Spider-Touched (33 page)

L’ANTIQUAIRE was a long, narrow building, the sole survivor in a block where bombs or munitions had destroyed its neighbors and human scavengers had plundered what remained. Small barred windows on either side of the front door were coated in grime that had probably built up in the centuries since The Last War.

A heavy steel door was the only opening set in the back of the building, the untrampled appearance of the vegetation creeping toward it making Tir think it was seldom used.

The remoteness of the shop’s location surprised him. He’d thought it would be in the center of town, closer to where guardsmen and police were headquartered and the wealthy walked the streets without fear of losing whatever riches they carried on their person.

Instead, L’Antiquaire was at the far edge of where humans without gifts had settled. It was one final residential neighborhood away from the border marking the remotest section of the gifted area, and relatively near to where the forest began.

Tir returned to the building’s front, wary, wondering again if this was a trap set for him by Rimmon and his daughter. Frustration and uneasiness seethed inside him. For all his dealings with humans, this world was unfamiliar to him, and without his memory he had only his instinct and his reason to guide him. And they urged caution.

Even in the days before the war and plague, the famines and droughts, and the emergence of the supernaturals, rare books were things to be killed for. And afterward, when humans burned them to stay warm or destroyed them because of what they contained, they’d become even more valuable.

It made no sense that a place like this—a shop where something as old and valuable as a tome bearing the stamp of the Knights Templar—would be located here. If Araña were with him—

Tir snarled, cutting off the thought. Already he was too deeply entangled in the silken webs of desire she’d spun around him. He was here and he would recover the book without her aid.

Still, he used caution in approaching the shop and stopped just beyond the doorway. The smell of books greeted him, musty and old, reminding him for a moment of the catacombs that had been his prison for centuries.

There were symbols carved into the door frame, generalized protections all the buildings in Oakland seemed to have and others that made him think of those he’d seen at the occult shop. Neither kind caused him concern. It was the glyphs interspersed among them that reached into his darkened memory, as if they’d prod him to—

He clenched his fists in frustration. The knowledge remained submerged, and the only way he would recover it was to step through the door, past the sigils, and gain possession of the book.

Tir reached with his mind for the emotions inside the shop and found awareness. Someone inside the building knew he was at the door, but they neither feared him entering nor anticipated it. If there was curiosity about his purpose or why he lingered beyond the heavily barred screen door, then it was buried in other thoughts.

Safe enough,
Tir thought, glancing one last time at the glyphs stirring his memory before entering the building.

The musty, dry-parchment and old-book smell was magnified inside the crowded shop. The air was thick with it, yellowed by the diffuse light coming from lanterns holding spell flame instead of true fire.

There was little room for anything other than shelves. They reached from floor to ceiling, creating tiny aisleways that would slow down a man of his size and keep anyone larger from exploring the stacks altogether.

A heavy, battered wooden desk was the only furniture visible. It was pushed into a corner to the left of the doorway but seemed to serve only as a place for books waiting to be shelved. If there was a method governing how the books were organized, it wasn’t immediately obvious to Tir.

He expected the shopkeeper to emerge from the stacks, but when one didn’t, Tir chose the middle aisle and moved deeper into the bookstore. His shirt grew dusty as he brushed against the tomes on either side of him.

Unlike those in the occult shop, the books here were mundane and not magical. History and literature. Science and politics. Texts that might have been in any library or home in the days before The Last War.

He reached the end of the row of shelves to find the aisleway he’d been traveling along blocked by the beginning of another row. A narrow gap allowed him to step to the side and proceed forward, giving the shop the feel of a maze-like warren.

Tir frowned, as puzzled by the shop’s layout as he had been by its location. It seemed to invite theft—or worse.

He kept going and finally emerged from the tight confines of book-laden shelves, only to find even more books, though these were scattered on tables in an area set aside for restoration. An old man glanced up, his gray-green eyes faded with advanced age.

