Spider-Touched g-2

by Jory Strong

  “There are plenty of humans worth saving,” she whispered, thinking of the men and women Erik and Matthew called friends, those who’d accepted her among them, the outlaws and outcasts who held to their honor in a harsh world.

  Her hand went to Tir’s chest. She felt the hard, fierce beat of his heart. “Not all of us are like those who held you captive.”

  “Then pray it’s not up to me to decide whether they live or die, Araña.” He stepped away from her but circled her wrist with his fingers.

  She thought they’d go directly to the bus stop. Instead Tir pulled her into a tiny eating place not far from the waterfront.

  Her stomach reacted by growling, her mouth by watering, her hands by automatically going to the knife hilts.

  Rough-looking seamen clustered around a mismatch of salvaged tables. Their faces were tanned, leathered, unshaven, and more than one of them wore the tattoos of a criminal.

  They undressed her with their eyes and Tir stiffened at her side. “It’s okay,” Araña murmured, comfortable despite the glances. She’d been in plenty of diners and bars like this one, where men who lived and worked on the water gathered. “We need to eat before we go to the brothel. This is a good place to do it.”

  There was little chance of guardsmen wandering in for drink or food. Only trouble would bring them, and these men didn’t want trouble, not of that kind, not in a city like Oakland. And if someone were curious enough or bold enough to approach Tir, thinking he was a pimp… then perhaps they’d be able to gather information on how frequently the docks were patrolled and what manner of predators roamed them at night.

  Araña allowed Tir to guide her to a stool along an L-shaped counter separating customers from a cook and a server. At his silent urging, she took the open seat against the wall while he took the one next to her.

  Grease spattered as baskets laden with cut potatoes were dropped into deep pools of cooking oil. Flames jumped as fish were tossed on grills.

  “You ready?” the server working the counter asked, stopping in front of Tir.

  Stained pictures hung on the wall next to where the cook was busy slapping food onto plates and passing them to an older woman to deliver to those waiting at tables. Prices next to the pictures, as well as crude writing, noted what the diner served.

  Beer. Fish. Fries.

  The catch of the day was salmon.

  “Fish,” Tir said.

  The server’s gaze flicked to Araña then to the male customers crowding around tables. “Your woman eating or she here to work?”

  Tir’s nostrils flared at the question. Araña put her gloved hand on the bunched muscles of his thigh in a soothing gesture.

  “She eats. Fish for her, too.”

  The server shrugged and told Tir the cost of the meal. His expression said he thought Tir was a fool for paying with cash from his pocket when he had a woman who could cover it by working in the alley on her back or knees.

  Tir turned toward Araña, and within a heartbeat, eyes smoldering with hostility changed, the flames of hatred giving way to heat as they looked at each other and remembered their last meal together.

  Liquid desire pooled in her labia with thoughts of breakfast and his feeding her by hand. Color rose in her cheeks.

  Silence stretched between them. The need to touch was countered by the feel of strangers watching and the necessity of remaining alert to their surroundings.

  “Later,” Tir murmured, and she gave a slight nod before escaping the intensity of his gaze.

  Their food arrived in an unceremonious slide of plates along the counter and a clatter of forks. They ate, and as they did so, interest in them faded, except for five men who sat huddled over their beers, whispering and nudging one another, passing something she couldn’t see around the table until finally one of them lurched to his feet and approached.

  A few steps away from Tir, the man doffed his tightly woven knit cap and held it in both hands. Grit clung to the grooves in his skin, and his fingernails were outlined in dark grime. His eyes dropped to where Araña’s gloved hand remained on Tir’s thigh, only partially obscured by the counter.

  Sea-chapped lips pulled away from tobacco-stained teeth. “My friends and me, we was wondering if you’re selling time with the woman. ’Cause—”

  Tir stood. The man backpedaled, fingers lifting away from his clutched cap in a gesture of peace. “Sorry, no offense meant.”

  Araña touched Tir’s arm, her stomach muscles tightening at the returned interest the encounter had generated, the attention she felt on her gloved hand and the speculation it would arouse. “We can go now,” she said.

  He turned away from the retreating man. “You’ve had enough to eat?”

  “Yes. For now.” Their plates were both empty, none of the food wasted.

  They left the diner. The five men followed them out almost immediately.

  Tir freed the top buttons of his shirt as they walked, so he could retrieve the machete strapped to his back if necessary. “Let’s return to the bus stop using the same route we took to the docks.”

  Araña’s hands curled around the handles of her knives. “They’ll split up and try to trap us in one of the alleys.”

  Tir laughed. “I look forward to it.”

  She glanced at his face and read anticipation to match his words. So be it, she thought, closing her mind to any hint of conscience. The men following them were bringing death on themselves.

  Araña turned, entering the first of the alleyways that would lead them to the bus stop. In her mind she traced the remainder of the route and considered the best spot for an ambush if she were the one planning it.

  The men from the diner weren’t as patient. Or as stealthy.

  She heard the pounding of footsteps moments after she and Tir crossed a narrow street and entered a second alley.

  “Stop. This is as good a place as any,” Tir said, sliding the machete from its sheath, its blade gleaming wickedly.

