With black-gloved hands, Andres reached down into the trunk and lifted out the spider. Its gold legs flashed in the sunlight as Andres lifted it high over his head. His cheeks pulled back in a grin so tight it showed the outline of his skull. A peal of laughter spilled from him, a low, monotonous sound that didn’t seem human. It made the hair stand up on Ash’s neck.
It was a really good fake, Ash had to admit. He felt a tinge of pride, seeing it in broad daylight like this. It looked real.
Still laughing, Andres turned toward his gunmen, and the spider’s emerald eyes caught the sunlight. They lit up with a vile green glow, staring directly at Ash with their ancient fire, seeming to mock him.
Ash stared back, feeling his skin turn cold. Those weren’t the green plastic gems he’d glued onto the fake spider. They were genuine emeralds.
This was the real thing. This was La Araña.
But it couldn’t be. He’d buried the spider statue with his own hands, encased it in concrete. And yet here it was, held high in triumph by Andres.
He had buried it, hadn’t he? The thought buzzed around inside his skull like an angry insect trying to get out. He knew there was no way he could have switched the spiders. He couldn’t have made a mistake like that.
If Anansi were real, Cleo had said to him that first night, I bet he’d be messing with you right now. At that moment, Ash knew with utter certainty that his father had been wrong. There was no scientific explanation. No chemical in the gold.
The curse was real.
At its height, the spider had been powerful enough to wipe out an entire civilization. And now, centuries after it had been forgotten, it was regaining its power. Manipulating the fates of everyone around it. Weaving a web that no one could escape. Bringing itself back into the hands of a madman who would restore it to its full glory, and more. Who would feed it all the souls it wanted.
The air around him crackled with invisible electricity. He could feel it. The spider had drawn him here, to this moment, and he had let it. Its gold body gleamed in the sun, shimmering like an open flame.
Andres lowered the spider, clutching it to his chest, and headed back to the Trans Am, leaving Ash stunned. Andres shooed Lazaro aside and took the still-open driver’s door in his hand to steady himself as he climbed in. He nodded over his shoulder at Ash. “Mátalo.”
Lazaro raised his gun, aiming at Ash’s chest.
Ash dove behind the Galaxie. The huge revolver went off with a crack like thunder, blasting a crater out of the ground where Ash had stood.
He crawled beneath the car, hugging the ground, as Salvador cut loose with his automatic weapon. A line of gunshots stitched through the dirt toward him, blasting plumes of dirt into the air. The unmistakable zinging sound of ricocheting bullets buzzed past his ears.
Salvador stepped out from between the buildings into the sunlight. A burst of bullets tore through him, flinging blood into the air. He dropped to the ground as the flat cracks of rifle shots crashed down the mountainside.
Cleo.
Lazaro came running around the Trans Am to the passenger side, but Andres didn’t wait for him. The car’s tires spun, spewing a cloud of dirt and rocks.
Ash rolled out from beneath the Galaxie and sprinted for the Trans Am.
Lazaro spun toward Ash and raised the gun. From her invisible perch, Cleo shot him down. Blood and dirt exploded around him. He got one shot off from his massive pistol, and Ash felt the ghost of its passage as it punched through the air near him. Then Lazaro went down.
Andres swung the Trans Am around, slewing up a curtain of dirt. The sunlight fell across his face, twisted with rage. He steered the car’s gold bird straight toward Ash and hit the gas.
Mauricio came over the back seat, his bound wrists reaching. He latched on to Andres’s arm. The car skidded out of control.
Ash dodged to the side and caught the edge of the roof pillar as the car slid past. The impact jerked his arm numb with a jolt of pain, made it feel like his fingers had been yanked off. But he pulled himself up onto the back of the moving car.
Mauricio yelled something to him, but he couldn’t make it out over the wind and the pounding of blood in his ears. An animal rage filled Ash. Feet braced on the slippery spoiler at the tail of the car, Ash climbed over the back window and into the passenger side of the open T-top. He dropped down into the tan seat.
Andres fought Mauricio for control of the wheel, sending the car swerving back and forth across the dirt road. He elbowed Mauricio off of him, then seized Ash around the neck with one crushing hand.
