Jory Strong: Spider-Touched

A glance at Tir, who nodded from a position allowing him to watch Levi’s stealthy attack on Farold, and Rebekka left her hiding place. It helped that she’d done this a thousand times in her imagination, dreamed of sprinting to the caged animals serving as a gauntlet of terror for humans running the maze, and calming them until the Weres could be freed.

She went first to the pack of feral dogs, using her gift to silence them before something went wrong and the demon appeared.

The hyenas were next. Then the cheetah and the bears.

She wasn’t telepathic, not as some Weres were. But her gift allowed her to touch emotion, use it to gain trust.

Levi and Tir joined her, their presence and her own rush of excitement nearly undoing what she’d managed with her gift. A couple of the dogs began barking and she hurried to quiet them. When it was done, Levi motioned and said, “Come on.”

A final mental push, trying to convey that freedom was near, and she followed Levi to the metal door leading to the cells holding the Weres.

He jammed the key with Gulzar’s dried blood on it into the lock and twisted. A motor hummed to life and the door retracted.

Rebekka’s heart lodged in her throat as she stepped inside. It was bad. She knew it would be. The only thing that would have made it worse was if there’d been more Weres held captive. Once there had been.

Cyrin’s eyes held only madness as Levi went toward him. Deadly claws at the end of furred arms reached through the bars with the intention of savaging anyone who got close enough to strike.

A flattened, maned face pressed to the cage. Yellowed teeth glistened as he roared.

Torn human carcasses represented what was left of meals, not just in the werelion’s cage, but in those of tiger, leopard, and wolf shapeshifters.

Rebekka moved to the bars, working hard to establish rapport. Knowing all of their lives depended on her gift.

Tir’s machete was drawn, as was his knife. He’d kill any threat. Including the Weres. Rebekka knew it without it being said.

The werewolves calmed the fastest, and then the leopard and tiger shapeshifters.

For any of them to escape, they needed to work together, to leave together, to use their combined abilities to keep the pure animals in line after they’d been freed from their cages.

Sweat coated Rebekka’s skin as she joined Levi in front of his brother’s cage. Her head pounded as she concentrated on Cyrin, trying to reach him through remembered emotion, love and loyalty and trust, trying to fix the tears in his mind where human and animal instincts had fought one another.

She used her gift as well as her words, her voice joining Levi’s until finally the insanity slid from Cyrin’s eyes and was replaced by recognition.

Levi unlocked his brother’s cage then and the two of them embraced. Tears streamed down Rebekka’s cheeks. If the demon arrived moments from now and killed them, at least they’d had this shining moment of success.

ABIJAH cocked his head as they neared the end of the hallway. Adrenaline surged through Araña when she recognized the sounds coming from outside. The animals were free. She suspected the Weres were, too.

Tir would be coming for her.

She had only an instant at the doorway to access the room. The urn sat on a narrow table against the far wall, directly across from her. Next to it a red candle burned in a shallow blood-filled bowl attached to a platform where a carved deity served as a fetish carrying prayers to the being it represented.

If Anton’s worshipped god had truly been present, she doubted she would have heard the fire whispering its willingness to become her weapon. To kill as it had killed once before, on the day she’d called it to her as hot iron was pressed to her flesh.

She couldn’t see the maze owner, but from the light pouring into the room and the sounds still coming from the maze, she guessed he was standing at the window, watching whatever was taking place there. She couldn’t afford to allow him time to think, or order Abijah outside.

Araña entered the room fast, going straight for the urn.

“Stop her, Abijah! Stop her, Abijah! Stop her, Abijah!”

Three times in rapid succession. Without the conceit of archaic words.

It was a command Araña understood couldn’t be disobeyed, and yet not a thorough enough one to keep Anton safe from her.

Abijah’s talons curled around her arms, halting her before she’d gotten more than half a dozen steps into the room. He lifted her so she dangled above the floor, seemingly defenseless.

Anton laughed. “Clever, clever demon. Now I understand how you managed to avoid killing the intruders outside. What luck for both of us that your plaything returned.”

He glanced through the window. “I fear I’m going to have to let them die in the traps and settle for the woman as a prize. I can’t send you after them and risk touching her myself.”

The spider rested on her brand in a symbolic acknowledgment of the day ten years earlier that had ultimately led to this one. She’d once thought her ability to summon fire was further proof she was destined for Hell. Now she knew otherwise. It was a gift to one reborn, a thread connecting her to the birthplace of the Djinn.

Anton left the window, passing between her and the flame he’d lit to his deity, and the fire came to her call. It filled the room with his scream as it had once filled another room with the screams of the clergyman and the couple she’d believed to be her parents.

It destroyed Anton’s ability to command a Djinn first. Burning away his lips and tongue. Swallowing his throat and filling his lungs with its rage. But unlike before when the fire killed because of her summons, Araña felt no guilt, no remorse. He deserved no mercy.

Abijah disappeared with Anton’s final heartbeat, and Araña skirted the still burning body, going directly to the urn. It was a thing of temptation and horror, but she’d known as soon as she read the stolen journal pages that she would destroy it without trying to use it to force the incantation from Abijah. She grasped it, the blood from the wound painting its side as she brought it down on the edge of the table, willing it to break.

A boom sounded. A wash of power exploded through the room as the urn shattered.

The force of it knocked her to the ground and sent shards of glass from the windows to the yard below. It extinguished both candle flame and Anton’s burning corpse.

Abijah appeared next to her, standing over her as a man and wearing the robes of a desert dweller. When she would have risen, he put his foot on her chest and held her with an easy strength that warned against drawing her knives.

“He’s killed hundreds of our kind and enslaved even more. You risk his life if you free him and he resumes his war on us. I spared him the first time because The Prince demanded it of me. He won’t be spared again.”

“The time for vengeance is past,” Araña said, ignoring the tiny voice reminding her of Tir’s warning not to ask this of him.

“Is it?” Abijah asked. “We will soon see.”

In a blink he became the scorpion. His tail lashing out, stinging her hand—and then he was gone in a swirl of wind that tore paintings from the wall and sent papers and books to the floor.

Pain spread through her with venom not meant to kill. It was like the witch’s strike when she mindlessly attacked—only this agony was the price she paid to gain the incantation.

It flowed into her, segment by segment like a scorpion’s tail.

It burned into her—ancient words she would never have been able to remember or speak if they’d been delivered from his mouth to her ears.

Outside she heard destruction raging, the howl of an unnatural storm tearing down walls and flattening anything in its path. But she was held motionless on the floor, unable to do more than smile slightly when Tir burst into the room and knelt next to her, his face harsh with worry.