Spider-Touched (2 page)

“Where’s the spider?” Erik asked, taking her hand before she could answer him and continuing to hold it longer than necessary after he’d stepped onto the dock, the gesture telling her some part of him was already braced for his own death.

“On my shoulder,” she said, knowing without conscious thought where the demon mark rested, four of its legs streaking downward to touch her collarbone, its body so much a part of hers there was no change in the smooth texture of her skin—brown yielding to the solid black of the spider shape then becoming brown again.

She never felt the demon mark move, could only guess at the reasons it positioned itself where it did. But it was always present, as deadly to others as her flame-trapped visions were.

Matthew followed them onto the wooden dock. Araña resisted the urge to ask how far they had to go before they reached the healer. Their destination mattered only in that it offered them a place of safety and rest.

The pier was crowded with fishing boats and a few houseboats. She used the silence as they traveled its length to study her surroundings, to notice those who took an interest in them.

When they neared the small concrete building at the dock’s end, Erik murmured, “Camera. On the lamppost.”

She glanced surreptitiously at it, keeping her head ducked.

“You two keep walking while I pay for the slip,” Matthew said. “By the time they identify any of us—if it’s even possible—we’ll be long gone from Oakland.”

“Let me pay the fee,” Araña said, misgiving filling her, the framed “Wanted” pictures on the wall of Erik and Matthew’s bedroom crowding her mind, tightening the knots in her stomach.

Matthew shook his head. “If the camera is there for any reason other than scaring people into good behavior, then there will be others. For all we know the dock attendant wore one and took our pictures when he pulled us in. The technology existed well before The Last War. We’re safe enough. It’s been a long time since Erik and I were here.”

Araña had no choice but to follow Matthew’s dictates. No reason to dispute his logic. She and Erik kept going as he detoured to pay for the slip. They stopped only when they were beyond the lamppost and the camera.

She longed to take Erik’s hand in hers—the contact too brief when she helped him from the boat. She ached to turn into him, to wrap her arms around him and let the hot wash of tears escape to wet his neck as she told him how much he meant to her, how much she loved him. How he was father and older brother, best friend and confidant, irreplaceable and unequal in her life—even though she loved Matthew, too.

But she didn’t dare press her skin to his. The demon mark had killed for the first time when she was five and a stranger had grabbed her. It had killed again when she was sixteen and thought she was in love. She wouldn’t risk losing Erik that way, even though she ached to be held close and feel the brush of his lips and the soothing stroke of his hand, the rub of his cheek against hers in comfort offered and received.

Be strong, she told herself. Here in this city, that’s what Erik and Matthew needed from her.

As they left the dock area, Araña’s hands settled near the hilts of the knives she wore in inconspicuous sheaths sewn into the dark fabric of her pants. A gun would have made her feel safer, but they’d left them locked on the boat with the longer knives.

Along the coast and canals, in the settlements without enough wealth to pay for more than a few policemen, an open display of weapons was viewed as a wise precaution for avoiding trouble. The larger cities were different.

There they were viewed as a threat to society. People remembered that after the plague ran its course and the supernaturals revealed their presence, anarchy reigned for long years and the streets filled with violence and fear.

Eventually the armed services and guardsmen brought order and harsher gun laws. There was no way to ban them, not when any abandoned and unclaimed building was fair game for salvage. But obtaining ammunition was difficult and expensive, and the penalty for using a gun without just cause was death.

Araña’s hands curled around the hilts of her knives in an unconscious search for security as Erik’s breath grew labored with each step, until finally he said, “We can separate. It’s still early enough for the buses to run. I can take one and wait for the two of you just inside the area set aside for the gifted.”

“No,” Matthew said. “You and I stay together. Araña can—”

“No.” Her stomach clenched on the thought of not being with them. “I don’t want to be separated from you and Erik.”

“Then we stay together,” Matthew said, one hand leaving its position near his knife to curl around Erik’s arm in unprotested assistance. “We’ll turn up ahead.”