“What can I help you with?” he asked, the hand holding needle and thread pausing over the book he tended.

Tir moved to the table where the old man worked. Up close he seemed even more frail and defenseless. “I’ve come for a book that’s in your possession.”

“Do you need me to find it for you?”

It took effort for Tir to tamp down the wild surge of emotion. For centuries he’d dreamed of this moment. “If you could.”

The bookseller placed the needle and thread on the table and came around to stand next to Tir. “Describe it as best you can.”

“Easy enough. It bears the stamp of the Knights Templar on its cover.”

The bookseller startled, then shook his head. “I don’t know how you learned I was in possession of that particular tome, but I’m afraid it’s already been sold.”

Tir’s hands curled into fists. How could the book be gone when Saril had seen it only a short time ago and assured him before he left that she saw only the present with her gift?

“Who is the buyer?”

“Virgilio Cortez.”

“He’s here in Oakland?”

His question was met with a puzzled expression. “Virgilio rarely leaves Los Angeles.”

Sudden insight made Tir ask, “Has he taken possession of the book?”

“Not yet.”

Satisfaction purred through Tir, though he continued to be puzzled by the shopkeeper’s lack of concern for his own safety. “Then I will see the book.”

The old man shook his head. “That’s not possible. Virgilio is quite strict in his requirements. Items purchased for his private collection are taken out of circulation immediately. The only way I can allow you access is if he or his designated servant grants me permission to do it.”

Tir’s hand dropped to the knife strapped to his thigh, Araña’s words sliding through his mind.
I don’t draw a weapon unless I’m prepared to use it.

“You will show me the book.”

He let the old man hear the promise of death in his voice. But some unexpected, foreign impulse made him add, “And I will protect you from the consequences of it.”

There was the briefest flickering of fear in the bookseller, as though his advanced age made the prospect of death’s embrace frightening only at the gateway of its claiming. Stooped shoulders straightened, a signal he intended to meet his fate bravely. “I can’t allow you to see it without Virgilio’s blessing.”

Tir pulled the knife from its sheath. Centuries of captivity darkened his mind, renewing the hatred in his soul and reminding him of his pledge to seek vengeance. He would do what was necessary in order to gain his freedom. Pain could make even the most devout of humans break.

The catacombs had once rung with their screams and tortured admissions of manufactured guilt. And he had offered this man a choice when he himself had never been offered one.

“Last chance,” he said, voice guttural, harsh.

The old man started to speak. Whatever he might have said was lost in the opening of the steel door, in his sudden, deep fear as a pregnant woman entered the back room, her greeting of “Thierry” cut off, strangled.

Here is a weapon I can use against him,
Tir thought. But before the intention could take root, a black-haired, brown-skinned girl-child slipped inside, stopping Tir’s heart with her likeness to Araña.

A blink and the child’s features became her own. But it was too late. The image of Araña growing heavy with his child, bearing a daughter that looked as she did, had shocked him to his core and scattered the hate festering in his soul.

Tir sheathed the knife, knowing Araña would turn away from him and accept death rather than welcome him in her arms if he harmed this woman and child whose only crime was being loved by the bookseller.

He would gain the book by another means, he decided, and thought instantly of Araña’s picking the locks, freeing him of his shackles.

He was reminded of his own pronouncement at the stream.
I believe I’ll find what I seek in Oakland. Otherwise you wouldn’t have found your way into my dreams
.

The bookseller said, “Talk to Draven. Perhaps there’s some service you can perform for him in exchange for his intercession with Virgilio. Only Virgilio and his High Servant have the combination to the safe the book is in.”

Tir gave a curt nod, his eyes quickly scanning the room and finding a line of safes set into a wall. He didn’t know who Draven was. It didn’t matter.

Araña had lived among thieves. She was one. If she couldn’t open the safe, then she could help him locate someone who could.

