A Web So Dark and Deadly

Chapter Fourteen

I wake around two in the afternoon the next day. My early morning near death experience feels like a distant memory, cleansed by the rays warming my arms through the hotel window. Though the sun promises a new day, I refuse to believe its lies. It's only downhill from here; I can practically taste the next bitter task already permeating the air.

Tabitha sits on her bed, looking at some plastic thing under the microscope. Every so often, she slides it out and adjusts the surface. I sit on my own bed, nursing a cup of coffee between my palms and taking occasional bites of a blueberry muffin Tabitha saved from the breakfast buffet that morning.

"I told you there would be opposition," she says, glancing up at me for a moment.

I sip my coffee. Two deaths in one night is a lot to take in. I can barely process the bullet holes, the blood seeping into their clothes, the eyes that will never see again. Two more deaths, two more bodies, two more graves to be dug. How many more will be killed, tossed out of the way like their lives are meaningless in this grand game?

My eyes shift to Tabitha. I never realized she had a gun. For some reason, having a gun makes her seem ten times more dangerous. It's one thing to be born with the power to kill — if someone is born a weapon. It's another thing entirely if someone seeks out their own weapons, becoming as sharp and deadly as a bullet.

"Why do so many have to die?" I blurt out. Tabitha arches an eyebrow, but she doesn't look up. Frustration and anger and sadness, this overwhelming, yawning pit of sadness for all those caught in the crossfire, for Daniel and the random man and woman from the hotel, wells inside me, bubbling over. "You're going around, killing people like their lives mean nothing. I don't know what you're after, but it can't possibly be worth all these deaths."

Tabitha's eyes narrow. I gulp, suddenly remembering a key detail: she can weave my death at any moment.

My employer rises from her seat, her flowing, black floral gown draping from her willowy limbs. She slowly approaches until her bony shadow hangs over me and her sunken eyelids glower from above. "Not worth it, ey? How about the deaths the order has caused? How about all the family members the Heads killed simply because our kind can't be locked away in a safe, our usage carefully controlled by the five people who run the entire organization? Does that sound fair to you?"

I rapidly shake my head.

"It doesn't, right? So I'm taking matters into my own hands. I refuse to sit back and watch any more poison weavers, if there are any left, be slaughtered. It shouldn't matter if we have a more deadly gift than the others. We have a right to exist, too, and shouldn't be picked off because of our birthed powers."

"Then... why not kill the Heads?" I whisper. "The ones who caused all this?"

Tabitha laughs, a crazed, unrestrained laugh. "And put them out of their misery? No, no. That's far too painless. I want them to live out the rest of their days contemplating their choices. I want them to go to bed and wake in the morning every day remembering every single name they sent to the slaughter. This, Cleo, this is all about revenge. Revenge is all I've lived and breathed, every waking moment, every wretched night, for the past five years, ever since..."

Tabitha cuts off with a sharp intake of breath. I watch her, barely breathing myself. My fists cling to the comforter underneath me. Tabitha continues, though her voice rings with false restraint. "Ever since I discovered the order's sins, I vowed that I would repay them. And now, because of you, my nightmare is about to end while theirs is just beginning." My employer backs away, parking herself back on the bed.

My veins thrum with adrenaline, blood, and fear. Most of all, I'm afraid that I may actually agree with her, that she may actually have a reason for doing what she's done.