The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [169]
It was a two-lane highway, leading over the crest of a hill and down into a valley. Beyond, flat slabs of gray stone thrust up like giants leaning against gray-green mountains. Five eighteen-wheelers sped up the hill, past a highway sign. The trucks were painted black except for a single white crescent moon on their sides. Marji gazed at the highway sign, but even as she did the image faded, and she stared at a tall, lean form in a sequined jacket and a beehive hairdo.
It was a faint skittering sound that broke the trance. Marji turned around.
They scuttled through the door, wriggling toward her across the singed carpet, gleaming in the light. Spiders. Gold spiders. She counted ten, twenty. Then she stopped counting as they continued to pour through the door. Again she lifted the can of hairspray and the lighter. Flame burst forth. The first row of spiders melted into motionless lumps.
The can sputtered. The flames wavered, then died out.
Marji threw down the can. She backed up against the vanity.
This is not good, girl. You always looked best in silver. Gold is definitely not your color.
The spiders wriggled closer. She fumbled for the phone on the vanity. There was time for one more call. From her jacket pocket she drew out the card the handsome, grumpy one had given her. She dialed, lifted the phone to her ear.
You have reached a Comlink pager, an electronic voice intoned. Please enter the telephone number where you can be reached.
No, there was no time for call-backs. They would just have to be smart enough to understand the message. She didn’t know what it was she had seen in the mirror, only that if she saw it then it had to be important. With a hard fingernail, she punched the keys.
Something brushed her ankle. Marji dropped the phone and stamped her foot. A spider fell off. Another stamp, and it was pulverized beneath her stiletto heel.
More spiders followed after it, and more. There was no more room to back up.
“Last dance, Marjoram,” she whispered.
More spiders crumpled under the heels of her shoes until she felt the first, sharp pricks of pain.
57.
Beltan crouched in the metallic shadows behind a pile of steel crates. He cocked his head, listening: the sound of rapid footsteps, echoing voices, the boom of doors shutting. For over an hour, Beltan had crept through the dim, angular halls of this fortress, encountering little activity. Then, a few minutes ago, the noises had begun. Something was happening.
Perhaps the doctor has gone back into the room and found your bed empty, Beltan.
Except he had heard no alarm, and the distant shouts were not sharp with anger and fear. They sounded more like commands.
It was cold. The thin white coat he had pilfered offered no warmth, and he pulled his knees to his chest. He knew he should get moving again. The guard he had seen a minute ago was gone, off to join his companions in whatever task they had been set to. But he needed to rest, just for another minute. While there was a strength in his bony limbs he had not thought possible, the simple act of moving quietly between hiding places had left him damp, weak, and trembling as a newborn foal.
A low hooting noise.
She was curled up in the corner behind him, long arms coiled around her small head, as if cradling it. She gazed at him impassively, her gentle brown eyes filled with intelligence and pain. The bare patches on her arms glowed in the faint light, scabbed-over cuts marking them like some of Travis Wilder’s runes.
“It’s all right, my lady,” he whispered. “We’ll stay here another minute.”
She leaned back as if she understood him.
And maybe she does at that, Beltan. She knew the secret of the lock on the door. And she was there, in your dream of the Gray Land. She called to you.
He knew it was risky and perhaps foolish to have brought the chin-pasi with him. But he owed his life and his freedom to her—however long each of them