Precise oaths, p.2
Precise Oaths, page 2
“Oh, you think the colonel’s handsome, huh?” the sergeant teased. “Should I tell him about your crush? Should I warn Ben he’s got competition?”
Liliana shuddered, only half listening. This powerful Fae colonel must live right on the Fort Liberty Army base, mere blocks from her house. The vividness of his face in her vision indicated a high probability she would encounter him in person in the near future.
More visions of Sergeant Giovanni and the dangerous Fae colonel flashed rapidly in Liliana’s fourth vision. “You have served with him in many battles. He has killed to protect you, and you to protect him.” And in addition to possessing powerful magic, he is a formidable warrior.
While the spider-kin hated even the idea of moving away from the clients she had guarded for years and her cozy home and routine, Seattle had the advantage of being on the other side of the continent from the Sidhe.
These people followed him. Perhaps that had been the hint of danger she sensed earlier?
Detective Jackson raised her eyebrows. “Is all that accurate?” she asked the other two.
“All true,” the red-headed scientist confirmed.
The detective whistled low. “Impressive.”
“Forget about it.” Sergeant Giovanni waved a hand carelessly. “Anyone could listen to the scuttlebutt and know all kinds of things about our unit. Soldiers gossip like old ladies.”
“There’s one problem with your theory,” Detective Jackson pointed out. “In order to brush up on you and your CO’s past, Madame Anna would have had to know who was coming. I didn’t call ahead. Did you?”
Uncertainty swept over Sergeant Giovanni’s face. “It’s some sort of trick.” Her dark eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Aren’t you supposed to tell me I’m going to meet the man of my dreams and live happily ever after?”
Liliana put aside persistent visions of the sergeant’s dangerous commanding officer and peeked at her romantic future. What she saw made the spider-kin cringe. “You will meet a man soon who will give you chocolate and jewelry, but he is dishonest. He desires another.” Sergeant Giovanni did not seem very skilled at choosing her mates. “Do not trust the man with the silver rose. Absolutely do not wear the locket.”
The sergeant shook her head and laughed. “Seriously? You need to go back to fortune-teller school or whatever. That fortune sucks.”
This objection Liliana had heard before. In her practiced singsong voice, she said, “I see only the truth of what might come to pass, not what you wish the truth to be.”
“She’s got you there,” the detective said with a chuckle.
Liliana glanced with her third eyes quickly at the policewoman from under her veil. She saw grudging respect dawn in her sharp eyes, along with a firework sparkle of suppressed laughter.
The spider-kin smiled back. This police detective was also a Normal, with deep moral principles. The rich, dark blues of profound courage interlaced her aura, shaded generously with the softer green of compassion.
Detective Jackson’s smiling eyes turned to a squint as she tried to see the spider seer’s face better through the obscuring veil.
Quickly, Liliana closed her third eyes.
Peter Teague nudged Sergeant Giovanni with an elbow. “We didn’t actually come here to talk about Zoe’s terrible taste in men.”
Sergeant Giovanni’s wry face reflected in the crystal ball.
“You have questions. Now, ask and I will answer.” Liliana waited patiently.
“Right,” Peter Teague said, but he didn’t ask her anything. The soldier and the man of science looked at one another, as if each expected the other to speak.
Detective Jackson rolled her eyes. Perhaps the annoyance she kept expressing was not Liliana’s fault. “Ma’am, we’re investigating a string of murders. Soldiers from Fort Liberty have gone missing. Some have been found dead. We thought you might be able to help us.”
Liliana stood up so quickly she knocked over her chair. “NO!” She tore the veil off her head and faced the corner, turning her back to the strangers.
Her second set of eyes, the domed green eyes that shone like polished chrome on her temples, opened without conscious thought as they always did when Liliana felt threatened. They allowed her to see in nearly 360 degrees, although in spectrums different from her human vision.
The man slipped one hand into the sleeve of his jacket to the hilt of a knife. The two women both had guns.
