by Jory Strong
She returned to the shackled stranger, who waited stoically, his gaze rarely leaving her.
“We’ve got to leave now,” Levi said.
“Go. I’ll catch up later.” The words held a confidence Araña refused to waver from, though her nerves were strung tight and her heart raced. She knelt and tried to steady her hand for the work of picking locks. She wasn’t adept at it, not like Matthew and Erik, but given enough time—
Levi hesitated a second, then stepped to the trapper’s body. He removed the knife and sheath strapped to the dead man’s thigh and dropped them on the ground next to the claimed knapsack.
“You know where to find us,” he said, hefting the still unconscious werecougar over his shoulders and leaving with Rebekka and the toddler.
The werewolf looked back before following the others into the forest. Araña’s gaze flicked upward to meet the prisoner’s and then she went to work on the locks.
In a thousand dreams of freedom, Tir had never imagined a human would risk her life for him, and yet there was no mistaking that the woman kneeling at his feet was mortal, despite the mark that had appeared at her wrist when she stood in front of his cage and refused to yield the keys.
His hands clenched and unclenched as he fought not only to remain still but to resist the urge to spear his fingers through her hair. He’d convinced himself she was a sliver of recovered memory—a woman he’d lain with when he knew who and what he was; or a fantasy conjured up to accompany the dream of freedom, but neither had done her beauty justice.
She was exquisite, her skin the dusky brown of earth, her hair and eyes the color of night sky. “I am Tir,” he said, giving her the name he hadn’t heard spoken in centuries and had never willingly shared with any of his captors.
“I’m Araña.”
Araña, the Spanish word for spider. He glanced at the mark on her wrist again and wondered if she had a witch’s training, or carried a witch’s spell.
There was the barest trembling of her hands as she tried to coax the lock open. He could sense her fear. It washed over him in waves despite her outward calm.
The tiny click of the lock yielding to her coaxing sent emotion surging through him, a fevered song pouring hope and anticipation into his blood as the first shackle fell away. The second followed quickly, and then she rose to her knees, her fingers going to the band at one wrist, the heat of her and the proximity of her mouth to his cock searing him, burning a fantasy into his mind even as the wrist restraints fell away and she turned her attention to the steel belt with its dangling chains.
When the last of the restraints put on him by humans dropped to the ground, Tir reached for her as she stood. She stumbled backward, evading him, her fear spiking. “Don’t. It’s not safe to touch me.”
A small sound of anxiety followed as the tone of the chopper blades changed, indicating the pilot’s success in landing it a short distance away. She pointed to the sheathed weapons and knapsack on the ground and said, “You can have them,” before whirling away, heading in a different direction than the one taken by her companions.
Tir grabbed the items up and followed her, his muscles rejoicing in the movement. He didn’t fear recapture, not in that moment. There was no room for it in the heady reality of freedom—the sweet scent of forest and the play of sunlight in shadow, the smooth rhythm of movement denied him for centuries.
He wanted to laugh. To sing. To raise his arms toward the heavens in embrace.
Behind them he could hear shouts as the dead dragon lizard and the trapper’s corpse were discovered. A machine gun rattled, a nervous burst slicing through leaves and silenced by a shout from a superior officer.
He smiled, a savage baring of teeth. Let them come after him. Let them try to take him. They’d be the first to feel his vengeance.
From time to time he caught a glimpse of the city. They were moving away from it and he wondered if Araña had a destination in mind.
He didn’t ask. He didn’t care. If he’d ever walked freely among men, it was locked away, the memory of it blocked by the collar.
Eventually he would go to Oakland and begin his search for the texts that would help him translate the tattoos on his arms. But for the moment he savored the freedom.
He easily paced Araña, found his attention returning to her repeatedly, caressing her lines, appreciating the sleek feminine form, the confidence in her stride.
His eyebrows drew together as the scent of blood reached him. His gaze was drawn to the black material of her shirt and the darkening spot on her side.
She was injured. The knowledge of it sent emotion roaring through him—not unfamiliar in the violent resolve it contained, but unfamiliar in its cause. The thought of someone touching her, hurting her…
Tir’s fingers curled into fists, tightening on the sheathed knife and machete. He told himself the savage anger rose from the debt he felt toward her for freeing him, from the belief she would be of further use to him in navigating a human world he had no experience with.
He told himself the fierce possessiveness came from the lust she generated in him, a heat unlike any he could remember. Thoughts and images from the previous night flitted through his mind.
Suspicion flared as he remembered his revulsion when the trapper’s wife was ordered into his cage to breed with him, her face overlaid onto a hundred other faces—women who’d failed to tempt him into breaking his vow never to lie with a mortal. And now, when he should care about nothing but savoring the freedom he’d gained, he burned for a human whose life was nothing against the span of his.
He didn’t think he would be able to stop himself from taking her. He wanted to cover her body with his and know the sweet heaven of finding her opening and thrusting into her slick, heated core.
He wanted her kneeling in front of him, as she’d done when she removed the last of the shackles, and taking his cock into her mouth. The fantasy was so visceral it sent a jolt of icy-hot pain through his shaft.
