Spider-Touched

Four

ARAÑA guessed it was nearing sunset when footsteps approached beyond the door.

The men grew quiet.

She rose to her feet as Farold entered with a satchel under his arm. He stopped in front of her cage, far enough back that she couldn’t touch him, and emptied the contents of the bag onto the floor.

Two dozen knives poured out of it, many of them with dried blood on their blades. Araña’s throat tightened when she recognized one of Matthew’s, then saw Erik’s as well as her own.

Farold glanced up at the camera mounted above the door he’d just come through. “You’ve got five minutes before the others are freed,” he said, speaking to someone else as well as her. “Anton is allowing you the choice of two knives.”

Behind her she heard the slide of metal, the solid steel that had served as a wall opening to become a doorway. A breeze swirled in, bringing with it the smell of evening air.

The choice of knives was easy. Araña indicated one of Matthew’s and one of Erik’s.

As they slid across the concrete toward her, she allowed herself the brief fantasy of using them on the guardsmen who’d brought her to the maze. But when they reached her, her thoughts turned only to survival.

She grabbed them and fled, emerging from the cell into a chute formed of outdoor cages. Wild animals lunged as she ran past them. They hurled themselves against the bars, excited by the prospect of a hunt.

A pack of feral dogs frenzied, spinning and salivating and finally turning to savage the weakest member. A bear rose on its back legs. A cheetah crouched in the cage next to it while hyenas laughed.

Adrenaline surged through Araña, but its source wasn’t solely fear. This gauntlet meant to induce terror fed her hope. It was exactly as Gallo had described it.

Beyond the caged animals she paused only long enough to determine which direction the heart of the city lay in. Then she ran away from it, toward the forest.

Her lips pulled back in a fierce smile when she reached the next choice of turns. It was marked by pornographic statues, a beast raping a woman to the right, another doing the same to a man on the left.

She took the left without slowing, just as Gallo had once done, and ran past walls covered in vines, ignoring glimpses of light hinting at shortcuts, and deep shadows suggesting hiding places.

Cameras perched boldly on top of poles and concrete. Araña imagined just as many of them remained unseen, all of them turning violence and carnage into entertainment for anyone with the money to pay for it.

There were other statues along the way, most of them sexual in nature. She used them as others would use a street sign, hoped as she was doing it that they hadn’t been repositioned since Gallo ran this maze.

Behind her a bell sounded. The feral dogs began barking, warning her the convicts had been freed.

Araña pushed herself to run harder, unsure how long it would be before the demon was released into the maze. Blood ran down her side from where the bullet had grazed her. She ignored it and kept going, her breathing becoming labored.

The maze encompassed miles, and one wrong turn would mean rape, possibly death. Her lungs burned along with her thighs, making her fight for each running step.

Relief fed her strength as she turned a corner and faced a bridge she’d hoped to find there. In the evening air a trace of steam rose from a channel too wide to jump.

The water disappeared through a bricked archway offering a tantalizing glimpse of freedom. She knew it was an illusion. Just as she knew the bridge was a trap.

Anyone rushing across it would drop into the water. And though its surface was calm and unbroken, beneath it waited schools of piranhas kept hungry for human flesh. The night Gallo ran, he’d seen the man in front of him fall into the water and be eaten alive.

Araña sheathed the knives. She wiped sweat and blood from her hands before grasping the metal railing and moving forward, keeping to the very edge of the bridge.

Gallo hadn’t known where the trigger was, but there was one. And once it was tripped, a section of wood would swing downward.

At mid-span a scream tore through the maze, followed by another, and then another, telling her the demon now hunted. An involuntary shiver wracked her body as she pictured Abijah. She flinched when a different voice gave an agonizing cry of torment—the sound of it wavering, hovering in the air and turning her skin icy cold as it went on and on and on.

Footsteps drew close, more than one pair of them, pounding hard and fast. Making Araña hurry along the bridge. She nearly screamed herself as it fell away beneath her feet.

Only her hold on the railing saved her from plunging into the piranha-infested water. The upper body strength she’d gained from a lifetime of hard physical work served her well as she climbed hand over hand to reach solid footing.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw two convicts round a corner. She recognized them. One was the wife beater, the other a rapist.

Araña started running again as soon as her feet touched dirt. Seeing the trap of the bridge, the men would know the danger the water posed and cross it quicker than she had.

She followed their progress with her ears. They were catching up to her. But with freedom so close, she didn’t think they’d linger to make sport of her— if the opening Gallo had escaped from was still there.

Araña turned the corner and saw it. Only instead of a doorway leading to sky and forest— and a nightmare trap in the copse of trees beyond it—a silvery web spread across the space.

Clinging to a corner was a spider half the size of a man. She started forward anyway, heart thundering in her ears but willing to take a chance it wouldn’t attack. She’d never suffered a spider’s bite, even when her hand had been forcibly thrust into a nest of them as a test of her soul’s purity.

