Spider’s Bar­gain

by Jennifer Estep

  But the detec­tive didn’t give up. Since he couldn’t scream for help, Ingles lashed out at me with his fists, rain­ing hard blows down on my chest and arms. The solid impacts made me grunt. But I’d been an assas­sin a long time, and I’d taken my share of punches from giants, dwarves, and vam­pires over the years—all of whom were a lot stronger than the human detec­tive in front of me. Ingles’ blows hurt, but not enough to make me let go or drop my knife.

  Still, we see­sawed back and forth there in the dark­ness under­neath the weep­ing wil­low for the bet­ter part of a minute before Ingles’ body began to shut down from the mas­sive trauma it had just received. When I felt the fight in him start to ebb, I pushed him deeper into the shad­ows, until his back was against the rough bark of the tree.

  By this point, tears of pain or fear or what­ever dripped down Ingles’ fat face and spat­tered onto my red silk shirt—along with his blood.

  “You know,” I said, twist­ing the knife in a lit­tle deeper. “It’s bad enough that you make the vam­pire hook­ers give you free­bies while you’re on duty, sup­pos­edly pro­tect­ing and serv­ing the good peo­ple of Ash­land. But to rape and beat that lit­tle girl like you did? That was just sick. Evil. And now, it’s going to be the death of you, Cliff.”

  Usu­ally, I wasn’t this chatty when I was killing some­one. But the soft mur­mur of my words helped to cover up the detective’s muf­fled gasps and the scrape of his limbs flail­ing against the tree. Still, if any­one had been curi­ous enough to look our way, he would have thought that the detec­tive and I were hav­ing a grand old time screw­ing against the tree.

  But only one of us was get­ting fucked over tonight, and it wasn’t me.

  I yanked the knife out of Ingles’ chest, and more of his blood splashed onto my clothes. The warm, sticky fluid coated my hand, but I barely noticed it. I’d wash it off later, the way I always did.

  By this point, the fight and life was all but gone from Ingles. I let go of him, and the detec­tive slid to the soft ground beneath the tree. His breaths came in shal­low, raspy gulps now, and I knew that he’d be dead in another minute. Two, tops.

  Still, I crouched down next to him, bloody knife in hand, just in case he made a last-ditch effort to do some­thing stupid—like try to go for his gun and shoot me.

  “Who…the hell…are you?” the detec­tive wheezed out the words.

  “Some folks call me the Spi­der,” I said in a soft voice. “Per­haps you’ve heard of me.”

  Ingles’ mouth twisted. “Fucking…assassin…bitch.”

  “Yeah,” I drawled. “That’s me to a T.”

  Those were the last words the detec­tive ever said. Forty-five sec­onds later, he rasped out his last breath and was still. Ingles’ head lolled to the side, and his brown eyes stared at nothing.

  But my job wasn’t through just yet. Because when the girl’s mother had reached out to Fletcher Lane through var­i­ous anony­mous chan­nels, when she’d decided to ask the Spi­der for help, the mother had made a spe­cific request about what she wanted done to Ingles’ body after the fact. Couldn’t blame her for it. Hell, maybe it would make the next twisted bas­tard think twice about things.

  Rather than fum­ble with the detective’s belt buckle, I used my knife to cut through the leather, then his pants and box­ers. The fab­ric ripped with a whis­per. And then, I used my blood-blackened blade to slice off the thing that Ingles had held most dear.

  When that was done, I wiped my knife off in the grass around the body and tucked it back up my sleeve. Then, I slowly stood up and looked around, my eyes once again peer­ing into the darkness.

  But no one had noticed me killing the detec­tive or cut­ting into him after the fact. The scene looked the same as before. Peo­ple still waited in line to get into the night­club, still smoked, and still stum­bled drunk­enly out to their cars.

  At this point, I should have been mov­ing through the park­ing lot and get­ting the fuck out of Dodge before some­one tripped over the detective’s body and raised the inevitable alarm. But instead, I found myself star­ing down at Cliff Ingles.

  The detective’s eyes were now just as empty and soul­less as those of the girl that he’d raped. Fletcher Lane had shown me a photo of the girl when he’d asked me to kill Ingles. The girl had had a look in her eyes that I recognized—a shat­tered, bro­ken expres­sion of lost innocence.

  Of every­thing lost.

  I’d had the same look for months after my fam­ily had been mur­dered. Even now, all these years later, some­times I still caught a glimpse of it when­ever I stared into the mir­ror just a lit­tle too long.

  Maybe it was because I’d been thirteen—the same age as the girl Ingles had raped—the night my fam­ily had been mur­dered. Maybe it was because in Ash­land, there were some peo­ple who just deserved killing. Maybe it was because Fletcher Lane hadn’t sent me out on a job in more than a month and I was bored.

  But I’d looked at the girl’s photo, and I’d told Fletcher that I’d do the job for free.

  Detec­tive Cliff Ingles had bro­ken the girl with his hor­rid actions, and I’d made him pay for it tonight. Maybe know­ing that he was dead would bring the lit­tle girl some peace in the end.

  Maybe not.

  Either way, I’d held up my end of the deadly bar­gain. The Spi­der had done her work for the evening. I’d helped in the only vio­lent, bloody way that I knew how.

  And now, it was time to go home and wash the blood out of my clothes once again.

  So I stepped over Ingles’ body and headed toward the back end of the park­ing lot away from the lights and noise around the front of the nightclub.

  As I walked under­neath the weep­ing wil­low tree, a moun­tain breeze rus­tled the tree’s branches, and the soft, trail­ing ten­drils kissed my face the gen­tle way a mother might show affec­tion for her child. For some rea­son, I stopped and waited until the breeze and the ten­drils died down before mov­ing on.

  The late sum­mer fire­flies lit the way as I stepped into the wait­ing darkness.