Already the bustle of the docks had faded and the reclamation of buildings slowed. Restored houses with iron bars and fortified doors stood next to burned-out buildings and rubble. If there were children present, they played inside or elsewhere.

They turned at the corner, their progress slowing with each block until Araña feared Matthew would need to carry Erik the remaining distance to the bus stop. Relief filled her when they got to a street where gaily dressed people hurried to their destinations and cars carrying the rich drove by.

Araña glanced upward. Despite the slowness of their progress, the sun slid relentlessly through the sky. They’d have to find shelter, either with the healer or at an inn. She didn’t think there would be enough time to get back to the boat by nightfall.

An old woman hunched with age waited at the bus stop, her hand on the arm of a pregnant girl no older than sixteen or seventeen. Both were dressed in black and adorned with amulets.

Witches,
Araña thought, the vision rising up to encase her in nightmare ice when the old woman’s face lifted and Araña saw in reality what she’d seen ten years earlier in her vision. Sightless, cataract-covered eyes seemed to stare directly at her, finding the taint on her soul before shifting to where the spidery demon mark hid beneath her clothes.

Matthew’s hand gripped the hilt of his knife when the milky-white gaze moved unerringly to his face then Erik’s. Erik touched Matthew’s arm lightly and spoke to the witch. “Do you know where we can find a healer?”

“Your stop is the last one. It’s close to the red zone.”

The sound of a diesel engine drew Araña’s attention away from the witch. She’d taken the lookout position automatically while Matthew and Erik stood so it would be difficult for cars traveling along the road to see their faces. With a subtle hand signal she told them the vehicle approaching carried guardsmen.

She forced herself to appear relaxed as the brown and gray jeep with the machine gun mounted at the back slowed to a crawl near the bus stop. All three of the guardsmen were young, not much older than her.

Their body language marked them as the rich, younger sons of the elite, as did the way they undressed her with their eyes. Wolf whistles and lewd comments assaulted her as they passed. A block beyond the bus stop they did a U-turn and slowed again, but this time they kept going after they passed.

The bus came into view. It was old, something cobbled together from salvaged parts, but it was a welcome sight.

A jeep carrying guardsmen passed the bus stop coming from the other direction. An older, grizzled man drove while two others sat in the back, arms resting on rifles as their eyes scanned the streets. Their attention lingered on Matthew and Erik, or on the witches—she couldn’t tell which before they sped away.

Her eyes met Matthew’s. A small tilt of his head was enough to convey his intention to get on the bus as it came to a groaning stop.

Matthew and Erik climbed onto it first. Erik kept moving while Matthew stopped to exchange words with the driver about the fees. He paid for the three of them then followed Erik to the back.

The witches climbed on board next, also paying in cash. They took seats toward the front. Araña scanned the road one last time for trouble before boarding.

“You fear your gift,” the old witch whispered as she passed. “It’s a thing of great power. Come to me and I’ll teach you how to use it.”

Araña kept going, refusing to acknowledge either the gift or the offer. The bus lurched forward and picked up speed. She hurried past a mother younger than she was, who already had two children.

Erik and Matthew sat near the rear exit. Araña took a seat across the aisle from them so she could look out the window on the driver’s side.

They rode in silence. Each of them tense, lost in private thoughts.

Blocks later the bus slowed to a stop. The woman with the children stood and hefted the toddler to her hip before disembarking. The infant in a sling on her chest woke and began crying as the bus pulled away.

Outside, each new neighborhood looked poorer than the last. By the way the houses were positioned, new ones built alongside salvaged ones, Araña guessed the families claiming them were related or joined together for their common safety.

Laundry fluttered on lines. Children screamed in play as they chased one another and were chased in turn by dogs big enough to protect them if necessary.

She knew the instant the bus entered the area set aside for humans who were different, gifted—or damned, as some believed. The houses were marked with symbols, and the distance between them grew, affording privacy. Some of the sigils were familiar; some she’d seen only in Erik’s books.

The bus slowed to another stop, and the witches got out just as a long-bodied vehicle carrying guardsmen passed, going in the opposite direction. Araña shifted in her seat so she could look out through the back window at the truck’s occupants.

