Spider-Touched

Nine

REBEKKA lifted Eston into her arms. Her heart ached over what she was about to do, but there was no choice. “This is for the best,” she said, managing the lie though Levi would smell it on her.

“I’m going with you to the Mission.”

“I’ll be fine. I can do this by myself.” Her already tense stomach grew more so at the thought of Levi leaving the red zone.

According to law he had the same rights as anyone else when he was in human form, but Oakland was a city controlled by pure humans, many of whom only barely tolerated the gifted, and it wasn’t uncommon for guardsmen and police to carry amulets that changed color in the presence of Weres.

The red zone was the safest place for shapeshifters who didn’t live among their own kind. In the red zone Weres could defend themselves without fear of trumped-up charges or indiscriminate slaughter by the authorities.

Rebekka imagined it was because the red zone was much like the towns of the Wild West she’d read about in a history book once. A certain amount of lawlessness existed and violence was common. Only instead of a sheriff keeping some semblance of order, it was fear of the vice lords that kept those who lived in and frequented the red zone in line.

“I should leave now,” she said, already fighting tears as she imagined surrendering the child she’d cared for less than a day.

“I’m going with you,” Levi repeated, his tone telling her it was pointless to argue.

Rebekka nodded, accepting the inevitable, and the gesture caused her cheek to brush against the soft texture of the toddler’s hair.

A fist tightened around her heart. It’s the only way, she thought, steeling herself for what she was about to do—but also promising herself she wouldn’t forget Eston.

His father deserved death. Rebekka felt no remorse in playing a part in ambushing the trapper and freeing those meant for the maze. But in doing it, they’d made an orphan of Eston unless he was reunited with his mother. And that did weigh on her conscience.

Prostitutes rarely carried their children to term. And those who did—

Rebekka knew she’d been lucky in so many ways. To be born at all had been the first stroke of it. And it had been followed by so many more, including being gifted.

Her mother hadn’t abandoned her on the street or in the forest, leaving it up to fate whether she survived or not. She hadn’t ended up in the Mission or been sold.

Even in the red zone, those who trafficked in children didn’t operate openly. But it was common knowledge, especially in the brothels, that unwanted pregnancies could be turned into profit in any number of ways.

There were men whose sexual fetishes involved pregnant women. And after the baby was born, there were brokers whose clients ranged from humans with sexual perversions and dark mages looking for sacrificial victims, to supernatural beings with an appetite for human children.

Rebekka’s arms tightened involuntarily on Eston. He’d be safe at the Mission.

Davida was one of the Church’s faithful. She didn’t like the gifted or the supernatural, but she treated the children in her care well.

They left Levi’s safe place in the red zone, staying well away from where most of the activity was centered and crossing the border where forest crowded a section being reclaimed by the non-gifted. The bus stop was blocks farther, and clustered with waiting people.

When the bus arrived, Rebekka paid her fare and Levi’s before claiming a window seat. He sat next to her, tense at being trapped in a confined space, though only she could tell it.

Levi tilted his head forward and feigned sleep, as if he were an ordinary human bracing for a long, tedious ride filled with a seemingly endless number of stops until he reached his destination. Rebekka looked out the window, trusting Levi’s sense of smell and his instincts to warn of danger.

The bus grew more and more crowded as they made their way toward the heart of Oakland. Eston trembled and clutched at her arms, making her wonder if this was his first trip to a city. She murmured soothingly and wished his vocabulary and ability to speak were more advanced; then maybe she could understand more of what he said than just his first name and his cries for his mother.

Rebekka told herself she should take advantage of the long bus trip by taking a nap, but her mind was too busy and her heart too heavy. She leaned her head against the glass and watched the scenery change.

The bus route skirted the area where the wealthy and powerful lived. She wondered what it would be like to live among those who didn’t worry about food or shelter or even the law.

She envied their freedom and security despite the damage she’d seen them do when they played in the red zone. Downtown came into view a little while later and, with it, an increase in the number of guardsmen and policemen patrolling the area.

Rebekka tensed out of habit but didn’t turn away from the window. Where there were citizen witnesses, it was always safer, and she often visited the library, though the building next to it housed the headquarters for both police and guardsmen.

As they approached the library, a flag fluttering on the antenna of a sleek black sedan with darkly tinted windows caught her attention. The flag had a gold background with a red lion rampant in its center as part of an elaborate shield design—a heraldic crest. All of the founding families of Oakland had them, and many of the wealthy had followed suit by claiming ancestral emblems or designing new ones for themselves.