Ash twisted in the passenger seat until he faced backward, but he couldn’t break Andres’s grip. His eyes met Mauricio’s. Something clicked.
Mauricio brought his bound wrists over Andres’s head, knocking his sunglasses off, pulling him back against the headrest.
Andres didn’t let go of Ash’s throat. His fingers dug in, trying to crush tendons and cartilage.
Ash couldn’t breathe. Stars swam around the edges of his vision. Distantly, he was aware of the engine picking up speed. He reached down, blindly found the emergency brake, and shoved it up.
The car slid, throwing Ash against the door. Something banged hard underneath the car. Everything dropped away.
Gravity failed, leaving Ash weightless as the car went airborne. The engine raced. Blue sky surrounded them.
Andres’s face registered total shock. He loosened his grip and Ash batted his arm away, too late. Shadowed trees flew past them, then a jarring impact slammed through the car. Splintered boards flew in through the open windows. Ash caught a glimpse of a rocky tunnel swallowing them, then everything went dark.
The car careened down a steep slope. Cold air blanketed them with the smell of fetid mud and rocks. A bone-bruising crash slammed Ash down onto the floor beneath the dashboard. It went on and on, deafening him, battering him for what felt like a lifetime.
With a final jolt, they stopped dead in the impenetrable blackness.
Chapter Forty-three
Mine
Ash’s body felt like it had been broken in half. His legs were propped up on the seat, his feet jammed against the seat back. His spine was shoved up beneath the dashboard, pressing his face down close to his knees. Darkness surrounded him. The air smelled muddy and stale, with a metallic taste like blood.
The Trans Am’s engine had died on impact. In the silence he could hear the ominous grating of stone against stone. Pebbles rained down on the car from some unseen height. Cold dirt sifted across his face. Someone coughed.
“Hey,” Ash said.
“Ash?” Mauricio whispered. “Are you okay?”
Ash groaned. “I don’t know yet. Where are we?”
“Down in the old gold mine, I think.”
Ash had no idea how deep they were. “Come on, give me a hand. I’m stuck.”
“Where are you?”
“Why are you whispering?” Ash said, waving his arms helplessly in the darkness. “I’m down here.”
“There you are,” Mauricio said, grunting, but Ash didn’t feel anything. “Don’t worry. I got you.”
“Um, no you don’t.”
“Ugh,” Mauricio gasped. Something thudded next to him. “Oh, God, that must be Andres.” Mauricio’s voice shook. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”
“Calm down. Is he dead?”
“I don’t know! I think so.” A soft hand found his and gripped it. “Is that you?
“Yeah. Pull.”
Groaning, Mauricio pulled Ash out from underneath the dashboard. He clung to the seat, tilted at a steep angle, trying not to slip. His spine popped, shooting a spasm of pain up his neck. He scrambled to find footing in the blackness.
“Can you get out?” Mauricio said.
Ash felt the open edge of the T-top above him and stood up. In the distance, an irregular pinpoint of light shone down, spreading out to reveal the outlines of the car. They were nose-down at an angle, jammed into the mine shaft. The spoiler on the car’s tail
gleamed with a sliver of reflected light. Ash peered into the darkness, trying to gauge the climb out. It would be steep, but at least it wouldn’t be vertical.
Ash fumbled blindly with Mauricio’s wrists until he got them free. Somewhere in the distance, a heavy timber groaned. Too late, Ash saw something hurtling down at him from the light above. He ducked as a skull-sized chunk of rock bashed into the Trans Am, bounced, and grazed his shoulder.
Sucking in a breath at the pain, Ash reached down for Mauricio. “Come on. Let’s move!”
Mauricio climbed up into the pale beam of light, balancing in his penny loafers on the trunk of the car. A golden glow seeped up from below, reflecting on his skin. “There. Look!” Ash turned to follow his outstretched finger. The watery pool of sunlight fell on the gold spider, radiating outward in rings of warm reflected light. The spider crouched on the crumpled nose of the Trans Am, as if it had crawled out as far as it could go before plummeting into the abyss of the mine.
