Spider-Touched

Eight

ARAÑA woke alone and knew an instant of panic—not from the close confines of the space she was in, but from Tir’s absence and the loss of his skin against hers. She sat up, aware of the meshed ceiling only inches above her head, high enough to allow a lion to walk easily and a human to sit, wide enough for a couple of Weres, in either of their forms, to lounge comfortably. Levi’s lair was just that, a hollowed out place fortified by wire and steel scavenged from the human world and hidden beneath the rock and wood of the natural one.

Air and light and sound filtered in, enough of it so she knew it was morning and Tir was close by, cooking something. Her stomach rumbled at the smell of roasting meat.

She glanced around the lair and found her clothes missing, guessed he’d taken them outside and placed them near the fire to dry. In the hopes of being less noticeable when they got to the city, she’d washed the blood out of them before they’d taken shelter for the night.

A blush rose to her cheeks at the thought of emerging from the lair naked. It was foolish to feel shy after all she and Tir had done together. She knew it, but flaunting herself didn’t come naturally to her.

For the first twelve years of her life she’d been trained to modesty—even her nightgowns had been flannel and cotton versions of the long dresses that covered her from neck to wrists to ankles. It had been easy to shed the restrictive clothing for shorts and tank tops, but she’d never lost her reticence even though she often saw men and women swimming naked when boats joined together to form impromptu floating cities.

She wasn’t ashamed of her body or embarrassed by the sight of others naked, but she’d never slipped into the water during those times. At first it was because she feared someone would brush against the spider and die as a result. Then later, as she matured, she didn’t join them because her bare mound set her apart from the other women. She’d worried…

Never again.

A shiver went through her as she remembered the heat in Tir’s eyes when he’d lifted his face from between her thighs. Arousal slid from her opening at the memory of what he’d done with his tongue and mouth.

She wanted him to touch her that way again. She wanted to give him the same pleasure.

Her hand slid over the smooth flesh of her cunt, fingers seeking and finding the wet evidence of desire. She stroked and probed, gathered the silky moisture on her fingertips, and caressed her stiffened clit.

A moan escaped, loud in the confines of the lair, and her face heated as she imagined Tir hearing it and knowing she was touching herself as she thought about him. Her nipples hardened, ached for his touch. Spikes of need shot up her spine with each pass over the tiny, naked head of her clit.

Araña closed her eyes and tilted her head back, imagining Tir hovering over her, watching, commanding that she give him her release.

Heat suffused her body. Orgasm shimmered through her, a pale imitation of what she’d experienced with him.

Worry rose in its wake, about the pain sure to come later when he was gone, leaving her bereft of touch and heartbroken. She didn’t think she could keep the needs of the body and the needs of the soul separate.

The demon mark lay on her hand. She touched it, wishing she could draw answers from it.

She was meant to find and free Tir. That much she believed beyond any doubt. The vision leading her to him was too different from the ones she’d had before for it to be otherwise.

But she was mortal, a human damned to Hell by the mark, and he was something else, something so much more. He was hundreds of years old, perhaps thousands, perhaps truly immortal.

Araña hugged herself, suddenly afraid of how much she already craved his touch, how much more she’d come to need it the longer she experienced it. Part of her recognized it was already too late to free herself from the web of destiny. It had been too late the moment she touched the thread of Tir’s soul.

Taking one of the blankets with her, she crawled to the lair entrance, wanting to escape thoughts of the future. Life had taught her such thoughts did little good. In the end, as long as she wore the demon mark, it defined her future—a fiery hell and a demon master.

The metal hatch hiding the entrance to the lair was heavy, but she managed to open it and escape into morning light. She detoured at nature’s call, then wrapped the blanket around her like a sarong before joining Tir by a fire pit far enough from the lair not to draw attention to it.

He was naked, crouched near the fire, black hair fanning over his shoulders and cascading in waves to his hips. His skin was marbled perfection, bone and muscle sculpted into a form that would inspire poetry and song and magnificent paintings.

Once again she was reminded of the angels in Erik’s art history books, divine beings captured in oil by masters dead centuries upon centuries before The Last War. She didn’t believe in angels, at least not on earth. None had been sighted since the early days, when some of the texts making up the Bible had been written. And if there once was a God—the creator of mankind—then she thought he’d long since lost interest in this world. Otherwise, why would angels not have made themselves known along with all of the other supernaturals?

