Jory Strong: Spider-Touched

He circled her, as if she were a slab of clay and he was an artist contemplating what he would make of it.

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.”

“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?”