Ash couldn’t tear himself away from its luster. The rest of the world fell silent, and his mind filled with the familiar tug of its promises. It held the answer to all of his problems. With the spider in his hands, he would never have to run away again. From anything. He could have power. Wealth. Meaning. Everything he had ever searched for.
Careful of the broken glass, Ash climbed over the twisted frame of the windshield and out onto the rippled hood of the car. He could almost reach the spider from here.
“Ash?” Mauricio said, still standing on the car’s trunk. “What the hell? Come back!”
Mauricio could wait, Ash decided. He crouched, edging closer to the spider one small step at a time. He could have it, if he wanted it. After all of this, didn’t he deserve it?
From the far distance, Cleo’s voice called down to him. “Ash! Mauricio! Can you hear me?”
Mauricio yelled something back, but Ash wasn’t listening. He was so close. He stretched his arm out. He could practically reach it from here.
But he had to choose. Leave the spider and go back to his old life, on the run with Mauricio, taking off on Cleo again. Or embrace the spider and have a new life. One where he could have all the riches, all the power he needed. He would be invulnerable. Maybe Andres was right. Maybe he would live forever.
Mauricio and Cleo called his name. He wanted the spider so badly he could feel it trembling through him. But he had to choose. The gold spider, or them?
He squeezed his eyes shut, blotting out the burning sight of the spider and its hypnotic green eyes. He had to choose. Now.
He chose them.
He forced himself to turn away from the spider and its empty promises, and he looked up into Mauricio’s relieved face. Before he could say anything, a bloody hand rose out of the darkness of the ruined car, fingers spreading.
“Look out!” Ash called, too late.
Andres grabbed Mauricio’s ankle, pulling him down to his knees, dragging him in through the shattered back window. The wreck of the car shifted, just enough to make Ash’s stomach lurch. Somewhere above, a timber cracked and splintered. Rocks broke free from the mine wall and crashed down around them, deafening. Metal screeched and crumpled.
Ash climbed over the wreck of the Trans Am to where Mauricio struggled. He kicked down into the darkness, feeling his boot connect with Andres. Mauricio scrambled free, leaving one shoe behind in Andres’s bloody hand.
“Get out of here!” Ash gave him a push.
Mauricio started to climb, choking in the cloud of dust. Rough hands grabbed Ash’s shirt. Andres’s face rose up into the uneven beam of light, half covered in blood. “You were not chosen!” he shouted over the noise of the collapsing mine. “I was!”
“Then take it!” Ash shouted, pointing down at the gleaming spider. “It’s yours!”
Andres turned to look and Ash shoved himself free of his grip. He scrambled out of the wreckage of the car and up the steep slope toward the light. When he risked a glance down, he saw Andres on hands and knees, scuttling across the Trans Am’s hood like an insect. He grabbed the gold spider and hugged it to him.
An electric silence crackled through the foul air, and everything seemed to freeze in place. From the deeper blackness above Ash, something rose up, blotting out the light. A huge mass balanced on eight looming legs. It radiated a wintery cold that stank like an ancient tomb.
Ash gaped up at the towering spider, unwilling to believe what he was seeing. His breath caught in his throat. He pressed himself back against the rough wall of the mine, feeling the stone fracturing behind him. Enormous as the spider was, it slid past him with an unearthly grace, its legs picking their way through the shadows.
His heart hammered in his chest. Deep inside, his mind refused to process the sight before him. It was a hallucination, he told himself. Some kind of toxin-induced flashback, brought on by the crash.
But still, he couldn’t will his body to move. He couldn’t force his hand to reach out. Just a few inches was all it would take to prove it was real. One moment to stretch his fingers out and brush the thing’s telephone-pole-thick leg as it swept past him into the depths of the mine, descending onto Andres. But some ancient instinct froze him to the spot.
In the terrible silence, Andres shrieked, an inhuman sound that seemed to go on and on, making the tiny hairs on Ash’s body stand up. Then the thing was gone, vanished from existence, and the mine crumbled down around him again in a deafening roar.
“Ash!” Mauricio scrambled and slid down to reach him. “Come on, man!”
