Jory Strong: Spider-Touched

“Do you care so much? He’s the enemy of our kind. In all likelihood he would have killed you if he’d gained his freedom from the collar.”

Memories swelled up, swamping Araña in moments of tenderness and passion, companionship and possession, filling her with bitter-sweet emotion that she’d never experience any of it again with him. “He wouldn’t have.”

“You sound so sure, daughter. But once you would have sworn vengeance against him in the same way you did to honor the two human men you loved.”

“Never.”

Tir’s name was so thoroughly woven into her soul she knew she was incapable of killing him.

Her confidence was met with laughter. “Once you would have looked at the collar around his neck and viewed it as a victory by the House of the Scorpion. You would have celebrated Abijah en Rumjal’s accomplishment along with the rest of us.”

Shock sliced through Araña, as well as the faded remnants of terror. “The demon the maze owner commands?”

“He may well be demon by now,” came the cryptic reply. “He’s been bound to human will for thousands of years. He remembers all the deeds he’s been forced to perform along with what came before. If the collar is removed, our enemy will also remember our shared history.”

There was a roar, a sudden burst of air and power, like fuel added to fire, and it carried Araña to the past.

She recognized the imagery from the art history books Eric had cherished and she’d so often studied. Only instead of dreams captured in oil, scenes rising from the imagination of devoutly religious artists, instead of it being captured myth, she understood it was reality.

Men—mortal and those cast in supernatural light—fought side by side with angels, their faces resolute as they battled demons who looked like Abijah. Demons who bore images of spiders and serpents, cardinals and ravens, as well as scorpions on their skin—and others who looked fully human save for the marks that were a manifestation of their spirit’s nature.

“He thought of himself as a holy warrior,” the demon said. “It’s written that healing was the greatest of his talents, but he turned away from it, preferring to kill instead. And when he couldn’t kill, he saw us enslaved and held by humans. He lives because of alliances we’ve made with powers beyond The Prince’s domain. And because it’s fitting he endure the torment and horror he once so readily sentenced us to.”

Araña closed her eyes, unwilling to search out and witness Tir’s deeds even though the memory of it would soon be burned away. Whatever power the Spider demon used to hold her from the flames, it was weakening. She could feel the pull to leave.

“How long until he has another chance at freedom?”

“Three hundred years. Four hundred. The weave changes and the woman has yet to be born. She won’t be if we can prevent it. She wouldn’t serve our cause or pledge herself to The Prince as you would have.”

“I’d never bow to Satan.”

The demon laughed again. “That would be a terrible sight indeed. One of our kind—and a daughter of my House—bowing to the angel who is now the god’s adversary.”

The response startled Araña. She turned from the battlefield, and it faded away as if it had never been. In front of her stood the demon, dressed as it had been before, in concealing robes with only black eyes and a small strip of skin revealed.

A raven perched on the demon’s shoulder. And beyond both of them, a magnificent city rose, shimmering like a mirage, in an endless expanse of sand.

“This is the kingdom you were born to,” the demon said. “This is our paradise and refuge. Our prison set deep in the ghostlands.

“We are the children of Earth, the Djinn, given life from its fiery womb so we can protect it. But now we wait and plot, and dream in exile of one day being able to return and reclaim what is our birthright.”

“Djinn?” Araña asked, searching her mind, her memory, finding nothing though the word resonated within her.

“We existed long before the alien god arrived and thought to enslave us and give us over to his mud creations as familiars. When we resisted, the god forced The Prince into the image Abijah showed you and named him demon.

“The Prince was the first to be called by that name, but it’s come to serve us well. In the millennia since then, the humans have followed the example of their god.

“They’ve conjured up thousands of nightmare creatures and named them demon. And along with their wars and their false prophets, knowledge of us has disappeared from human memory and history. They no longer remember how we once walked among them, able to take no form as freely as we could take any form.”

The shimmering, beautiful city began to disappear, its buildings consumed by translucent flames. And like the candles burning in the witches’ circle, Araña knew time was running out. The roar and pull of the primordial fire was growing stronger, harder to resist—or want to resist.

“I grieved the first time I witnessed your death,” the de—the Spider Djinn said. “This time, as I stood in front of the tapestry and watched the outcome of your human choice, my anguish was tempered by the knowledge a Raven would soon follow you into the fire, and you would be reborn among us.

“I didn’t know then that you’d touched your lips to those of our enemy and, in doing so, shared breath and bound a part of yourself to him. In the moment your spirit was freed, he used his greatest gift to heal and preserve the human shell you’ve been tethered to.

“Because it was a vessel created for you, the Raven can guide your spirit back to it and you will live again among those who’ve feared and hurt you.

“Or the ties binding you to our enemy will burn away in the fire and you can once again walk among your kind, in our kingdom.

“By The Prince’s will, it is your choice.”

Live for all of us.

Matthew’s words found her, holding within them the love that had sustained her and the only home her heart had known—until Tir.

Memories of Tir made the decision easy. Thoughts of how she’d found him in the trapper’s truck, shackled and tethered to a chair, and how earlier in the day he’d healed a human child when there was nothing to be gained from it.

If she’d once lived for vengeance, she realized now its price could be too high to pay. And if she and Tir had once been enemies, she’d learned that the past might be better put aside and a different future forged.

“I want to go back to him,” she said.

The pitch black eyes of the Spider Djinn who claimed to be her mother showed no emotion. “As you will,” she said. “But know this. If you betray us by speaking of us or revealing our existence, The Prince will send assassins belonging to the Scorpion House and they won’t fail him. He will order your name struck from the books of our kind and those of the Raven’s House will be forbidden from ever returning you to us.”

“I understand.”

“Then the choice is made. Perhaps you will still come to serve us as you were meant to. Use your gifts wisely. Use all of them.”

“Will you continue to teach me?”

“Perhaps, daughter. Call my name when you next enter the Spider’s realm. I am Malahel.”

Araña understood, as she hadn’t before, that from the moment she’d climbed onto the Constellation and seen the unnamed port city in her vision, she’d been meant to come to Oakland and encounter Abijah and Tir.

“Why don’t you free Abijah?”

“The human he’s bound to is one we can’t touch, not from our prison, and not while he refuses to leave the one he created for himself with the maze.”

“And Abijah, why doesn’t he kill Anton?”