Precise oaths, p.18
Precise Oaths, page 18
“I am sorry too,” Liliana said softly. Two deaths of sister spiders now lay heavy on her conscience. Under other circumstances, she would have been proud to name both Stella and Kristen as friends. Her human eyes made hot tears stream down her face from pain of both the body and the heart.
A canine howl of pain and a crash of shattering glass brought Liliana’s attention back to her one true friend on the roof above. A guttural growl let her know Pete was still alive. He fought the gigantic spider alone now. And from the sound of that howl, he fought wounded.
Liliana struggled to pull herself hand over hand up the line the mere ten feet she had fallen, but she couldn’t. Her left arm screamed in agony when she tried to use it and would not hold any weight. Her bloody hand just slid off the line.
Pete trusted her. He was going to die fighting alone just a few feet away.
Blood and pain flowed in a pulsing river down her arm.
Liliana fought more tears. She had tried so hard to save her only friend. She murdered Stella and Kristen so Pete could live. Meaningless. He would die anyway.
The least she could do was die with him.
She wiped the slick blood off her left wrist onto her leotard to clear her spinneret and attached a loop to her silk line. By putting one foot in the loop and pushing with her leg, she went up a few inches.
A table flew across the railing over her head, passed her on the way down, and shattered in the alley beside Stella’s broken body.
By repeating the loop process, Liliana inched her way slowly to the restaurant balcony, wondering as each second ticked past if she would see Pete get hurled across the railing next. She was too afraid to open her fourth eyes and look to see how he fared in the battle above. She could do nothing to change Pete’s fate while dangling in the air.
Finally, she rolled over the railing and fell on the tile, panting through the agony in her shoulder that whited out her vision for a moment. When it cleared, she opened her human eyes and dared to look.
Pete was still on his feet, but he had several cuts and stab wounds. Blood soaked his clothing and his ruddy fur.
Liliana marveled through the fog of pain that the red wolf was still standing, still fighting. She had not known anyone so fierce since her father died.
The widow spider faced him, front four legs reared up in attack position, striking down at him as he dodged and growled and hit her with a table frame.
Lady Daphne’s exoskeleton showed not even a single scratch. Nothing Pete had done had damaged his opponent in the slightest. Wolf-kin claws and sharp steel knives and even the wrought iron furniture were apparently no more effective against widow spider armor than Liliana’s arm blades or Pete’s bullets.
Liliana pulled a string of silk from her spinneret and kept pulling, wadding it all into a ball. She stuffed the ball of webbing into the big hole in her shoulder, hoping to slow the bleeding.
As Liliana struggled to her feet, the widow spider stabbed Pete in the thigh. The sharp limb pierced clear through the muscle on the outside of the wolf-kin’s leg and stuck out the back.
Pete howled again in agony tinted with battle rage.
“No,” Liliana whispered, too exhausted to scream.
Daphne’s wickedly barbed leg pulled Pete toward her fangs like a fish on a hook.
Liliana staggered forward, not sure what she could do to save her friend this time.
Rather than fight to pull free, Pete took firm hold of the spider’s leg with both clawed hands right up next to where it joined the widow spider’s body. He deliberately let his feet go out from under him, falling back until all his weight was on that single spindly limb.
The giant spider staggered sideways, her many legs scrambling to keep from being dragged onto her side by the wolf-kin’s weight.
Pete planted his free foot against the underside of the spider’s exoskeleton and heaved. His powerful shoulders strained as he pulled and twisted.
Lady Daphne spun frantically in a full circle, trying to shake off the red wolf.
With an ear-splitting shriek of agony, the spider’s leg pulled free of the socket. Connective tissue dripping with ichor pulled loose from the widow spider’s body along with the severed limb.
Pete dropped on his back in front of Liliana. The seer helped her friend to his feet and pulled him away from their enemy. The severed leg dragged on the tile, leaving a slime trail as Pete staggered backward.
As she screeched in agony, the giant arachnid’s seven other legs scrambled madly, knocking tables in every direction. Glass and iron crashed and clattered in a pandemonium to rival the deafening music of the Mirror Club.