Tir slowed, allowing her to pull ahead of him and move out of sight. His lips pulled back in a silent rage. Was she a witch? Was that how she’d shown herself in his dreams and sent lava-hot lust boiling through his veins?
Was this the work of some dark deity? Or some elaborate human ploy, his freedom an illusion to trick him into surrendering what he’d never surrendered before, his seed? Already he’d given her his name.
Tir slowed further, stopping at the edge of a clearing. There were no sounds of pursuit, and with the fading of Araña’s footsteps, he was left surrounded by the rustle of leaves and grass, the scolding of a jay and the chirp of a squirrel.
He became aware of the knapsack he carried and the weight of the weapons in his hands. He didn’t need them to survive, but they gave him an unanticipated advantage as he prepared to enter a world that was unfamiliar to him in so many ways.
Without meaning to, his gaze traveled to where Araña had disappeared. Instinct told him to follow her. His cock urged it.
The sheer force of his desire to go after her served as a warning of how dangerous she was to him. It made him turn away and take another path. But each step grew harder than the last the farther he got from her.
A tightness gathered in his chest, silken strands of unnatural worry weaving, encasing his heart until finally he stopped and turned back—unsure he could find her given the time that had passed.
Six
EXHAUSTION had finally pulled the child into the deep oblivion of heavy sleep. His face was pressed to Rebekka’s neck, but she didn’t stop stroking the small back, the gesture as soothing to her as it was to him. It had taken a while to gain his trust, then longer to understand his baby talk and to learn his name. Eston.
Where is his mother?she wondered, though she held no illusions when it came to men—or women. It was possible the toddler’s mother was as evil as the trapper had been.
There were plenty of humans who wouldn’t protest capturing and selling Weres to run in the maze. An uncomfortable n
umber of them would applaud it.
Weres had rights—but only when they were in their human form. And even then, who would enforce them? Not the police or guardsmen. Not in Oakland anyway.
Was it any wonder the Weres, whose ability to shift form gave them an advantage when it came to survival, chose to live away from places where humans ruled? She didn’t blame them, though it meant the Weres who lived in the human world were the outcasts who’d fled to escape punishment or chosen to leave because staying meant death.
Eston whimpered in his sleep, his arms tightening around Rebekka’s neck and sending a twinge of longing through her heart. She wanted a child of her own, but she also wanted a husband, and she saw little chance of gaining one.
What few men she encountered regularly were those who visited the brothels. She’d never accept one of them. And the Weres, like Levi…
Marrying one of them was to be forever trapped between worlds, just as they were. It meant hardship, not just for her as a human, but for any children who might come.
That left only the gifted as potential mates and she knew so few of them. Beyond that, her talent wasn’t one to help overcome the stigma of being the daughter of a prostitute and growing up in a brothel, even if she’d never lain with a man for money.
Rebekka sighed, a soft sound of sad acceptance as her fingers combed through Eston’s silky locks of hair.
Next to her Levi asked, “What are you going to do with him?”
His voice was carefully neutral, as if he could guess the nature of her thoughts and didn’t want to tread on the land mine her heart had become or be the one to point out the harsh reality of the world they lived in. There was only one choice. He knew it as well as she did.
“I’ll take him to the Mission tomorrow,” she said, arms tightening at the idea of leaving the child at the orphanage. But she couldn’t keep him in the brothel and she didn’t have the resources to try to reunite him with his mother—nor did she want to call attention to herself by attempting it.
Both the police and the guardsmen turned humans over to run in the maze. If word got to Anton Barlowe or Farold that she had the trapper’s son, it could lead to questions, to retribution for the loss of the dragon lizards and the others being transported to the red zone.
Rebekka shivered. She glanced at the werewolf padding along next to her now that the trail had widened, then at the werecougar, still slung over Levi’s shoulders and just beginning to stir and fight his way back to consciousness.
“If either of them is able to take a human form, maybe they can tell us where the trapper lives,” she said. “Davida cares for the children left with her. She has the support of the Church and the government, as well as some of the wealthy. They have the resources to get Eston back to his mother if they know where to look.”
“I’m not convinced they’d incur the expense, but if we learn where Eston is from and take him to the Mission, at least a story claiming he was handed off to a prostitute in the red zone will be believable. We know a man was traveling with the trapper.”
The wereman jerked into sharper wakefulness. Levi quickly lowered his burden to the ground, pinning the shapeshifter on his stomach with his hands behind his back while animal instinct prevailed and made the werecougar dangerous to all of them.
Rebekka knelt where he could see her, the child snuggling closer, seeking safety in his sleep. “It’s okay,” she murmured softly, both to the toddler and to the struggling Were.
She pitched her voice to soothe them, touched the werecougar’s emotions and calmed him through the use of her gift. He stopped fighting, though he continued to shake with fear.
Rebekka’s heart went out him. She wondered how he’d come to be trapped between forms. A pure Were mother would kill an infant at birth if it didn’t quickly settle into one shape or another. A mixed child born to a human mother wouldn’t fare any better.
“We don’t mean you any harm,” Rebekka said, willing the wereman to meet her eyes, but he was too timid, or too traumatized by all that had happened, to look anywhere other than the ground.
