Spider-Touched (29 page)

Just like seeing the Were enter the brothel, it was pure luck Raoul had caught the faint trace of a werelion’s scent on Farold’s driver, Gulzar, and with a few questions, a touch of feigned admiration, the tattooed criminal had bragged about trapping two brothers not far from Oakland and turning them into monsters to run the maze.

That one of the created weremen ultimately escaped while the other remained . . . Raoul could easily guess the reason Levi had ambushed the trapper’s truck. And that reason, coupled with the guardsmen’s failure, had formed the seed of an idea that would ultimately lead to him returning to his father’s compound and mate a wealthy man.

Learning the healer was missing only added greater strength to Raoul’s plan, though now he modified it, using her as well as what he thought he knew of Levi’s motives to bait the trap.

“If she’s in the possession of the maze owner, I might be able to help free her,” Raoul said.

“How?”

Raoul glanced around the room, only partially pretending a wariness of being overheard. But when Levi didn’t suggest they go somewhere to talk privately as he’d hoped, he forged ahead.

“A year ago my brother traveled here by the same route I was taking when you came across me,” Raoul lied, laying the groundwork. “I think he ended up in the maze. From what I’ve been able to learn, he might still be alive. I’ve heard the maze owner is hunting an escaped prisoner whose arms are tattooed with the names of those he’s killed.”

Levi abruptly stood. “Follow me.”

Raoul hid his smile as he followed the lion out of the bar and into a small office space. As soon as the door closed, Levi asked, “Anton wants the prisoner who was bound to the chair?”

“Yes.” Raoul shivered for effect before embellishing with lies. “I was there when he was brought to the trapper’s compound. The settlement where he was finally captured was afraid to execute him. They thought he was most likely demon-possessed.

“I heard one of them say they’d used the warded collar around his neck to hold the demon inside the prisoner, but they were afraid it would be freed once he was killed. That’s why they offered him to the trapper and paid for him to be transported to Oakland. They’d heard the maze owner has an enslaved demon who hunts. They thought like would kill like.”

Raoul licked his lips, his eyes meeting Levi’s then skittering away for effect. “I heard what you said in the truck. You thought the prisoner was dangerous and should be left with keys to free himself and go his own way. He smelled human enough to me. But it could be because of the collar. When your companion, the one bearing a church’s brand, insisted on freeing him, I thought the churchmen and the settlement police who gave him to the trapper must be right about him being demon-possessed. Then when I heard the maze owner was searching for him and also for the woman—”

“Anton is searching for the woman?”

Raoul retrieved the paper he’d first seen when he went to the maze. He passed it to Levi, reliving his surprise at recognizing her and seeing she was worth money to the maze owner.

As the lion unfolded and studied the reward offer, Raoul sought to close the trap he’d carefully constructed. “If I didn’t think my brother was alive, I’d leave Oakland and never look back. But if there’s a possibility I could free him by exchanging the woman or the escaped prisoner . . . They’re human. And except for the healer, I’ve never met one whose life is more important than a Were’s.”

Levi glanced up from the paper. Molten gold eyes seethed with turmoil. “Anton and Farold can’t be trusted.”

Which was not the same as warning Raoul to stay away from the human with the brand. Raoul only barely contained his jubilation. “I have to take a chance on being able to keep them from double-crossing me. I’d never forgive myself if there was a possibility of freeing my brother and I didn’t take it. I’ll try to include the healer in the trade even if I’m only successful in recapturing the prisoner and not his branded companion. I owe the healer that much.”

Levi crumpled the paper in his hand, balling it in his fist. “I need to get back to work. You won’t catch the prisoner by yourself, and if you involve the maze owner, you’ll end up in a cage. There’s a bar in this section of the red zone. It’s got a skinned human nailed to the front of it. Ask around and you’ll find it. Meet me there an hour before sunset tomorrow.”

Raoul hid his smile and managed to keep it from his voice. “I’ll be there.”

Sixteen

ARAÑA stood at the window and witnessed the dawn slowly pushing aside the darkness and weakening the predator’s claim to the outside world. The night had seemed interminable, a heavy shroud imprisoning and suffocating her, trapping her in fear and worry and guilt.

Tir should have been back by now. But she couldn’t wait or go in search of him or even leave a message, for fear of leaving a trail.

The bread and cheese they’d set aside for breakfast remained untouched, her stomach too tense, her nerves strung too tight to eat. The vision image of Levi’s death assaulted her. Failure and guilt tried to crush her.

Araña turned away from them. She knew what she had to do, and she would do it.

Finding the house belonging to the Wainwright witches was easy. The first person she approached for directions provided them.

The house was in the center of the area set aside for the gifted. Dark stones surrounded dozens of tiny windows. Dew caught on elaborate glyphs carved into door and window frames.

A short, wrought iron fence marked a boundary and warned with more sigils that the area was protected by magic. Underneath it ran a ley line.

The ground hummed with it and power licked through the soles of Araña’s shoes like a blue-white flame sending nervous energy through her. It danced along her senses with a hint of fire, but not enough of it for her to imagine she’d ever dare to summon it.

She touched damp palms to the knife hilts before opening the wrought iron gate and walking to the front door. A thick brass gargoyle with a ring held in its mouth served as a door knocker.

With a thought, she felt the spider hovering over the pulse beating rapidly at the base of her throat. Araña grasped the gargoyle-held ring and used it.

The door opened immediately, as if the woman standing behind it waited only to see if Araña’s courage would fail at the last instant. “I’m Annalise,” she said, though the gray streak in otherwise black hair had already identified her as the Wainwright witch who’d met with Rebekka.

