Spider Read online

  Table of Contents

  Legal Page

  Title Page

  Book Description

  Trademarks

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  More from Aurelia

  About the Author

  Publisher

  Spider

  ISBN # 978-1-78686-436-9

  ©Copyright Aurelia T. Evans 2018

  Cover Art by Erin Dameron-Hill ©Copyright November 2018

  Edited by Jamie D. Rose

  Totally Bound Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorized or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2018 by Totally Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, UK

  Totally Bound Publishing is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

  Warning:

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Totally Melting and a Sexometer of 3.

  Arcanium

  SPIDER

  Aurelia T. Evans

  Book six in the Arcanium series

  Oh, what a tangled web she weaves…

  One moment, Elizabeth is the modest, religiously devout nanny who accidentally brings her four charges to a slightly inappropriate circus filled with all the things a phobic like her could ever fear. The next, she’s sucked into the demonic world of Arcanium and transformed into Arcanium’s newest oddity, the Spider.

  Her anxieties and phobias quickly attract the attention of the Creature, the gargoyle-like guardian of the haunted funhouse, who feeds on fear—of which she offers a veritable feast, especially after she’s been locked in a glass box with giant spiders crawling over her eight-limbed body all day.

  However, she also catches the eye of her jealous ex-lover, who helped make her into the scared, secretive woman she’s become, a woman who wrapped herself in the piety of her childhood cult just to escape him.

  Between Arcanium and her own personal demons, Elizabeth has all four hands full.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Cirque du Soleil: Cirque du Soleil

  Abbott & Costello: TCA Television Corporation

  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Viacom International Inc.

  TASER: Taser International Inc.

  Candyland: Hasbro, Inc.

  Cheerios: General Mills IP Holdings II LLC

  Cinderella: Disney Enterprises Inc.

  The Illustrated Man: Ray Bradbury

  Magic Mike: Warner Brothers Pictures, FilmNation Entertainment

  Cake or Death: Eddie Izzard, Lee Hazelwood

  The Matrix: Warner Brothers Pictures

  YouTube: Google Inc.

  Snow White: Disney Enterprises Inc.

  Fear Factor: NBCUniversal Television Distribution

  Gulliver’s Travels: Jonathan Swift

  A Christmas Carol: Charles Dickens

  Kool-Aid: Kraft Foods Group Brands LLC

  Spider-Woman: Marvel Characters Inc.

  Plexiglas: Arkema France Corporation

  Peter Pan: Disney Enterprises Inc.

  Fabergé: Fabergé Limited

  Raid: S.C. Johnson & Son Inc.

  Olympics: United States Olympic Committee

  Prince Charming: Disney Enterprises Inc.

  The Exorcist: William Peter Blatty, Warner Brothers

  The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Victor Hugo, Disney Enterprises Inc.

  The Cheshire Cat: Lewis Carroll, Disney Enterprises Inc.

  Frankenstein: Mary Shelley

  Chapter One

  In retrospect, Elizabeth should have looked up what kind of circus Arcanium was before bringing the Bishop children.

  It wasn’t entirely her fault. Mrs. Bishop had recommended it based on a casual glance at the weekend events in the local paper. However, when she and Mr. Bishop went out of town for the weekend on business—which was almost every weekend—it was up to Elizabeth to entertain and care for the children, and she was responsible for the content of that entertainment and care, which meant she’d been responsible for investigating Arcanium’s suitability for an infant, a three-year-old girl, a nine-year-old boy and a monster masquerading as a sixteen-year-old girl.

  Standing in front of the half-naked sword swallower performing at the entrance of the circus, Elizabeth shared a look with said monster, who usually just went by Sharona.

  “You’re going to be in so much trouble.” Sharona flipped her hair over her shoulder.

  She was pretty, just like her mother. Though it was mid-January, the weather was unseasonably warm, and Sharona had taken the opportunity to ignore her mother’s guidelines for shirt length and exposure, guidelines that Elizabeth couldn’t really enforce without Mrs. Bishop’s approval—and Sharona knew it. A teenage girl flaunting her already-beach-ready body next to a woman in orthodox dress turned a few heads from the initial impact of the sword swallower, as though Elizabeth was just another circus oddity.

  If the Bishops thought hiring a Petrosian saint for a nanny would rub righteousness off on their children, they’d severely underestimated teenage determination—and chosen the wrong Wu daughter as a nanny, not that Elizabeth’s mother had shared that little bit of information with them.

  Thank God, Sharona’s brother Todd was much more manageable. And the toddler and infant were at least predictable.

  “Why’s she going to be in trouble?” Todd asked, holding the toddler’s hand tightly. “The guy’s just swallowing swords. Man, three swords now? Wow, gross. Think he can do four?”

  “I’ll admit that if he were swallowing dildos, that would be more shocking.” Sharona took her phone out of her purse and framed the sword swallower in the picture.