“Levi is going to let you go in a moment,” she continued. “Before he does, I want you to understand you have a choice.”
Her throat tightened for an instant, her thoughts straying to Levi, to the memory of offering him this same terrible choice, the loss of one part of himself in order to avoid a lifetime of being trapped between forms.
“I’m a healer. I can push the parts of you that are human back or I can push the animal away, so you’re one or the other. Or I can do nothing and leave you as you are. Whatever you choose, you’re free to go your own way. But if I change you, there’s no going back. You will remain animal or man. Do you understand?”
The Were spoke, an unintelligible word forced through a misshapen cat’s mouth. She assumed it was yes and met Levi’s gaze, gave a small nod. He eased his grip on the werecougar, slowly releasing him, though Rebekka knew Levi would act quickly and lethally if there was the slightest hint of aggression.
For a long moment the Were remained still as he gathered his courage. Finally he tilted his head enough to look at Rebekka. He spoke again, a sound that might have been help or cat or something else entirely.
“Do you want me to help you?” Rebekka asked, feeling pity where others would feel revulsion at the sight of pelt and skin, human features as well as animal on the same body, as if a madman had hacked apart two separate beings then cobbled pieces of them into one.
This time the wereman nodded instead of trying to speak, accompanying the gesture by cautiously raking his claws in the dirt.
“You want the cougar’s form?” Rebekka asked, wanting to be sure.
Another nod.
She didn’t remind him there was no going back. She understood his choice and guessed he knew he would continue to be a victim if he elected to look human.
There was no advantage to it. In his animal form he might be accepted into a Were community, perhaps even allowed to breed. In Oakland he would have to hide his nature outside of the red zone because there were plenty of humans who feared and loathed Weres—in any form.
It might be different in other places, though she’d never heard of any. Only the vampires lived openly among humans. But in the cities where they did, like San Francisco, they ruled with an iron fist, ensuring safety to the humans who worked for them but guaranteeing death to any who defied or challenged them.
Rebekka passed off the sleeping child to Levi. Eston’s face scrunched up, but he didn’t wake.
“I’ll need to touch you,” she told the werecougar. “It won’t hurt. But it’ll feel strange, like you’re a piece of clay in the hands of a sculptor. The calmer you are, the faster it will go.”
She waited for him to make eye contact and consciously relax his taut muscles before she slowly leaned over and placed her fingers against the bare human skin. At first there was only a tingle, as if the magic of her gift was gathering information about the nature of her patient. The sensation passed and then she applied her will and her fingertips became like blunt knives sliding into soft clay, only more so.
It was a melding that took her completely, sucked her in and blocked everything else out. She saw the human parts that needed to be pushed back from the surface. She tugged at the fabric of the cougar, expanding it, pulling it forward to conceal anything not matching it.
When she came back to herself, a mountain lion was rising to its feet where the wereman had lain. It shook itself off, gold-colored eyes meeting hers briefly before its attention centered on the wolf.
The cougar went into a crouch, revealing yellowed, deadly fangs as it gave a feral snarl and prepared to leap. Levi’s gun was out before Rebekka could move.
“Leave or die,” he said, and even in a human form, Levi was alpha, the gun replacing the teeth and claws of his lion form.
The cougar slunk away, waiting until he’d gained the sanctuary of the forest before he screamed in protest at being denied the opportun
ity to attack the werewolf. The werewolf whined and grov eled, crawled over to lick Rebekka’s foot before slipping into the woods where all signs of obsequiousness disappeared.
ARAÑA stopped when she reached the stream. She knelt and splashed cold water on her face before drinking, her eyes searching for and finding the markers Levi had described during the hike to the cemetery.
There was safety upstream, a small concealed lair he’d built with his brother before they were captured and sold to the maze owner. To get there she’d travel in the creek, a risk because water drew prey and predators alike, but an advantage because water also would make it more difficult to track her.
It had been an unconscious decision to head there rather than back to Oakland. Some instinct guiding her, or perhaps it was training—splitting up lessened the odds of being caught.
Separating herself from Levi and Rebekka had also allowed her a chance to think, to make her own plans. After today’s events, she considered her debt to them paid.
Her side throbbed painfully. Of greater concern was the blood soaking her shirt, a scent guaranteed to attract predators. She listened for the sound of Tir and heard only insects and birds.
It was for the best, she told herself. She’d known the moment his footsteps slowed, but she’d kept going despite the cry in her heart.
For a moment she allowed herself to remember his beauty, the heat she’d seen in his eyes when she’d knelt in front of him, and afterward when he’d reached for her. It was better this way, she repeated, turning it into a mantra. Whatever had caused her to touch her life to his in the vision place, it didn’t change the truth of what the demon mark meant.
Staying with him and being unable to touch him or be touched in return would be torture. Coming to care for him would only lead to horror and pain.
Her throat closed up as memories rose, stark and brutal. Once she’d foolishly thought love could make a difference. She’d thought the convictions of her heart and the driving need to act on them would make a difference. She’d believed in whispered words and sweet promises, in a confident tone and a knowing masculine smile.