“I’m—”

“Araña.” The witch’s eyes flicked to the spider. “Come inside. I’ll show you to the parlor.”

There was no true choice. Araña stepped across the threshold, expecting to feel the same pulling at her soul she’d experienced when she crossed the wards protecting the occult shop. Instead she felt a parting, like stepping through a curtain of finely spun silk.

Annalise closed the door, her eyes going to the spider again before saying, “This way.”

Araña followed her down a hallway etched with sigils and whose walls were lined with prewar artwork, paintings of naked men and women dancing. Worshipping a goddess who was of the earth. Coupling in rites of fertility that predated any church.

The witch stopped in an open doorway, motioning for Araña to go inside. Araña took a single step and saw the old witch from the bus stop, the one who’d sent Erik and Matthew to their deaths.

Rage engulfed her, flash-fire fast and equally hot.

The knives slid from their sheaths without her making a conscious choice to draw them, but once they were in her hands only a single desire dominated.

Vengeance.

Araña moved forward, uncaring, unthinking about what protections the witch might have in place.

Blind fury drove her—

Into pain so intense it dropped her to the ground.

She screamed silently, writhed in an agony that had no physical expression because she could no longer move any part of her body.

Scream after scream pierced her brain, overlaying onto imagines from the past—the men who’d died from the spider’s touch, though they’d been allowed to thrash and flail before succumbing to its poison.

Her vision blurred, narrowing until there was a sole point of focus. The witch hovered above her, curdled-milk eyes staring at her as they’d done at the bus stop,
seeing
her despite the blinding cataracts.

The matriarch murmured something, the language unknown to Araña, and the pain ceased, though the paralysis remained. “Foolish, foolish child to attack me. You remain in this world only because of debts I owe to those who would see you trained in the use of your gift.”

Bony fingers delved into a pocket and withdrew, holding a clear, ordinary-looking crystal. The witch dropped it onto Araña’s chest, and the spider scurried away from it just as it had done in the presence of the demon Abijah.

“The deaths you thought to avenge served a greater purpose. And the men you think you honor with your mindless violence were rewarded for their sacrifice. If your courage matches your fury, you can determine the truth of their fate for yourself before you seek me out again. Go see the shamaness Aisling. Offer the fetish to her. Tell her that her father wills her to use it in order to escort you into the ghostlands. Tell her she will gain a favor from him for doing it.”

A curse followed, or perhaps it was meant as a reminder of a lesson learned. The witch spoke and the pain returned, blocking out all reality and becoming Araña’s existence until it fell away abruptly, leaving her gasping, shaking—at last able to move again.

She rolled to her side, her body curling involuntarily into a fetal position and remaining that way until pride forced her knees away from her chest and gave her the strength to rise to her feet. She took a perverse pleasure in finding the knives still in her hands, and didn’t sheathe them until she looked around the room and found it empty, the Wainwright matriarch gone.

Movement behind her had Araña turning. Annalise stood at the doorway, expression disapproving. “I’ll see you out now.”

Araña took a step. Something at her feet glittered, and she looked down to find the crystal on the floor where it had fallen.

Longing held Araña motionless, the desire to see Matthew and Erik overriding her hatred of the witch and her fear of her gift. Pride urged her to turn away from the crystal and all it represented. But the memory of the vision that had brought her to the witch’s door at daybreak held her in place.

Before she could change her mind, Araña bent down and scooped up the crystal fetish then followed Annalise to the door. The witch opened it, her face no longer revealing her thoughts, her voice emotionless as she warned, “Inside the circle, those you care for in the ghostlands can touch you without fear. Beyond it neither you nor they are safe.”

TIR savored every moment as the night gave up its claim to land and sea and sky in a slow tide of diffuse, cloud-blocked sunlight. Freedom. It sang in his ears with each lap of water against the boat, with each seagull cry. It caressed his bared torso with a chilled, misty breeze that made him want to open his arms and embrace it.

For centuries he’d been trapped in dark catacombs or window-less cells, chained and enslaved, his only glimpse of the dawn what he held in his memories. Never again, he vowed. Never again would he wear shackles around his wrists and ankles and be helpless against humans.

He looked around at the wreck-strewn harbor and felt deeply satisfied at having fulfilled his promise to Araña and recovered her boat. Anticipation formed, swelling his cock as he pictured her expression when he got back to her and told her of his success.

Only the presence of the watching cormorants kept him from taking himself in hand and imagining the tight fist of his fingers was Araña’s mouth offering thanks, her cunt offering welcome. The doorway into the cabin offered further temptation, the erotic image of lying on the bed that had been hers and bringing himself to completion, leaving his scent in a primitive marking of territory.

He took a step forward, nearly giving in to the urge before he regained his self-control. Dangerous. She was so very dangerous to him. Time and time again she consumed his thoughts and made him burn—not for absolute freedom, but for her.

Tir turned away from the doorway. He closed his mind to the demands of the flesh, redirecting his energy instead to pulling up the anchor.

Two of the cormorants left their stations on what remained of a sunken container ship. But rather than joining him on the boat, they dove into the water after fish.

Birds and not skin-walkers, Tir thought, glancing at the remaining cormorants, though he didn’t try to determine which of them were men mimicking their totem guardian.

The low purr of a powerful motor turned Tir’s attention toward the shore. He started the engine, unwilling to leave the boat where it wasn’t easily accessible.

A sleek craft appeared moments later, emerging from a narrow space created by jagged pieces of metal rising out of the water like sunken mountain peaks. Rimmon was piloting the speedboat, his bodyguards near him, one holding a machine gun, the other a launcher of some kind.