It was a blasphemous thought, one that would have earned her a beating had she ever expressed it in the settlement where she’d spent the first twelve years of her life.

Araña turned her attention to the food. Her stomach growled and her mouth watered.

“Quail?” she asked, looking at the spitted birds, their roasted bodies cooling to the side of the fire.

“Yes.”

When she would have reached for one of them, Tir’s fingers shackled her wrist. Her eyes went to his and her breath caught at what she read in his expression.

“Mine,” Tir said, not knowing where the word or the impulse had come from, but denying neither. He dropped her wrist and snagged his fingers in the blanket stretched across her breasts.

A sharp tug, accompanied by Araña’s small cry of surprised protest, and the material no longer hid her from him.

The sight of her flushed cunt lips was nearly his undoing. Only a grumbled reminder from her stomach kept him from pushing her onto her back and feasting on her.

Tir picked up one of the first roasting spits he’d set aside. A quick check told him the meat was hot, but not too hot. He tore a piece from it with his fingers and carried it to Araña’s lips in silent offering.

Mine, he thought again, the word rippling through him, bringing uneasiness with it, but not enough to make him stop feeding her by his own hand.

Pitch black eyes widened and the scent of her arousal intensified, as if their bodies communicated on some primitive level. As if some animal instinct had taken over in the aftermath of their spending the night in the Were’s lair. Whatever the reason, he found a savage satisfaction in tearing pieces of meat from the bird he’d hunted and prepared for them.

His cock throbbed each time her lips touched his skin when she took what he offered. His breathing became more labored as she grew bolder, capturing his fingers and sucking them into her mouth, licking away the juices with her tongue.

Heat leapt from her to him, a liquid fire starting where they touched and burning through his veins, eradicating all thought of eating. Primitive emotions held him in their grip, uncaring of any rational arguments he might offer to explain the raw possessiveness and molten need Araña stirred to life inside him.

He was free and with a woman for the first time in memory. For the moment it was reason enough to take what he wanted.

Araña’s eyelids lowered, hiding her expression beneath heavy black lashes as her belly filled and she became sated. But she couldn’t hide the rise of a different hunger.

Her lust beat against him like the wings of an exotic captive. Her scent intoxicated him.

A fantasy raged through him, of lying sprawled on cushions as she fed him by hand—a submissive seeing to the needs of her master. Vague images shimmered to life in his darkened memory, of men and women prostrate before him. But he could spare only a thought to the unanswered question of his true nature, could give only fleeting consideration to the possibility his race had once walked the earth as gods.

Araña’s hands settled on his chest, her palms against his nipples, sending hot sensation to his cock. She closed the distance between them, shy innocent and sultry seductress, a primitive female intent on having her needs met.

Tir let her push him backward onto his elbows. She straddled him and a groan escaped as her smooth, hot cunt rubbed against his penis, leaving it wet with her desire.

Need raged through Araña, making her shiver. The only thing that mattered was joining with Tir.

Blue eyes glittered, adding to the savageness of his features and stirring a primitive fear inside her. He wasn’t human. He wasn’t safe, even for his lover.

It didn’t matter. She couldn’t stop herself from reaching down and taking his cock in her hand, from guiding it to her entrance.

“Tir,” she whispered, impaling herself on him, nearly sobbing with the pleasure of having him inside her.

He didn’t help her, didn’t rise onto his knees and use his strength to lift her up and down on his shaft. He watched as she fucked herself on him.

It made her feel powerful at first. But then the emotional distance became unbearable.

It wasn’t only the feel of skin against skin she craved. It was the sharing of breath and body heat, the feeling of being truly intimate with another hum—

But he wasn’t. And she knew their being together was temporary.

I don’t care, she told herself. In all likelihood she would die in Oakland as Erik and Matthew had, or die trying to get back home.

She thought the demon mark would kill the next man who tried to touch her. This time spent with Tir felt like stolen moments. But then she was a thief and had been for the last ten years.

She leaned forward, rubbing her palms against his tiny hardened nipples, the change in angle sending sharp spikes of pleasure through her each time her clit struck his abdomen. Her lips covered his and she closed her eyes.

