by Jory Strong
The raven jumped to the windowsill. It cocked its head, listening for the sound of approaching humans. Hearing none, it soared across the room to perch on the cradle.
Araña saw it then, why the man was so sure the child wasn’t his. Instead of pale skin and silver-blond hair, the infant was dark, its hair and eyes black.
Its mouth opened and closed in a cry too weak to hear. Its tiny hands were balled into fists as if it fought to live even as the raspy sound of its faint breath marked the struggle.
The raven opened its beak and emitted a harsh cry, the sound of it carrying a word buried deep inside, a name. Araña.
She felt herself taking form, emerging from the raven’s mouth as a spider, sliding downward toward the baby on a fine silken thread.
The infant stilled the moment she touched its skin. Its death the harbinger of her birth.
She felt the flutter of its soul departing as in spider form she crawled into the baby’s open mouth and took up residence in a shell of flesh that wasn’t her own.
There was the hard kick of a heartbeat returning. The gasp of lungs filling. And then a cry announcing her arrival as the human soul hadn’t had the strength to do.
No! Araña screamed silently, denial filling her, driving her out of the scene. Breaking her contact with it as though she’d been riding the thread of her own life in the same way she’d done hundreds of others.
For a shimmering instant she was without true form, as she always had been in the spider’s place, but then the physical shell she still wanted to believe was her own gathered around her, shocking her.
Instinctively she sought the mark with her thoughts, and her horror deepened when she felt her cells start to break up—as if they’d re-form into a spider in the same way the demon Abijah became the scorpion.
“No!” she shouted, and her voice joined the whispering stream around her, drawing her attention away from the whirlpool turmoil of her own emotions and to the tapestry in front of her. It extended for as far as she could see, its detail sharper, its texture richer than the carpeted pattern she’d glimpsed the first time she willingly sought this place.
“Your time here is finite,” a voice behind her said. “The candles in the other world burn down rapidly.”
Araña whirled to find a woman standing there in the robes of a desert dweller, the fabric concealing all but a dark slash of face and eyes as black as Araña’s own. “Who are you?”
Nineteen
THE woman tugged at the material covering her head, pulling it away to reveal features nearly identical to Araña’s, save for the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and the spidery threads of gray through her black hair.
“I am the one who first gave you life, only to witness your being slain by the god’s warriors, your soul cast back into the fire until a Raven could find the name forged for you, and you could be reborn—not as you once were, but to serve our kind in a different manner.”
“No,” Araña said, denying the woman’s words. She’d accepted the mark, accepted that it tainted her soul by turning her into a tool for the demon, but this—
“No.” She couldn’t be a demon.
“It doesn’t matter whether you believe or not. Your life serves us. You live bound to human flesh by the will of The Prince.”
Ice slid through Araña’s veins at the mention of the name, but also a thin, desperate sliver of hope. How often had she felt the lash of a cane against her back and heard the fervent prayers accompanying it in an effort to drive out the taint placed on her soul by the Prince of Lies, the Great Deceiver? She had no reason to trust the being standing in front of her, no reason to think the demon’s words or appearance were truth.
Araña forced her mind closed to everything but the purpose that had made her seek out the Wainwright witch and freely swallow poison so she could enter this place. “Will you teach me how to use my gift?” My curse.
The demon pulled the folds of material back in place, leaving only the thin strip of flesh and dark eyes revealed. “I will give you the knowledge you need to possess. Come. Not much time remains.”
She turned and walked alongside the tapestry. Araña followed, realizing as she did so that she could sense the passage of time vividly now. They were moving from the past into the present, the babble of indecipherable voices growing louder with each step.
The demon stopped in front of a section of the weave. And somehow, Araña knew if she could find her own soul thread and touch it, she would see herself lying in the center of the witch’s pentacle with the Wainwright matriarch standing guard. She looked ahead, into the future, and the patterns shifted subtly, then shifted again, as if despite what might be done in this place, life could not be so easily controlled.
“Until you are freed from the shackle of human flesh and able to exist in a noncorporeal form,” the demon said, “you won’t enter this place again or see the complete weave of lives. Your gift will remain limited.”
Training and the hardships she’d endured growing up kept Araña from reacting to the comment, from revealing she’d seen this tapestry before, as a carpet sweeping out in front of her.
The demon’s hand lifted to hover just in front of it. “Do you hear the whisper of their true names?”
“I hear a rushing stream.”
“Choose a thread and focus on it, but don’t allow yourself to touch it mentally.”
Araña felt a trickle of sweat down her back. A lifetime of resistance paralyzed her. Acid burned her throat at the thought of destroying a life.
She swallowed and focused on an orange-green thread with hints of brown. It was a struggle not to merge into it. But slowly the babble of voices faded away, leaving only one, an unknown man’s name. It repeated itself over and over again, as if death would come if it ever ceased being spoken.
Araña pulled away from it mentally and turned toward the demon. “How can I find a particular soul if I can’t see the pattern?”
“Your reach is short unless you travel deeper and deeper into the heart of the flame. Physical proximity is compounded by the ties those souls have to others.”