  Araña drew her knives as their attackers entered the alleyway from both ends. Three to the left. Two to the right.

  “You won’t need your weapons,” Tir said, stepping in front of her, crowding her so she was forced backward between him and the wall. “I won’t allow you to put yourself in danger needlessly.”

  His arrogance aggravated her as much as his protectiveness pleased her. “Move,” she said, pressing her knuckles into his back instead of the tip of her knife he probably deserved. “I can hold my own.”

  “I know, but in this instance, there’s no need for you to.”

  The men advanced, knives in their hands, sure of themselves and growing more so the closer they got. On some silent signal, arms went back to the left and right, then shot forward hurling blades.

  Tir blurred into motion, so fast, so smoothly efficient, that before Araña could step forward and follow his attack with one of her own, he’d knocked the thrown knives from the air and moved into the offensive.

  It was a fluid dance of man and weapon, his movements a poetry glorifying the righteous slaying of his enemies. Blood coated the sides of the buildings within seconds. It pooled, surrounding severed limbs and soaking into clothing. It painted the cracked and broken pavement and whatever trash it touched. And in the midst of the carnage, Tir stood unscathed, unbloodied.

  For an instant Araña thought she saw the air vibrating around him, recognizing his supernatural nature even if he himself didn’t remember what he was. He looked up and their eyes met. Heat and frigid cold washed through her, desire and primal fear combined. He was a ruthless warrior whose beauty held perfection as well as savagery.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  She almost obeyed without question, Erik and Matthew’s training deserting her until she had the strength to look away from Tir.

  Then instinct guided her, habit. She crouched down and quickly went through the closest man’s pockets. There was paper money, enough of it that he could have paid for a shared prostitute if that’s where the
men’s true interest lay. It was slick with blood and folded around stubs from a gaming club.

  Araña left it, though she knew Erik and Matthew would have chided her for doing so. She moved to the next man, the one who’d approached them in the diner.

  There was a paper folded into fourths in his shirt pocket. She opened it and trembled at the sight of her own face staring back at her.

  A reward was being offered to anyone who came forward with information leading to her capture, or who braved the warning that she could kill with a touch and brought her to the maze themselves. Alive. She was worthless dead.

  Tir took the paper from her and read it before crumpling it and tossing it aside. He cleaned the machete with the dead man’s knit cap then sheathed it and stood, his fingers a steel band around her arm as he forced her to her feet.

  “Let’s go,” he repeated, his voice dark with fury. “Let’s find the Were and the healer.”

  DINNER was a formal affair, silent and somber for the most part, unlike anything Rebekka had ever experienced. There were no jokes—civilized or ribald. There were certainly no raunchy retell ings of client requests or descriptions of anatomical shortcomings or abundances—the things she’d been exposed to in the human brothel she grew up in and the Were brothels she worked in.

  There were no children present, though she noted their absence because of Eston’s. Janita, the lady’s maid who’d brought fashionable clothing along with a matching necklace to the room Rebekka was in, had remained to escort her to the dining room. She’d insisted on taking Eston to be fed in the kitchen, saying The Iberá believed children should join the adults only when they proved themselves ready for the privilege.

  Surreptitiously Rebekka glanced at those gathered at the table. The women wore expensive jewelry and elegant evening dresses, but they still seemed to be shadows of their husbands or fathers or brothers. The men talked among themselves, primarily of business and news from other cities.

  Everyone deferred to the patriarch.

  Servers came and went, unobtrusively, silently seeing what needed refilling and what needed to be whisked away.

  The food was beyond imagining in its abundance and presentation. Rebekka had never known hunger, not as so many others had, but she was still nearly overwhelmed by the feast that was apparently nothing more than an ordinary meal to the Iberás.

  Despite her tense stomach, she ate. Committing each flavor, each delicious bite to memory and hoping she would be granted freedom or find a way to escape so she could look back and one day savor at least this part of the experience.

  No one left the table. Not when their dessert dishes and coffee cups where taken away, not even when the patriarch’s place was clear of dinner trappings.

  It was only when he said, “If you’ll excuse me, I think our guest would enjoy seeing the lions,” that the members of his family were dismissed. They rose, bidding the patriarch good evening before going to the suites and sections of the estate they called home.

  Rebekka noticed then, that The Iberá was seated in a regular chair. When the last of his family members had departed, the butler who’d taken the witch’s token away on a tray entered the room with the motorized wheelchair.

  Rebekka looked away, allowing the old man his pride and dignity. Prisoner she might be, but she was also a healer, and strangely indebted to the Iberás for keeping her from being captured by guardsmen and turned over to the maze, and for not surrendering her to Father Ursu.

  The hum of a motor signaled the wheelchair was in operation. Rebekka stood and looked at the patriarch again.

  “Come,” he said, and she followed, seeing him for the first time as a healer would. Seeing how his aura of command and power and wealth had hidden his frailty before.

