I narrowed my eyes and scrutinized the property sprawled out in front of me. The home had to be over 3000 square feet. I didn’t want to think about how much the place must have set Davis back. His consulting gig had paid him handsomely, that much was certain. But the money had not saved him from his terrible fate. Magic didn’t care if you had a nice house in the suburbs or lived on the streets.
“I want you to look around Davis’s home, go through his things and see if you can find anything that might help us fill in the details of his movements and habits.”
I nodded with understanding, but there was one big problem with this plan.
“I wonder what Mrs. Davis will think of me snooping around the property.”
“Just tell her you are here on official business, Agent Forster.”
I sighed. I guess this would be round two of me impersonating the FBI agent. I eyed the meticulously kept grounds of the dead man’s home and tried to ignore the sick sensation stirring at the pit of my stomach. I didn’t look forward to lying to a woman whose husband I had gunned down a few minutes earlier.
“Okay, here goes nothing.”
I walked up the gravel driveway leading to Davis’ opulent dwelling and steeled myself for what was to come. Judging by the snap in the breeze, it was a lot colder out here than back in Austin, but my magic threads maintained a comfortable temperature. My black combat gear once again had given way to a black suit, and my machine pistol was a holstered Glock. I was ready to play the part of an investigating FBI agent again. I could only hope that this time would go more smoothly.
Octurna’s whispering voice inside my head kept me company while I trekked toward the home’s front entrance. “Your reunion with the lovely Keira went pretty well. Looks like she wants to join our crusade.”
“I guess so,” I said with little enthusiasm, not eager to discuss my relationship with the reporter. At least not with Octurna.
“What are your thoughts?”
“Does it matter?” I asked.
“I value your judgement, Slayer. Can we trust her?”
My eyebrows ticked upward, taken aback by the question. “What are you saying? You think the Cabal compromised her?”
“It is a reasonable concern.”
I frowned. I hadn’t even considered the possibility.
“Months have gone by since the last time you saw her. Plenty of time for the Shadow Cabal to have tracked down the journalist who got away and sink their claws into her.”
“You can’t be serious,” I said. “She wants to help us, and my gut says that she’s on the level.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s a trap…”
“Are you suggesting the Cabal set her up to be at the Austin precinct?”
“I would not rule it out.”
I shook my head stubbornly. “That’s impossible.”
“Is it, now?”
“You're paranoid, Octurna.”
“Paranoia has kept me alive for the last century. The Shadow Cabal might well have anticipated our involvement in this case. Remember, our enemies are not mortal men but some of the most powerful mages in the world.”
I mulled this over for a beat. Octurna made a good argument, but I had looked deep into Keira’s eyes. Recognized her fear and sensed her deep-seated need to fight back. I’d felt the same way after the succubus wiped out my team. You couldn’t fake that kind of pain. Besides…
“I saved her life. She wouldn’t turn on me.”
“I thought the same of Diamonique, and it nearly destroyed us. If you pursue this relationship, I advise you proceed with caution.”
I gritted my teeth. Octurna’s attitude was getting to me. “Listen, I know you don’t trust anyone after what happened with Diamonique—”
“I trust you, Jason.”
That made me pause. “Thanks.”
“I understand you care for this woman. You want to keep her safe. But your compassion is a weakness the Cabal can use against you.”
I chose not to debate Octurna on the matter. I knew she was really talking about herself. Her love—her obsession—with Diamonique had nearly brought an end to our war before it got started.
“I’m about to look in the eyes of a woman whose husband I just killed. So let’s drop this for now, okay?”
I sensed Octurna biting back a curt response, and then she said, “Good luck, Slayer.”
I would need it.
The sorceress grew silent in my head. We both knew this conversation was far from over, but this wasn't the time or the place. It required a great deal of magical energy for Octurna to communicate with me while I was in the real world. That she had tapped into her powers to do so suggested she was deeply concerned about Keira.
As I moved toward the house, I wondered if she might be right. Our enemies would exploit any chink in our armor. Even if Keira’s presence at the Austin police precinct wasn’t part of some secret Cabal plan to destroy us, it didn’t mean they couldn’t get to her down the line. Letting Keira into my world might put all of us in danger.
I cursed Octurna for planting these dark seeds of doubt inside me.
I reached the house’s front entrance and put an end to my swirling thoughts. Time to focus on the job. I took a deep breath and steeled myself for what lay ahead. It was late at night, almost ten o’clock, and I wondered if Mrs. Davis would even answer the doorbell. Only one way to find out.
I was about to ring the buzzer when I noticed that the front door was already open a crack.
I paused. This gated community appeared to be super-safe, but I doubted that these people left their doors open late at night. My neck prickled as I spotted the fallen pizza box in front of the door. It looked like someone had stepped on it after dropping the box on the floor.
What the hell had happened here?
I drew the Glock and nudged the door open. It swung backward with a loud creak, amplified by the stillness of the night.
A beat later, I was inside the house’s spacious foyer. I advanced into the darkness, weapon up, my enhanced senses exploring the shadows.
After a few feet, the foyer widened into a large living room. The furniture was draped in white sheets, as if someone expected the house to be closed up for a while. There was no sign of Mrs. Davis, but the fractal tattoos etched across my body flared, sensing the presence of black magic.