  “What’s a dildo?” Todd asked.

  “I mean…this guy? Not hot. But imagine what Mom and Dad would say if they saw the snake lady in the background? Or maybe this nice couple walking by? How romantic.” Sharona grinned at the shot of the woman in shiny purple latex leading a man in red leather around on a leash. The man carried a double-sided torch trident over his shoulder.

  “Come on, Todd. We’re leaving.” Elizabeth didn’t think the ticket master was going to give them their money back. The gigantic sign of rules and warnings that she’d apparently failed to read all the way through had been clear about one thing. No refunds.

  “Why?” Sharona lowered her phone to follow the progress of the woman and collared man—most likely because, despite the scars on the
upper half of the man’s body, the leather cradling his buttocks left as little to the imagination as his mistress’s outfit.

  “I am not taking your nine-year-old brother and baby sisters into a place like this.” Elizabeth hooked a hand around Sharona’s elbow to lead her back to the elaborate Arcanium gates.

  “It’s not like they get it. He doesn’t know what a dildo is. Do you even?”

  “And when Todd tells his parents about circus acts gyrating in fetish gear, who do you think isn’t going to get paid this week?”

  Sharona giggled. “How do you know what fetish gear is?”

  “How you know is the more important question. I’m thirty-five, and I’m religious, not ignorant.”

  “Same diff.”

  “It really isn’t,” Elizabeth said dryly.

  Sharona grabbed one of the wrought-iron whorls on the gate before Elizabeth could lead her through. “I want to stay.”

  Trying to force a recalcitrant teenager to go somewhere she didn’t want to go while maneuvering a dual baby-and-toddler stroller over grass proved too much for Elizabeth. “Over my dead body. Your mother wanted me to take you to a circus, which was supposed to mean clowns, trained animals, acrobats… There’s nothing redeemable about a freak show pretending to be a floor show. I thought these places had all been wiped out.”

  “But I want to see the snake lady,” Todd said. “I like snakes.”

  Elizabeth suppressed a shudder. “You know I don’t. But if you want snakes, we can go to the zoo again. Would you like that?”

  Sharona crossed her arms. “I want to stay.”

  “You just want to look at the boys,” Elizabeth said. “There are boys wherever we go, Sharona. We don’t have to stay here for you to let temptation get the better of you.”

  Sharona scoffed. “Look. This is the coolest place you’ve ever brought us to. Come on. This place has, like, three-headed dogs and games and a haunted house. I swear on a stack of Bibles”—she held up her phone as though it were the equivalent—“I won’t tell Mom and Dad about this place if you let us stay. Besides, Todd knows how to keep secrets.”

  Elizabeth raised her eyebrow. “What kind of secrets?”

  “Sharona sneaks out of the house by going out of her window and down the rose trellis,” Todd said, whispering loudly. “She goes to meet a boooooy.”

  Now Elizabeth directed her raised eyebrow toward Sharona.

  “You little creep.” Sharona shoved her brother. Elizabeth stepped in to keep Sharona from doing more than superficial damage and to snag Maggie before she decided to toddle off toward the shiny swords.

  Todd scrambled behind Elizabeth. “You just told me I couldn’t tell Mom and Dad.”

  “You’re fucking dead.”

  “Language!” Elizabeth picked Maggie up and knelt next to the stroller, where Brianna had started fussing. “You can use those words with your friends all you want, but not around me and not around your brother and sisters.” But now that Todd had revealed a tasty bit of ammunition, Elizabeth thought Sharona would be a little more amenable.

  Sharona rolled her eyes. “Whatever. Can we stay? Please? Listen. There are elephants, right? Trained animals. I’m sure we’ll find some clowns and acrobats somewhere. I mean, it’s a freakin’ circus. There’s more skin at a public pool. It’s not a big deal. Just because you’ve got a thing about covering yourself up doesn’t mean the rest of the world cares.”

  “Believe it or not, I don’t expect the rest of the world to adhere to my standard of modesty,” Elizabeth said.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “It’s more what they’re doing while they’re half-naked that concerns me. Your brother isn’t that young and neither are you,” Elizabeth said. Thankfully, the baby had drifted back asleep rather than wake up screaming to join the rest of them.

  “It’s not even sex. It’s just sexy.”

  “It’s not appropriate.” She straightened, hitching Maggie on her hip and grateful for the pins holding her head covering in place, because Maggie liked to tug on it as much as she liked tugging her sister’s hair.

  “Geez, no wonder no one ever married you. You have so many sticks up your butt. There isn’t room for anything else.”

  Elizabeth pretended Sharona hadn’t hit a nerve, but both of them knew otherwise. “You’re not making your case, young lady.”

  “One hour. If we see something we wouldn’t see at the beach or Cirque du Soleil, we can leave and Mom and Dad never have to see the pictures I took. Todd will just talk about the muscle man and snake lady and sword swallower, and Maggie’ll just squeal about the clowns or something. Come on. You can flagellate when we get home, and it’ll all be fine. I’ll buy you all the mortification instruments you want.”

