Jory Strong: Spider-Touched

He put the machete and knife down to run his hands over her as if searching for the source of her agony. “I’m okay,” she said, the last of the pain fading when the final words of the incantation were in place.

Tir lifted her into his arms and stood. Through the open space of the window the funnel cloud that was Abijah dissipated, leaving utter calm and stark devastation in its wake—and such intense silence Araña’s heartbeat sounded like a bell tolling in her ears.

“Levi and Rebekka?” she asked, delaying her final task.

“Safe. I assume that was the demon making a grand exit. He cut a clear path for them to escape into the woods before circling back to attack the building next door.”

“Farold?”

“Dead.”

Tir glanced around at the chaos of the office, at the smoldering corpse. He set her on her feet, his expression hardening as he met her eyes. “You said the incantation was in Anton’s possession. Where is it?”

Did it occur to you that freeing him completely was never the goal in this game? You risk his life if you free him and he resumes his war on us. The incantation is in parts. Speak some of it and he gains strength and power—enough to believe you’ve done what you can for him.

Tir could live among the outcasts and criminals as she did. The tattoos on his arms would draw little attention, just as the brand on her hand rarely warranted a second glance in the settlements and floating boat cities that were her world.

She reached up, intending to touch the face she had already committed to memory.

He grabbed her wrist. Stopping her.

“Where is it?”

Trust me, she’d asked of him.

I trust you, he’d said.

“Abijah gave it to me before he left.”

She leaned forward until her mouth was only a breath away from his. “Remember I’m not your enemy. Remember I asked you to put aside your dreams of vengeance because the price for gaining it can be too high to pay.”

Tir didn’t stop her from pressing a kiss to his lips. “Remember I love you,” she said, then began speaking the words Abijah had given her.

Power surged into Tir with each syllable. It came with music, indescribable notes transcending reality and calling for his cells to break apart, to become the spectrum of light, part of a greater whole, to be everywhere and nowhere. Infinite. Without measure in form or time.

It was only when the collar fell away and memory descended that music and cold light were forged into individual purpose. Tir.

Black wings flowed out, tearing away the shirt as they solidified. Along his arms the marks put there by humans disappeared as if they’d never been.

Abijah. He remembered the name now.

It was the name of the Djinn he’d hunted for centuries. The name of the enemy who’d caught him in a trap and enslaved him with the collar.

The desire for vengeance rose up, pulsing through Tir with omnipotent fury until the rush of returned memory and power faded enough for him to become aware of Araña standing in front of him, her dark, dark eyes seemingly soulless, the spider on her cheek marking her as his enemy.

She met his gaze, neither cowering in his presence nor drawing her knives from their sheaths, neither pleading with him to turn aside the past nor cursing him for what he’d once been to her kind. An enemy. A killer.

The knowledge of it was there in her eyes as she stood waiting for him to make his choice, just as she’d made her choice when she spoke the incantation to free him.

“Araña,” he said, reaching for her, only to have her pushed away as others of his kind appeared in a burst of light, three of them, their wings ranging from snowy white to mottled gold—all of them beings he’d hunted alongside, first to slaughter and then to capture the Djinn so the creatures of mud could rule here.

“Brother,” the white-winged Addai said, stepping forward and embracing Tir. “I turned my attention away from this world and a thousand years passed before I knew you’d gone missing. By then it was too late to find you.”

Addai stepped away and, with a casual backhand, sent Araña sprawling to the ground at Tir’s feet. Without conscious thought, Tir formed a sword. It glowed like the sun but was the frigid ice of deep space.

“Slay her and let’s be done here,” Addai said. “The humans no longer remember the creatures we were once charged with making their familiars.”

“No,” Tir said, stepping in front of Araña, protecting her from the angels he’d once called brothers, knowing in that moment he would die with her rather than return to what he’d been. “It’s time for our war on the Djinn to be over.”

“Heretic,” Addai said. “We have encountered others holding that same idea, and they have all met with the fate you have only recently escaped.”

With a sweep of Addai’s arm, sigil-inscribed shackles appeared next to the collar on the floor between them. Swords to match Tir’s came to his brothers’ hands and they spread out, flanking him.

Pride flashed through Tir when Araña pulled her knives from their sheaths and prepared to spring to her feet. “Don’t,” he told her, fashioning a second sword from his memory, remembering its hunger for passing judgment and naming it death.

Music swelled inside him. The notes of a warrior who’d accepted a cause.

Addai said, “I will give you the benefit of the doubt and a chance to throw off the last of whatever spell she cast on you when you were at her mercy. Slay her, brother. Don’t make us bind you and return you to the mercy of humans.”

Tir’s gaze went to Araña’s, and he felt her horror for him, her willingness to sacrifice herself rather than see him enslaved again. “No,” he said, “that spell is love and its loss is too high a price to pay.”

“Well said, brother.”

The swords around Tir blinked out as if they’d never been drawn. The shackles and collar disappeared as though there’d never been a threat of them.

Tir freed the power forming one of his blades and offered his hand to Araña. When she took it, he pulled her to her feet and against his chest, his arm going around her waist to keep her pressed to him.

His brothers made no move to attack. Instead they gathered again in front of him.

“This is no trick,” Addai said, “but a test. There are those of us who want to live openly here, to take mates and reshape this world. To that end, new alliances are forming. Between angel and Djinn as well as with gifted humans and shapeshifters.”

He looked at Araña and bowed slightly. “My apologies for striking a daughter belonging to the House of the Spider. Had you died by my brother’s hand, your mother would have you know a Raven waited to guide your spirit back to the Djinn.”

“I understand,” Araña said, and though Tir couldn’t discern her thoughts, he felt her peace and knew Addai’s words hadn’t surprised her.

“She is mortal,” Addai said. “There is only one way you can assure her safety and keep her with you.”

Tir closed his eyes. A part of him wept in sorrow. To speak the words Addai alluded to was to cut himself off from the glorious whole of the light that both defined his form and absorbed it. But to do less was to risk Araña and to one day lose her.

For all that she was Djinn, she was also human, mortal, fragile in this harsh world mankind had created from the paradise they’d been given. Her flesh was a prison her soul would flee at the slightest dropping of his guard against it.

Tir turned her in his arms. “Do you want this? There is no going back.”

Not that there had ever been a chance of willingly parting from her. She had enslaved him from the moment she entered his dreams then knelt at his feet and freed him from the shackles he wore.