Liliana gripped Pete’s elbow to steady him as he took hold of the huge spider leg impaled through his thigh. With a hand on either side of an arachnid knee joint, he wrenched backward. It cracked like a giant crab leg. He hefted the thicker part as if considering using the widow spider’s armored thigh as a weapon against her. He left the sharp barbed end still sticking through the big muscle in his leg.
He flashed Liliana a fierce toothy grin coated in red from a long gash on the side of his face. Then, his one good leg collapsed.
Liliana tried to keep him from falling, but she could only slow the collapse of his big body to one knee. Him kneeling in his huge wolfman form, and her by some miracle still standing, put them at about the same height.
As they leaned on each other, not sure who held who up, the huge widow spider recovered. Daphne shook herself hard and stood steady on her remaining seven legs. Widow spiders could regrow a lost limb in a few months. For her, it was a minor wound.
The furious spider approached them slowly, wary and limping after her injury. Lady Daphne leaned onto her front three legs with a whine of pain and pulled some silk from the spinneret at the back of her abdomen with the other four. She cast multiple trapping loops in their direction in rapid succession.
Liliana raised her right arm blade, protecting Pete, even though she couldn’t lift the other arm. Her razor-sharp blade cut through the silk as it fell. One sticky line got past her and stuck fast to her hip.
Before their enemy could take advantage and pull on the line, one of Pete’s long arms snaked out and shredded the silk with his claws.
Pete growled beside her, baring his fangs defiantly at the enemy.
If Lady Daphne wanted to kill them, she would not have the luxury of doing it while they were bound and couldn’t resist.
The huge spider paced in front of them, back and forth, looking for the best opening to kill them without taking any more damage. The lost limb didn’t slow her down, but she emitted a pained whine periodically.
It didn’t matter. All Lady Daphne really had to do was wait for blood loss to weaken them. Well, that was true in Liliana’s case. Pete’s worst wound was still mostly sealed with the spear of spider claw. Liliana had managed to slow the bleeding from her shoulder with the wad of silk stuffed in the hole, but it still oozed and ran down her arm.
Liliana didn’t need her fourth eyes to tell her they were likely to die without even striking another effective blow.
“It was an honor to fight at your side,” Liliana said softly.
Pete put a clawed hand covered in blood and ichor companionably on her back. It spanned all the space from shoulder blade to shoulder blade. “Same here,” he growled.
Lady Daphne seemed to lose patience in that moment and came for them, fangs dripping with acidic venom, front three legs up high, ready to stab.
Liliana braced herself to meet her death with courage.
Her father and mothers would have been proud of her today.
The BRRRRRAATTTT of a rapid-fire machine pistol halted the giant spider. Bullets sprayed Lady Daphne in the face.
A tortured metallic shriek rang out as three of her eight green-faceted eyes exploded in gouts of sickly yellowish ichor.
Liliana looked behind her. Muzzle flashes exploded with each shot, lighting the rooftop battleground like rapid, red-shaded lightning strikes. They also lit brilliant fuchsia and violet dragonfly wings with a miniature woman in a leather jacket suspended in the air between them. Siobhan’s cute pixie face was set in a grim line. Her whole body leaned into the weapon, and her wings beat frantically to fight the kickback.
As the giant spider staggered back, screeching in agony, the tiny Fae landed beside Pete and Liliana.
“Close your eyes and plug your ears!” Siobhan clicked something on her machine pistol and pumped it like a tiny shotgun.
Liliana and Pete did as they were ordered after a confused look at each other and a shrug from the red wolf’s hairy shoulders.
Siobhan pulled the trigger. A boom rang out with a recoil that knocked the little Fae onto her butt on the tile.
Through her tightly closed eyelids, Liliana’s human eyes were still nearly blinded by the flash, and she was partially deafened by the explosion despite her fingers in her ears.
The ear-splitting screech Lady Daphne emitted didn’t help.
