do you think the woman’s still there?” I ask, breaking the van’s silence.

  Darren shrugs. “I don’t know. Seems like everybody in this town is gone. Weird, since this part wasn’t evacuated.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Karen. She—” Darren slams on the breaks and turns the wheel sharply, swearing.

  “—oh, shit!” The van, going faster than the speed limit, falls on its two right wheels, its velocity flipping it. Since I don’t have a seatbelt on, I careen into the van’s metal ceiling. I wholly expect to do a lot more flopping, but the van remains on its back after the first flip.

  I struggle to get my weight off my neck—pain surging down my spine—and work to crawl to the front. Moving through an upside-down vehicle is not something I’m used to.

  Darren undoes his seatbelt, falling to the ceiling, while Nat has her arms crossed, repeating, “No. No, I stay. Not going.”

  Darren gives her a strange look, and kicks open the driver’s door. He’s the first to crawl out, a bit difficult due to his belly, and as I follow him, I notice the door didn’t fully come off. It’s stuck to a white, thin substance. The same stuff the van is stuck in, on its side.

  I tumble out of the van, falling face-first into the white stuff. It sticks on my skin, and as I stand, I work to peel it off. Like uncolored cotton candy. As I wave my hands in the air, feeling like I got a whole roll of tape stuck to my skin, Darren convinces Nat to get out.

  Once I’m free of the substance, I’m able to see what happened, what we drove into. The entire street—sidewalks, streetlights, surrounding buildings—all are coated in the same substance. I know I’ve seen stuff like this before, but my mind is thinking big, not small. The van hangs two feet in the air, on its side, caught in the white mass.

  “Tell me this isn’t the hospital,” I say, staring up at a tall building, its windows coated in the stuff.

  “No,” Darren quickly says. He leads us through the street, and we each do our best to keep away from the sticky stuff—Nat especially. We stop before another building. “This is the hospital.”

  As I gaze up at it, I mutter, “I wish it was the other one.”

  The hospital makes the streets and other buildings immaculate. Windows are broken out, not a single inch of any of its surface is free of the white. On the building’s corner sits a peculiarly round grey ball. If I had to guess, I’d say the ball is the size of a horse. It hits me before Nat speaks.

  “Is that…egg sack?” Nat’s face twists in horror. “No. No, I—”

  Darren grabs her elbows. “We have to do this, for Cloud.”

  I don’t seem to be as freaked as Nat, but my stomach does bunch up. Why didn’t I realize it sooner? The white stuff is webbing, like a giant spider inhabited the area and made the entire block its web.

  “My Spidey senses are tingling,” I whisper. Moving to the hospital’s sliding doors that hang permanently ajar, I glance at the two Vamps. “This is a Demon’s work.” I don’t know why I know; I just do. No supernatural race could make something like this in mere days. No race would be that brave to do so when humanity is still the most numerous on the globe. After seeing the strange and fantastic shapes and sizes of the Demons when Michael called names, I just know. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Darren and Nat enter behind me. The entire lobby is shrouded in the webbing. No chair, no countert
op without it. We move into the first hall, the lights flickering. “Where would the blood be?”

  “I’ve never been inside the hospital before,” Darren mumbles, scratching his head. “I guess we should spread out and look?”

  “Have you seen any horror movie ever?” I ask, and Nat jumps to agree with me. “Never split up.” A loud, ear-splitting cry breaks through the air, reverberating off the webbing. We all look up; it came from the upper levels. “But let’s hurry, shall we?”

  Darren quickly says, “Agreed.”

  We continue through the hall, checking each room. When we find rooms that have beds, we find nothing but bloody sheets. What Demon could do something like this? I return to Darren and Nat after glancing into a particularly unsettling room. The bed, covered in blood, wasn’t what got to me. It was the toy truck sitting beside the bed, beneath a thin web. Children were in this hospital, and they’re gone—dead, probably—just like everyone else.

  We head to the stairs after checking the whole floor. The stairwell is full of webbing and egg sacks. These sacks, however, are cracked open. I peer inside one as Darren whispers assurances to Nat. Nothing inside of them.

