Precise oaths, p.15
Precise Oaths, page 15
Pete got up and walked unsteadily to the other side of the basement, as far away from the dead widow spider as possible.
Steadying his wobbly steps, Liliana followed the wolf-kin without question.
He sat down again with his back to the damp cinderblock wall, facing the body on the other side of the room warily. He looked toward the corner where the widow spiders tossed his knives and started an ungainly attempt to get back to his feet.
“I will get them for you,” Liliana told him, and he settled back.
While searching for his knives, she found Kristen’s head rolled into the same corner. Gently, she laid it beside her body, pushing the long hair away from the blood and closing the staring eyes. It was the best she could do to give the girl some dignity.
The panther-kin who raped Kristen had done so much damage with a single cruel act. So many had died, and there was more blood and death still to come. Ripples of pain would echo from that single dark deed through lifetimes.
Liliana wished others could see as she did, the many ways each act affected the fate of others, the way every life intertwined with the other lives they touched. Maybe if they did, they would take more care.
Or probably not.
Anyone who would rape a young girl on their first date probably didn’t care about the damage he did.
To the dead girl, Liliana murmured, “At least he paid for his crime with his life.” But it was cold comfort to the young spider-kin lying headless in a pool of her own blood with her orphaned children growing restless inside her.
Eight knives of various lengths lay in the darkened corner. She brought them back to the red wolf.
Pete’s eyes showed white around the edges as he stared at the dead widow spider.
Liliana’s third eyes saw into him, the dark horror of the basement full of blood, death, and terror, like he was in a living nightmare that he couldn’t leave. The knives sliding into place in their sheaths at his ankles and wrists and on his back comforted him somewhat. He felt safer with them, but he touched the empty shoulder holster with longing.
She would have to get his gun back for him.
He did not seem to want her to sit too close, so she left space between them.
After a while, he looked at her strangely. “Um, Lilly, don’t take this the wrong way, but are you likely to get pregnant any time soon?”
Liliana felt her face flush. “I am not yet adult, so I cannot become pregnant for four more years.”
He blinked. “How old are you?”
“One hundred and forty-six.” Wasn’t there some sort of social rule about not asking a woman’s age? Liliana suspected the venom made Pete forget that rule.
“You’re more than a hundred years old?” he said, incredulously. “If I were a bar bouncer, I’d card you.”
Liliana shrugged. “Spider-kin live a long time. My sister, Isabella, is nearly three hundred fifty and passes for a human in her mid-twenties.”
“I didn’t know anybody but Fae lived that long.”
They sat in silence for a while, watching the shadows move over the swollen belly of the headless dead girl.
“So, if you do get pregnant, will it be like, um…will you have to um…” Pete trailed off and gestured to the body.
“Spider seers are the opposite of widow spiders in many ways. We are born completely human and become more and more spiderlike as we mature. I got my arm blades when I was five, my second eyes at ten, my third eyes at fifteen. My fourth eyes didn’t open until I was twenty, but that is still childhood for a spider seer. The first time I become pregnant, I will become fully human again for a time, and I should learn how to take human form at will afterward. I should learn full spider form some time in the next century after that.”
“So, right now, you can’t be totally human or totally spider? You’re stuck in demi-spider form?” It was more confirmation than question.
Liliana nodded.
“Will you have a whole bunch of babies like that?”
“I will bear a single spider seer girl child if the child is conceived during the blood-fire time, a boy child of the father’s race any other time.”
“The father’s race? Isn’t that usually the same as yours?”
“There are no male spider-kin. We can mate with any Other, or even Normals, although that is rare. Spider seers seek mates who are fierce and strong, who can protect us when we are pregnant and less able to defend ourselves. One of my aunts married Genghis Khan. My father was lion-kin. My sister’s husband is Komodo dragon-kin.”
“What’s the blood-fire time?” Pete seemed less nervous now, just curious.