A man leaned casually against the car, eating a pastry, his pose all she needed in order to identify him as one of the entitled and not the sedan’s chauffeur. Eston’s face joined hers at the window and he made a chortling, happy sound.

She smiled. His interest in his surroundings gladdened her heart even as it added to the heavy burden of guilt and worry she felt about abandoning him at the Mission.

They drew abreast of the sleek sedan. The man looked up, and for an instant Rebekka could have sworn she saw surprised recognition on his face. But when their eyes met and held, no memory stirred, and then he looked away, his attention shifting to something else.

The bus lumbered on, almost empty of riders now. It skirted more areas claimed by the wealthy before those gave way to increasing poverty as they drew closer to the Barrens.

Houses huddled together in clusters like tiny outposts of reclaimed civilization. These places belonged to whoever was willing not only to restore them, but to defend them against bands of outlaws and the twisted dregs of society who called the Barrens home.

“Let’s get out here,” Levi said, breaking his trip-long silence as he reached up and pulled the cord that signaled the bus driver to stop.

Rebekka didn’t protest the added walking distance. The bus would turn around at the next stop anyway, before reaching the Mission.

A moment later she stood and followed Levi off the bus. There were no children playing outside under the watchful eyes of women working in gardens or hanging laundry on lines. The yards surrounding the houses they passed were empty, though she could feel people watching from behind barred and cloaked windows.

Levi headed toward the waterfront, where they’d be less noticeable from the street. There they found suspicious-eyed men fishing from rocky banks and half-starved mongrels scuttling around, hoping to snag an unguarded catch.

Rebekka’s arms were weary from bearing Eston’s weight, but she didn’t want to ask Levi to carry the child. If there was trouble, he’d need his hands free to protect them.

That was the curse of her gift. It made her helpless. For a healer to injure another, to kill another…

She shuddered. Even to save her own life she wasn’t sure she could do it, for fear of destroying her ability to heal, tainting it so it became something dark and evil.

They were halfway to the final stop on the bus route when she heard the rumble of its engine. “Wait,” Levi said, lightly touching her arm before they broke away from the cover provided by what remained of an old gas station.

The bus came into sight, empty save for the driver. A heartbeat later, a camouflage-painted jeep with a single guardsman slid into view, trailing behind the bus, its uniformed driver scanning the area on either side of the street.

Rebekka’s mouth went dry. It had to be coincidence, she told herself, the presence of the guardsman unnerving her.

“Did you recognize him?” Levi asked, quickening her pulse with the question.

“No. What about you?”

He answered with a slight shake of his head then stepped out from behind the shelter of the collapsed building. They moved quickly, minimizing their exposure from the street.

Rebekka felt hyperaware of her surroundings, on edge. She attributed it to Levi, told herself she was picking up on Were edginess.

There was no reason for them to be the focus of a hunt—not by guardsmen anyway.

Unless the guardsmen also served Anton Barlowe.

Rebekka’s stomach knotted as the last stop on the bus route came into view and she saw the guardsman waiting there. He was on foot, a rifle held casually at his side as he talked into a handheld radio.

This one she recognized. Jurgen. He was a frequent and brutal visitor to the brothel, a man who left those he visited in need of a healer.

Movement drew her attention to a cluster of houses beyond the bus stop. Another guardsman emerged, his pistol drawn. She recognized him as well. Cabot.

“This is no coincidence,” Levi murmured as a silver car slid into view from a side street leading to the waterfront.

The sight of it chilled Rebekka to the core. She’d seen it often enough in the red zone, with Farold or Gulzar driving it.

Levi tensed when Gulzar became visible behind the steering wheel. Rebekka didn’t need to use her gift to feel Levi’s rage and hatred and desire to kill the man who’d tortured him into something neither lion nor man.

“How could they know we were coming here?” Rebekka asked, guessing at the answer even as the words left her mouth.

“The man who escaped the ambush must have hidden and overheard us talking,” Levi said, making the same guess.

Rebekka’s heart thumped violently in her chest. Gulzar or the guardsmen would have already talked to the bus driver and learned a man, woman, and toddler had gotten off at the previous stop.

“Where do we go?” The prospect of entering the Barrens without guns and overnight supplies terrified her.