The leathery sound of wings made her glance upward. A whimper of fear escaped when she saw the demon.

Abijah landed in front of her, blocking her chance at freedom. His skin gleamed with blood. The metallic scent of it reached her on a breeze caused by his descent.

Just as it had done earlier, his tongue flicked out to taste her fear. His cock hardened to resemble those on the statues she’d run past.

The demon’s smile held wicked menace. “I have something special in store for you,” he said, taking a step forward.

She pulled the knives from their sheaths and braced herself for his attack. He leapt, but instead of attacking her, the batlike wings carried him past her and to the first of the convicts to round the corner after her.

Araña darted forward as the screaming started. With a glance up at the spider and an instinctual thought of apology, she sliced the web and pushed through it to where a path cutting through the forest beckoned and a trap waited.

Gallo had elected to clamber over rock and debris along the wall of the maze after his companion chose the path and entered the copse of trees, only to discover how deadly a choice it was. Araña pressed on, running along the bone-cluttered trail as the agonizing cries of the dying followed her into freedom.

REBEKKA shivered as the air cooled and full night drew closer. Despite Levi’s presence next to her and her own gifts, she wasn’t foolhardy when it came to roaming the darkness. If the woman didn’t escape the maze soon…

Levi tensed. “Someone’s coming,” he whispered, lifting the gun he held and pointing it toward the trail.

She strained to hear something beyond the croak of frogs and the song of insects, but her ears were no match to those of a shapeshifter, even one who no longer had an animal form.

Rebekka worried her bottom lip as her thoughts strayed to the Wainwright witches. She wondered if there was a subtle message in the picture Annalise had chosen to show her in the occult shop.

Had the witch meant to imply more than the possibility of Levi’s brother being freed? Was she hinting there was a way Levi could regain his ability to shift into a lion?

Icy fingers slid down Rebekka’s spine as she touched the pentacle in her pocket. What price would the Wainwrights ask for such knowledge?

Levi nudged her, bringing her attention back to the trail. Their choice of hiding place had more to do with practicality than anything else. If the woman escaped at all, the forest was the only place they could intercept her and guide her to safety without revealing themselves. And the spot where they waited was the only one where several paths joined. Still the odds didn’t favor either escape or—

A woman moved into view soundlessly, with determination, as if she had a destination in mind. Uneasiness assaulted Rebekka, the worry this was a trap. But logic and the token in her pocket said otherwise.

She stood, drawing attention to herself. Somehow she managed not to recoil when she saw the brand on the woman’s hand, the Church’s usual way of marking someone who practiced black magic.

Rebekka shoved her fear deep inside and said, “If you want a safe place for the night, we offer one.”

Levi stood, and the woman’s gaze shifted to the gun in his hand. It stayed there until he lowered it in a demonstration that they didn’t intend to force her to go with them.

“Who are you?” the woman asked.

“No names,” Levi said. “Not here.”

In case I’m recaptured, Araña thought, nodding, the answer reassuring. They couldn’t know she’d already seen them clearly enough to draw a picture that could be used to identify them.

She glanced past them. The tree Gallo had taken shelter in the night he escaped the maze wasn’t far, but then what?

Home was a long way away, nearly impossible to get to without a boat. And she didn’t doubt the Constellation had already been confiscated.

She intended to get the boat back. Just as she intended to stay in Oakland until justice was served on the two guardsmen. But she had no money unless she stole it, or returned to the place she’d been captured and found the wallet she’d lost after Matthew ordered her to run.

Beyond that, she was injured, her clothes bloody enough to attract predators of all kinds. She was in a strange place without allies… except for these strangers.

They would want something from her. It was the way of things. But Araña found herself nodding slightly and slipping the knives into blood-crusted sheaths.

Tension left the woman’s body. She bent down and retrieved a cloak before closing the distance between them.

The man came with her, his body language alert, protective. The woman thrust the bundle into Araña’s hands. “When we’re near the edge of the red zone, you can put this on so no one from the gaming clubs will recognize you. We need to hurry. At nightfall the werewolves and feral dogs prowl in packs.”

Araña nodded and followed the strangers. They stopped once, where forest merged into vine-covered ruins. She put the cloak on and they continued.

Rubble gave way to lit streets in an extravagant use of power. But it didn’t surprise her, not given the old Victorian houses and the elegant people seen through bay windows.

Bouncers blocked club entrances, neckless men with thick arms and dead eyes. They began disappearing into the clubs as light faded quickly.

Behind her Araña heard the sound of locks clicking into place one by one, a domino effect spreading along the streets as humans gave over the night to the predators.

Her companions picked up the pace, and she could feel their tension mounting, the need to hurry measured against the desire not to draw attention. They ducked into a darkening alleyway, then another and another, until emerging on a street that made Araña halt in her tracks.

