Spiders in the Grove

by J. A. Redmerski

  Baring my teeth at him, I do as he says.

  He takes Sabine by the arm, never taking his eyes from mine. He lifts her dress, exposing her naked body underneath from the waist down. I know she wants to look at me, hoping I’ll stop him somehow, but she doesn’t because she can’t, and I don’t because I can’t, either.

  Joaquin slides his hand between her legs “She’s not wet,” he says, and then crouches in front of her, gazing up at me. “Why isn’t she wet?”

  I snarl at him. “Because I heard you coming down the hall, and took that as a sign to stop.”

  His hand moving, Sabine’s eyes go from suppressed fear to the onset of pleasure, but she keeps a straight, unemotional face.

  He stands, drops her dress back down.

  “Remember, Lydia,” he whispers near my ear, placing his wet fingers to my lips. “I’m the one in control here; not you, not Cesara—me.”

  Actually, Joaquin, that’s not true, and you know it.

  “I will have you—willingly—before this week is over,” he goes on, so sure of himself it makes me laugh inside. “And when I’m done with you, you won’t want anything to do with Cesara, or this dark-haired beauty who’s so easily stimulated.” He puts his fingers in my mouth so I can taste his victory.

  “Don’t be late this evening,” he tells me, adjusts the lapel of his suit, “on this night of all nights.” A mysterious grin sneaks up on his face; he turns and walks down the length of the hallway, disappearing around the corner.

  On this night of all nights? Could he be more cryptic? Well, whatever he meant by that, it seems to have done its job in tripling my nervous levels.

  Searching the walls and ceilings more closely this time, I look for the hidden camera that exposed me, but never find it. I put on my slave-master shoes again, grab Sabine by the back of her neck and shove her forward. “Move,” I order, and Sabine does what I say without falter.

  Nora

  “You’re kidding, right?” I say into the sweaty cell phone pressed to my ear. “We’re knee-deep in shit over here; we leave now, we’re going to lose Artemis’ trail. Are you sure you want to take that risk?”

  “Those are my orders,” Victor says on the other end. “Drop what you are doing, catch the first flight to Mexico, and meet my contact at the address I gave you.”

  “She’ll never forgive you for this,” I say, and shake my head at Osiris and his bitch of a sister, Hestia, waiting for the news; but they already have an idea what the call is about.

  “You’re not going to interfere,” he tells me. “I only want you there in case something goes down.”

  “If something goes down, then you expect me to help her, and that’s interfering. Besides, I doubt even on the first flight out we’ll make it there before that auction ends.”

  “You are closer than I am,” Victor says.

  “I’m not going to fucking Mexico,” Osiris puts in. “I don’t give two fucks about that girl—we’re working with you to find our brother and sister, and that’s it.”

  “We didn’t sign up for this,” Hestia adds.

  “Tell them I did not expect them go with you, nor do I want them to,” Victor says, able to hear their voices beside me. “First flight,” he re-caps. “All of your identification, and your invitation, will be with my contact. Dress appropriately; you will be posing as a buyer.”

  “She’s going to see me, Victor—she warned you about interfering, and you know as well I do that it also meant going in there like this. Actually, this way is worse—she’ll think we’re babysitting her; that would be enough to piss me off, that’s for sure. Why not send Niklas?”

  “He cannot be reached.”

  “Fredrik?”

  “Do as I say.”

  He ends the call.

  Dropping the phone crushed in my hand to my side, I sigh deeply, seriously fucking annoyed.

  “I can’t believe he wants me to do this,” I say, though more to myself. “We’re this close”—I press my thumb and index finger an inch apart in front of my squinting eye—“and he wants to fuck it all up because he….god, I hate even saying it.”

  “What? That he loves her?” Osiris says. “Jealous much?”

  My face scrunches up. “Oh, hell no—I don’t do love. It just disgusts me, is all. I don’t care who it is.”

  “Wise woman,” Hestia puts in, and for the first time since we started working together, we agree on something.

