Spider-Touched

Thirteen

ARAÑA bowed her head so the hood of the dark cloak they’d purchased after the attack shielded her face from view. The heavy material made her feel trapped, and in a fight it would hinder her ability to draw her knives quickly and strike fast.

The only place she knew to look for Levi and Rebekka was the brothel. But as she and Tir approached it, dread built with each step. The healer wouldn’t be there. Araña was as sure of it as she had been that Erik would die in Oakland when she first saw the city rising out of ruin.

“It might be better for you to go in alone,” she said, slowing at the end of an already deeply shadowed alleyway. “Some of the brothel’s clients probably frequent the gaming clubs. One of them might have seen me run the maze.”

Tir’s hand tightened on hers in response and he kept going. His harsh no held the same steel as his grip.

Two hyena-faced Weres served as doormen and bouncers. They opened the doors into a leather-and-fur waiting room hosted by a madam with boar tusks and small black eyes in a round human face.

She swept Araña and Tir with a quick, assessing gaze and grunted before saying to Tir, “You pay full price regardless. A quarter if the woman watches. Half if she works my whore. Full price if my whore works her.”

Women lined up without being told. Their clothing left little to the imagination and their appearances ranged from fully human to mostly animal.

“I’m here to see Levi or the healer,” Tir said.

The madam’s eyes hardened. “There’s no healer here. We don’t have any use for the gifted except as paying customers. If it’s Levi you want, then he should have met you outside.”

Araña slid her hand beneath the folds of the cloak. The gesture had two men stepping into the room through doors on either side of the parlor. Their mouths opened in animal threat to reveal razor-sharp teeth.

They retreated when she drew out several bills from the wallet and, keeping her head down, offered them to the madam. “For your trouble. Where can we find Levi?”

The woman grunted and took the bills. “Unless you want to keep paying so you can look at the girls, go outside. I’ll have him located and sent to you.”

They left, and Levi joined them a few minutes later. If he was surprised to see they’d survived, it didn’t show. “Let’s walk,” he said, turning without waiting for an answer and heading in the direction of the boundary between the red zone and the area set aside for the gifted.

When he was out of the hearing range of the Were doormen, he said, “Rebekka was captured.”

Acid rose in Araña’s throat, hot with her guilt. “By who?” she asked, already knowing.

“Guardsmen, but Gulzar, Anton and Farold’s torturer, was in the area as well.”

“When?” Tir asked.

“This morning, as we were taking the child to the Mission.” Levi’s face contorted in furious agony. His lips parted in a silent, impotent human snarl. “I should have hunted the man in the cab with the trapper. He must have overheard us talking about what to do with the child and gone to the maze with the information. The guardsmen and Gulzar were lying in wait for us.”

“She was taken to the maze?” Araña asked, her skin becoming chilled with thoughts of Abijah, her guilt flaying her at the thought of the healer being raped by guardsmen or convicts or the demon.

“I don’t know where she was taken, or even if she lives. None of the men who frequent the gaming clubs and come to the brothels have mentioned her. Pictures of those running are often posted early to stimulate betting interest. We separated. My intention was to draw the guardsmen and Gulzar away and kill any of them I could so Rebekka could escape with the child.”

“Did you recognize the guardsman?” Araña asked, thinking of Jurgen and Cabot and her intention to kill them before she left Oakland.

“Two of them, but not the third. I succeeded in killing one guardsman before I escaped the area. Rebekka works tonight. If she’d managed to escape, she would have come to the brothel, even if she had the child with her. The prostitutes depend on her, and while she’s here, she’s under the protection of the vice lords who own them.”

He glanced up at the sky and quickened his pace. Araña did the same and said, “We need safe shelter for the night.” She didn’t think it would be on the Constellation.

“It can’t be at the brothel, not unless you’re willing to pay for a room and a whore.”

Despite Levi’s waiting in the woods when she escaped the maze, Araña couldn’t bring herself to tell him about the reward being offered for her. She’d lived too long among outcasts and outlaws—men and women whom circumstances might turn into bounty hunters—to willingly reveal there was a price on her head. “A recommendation then.”

He considered the request for several long moments before saying, “Rebekka has a house in the gifted area. She rarely goes there and never speaks about it. If she were here, she’d offer it to you.” The last held some of the same guilt Araña felt.

“You’ve checked to make sure she’s not hiding there?” Tir asked.

“Yes. There was no sign of her.” Levi’s fingers flexed in a lionlike gesture of claws being sheathed and unsheathed. “If you intend to eat, you’ll need to buy food at the stall up ahead. You won’t have time to get it elsewhere.”

