World Weaver (The Devany Miller Series Book 4) (36 page)

We watched the Riders throughout the afternoon, looking for patterns, for reason behind their movements. After a couple of hours, all I could tell was they liked to walk. A lot. Inward they went, long lines of them. They entered the Witch Kings building and then emerged, walking down a different street. Over and over again they did this until I wondered if they were Riders or zombies or something else.

“How does this help?” I asked, impatient.

“Where does your daughter’s line go?” Zeph asked, ignoring my question.

I looked, watching Bethy’s lifeline zigzag to the city, disappearing through a spot in the wall that had fallen in, disappearing into the crowd. “Down there, through the wall.”

Mal stepped forward. I didn’t think anything of it until he kept going, walking like a man in a trance.

“Mal! What are you doing?” When he didn’t answer, when he didn’t turn, Zeph ran to catch him. She put a hand on his arm that he ignored. She stepped in front of him.

He side-stepped her and continued forward as if pulled by an invisible string.

What the hell?

I ran down to help her stop him, Krosh with me. We all took turns trying to subdue Mal, and we were successful until he turned his magic on full bore. I fell to the ground, writhing in a rush of desire, Krosh beside me. I crawled onto him, uncaring who saw. The magic itched inside me, wanting me to copulate, wanting me to fuck.

It eased as quickly as it began, leaving me panting and embarrassed. I sat up to see Mal over halfway to the city. Zeph pushed herself up, her gait wobbly as she ran after him a few steps then stopped, every line of her body tense.

The parasite inside him was hearing a call. That was my guess and I told her what I thought.

“Calling him?” she asked, disbelief in her voice.

“Maybe there’s some sort of queen that calls her children to her. Look how they move, in toward her, always in. They leave, but not for long and they’re walking back to the middle. We need to get in there and see if we can destroy whatever it is that’s directing them.”

“If we kill it, what will happen to Mal?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

She was silent for quite some time, watching her lover reach the gap in the wall, watching him climb the rubble and disappear inside. “All right. Let’s go kill whatever this is and get our people back.”

She didn’t say another word until we reached the wall. Her face was drawn, her lips a tight slash of anger. She’d been a good leader up until now, but I didn’t want to rush in and get us all infected or killed.

I put a hand on her arm that she shook off. “Listen to me.”

She had a foot on the broken wall, the masonry crumbling under her foot. “Why?”

“Because I listened to you when I needed to. You need to hear me out because right now I have the clarity.”

She cursed under her breath, a word both mellifluous and harsh in a language I didn’t know. I made a mental note to ask her to teach me how to say it and what it meant. Later. When Bethany was back with me and Mal back with her. “Say it,” she said.

“You, me, and Krosh go in. The rest stay out here, ready to save us if we get into trouble. Save us or avenge us.” She didn’t respond, so I said, “That’s it.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“I wing most of this shit. Besides, you didn’t want a speech, right?”

“There’s too many to sneak past.”

I peered through the hole in the wall. Beyond, Riders marched their human hosts in regimented lines past us, the outer line headed west, the inner, east. “Maybe we don’t need to sneak past.” I pointed. “They’re drones, I think. Mindless workers. Go in, do your job, leave. Rinse and repeat. Maybe only a few Rider parasites are given autonomy. Anyway, I’m guessing our goal is the queen, wherever she is. They would take Bethy and Mal to her, where there would be the most security. So, we join the line and march with them. If they notice us, then we get taken to the queen. If they don’t notice us, we end up at the queen anyway.”

“If there’s a queen,” she murmured. She studied the lines and nodded after a long study. “You, me, and Krosh,” she agreed. “Ben, take up position at the tree line. Set watch and hide if there’s any outside movement. If the watch warms, blow something up and come get us.”

He nodded. “Aye, Captain. I’ll blow up something big just for you.”

***

We climbed over the rubble, sharp rocks digging at the soles of my boots and sliding underfoot so I was constantly in peril of twisting an ankle. Sure we were making enough noise to wake the dead, I kept half an eye on the Riders.

They ignored us.

My suspicion that they were mindless drones was confirmed as we slipped into the line and they slowed behind us to make room. Then we were caught up in the march, the Riders eerily silent and ever-curving toward the Witch King’s castle.

The city was devastated, but it looked as though there’d been some attempts at clearing the rubble. There were neat stacks of thick blue glass that still shimmered with magic, rows of concrete and brick, wood and marble. Some of the finer homes had been cleaned up—those that still stood despite the destruction from the Witch King’s folly.

The thing that confused me was how Valley’s Head was on an island. Sephony had ridden from the city to what was now Tempest Peaks on a horse. She certainly hadn’t crossed water. Had she gone through a hook? Or had Ketwer Island been part of the mainland once upon a time?

Something niggled at me and since I had time, I poked at it. Hadn’t Lizzie said the witches and Wydlings drove the infected to Ketwer Island? I couldn’t remember.

Midia was a confusing place.

I wanted to ask Zeph, but I figured she wouldn’t know. I wished I’d thought of this sooner. I could have had the answer from Sephony herself. I made a mental note to ask Vasili if he knew what the deal was with Valley Head’s location next time I saw him.

It took us twenty minutes of walking to get to the gates of the Witch King’s castle. Wanting to regroup, we peeled off from the Riders as they filed inside.

Hunkered down around the corner from the endlessly streaming horde, we discussed whether to storm the castle or slip in with the drones.

“We may have a better chance of finding Bethany and Mal if we don’t make a big deal out of our entrance,” I said. “Maybe we can grab them and go without any of the Riders being the wiser.” I wasn’t sure why I was being Miss Hopeful Pants. Surely I’d learned by now that nothing was easy.