  Sixteen years old and somehow both a juvenile delinquent and a devout student. Sometimes Elizabeth thought she and Sharona clashed so much because they were too alike.

  “We’re already here. It’ll take us another hour to get to the zoo then it’ll be too sunny and hot for Maggie,” Sharona continued. “I swear I won’t tell Mom, and neither will Todd.”

  “Swear,” Todd said. “What aren’t we telling them?”

  “You know how we didn’t tell them about that movie with kissing and boobs in it?” Sharona said.

  “I’m not hearing this.” Elizabeth resisted the urge to cover the toddler’s ears.

  “I’ll be good the rest of the afternoon. I’ll take care of Todd and make sure Maggie doesn’t run off and play with scissors. These photos stay on my phone, and we don’t tell my parents you took us to a weird-ass den of iniquity. Deal?” Sharona held her phone-free hand out.

  “You’ve been listening to your father talk business too much,” Elizabeth said.

  “I’ve never heard him use the phrase ‘weird-ass den of iniquity.’ When have you been listening to him?”

  “That’s enough of being a smart aleck, Sharona. If it’s too hot for Maggie, it’s too hot for me, too.” She was getting a headache, both from imagining what the Bishops would do if she stayed and from how warm she was getting underneath her long-sleeved shirt, long skirt and head scarf.

  “Hard to believe it’s January, isn’t it?” Doing an excellent impersonation of a caring human being, Sharona opened her arms to take Maggie. “Not my fault your beliefs tell you to swelter in the name of piety. You’d rather sweat like a pig than let someone see a scandalous ankle, as though it’s the Victorian era all over again.”

  “It’s not about scandal and it’s not about sex. You know that perfectly well.”

  “Excuse me if I don’t get why covering yourself almost head to toe shows respect to God. Didn’t he make Adam and Eve naked?”

  Elizabeth refused to let Sharona bait her into another ‘my Christianity makes more sense than yours.’ She remembered similar debates with girls Sharona’s age back when she’d been that young, too, when she had still been in public school—so-called fellow saints pulling Elizabeth’s head covering off or lifting her skirt, as though Elizabeth’s representation of piety somehow insulted everyone else’s. People got sensitive when their holiness was threatened. They’d never understood that when she was young, she hadn’t had a choice, because her parents had bought all her clothes and controlled what she wore. And now that she was a full-grown woman, she still didn’t, for reasons adjacent to parental control. After all, she was an unmarried woman, which technically still put her under the purview of her parents.

  These days, modesty was the least of her concerns, but it was one of the few ways her family—along with the other dozens of families in their neighborhood who were part of the same church—could declare its beliefs, and one of the few ways an unmarried woman could defend herself.

  “Remove the temptation,” Charity Wu always said. “We expect our brothers to control themselves, but we remove temptation out of compassion. We cover our bodies as God concealed his in the temple. Moses was the only one permitted to see God the Father in the temple, and s
o we only allow our husbands to see our bodies.”

  When Elizabeth had pointed out that Moses had only ever gotten an ass view of God on the Ark of the Covenant, she hadn’t been able to sit comfortably for days—bruised in the only place Moses had ever seen God.

  The Bishops didn’t believe in the strap or the paddle, and Elizabeth preferred it that way. It just would have been nice if the Bishops had given her anything at all with which to convince Sharona to play nice. Instead, they’d given her a spoiled—and, more importantly, smart—brat to look after, who was too old for a nanny and too convinced of her own cleverness to talk sense into.

  The sword swallower yanked four swords from his throat just as Elizabeth and the Bishop children came closer. A few of the bystanders tossed quarters or dollar bills into the basket at the edge of the platform on which he performed.

  The sword swallower returned his swords to their place in the spinning holder and reached for a gleaming brass hook. “Excuse me. I couldn’t help but overhear.”

  “What exactly did you overhear?” Elizabeth fought and lost against the flush on her cheeks. Sharona hadn’t been tactful about the man’s attractiveness.

  He had nothing to hide, per se, but he was a touch thin, his complexion sickly, his hair shorn but stubble showing the dramatically receded hairline. He was hardly the masculine specimen that was luring Sharona into the circus, but a second glance had Elizabeth noticing muscle tone under his pasty skin. And he was fearless as he brought his head back and pushed the sharp end of the hook up his nose, then curved it down to emerge from his mouth.

  She’d envy that fearlessness if he didn’t look like he’d just caught himself on a fish hook.

  The sword swallower gave a flourish, then picked up a handful of iron nails.

  “Calling this a ‘family circus’ might be a bit of a stretch, but we stay pretty tame until after eight.” The sword swallower carefully pushed one of the iron nails into his socket around the eyeball.