Not good. Not good at all.
I edged into the quiet home, and that’s when I realized the furniture was not, in fact, covered in protective sheets. Cobwebs coated every surface. Thick strands of the silky material concealed most of the furniture in the living room. I felt like I’d taken a wrong turn and ended up in some elaborate Halloween maze. Giant cobwebs draped over the big screen TV, the couch, armchairs, and the coffee table. I touched the webbing and realized it wasn’t fake. The material had the gossamer consistency and stickiness of a real spider web.
Upon closer inspection, I spotted a number of objects trapped in the web. The cocooned items appeared to be human bones.
I swallowed hard. This was bad news. If I was too late to save Mrs. Davis…
And then a scream pierced the silence. The pitiful cry of terror came from the back of the property.
I crossed the living room, reached the large sliding door, and leapt onto the deck. I stepped up to the wooden railing and surveyed the yard in the pale moonlight. More screams echoed through the night. They originated from the large pool which dominated the back of the house.
Horror welled up in me as I spotted the human figure trapped inside the giant web that spanned the full length and width of the swimming pool. His desperate cries for help reverberated in the night while the moonlight made the water shimmer underneath the strands of silk.
One look at his red-and-blue uniform told me everything I needed to know. I had found the pizza delivery boy.
My mouth felt dry as my heart hammered against my chest. What sort of creature could spin a web this large? I was about to get my answer.
; A shadow flickered toward the pool, moving with the speed of a phantom. I made out four spindly spider legs that supported an elongated, full-breasted female torso. Similar to a centaur, the upper body, arms and head were human and belonged to a beautiful naked woman.
And that wasn’t even the weirdest part. I knew her.
I recognized her long blonde hair from the image Octurna had shown me of Mrs. Bethany Davis. Her eyes were too large for her face and glittered with inhuman malice. She regarded the man in the web without emotion. The creature eased into the web and hovered above the pizza delivery boy, whose features froze in terror.
Her full lips split into a smile as she shoved her large, perfectly shaped breasts into the pizza boy’s face. It was like a parody of every cliched porno featuring a delivery boy and a bored housewife. I wasn’t sure if she was going to eat him or mount him.
Fucking hell, she might do both.
Either way, if the bones in the living room were any indicator, this encounter wouldn’t end well for the hapless dude in the web.
I advanced toward the pool and drew my rune-engraved machine pistol. Almost instantly, the four-legged spider creature grew still, sensing my presence. Spider-lady pivoted toward me. The hairy black spider legs blended with the night, and for a surreal beat, her pale torso appeared to hover in midair like a disembodied spirit. My finger whitened on the trigger of my magical machine pistol.
The young man tangled at the heart of the web had spotted me, too.
“Help, please help, for God’s sake!”
The shrill cries threw me off. I couldn’t blame the poor kid for being panicked. Had our roles been reversed, my screams would have rivaled his. I represented his first sign of hope and only chance of escape. But I didn’t need any distractions.
“Working on it,” I called back. “Now shut up.”
A wet sound cut through the night, and something silvery streaked in my direction. An instant later, a white sticky substance enveloped me, and I realized the creature had just blasted me with its webbing. I tried to free myself, but I was hopelessly trapped.
A mighty yank pulled me off my feet. Spider-woman was reeling me in like a hooked fish.
Time to show her I wasn’t like the prey she was accustomed to.
I released the twin blades of my gauntlet. Razor-sharp silver reflected the moonlight as the blades arced toward the strand of webbing and sliced it in two. Free again, I circled the pool web, machine pistol leveled at the Widow Davis.
Oh shit, I got it now. She was literally a black widow spider. The Shadow Cabal had a sick sense of humor.
The monster regarded me with insectile eyes, but something made me pause before pulling the trigger. Maybe I was thinking about the Bethany Davis Octurna had shown me, a smiling blonde with a baby on her hip. That woman had seemed… kind. She didn’t deserve this—even less so than her philandering husband.
I spoke then, hoping to reach some part of the creature that was still human.
“Mrs. Davis, step away from the boy. You don’t want to do this.”
She regarded me icily and spoke, her voice weirdly distorted. “You men are all the same. You take what you want, when you want, and don’t give any thought to who ends up getting hurt.”
The spider-hybrid's voice shook with rage. She was clearly talking about her husband’s betrayal.
I wondered if Mrs. Davis had still been human when the news of his infidelity had reached her, along with the fact that he was the prime suspect in a murder. Had the stress of these revelations triggered this horrific transformation?
“Who are you? What are you doing in my house?” she continued. “Did you come here hoping to seduce a lonely housewife while your own wife waits up all night for your return?”
A desperate, pitiful tone had entered her voice. Her pain got to me, and I lowered my machine pistol.
“What are you doing, Slayer?” Octurna’s voice piped up in my brain.
“Listen to her. She’s a victim.”
“Tell that to the men she killed. Mrs. Davis is already dead. And so will you be, unless you finish this now.”