Levi turned to her. “We split up and head toward one of the other bus routes, or get downtown and catch the bus there. If we’d been recognized they would have gone to the brothel looking for us and we’d have heard about it. Give me the child.”

Rebekka’s arms tightened around Eston at the steel in Levi’s tone. Eyes that usually reminded her of molten gold were ice cold, frozen in ruthlessness.

She didn’t need to ask what he intended. She knew.

Survival came at a cost. Always. And Levi wouldn’t risk theirs for the sake of a human child.

He wouldn’t hurt Eston, not physically, but he intended to leave the toddler somewhere and trust to fate that someone would find him and take him the remaining distance to the Mission.

“No,” Rebekka whispered. “I’ll take him ahead.”

“And walk right into a trap?”

“I’ll find someone I can trust when I get closer. I—”

“No. You’re too valuable,” Levi said, his fingers curling around Eston’s sides, forming a wedge between the child’s body and hers.

She pulled back automatically, and Eston began crying, frightened by the argument and Levi’s attempt to wrest him away from Rebekka.

Rebekka stifled the noise quickly by pressing the toddler’s face to her neck, and he quieted as though recognizing and responding to the threat of danger. But it was too late. The sound of his cries had already carried, alerting the guardsmen to their presence.

“Go!” she told Levi, turning her back so he couldn’t make another attempt to take Eston from her.

She heard the soft slide of a blade leaving its sheath. Terror for Levi coiled and knotted in her stomach; fear that he’d go after Gulzar melded to what she held for herself. If she was taken and questioned—

Rebekka blocked it from her mind and began running. Levi was smart. The desire for revenge wouldn’t overcome his survival instinct. He would kill the guardsmen and Gulzar if he had a chance, but primarily he would try to lead them away from the route she would take.

A shout went up behind her. A gun fired.

It was followed by more shots and the squeal of tires. But rather than coming toward her, the silver car headed in the direction of the Mission and the Barrens.

Rebekka’s breath labored and her chest burned from running even a short distance with Eston. Some of the fishermen looked up as she hurried past them, their eyes and postures telling her to keep going, they would offer no aid.

She stumbled and nearly fell, the jerky movements making Eston cry again. Her heart skipped a beat when she saw the jeep that had been trailing the bus. “Hush, please hush,” she pleaded, crouching in the nearest shadow, rocking, trying to muffle his sobs.

The jeep sped by, its engine noise masking the sound of Eston crying. For a split second Rebekka thought all of the men had gone after Levi. But then a bullet ricocheted off the ground near her and a male voice shouted, “Stay where you are.”

Jurgen.

Rebekka froze—but only for an instant. Being taken alive was worse than dying.

She scrambled toward the corner of a burned-out building.

Brick chipped as a bullet struck. Fragments hit her face, making it sting and bleed. She bolted, desperately looking for someplace to hide with each step. The prospect of being flushed out into the open like game and easily picked off with a rifle made her bite her tongue to keep from whimpering.

The rubble and debris along the waterfront became too difficult to maneuver around with Eston in her arms. She turned, and within a block the street loomed ahead, an asphalt-coated killing ground.

A sob caught in her throat at the thought of crossing it. But the thought of being raped by the guardsmen or sold to be raped by criminals running the maze kept her moving.

She should have let Levi take Eston. Abandoning him near the Mission was no crueler fate than what might happen to him with her.

Rebekka paused next to the burned husk of a military tank that had been used hundreds of years before her birth to reclaim the city from anarchy. She strained to hear something beyond Eston’s whimpers and the sounds of her own harsh breathing, something that would tell her it was safe to emerge from hiding. She found no reassurance.

Every second she delayed added to her peril. And yet she had to steel herself to edge forward and peek around the black and rusted metal of the tank.

Hope rose in her when she saw no guardsmen. Up ahead there was a curve in the road. In her mind’s eye she pictured what lay beyond it, the true beginnings of Oakland. There were shops there, places it wouldn’t be easy for a guardsman to take a woman and child away without witnesses.

She doubted the guardsmen hunting with Gulzar wanted what they were doing known. Not all those in authority were corrupt—Rebekka knew that, though only dire circumstances like the one she was in would make her risk her life on it.

“Just a little bit farther,” she whispered, more for her benefit than Eston’s.

She rubbed her cheek against the soft down of his hair as she gathered her courage to leave the shelter of the tank. Another peek and she ran, angling for the corner and the promise of safety it represented.