  Beneath the expensive material of his trousers and shirt, the muscles in his legs and left arm were atrophied. As she watched, the hand resting on his lap twitched in an involuntary spasm, making her realize with a start that he hadn’t used it during dinner. It twitched again and she saw him sit straighter, as if he could will his body to cooperate, even as the fingers operating the chair controls trembled slightly.

  Pity slid through Rebekka. A name came to mind. Lou Gehrig’s disease — after a famous baseball player who’d lived and died centuries before The Last War—a cure for which had never been found.

  Despite Tomás’s earlier claim, she thought the patriarch would lead her onto the grounds and show her lions held in cages or moat-surrounded enclosures. Instead they took an elevator then traveled down a hallway to pass through a doorway leading to the same walkway along the top of the interior walls that was patrolled by private militia.

  Rebekka’s breath caught when she saw a pride of lions lounging in the area between the inner and outer walls of the estate. There were six females and a male, all magnificent. Seeing them made her heart ache as she was reminded of what had been done to Levi, and what he’d given up when she healed him.

  As if picking up on the tenor of her thoughts, The Iberá said, “Our goals aren’t so different, yours and mine. We’d both like to see an end to the maze and the red zone that spawned it.”

  Rebekka resisted the urge to refute his assumption. The red zone had always been more home to her than the area set aside for the gifted. It was a harsh, often cruel place, a decadent, vice-ridden playground for the wealthy and powerful, but it was also a sanctuary of sorts for the Weres who couldn’t live among their own kind or among humans.

  The patriarch took her silence for assent. “Did you know that the early believers of the Church were once thrown to the lions? There’s always been a cost for battling the darkness inside man.”

  He turned his head to look at her. “There’s still a war going on for the souls of those in Oakland. The maze is a symbol of that evil, and Anton, with his demon, proof of how bold and powerful God’s enemies have become.”

  Rebekka couldn’t keep her silence. “And what of the gifted? The Church might accept us in public—for political purposes—but they haven’t truly turned away from their doctrines. The early Christians looked to Exodus and spoke of not allowing a witch to live, but that edict has been expanded to mean that anyone using unnatural powers or secret arts should be put to death. Do you think I don’t know Father Ursu wouldn’t hesitate to kill me, whether I answer his questions or not?”

  “The Church is made of men,” The Iberá said. “They’d have us believe they’re infallible, but they’re not. They crave power without balance, but allowing them to have it would be a mistake. A strong, uncorrupted guard and police force diligently enforcing the law will provide that balance. As will a governing council made up of those who can both accommodate the Church and stand against it when necessary. There’s room in this city for those gifted who don’t consort with evil.”

  The patriarch leaned toward her, his eyes intense, like a hawk’s. “If Satan acts through some of them, then God has touched others. A healer should never hunger or fear for their life. They should live in comfort as a doctor or veterinarian would, and be held in high regard.”

  Below them the male lion began to roar. He was answered by a lion on the other side of the compound.

  “Come, there’s more for you to see,” the patriarch said, touching a lever and propelling the wheelchair forward along the walkway surrounding the main estate and grounds.

  They passed an area set aside for private guards to live and train in, as well as three additional lion prides in different sections of the outer estate. When they reached a building to the left of the main house, the patriarch touched a button, summoning the elevator, and they descended. “This is the veterinary facility. Tomás and his father surprised me with a lion for my birthday.”

  No expense had been spared, either on equipment or furnishings. A heavy steel door slid open and The Iberá ushered Rebekka through into a room where a huge male lion paced.

  Hunger radiated from him, and pain. He stilled, golden eyes immediately focusing on Rebekka, drawing
her to him.

  Without thinking she went, pressing calm into him as she approached, telling him without words she wanted to help him. The lion signaled his acceptance by sitting, then leaning against the front of the cage.

  He opened his mouth partially and Rebekka thought the source of his pain lay there. She reached through the opening in the bars and as soon as she touched his muzzle, knew her guess was right.

  Infection raged at the root of a canine tooth. It was already starting to perforate bone and spread to soft tissue. She concentrated on the area, calling on the lion’s immune system to attack and absorb, then drawing on like tissue to fill the pockets created by pus and bacteria. When it was done, he gave a purring rumble of appreciation before turning to feast on a deer carcass she hadn’t noticed in her hurry to get to him.

  “I envy you your gift,” the patriarch said, reminding her she wasn’t alone. “Not just to be able to heal them, but to be able to touch them.”

  He wheeled the motorized chair around, pausing at the steel door for Rebekka to join him, then pausing again as he directed her into living quarters as elegant as those in the main house. “This is kept ready for the veterinarian, though he rarely has need of it. It could be yours, and the child’s. Eston would have a better life with you than he’d have otherwise. The maid assigned to you would be yours as well. You could travel to other estates, escorted by my private guard, and be paid well to use your gift.”

  Rebekka’s hands fisted the expensive fabric of her borrowed dress. “In exchange for betraying my friends?”

  The Iberá batted the question aside with his good hand. “I’m interested only in recapturing the prisoner you claim to know nothing about or have any allegiance to.”

  Would your answer change if you knew Levi was Were and Araña branded?she wondered, but didn’t voice the question. “Why? Why is he so important?”

  “That doesn’t concern you.”