The answer sickened Araña, but it also explained why she’d so often seen the damage she wrought. Those who were close to her would always be at risk if she couldn’t control the gift. “And if I want to change a pattern?”
“Not all of them can be changed. Some are held in place by powers other than ours, just as some threads can’t be seen or, if seen, can’t be touched. To predict how a single change will affect an entire pattern takes centuries of study by those dedicated to it. In your human life span, without the ability to enter this place as you are now, you will never be able to accomplish it. The candles marking your time here have almost burned out. Tell me which weave you wish to alter and I will use it in teaching you.”
Araña’s stomach muscles tightened hard enough to cramp. Ruthless fingers squeezed her heart. She was terrified that telling the demon would lead to something worse for Levi or Rebekka. But there was no real choice. And so she revealed what she’d done when she entered the vision place in an effort to help Rebekka.
“To change his fate you must start at the outcome you wish to undo and work backward, searching through all the strands and picking the one which will divert the course of the Were’s life if it’s touched to his. It’s a complex task and your time is short—as it will always be. Your human body will draw you back to it with pain.”
The demon stepped forward, into the future, and pointed, saying, “Here is the Were’s thread.”
Araña recognized it and understood by its abrupt end that she was looking at the instant of Levi’s death. Another thread ended at the same time, the black-and-gray of the dark-haired stranger tasered along with Levi.
Near them, entangled but not ending, were two threads. The guardsmen.
Jurgen and the stranger.
She focused on them one at a time. The red-mottled-with-black strand belonged to the stranger. Salim.
; The purple-twisted-with-blue belonged to the man she’d vowed to kill. Jurgen.
Araña followed Levi’s strand backward, into the past, and found her own at the moment where he and Rebekka had been waiting for her in the woods.
Her thread called to her like a living flame, and it was almost impossible to resist merging with it. She wanted to follow it to the place it originated. To see for herself that the scene following the spider’s birth dream of fire was real, and not a demon trick, a lie meant to turn her into a more willing tool.
Instead she went forward. She saw the blue-black of Tir’s at the place she’d seen him in her vision, then again at the ambush site.
His life thread disappeared and reappeared only when it was alongside hers, often so close it bled into the hues of her flame-colored thread. Some are held in place by powers other than ours, just as some threads can’t be seen or, if seen, can’t be touched. She thought Tir’s supernatural nature was the reason his was so elusive.
Araña moved forward, to the moment where she and Tir and Levi were at the healer’s house. Tir’s thread remained hidden beyond that, what happened after he left to recover the Constellation a mystery.
But in the future she saw how Jurgen’s soul strand paralleled the black-haired stranger who’d died with Levi, crossing it once before both the stranger’s and Levi’s threads ended.
She found the flame of her thread on the tapestry. It didn’t intersect with Levi’s again. Or wouldn’t unless she altered the pattern. And altering the pattern was what she intended, that and killing Jurgen.
Araña held a part of herself back as she mentally touched the gold-brown of Levi’s soul. He was at the brothel door, waiting or leaving or simply standing guard, it didn’t matter.
She reached out her hand to physically touch the flame color of her own strand. The demon said, “With that choice you will return to your flesh prison without knowing what changes you wrought.”
“Will I encounter Levi at this place in the future?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’ll be enough,” Araña said, trusting in the outcome she’d accomplish with her knives far more than in the demon standing next to her or the gift that had always been a curse.
She altered the future by touching her life to Levi’s. There was only the briefest impression. Early dusk. Levi opening the brothel door into the alleyway. A soiled newspaper tumbling over her foot. And then she felt a shock of joy as name and spirit and body fused together, rousing her as the five candles on the floor around her guttered and went out.
SHE was back. Tir felt the turmoil of Araña’s emotions as soon as he reached the rubble-free ground marking the beginnings of the healer’s yard.
Relief swept into him that she’d returned safely, followed by heat, lust, a tide of feelings that began and ended with her, and had since the moment she first breached his mental shields to invade his dreams.
The promise of freedom made every sensation all the headier. His cock throbbed, thick and full from the knowledge he was only steps away from her.
He’d take her as soon as he got inside. Then take her again before they left for the bookseller’s shop.
It was a few hours less than a day since he’d been with her last, but it was too long. He was anxious to be inside her, to have her beneath him, thighs splayed, midnight black eyes heated in sensuous welcome.
He jogged the last few feet and took the stairs in a leap, only to halt at the front door and remember how he’d prowled the house earlier when he found her missing. How her absence had given birth to something dark and primitive, something that demanded she be punished for defying him when he’d ordered her to remain in the house until he returned.
She was mortal. Human. Vulnerable.
A blink and she could be gone from his life forever. With his blood and his vigilance, she could remain by his side for eternity.
Possessiveness and desire were a liquid-fire heat pouring into his bloodstream and pooling in his testicles, making his penis pulse so violently a drop of arousal escaped its tip.
