Jory Strong - Spider-Touched

Farold glanced up at the camera mounted above the door he’d just come through. “You’ve got five minutes before the others are freed,” he said, speaking to someone else as well as her. “Anton is allowing you the choice of two knives.”

Behind her she heard the slide of metal, the solid steel that had served as a wall opening to become a doorway. A breeze swirled in, bringing with it the smell of evening air.

The choice of knives was easy. Araña indicated one of Matthew’s and one of Erik’s.

As they slid across the concrete toward her, she allowed herself the brief fantasy of using them on the guardsmen who’d brought her to the maze. But when they reached her, her thoughts turned only to survival.

She grabbed them and fled, emerging from the cell into a chute formed of outdoor cages. Wild animals lunged as she ran past them. They hurled themselves against the bars, excited by the prospect of a hunt.

A pack of feral dogs frenzied, spinning and salivating and finally turning to savage the weakest member. A bear rose on its back legs. A cheetah crouched in the cage next to it while hyenas laughed.

Adrenaline surged through Araña, but its source wasn’t solely fear. This gauntlet meant to induce terror fed her hope. It was exactly as Gallo had described it.

Beyond the caged animals she paused only long enough to determine which direction the heart of the city lay in. Then she ran away from it, toward the forest.

Her lips pulled back in a fierce smile when she reached the next choice of turns. It was marked by pornographic statues, a beast raping a woman to the right, another doing the same to a man on the left.

She took the left without slowing, just as Gallo had once done, and ran past walls covered in vines, ignoring glimpses of light hinting at shortcuts, and deep shadows suggesting hiding places.

Cameras perched boldly on top of poles and concrete. Araña imagined just as many of them remained unseen, all of them turning violence and carnage into entertainment for anyone with the money to pay for it.

There were other statues along the way, most of them sexual in nature. She used them as others would use a street sign, hoped as she was doing it that they hadn’t been repositioned since Gallo ran this maze.

Behind her a bell sounded. The feral dogs began barking, warning her the convicts had been freed.

Araña pushed herself to run harder, unsure how long it would be before the demon was released into the maze. Blood ran down her side from where the bullet had grazed her. She ignored it and kept going, her breathing becoming labored.

The maze encompassed miles, and one wrong turn would mean rape, possibly death. Her lungs burned along with her thighs, making her fight for each running step.

Relief fed her strength as she turned a corner and faced a bridge she’d hoped to find there. In the evening air a trace of steam rose from a channel too wide to jump.

The water disappeared through a bricked archway offering a tantalizing glimpse of freedom. She knew it was an illusion. Just as she knew the bridge was a trap.

Anyone rushing across it would drop into the water. And though its surface was calm and unbroken, beneath it waited schools of piranhas kept hungry for human flesh. The night Gallo ran, he’d seen the man in front of him fall into the water and be eaten alive.

Araña sheathed the knives. She wiped sweat and blood from her hands before grasping the metal railing and moving forward, keeping to the very edge of the bridge.

Gallo hadn’t known where the trigger was, but there was one. And once it was tripped, a section of wood would swing downward.

At mid-span a scream tore through the maze, followed by another, and then another, telling her the demon now hunted. An involuntary shiver wracked her body as she pictured Abijah. She flinched when a different voice gave an agonizing cry of torment—the sound of it wavering, hovering in the air and turning her skin icy cold as it went on and on and on.

Footsteps drew close, more than one pair of them, pounding hard and fast. Making Araña hurry along the bridge. She nearly screamed herself as it fell away beneath her feet.

Only her hold on the railing saved her from plunging into the piranha-infested water. The upper body strength she’d gained from a lifetime of hard physical work served her well as she climbed hand over hand to reach solid footing.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw two convicts round a corner. She recognized them. One was the wife beater, the other a rapist.

Araña started running again as soon as her feet touched dirt. Seeing the trap of the bridge, the men would know the danger the water posed and cross it quicker than she had.

She followed their progress with her ears. They were catching up to her. But with freedom so close, she didn’t think they’d linger to make sport of her— if the opening Gallo had escaped from was still there.

Araña turned the corner and saw it. Only instead of a doorway leading to sky and forest— and a nightmare trap in the copse of trees beyond it—a silvery web spread across the space.

Clinging to a corner was a spider half the size of a man. She started forward anyway, heart thundering in her ears but willing to take a chance it wouldn’t attack. She’d never suffered a spider’s bite, even when her hand had been forcibly thrust into a nest of them as a test of her soul’s purity.

The leathery sound of wings made her glance upward. A whimper of fear escaped when she saw the demon.

Abijah landed in front of her, blocking her chance at freedom. His skin gleamed with blood. The metallic scent of it reached her on a breeze caused by his descent.

Just as it had done earlier, his tongue flicked out to taste her fear. His cock hardened to resemble those on the statues she’d run past.

The demon’s smile held wicked menace. “I have something special in store for you,” he said, taking a step forward.

She pulled the knives from their sheaths and braced herself for his attack. He leapt, but instead of attacking her, the batlike wings carried him past her and to the first of the convicts to round the corner after her.

Araña darted forward as the screaming started. With a glance up at the spider and an instinctual thought of apology, she sliced the web and pushed through it to where a path cutting through the forest beckoned and a trap waited.

Gallo had elected to clamber over rock and debris along the wall of the maze after his companion chose the path and entered the copse of trees, only to discover how deadly a choice it was. Araña pressed on, running along the bone-cluttered trail as the agonizing cries of the dying followed her into freedom.

REBEKKA shivered as the air cooled and full night drew closer. Despite Levi’s presence next to her and her own gifts, she wasn’t foolhardy when it came to roaming the darkness. If the woman didn’t escape the maze soon…

Levi tensed. “Someone’s coming,” he whispered, lifting the gun he held and pointing it toward the trail.

She strained to hear something beyond the croak of frogs and the song of insects, but her ears were no match to those of a shapeshifter, even one who no longer had an animal form.

Rebekka worried her bottom lip as her thoughts strayed to the Wainwright witches. She wondered if there was a subtle message in the picture Annalise had chosen to show her in the occult shop.

Had the witch meant to imply more than the possibility of Levi’s brother being freed? Was she hinting there was a way Levi could regain his ability to shift into a lion?

Icy fingers slid down Rebekka’s spine as she touched the pentacle in her pocket. What price would the Wainwrights ask for such knowledge?

Levi nudged her, bringing her attention back to the trail. Their choice of hiding place had more to do with practicality than anything else. If the woman escaped at all, the forest was the only place they could intercept her and guide her to safety without revealing themselves. And the spot where they waited was the only one where several paths joined. Still the odds didn’t favor either escape or—