Together, they climbed through the hail of sharp rocks and choking dirt, toward the light. Above, jagged wooden planks dangled from the mine entrance.
Ash grabbed a jutting timber and hauled himself up. He hooked one arm around the rotting wood and reached down for Mauricio. He lifted his brother toward the light, groaning, feeling the muscles in his arms tremble and threaten to give up. Mauricio scrambled to get a grip, his Dockers torn, one loafer missing, black sock caked with dirt. He couldn’t reach the edge.
Ash’s arms shook. He couldn’t hold on any longer.
A shadow passed across the mouth of the mine. Cleo. She reached down and grabbed Mauricio’s arm in a sure grip, suspending him between them.
She leaned across the lip of the mine, hair blowing in the wind, still wearing her bulletproof vest. Her fierce gaze met Ash’s. She was the most welcome sight he’d ever seen.
“I got you!” In one swift movement, she hauled Mauricio up over the edge into the sunshine. A moment later she came back, holding her hand out to Ash.
He huffed and reached for the rocky edge, his fingers slipping in the dirt. The timber broke and dropped away. He swung back and forth by one hand, then surged for Cleo’s outstretched arm. She caught him and held him, grimacing, as he got his footing.
One painful inch at a time, Ash scrambled up onto level ground and then collapsed into the grass. A cloud of dirt bloomed out past him, choking the air, coating them in gray.
Mauricio and Cleo helped him up. Together they stumbled away from the mine, up the slope until they could go no further. Mauricio sagged to the ground. Ash stood hunched over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. The mine entrance slowly collapsed in on itself, vanishing under a jumble of broken timbers and boulders.
“Did you see that, down there?” Ash huffed, pointing. “The spider.”
Mauricio shook his head. “Too dark. But it must still be down there. On the hood of the car.” He folded his arms tightly across his chest.
“You mean the gold spider, but that’s not what . . .” Ash shook his head. He looked over at Cleo, who stood staring into the sky, one hand shading her eyes from the sun. Tears streamed down her face.
“Cleo?” He put his arm around her shoulders.
Blinking, she pointed up.
Above them, the dark red V-shape of a hawk spiraled in the sky. Ash hadn’t seen one of those since he was nineteen.
“We got him,” Cleo breathed, choking back a so
b. “We got Andres.”
“I know,” he whispered back. “You promised we would.”
She sagged against him. Ash held her tight, thinking back through the years to the night of the fire. To everything and everyone they had lost that night. And to what they still had left.
Mauricio, covered in dirt but alive, came over to stand with them, and Ash patted him on the back. Together, they watched the hawk circle away into the clear blue sky.
Chapter Forty-four
Forged
Ash drove the Torino at a sensible speed, trying not to think about the last time he’d been behind this wheel. He focused instead on how Prez was going to react when he saw it again. Hopefully, there would be no bodily harm involved.
He rolled through the junkyard at a walking pace, past rows of gutted cars and trucks, some of them missing windshields, doors, even entire front ends. He left the last row and drove into the back lot behind the building, where Cleo and Mauricio sat in the Galaxie with the windows rolled down. Moolah stuck his head out of the open window, tongue hanging. The only other vehicle there was DMT’s Porsche.
Ash pulled up in front of the Porsche and let the engine idle, liking the low rumble of it. He reached up and adjusted the brand-new chrome rearview mirror.
Prez slowly got out of the Porsche, eyes big. He was obviously trying to play it cool, but he looked like he was seeing a ghost.
Ash shut off the engine and got out, liking the smell of fresh paint. He tossed the keys into the air and caught them again.
Prez pointed at the Torino. “Ash, what . . .”
Ash waited for him to finish, but Prez just stared. Ash followed his gaze. The Torino did look good in the sunlight, shiny and new, like it had just rolled off the assembly line.
DMT got out of the Porsche and folded his arms, smiling widely.
Ash grinned at the encouragement. He held up his empty hand. “Now, I know it’s not the same. It’s not a hundred percent original anymore, and that pretty much cans it as far as historical value goes. Right? But look at the bright side.” He held out the keys. “Now you can drive it.”
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