  I think on it a moment, glancing between Osiris and Hestia standing underneath the setting sun. We look like rogue assassins straight out of a video game, dressed in black from neck-to-toe; guns at our hips, and our boots, and our backs; the breeze blowing dramatically through my long, blonde hair as I stand tall on the rooftop of the city’s tallest building; the smell of the hunt is thick in the air; the cool, tingling feeling of excitement racing up my spine. This is what I live for—the hunt, the chase, the game, the capture—not babysitting someone who doesn’t need it. Or babysitting at all.

  “Let’s go,” I tell Osiris and Hestia, waving at them to follow.

  “Not going with you, remember?” Osiris points out.

  I turn around. “I’m not going to Mexico, either. Come on; let’s get back to work before we lose your sister’s trail.”

  Osiris raises a dark brow amid that sexy, sculpted brown face of a god—I haven’t had him yet, but he’s on my to-do list.

  “You sure that’s a good idea?” he asks.

  Hestia doesn’t care either way—she’s as ready to get moving as I am.

  “Victor will get over it,” I say.

  “Well, I’m talking about the girl,” Osiris says. “If something happens to her, I imagine Victor won’t be as forgiving.”

  “Izabel can handle herself”—I pull the gun from my hip, check the chamber, and then slide it back in—“and as soon as Victor, and everybody else in his Order figures that out, and stops spending so much precious time on her, the better off the organization will be.” I point a finger at them both. “You mark my words: if everybody continues focusing on her wellbeing, instead of just letting her make her own fucking mistakes, Izabel will be the fall of Victor’s Order, and likely the death of everyone in it.”

  “Does that include you?” Hestia asks.

  “Nah”—I shake my head, purse my lips—"definitely not me. I’ve already figured out she can handle herself; that’s why I’m not going to Mexico.”

  I turn and head for the rooftop door. “Coming, or not?”

  They follow me out.

  Victor

  I grit my teeth, and toss the cell phone on the chair behind me I have yet to sit down on. The gun feels heavy in my other hand; I want to use it, but I cannot, though the longer I hold it, the more I feel like the other part of me will take over and pull the trigger.

  I set the gun aside, too, next to a stack of old magazines, not trusting myself with it. Apollo will die for what he and Artemis did to Izabel, but I need him alive to lure his twin, so she can die with him. Osiris and Hestia may be close-by, and on Artemis’ trail, but the best way to catch her is with bait. And in Dina Gregory’s house, where Izabel is most-likely to be is the best place to bait her. Izabel knew this—that is why she kept Apollo down here—but I also get the feeling it was not the only reason.

  “You should tell my brother and sister I said hi, and that I miss them,” Apollo says, with sarcasm.

  When I do not respond, he tries something else:

  “I actually prefer this wheelchair,” he says, “to the hospital bed that psycho had me on—I appreciate it, man. I got real tired of staring at the ceiling.” He looks across at me. “But this back and forth shit,” he continues to ramble, “is getting a little tiring. You people are crazy, you know that, right? I mean, shit, I’ve never seen so much drama, and I come from a big fuckin’ family; and you know my family, Victor, so that’s sayin’ a lot.” He pauses. “Hey, you want to know something?”

  “No, Apollo, I do not.”

&nbs
p; “Your girl,” he says anyway, “she seems pissed—like at you, I mean. What’d you do to her? It don’t take a genius to figure out she never told you she had me down here. And that other guy, Big Fred, whatever, when she talks to him, she’s got that twinkle in her eye, if y’know what I mean. Heard her with him on the phone one day. You should teach your girl not to have private conversations in front of prisoners.”

  He will say anything to get under my skin—I was falling for it until his insinuation about Izabel and Fredrik. That is entirely false. About her being angry with me—that is more than plausible.

  Still, I offer no response. I focus on the sounds of the house, listening for signs of Artemis. I think about Izabel keeping this from me, having Apollo the whole time and not telling me about it—something I have thought about before Apollo brought it to my attention. But as much as it disappoints me, it does not compare to Fredrik knowing and not telling me. He conspired against me with Izabel, and it is something I cannot forgive. The trust I had in Fredrik is gone.

