large, black, hemispherical eyes were orbited by six smaller ones, all sitting on a gray-haired bump of a head that would feel, Laine knew, as hard and alien as a bristled watermelon. Between the spider’s two front legs was a pair of fangs, sharply pointed and hard as polished ebony. The fangs curled in, wet themselves on the glands tucked under its crablike mouth, then extended again, glistening wet with poison.
She was on the cliff edge of total panic, wanting to shriek and keep screaming, but no sound came out of her dry mouth. Her jaw spasmed.
But her left hand was farthest from the spider, and she sent it shaking out from under the bedsheets, hunting for a weapon.
The spider, low to the ground, took an incredibly slow, very careful step forward. It raised itself slightly on its legs and Laine heard a faint hiss as it drew in air. The spider let out a whisper that set the hairs on the back of her neck hard.
“Aaiiide.”
Oh God, she thought madly. It’s trying to say my name.
Her sneaking fingers found the alarm clock. Useless-she could grab it but every chance was that the cord plugged into the wall would stop her swinging it. She kept hunting for the other object she knew was there.
The spider steadied itself on its feet, tensing its legs and reminding Laine deliriously of how a golfer wiggled his feet and hips, positioning himself for a clean swing. Again, she heard air drawn in and released in a controlled hiss: “Maaaie maaaiee.”
She understood the bastardized words: Bye bye.
Her fingers finally touched what she wanted: the smooth, round steel of a spray can. But as she grabbed, her sweaty fingers slipped and the can clattered across the floor and rolled impotently into the corner.
Laine’s eyes widened.
Garnock’s mandibles parted. A smile. Then it leapt.
But the spider only moved a fraction before it was slammed back down to the floor with a hard ring of steel on wood. Two tines of a pitchfork had speared through its bony shell and pinned it to the pine floorboards.
Katharine turned and spat.
The impaled creature let out a horrible hissing wail, and its horned feet scrabbled against the floor, gouging the polish. Its fangs pistoned up and down like thresher blades. It was pulling the fork out of the floor.
Katharine stepped carefully behind the skewered spider and leaned more weight on the pitchfork handle. Her stomach convulsed and she strained to keep from gagging.
“It was a dog. It looked like a dog when I stabbed it…”
Laine padded quickly across the floor and scooped up the can of insecticide. She glanced over to Garnock.
It was wheezing and straining against the tines. The hairy armor of its exoskeleton was starting to tear and a puddle of blue hemolymph spread beneath it.
“I think it’s going to pull itself free,” said Katharine quickly.
It was true. Though it would kill itself doing it, Garnock was aiming to pull its flesh right through the pinning tines. Laine popped the lid off the spray can. She stood in front of the giant spider and watched its fangs swoon up and down.
“Bye bye, indeed,” she whispered, and sprayed insecticide right into the nest of its eyes.
The spider let out a piercing whistle that bubbled in the blue liquid leaking from below it. Its legs pounded a sloshing tattoo on the boards. Laine kept the spray going, saturating the spider’s head, covering the creature in a pungent chemical fog.
“Come on,” she whispered, grabbing Katharine’s arm as she slipped past Garnock. It twisted on its impalement and Laine saw its fangs stab the air as she passed. The women hurried down the hall.
“We should leave that for a while,” suggested Laine.
“Yes,” agreed Katharine. “I’ll boil the kettle.”
T hey were in the kitchen, Laine helping Katharine make tea. Outside, daylight was fading from the sky.
“When did Nicholas say he’d be back?” asked Laine as lightly as she could.
Katharine frowned and checked the wall clock.
“He didn’t.”
The telephone rang. Katharine and Laine glanced at one another. Katharine picked up the phone.
“Hello?” she said. As she listened, her eyes stayed on Laine. “When?” She nodded. “Is anyone there going to…? Okay. Thank you.” She cradled the receiver. “Reverend Pritam Anand died today. Heart failure.”
Laine set down the crockery as a shiver of understanding went through her. Pritam was dead. Garnock had come for her.
Quill would be after Nicholas.
He must know that.
“The fool,” she whispered. “He’s in the woods.”
Chapter 36
S mall, shifting gems of darkening blue winked through the high, wind-harried leaves. Evening’s fast fingers were drawing velvet across the sky.
Nicholas came awake, slowly and painfully, as if being thawed from a block of black and acidulous ice. At first, he thought he was on fire, and the flickering yellow lights at the corners of his eyes were his limbs aflame. But as he worked blood into his fingers and limbs, he realized the pain was just the agony of pins and needles.
A faint whistling. An old tune, bittersweet, mournful and thin, was barely audible above the wind troubling the eaves.
Nicholas lay on the floor. He could just see out a clear window: trees almost black with approaching night masked all but the tiniest glimpses of bruised evening sky. Everything shifted, in and out of sharpness. His stomach felt ready to let go its contents, and he swallowed back salty bile. He tried to sit, but sharp pain in his wrists and ankles stopped him. He was well tied with ropes.
He rolled a few degrees, wincing at the bright potsherds of pain in the bigger muscles of his legs and arms.
Quill sat on an old oak rocking chair before a small iron stove, staring at the flames flickering behind the black-toothed grin of the stove door, whistling through her gray prune lips. As the firelight shimmered, so did her appearance. One moment her skin was ancient and sagging, pale and deeply scored as drought-cracked earth, but when the flames rose and shadows played across her, Nicholas saw the clear skin and gold hair of young Rowena Quill. Young, ancient; haggard, beautiful. Dark brown eyes, now black, now brown, reflecting red, locked on the flames. Quill’s tune was soft and came from far away and long ago. She seemed to feel Nicholas’s eyes on her and her whistle fell to a sigh.
“Awake?” she asked.
Nicholas rolled a little more. He lay on clean wooden floorboards that smelled of pine oil. The room was a cozy mouthful of shadows: it was paneled in dark wood, but neat. A small cedar table stood on a rug with a single chair keeping company. A curtain to a toileting room was held back by an embroidered sash. A tall pine dresser as thin and stately as a butler held some painted dishes and glazed figurines. Another curtain, this one of lace that reminded him too much of spiderweb, hid all but the shyest glimpse of a trimly made brass bed with a floral counterpane. At the far end of the room he lay in, the floorboards were cut away in a circle. The ring was lined with neatly mortared stones: a fire pit in which coals glowed dully. On the far side of the pit, a folded blanket, kneaded and pressed by the weight of a pet-Garnock, he guessed-but there was no sign of the monster.
“Where is Hannah?” he asked.
Quill rocked. “Hush.”
Again, Nicholas had a vertiginous feeling of seeing her through idling water or of a hologram viewed in passing: her features swam in the fickle firelight, vacillating between old and young, hideous and beauteous. Only her expression remained fixed and cold. Behind her, through the window, the last of the day’s color bled from the sky.