He swallowed the cries she couldn’t contain, the gasps. And finally gave her what she wanted.

Effortlessly he held himself up on one elbow as his fingers tangled in her hair, his arm across her back making her a prisoner as he took charge despite her being on top of him. His tongue thrust aggressively against hers, the force of it controlling the rhythm of her fingers on his nipples, the squeeze and release of pain that blended to pleasure for him.

His cock throbbed inside her, a second heartbeat held motionless in her channel until she whispered a nearly silent please against his mouth when they parted for breath.

He relented, the arm trapping her upper body sliding downward, the hand going to the small of her back, remaining there as his hips thrust upward, in counterpoint to hers, driving his cock into her channel hard and deep.

Araña tangled her fingers in his hair. Her own fell curtainlike on either side of their faces, spider black strands twining with his on their way to the ground.

She took the sounds of his pleasure along with his breath, their lips never far apart, their tongues rubbing, stroking, their bodies writhing in a wild joining, fighting for and finding that place of perfect union.

Araña nuzzled Tir afterward, loving the feel of his arms around her, his solid strength beneath her as she lay sprawled on top of him like a human blanket. They needed to leave. It would take them half a day to get to Oakland and they didn’t know what waited for them there.

Her stomach knotted—worry about the Constellation, about Rebekka and Levi, chasing her contentment away. She turned her head, thinking only to delay when she’d have to leave Tir’s warmth in order to wash and dress, but the instant she faced the dying fire, her soul tumbled into the flame, defenseless against its summoning.

No, she screamed silently, her voice unheard in the surreal whispers held deep in the fire. The pain arriving without pause, insistent, sharp, excruciating, as if this time she wouldn’t be allowed to linger or fight against choosing one of the soul threads.

Araña tried anyway, out of habit and fear. But the battle was over almost as soon as it began. There was no conscious decision, there was only a forced yielding, a reaching blindly, convulsively, for a twisted strand with various shades of brown and a swirl of gray.

The pain dulled, enough so she slid from the spider’s domain to the waking vision of someone’s life. Oakland again, but she wasn’t surprised. She wondered if she’d ever truly escape it now that she was caught in its web.

The city crept past her in slow, familiar jolts, the glass she was looking through smudged and cracked. There was no true sensation other than what she held in her memory, but she could smell the interior of the bus, could feel the rumble of its engine vibrating through metal and torn vinyl seats.

They were heading toward the heart of the city, backward along a route similar to the one she’d taken with Erik and Matthew. And though she had no corporeal presence, she felt the phantom close of her throat, the swell of grief she’d managed only to give a shallow burial.

Real pain spiked through her in a sharp reminder that the past was done with, its strands already woven into place. And in pain’s wake came knowledge. She walked in the immediate future now. Minutes away. No more than an hour.

If she’d had a physical form, she would have frowned even as her heart raced with foreboding at what lay ahead. Until Oakland, until the vision of Tir, the only hint she’d ever had of present and future was what she could glean from her surroundings. Until Oakland, she might go months without being trapped by flame. But here, in two days she’d been drawn into the fire as many times.

Trepidation filled her as she forced her attention away from the window. It escalated into horror when she saw the trapper’s child, positioned on the lap of the soul she was ghosting, Rebekka’s slender arm around his waist.

Denial screamed through Araña. But there was no undoing the choice, no releasing the strand she’d taken.

Nothing good would come of this. Nothing ever had. Her demon-born gift brought only death and pain and suffering.

Araña became aware of a presence next to Rebekka. Her dread deepened when she saw Levi.

The pain returned, an excruciating flash of agony forcing her back into the black heart of the demon flame. There was no respite from it as a kaleidoscope of colors swirled around her, accompanied by the streaming whisper of voices.

In desperation Araña fought her way forward, remembering the blue-black of Tir’s soul thread, looking for it but not seeing it. She endured the searing punishment of delaying until the instinct for survival forced a choice.

The thread was gold with flecks of scarlet. Araña had the fleeting impression of wealth and unrealized power, of old bloodlines and unacknowledged gifts, before she was in a building, ghost-walking down a long corridor with framed photographs of men in guardsmen uniforms.

Horror filled her. She fought to escape, but she was trapped, the pain blackening the edges of phantom sight but not spreading so she passed out.

