by Jory Strong
Tir’s lip curled in disdain at the word. Gifted. He’d met his share of them over the centuries and found them capable of cruelty beyond measure. Humans were never meant to posses such talent. They were dust, the walking dead, frail and unworthy. They were less than the most simple of beasts. They were—
He turned, aware she’d stopped walking. His cock hardened as his eyes traveled over her crouched form and he remembered the feel of her above him, the heated clamp of her channel and the silky texture of her skin.
She was nothing to him beyond useful help, he told himself. But the lie showed itself in the clenching of his jaw, in the flash of anger and need that had him wanting to return to her side and end the silence created by his threat.
His eyes hesitated on the hand bearing the brand, noting the fingerless glove she must have found among the weeds. Realization slid into him like a knife.
He looked around, studied the area and found dark stains on the ground. This was where her family had been killed. This was the place where guardsmen had thought to rape her.
Tir closed his eyes and reached for her mentally, only to be met by a wall of rigid control. She was stronger than most humans, though it had been centuries since he last cared enough about what one of them felt to do anything but try to block them out.
He pushed harder and could almost taste the tears held back, contained in a bottomless well of sorrow. For the first time in what he remembered of his life, he wondered if he had family that grieved when he disappeared. He wondered if he had ever loved another deeply enough that their passing from his life tore a rent in his soul.
He prodded at his lost memory, but there was no echo of pain, no resonance of sorrow. Nothing rose from the darkness.
Tir touched the sigil-inscribed collar, silently reminding himself the only thing that mattered was gaining the information that would allow him to translate the tattoos on his arms and achieve his freedom. She was a dangerous distraction, one he couldn’t afford.
He watched as she stood and moved away from him, obviously searching for something. She found it moments later, and before she slipped it into her pocket, he saw it was a wallet.
“We’ve got money for food and lodging now,” she said, her subdued voice coming to him on a breeze, along with the scent of her sadness.
Tir steeled himself to wait until she returned to his side. His hands balled into fists in an effort to keep from reaching for her.
He succeeded at the first, but not the second. Her dark pain-shadowed eyes had him cupping her face and trying to smooth the bruised look away with the pads of his thumbs.
Tir leaned in and covered her lips with his, found an unexpected gentleness in himself. She resisted his offer of comfort at first. But with the tender probing of his tongue in a request for admission, he broke through the barrier she’d erected.
Araña softened, opened for him. He tasted her sorrow as well as her strength.
Her hands went to his chest, her palms pressing to his nipples, sending jagged bolts of pleasure to his cock. Lust coiled in his belly as he found the contrast of bare flesh and gloved leather wickedly erotic.
Tir moaned, deepening the kiss. His hands left her face to pull her more tightly against him.
He felt her grief retreat, driven away by the hard press of his body to hers. Desire rose in its place, fanning the flames of his own and making him want to press her to the ground and take her until nothing remained for her but pleasure.
He plundered her mouth until she clung to him. Only then did he lift his lips from hers.
“We need to go to the occult shop,” she said.
Tir could feel her desire to escape more than just this place where her family was killed. His arms tightened involuntarily. Denial flared. She wouldn’t be free of him until he allowed it.
Araña made herself concentrate on the tasks that lay ahead. “We need to go to the occult shop,” she repeated, aware of the steady progress of the sun across the sky.
It could take hours of searching the shop before they’d know whether the information Tir needed was there. And before they sought shelter for the night, she wanted to know if the Constellation was still in its slip.
And if Rebekka and Levi are okay, the voice of conscience added, filling her with dread and guilt even as she knew there was nothing she could have done for them. It had been too late to change the future from the moment she’d touched Rebekka’s soul thread.
Tir’s arms dropped away, but her palms lingered on his chest despite her words. It took more effort than it should have to break the contact, to turn away from the illusion of safety and peace she found in his arms.
She forced herself to start walking, to retrace the path she’d marched at gunpoint. She numbed her mind and blocked her memories, refusing to revisit what she’d seen until she reached the place where the guardsmen’s vehicle had been parked.
It was sheer luck they’d driven past the occult shop on the way to the maze. Habit had made her memorize the route. On the ocean there were no signposts, no pedestrians to ask directions of. There were only landmarks close to shore and the stars above.
When they reached the shop, Araña stopped at the edge of the inscribed circle painted in red on the sidewalk surrounding it. The symbols were common enough, wards against noncorporeal beings as well as entities intent on mischief or possessed of evil.
“Can you cross it?” she asked, sweat trickling down her spine at the resistance she felt, the tightness in her chest. It would take effort for her to step over the line.
She hadn’t expected to have trouble entering the shop. But it felt as though something in the wards recognized the demon mark.
Tir answered by stepping through the circle and turning toward her, offering his hand. She took it and let him tug her forward.
Her breath left her in a suffocating rush, as if a spell tried to suck her soul from her body and trap it. A whimper escaped at the confirmation she was Hell-bound, and she was left trembling with the single step she’d taken.
“Can you proceed?” Tir asked.
“Yes.” It was too late to turn back now.