Liliana shifted uncomfortably on the concrete. “It is a time of…of…intense sexual desire, to the point of madness.” She picked a loose thread on the torn edge of her skirt until it unraveled. The idea of losing all inhibitions, even for a short time, disturbed her deeply. To her, losing control of her thoughts and actions equaled insanity, and maintaining her sanity had been the hardest battle of her life when she was younger. Her first mother, Solifu, had to kill the daughter she’d had between Isabella and Liliana. She never spoke of it, and neither did Isabella, but Liliana had seen her lost sister and the events leading to her mother making the choice to end the young spiderling’s life. A spider seer whose visions drove her mad became deadly dangerous. It was oddly comforting to know that, as much as her first mother loved her, Solifu would kill her rather than let her become a danger to everyone around her. Now she was on her own. There was only Liliana to make sure Liliana stayed sane.
“I have four years to choose a mate, or my body will force me to choose the nearest fierce male.” Liliana’s cheeks were very warm. Hormones would override her ability to choose and her honor. She would use her venom to make any nearby suitable male mate with her if she had no obvious mate by then.
Pete didn’t say anything for a while, watching the dead woman.
She didn’t dare look into him with her third eyes right then. The last thing she wanted to see in Pete’s aura was the kind of horrified disgust he felt for the widow spiders. But his silence told her volumes. She had only just managed to make a friend, and now hormonal realities she could not control had made her monstrous in his eyes.
“If we live that long, I will warn you so you can stay away,” Liliana almost whispered, human and third eyes focusing on her fingers as they systematically unraveled her skirt edge.
Pete turned to her, eyebrows lifted. He scooted closer to her, closing the distance she left between them. “No, Lilly, it’s okay.” He put an arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze probably meant to be comforting. It was a bit painful, since her venom still interfered with his motor control and he was really strong, even in human form.
“You won’t need to warn me away,” he said, raspy voice gentle.
Liliana firmly closed her third eyes, then looked up and met his eyes with her human ones for a moment. A trickle of hope filled her chest. She risked looking into him with her third eyes again. She did not see passion. She saw a deep relief that her reproductive cycle bore little resemblance to a widow spider’s, and beyond that, affection and gratitude.
Pete did not desire her. She already knew this and respected his loyalty to his beloved. It should not feel disappointing. “Why won’t I need to warn you?”
“Because by then, you will have found someone.”
“You can’t see the future.” His arm felt warm and heavy around her shoulders and a bit sticky from widow spider web residue.
“No, but I can see you. You’re beautiful and brave, and any man would be lucky to have you.” Pete believed what he said, that Liliana would find a mate before blood-fire madness chose some random fierce male for her.
He squeezed her shoulders again and patted her arm reassuringly if a bit clumsily.
Pete had more faith in her ability to find a true mate than she did.
Liliana recognized where she excelled and where she did not. She was very good at fighting and seeing. She was not very good at relationships and social interaction. She didn’t even have any friends—except now she had Pete. The likelihood that in the next four years she would find a fierce, handsome, brave, passionate man and convince this miracle man to choose her for forever was very, very low. She did not need her fourth eyes to tell her that. In fact, she very carefully did not look.
The one hard lesson she’d learned, the one lesson she tried to teach to all her clients, was never to ask a question if you really did not want to know the answer.
Oddly, she thought of the obsidian Sidhe prince, Colonel Bennet, for a moment. No one could say he wasn’t fierce, and she found him intriguing. But a Sidhe would be far more likely to treat her as a threat than a potential mate.
“We have nearly three hours before we can try to save Sergeant Giovanni,” she said. “You have a strong sedative, widow spider venom, and spider seer venom all in your body and deep puncture wounds on your throat. You need to heal. You should sleep.”
Pete looked over at the dead body and scratched at his arms. “Yeah, I don’t think I’ll be doing any sleeping in here.”
“I will keep you safe, Pete.” His eyes still had wide pupils and a slightly unfocused look, so her venom still affected how easily he would take orders. “Lay down and go to sleep right now.”