“Go for her belly!” Siobhan shouted directly in their ringing ears, then took to the air again. “Nudd said widow spiders have no armor on the underside of the abdomen.”
Liliana felt stupid. She had read The Lord of the Rings. She should have known that.
With their tiny, well-armed ally on their side, and the new knowledge of the enemy’s weakness, this might no longer be a hopeless battle. Pete and Liliana looked at each other for half a second. Pete nodded, and she knew exactly what he would do next without bothering to look into his mind.
The red wolf rolled in a somersault forward and to the left, favoring his injured right leg.
At the same moment, Liliana did the same thing to the right, favoring her injured left shoulder.
They bypassed Lady Daphne’s many legs on either side while Siobhan distracted the spider by spraying the part of her carapace that passed for her face with more bullets.
The widow spider lifted her abdomen and leaned forward on her front three legs so she could pull silk from her spinneret to throw at the flying wood sprite. It was the one position that exposed her vulnerability. While the armored shell was solid under the spider’s front body section, the underside of the big round abdomen had only leathery skin. It had to move and flex so the spider could breathe.
Liliana ducked under and stabbed deep through that leathery skin, then sliced with her arm blade along one side of the spider’s belly. Pete sunk the claws of both hands into spider flesh and ripped the spider open with brute force on the other side.
The stench of sewer and something cloyingly acidic like vomit hit the back of Liliana’s throat and made her gag. Lady Daphne’s guts spilled on the tile with a generous helping of slimy ichor and the viscous pearly white liquid that becomes silk when exposed to air.
Lady Daphne’s shrieks reached a deafening crescendo. She leaped away from them while Liliana’s blade was still buried in her body, ripping the deep gash open even wider and nearly yanking Liliana’s arm out of its socket. Entrails dragged behind the giant spider and tangled in her legs as her limbs scrambled nonsensically in every direction.
Liliana could no longer move fast enough to get out of the way when one of those giant spider legs flailed in her direction. It knocked her across the balcony into the iron railing with no more control of her body than a rag doll flung by a child. The back of her head slammed into an iron support.
Chapter 16
Sick Day
When Liliana woke up, she was clean and in her own bed. The tick, tick, ticking of her many clocks sounded exactly as they should. Nothing could be too terribly wrong in the world as long as her clocks kept ticking along.
She wondered idly who had bathed her. Her left arm rested in a sling with lots of gauze to pad her injured shoulder. All her injuries had been bandaged and the glass chunks removed, but she didn’t feel the itchiness of stitches. If she had been taken to a hospital, they would have put stitches in her skin that she would have to cut out before her fast-healing skin absorbed them. She had been well cared for by someone who was familiar with spider-kin needs. She suspected Doctor Nudd.
The only thing that hurt was her head.
She touched the back of her head gently and found an impressive goose egg.
Ow.
Beside her, on her little nightstand, next to a stained-glass lamp shaped like a tulip that she had found in a garage sale forty years ago, waited a note and a small bottle of white powder. The label on the bottle read, “Amphidosone.” Liliana had been given amphidosone before. It was made from skin secretions of a frog-kin species, was highly addictive, and as “sopor” was sold on the street as a recreational drug. Taken in reasonable amounts, it proved an excellent analgesic for both Fae and beast-kin like her.
The note said, “Half a teaspoon dissolved in liquid for pain, as needed, at least four hours apart.” Signed illegibly, the scrawl appeared short and had a capital N at the beginning. Doctor Nudd it was.
Rolling to a sitting position, she groaned. The only reason none of her injuries hurt before was because she hadn’t moved. Now, everything hurt. She looked longingly at the white powder. In addition to dulling the pain, though, it would affect her like several shots of tequila affected a human. She had things to do before she could impair herself to that extent.
Her clocks said 7:20, and the sunshine coming through her brightly colored curtains said morning. She had appointments today. But she couldn’t remember exactly when the first one would be. Her pounding head made thinking difficult.
Very slowly and gingerly, wearing a moss-green nightgown someone had dressed her in from of one of her own drawers, her feet bare, she walked to the room housing her business.