Fear soured her stomach. She thought it possible she’d seen them earlier, but she couldn’t be sure, just as she couldn’t know whether they patrolled a set route or if they were trying to get a glimpse of Matthew and Erik.

Her palms glided over the sheaths containing the knives, and she gained a measure of comfort from the feel of the blades. “We get off still?”

Matthew nodded. “We can make it to the red zone if necessary.”

“It’s a safety zone?”

Matthew snorted. “It’s where the rich go to play without any worry about breaking laws. And because of it, it’s also where the vice lords and black magic practitioners live without fear of being arrested. It’s a death trap for anyone who doesn’t know how to take care of themselves.”

Erik’s soft laugh brought a smile to Araña’s heart along with a stab of pain. “The same could be said of the places we’ve called home for the last twenty years. The biggest difference is the rich don’t come to play with us.”

“True enough,” Matthew said, rising from his seat even as the bus driver announced the last stop on the route.

They stepped off the bus onto a deserted street. The houses for as far as the eye could see were nothing but rubble, with yards full of weeds and burned-out cars.

Uneasiness filled Araña, a terrible certainty that the witch had betrayed them with her answer.
Your stop is the last one. It’s close to the red zone.

“Which way?” she asked, but the drone of an engine coming toward them made the choice an easy one. Instinctively they headed toward the nearest cluster of buildings and took cover.

Matthew and Erik freed their knives. Araña did the same, her heart skipping into a too-fast race when the long-bodied guardsmen’s vehicle that had passed only moments earlier jumped the curb and stopped.

Seven men got out, six of them young. The seventh was grizzled, old enough to recognize Matthew and Erik from the days they’d pirated in the waters near Oakland.

He directed three of the men to go across the street, then pointed at the row of destroyed and ruined houses where Araña crouched next to Erik, his voice carrying across the distance. “They had to have gotten out at this bus stop. Fan out. We take the men dead or alive. Either way we can claim the bounty on them.”

“And the girl?” a pale redhead asked.

“Probably a piece of diseased boat trash. Take your chances if you want to. But don’t leave her alive when you’re done with her.”

“Give me some credit, Sarge. I’m not that sloppy.”

Araña’s hands tightened on the knife hilts. She could kill. She’d been forced to do it before.

“If you get a chance, separate from us and make a run for it,” Erik whispered, his breathing already strained from the sprint to shelter. He shifted his knives into one hand and dug out his wallet, then slid it into the pocket of Araña’s shirt. “Don’t go back to the boat. It’s not safe and by tomorrow she’ll be confiscated. Hide among the gifted.”

Icy fear squeezed her heart. A terror born in her childhood and fed with ranted sermons about Hell and damnation, beatings that came with being judged as demon-tainted.

“I won’t leave you,” she whispered, refusing to let the thought of what waited in the afterlife make her abandon the men who’d saved her life and made her a part of their family.

When she would have given the wallet back to Erik, Matthew stopped her. “Keep it for now. Only two of the guardsmen have rifles. The rest have handguns. Eliminate any one of them and get his weapon and the odds start to change in our favor. We’ll hide and wait for them to come to us. We won’t outrun them.”

Araña nodded, hearing in Matthew’s words his own declaration. He wouldn’t leave Erik regardless of what happened.

Matthew moved around the corner to hunt the hunters. She found a place among a curtain of vines, one that allowed her to see the building where Erik melted into the gloom of a room that had collapsed except for a small area.

There was no sound save for the thunderous beat of her heart. It felt as if the world around them held its breath, silencing birdsong and insect noise alike, stilling the wind so there was no rustle of leaves or whisper of grass.

A guardsman appeared, the pale redhead with his own plans for her. He walked quietly, his arm outstretched and gripping a gun. His movements held a bold confidence, as if he were stalking prey and his possession of the weapon protected him from attack.

The thin leather of her belt could serve as a garrote, a way to kill without risk of a shouted warning. But it took strength and time, and with the others patrolling, she couldn’t take the chance of using it.