Zephyrinia pulled her gun free of its holster and checked her ammunition. She holstered it and touched each spot on her body where she had a knife hidden. Finally, she touched her fingers to a small black bag hanging from her utility belt. “We’ll try. And if they find us out, we will kill as many as we can.”

I didn’t have any knives, but I supposed that didn’t matter. I had magic and my ‘bull in the China shop’ technique. “Krosh?”

He’d been quiet. I didn’t know if the magic of the parasites was affecting him or if he was just in battle mode. “I am ready to do what must be done,” he said, his tone confident, relaxed.

“Good. Let’s do this.”

We managed to get inside the gates before we were taken. One minute we were surrounded by complacent drones. The next we were set upon by snarling things that looked too monstrous to be witch—or human.

Zephyrinia got a shot off before they knocked the gun out of her hand. I blasted the two holding me with my magic, their fingers charred and sizzling as they pulled away from me. It didn’t help. More came and then more. They took Krosh down in a dog pile, Zeph too.

They grabbed me and dragged me to the floor. Eyes glared down at me, faces red and contorted by strain. Two parted on my right and a third came into view, his knobby-knuckled hand held over my head, in its grasp a squirming, black, leech-like thing.

Oh god.

I thrashed. Thrashed like a maniac, clamping my teeth together so hard my jaw ached.

They didn’t need my mouth. The Rider parasite splatted on my face, its wet, slimy body covering up my nose so I couldn’t breathe. I tossed my head around, trying to dislodge it, but the slime was sticky and the leech held on.

Tiny motes of black swam in my vision. Close to passing out from lack of air, I finally gasped in some needed oxygen.

And a leech. A fat, fucking leech.

Gagging, coughing, choking as the thing squirmed down my gullet. “No!” I screamed. “No!”

It didn’t matter. The thing was inside me. I was lost. Lost.

***

The antechamber was noisy, filled with baby parasites in piles about the room. The slick smucking sounds that came from the next room made me want to gag, but I couldn’t puke or I’d give myself away. Somehow, despite the parasite inside me, I was still myself. As far as I could tell, the Riders didn’t know I wasn’t infected. When Sephony burned away my taint, she must have blocked the way for anything else to crawl in and take hold; that or in getting rid of the Rider’s potential, she’d damaged my brain enough that it didn’t make a great home any longer.

Whatever the reason, I was grateful.

I rose to my feet, careful to keep my expression blank, my movements unhurried. Krosh and Zeph had been given parasites too, but Zeph was the only one who looked stoned. Krosh had slipped me a single wink that told me he hadn’t been affected either.

Or, it meant they’d gotten to him and were now using him to out me.

Nah. Too complicated.

Krosh and I followed Zeph as she integrated us back into the lines headed inward. The doorway we passed through was massive, big enough to allow a horse and carriage through. Big enough to drive a Hummer through. The polished marble floor gleamed and the ceiling glittered with glass mosaics of what must have been historical events in witch history.

The glopping noise in the curtained-off corner made me nervous and sick to my stomach. I fought the urge to look over, knowing if I did I would give myself away. Was it the queen? Was the glopping noise her giving birth?

Oh god, I so didn’t want to see.

The line slowed to a crawl. From what I could tell, one of the Riders in line would disappear behind a big purple curtain eaten away by moths and time. It would exit moments later carrying a parasite. I was twenty host bodies away from my turn to walk behind the curtain. Then I would … what? Lizzie had said that ending the parasites could only be accomplished without force. How could that be? I wanted to burn the place down, then pour salt over the top of it, then burn it again.

Something told me burning the parasites with fire was considered force.

Damn it.

Five in front of me. I wanted to run. I also wanted to see if Bethany and Mal were behind those curtains. If I dipped down into my Magic Eye, would they be able to sense it? I didn’t know.

One person ahead of me. My palms were damp and I fought not to rub them on my jeans. A drone wouldn’t give a crap about sweaty hands. A drone would move forwa—

—my turn. I made myself walk to the curtain, beyond.

A thing. A woman? Something … writhed in a large, ornate bed. She was naked and pale, her skin an agony of stretch marks, her stomach so distended it mine ache in sympathy. Veins bulged just under her translucent skin making it look like a spider had been spinning web there. She grunted and a parasite slid out from between her legs into the waiting hands of a drone.

Then it was my turn.

No way in hell.

I dialed up my power and blasted the drones nearby. Krosh was at my shoulder, then, punching, shoving, biting when needed to subdue the Riders protecting their queen. They weren’t drones, and they hissed invectives at us until I wanted to kick each one in the ass.

A woman grabbed me. I brought my foot down on hers and flung my head back to connect with her nose—thank you self-defense class. I turned, punching up with my right hand. My fist slammed into the underside of the woman’s jaw and she dropped like a stone.

“Right. You okay?”

Krosh’s lips were bloody and so were his teeth. “Yes,” he said, the words more growl than anything. His hyena stared out at me, glowing with power.

We shut the heavy doors that separated the queen from the rest of the drones, and Krosh found a crossbar. We slipped it in place and I hoped the old wood would hold. “Would you guard the door while I talk to her? If she can talk, that is,” I said, my lip curled.

“Go.”

Sweet-smelling, watery blood had dampened the carpets over the years until the room was soaked with it, the carpet squishing underfoot. It had once been beautiful, I guessed, but there was no beauty left in it.

Or her. Her feet were swollen, her legs thick, puffed with water. I was so concentrated on what was happening, on the parasites that slipped out of her onto the floor to lay squirming that I didn’t notice her turn her head to stare at me.

She whispered something I didn’t hear. I tore my eyes away from her massive, squirming belly and stumbled over a parasite laying dead on the floor when I saw her face.

Ravana?

Impossible.

Then it hit me, and when it did, I went cold all over.