Liliana knew better than to startle armed people. She knew better. She shouldn’t have done that. She wished these strangers would just go away.
The spider-kin picked up one of her new scarves from the messy pile on the corner shelf. “No one asks me to see murdered people. I don’t want to see murdered people.” Her nightmares were rich enough. “Please, don’t ask me to see murdered people.”
She ran the scarf through her fingers, facing the corner of the room next to the inner door that led to her living room. Burnout velvet cloth was her favorite. The sensation of silk then velvet trailing in patterns between her fingers always calmed her.
“It’s all right,” Detective Jackson said gently. “You don’t have to look at the murdered soldiers.” Her voice soothed like someone talking to a frightened child. “We just want to ask you a few questions. That’s all.”
Liliana swallowed and nodded at the corner. It was all right. She’d misunderstood. They wouldn’t make her watch people be murdered. “Okay.”
Talking to people with her back to them was a violation of a strict social rule both her mothers had ingrained in her. “Okay. You can ask.” She took a deep breath to steady herself and turned around, still holding and staring down at the burnout velvet scarf in her hands. “But I won’t look. Okay? I don’t want to see murdered people.”
Peter Teague followed the spider seer to the corner of the room.
Liliana tried to step back from him, but her heel touched the wall next to the door.
“Right.” His voice wasn’t gentle like Detective Jackson’s. “Tell us where you were last night.”
Chapter 2
Other Nature
“Did you go dancing?” Peter Teague asked.
Liliana smiled wistfully at the toes of his big combat boots. “I used to love to go dancing. I never liked the crowds, but the music was so beautiful. I would dance outside on the porches and balconies, and in the grass.”
Their was so much music in her youth. People played instruments and swirled brightly colored skirts. Everyone danced in the evening after dinner for someone’s wedding or birthday or just for the sheer joy of being alive. It had been so long since Liliana danced, she’d almost forgotten to miss it.
Peter Teague’s brow wrinkled. “So, does that mean you went dancing or not?”
“There aren’t any places to dance in the grass away from the crowds in Fayetteville. There’s always too much noise and too many people, and the music is too loud. I don’t go dancing anymore.” It had been decades at least. She hadn’t gone dancing in decades.
“Did you go to the Wolverines basketball game Friday night?” Peter Teague’s voice had gained a more intense edge, but she didn’t know why this scientist was so interested in what she did for fun.
“Go Wolverines,” she muttered dutifully. It was socially required in Fayetteville to say those words whenever the local high school was mentioned. “I don’t like basketball games at all. So many people screaming and shouting for nothing important.” She shrugged. “And I always know who will win anyway. I never go to basketball games.”
“Do you mind telling us where you were Friday night?” Detective Jackson asked.
“I was here. I have been rereading Gulliver’s Travels.” Liliana waved the scarf at the closed door beside her that led into the rest of her house.
“Is there anyone who could verify that?” Peter Teague asked. “Was someone with you?”
She shook her head. “Clients stay in the business space unless they have to go to the bathroom.”
Liliana tilted her head to one side, puzzled by the seemingly random conversation. “Usually, when men ask about things like dancing and basketball games and my house, they want to have sex with me.”
Doctor Peter Teague was attractive on the outside. If he was a nice person on the inside, she might enjoy having sex with him. She hadn’t looked into him, though, so she didn’t know if he was a good person, or even if he was human like the two women, or some kind of Other.
“Do you want to have sex with me, Doctor Teague?”
Doctor Teague cleared his throat and took a step back. “Uh, that’s not um, I mean…uh, not that you’re not pretty, but…”
Detective Jackson snorted.
Sergeant Giovanni laughed outright. “Give it up, Pete. There’s no good answer to that one.”
Liliana’s ears flushed hot. When people laughed at her, it usually meant Liliana had missed something obvious to everyone else.
She replayed the conversation in her mind, trying to spot where her understanding had gone wrong.
Oh. Their questions weren’t about Liliana. They were about murders. “Did the murders happen last night and last Friday night?”
