Spiderstalk

by D. Nathan Hilliard

  “No?”

  “No.” He put the van in motion again, and started slowly forward. “And the reason she isn’t is because Olivia is a genius.”

  “Good ol’ Olivia…I never doubted her for a moment, but what are we doing now?”

  “Now we’re going to drive right past her, and leave. We’re supposed to meet Olivia in a couple of hours at the rendezvous point.”

  “Where is the rendezvous point anyway?” Adam watched the woman they approached with growing trepidation. She stood straight and grim at the end of the guard rail, staring right at them.

  “Not near the telepath, Adam,” Antonio cautioned and nodded at their adversary. “Especially this one.”

  “Right.” Adam cringed inside at the thought he might have inadvertently put Olivia in danger.

  They now approached within a hundred feet of the woman, still moving slowly, and Adam got his first good look at her.

  She’s young, he realized with surprise, late teens or early twenties tops. Yeah, she reads minds and shoots people, but she’s still just a girl…not some kind of monstrous creature.

  The woman held up a chunk of asphalt she must have found at the edge of the pavement, glared straight at Adam through the windshield, and crushed it into gravel with one hand.

  Holy Shit! I stand corrected!

  “Oh yeah,” Antonio murmured as they rolled past her. “She doesn’t like you at all.”

  “I noticed,” Adam gulped. They passed within ten feet of her, but she did nothing but watch them go by. He shifted so he could see her in the side mirror, and watched her receding form stare after them as they crossed the bridge.

  “Shame, too. She’s actually a damn fine looking specimen of womanhood.”

  “She’s all yours.” Adam watched the now distant figure to the rear of them disappear as they went around a curve. “I am soooo over blondes.”

  “You sure? I hear they have more fun.”

  “I’m sure. Now would you please pull over and put some friggen clothes on?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE WITCH AND THE CATSPAW

  “And then she just stood there and let us drive past her,” Adam reported dutifully. “We weren’t fifteen feet from her and she could have blasted us both…and I think she really wanted to…but she didn’t.”

  Olivia sat across the table from him in the Chinese restaurant, obviously concentrating on everything he said. She had a small bowl of steamed dumplings she nibbled on, using her chopsticks with fastidious precision as she listened to Adam and Antonio relate the day’s events.

  Beside her, Antonio wolfed down a plate full of sesame chicken. Now back in a cream colored suit, with his hair tied back, he no longer looked like the primitive warrior he appeared to be earlier. With his Rolex watch and gold ring, he once again appeared the wealthy, yet laid back, corporate boss.

  But now that Adam had seen his earlier guise, he could still see Antonio was definitely Native American. A quick appraisal of Olivia’s features suggested she might be as well, although she could as easily be Hispanic…and those green eyes didn’t come from any American Indian tribe he knew of.

  “Adam did great today,” the big man gestured with his fork. “I couldn’t ask for better company.”

  “Yeah, if you consider standing around looking stupid or screaming in terror ‘doing great,’ then I suppose I was alright.”

  “He’s modest, too.” Antonio chewed.

  “I would imagine,” Olivia looked at him seriously, “that today’s events were rather confusing for you. I’m surprised you aren’t hammering us with questions.”

  “I would love too,” he admitted. “I really would. I have a list of questions as long as your arm. But as Antonio proved today, I’m being kept in the dark for good reason because we’re dealing with telepaths, and I understand what I don’t know can’t be used against us.”

  “That’s very trusting of you, Mr. Sellars.” She gave a cool look over at her boss eating beside her. “We’ll try and live up to that trust.”

  “Absolutely.” Antonio pointed at him with his fork. “Believe me, everything I do has a purpose, and I want to see us all get through this okay. The odds of getting your nephew back went up dramatically today, but I’m still going to need you to trust me a little bit longer.”

  “Okay, will do,” Adam sighed and looked back at Olivia while gesturing at Antonio. “Just promise me he isn’t a lunatic.”