She’d almost reached it when the jeep came into view, racing from the direction she’d come from and carrying two guardsmen, Jurgen and the one she didn’t know.

Jurgen stood, taking aim with his rifle, and she pushed herself harder, drawing on the last of her strength to get around the corner. Her terror spiked when she saw a car approaching.

Before she could reach an opening between houses and dart through it, the black sedan cut her off. The man she’d noticed as the bus passed the library emerged and opened the back door, forcing her into the car. He followed her, slamming the door shut behind him.

It happened so quickly she had no chance to offer any resistance. And then he was urging her to stay quiet, and the instinct for self-preservation made Rebekka comply as the jeep carrying the guardsmen stopped next to the sedan.

A partition shielded the backseat from the front but didn’t filter out sound. Boots crunched as one of the guardsmen got out and approached. An electric window in front slid down. The man driving, a chauffeur or bodyguard maybe, said, “Are you chasing a woman carrying a child?”

Rebekka closed her eyes, willing Eston to remain silent. She fought to slow her breathing and could barely hear over the thundering race of her heart.

“You saw them?” Jurgen asked, wariness in his voice, or suspicion.

“Nearly hit them,” the driver said. “If I’d been going any faster I wouldn’t have been able to swerve out of the way in time.”

Jurgen didn’t say anything immediately. Rebekka could almost sense him struggling for a legitimate reason to search the car. Finally he said, “Which way did she go?”

“I don’t know. By the time I looked again, she was gone. What’d she do? From what I saw, I wouldn’t have thought she was someone the guard would be interested in.”

“She’s wanted for questioning. Her companion just killed a guardsman without any provocation.”

Fear for Levi flashed through Rebekka, overwhelming the fury she felt at Jurgen’s claim the attack hadn’t been provoked. She silently urged the driver to ask if the killer was alive and in custody. But Jurgen stepped away from the sedan, and the sound of his heavy footsteps marked his return to the jeep.

The window in the front seat hummed as it closed, the sedan already in motion. It wheeled around to head in the direction of the city, and the pressure in Rebekka’s chest eased though the worry for Levi remained.

She turned toward the man who’d probably saved her life. But before she could speak, Eston chortled and opened his arms, leaning away from her in order to go to the stranger.

“Mas,” he said. “Mas.”

Rebekka reacted without thinking. Her hand snaked over to the door handle but just as quickly the stranger grabbed her arm. “You’ll hurt yourself,” he said, ordering the driver to secure the car.

Locks snicked into place. The man released her and Rebekka pulled away, pressing her back to the door. “What do you want?”

“The prisoner you and your friend freed when you ambushed the trapper’s truck.”

A small shock of amazement went through Rebekka, that Araña had managed what seemed impossible. But on its heels came fear as Eston wriggled and struggled to get to the man who was no stranger to him—the man who must have escaped into the woods before Levi could stop him.

“I don’t know where the prisoner is,” Rebekka said, reluctantly giving up her hold on the toddler rather than continuing to restrain him. “Who are you?”

Her rescuer grunted as Eston clambered onto him, but his hands were gentle as he repositioned the child.

“Who are you?” she repeated.

Indecision played over his face. It lasted only a split second before he shook it off. “Tomás Iberá.”

Her heart stuttered, the blood it pumped turning to ice. Iberá. She recognized the name.

His family was old, one of those who’d “founded” Oakland—reclaiming it from the chaos of lawlessness after The Last War and the subsequent emergence of the supernaturals. Enzo Iberá was a general in the guard and said to be one of those in contention for taking it over after its last leader was killed by werewolves and feral dogs in the red zone.

Tomás tapped on the partition separating front seat from backseat. “Home,” he said to the driver.

Rebekka forced thoughts through a mind nearly frozen by fear. She tried to make sense of what Tomás had said—and hadn’t said.

His only interest seemed to be the prisoner. And yet he hadn’t turned her over to the guardsmen—though perhaps the reason for that was simple. He might not have recognized them as men who did business with the maze.

She wracked her brain for what she knew of the Iberás, and came up blank. If those in his family frequented the red zone, they didn’t visit the shapeshifter brothels.

“What’s so important about the convict?” Rebekka asked.

Tomás turned toward the front without answering, leaving her imagination to run riot with images of what would happen when they reached their destination.