“Ma’am, we’re sorry we bothered you.” Detective Jackson stood up. “We’ll be going now.”
“Okay,” Liliana said, still confused. Why did the detective not answer my question?
“Not just yet,” Doctor Teague said.
Detective Jackson’s full lips tightened, and her eyes narrowed, making her look very fierce. “May I remind you this is my investigation?” She stood up and pointed at the sergeant and the scientist. “You two are only here in an advisory capacity, and so far your advice has led us on a big fat snipe hunt.”
“I just have one more question,” the red-haired man insisted, holding up a single finger.
Detective Jackson sighed and crossed her arms. “Fine.” That looked like more annoyance, but definitely not at Liliana this time. “Ask. Then we leave this nice lady in peace.”
Peter Teague turned back to the spider-kin. “Have you ever seen people killed by having their insides dissolved by acid and sucked out through two big holes in their throats?”
“Pete!” Sergeant Giovanni stood up and grabbed the man’s arm, pulling him back from Liliana. “The lady is clearly...” She circled a finger around her ear. “…busy.”
Liliana continued to look down at the scarf in her hand, so the soldier probably thought the spider-kin couldn’t see, but Liliana always saw. “I am not crazy, Sergeant Giovanni. The word people sometimes use to describe me is ‘autistic.’ It’s not really right either, but it’s a better word than ‘crazy.’ I’m not crazy.”
She forced herself to look at the soldier and the man directly for a second before her gaze dropped again. “Yes, I have heard of people killed in that way, Doctor Teague.”
The two women stopped glaring at the man, and Sergeant Giovanni stopped trying to drag him out.
All three stared at the spider-kin seer.
Liliana swallowed hard. She hated when people stared at her like that.
Sure, she had seen that kind of death, but she certainly didn’t want to see it again. It was a horrible way to die. Widow spider venom dissolved people while they were still alive.
Wait.
Widow spiders were spider-kin.
Every hair on her body stood on end.
Do they think I’m a widow spider?
Liliana rocked her weight onto the balls of her feet, her body ready in a moment to fight or run. She had seen enough of the detective and the sergeant’s minds and hearts, she didn’t want to hurt them. They were good people, but Liliana would not let anyone put her in a cage.
“Did you ask me those questions because you think I killed the soldiers?”
“You match the description of the woman we suspect, Madame Anna,” Detective Jackson said, with an apology in her tone. Her arms were uncrossed, and she studied Liliana. It was the first time since she arrived that the detective showed no sign of annoyance.
The man with the big shoes shrugged off Sergeant Giovanni’s grip.
His stare made her even more uncomfortable, like he was trying to tell her something, or ask her something, without words.
Was he some kind of Other?
Liliana put her hands over her face as if she were upset and peeked through her fingers at Peter Teague with the small, black third eyes by her tear ducts.
The man’s pale, freckled appearance hid another face, a sharp-fanged canine face, and an intense aura of feral energy, like the scent of musk mixed with the color of lightning.
Wolf-kin. Though he looked different from other werewolves she had known. His aura was filled with more feral power. Most wolves were dark-haired and of Eastern European or Native American descent. She had only seen red wolves in visions and nightmares.
Peter Teague must be a Celtic wolf, one of the mercenaries who hunted down dangerous Others and killed them for money. Like the pack who killed her parents.
Terror hit her in the gut like a kick.
He was on the hunt for a spider-kin killer. Liliana was the only spider-kin in Fayetteville. His cold blue eyes watched her intently.
Ice water crawled over her skin.
Not this time. This time, I am not a powerless child.
Liliana threw her scarf in the werewolf’s face and bolted through the door.
The wolf lunged for her.
She leapt over her couch.
His fingertips brushed her ankle, then his belly hit the wooden back of her couch. Air whoofed out as if he’d been punched.
Ha!
No one knew her house like she did, and no human or wolf was more agile than a spider-kin.