Tir left the shop through the steel door set in the back wall. He hurried toward the healer’s house, telling himself his rush was dictated by what he’d found at L’Antiquaire. But the stirring in his cock and the worry in his heart called him a liar.

ENTERING the witches’ house again was harder, so much harder than stepping into it the first time. The paintings and antiques had no power to distract Araña, and though she forced her hands to hang loosely at her sides—away from the knives—she doubted she was successful in appearing relaxed.

She expected Annalise to lead her to the parlor again. Instead the witch took her deeper into the house, only stopping when they arrived at a sigil-painted door with a bloodred pentacle in its center. Magic hung thick and heavy in the air, as if centuries of conjuring had soaked into the wood before spilling out into the space in front of the door.

When Annalise opened it, revealing a narrow, dark stairway leading downward into utter darkness, Araña took an involuntary step backward. Despite her time with Matthew and Erik, the fear beaten and prayed into her during her formative years returned as if she’d never been free of it.

Hell and damnation waited at the bottom of the stairs. It waited for anyone who took up with witches and played in their dark magic.

Araña could almost see Hell’s flames shadow-dancing on the walls, black and hungry for her soul. The prospect of taking the first step downward made her skin crawl and grow clammy, threatening her resolve to gain control of the demon gift.

“Levanna waits below,” Annalise said, voice empty of inflection.

Araña’s stomach knotted, forcing the acid-hot taste of fear into her mouth, and without her meaning them to her hands curled around the knife hilts.

The witch said, “Only agreements entered into long ago spared your life earlier today. They won’t protect you a second time. A single human life span passes without notice to beings whose existence spans eternity. Failed tools and plans are easily set aside and replaced by new ones.”

Araña’s fingers tightened on the smooth leather of the hilts before she made them uncurl and ordered her hands away from the false security of the knives. She closed her mind to fear and blocked out the voices from the past, the sermons shouted from the pulpit and delivered with the lash of a cane.

Her reasons for seeking out the witch hadn’t changed. Levi would die because of her unless she gained some control over her gift. Her next victim could easily be Tir.

She took the first step downward. Then a second. And a third. Fully expecting Annalise to close the door and trap her in darkness.

But if the witch was tempted, she didn’t act on it before Araña reached the bottom of the stairs and found a hallway instead of a room.

A single candle beckoned at the end of it, bloodred, the flame whispering,
Come to me.

It was like a vision summons, only Araña’s body answered instead of her soul, moving steadily forward, unwilling to turn back or deny the fire’s command.

Her heart thundered, not the phantom beat she imagined in the dark center of the flame, but the real squeeze and release of muscle.

The Wainwright matriarch waited in a room of flickering candles set at each star-point of the pentacle drawn on the floor. She was draped in black, moon-faced and milky-eyed, like a spider waiting in a web. “So you returned. Perhaps you’re not a foolish child after all.”

“Will you help me gain control of my gift?” Araña asked, her throat so dry it took effort to push the words into the air between them.

“You have to enter the place where the Spiders weave if you want to learn.”

Araña’s eyes glanced at the candles, positioned one at each apex of the pentagram. If she’d allowed herself to think about it at all, she would have guessed she’d have to go to the very place she’d spent a lifetime trying to avoid.

She had no way of knowing if the matriarch would lie or tell the truth, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking, “Will I be able to undo something that hasn’t come to pass?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. That is not for me to say. Where you go is not a place I can enter now. Another waits to teach you the things you need to know.”

A chill swept through Araña as she imagined herself coming face-to-face with the demon responsible for the spider mark. “Who?”

Goose bumps rose on her arms with the witch’s laugh. “Nothing you can offer is worth what it would cost me to speak that particular name out loud. If you want answers and knowledge, then enter the place where the Spiders weave.” A gnarled hand emerged from the black folds of her garment. In it was a vial full of liquid. “I am here to assist you in finding the true gateway and to ensure the shell of flesh so painstakingly created to house your spirit will not host another’s.”