  “You wound me, Adam.” Antonio put on a hurt face while shoveling in more chicken at the same time. “Tell him, Olivia.”

  “Mr. Sellars,” she responded with formal gravity, “I assure you, I have never noticed a correlation between the lunar cycles and Antonio’s behavior. He is always this way.”

  Antonio choked on his food beside her.

  “Et tu, Olivia?” he gasped for air, “I’ve heard more ringing endorsements.”

  “Sir, I merely apprised him of your consistency of character,” she purred as she picked at her food with a smug satisfaction. “I made no derogatory inference regarding that character itself.”

  “Riiiiggghhht.” Antonio regarded her narrowly, then sighed and shrugged at Adam with a “Women, who can explain’em?” expression.

  These two really care for each other, Adam realized with depressed insight. And they aren’t just two-dimensional characters from some spy novel either. She has a real wit behind that façade, to go along with her intelligence. And Antonio? Sweet Jesus, I would be happy to be half as on the ball as he is when I’m his age. Hell, who am I kidding? I wish I had half his mojo right now. That guy might be crazy, but he’s the right kind of crazy.

  “Adam? You okay?”

  “Huh?” he started, and realized the pair across the table were looking at him.

  “You went away there for a minute,” Antonio said. “Are you alright?”

  “Oh,” he recovered. “Yeah, I’m fine. I was only wondering what the next step would be, now that we survived whatever it was we had with your enemies back there.”

  “Ah! Back to business. I guess we might as well explain the next part of this operation, since it starts tonight.”

  “Tonight? That fast?”

  “Yes, Adam.” Antonio’s solemn tone brought Adam fully into the moment. “Now comes the hard part.”

  “The hard part? You mean getting shot at today by psychopathic rednecks wasn’t the hard part?”

  “No, that was easy. You didn’t know it was coming. This is an entirely different situation. This time you are going to prepare to meet them…alone.”

  “What do you mean?” Adam tried to keep the panic out of his voice. He refused to look like a coward in front of these two, but this new stage of the plan seemed to have “suicide” written all over it.

  “The totem we left at the gas station,” Antonio continued, “had a hotel room key on it from the Salt Pine Hotel. The Salt Pine doesn’t get much business this time of year, except when there are sporting events over at Texas A&M, but Olivia booked your entire wing for the next few nights in order to play it safe.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, that is your room for the next evening or two, and we have now invited them to come visit. The fact that woman let us by on the bridge suggests they may have agreed to take us up on the offer.”

  “And you’re not going to be there?”

  “No, Adam,” Antonio intoned. “This time, it’s only you and them.”

  ###

  “What the hell are those things?”

  The three of them sat in the station wagon, staring across the parking lot at the door to one of the upstairs rooms of the Salt Pine Hotel. They had pulled in just a minute earlier, and froze at the sight of the two objects flanking the entrance to Adam’s room.

  “The thing on the left,” Antonio squinted through the twilight gloom, “is the totem Olivia constructed for this mission.”

  “The thing on the right looks sort of the same, but different.” Adam tried t
o make out the thing but at this distance could only tell it was a pole like the one Antonio had handed him at the gas station, but shaped differently at the top.

  “They left their own totem?” Olivia leaned forward between the two men from the back seat. Adam made a mental effort not to be distracted by her proximity as she put a hand on his shoulder and her hair brushed the side of his face. “Sir, I need to see this.”

  “Olivia, we discussed this…”

  “Sir, if that is a totem then it is the first response from the Sp…from our adversaries we have had in over a century. They are most definitely watching to see what we do. I need to be up there, to evaluate that message, so we can formulate a correct response of our own.”

  Antonio frowned at her, and Adam realized the man was wrestling with the idea of putting her out there in an exposed position…and not liking it very much. As much as he wanted to get Olivia’s input on anything he could, he found himself agreeing with Antonio’s obvious reluctance to risk the brilliant young woman. At the same time, he could see how it was frustrating Olivia to the point of almost breaking her usual self control.