“Okay.” He stretched out long legs on the cold concrete and used his shredded jacket as a pillow. He fell asleep almost immediately. When Pete had no real objection to her suggestions, his resistance to them was no stronger than anyone else’s.
Liliana stroked his thick red hair gently, threading out remnants of webbing and wishing she had some oil. “I will keep you safe,” she whispered. She was not certain it was truth, but she was determined to do her best to make it truth.
For lack of anything else to do, she relaced Pete’s boot, thinking about the fight to come. His overly large boots made him seem clumsy in human form, but they would be very useful when he shifted to demi-wolf form and his feet, along with the rest of him, got much bigger.
The rest of his clothing was the same. It either fit loosely or was designed to stretch. Even the straps of the knife sheaths tucked into his boots and around his wrists were designed to adjust size with him as he changed shape. Clever. The wolf-kin could take demi-wolf form and return without damage to his clothes. Only full-wolf form would necessitate removing them.
While her hands busied themselves with his boot laces, her mind worried at the problems ahead. Perhaps there was some way to increase the odds in their favor in the fight to come. She searched her mind and the paths of the near future, seeking a path that would lead to Liliana, the red wolf, and the nice Army sergeant all walking out of this building alive.
She did not find one.
Chapter 14
Stella
Above them, Liliana watched as the nightclub and restaurant closed for the night. The raucous music went silent. The innocent hotel guests settled snugly in their beds. Most of the employees left.
Only three widow spiders remained: Lady Daphne, Stella, and Margaret, who Liliana discovered was the large woman in the flour-dusted apron from the restaurant.
Liliana walked over to the dead body of the young spider-kin she’d killed. The slightly swollen belly of the headless corpse moved subtly. Her second eyes could see the warm living cluster of spider-kin babies, growing restless as their mother’s body cooled. She put her hand gently on the dead woman’s belly and blinked tears. “I am so very sorry,” she whispered.
Sad and without hope, she sat back down next to her wolf-kin friend. Kristen’s life had been the price paid for Pete to survive, but it was a bad bargain if she could not find a safe way for him to survive the night. She had neither thought of nor seen any way to improve their chances beyond the tiniest of unlikely flickers.
Needing some comfort in the cold, dank basement filled with the scent of blood and death, she lifted the head of the sleeping wolf-kin off his makeshift pillow and laid it in her lap.
Pete curled around her legs in his sleep and muttered, “A few more minutes, Ben.”
She petted his thick red hair absently while she considered her options. They would simply have to fight as best they could and hope beyond reason they beat the odds.
Pete’s destroyed jacket lay under her legs now. Something hard in it poked at the bottom of her leg. She reached into the tattered folds and found Pete’s outdated pocket phone. She turned the phone over in her hand.
Wrist phones had electronics built into the wrist band, sensors and such. The wolf-kin had probably not found a way to get one to flex with his size changes like all his other clothing.
She placed his thumb on the sensor pad to activate the phone. She looked over Pete’s contacts. Doctor Nudd’s number met her eye. Pete trusted Doctor Nudd with his life.
Oh. Pete has allies!
Why hadn’t she thought of this before? Unlike her, he had other friends who might be willing to fight at his side.
She touched Doctor Nudd’s name in the list to call him.
“What now, Pete?” Nudd’s gruff voice answered after several rings.
“I am not Pete. I am Liliana.” She kept her voice soft so as not to wake the sleeping wolf-kin. She looked backward in time to see how Pete used the phone. Oh. She touched a small image resembling an old-fashioned video recorder. A tiny, poorly lit image of herself appeared in one corner of the screen. The rest of the screen filled with a flat image of the tall goblin.
It seemed likely she had woken Doctor Nudd. It was a bit past three in the morning. He sat in a bed big enough for Liliana and three other normal-sized people to sleep in comfortably. A single lamp beside the bed lit the goblin’s messy hair and grizzled face. “Is he in trouble again?” Doctor Nudd asked.