Brothels lined it, some connected by walkways, others standing alone. The woman glanced over her shoulder but didn’t stop. “You won’t make it to safety if you change your mind now. I’ve got a room here. You won’t be bothered.”

With a thought, Araña found the demon mark on her shoulder and drew comfort from it. She caught up with her unnamed companions and followed them into one last alley.

They stopped in front of an unobtrusive door. The man punched in a series of numbers to open it and Araña hid her smile. If they thought to betray her and lock her in, they wouldn’t keep her using a system like this.

As soon as they stepped inside, her companions sagged with relief and identified themselves as Levi and Rebekka before indicating they were going upward. Araña told them her name as they began climbing a narrow set of stairs.

Levi left them at the first landing. On the third, Rebekka pushed through a doorway leading to a dimly lit hall. “Clients aren’t allowed up here,” she said, producing a key and letting them into a bedroom.

An open doorway revealed a small bathroom. Rebekka lit an oil lamp to take the edge off the darkness of the room. “I can’t stay to tend to your wounds. But there are salves and bandages in the bathroom. Use what you need.”

“Why are you helping me?”

“We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

Rebekka opened a drawer and pulled out clothing. As she had with the cloak, she shoved it into Araña’s hands. “We’re close to the same size. These should fit you. I need to get downstairs. I’m the healer here. I won’t be back until morning. You can take my bed.”

She left and Araña showered, washing her clothing at the same time. Watching as clear water turned bloodred before disappearing down the drain.

When she was finished, she bound the wound on her side then freed the clothesline coiled on one shower wall and attached it to a ring on the other so she could leave her clothes to dry.

Exhaustion hit like a sledgehammer as she emerged from the bathroom. It made her movements slow and laborious as she pulled on a long shirt and slid under the blankets on the bed. But when she closed her eyes, sleep wouldn’t come.

In the room beneath her the rhythmic creaking of bedsprings began. The thump of wood against wood intermingled with grunts.

Pain lanced through her heart, harsher than what spasmed through her body. Memories washed over her, of lying in her own bed and hearing soft laughter coming from the bedroom next to hers as Erik said something to Matthew at day’s end. Of their lovemaking, muted by the heavy, exotic tapestries they’d hung on their wall when she’d entered their lives.

Tears slid across Araña’s cheeks. This time she didn’t knock them away as she’d done on the boat. She let them flow freely to wet the pillow beneath her, and tried only to stifle the sobs that threatened to wrack her body.

Her chest ached with the effort. Her fingers curled into fists.

The feel of the skin stretching and pulling against the scarred tissue on her left hand made her aware of the demon mark. The spider rested on top of the brand.

Guilt rose sharp and fierce with the worry that she had caused Erik and Matthew’s deaths. It lashed at her as mercilessly as the rod she’d once felt across her back each time her father claimed even the smallest wrongdoing was a result of the evil taint she carried in her soul.

She’d gone by another name then. One she’d shed ten years earlier, on the night she killed her parents and the clergyman who’d pressed the hot brand to her skin. The night she’d climbed aboard the Constellation and taken the name of the demon mark as her own.

Spider. Araña.

She dug her nails into her palms, unable to prevent the memory of that first night on the boat from assaulting her. In it she lay huddled in a blanket, too overwhelmed by all that had happened to protest when Erik dabbed salve onto her newly burned flesh with a cloth.

When it was done, he’d extinguished the lantern and gone on deck. She’d been only vaguely aware of Matthew untethering the boat and silently pushing it away from the dock and into the deeper part of the canal with a pole.

She understood now that together Matthew and Erik had used oars to maneuver the boat into the black shelter of night on the water. They’d rowed as she ebbed in and out of consciousness, hadn’t stopped until finally the wind stirred to life and was caught by the sails.

Araña steeled herself. She tried to stop the memory from continuing to play out, but it was impossible. In it Matthew remained on deck while Erik entered the cabin. A match flared, its flame put to the wick of a lantern and trapping Araña in her demon gift.

She trembled as the reality of the day’s events merged with the long-ago vision of Oakland and death. Felt her heart swell in agony as once again Matthew was cradling Erik in his arms. Only now she knew there would be no going home with Matthew—to grieve and try to pick up the pieces of their lives without Erik.

Araña rolled over in an effort to escape the pain, the question of guilt. But there was no escape, just as there’d been no escape from the demon gift that night.

The yellow-orange flame in the oil lamp Rebekka had lit trapped Araña so she couldn’t look away. Her heart raced in her chest, as if its thundering beat could hold her soul against the essence of fire, the birthplace of demons—but it had no power against the gift that was a curse.

Yellow-orange gave way to red the color of newly spilled blood. Bright red darkened, became a black void as the last thumps of her heart faded along with her awareness of it, leaving her in utter silence.