The spider burned on her shoulder, its fiery heat a reminder that the mark was fused to her being and there would be no separating it from her flesh. Her gaze slid over Tir’s bare torso. He was probably safe enough in the occult shop, but he’d need a shirt before they traveled beyond the area set aside for the gifted.
The tattoos on his arms would draw too much attention. They’d make him stand out and would turn him into a target for police and guardsmen alike. Beyond that, it would be better if, in addition to the trapper’s knife tied in its sheath to his thigh, he also carried beneath his own shirt the machete that was now strapped to her back and hidden by her shirt.
He pulled the door open. She felt the wards on the threshold, stronger than those circling the building. They pressed on her, as if instead of sucking her soul from her body, these would squeeze, forcing her spirit to flee into some magical trap.
The mark burned hotter. Araña had a brief thought of the demon Abijah, wondering if this was how he’d been captured. Then she forced herself through the warded doorway and into the shop.
A man glanced up from behind a counter cluttered with books. He was slight, pale, goateed. His expression held curiosity about her hesitation at the doorway, but no hint that he’d felt the wards reacting to her.
A clerk, she guessed, not a practitioner, though she couldn’t be positive.
Tir entered, and the man’s attention went unerringly to the tattoos. His eyes flashed with surprised recognition, sending nervousness skittering through Araña.
She looked away from him long enough to see if the shop was empty. The sight of two men, their hands resting casually on guns worn at their sides, caused her to brace for trouble.
The guns weren’t their only weapons. Bandoliers crisscrossed their chests. Only instead of bullets, they held knives and deadly throwing stars.
The men made
no movement other than to note her awareness and actions with their eyes. Bodyguards, she thought. Not guardsmen or police.
There was a third presence, the person the bodyguards stood in front of. His identity didn’t matter as long as he didn’t prove to be a threat.
Araña allowed herself to relax enough to return her attention to the man behind the counter. He was tucking a piece of paper under a book, the nervous swipe of his tongue over his lip and his hasty movements drawing her interest where simply walking away from whatever he was doing would have better served him.
He closed the other books strewn across the counter, leaving her with the impression he was researching something. The lack of a pen or pencil nearby suggested that rather than looking for text to copy for a client, he was comparing whatever was on the paper he’d tucked away to what was in the books.
She’d only been in an occult shop once before, when she’d accompanied Matthew in order to stand guard while he negotiated a job with the owner. But she doubted this place operated much differently. The candles and supplies could be bought, while the books were available to study and, for a price, to have sections of them copied.
Araña shivered at the thought of using spell magic. Much of what was contained in the shop was probably worthless or harmless to someone without the gift for using it, but some of it was deadly, to practitioners and nonpractitioners alike.
The man came around the counter, pale, white fingers worrying his goatee. “Can I help you?”
Araña left Tir to answer, her attention caught by a glassed bookcase near the counter. She edged closer. Inside it were books filled with demon names and rituals for summoning and commanding them.
She shivered and surreptitiously rubbed the spider, trying to ease the burn of it. It was part of her and yet not part of her, a sentient gateway giving a demon access to this world and to a human tool that could be used to bring about suffering and death.
The thought made Araña turn away from the case and the reflection of her face caught in it. Her stomach knotted and she fisted her hands.
She didn’t want to think about what it meant to bear the mark, to have her soul tainted by it. But it was impossible not to consider that the answers to questions that had haunted and shaped her life might be here, in this shop.
The bodyguards eased their stance though they remained alert. Her gaze was drawn to the wall of books behind them.
Shock rippled through her at the sheer number of them—all of them the private journals witches and warlocks kept, shadow books that held their secrets and a record of the power they’d gained in their lifetime.
Movement broke the trance of seeing so many of them in one place. Araña’s attention slid from the wall to the man who moments before had been blocked by his bodyguards.
A single, emerald green eye blazed, its twin gone, replaced by scarred flesh in a melted-wax face, as if he’d played with magic and been marked by the fires of Hell.
There was speculation in his gaze as it moved from her to Tir. And what might pass for a small smile before he murmured to his guards, “I’ve satisfied my curiosity here. It’s time to return to the club.”
One of the bodyguards peeled away. But rather than walk past Araña and go to the front door, he went to the back of the shop, to a door not immediately obvious until he opened it.
Araña watched as the bodyguard stepped outside. He looked around before giving an all-clear signal and exiting completely.
The man he was guarding and the second bodyguard followed, closing the door tightly so it once again blended into the wall. “Who was that?” she asked, knowing the man had to be both wealthy and powerful in Oakland to be accompanied by openly armed men.
“Rimmon,” the clerk said, shuddering, his voice holding fear. “He’s one of the vice lords.”
“In the red zone?” Araña guessed.
The clerk nodded and licked his lip, reminding her of his earlier nervousness regarding the books he’d been looking through when they entered the shop. Now that they were alone, just the three of them, she saw no reason for subtlety or delay.
Her eyes met Tir’s, and for a heartbeat it felt as though they were one person. Perfect understanding flowed between them, like what Matthew and Erik had together.
She took a step toward the counter, gambling that the clerk didn’t have inherent magic of his own and wasn’t protected by it, guessing whoever owned the store valued only the books enough to ward them.