A pirouette on one toe spun her around the corner to her kitchen. She thumbed the switch on the room-bot. The waist-tall device with its long extendable arms trundled into the wolf’s path.
Peter Teague tripped over her bot and face-planted on her tile kitchen floor. It sounded painful.
Liliana couldn’t help but wince in sympathy as she slammed the back door shut behind her. It gave her a few precious seconds on her back porch, out of the wolf’s sight.
In a swift, smooth motion like an Olympic gymnast, she leaped onto the railing around her back porch, caught the edge of the roof, and flipped her legs up. Her feet landed on the slanted roof.
Wolves hunt by scent.
She threw one of her ballet slippers onto the sidewalk and the other clear out to the quiet, drizzly neighborhood street.
Her body flattened against the wet shingles just as the werewolf pelted into her backyard. Her heart pounded so loud in her ears, she worried the red wolf would hear. She opened her fourth eyes so she could watch him without raising her head.
He found her shoe, then saw the other.
Take the bait, wolf. Come on. Take the bait.
Sergeant Giovanni ran out the door next. The werewolf raced off into Liliana’s neighborhood, the human on his heels, rapidly leaving her little house behind.
Liliana smiled with fangs out.
You won’t be killing a spider today, Celtic wolf.
Detective Jackson followed the other two onto the porch a few seconds later and closed the back door politely. The police officer watched the soldier and the wolf-kin scientist run up the street for a moment, shook her head, and muttered, “I still say it’s a damn snipe hunt. If that lady knew anything about those dead soldiers before we arrived, then I’m the pope.” At a steady jog, she followed the other two into the shady neighborhood.
Whatever a snipe was, Liliana felt some kinship with the creature in that moment.
She didn’t twitch a single muscle until the detective jogged around a corner.
From perfect stillness to explosive motion, she skittered up her roof, leapt from the peak to the tall pine growing beside her house, then crept out onto the wiggly end of a high branch. With her wrist, she touched the rough bark. A dot of fluid from the tiny hole just below her palm stuck to the bark. As she pulled her hand back, a fine line of silk strong enough to hold several times her body weight formed where the fluid and air met.
The spider-kin looped the silk strand around the branch, drew an appropriate length out of the spinneret in her wrist, and scrambled down the line to the flat roof of the strip mall next door. She ran along the top of the long building, her feet clad only in knit tights, skimming lightly over the rough gravel roofs of the Troopers Army surplus store, the H&R Block, the barber shop, and the Virtual Fit net-based clothing store.
The roof was flat asphalt with gravel over it. Each rock jabbed her feet as she ran. A few spots of blood stayed behind as her wet tights ripped and shredded, leaving her feet bare on the rocks.
Thank goodness the red wolf was on the wrong scent, or he would have been able to follow her blood trail easily. She ignored the pain and built up enough speed to leap clear across the narrow alley to the roof of Emerald Arms. That should break up her trail a bit, even if the wolf picked it up. She landed neatly on the foot-wide concrete ledge of the custom weapons store’s roof and kept running. The concrete abraded the cuts on her feet, but at least it didn’t add to them.
When she reached the end of the block, the spider-kin shimmied down a silk strand to the asphalt parking lot. She leaned against the brick wall, catching her breath and assessing her situation.
The old gas station across the street had been converted to a Starbucks when gasoline became obsolete in the ’40s. With the entrance to Fort Liberty less than a block away, cameras hid everywhere. Camera drones circled overhead at periodic intervals. She had to move carefully to avoid them.
Liliana took her moment in a traffic lull to run across the street. She panted again, hidden under the cover of the Starbucks’ green-roofed entryway, watching with her fourth eyes until the sky cleared of camera drones.
She ran some more.
Down Fillyaw Road, the shade of neighborhood trees gained density and became a narrow strip of true forest. Persimmon Creek ran through there, winding its way behind and between the neighborhoods full of houses for off-base soldiers and civilian contractors. The cradle of tall trees beside the creek hid her from curious eyes and airborne drone cameras.