  “Olivia…”

  “Sir, you need me up there. Please, let me do my job.”

  Silence hung in the air for a moment.

  “Alright,” Antonio grumbled, “but stay between me and Adam. I wasn’t expecting this, and I hate unexpected situations.”

  The three of them slowly exited the car and made their way across the dim parking lot. Adam gripped his cane tightly, feeling horribly exposed on the bare expanse of asphalt. He noticed Antonio had his hand up near the lapel of his jacket, ready to reach in for the .45 he had strapped on earlier. In his other hand he carried Adam’s suitcase. If Olivia had a firearm, it could have only been in the shoulder bag she carried. At the moment, her attention seemed focused like a laser on the object up by his door.

  Antonio led the trio up the outside stairs, with Adam bringing up the rear. After a cautious ascent with no incident, they made their way to their destination.

  Adam stared at the two objects flanking the door with curiosity.

  He recognized the item on the left as the totem Antonio had handed him at the gas station. The skin and spiders looked exactly as they were before. The blue card was missing, but that was to be expected. The pole to the right was similar, yet different.

  Where Antonio’s totem had a cross piece from which the skin and spiders hung, this featured a big round loop of wood at the top. In the center of the circle, a large spider hung in what appeared to be its real web. This one was even larger than the two Antonio had found, a full six inches in leg span. Along the bottom of the hoop hung a series of long furry objects that would have caught Adam’s attention earlier if not for the large spider.

  “Ugh!” he started, noticing the dried blood where they were tied to the leather thongs. “Are those…”

  “Dog tails,” Olivia finished. “Yes, they are.”

  “They cut off their dog’s tails to make this?” Adam stared at the object in disgust. “Why?”

  “Because,” Olivia mused aloud as she examined it, “they didn’t know until this afternoon they were going to need one of these and had to make do with what they had. I should have expected this.”

  “Yes, but,” Antonio interjected, “couldn’t the dog tails be taken as an insult?”

  “Perhaps, but it could also mean they took pains not to kill a dog. Of course if that were the case then…” Olivia froze, one hand on the totem at the bottom of the loop.

  “Olivia?”

  “If that were the case,” she repeated in a tight voice, “then this spider should still be alive.”

  “Okay, don’t move.” Antonio pulled his pistol and aimed it at the spider.

  “Uncle, NO!” Olivia hissed. “It would be a grave insult! It would undo everything we’ve accomplished.”

  “Wait, you mean that thing is real?” Adam stared from Antonio to the large spider hanging in the loop.

  “It’s real,” Antonio gritted, “and Olivia is deathly allergic to it.”

  “Oh crap.” Adam still couldn’t believe the large spider was real—they weren’t supposed to grow that big—but the tension in Antonio’s voice was undeniable. Without thinking he reached over and carefully put his hand over Olivia’s, shielding it from the spider. “Alright, I got it. Just tell me this thing ain’t deadly.”

  The tight look on Antonio’s face wasn’t reassuring, but Olivia didn’t seem in any danger of panicking.

  “Sir…” She slowly pulled her hand out from under Adam’s then calmly stepped away. “It’s okay, I’m fine. As a matter of fact, I don’t think I was ever in danger. If I may recommend a different course of action, catching one of those moths over by the other door light might provide us with the answer to our question.”

  Antonio looked from Olivia, to the spider, then back to Olivia again. With a curt nod he holstered the .45 and stalked over to the light beside the next door. Then, with an ease Adam knew shouldn’t have surprised him, the big man snatched a moth out of the air and brought it back over to them.

  “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here.” Antonio tossed the insect into the wooden loop.

  The moth hit the web, and the large spider was on it in an instant. Adam recoiled, jerking his hand back when the big arachnid moved, still having a hard time believing it to be real.

  “Holy crap!” he gasped. “Now that’s just messed up! Between that and severed tails, that has to be the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in ….well, ever.”