The clerk squawked, either from her movement toward the counter or from Tir’s hands wrapping around his scrawny arms to prevent his interference.
“No,” he protested, struggling, his panic increasing as Araña tugged the piece of paper from its hiding place.
Her pulse quickened when she saw what the clerk was researching. Small sections of incomprehensible texts and symbols were scattered on the page, as if someone had randomly reproduced pieces of the whole from memory.
She recognized some of it, could remember tracing over it with her fingertip as she and Tir lay together. Her heart slid into a racing beat as her thoughts went immediately to the vice lord who might even now be setting an ambush into place outside the shop.
“Who’s this for?” she asked, turning the page so Tir could see it.
His face hardened in sheer ruthlessness. Intentionally or unintentionally, his grip tightened on the clerk.
The man cried out, fear pouring off him. “I can’t—”
He broke off at the feel of steel against his throat, Araña’s action was smooth and unconscious, like drawing breath. “This isn’t a cause you want to die for. Who asked you to research what’s written on the paper?”
His eyes darted to the left, where her gloved hand rested on his shoulder, instead of to the right, where the crime lord and his bodyguards had disappeared through the unobtrusive doorway.
“Who?” she repeated, numbing her mind and her conscience to what might come next even as she fervently hoped the clerk wouldn’t force them to hurt him.
“Father Ursu,” he said, sagging in relief when she pulled the knife away from his throat and sheathed it.
The name held no meaning for Araña. She glanced at Tir and found his eyes narrowed.
Realization came to her then as she thought about how he’d healed her after she fought with the dragon lizard. There was no cure—either magical or medical—that would have been able to save her.
Many would view what he’d done as a miracle.
She’d assumed he was being taken to the maze. But what if he’d been bound for the Church instead? He’d be priceless to them.
Her gaze moved to the books she’d ignored in her hurry to retrieve the paper. They were old, created well before the world was forever changed.
All but one of them had writing on the cover like she’d seen in Erik’s history books. She remembered the pictures of artifacts and parchment texts with script common to the place where The Last War was said to have started, a distant part of the world once known as the Holy Lands.
The book title she could understand made her stomach knot as she automatically translated it: Demonios del Vieje Mundo, into “Demons of the Old World.” Unerringly her hand went to where the spider lay on her collarbone, hidden by her shirt.
Her thoughts shifted, telescoped. What if Tir had only been able to heal her because she carried the demon mark? What if the Church’s interest in him had nothing to do with healing?
She shivered, comparing the spider’s reaction to Tir with its reaction to the demon Abijah, how it accepted Tir and seemed to seek out his touch while it cowered from Abijah.
Her attention shifted to the band around Tir’s neck. What would happen if he were freed from it? Would he kill indiscriminately? Or would he kill only those who deserved it?
“The priest wants the texts and symbols translated?” Tir asked the clerk, drawing Araña from the turmoil of her own thoughts.
“Yes.”
“When did he make his request?”
“Yesterday, when the shop opened.”
“You’ve found what he wanted?”
“No.”
“How many of the books are left to search?”
The clerk’s gaze skittered to the counter. “Only those. They’re the last.”
Tir released the man. “Then we’ll look through those. You’ll stay with us.”
A short time later they left the shop without having found anything useful. As they walked Araña wondered why the Church was also seeking a translation of the tattoos on Tir’s arms. Did they hold the key to killing him or banishing him from this world as well as to freeing him? Her hands went to the sheathed blades. Her fingers rubbed over the smooth hilts, trying to draw comfort from them but not finding it. Was he a demon? Is that why the spider allowed him to touch her? Is that why she’d been forced to join the thread of her life to his in the dark heart of the fire? Tir stopped and gripped her upper arms when they were out of sight of the shop, imprisoning her and making her shudder, not from fear, as the clerk had done, but from needy longing. “You’re quiet,” he said. “Yes.” Questions crowded her mind, but the courage to ask them deserted her. She had secrets, too.
Things she didn’t want to share. But could she really help free him if he meant to wreak havoc on the world? Could she add that weight to all the suffering she’d already been responsible for as a result of her demon gift?
Tir fought to keep his fingers from tightening painfully on Araña’s arms. Her tendency to withdraw was back despite the heated scent of desire and the soft molding of her body to his. The longer he was with her, the more attuned to her emotions he became. They brushed against him, became almost a whisper of her thoughts in his consciousness. Her silence wasn’t comfortable. It rubbed him, made him feel raw and on edge.
The thin wall shimmering between them was intolerable. He wanted her open, as trusting when she walked at his side as she was when she lay underneath him, thighs splayed, her body welcoming his, holding him deep in her core.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, hating that he had no will to stop himself from doing it. Fighting against caring for this human who seemed to be tangling him in a silken web of need. Silence greeted his question, swallowing it as though it had never been spoken. Dark eyes met his, a black abyss he could lose himself in. Tir’s nostrils flared at the unspoken challenge. His thoughts flashed back to the morning, when she’d taken food from his hand, acknowledging with her act of submission that she belonged to him—body and soul.
