Spider-Touched (46 page)

In the immediate past Araña could see the girl’s capture.

The location of the house.

The car in the garage with its remote control to open the gated entrance to the maze complex.

The collection of keys that would unlock the office door and the cells housing the animals and Weres, as well as any human prisoners.

Impotent rage held Araña in its grip for an instant as she realized that in her hunger for revenge and her desire to gain it with her knives, she’d wasted an opportunity to learn when she stood in front of the tapestry and asked how Levi’s fate could be changed.

“To predict how a single change will affect an entire pattern takes centuries of study by those dedicated to it,” Malahel had said upon their initial meeting.

Araña didn’t have that kind of time. Neither did the girl.

Pride was a weak barrier against what it would cost both the girl and herself if she failed now. With a thought, Araña cast a name into the vision place.
Malahel
.

A robed figure shimmered into existence though her form was translucent. “I’m impressed, daughter. I hadn’t thought it possible you would retain so much of what you once were.”

“How do I stop him? How do I kill him from here?”

The Spider Djinn’s attention shifted to the pus-colored thread. Araña could feel a phantom presence enter the same mental place her soul traveled. But it was the translucent image of the woman who’d once been her mother that said, “Look for those connected to the girl’s life.”

Araña looked, and saw immediately that the girl had brothers and a father who were searching for her. Bear shapeshifters who’d left the safety of the forest and joined the other predators in the red zone, though they hunted only a single prey, the human whose scent they’d found where a trap had been set in the woods.

“Touch one of their threads to Gulzar’s?” Araña asked, a pit of horror forming at the thought she might relegate one of them to the same fate as the girl’s by doing it.

“It’s his scent they need,” Malahel said. “The girl’s won’t be easily found outside his house.”

Araña found the strand in the closest proximity to Gulzar’s and mentally grasped it.

The patterned carpet dissolved into a thousand separate threads.

Panic welled up, but she forced it away, concentrating instead on finding the sickly thread of Gulzar’s strand.

It was the sound of his name that led her to him, and as soon as she mentally took his strand, the carpet representing the future returned.

A glance showed the convergence of threads, the extinguishment of Gulzar’s life in less than an hour’s time, less than it would take her or Tir to get to him.

Araña moved toward the moment, wanting to witness the truth of it.

Pain stopped her before she reached it, shocking in its intensity and unexpectedness.

Malahel’s voice spoke in her mind, blocking the pain.
Your body tethers you and calls you back. It can’t survive long without your spirit housed within it. Beyond that, this realm belongs to the Spider Djinn. You’ve mingled your soul with our enemy’s and that also limits your time here.

Araña had always thought the pain was caused by the mark forcing a choice on her. Now, with a thought, she could feel the strand holding her to her body. With it came an awareness that was real, not phantom.

Blood dripped from her nose and onto her breasts. Tir cursed and willed her back to him.

The vision place itself pushed and contracted, as if it would cast her from the womb where the future was formed.

She knew instinctively she’d traveled here too many times in the span of a few days for it to be easily reached again, at least for a while. And when the pain returned, she couldn’t fight it.

“Never again,” Tir said as soon as their eyes met.

“I’m okay,” she said, finding her nosebleed had already stopped. “And the price was worth it. Anton and Farold’s helper isn’t at the maze tonight. He’s at a house in the red zone. He’ll be dead in an hour. The car is there along with keys and gate controller. I can describe the route and you—”

“Will remain here with you until sunrise. Rimmon’s promise of protection covers only the boat. I don’t intend to allow you out of my sight again until I’m free of the collar.”

She opened her mouth to protest then closed it again, knowing it would be futile. Tomorrow, after they’d gotten to Gulzar’s house, she’d find a way to convince Tir to let her confront Abijah alone.

“I won’t lose you,” he said, standing with her in his arms and taking the few steps necessary to reach the bathroom.

He pulled the paneled door of the shower stall open and turned on the water, adjusting the temperature before setting her to her feet.

Her cunt lips grew slick and swollen with the thought of his lathered hands on her flesh, of hers on his. “There’s not much room for two people.”

Tir urged her underneath the warm spray and joined her, crowding her against the wall, his hardened cock trapped between their bodies. “For what I intend, we don’t need much of it.”

Twenty-five

“LOOKS like they’re getting ready to leave,” Levi said as he and Rebekka cleared the last of the tangled ruins that had once been trucking containers and multimillion-dollar cranes.

Rebekka nodded but didn’t say anything. The day of the ambush she’d been consumed with thoughts of the child crying in the cab of the trapper’s truck and the Weres held in the back of it.

She’d been battling fear at the sound of the approaching guardsmen—and if she was honest with herself—didn’t want to look too closely at a man she knew they’d have to leave behind.

But as Tir turned, sensing their approach and nudging Araña, Rebekka
knew
he wasn’t human, despite the form he took—just as she’d known the same about Zurael and their raven-marked escort, though Levi had claimed otherwise on their walk to Rimmon’s dock.

Surreptitiously she touched the witch’s token in her pocket, attributing her newfound
sight
to it, then shivered as she remembered the icy feel of Aziel’s staff passing through her chest and her heart.

“How is it you’re free, healer?” Tir asked when she and Levi reached the dock.

There was something in his voice that made it impossible not to answer, though Rebekka told him an abbreviated version of what she’d shared with Levi, leaving out what she knew of the urn and what Annalise had told her—only to get a small shock when Araña said, “I encountered Aziel in the ghostlands. The shamaness greeted him with warmth.”

“When?” Tir asked. And there was no mistaking the edge of menace contained in the single word.