His mind flashed back to the child and the pregnant woman at L’Antiquaire, only it was Araña’s face overlaid onto the stranger’s and onto the little girl’s. He wanted a child with her in the future. When he was free, his need for vengeance satisfied.
Tir unlocked the door and entered the house. She’d cleaned since returning. The scent of wood soap and fresh air made him think of the Constellation.
She’d showered. Moments earlier. He smelled shampoo and felt the fine hint of mist against his skin.
He didn’t call out. She knew he was back. He sensed it in her, but instead of challenge or sexual invitation, it was confusion, distress, the longing for comfort that assailed him.
Tir stripped the shirt off as he crossed the tiny living room and went into the bedroom. He nearly doubled over at the sight of her standing naked in front of a mirror secured to the wall.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, meeting her gaze, no longer able to bear the confinement of trousers when his cock ached unmercifully.
He kicked off his shoes. The machete fell to the floor as he crossed to her. As did his pants. “I went to the witch’s house,” she said, their eyes locking in the mirror. The desire to punish her for worrying him returned. But the need to touch her, to hold her in his arms and feel the press of her skin to his, overrode it.
Tir’s hands went to her waist, then up, to cover her breasts. The hitch of her breath inflamed him further. The way she melted into him very nearly had him burying his face against her neck and finding her opening with his cock.
“You should have waited for me to accompany you.”
“I couldn’t.”
His fingers tightened on her nipples in rebuttal. She argued with the press and rub of her buttocks against his hardened shaft, by covering his hands with hers. “What happened?” he asked, no longer able to resist kissing her neck, her shoulder, brushing his lips over the spider that appeared like a deadly pet, also seeking his attention.
She shuddered. Her distress spiked. Her eyes became haunted.
“Tell me,” he said, letting her feel the hint of teeth, a silent promise he wouldn’t let her evade his question as he had the last time they were together.
“Do you think it’s possible I’m a demon?”
Surprise allowed the laugh to escape. That was his only excuse.
She stiffened in his arms, but her hope wiped away any affront his reaction might have warranted. In the mirror her gaze flicked to the hated collar around his neck then met his again. “You knew Levi was Were and Rebekka one of the human gifted after encountering them at the ambush site,” she said.
His lips went to her ear. He traced the delicate outline of it before sliding his tongue in and out of the sensitive canal.
She arched, pushing hardened nipples against his palms and smooth buttocks against his groin. The longing for comfort he’d felt in her earlier melted into the need to feel him inside her, the desire to be so closely entwined it would be difficult to tell where one of them ended and the other began.
Tir moaned, wanting the same thing, nearly yielding to the demands of his body and hers. “You’re human. Fully human.”
He had never thought the words would give him such satisfaction. But at the moment he found her mortality arousing, her fragile, feminine form unbearably pleasing.
“Then how do you explain the mark?”
He shrugged. “A geis perhaps. Or a curse. Now tell me why you think you’re a demon.”
Araña shivered; her cunt clenched and nipples ached. The birth dream seemed just that—a dream, an illusion so far removed from reality it no longer mattered.
Lies built on truths, especially hidden ones, were more powerful than those formed without basis. Looking back on it, she wondered if perhaps a part of her had always known the man and woman raising her weren’t truly her parents, despite what she called them.
No matter what she did and how hard she tr
ied to be what they wanted, there’d been underlying coldness and suspicion, a reserving of love. It had been easy to attribute it to the demon mark, but now…
If it lives, I won’t claim or raise it.
If it lives, I’ll see that it’s raised by those who won’t spoil it by sparing the rod, as happened with the mother.
That much of what she’d seen in the vision place she believed. Her back bore the evidence of it. And Tir’s suggestion of a geis made her think of her birth father’s curse. Let Satan take the child the same as he claimed the mother giving birth to it.
How could this not be her body? She knew every inch of it, its strengths and weaknesses, what it was capable of doing, of enduring, its craving for touch—for Tir— hercraving.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. She’d accomplished what she set out to do when she went to the witch’s house.
Tir’s fingers claimed her nipples again in a punishing grip. Her cunt wept from it, wept with the need to have him inside her, and had since the moment he stepped through the front door.
“I already intend to punish you for leaving when I told you to remain here until I returned,” he said, sending erotic fear whipping through her. “Do you want to make it worse?”
Lust coiled in her belly, a dark need she wouldn’t have thought possible, given the scars marking her back. “The witch opened a gateway to the place the visions take me. When I entered it I saw… my own birth. I was the spider, a demon taking possession of a human body, a newborn child’s body. I felt her die as soon as I touched her. I—”
“Have no reason to trust a witch,” Tir said, his hand sweeping downward, over her belly to cup her mound.
His fingers delved into her slit. His palm rubbed over her stiffened clit. “Does it feel as though this body belongs to another?”
“No,” she said on a moan, grinding against him, the muscles of her sheath clenching hungrily on him. “No.”
In the mirror his face became taut, his eyes nearly as dark as hers. His mouth found the topmost scar on her back and his tongue traced its length, sending a lash of ecstasy to the soles of her feet. “Would a demon allow itself to be punished so severely?”