  “I’d be mad as hell, bro,” he says, “if my woman did some shit like this to me; left me in the dark—look at you down here, doing the work of a newbie agent—Ha! Ha! Ha!”

  My chest and shoulders rise and fall; finally, he gets my attention. I break away from my thoughts to acknowledge him.

  “But maybe it’s where you’d rather be anyway,” he goes on. “Why aren’t you there, Victor? In Mexico?”—he laughs under his breath—“I mean, it’s just funny to me, how you claim to love that woman so much—more than you ever loved my sister—but here you are, with me in this dusty-ass basement”—his eyes scan the area—“instead of being in Mexico, where your woman is in way over her pretty red head.”

  “It is complicated,” I say. It frustrates me that Apollo is baiting me with conversation, and that I am falling for it.

  He smirks. “Complicated is an understatement. What the hell happened to you, Faust? Well, I know what happened—you lost your shit!—but how did you let it happen? Seriously, man, I want to know; y’know, so I can make sure it never happens to me.” He grins.

  “It will not happen to you, Apollo.”

  He arches a brow. “Oh? How can you be so sure?”

  “You will not live long enough to meet another woman to fall in love with.”

  “I see.” He nods, always unaffected by verbal threats.

  I sit down on the chair, prop an ankle on a knee, and fold my hands loosely within my lap.

  “Oh, come on, Victor; you know you want to be there, watching over her yourself.”

  “I have it under control.”

  “Do you?” he taunts me. “Or, are you just trying to make yourself believe that?”

  “You talk too much, Apollo.”

  He smiles, showing his teeth.

  “Yeah, it’s kinda my thing; I like a good conversation.”

  “Then you must be terribly disappointed,” I taunt him in return, “so, perhaps you should shut your mouth.”

  He smirks.

  “You know what they’ll do to her over there,” he continues. “You know they’ve probably already done it. Over and over and over—”

  I tear across the room in a blur; Apollo’s eyes bulge in his face as my hand clamps about his throat with all the force I can summon. I glare down into his eyes, my lips stretched tight over my teeth, my head burning hot like a raging fire, spreading, spreading, spreading. He chokes, gasping for air, his tongue swollen in his mouth; I squeeze harder, the rage in my head burning hotter. The whites of his eyes roll into view, and then his eyelids flutter. “Don’t fucking test me, Apollo Stone”—the force of my hand knocks his head against the wall behind him—“because I can find your sister without you; you are only alive because this way is quicker.” Gritting my teeth, I hold him still for a second longer and then let go.

  Apollo coughs in a mad fit; life rushes back into his face; moisture settles in around his eyes.

  I fall heavily into the chair, my arms hanging limply down at my sides, my back slouched, my breathing labored. What is wrong with me? I must focus. I cannot let this man get to me.

  Then I sigh, realizing. It is not Apollo getting to me at all—it is Izabel. And I do not know what to do with it. All I know is that I cannot spend too much time on Apollo and Artemis; I need to be ready in case—

  A surge of energy floods my body; I scoot the chair closer to him, and I sit right in front of him. I cannot believe I am about to do this, but seeing as how I grow more and more unlike myself every single day, I just go with it. Until I can fix it.

  “Goddamn”—Apollo coughs, still trying to catch his breath—“you’ve seriously cracked!” He clears his throat, and then he laughs.

  “Cut the sarcasm, Apollo,” I say, “I am going to do you a favor.”

  “I’m listening,” he says, with suspicious doubt.

  “I am going to let you go”—(his left brow hitches higher than the other)—“and the reason I am going to let you go—”

  “Is to teach that woman of yours a lesson,” he finishes for me, grinning. “You got that look in your eyes. Wow…I uh…well, I have to say, vengeance really doesn’t look good on you. I mean, it really doesn’t.”

  “Do I look like I care how it looks to you?”