“We’ll stop,” Tir said.

At the small shop, Araña hung back with Levi and kept her face hidden as Tir bartered for bread and cheese. Her mouth watered at the sight of the fresh fruit, but buying it would deplete their resources.

He rejoined them and they continued walking. When they were well away from the food seller, Tir said, “Araña’s boat has been confiscated. It’ll be auctioned in the morning and most likely be gone from its berth by the end of the day. I intend to steal it tonight. Is there a place along the red zone where I can hide it?”

Levi’s answer was a lion cough of amusement. “Vampires guard the area at night, under contract with the dock owners as well as some of the cargo ship owners. If you managed to slip past them and steal a boat, the harbor is patrolled by private security, guardsmen, and police. If one of them spots you, they’ll hold you in place with machine guns then board at daybreak. And if you’re foolish enough to make a run for it and dodge them by going into the outer harbor, they’ll blockade you and leave you to your fate.”

“And that fate would be?”

Araña couldn’t help but smile at the arrogant, masculine confidence in Tir’s voice.

“The harbor is filled with ruins. Even in daylight it’s nearly impossible to avoid hitting metal sharp enough to rip open a ship. If you manage it, you’d most likely be killed by the vice lord who controls it. He lets very few boats in that aren’t his own or haven’t paid well for the privilege.”

“But he lets some in?” Araña asked, hearing Levi’s qualifier and experiencing a small flare of optimism. She couldn’t offer the vice lord money, but she had the skills of a thief to barter.

Levi shrugged. “I don’t know. But I wouldn’t count on making a deal with him, not if rumors are true. They say he’s consumed with finding a cure for his daughter. She’s said to have the wasting disease.”

Pain lanced through Araña, a sharp, unexpected thrust as she thought of Erik. They’d come to Oakland seeking a cure for him. Seeking a miracle. If the vice lord’s daughter truly had the disease—

Her heart skipped and stuttered its beat with the memory of Tir saving her from certain death after her fight with the dragon lizard. His hand tightened on her arm, warning her to remain silent as he asked, “What’s the vice lord’s name?”

“Rimmon.”

Araña missed a step as the melted-wax face of the man in the occult shop immediately came to mind. Erik and Matthew had never been believers in coincidence.

“Where can I find him?” Tir asked, his voice holding no hint as to whether or not he remembered the name and the man, though Araña suspected he did.

“He’s usually at his club. Temptation. It’s a Victorian on the same street as all the others like it.”

There was a subtle hesitation in Levi when they reached the sigil-marked boundary of the area set aside for the gifted. His jaw muscles tensed and his posture stiffened, though he didn’t flinch as he passed through the wards.

They traveled in silence, staying close to the border for a while, then cutting through a neighborhood where the majority of the houses had collapsed around trees taking root in what had once been living rooms.

Wild grass and flowers sprouted on fallen roofs. Dark green vines with poisonous, bright red berries slowly crushed rusted cars and old fences under their weight.

Rebekka’s house stood alone, isolated. They approached cautiously, though there was no evidence of it having been visited by guardsmen or those in the employ of the maze owner.

Levi pulled a key from his pocket and unlocked the door before giving the key to Araña. “There’s another one in the kitchen drawer.”

He pushed inside and they followed. The house had a dusty, closed smell, verifying what Levi had told them about the healer seldom visiting.

Araña expected Levi to leave immediately. Instead he prowled the tiny house like a large, restless predator. She went to the kitchen and took Erik’s wallet from her pocket, blocking the grief that came from handling it, fortifying herself with Matthew’s words as he’d told her to run.

She removed Erik’s boat keys and placed them on the counter before pocketing the wallet. She opened the drawer and found Rebekka’s second house key, along with paper, pencil, and extra candles.

Impulsively she pulled out the paper and pencil. Tir set the food down on the counter and took the keys. Anxiety tightened her chest.

“I should be offended you have so little confidence in me,” he said. “But I find your worry for me oddly arousing.”

“I want to go with you, Tir.”

“No.” His mouth found her neck and sent a pulse of pure need to her cunt. “You’ll stay here until I return.”

When she didn’t acknowledge the command, his lips were replaced by his teeth. They closed on her skin in sharp demand and remained there until she said, “I’ll stay as long as it’s safe.”

Tir rubbed his tongue over the place where he’d bitten. A caress and not an apology.

“You’ll speak with the vice lord before you go for the boat?” she asked.

“Yes.” Neither of them mentioned how he’d done the impossible and saved her from dying after her fight with the dragon lizard.