Glass doors came into view. She caught the image of the man whose life she ghosted before he exited the building.

Oakland again. Downtown, where the guardsmen and police would have their headquarters. There was the bustle of people. Food-stand vendors called out their menus, and the man who’d been in the guard headquarters bought a pastry from one of them before moving to stand next to a black sedan to eat it.

The bus would appear in a few minutes. Araña knew it with grim certainty.

Visceral waves of fear and guilt and mingled rage made her fight more desperately to escape back into the heart of the flame. The pain was excruciating, deadly—her struggles pointless.

What she expected came to pass—a bus rounded a corner.

It stopped, disgorging passengers and taking on new ones—none of them Rebekka or Levi.

Disbelief settled for the span of a phantom heartbeat, hope flared into existence—she’d been wrong.

But she hadn’t.

The bus began moving again, closing the distance until it came alongside the black sedan. And there was Rebekka in the window, gazing outward.

Araña knew the moment when the two threads she’d chosen intersected, changing the weave of the future. She felt it rippling forward as she slipped from the hold of the flame to find herself in Tir’s arms.

“You’re bleeding,” he said, making her aware of the blood streaming from her nose, the price for her continued struggles against the demon gift.

“I’m okay,” she said, attempting to pull away though she craved the comfort he offered.

Tir’s arms tightened, as if he’d force her to remain with him. But then he let her go abruptly, as if on some level he knew she was dangerous to him, understood the same gift that had led to his freedom might one day cause his enslavement.

Araña rose to her feet and went to the stream to wash. She felt raw, haunted, besieged by guilt. When they got to Oakland, they would learn of Rebekka’s fate—perhaps—if Levi survived to tell of it.

Her throat tightened, remembering the night she’d run from the settlement and been taken in by Erik and Matthew, remembering her run in the maze, her escape to find Rebekka waiting, a stranger offering shelter.

Those who helped her or knew her weren’t any safer from her demon gift than the multitude of strangers whose lives she touched when the flame took her. If she were braver, perhaps she’d go willingly into the embrace of death, and face the demon that had left its mark on her, rather than continue to do the demon’s work on earth.

But the prospect of what awaited her in the afterlife was more horrifying than what she wrought with her gift. And it wouldn’t honor Matthew and Erik if she surrendered, if she failed to live as they’d wanted her to, as they’d taught her to do by example and the strength of their love.

Tir followed Araña to the stream though he didn’t join her in it. Concern for her gnawed at him as she washed the blood away, but it was mixed with tendrils of suspicion. There was more to her visions than she’d told him previously.

His eyes flicked to the spider mark now riding her shoulder. Buried memories fought to surface, but they were kept suppressed by the band around his neck.

She was human, her gifted nature not obvious to him in the way he’d known Rebekka possessed talents most humans didn’t. He trailed a finger along the hated collar of his enslavement. When he was free of it…

“Tell me about the vision,” he said, his misgiving deepening when Araña hunched in on herself.

A slight tremble of her body and he went to her without it being a conscious decision. The delicate line of her spine drew his attention, making him fight against pressing kisses along its length.

“Tell me,” he coaxed, his lips brushing over the spider on her shoulder as his hand wedged itself between her thighs to curl possessively around her mound.

“Something’s going to happen to Rebekka.”

“What?”

Araña gave a small shrug. “I don’t know.”

Tir heard the truth in her words, but her emotions confused him. Guilt bombarded him, thick and heavy in comparison to the fear he sensed in her.

His hand left her cunt to go to her chin. Gripping it, he turned her face so it was no longer hidden by the silky black curtain of her hair. Haunted midnight eyes met his, their depths hinting at secrets but also flashing with a resolve not to share them.

They stared at each other for long moments. “What do you see when the flame takes you?” he asked.

She stiffened instantly and would have pulled away if his hands hadn’t prevented it. Silence was the only answer she gave him, and he discovered he didn’t like it—not because he feared her visions but because she stirred intensely primitive feelings in him, making him want to possess not just her body but her very soul.

He released her abruptly, rebelling against feeling those things about a mortal female—even one who had freed him. “Keep your secrets as long as they don’t involve me. But remember this, if I find they make you my enemy, not even the sweet temptation of your body will save you from death.”