by Jory Strong
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 b
ack 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.
“So you made it,” Rimmon said, circling the Constellation like a shark circling prey. “Now we’ll see if you can deliver on your promise or whether I’ll enjoy the companionship of your woman.”
Tir resisted the vice lord’s taunt and the temptation to violence, and Rimmon laughed, as if feeding on Tir’s fury, before saying, “Follow me. Don’t deviate from my path or you’ll sink the boat you’ve sold a portion of your soul to save.”
Tir followed, skirting hazards and guessing there were more he couldn’t see, their path revealing how unnecessary it was for Rimmon to hold the harbor with armed boat patrols. Only someone well acquainted with it or guided through it would have a chance of reaching shore.
Rimmon was climbing onto the pier as Tir brought the Constellation alongside it. Two men dressed in the same manner as the bodyguards stepped forward and helped Tir secure the lines. When it was done, Tir went to Rimmon’s side. The vice lord said, “My promise covers protecting the boat from theft or damage only. Not determining who has a right to board her, or keeping whoever occupies her safe.”
Tir shrugged, his thoughts moving beyond healing Rimmon’s daughter and going to Araña and the continued search for the tattoo translations. “Let’s get on with it.”
“Yes. Let’s see if pride goes before a fall in your case.”
The vice lord led him to a car, the bodyguards going ahead to open and close the back doors before taking up positions in the front seat. The interior smelled of leather and hashish and sex, much like the club Temptation did.
They left the port area, and at the edge of the red zone were joined by two other vehicles, open jeeps carrying armed men. It surprised Tir at first, but upon reflection, made sense.
Despite Rimmon’s nonhuman status, his ruined face was testament to the damage fire could do to him. A man who controlled a harbor was probably subject to attack from those who served the law as well as those who wanted to carve out a crime empire of their own.
Beyond what called itself civilization, they climbed into the hills. The vice lord grew more remote with each mile.
A stone house with floor-to-ceiling glass windows became their destination. It sat at a canyon edge, defying man and nature and whatever god the vice lord might answer to.
The vehicles stopped and the guards exited. Those in the car with Tir and Rimmon opened the back doors, then closed them again, trailing the vice lord and Tir into a house that smelled of incense and spoke of luxury.
“This way,” Rimmon said, climbing stairs carpeted with a rug woven by human fingers centuries earlier.
He led Tir down mural-painted hallways filled with winged creatures, humanlike and inhuman, coupling with mortal women. At the end of it, the vice lord paused in front of a door as if gathering his strength. A knock announced his presence before he entered the room with absolute confidence.
“I’ve brought someone to heal you, Saril.”
Tir followed. A woman sat in a cushioned chair in front of the window, bundled in a heavy quilt though the room was almost unbearably hot. She was young, no older than Araña, her face ethereal, beautiful despite the bones shown in stark relief, as if some sculptor had captured her in porcelain and absolute stillness.
The vice lord crossed the room to her, his fear palpable. “Saril!”
She stirred at the command in his voice. And he repeated it, his fingers white on the armrests of her chair. Her eyelids fluttered as she fought the sleep that would ultimately slide into a coma and then death. When she won the battle to wake, Tir saw the green fire of her father’s eyes.
“I’ve brought someone to heal you,” Rimmon said.
“Another one?”
“This one won’t fail as the others have.”
“And if he does?”
“That’s not your concern.”
“I’m not like you. I won’t let you hurt people in my name.”
“You have no say in the matter.”
Anger tightened her features. “Just as my mother had no say when she caught your attention?”
The vice lord abruptly caught his daughter’s chin in his hand. “This argument grows tiresome. She came to me willingly. And left willingly—carrying a child she then proceeded to hide from me until it was almost too late. An attempt to heal you will be made, whether you want it or not, whether you feel it taints your soul or not. If progeny came to me easily, then perhaps I’d allow you to die some foolish, noble death, but at the moment, you are my sole living descendent.”
He released her and turned away. Tir thought he meant to leave the room. Instead Rimmon crossed to the nightstand and took up a sheathed sword.
The hilt was blackened, and when Rimmon drew the blade, it was charred as well, as if it had burned in the same inferno of fire that had tried to consume the vice lord. “If she dies in your presence, I will strike you down.”
It was only when Rimmon returned to his daughter’s side that Tir could see the script etched into the blade, and the sight of it sent icy fear through him, some deep recognition that the weapon’s bite could grant him the true peace of death he’d sometimes thought would be preferable to captivity.
The vice lord said, “Heal her.”
But it was his daughter who answered instead of Tir. “Not with you in the room.”
Rimmon’s lips curved upward in a twisted parody of mirth. “As you wish, Saril. But it changes nothing.”
He left without speaking to Tir again. And for a moment Tir and Saril studied each other wordlessly.
Her gaze traveled over the tattoos on his arms, eyebrows making a faint move to draw together as she puzzled over what crimes they might represent. Finally she broke the silence by saying, “I’m sorry you’re involved in this. He has a long reach. Even if you manage to escape from the house and get away from Oakland, he’ll find you. But if you want to attempt it, I won’t call out to him.”
Her words rebuffed Tir, making him take a step backward—as if centuries of judgment were under attack. Until Araña, he’d never met a human willing to put herself at risk to offer him a chance at freedom.
“I’ll heal you,” he said, drawing the knife at his thigh, wanting to be done with it.
Her gasp was faint, as was her flinch. But the emerald green eyes never left his as he stepped forward.
“Give me your hand.”
She struggled to free it from the heavy cocoon of quilts, using a strength born of sheer determination to lift it. And even then, sh
e could hold it only inches away from her lap.
Tir took it and felt the fine tremors going through her, the icy chill, as if the grave already claimed her. Deep in the past, among the shattered remains of his earliest memories, were those where warrior priests used him to heal this disease, though it had been called a curse in those days.
There’d been prayers said as his blood was mixed with crushed berries and placed in special vessels set aside for the purpose. There’d been exaltations to a deity who’d ignored Tir’s plight even as his blood was used to heal those who served and paid homage to the god.
But the gods of the humans who’d held him captive meant nothing to Tir. And though he could remember the incantations, they weren’t words of power to him.
He knew only one way. And his jaw clenched as he remembered the excruciating agony he’d experienced when he restored Araña to health. He knew, as surely as he knew it would require all his strength not to kill Saril, that his suffering would be made worse because he willingly healed.
Tir closed his mind to it as he slashed across Saril’s palm and then his own. He thought instead of his freedom, focused on the ancient parchment containing centuries of translations, as he wove their fingers together, pressing wound to wound.
Madness threatened to engulf him. Discordant notes tore through his mind like daggers ripping and shredding, spreading disharmony.
The urge to lash out was nearly unstoppable, but he fought it, willed himself to save the violence for when he was free of the collar and could wreak vengeance on those who deserved it.
He battled against the desire to scream. The muscles of his neck tightened, choking off the sound of his suffering and, with it, his breath.
Sweat poured off him, slowly leaching away his mindless, pain-driven fury.
And finally he was free of it.
Tir dropped Saril’s hand. Her eyes held awe, gratitude, reverence.
“The music,” she whispered, tears escaping to trail over her cheeks. “I’ve never heard anything so beautiful.”
Tir turned away from her, disconcerted by her expression.