“Yesterday,” Araña answered. “After I visited the witches the first time.”

“You let your soul be cast from your body and into the land of the dead?”

“I saw Matthew and Erik there.”

There was a subtle change in Tir’s expression, but his voice still held a silky promise of retribution as he said, “We will revisit this conversation later, in private, after we accomplish what we must at the maze.”

Rebekka resisted the urge to rub her hands over the smooth, worn cloth of her pants. She felt the weight of the token in her pocket, along with the folded pages from the journal.

Between Araña’s mention of Aziel and the knowledge she’d visited both Aisling and the witches, Rebekka didn’t think she needed additional proof this was the right time to attempt a rescue of the animals and Weres held by Anton, but she still asked, “Will you tell me what you agreed to do for Draven Tassone?”

“He wants an urn destroyed.”

Rebekka started in surprise. She’d been sure the witches intended to use Araña to trap the demon and bring them the urn.

Now, framing it with Annalise’s talk of war between supernatural beings and the forming of alliances, she considered that maybe what they really wanted was to free the demon and had made a deal with Draven to hide their connection to it.

“The urn the demon is bound to?” Rebekka asked, needing to understand.

Araña went completely still at the question. Tir cursed.

Without it being a conscious decision, Rebekka pulled the folded papers from her pocket and gave them to Araña. “They’re from a book in The Iberá’s possession.”

A glance at the rough sketches and Araña nodded. “These urns are very like the picture Thane showed me.” Her eyes scanned over the accompanying entries. She quoted a portion of the passage, “Demons have no love of humans and will expend as much energy twisting and evading and turning a command into something to suit their own purposes as obeying it.”

Araña looked up at Tir. “This is why I need to go into Anton’s house alone. Abijah will use Anton’s command, not to kill me unless I’m escaping the maze, to his advantage. He was granted permission to ‘play with me.’ It might keep him from investigating what’s going on in other parts of the maze.”

“No.”

Levi spoke for the first time. “The demon’s intentions won’t matter at all if you—
we
—can’t get into the compound in the first place without being seen.”

Nothing could have prepared Rebekka for Tir saying, “If Araña’s vision proves true, we’ll find the man named Gulzar dead in a house he maintains in the red zone. We intend to use his car and his keys to gain access to the office, and from there, Anton’s house.”

Levi’s hands opened and closed as though he still had a lion’s claws. “How did he die?”

Araña gave a small shake of her head. “I don’t know the exact manner of his death, only that he died last night.”

HIS death was brutal,
Tir thought a short time later.

Blood trailed everywhere, as if Gulzar had been nicked and chased until the floors were painted red and he’d finally bled out. And when he could provide no more entertainment alive, his attackers still found another way to make sport of him. They tore him apart.

Pieces of Gulzar were everywhere. What remained of shredded skin and muscle and organs was on the walls and furniture. Shards of bone, none of them bigger than a coin, crunched underfoot as the four of them moved through the carnage, looking for the key chain Gulzar had once worn on his belt.

Tir’s gaze kept returning to Araña. Suspicion descended and clung to him. There was more to her visions than she admitted.

Twice he’d seen her bleed as a result of them. Twice he’d thought it was a cost unwillingly paid. But what if it was an offering instead? This violent death was no coincidence.

His hand snaked out when he neared her, catching her arm. “Don’t think you can continue to hide the truth about the mark or its vision gift from me much longer.”

Araña’s fear lanced through him, confirming his suspicions. “I know,” she said, unfathomable emotion becoming a wall between them as she reached up and touched the hated collar. “The incantation is in Anton’s possession. You won’t gain it unless you allow me to go into his house alone.”

Her words from the night before slid from the dark place his hunger for revenge lived.
If I asked it of you, would you turn away from seeking vengeance against the one who put this on you?

Tir’s hand tightened on her arm. “Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

Centuries of memories and hate whipped through him, all that he’d endured while at the mercy of humans. “If you prove to be my enemy, not even the love I feel for you will save you from death,” he said, knowing it was a lie even as the words left his mouth, but there was no taking them back as Levi and Rebekka stepped into the room with Gulzar’s ring of keys.

Levi said, “There’s a good chance Farold will be walking in the maze, checking the cameras and traps. It was a habit of his on days when the magistrate arrived in town. We may be able to catch him there. That would leave only Anton and the demon.”

Fear for Araña added to Tir’s anger over her refusal to tell him what she knew of the incantation. She’d placed him in an impossible situation. Freedom was too close for him to turn away from it. But beneath his hand her bones were fragile, her lifetime finite without his vigilance. She was mortal, and there were no guarantees he would be able to heal her if things went wrong.

As if sensing the violent turmoil of his thoughts, Araña’s finger traced the collar. “Trust me to deal with Abijah and Anton while the three of you handle Farold and free the Weres.”

Suspicion flared again at her choice of the word
deal
. But this time it was doused immediately, and the hollow place it left filled with guilt and repudiation as he remembered her fear at L’Antiquaire when she’d entered into the vampire’s bargain in order to allow him access to the texts, as he thought about her kneeling in front of him in the woods and working desperately to free him of the shackles before the guardsmen reached them.

He leaned in and brushed his lips against hers in apology. “I trust you.”

THE car had been in the garage where she’d seen it from the vision place. The gate controller made it unnecessary to do more than slow as they approached the entryway.

She drove—because she knew how thanks to Matthew—and because if Levi was wrong about Farold being in the maze, then the sight of her alone in the front seat and behind the wheel would suggest Gulzar was behind her with a gun pointed to her head.