Heat rose in Araña’s cheeks when she realized Levi stood across the counter from them, his arms folded across his chest. Embarrassment at having been so lost in Tir that the Were was able to get within striking distance without her noticing made Araña pick up the pencil and begin drawing. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but with sure strokes, Jurgen’s face appeared on the paper.

Levi’s arms dropped to his sides. “Jurgen,” he said, and the same hatred Araña felt was in his voice. “There’s always a need for a healer when he visits the brothel. He went after Rebekka.”

On a separate piece of paper she deftly drew Cabot, the man whose cock had shriveled at the sight of the spider on her bare mound. “And him?”

“Dead.”

Araña allowed herself a moment of satisfaction before pulling another sheet of paper from the drawer. The image of the man she’d seen in her vision was as real to her as the others.

Beside her, Tir tensed so subtly that if their bodies hadn’t been touching, she wouldn’t have known it. On the other side of the counter Levi shook his head, the brown-blond tones and length of his hair making him momentarily resemble the lion Rebekka said he could no longer become. “He wasn’t there.”

“He’s not the third guardsman or the man you call Gulzar?” Too late, Araña realized she should have hidden her surprise and puzzlement.

Tawny-colored eyes narrowed. “Why did you think he would be?” Levi asked.

Guilt lashed at Araña. Suspicion appeared in Levi’s eyes, telling her he smelled the emotion on her. She saw no point in lying. “I had a vision this morning, before we left your lair in the forest.” She touched her finger to the stranger’s image. “He was in it.”

“And Rebekka?”

Araña’s guilt intensified. “I saw the three of you on the bus. The man emerged from the guardsman headquarters and bought a pastry from a vendor. He was eating it when the bus passed with Rebekka and the child in the window.”

“That’s all?”

“I didn’t see anything of what happened after that.”

The truth, and yet so much less than it. But even Matthew and Erik, who she’d loved and trusted, didn’t know all of what carrying the demon mark meant.

Levi leaned forward, the gold of his eyes molten with turbulent emotion. “Use your gift to find her.”

Araña’s heart skipped a beat. “I can’t.”

The Were snarled. “Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t.”

“You can try. If it hadn’t been for her, you would have escaped the maze only to become food. Humans don’t survive a night outside, even if they get out of the red zone and into the forest.” His gaze darted to the spider now on the back of her hand. “Against fur and fang and supernaturals, you’d die just as easily as any other.”

Araña knew he could hear the thunder of her heart and smell her fear. “I have no control of my gift.”

Levi snarled again. “Then get it. Go to the Wainwright witch. It was Annalise who told Rebekka you’d be running in the maze.”

The pencil snapped in Araña’s hand as the image of the old witch who’d sent Erik and Matthew to their deaths flashed into her mind and brought a killing rage with it. “What does she look like?”

Levi’s eyes narrowed. “I only caught a glimpse of her. She’s got black hair with a skunk streak of silver down the middle of it.”

Araña dropped the pencil halves on the counter. Not the old witch or the pregnant one, then. “Are there others?”

“There’s never only one witch. I don’t know if there are others by the same last name. What does it matter?” There was a sharp edge to Levi’s voice now. “The Wainwright witch has already demonstrated an interest in you. Ask her to help you get control of your gift.”

Sweat coated Araña’s skin at the thought of willingly entering the heart of the flame. She’d only make it worse by attempting what Levi wanted her to do. And to trust a stranger, a witch… “I—”

“Will think on it,” Tir said, his hands settling possessively on her shoulders. “There’s nothing any of us can do to help the healer tonight.”

Levi’s muscles bunched. His eyes bored into Araña’s, in challenge and anger, with a hint of condemnation—as if he could smell her cowardice. The muscles in his jaws worked as if he intended to argue, but he left without saying another word.

Araña pulled away from Tir and went to the door. She closed it against the approaching night and wished she could shut out her conscience as easily.

She turned and found Tir directly behind her. The heat of lust remained, but it was overlaid with the chill of unshared secrets and unspoken suspicion. “You recognized the man I drew in the third picture.”

Tir leaned in, bracing his hands against the smooth wood, trapping Araña. Proximity and the mix of their emotions made for a dangerous, volatile combination. “And your guilt over the healer’s fate pummeled me. Tell me about the vision and why you blame yourself for her misfortune. What could you have done to prevent it?”

“Nothing.”

It was truth and lie entangled. He sensed it. “Tell me why your conscience flays you.”