The only sense of herself she had was spiderlike, as though she had become the darkness stretching across time and encompassing endless possibility. There was a peace to it, a unity with the mark she didn’t have anywhere else. But there was also a price to pay for it—a terrible price despite the nearly overwhelming beauty that came in an explosion of color.

Silence yielded to sibilant whispers. Thousands of voices blending together like a rushing stream.

Black nothingness gave way to strand after strand of color. Thousands of threads given substance, each strand representing a soul, a life. And the urge to grasp them, weave them together into patterns of her own choosing was a tempting, haunting call that had grown stronger as she got older.

Araña fought against it as she always did, though she knew in the end she would lose. There was no leaving this spider’s place of vision until she yielded.

And she would yield—sooner rather than later. Before the pain of not choosing grew so intense she would grab wildly, grasping two threads without caring about the result, what the intersection of two paths would mean or how their coming together rippled into the future and changed the design of it.

Phantom pain slashed through a heart she could no longer hear or feel as she remembered that long-ago night when Erik lit the lantern and the flame caught her, bringing her to this place. She didn’t remember taking up the thread belonging to the witch, but she must have.

The view of Oakland from the water belonged to the old witch at the bus stop. Even now, it was a clear snapshot in Araña’s mind, an image followed by the memory of pain and nothingness as she’d fought against touching another soul to the witch’s.

But in the end, she’d lost. She’d chosen a second strand, a deep, rich earth brown, not knowing until she touched it that it belonged to Matthew—the stranger whose boat was carrying her away from the mob hunting her. And in that instant when she touched the thread of Matthew’s life, she’d seen Erik’s death without understanding the full truth of it or what crossing the witch’s path would mean.

The first shimmer of pain pulled Araña from her memories. A nameless urgency made her push formlessly through twisting, multicolored strands—forward into some future moment— until a blue-black thread caught her attention and drew her to it.

She couldn’t tell from looking at it what made this soul and life different from all the others, but she knew it was, knew the being it represented was like nothing she’d ever encountered before.

The pain intensified, isolating her until the only choice was to reach out and grasp the thread in a spidery demon touch.

There was a wrenching disorientation as darkness and nothingness gave way to midday sun and the Oakland skyline. She saw it through tattered canvas, the ripped side of a rapidly moving transport truck.

They were several miles away from the red zone. She recognized the tallest building and knew it was near the maze. Beyond it was one of the buildings she’d seen when they sailed toward the docks.

The truck was in an old graveyard. She noticed tombstones fallen among the weeds, a destroyed mausoleum with the words “Our Lady of Peace” above a doorway framing sky and forest.

Movement to the right turned her attention to what was inside the truck, and even without a physical presence, the sight of the dragon lizards with their tails swinging back and forth in agitation sent terror whipping through her. They were contained, as were the hyenas trapped in a small cage above them.

Next to the hyenas a wolf had bloodied its mouth gnawing frantically at the bars of its cage. The warded silver around its neck made her think it was a Were. Her suspicion deepened when she turned farther and saw the werecougar trapped between forms, his body vibrating with despair.

The sense of the future, tomorrow, reverberated through her. Given the proximity to Oakland and the presence of the dragon lizards, she knew she must be in the truck belonging to the trapper the maze owner had spoken of.

There was one last occupant in the truck, the one whose life she’d followed to this place and moment in time. But when she would have turned farther to look, searing agony prevented it, ripping her backward to the present.

She expected an explosion of color, a thousand threads to choose from. Instead there was only the single, blue-black strand in an infinity of darkness.

The pain stopped. Completely. In a way it had never done before while she was still held in the spider vision.

Pure blackness gave way to night. A man lay on a bed of straw, bathed in moonlight.

His wrists and ankles were shackled to a band of metal around his waist. An eerie sigil-inscribed collar encircled his neck, glowing icy blue.

There was no sound in her vision walk save for the sibilant whispers, now joined by discordant notes of music, a fractured rhapsody she instinctively knew belonged to him.

He had a face like the angels she’d seen in Erik’s art history books, too beautiful to look at and yet so enthralling she couldn’t look away. Black hair as long as her own rippled over his chest and back in erotic waves, making her want to reach out and tangle her fingers in it, making her crave what she’d never known and couldn’t have—the touch of a lover.

Despite the length of his hair and the shackles imprisoning him, he was masculine perfection, the epitome of unfathomable power. And though Araña had no true awareness of her body, she had a phantom sensation of her breath catching and her cunt weeping with a need that would never be safely satisfied with anything but her own touch.

The man’s eyes opened, his gaze meeting hers deep in the vision, trapping her in dark pools of blue. And in that instant she felt the shimmering touch of soul against soul and she understood even as the lantern flame released her to tumble into exhausted sleep, this time it was her life that was to become part of the weave.