  Nat goes to open the door to the second floor, but she jerks away from the knob, letting out a scream. Darren pushes her aside, telling her to be quiet, and goes to look at what freaked her out. A black, hairy leg pokes through the slightly open door. He uses his Vamp strength to yank the door, and the sight that greets him causes him to scream, sounding nearly identical to Nat. Both Vamps fall back, stumbling into each other.

  I roll my eyes, wondering how I could be surrounded by such baby Vamps. I step in front of them, shielding them from whatever spooked them. As I stand there, gazing down at the creature, I feel the unholy need to scream, too. But I don’t. I hold it in.

  Hunched on the floor, with not one, not two, but eight hairy legs each the size of my arm, is a miniature version of the Demon who coated this place. An arachnid-like body, save for the middle parts. It’s a child. One from one of the beds, probably. Its head is that of a young boy, his Human arms still functional. He holds them before his face, hiding his smile. The eight legs come from his spine, and his Human legs drag across the floor, limp and useless.

  I slowly kneel, resisting the urge to scream, vomit, or hit the kid/spider (or a combination of all three), and say gently, “Can you understand me?”

  The boy lets out a shriek, lunging for me. I fall backwards, into the landing on the stairwell. Nat is busy screaming like a crazed schoolgirl, while Darren slowly recovers himself. The boy’s legs enclose me, and I realize why he hid his mouth.

  It’s not a Human mouth anymore.

  A bloody line draws away from the mouth, lips peeled back, to each earlobe. Skin and tendons apart, two large fangs sprout from the lines, and two smaller fangs hover near the boy’s chin. The lower fangs drip venom, and as the larger ones snap at me, attempting to drag my face into the rows and rows of sharpened teeth that I’m certain the boy didn’t have before, Darren grabs him by the Human legs and pulls him off, throwing him off me, over the stairwell. The spider-boy catches himself on the wall, staring at us, a thick goo dripping from his disfigured mouth.

  Seeing the boy’s body mostly limp, with Demonic spider legs jutting out of his back, will be something that will haunt my dreams.

  The boy leaps for Darren, and Darren catches him by the fangs. I grip the boy’s Human legs and pull with all my might. With our combined pulling, the tiny body tears apart, leaving me with a leggy body and Darren with a fanged head. Darren instantly drops the head, looking like he’s going to throw up. The spider legs shrivel on top of me, and I shove the body away. I would be sad, but that thing was no longer a boy.

  “That was…” Darren can’t find the words to say.

  Nat hugs herself, muttering how she wants to go back.

  I dust myself off. “Never thought I’d see any spiders of unusual sizes.” As I say it, I get a dirty look from Nat. Not the time to make jokes, I know.

  Another loud scream pierces the air, and each of us have to cover our ears. The building rumbles. A sense of urgency mixed with dread, fills me. We have to hurry this up. It doesn’t take psychic intuition to tell me that being here is dangerous. If everyone in the hospital turned into one of those things, we’re in for it.

  We search the second floor, finding much the same as was on the first. Empty beds, bloody sheets. Egg sacks that haven’t yet opened or hatched. We hurry along, Nat walking slower. Who knew Vampires could be scared of anything, let alone spiders? Big, Demon-y spiders, I can understand. I don’t think anyone could face something like that and not be afraid.

  The flicking light above us is blocked, and I hear a thump as Nat passes out, right on top of me. I fall forward, unable to see what’s behind us.

  Darren mutters “Fuck” right before a big, black thing tackles him.

  All my eyes see is a white lab coat, and then the creature turns on me. I feel a sting in the back of my neck, and the world fades to black.

  “You have certainly gotten yourself into a heap of trouble, haven’t you?” A voice booms in my head, and I fight to open my eyes. A strange feeling surrounds me, and my hair sticks to my face. My arms are held down to my sides, and despite my strength, I can’t move them.

  At first, I hope it’s—I can’t believe I’m thinking it—Devil Jr., but after a minute of struggling to open my eyes, I find that no one’s there. Well, Darren and Nat are, but they’re unconscious, held to the opposite wall of the hospital in web-like cocoons. I note that we’re currently in the hospital’s small courtyard. What little grass is left pokes up through the webbing on the ground, a startling green to the sheer whiteness.