Araña turned her face away from him, evading, stirring to life something deeply primitive inside him, something that didn’t want to allow her to hide any part of herself from him.

Tir touched his lips to her ear. “Don’t fight me,” he warned, part of him willing her to do just that so he could assert his dominance. “You won’t win. Tell me the truth about your visions. Tell me why they lead to your guilt.”

Araña stiffened in his arms. “And will you tell me how you recognized the man I drew? Or should I guess?”

It was his turn to become tense, and that tension grew when she said, “You weren’t bound for the maze, were you? You were bound for the Church and someone connected to the guard was involved. That’s why the priest has the clerk at the occult shop researching the marks on your arm. They want to use you to heal, to create miracles.”

The precision of her guesses was testament to her intelligence. He’d been used in that manner for centuries—and the threat of being used that way again would remain until he was rid of the collar.

Already he’d come to believe Araña wouldn’t willingly betray him. Not after remaining behind to free him from his shackles as guardsmen drew closer. Not after lying with him and welcoming him into her body. Not after sharing what little wealth she owned after finding the wallet.

But if he gave her Tomás’s name and spoke about the lion, she could well do something foolish in her concern and guilt over the healer’s fate. How hard would it be to locate a wealthy family that kept exotic, dangerous beasts?

Even searching for the information would divert her attention away from the task of finding the texts that would free him. He couldn’t allow it. He couldn’t risk her. For all he knew, guardsmen, Church, maze owner, and Tomás’s family were all working together to recapture him.

She could keep her secrets, for now. Just as he intended to keep his.

Tir’s mouth settled on hers. Her lips were petal-soft against his, though she refused him entry and resisted him with the stiffening of her body. Ferocious desire surged through him, bringing with it all the fantasies he’d harbored during the day, all the possessiveness he felt when it came to her.

He shifted his hands so one was freed while the other kept her wrists pinned to the door. Her heart thundered against his chest. But the shiver of erotic fear he felt in her negated any protest she might voice.

Her heated, sultry scent swamped him, burning away all rational thought. And with a harsh moan he invaded her mouth, cupping her jaw and applying pressure, forcing the barrier of her teeth to lift so his tongue could push its way through firmed lips.

If he thought she’d yield, he was mistaken. She fought him, but the battle was waged on a sensual field.

Hours had passed since they’d lain together next to the fire, since he’d fed her in a primitive display of male dominance and female submissiveness. His hand left her jaw, his fingers ruthless as they unbuttoned her shirt and shoved her bra upward to free her breasts.

She cried out, her back arching; her nipples hard, tight points; her body betraying her. He took a dark areola between his fingers and swallowed her moans as she responded to his touch.

His penis throbbed against the front of his pants. His cock screamed, not only for freedom, but for the feel of her mouth on it.

I need you, she’d whispered in the alleyway near the dock where the boat was moored, and he’d wanted her then and there.

Tir released her nipple. He brushed his knuckles over her flat belly on the way to her waistband.

As he undid the thin leather belt she wore, he imagined using it on her. He’d get the truth from her then.

The image of punishing her nearly sent Tir to his knees. Had he always had such fantasies, or had his time in human captivity darkened his hungers to match those of his captors?

Her hips bucked when he opened the front of her pants and slid his hand into her panties. “Yes,” she whispered, widening her stance, moaning as he cupped her smooth mound.

Tir pressed his fingers into her slick channel and fought the siren call to touch his lips to her lower ones, to thrust his tongue into her sheath. “Please,” she said, pushing into his touch, rubbing her swollen folds and hardened clit against his palm, driving his fingers deeper.

His mind was a confusion of conflicting desires, but one dominated, the need to free his cock from its painful confinement. She cried out in protest when his hand left her wet, heated flesh. He swallowed the sound, loved the way it slid down his throat, filling his chest before sending molten lust to his penis and testicles.

He jerked her pants downward and then opened his own, nearly coming when his cock head touched her bare flesh. His fingers went automatically to his shaft, and for an instant he was tempted to grant himself relief, to coat her skin with his seed.

His penis hadn’t stirred at the brothel. It hadn’t filled in the centuries when he’d been presented with women, both willing and unwilling alike, but with Araña…

He wanted her. When he was with her, he could barely think of anything else but taking her.

Tir’s lips left hers in order to trail kisses along her jaw and up to her ear. He fucked his tongue into the sensitive canal, his fingers tightening on his cock, sliding from base to tip in time with the wet probing.

“Let me touch you,” she whispered, the muscles at her wrists flexing as she tried to escape his grip. “Let me take you in my mouth.”