Octurna was right. I should end this conflict while I still held the upper hand. Going by the bone collection I had stumbled upon back in the house, Mrs. Davis had murdered several innocent people. She was a monster—a bloodthirsty predator. But she wasn’t in control of her mental faculties, as much a victim as the poor souls whose remains hung suspended in the cobwebs.
A horrible thought occurred to me. “Mrs. Davis, where’s your kid?”
She shook her head from side to side. “My sister’s house. I wanted…I was so hungry. I sent my daughter away…”
I sagged with relief as Mrs. Davis spoke again. “I tried to be a good wife. Tried to love my husband. But it wasn’t enough. It’s never enough.”
Anger edged back into her trembling voice, and I sensed a new attack was imminent. Her lips parted, and I spied a pair of curved black fangs. A greenish substance dripped from them. The creature sprang toward me, its lethal intention clear. Even though the dragon blood gave me a heightened tolerance to poison, I wasn’t all too eager to find out if I was immune to the effects of her venom.
Instincts taking over, I hurled myself out of the path of the beast. As I cut through the air, I twisted my wrist and activated my energy shield. Mr. Davis slammed face first into the wall of energy and howled with agony as its magic repelled her in an explosion of crackling lightning.
The shield dissolved as I rolled across the ground and catapulted back to my feet. The spider reeled but quickly recovered its equilibrium, the monster’s human features distorted with blind rage.
“I won’t let you hurt anyone ever again!” Mrs. Davis hissed.
Was she confusing me with her husband, or just passing collective judgment over the male of the species? Between Octurna’s earlier comments and spider-lady’s misandry, I was starting to feel more than a little dunked upon.
Still, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her even though she was trying to kill me. I wanted to save Mrs. Davis. But the beast raging inside her had no desire of being saved. It was hungry and wanted to kill.
Mrs. Davis spat another gob of webbing at me from her spinerette. The silver projectile was the size of a pool ball and slammed into my face with a wet splat. Blinded, the impact of the concentrated ball of webbing hurtled me toward the pool. One moment, I stood at the edge of the pool, madly wind-milling my arms. The next I was lying face first in the giant web. The pizza delivery kid was freaking out at seeing his one chance of salvation falling into the same trap that held him.
We were both fucked now.
The sticky web clung to me like a second skin. Despite my enhanced strength, I found it impossible to break free. From the corner of my eye, I spotted movement. Heard the scuttling of chitinous legs. Any second now, she would be upon me, and I would feel those long black fangs sinking into my flesh.
No!
The dual knives of my gauntlet shot out. My broken wrist had been magically healed, but it was still tender as I tried to angle my hand for the blades to cut the web. I gritted my teeth and against the pain. And then my right hand was free.
The spider creature picked up its pace, sensing that its prey was trying to escape.
I roared with anger as I pulled at the web. I felt the filaments giving way, and my weight pulled me into the water below. I dropped to the bottom of the pool like a stone, strands of webbing sticking to every part of my body. Even though I sensed the weight of the water, my clothes remained dry, the magic of my threads conjuring a protective air bubble around me. I had first experienced this effect back in the Philippines when I had been searching for Diamonique’s remains—a quest which had required a fair bit of underwater diving.
I fought to reach the surface, but the webs were worse than a crust of ice. I couldn’t find my way out. I swam toward the deep end, hoping to find an exit. A loud splash cut through the pool as the monster joined me. The hybrid had thrown ca
ution to the wind and was pursuing me toward the bottom of the pool. She was with surprising grace, using her many limbs to glide through the water.
I snarled, all feelings of empathy giving way to my survival instincts.
The twin blades of my gauntlet exploded toward the incoming creature. They found soft flesh and pierced the monster’s throat before it could drive its poisonous fangs into me. Blood clouded the pool, turning the water a sickly black.
A dying beast can be even more dangerous during its final moments. With that in mind, I withdrew the blades and kicked away from the monster. I pushed myself off the nearest wall and shot toward the surface. The web was waiting for me, but I was ready. The two knives sliced through the silky mass. Moments later, my head exploded from the water, and I sucked in deep gulps of air.
With the help of my gauntlet, I fought my way through the webbing. Less than a minute later, I pulled myself out of the pool. I found myself laughing, exhilarated to be victorious and alive.
The pizza delivery boy’s panicky voice reminded me I wasn’t alone. “Is she dead? Did you kill that monster? Please, don’t leave—”
His voice broke off as the surface of the pool stirred and the spider woman appeared. An ugly gash split her neck. She desperately pressed her hands down on the wound to stem the blood flow while her spindly limbs cut through the water. I don’t know how the hybrid found the strength to pull herself out of the pool while she hemorrhaged. Mrs. Bethany Davis rose to her full height, her torso bobbing unsteadily. The insectile eyes were incapable of showing emotion, but I didn’t need to read her expression to know that she was dying and desperate. She let out a pitiful croak, lunged at me one last time, and collapsed in a lifeless heap less than two feet away.
I hovered over the dead spider monster. If Octurna expected a monster skull as a trophy from this latest adventure, she had another thing coming. Mrs. Davis had suffered enough.
I stared at the lifeless hybrid. Besides, experience had taught me what would come next. I didn’t have to wait for long.
Shadow Plague Page 5