  The Vamps hang on the other side of the courtyard as me, their faces hidden by a thin film. I shout for them, “Hey, wake up! Darren, Nat!” My sense of urgency grows when I see a group of egg sacks. Twelve or so, each shaking every few seconds, ready to hatch into more of those hybrids.

  I try moving. My entire body is frozen, stuck in the webbing. This is the last thing I need—being eaten alive by Demon spiders. The only thing I can seem to move are my fingers.

  “I wonder,” the voice cuts into my brain like a knife, “where is your master now? He would let his only Mark be devoured? You might remain alive, but you’d be in pieces, floating in the Arachnoid’s stomach.”

  “If you’re here to gloat,” I say aloud, “or to ask if I want to trade in my Mark for yours, don’t bother.”

  The voice chuckles. “Then I’ll sit back and enjoy the show.”

  I want to get him out of my head, but I know I can’t. If the voice belongs to who I think it does, Hades, then I have worse problems than a spider eating me. Don’t they drain blood, like Vampires? They don’t tear their food apart.

  A shriek echoes throughout the air, momentarily deafening, and I look up, to the corner of the hospital, where a creature the size of a school bus appears. It crawls down, very similar to the little one. Different not only in size, but also its Human center. A woman, complete with a white lab coat and a web Mark on her collarbone. Its legs are thicker, stronger. When it finishes crawling to the ground, it pokes through the concrete as easily as it does the grass. It turns to Darren and Nat first. A line of white webbing flows from the body’s mouth, and the Human hands spin it around the Vampires’ faces.

  How in the Sam Hill am I supposed to defend myself from that?

  I flex my fingers, remembering what’s in my pocket. After a little wriggling, I retrieve the small stone Deb gave me. It’s heavier than it looks, and it looks about the size of a quarter, so that’s not really saying much. It’s supposed to just activate, when it’s on the ground.

  I’m going to wing it. The stone is cold and smooth in my hand, and as the giant Demon turns to me, I toss it as far as I can, considering my arms are tight to my side.

  The stone catches on some webbing, effectively killing what small amount of hope I had.

  The loud voi
ce in my head laughs.

  Human Mark staring, unimpressed, the Demon walks to me. The stone hangs uselessly in the webbing. The Human’s face, peeled back, nearly swallowed by the size of the spider-like fangs, sits a few feet from me, daring me to try something else. A gruesome, unnatural sight.

  Good thing Nat’s unconscious.

  I put all effort into gathering heat, but the voice speaks, “You set that web aflame, your undead friends will burn with it.”

  I stop the heat. If I messed up the stone and can’t use the fire—how do I get out of this?

  The Demon lets out a shriek, and I want to plug up my ears so I never have to hear that noise again. It’s a shrill, splitting sound that makes my eardrums want to bleed. The giant Arachnoid moves before me, and to my dismay—and horror—dozens of miniature Demons scurry out of the hospital, each with its own Human center. They surround me, watching with hollow eyes, but they don’t attack.

  I start to wonder why, but as I hear the first crack come from the group of egg sacks, it comes to me. I’m going to be the food for the newly developed babies. It’s a long, anxiety-riddled wait. Feels like hours, but in reality, it’s probably minutes. The group of eggs hatch, and one by one, tiny, hairy legs are the first things I see. These Demons have adult-sized Humans. Their legs drag on the ground worse than the others, their spider legs hardly able to hold up the weight.

  Beneath the Human exo-suits, I wonder what they look like.

  The biggest turns to one of the adolescent hatchlings, the fangs on the Human mouth clicking. The adolescent nods once, crawls up the web to me, and pokes my neck with a goo-covered set of spider fangs.

  My vision blurs as the babies sluggishly and clumsily get closer. My head lolls back, and I mentally curse myself. Why couldn’t things ever be easy? I zone in and out, about to be eaten alive. What a way to go.

  “If you call for your master,” the voice says, bringing me back to a low level of consciousness, “I’m certain he would come.”

  I’m too weak to tell the voice to go screw himself. I never wanted this Mark anyway. Maybe being eaten alive won’t be so terrible. It has to be better than being forced to be at Devil Jr.’s side for all eternity, right? Even after my physical body ages and dies, he’ll still have my soul.