One of the shelves in her former dining room did not hold arcane knickknacks or clocks. It held big faux leather-bound books and an old-fashioned telephone with a handset connected to it by a curly wire. She replaced the old rotary phone late in the previous century when it became difficult to call many places without the tones push-button phones made. She had seen no reason to replace it since then, even though some people now considered voice-only wired phones to be antiques.
So she would not have to stay on her feet, she picked up the base and carried it to the table. The long cord trailed behind her.
Liliana lifted the largest book off the shelf with her one usable arm and considerable difficulty. She stifled a whimper. There were excellent reasons for the bandages along her ribs.
Pushing the crystal ball off-center, she set the big book on the round table. She would have to put that back later. The book with tabs on the side with the letters of the alphabet on them wasn’t as heavy as the appointment book, thank goodness.
Ah. She had four appointments today, the first at 9:30 AM. She opened the book to the appropriate page to get the contact information for her first client and sat down carefully to avoid jarring her injuries. People might look down on her for using paper to keep track of contact information, but it could never be hacked and it was never “down,” unlike the more modern ways of storing customer data.
One by one, she called all four of her clients for the day in the order of their appointments and either left a message or spoke to them, canceling or rescheduling. She considered also calling the clients she had scheduled for tomorrow, but decided not to. It was bad for business to cancel appointments, and hopefully, she would be feeling better by then.
Liliana lifted the huge appointment book and the smaller address book with difficulty and put them back on the shelf. She started to put the phone back but stopped. She picked up the receiver and dialed a number from memory. The phone rang twice.
“Willoughby residence,” a cheerful voice answered.
“Hello, Mrs. Willoughby. You asked to schedule an appointment for next week. I can do that now.”
“Madame Anna! I’m so glad to hear from you. I was worried sick. You seemed so upset when I left yesterday.”
The rabbit-kin’s comments warmed her. Liliana hadn’t known anyone worried about her. “I am fine.”
“That’s wonderful to hear. Could I come in today then?”
“I am not that fine.”
“Oh no. Are you hurt? Are you sick? Was it that red wolf? You said he wasn’t dangerous, and Ben, Mr. Harper I mean, my boy Sam’s teacher, he said that his Pete was a really good man. He doesn’t know that he’s a wolf-kin though, right? Of course he doesn’t, him being a Normal and all. But in any case, you said the red wolf might die, and he didn’t come home last night, and now Ben’s real worried. I’m not worried, of course, not about a Celtic werewolf of all people, but I thought I’d ask anyway. For Ben. I wouldn’t want him to worry unnecessarily after all.”
Liliana started to answer, but Janice Willoughby did not seem to have much of a need to breathe.
“Ben’s such a sweet man, and a wonderful teacher, Sam’s favorite. I’d hate to see him get hurt. He loved the cookies and the cake I baked, and we really hit it off. It would be a crying shame if anything happened to his young man.”
In a single day, Liliana marveled at how Pete had transformed from an evil werewolf beast who might eat Janice’s children to the wolf-kin beloved of her son’s favorite teacher.
To make certain that Pete was all right, Liliana opened her fourth eyes for a moment. He, too, was clean, bandaged, and in bed. The bed was huge, big enough for a half-dozen people to sleep in at once, and had an open window beside it with sheer blowing curtains.
Oh. Doctor Nudd’s house.
She closed her fourth eyes quickly. The extra vision made her dizzy and nauseous.
It took her a few seconds to realize that Janice had stopped talking.
“Pete is fine. He did not die, but his thigh is injured. He stayed the night at a friend’s house. He is still sleeping.”
“Oh, that’s so good to hear. I’m so glad. Ben will be completely relieved. Unless the friend was more than a friend, if you know what I mean. Then he probably wouldn’t be so much. But I’m sure that his boyfriend wouldn’t cheat on him like that. Ben’s not the kind of man to put up with that sort of nonsense. I would sure hope that red wolf knew better than to do something like that to him. He’s such a lovely man, you know?”