  He chuckles, shaking his head. “Actually, no, you honestly don’t—Wooo! Am I still fucked up on that shit Tall-Dark-And-Psychotic pumped me full of? I must be. Because if I ain’t, then this world must’ve hit one helluva—.” He stops mid-sentence, and just looks at me, realization filling the lines in his face. “You’re serious?”

  “Yes. I have never been known for my jokes.”

  He laughs, makes a noise with his breath. “Yeah, I guess you’re right—though you should try a few sometime; laughter might do you some good. Wait—what’s the price? Of course, there’s a price.”

  I lean toward him, dropping my hands between my legs.

  “I want you and Artemis to leave Izabel alone. I will call off every person I have looking for you, terminate the bounties on your heads, and I myself will leave you be, let you live your pathetic lives without having to look over your shoulders—just leave Izabel alone.” If I kill Apollo here, no deal like this could ever be made, and Artemis would hunt Izabel forever.

  “Oh, come on now, Victor,” he says with amusement, “you know Artemis; she won’t be as easy to convince. Not to mention that woman of yours; I think her level of revenge is waaay up there in the Ain’t-No-Motherfucker-Stopping-Me range right along with my sister’s, so I doubt she’ll stop looking for Artemis.”

  “You, Apollo, know how to convince Artemis of anything,” I tell him. “You know as well as I do that you could have stopped all of this from ever happening in the first place, but you chose to let her go through with it.” I peer in closer at him, leaning forward on the chair. “I will take care of Izabel. You deal with Artemis. Nobody dies. Everybody goes on to live the short, eventful lives we were always meant to. Do I have your word?”

  He smiles, close-lipped. “Would you even believe my word if I gave it to you?”

  “I suppose I will have no choice,” I say. “But remember, if either of you ever go after Izabel again, using any method at all, I will find you both and I will kill you both and nothing in this world will save you then.”

  Apollo thinks on it a moment, chewing on the inside of his cheek.

  “All right,” he says with a short nod, “you have my word.”

  After a moment of my own contemplation, further talking myself into doing this, I unstrap his legs and then his wrists.

  Apollo slowly stands from the rickety wheelchair, and his legs, weak from not being used in so long, almost fail him, but he gets his balance. He stretches his arms out at his sides, up into the air; he rolls his neck side to side. And then he looks at me, and down at the gun already in my hand again.

  “You really do love that woman,” he says, this time with less mocking, and more understanding. “If only you had loved
my sister like that—you fucked her up, man; you tore out her heart; you created something vicious and cruel.”

  “I know. And one day I hope to repay her for what I did. One day I hope she can…understand me.” I pause, making sure whether or not I want to say this. “Apollo…I never did stop caring for Artemis. I did what I had to do—what I chose to do, I know, I am guilty—but I was a different man then; I was not even a man. I was a product; a machine built by the hands of men, trained from a boy to think and act only as they taught me. It was all I knew for a very long time. I would never ask or expect Artemis to forgive what I did to her; I would only want her to understand it someday.” I lower my head.

  “Ahh, so, that’s what this is about?” Apollo says; he tilts his head to one side, and then the other. “It’s not revenge because your woman left you in the dark; you…”—he chuckles—“…I can’t believe I’m seeing this.”

  “Seeing what?”

  He smiles. “You are a different man, Victor, that’s for damn sure.”

  Then he turns and heads for the basement stairs; he stops with one bare foot on the bottom step, and looks back at me.

  “I know you can’t say it,” he begins, “because it’ll make you feel guiltier than you already do, but you don’t have to say it—I see it all over you.”

  “Say what, Apollo?” I swallow hard. “See what?”

  He grins. “That you’re still in love with my sister.”

  I say nothing. I look at the wall instead.

  “I know you, Victor—Artemis knows you—and if you really wanted her dead, you would’ve already found her by now. You know she’s here, in Arizona, and you’ve known all along. And you’re letting me go because, as you’ve already said so yourself, you know she’ll listen to me. And because you want me, without having to ask, to tell her that you still love her.”