In a heartbeat, everything left his mind but one need, one purpose—to fuck through her sultry lips and press his cock head to the back of her throat, to feel her tightening on him, sucking him, swallowing him.

He released her pinned wrists. “Do it,” he commanded, resting his forearm against the back of the door, nearly whimpering himself when her hand chased his away from the hard length of his erection.

He quivered as the feminine hand he’d seen wield a knife closed around him in a firm grip. He jerked when the pad of her thumb gathered his escaping arousal and rubbed it into the smooth head of his cock.

She went to her knees gracefully and nuzzled her cheek against his length. The spider was there as well, blending seamlessly into her skin.

A moan escaped when she turned her head and brushed her lips to his trembling, eager flesh. “Araña,” he said. Her name curse and pledge. Demand and plea. And she smiled against him and let him feel the hint of her tongue—the torment of pleasure denied.

“Take me in your mouth.”

Her soft laugh made lust boil lava-hot in his veins. On a snarl, his hand fisted in her hair. “Do it.”

She touched her tongue to his length again, stroked, called what blood remained in his body to his cock. His gut tightened in a wave of panic, that he’d come like some untried youth. He growled her name again, his buttocks clenching, fever sweeping through him as he fought to keep from begging, to keep from throwing himself on her mercy.

Araña had never felt so powerful as she did in that moment, kneeling in front of Tir, positioned like a supplicant for him to command.

She reveled in his harsh voice. In his ragged panting as he struggled for breath. She could barely remember what had led to this.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was touch—what she gave to him and what he returned. She’d been starved for it, had rarely allowed herself even to dream of it.

Now all that mattered was feeling Tir’s skin against hers. A lifetime with him would never be enough.

She cupped his testicles in one hand and weighed them in her palm. Remembered the stallion she’d once seen mount a mare—and fantasized about Tir taking her that way. Sinking his teeth into her flesh as his flanks pistoned and his cock thrust hard and deep.

Her other hand tightened on his throbbing shaft. She licked along his length, savored him.

He smelled like the forbidden. Tasted like sin wrapped in undeniable temptation. And the sound of her name coupled with the harsh rasp of his breathing as he ordered her to take him into her mouth, to suck him, was more beautiful than any choir of angels. It spoke to her soul, filled it, as if she’d somehow bound them together the night she’d touched her thread to his in the heart of the flame.

Araña relented. Not because he commanded it, but because she desired it. Because she wanted to hear his cry as he came and to taste the hot wash of his seed as it pulsed down her throat in molten jets.

She took him in her mouth, looked up at him and memorized the harsh lines of his face as he thrust between her lips.

Their eyes met and held, dark and light blending in a carnal taking, bleeding into each other with primitive intensity.

Shallow thrusts became deeper ones. Pants became moans then grunts as she lashed him with her tongue, threatened him with the feel of her teeth against his cock, dedicated herself to swallowing him whole.

He came like a bolt of lightning. Savage. Uncontrollable. Wild. A force no human would conquer. A force only a few survived.

And she took what he gave, her hands leaving his cock and testicles in favor of holding him to her. Her nails digging into his buttocks in a sharp reminder that she might be on her knees before him, but she wasn’t conquered.

He hardened again almost as soon as he’d spent himself in her mouth. On a growl he pulled from between her lips and lifted her, held her against the door and thrust his cock into her channel with such ferocity she cried out.

“Mine,” he said, covering her mouth with his, pushing his tongue through the seam of her lips and growing more feral when he encountered the taste of himself there.

Araña clung to him as he pounded in and out of her sheath. There was no thought of fight or resistance. There was only the merciless climb. The scream of release. The sweet lassitude that came afterward. And the tenderness she’d come to need as much as she did his dominance.

He nuzzled her, kissing her gently, the door the only thing enabling them to remain upright at the conclusion of their sensual battle.

“I need to leave if I’m going to arrange a safe berth for your boat and then retrieve it.”

“I want to go with you.”

“No.” The denial was delivered with a kiss. “I don’t want to worry. Stay here. Stay safe. The night holds nothing I’m afraid of.”

But I’m afraid of losing you. Of what you’ve come to mean to me.

She volunteered neither. “The smaller key is for the boat engine. The other is for the cabin.” He kissed her again before stepping away from her. They straightened their clothing, not taking their eyes off each other. When he opened the door, she said, “Stay safe.” The words she’d always exchanged with.

Matthew and Erik whenever they parted company. “Stay here until I return.” The steel edge of command was back in Tir’s voice. Then he was gone. The door locked behind him. And the waiting began.