  “Actually, Mr. Sellars,” Olivia muttered while staring at the feeding spider, “that ‘thing’ is an honor-bound promise on the part of our adversaries—that they will meet you and let you walk away alive.”

  Adam eyeballed the gruesome object.

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Well then,” he leaned back against the upper walkway railing and nodded at the totem. “I take it back. With apologies to all the pooches who suddenly got shorter today, that is a thing of beauty.”

  “Indeed,” Olivia murmured. “Sir? Would you catch a few more moths? We need to move it inside. It’s too cold out here for it, and I’m sure Mr. Sellars would prefer knowing it is sated and unlikely to wander while he shares a room with it.”

  “Wait…what?”

  “Remember, Mr. Sellars…’thing of beauty.’ Besides, I would think you would prefer to have a visual reminder of their agreement not to shoot you out of hand when our adversaries show up.”

  “Good point. Mr. Spider has a room for the night. Nice spider. Pretty spider.”

  “Mrs. Spider,” Olivia corrected absentmindedly. “Now, if you will lift it gently by the lower pole, I will open the door and you can take it inside. Don’t panic if it moves, it may run over to the edge in order to get a grip on something more stable than its web while it’s being moved.”

  “Okaaay,” Adam agreed with reluctance. He didn’t really want to handle the thing, but wasn’t about to act squeamish now. Shifting his cane to his off hand, he carefully gripped the middle of the pole and lifted it with slow care.

  As predicted, the big spider scuttled to the top.

  “Easy fella…er, girl..uh, tell you what...I think I’ll call you Charlotte. We’re just taking a short walk inside where it’s nice and warm. Then wonderful Mr. Antonio is going to feed you a bunch of scrumptious bugs.”

  With Olivia holding the door, he maneuvered the totem into the hotel room with care and gently leaned it against the corner. It was a modest hotel room like ten thousand other hotel rooms across the world.

  Antonio followed them inside, cupping several moths in his hands. He carefully tossed each one into the web, then stepped back with the others and waited. The three watched the large spider for several minutes before it moved.

  Apparently deciding its trip was over, the big arachnid moved back into its web and got down to the business of lunch. As Adam watched, he wondered at the ten
sile strength of the web as it seemed to him it should have bowed under the weight of the large predator as it moved across it. Yet it didn’t give any more than the webs of normal-sized garden spiders. As a matter of fact, it hardly gave under its weight at all.

  Somehow, he realized, this thing must make a stronger form of web than ordinary spiders. I’ll have to ask Olivia about it later.

  At the moment though, he could think of nothing to say so he settled for watching the large animal feed.

  “Well,” Antonio finally broke the silence, “That’s that. I brought up your suitcase, so you can settle in for the evening. Olivia and I will be on our way.”

  “Yeah,” Adam breathed. “I guess I’ll be seeing you two in the morning?”

  “Not unless they visit you tonight,” Antonio replied. “We’ll call you in the morning, and from time to time to check on you, but otherwise we will not meet again until after they have made contact. I’m sorry, Adam, but this is the way it must be.”

  He had been afraid of that.

  “It’s okay, I understand.” He prayed none of the fear he was feeling showed. “You guys are on dicey terms with these people, and you’re just taking precautions. You made this happen, now it’s my turn to step up.”

  “You’ll be fine, Adam.” Antonio beamed and gave him a reassuring clap on the shoulder. “Tell them what you’re here for, listen to what they have to say, and go from there.”

  “No problem.” Adam put on a good front, then noticed Olivia standing slightly to the back and watching the two of them with all the enthusiasm of a funeral director. “I’ll be fine, Olivia. You got me here, and you haven’t been wrong yet. Thanks for that.”

  For a moment, her wooden expression made him wonder if he had said the wrong thing. Then she shouldered her bag, and gave him a grave look.

  “Good luck, Mr. Sellars. We will call you at 8 a.m. Have a good night.”

  Without further ado, she turned and left.

  “Good night, Adam.” Antonio waved as he followed his assistant out the door. “Try and get some sleep.”