“Pete is safe for the moment, but Sergeant Giovanni is still in danger, and we will both be in very great danger soon, when we go to help her.”
“How can I help?” He rubbed at his face. He wore an old-fashioned flannel sleep shirt. She wondered if his bedroom was cold at night.
She opened her fourth eyes to look around Doctor Nudd’s room where the phone camera didn’t reach. He kept his window open at night. Sheer curtains blew in the light breeze. “I do not know how you can help. I only know we are highly likely to die without aid.”
Liliana gave a general outline of their situation to the unseelie healer.
He became more and more agitated as she spoke. “You should have called me sooner,” he shouted at her, pacing next to his bed. “Even the mag lev train won’t be fast enough to get me from Fayetteville to Raleigh in time to matter.”
Guilt and frustration flooded Liliana. “I did not think of it sooner.” She was so used to doing everything alone.
Doctor Nudd sighed. “Nothing to be done about it.” He scratched at the wiry brown whiskers on his unshaven chin. “I’ll see what I can manage. Watch Pete’s back, would you? The boy is too brave for his own good, if you know what I mean.”
Liliana smiled fondly at the sleeping red wolf. “I do know what you mean.”
It was time, but she hated to wake Pete. Sergeant Giovanni had less than an hour to live. If they moved now, there was at least a chance they could save her, and their probability of living was the highest right now.
Rather than putting it back in his shredded and useless jacket, she put Pete’s phone in the pocket of his blue jeans. She shook him gently.
“Huh?” Pete sat up with a huge jaw-cracking yawn and rubbed at his eyes. The wounds on his neck were closed, and even in the shadows of the single light bulb, his pale skin had better color.
Her venom had granted him a few hours of pleasant, healing sleep free of ugly dreams, despite his recent circumstances. Considering her advice nearly got him killed in the most horrible way possible, she was glad she’d at least been able to give him that.
“It is time, Pete.” Liliana got to her feet. “Follow me and be as quiet as you can.”
He nodded, yawned again, and followed on her heels.
Liliana was relieved to see he planned to keep his word to follow her lead, even now that her venom’s influence had worn off. She smiled a little in spite of their dire situation. He gave precise oaths because he kept them.
They crept up the stairs. The pounding bass no longer vibrated into the stairwell. It left everything eerily silent. Liliana opened the door leading to the first floor of the empty nightclub.
The stairwell opened into a narrow corridor behind one-way glass. On one side of the hall, she could look out through the glass to the darkened dance floor. On the other side, a line of doors led to offices and storage areas.
Liliana knew which office door was the right one, but when she turned the handle, it didn’t move. Locked.
She stood looking at it for a moment, uncertain what to do. She couldn’t break the sturdy wooden door. The knob was made of solid steel. Her arm blades couldn’t cut through steel.
Pete raised his eyebrows at her in question.
“Your gun is in there,” she whispered.
He shrugged his shoulders, reaching outward with his arms as if to embrace her and four other people. His arms and shoulders lengthened as he did. He tilted his head back and opened his mouth as if to yawn again or howl. Fangs pushed past his lips, velvety red-brown fur flowed over his exposed skin, and wiry whiskers pushed out of his upper lip. His nose stretched forward and darkened to a black, shiny, triangular point on the end of a short muzzle. He gained height and breadth, especially in his shoulders, straining the fabric of his formerly loose, stretchy T-shirt with “Keep Calm. I’m the Doctor” written on the front.
Liliana understood that reference. The television show had been around almost as long as she’d been in America. She’d used her fourth eyes to watch it a few times and found it enjoyable.
Deep, ruddy fur with darker brown markings showed through the slits in his clothing where Liliana’s arm blades sliced through cloth when she freed him. The massive wolf-kin towered over her petite form. Only Pete’s pale blue eyes seemed unaffected by the change. The aggressive scent of canine filled the narrow corridor.
