Spider-Touched (4 page)

In the cage next to Tir the human finally succumbed to his injuries. His rattling breath was a death knell making the hyenas laugh and the lion charge.

The wereman, his body caught in a grotesque blending of cougar and human, paused in his savage assault on the bars of his cage, his lips pulling back to reveal broken teeth and a bloody mouth.

At the far end the lethal dragon lizards turned their heads, flicked their tongues out to capture the scent and taste of death. Their huge size and venomous bite, their aggressiveness, made them terrifying creatures, illegal to house or transport, though Tir had seen little evidence that humans obeyed the laws they were so fond of creating.

The sound of footsteps drew Tir’s attention away from the companions he was caged alongside. He shifted his weight, and the chains tethering his shackled wrists and ankles to a metal belt around his waist rattled.

There was enough play in them to allow for a shuffling walk, to allow him to scoop food into his hand and bend his torso to eat, but not enough to allow him to kill—though given the opportunity, he wouldn’t hesitate to attempt it.

His hands curled around the bars of his cell. The door at the far end opened, allowing pure sunlight into the building. His eyes stung, but he didn’t close them. He let the light burn itself into his soul, let it strengthen him and feed his resolve for freedom and vengeance.

A slight figure stood in the doorway, her fear palpable. Familiar. Tir’s lips curled in disgust when the woman finally stepped into the building, driven not by courage but by a terror of disobeying her husband.

She scuttled crablike past the wereman, who pleaded for help in a voice that sounded strangely human despite the distortion and indecipherable words caused by the cat’s muzzle. She moved past the dead man’s corpse and Tir, her face averted, shoulders hunching in defense, like a turtle trying to pull its head and neck into a shell.

If Tir had once been capable of feeling pity for humans, it had long ago been extinguished. Disgust burned in his belly with his rage. Those who stood by and did nothing deserved to have their fate tied to that of the guilty.

The woman stopped at a crank mounted on the wall. She grasped it with both hands, strained to turn it.

Her arms shook with the effort of trying to manipulate something set for a man’s height. Whimpers and panted sobs blended with the groan of metal against metal, the slow unfolding of a heavy tarp rolled against the ceiling.

Tir watched without compassion. He wondered idly when the trapper would come in and berate her for her inadequacy, equate her value to the dead man whose carcass already buzzed with flies.

Her plight interested Tir only in that it served to break up the monotony of his captivity. He would have been the answer to her prayers had she been willing to free him. But his promise to kill the human known as Hyde and leave her alive had fallen on deaf ears. His words had been wasted on a spineless creature who allowed herself to be terrorized by the man she’d accepted for a husband.

Tir could not remember a time when he was free, but not all his jailers had treated him poorly. Some, especially the acolytes, had shared with him the changes taking place in the world outside the catacomb prison. Others had left books in his cell, hoping to gain his favor, or perhaps reduce their own complicity should he gain his freedom in their lifetime.

He might have spared them. It was a moot point.

The acolytes matured into priests. Into deacons and bishops, and popes, grand rulers and god kings, chancellors—depending on who held the key to his cell. They aged and died, and in the end, many of them were laid to rest in the same catacombs holding his prison, their bodies becoming food for worms, then dust and brittle bones.

Tir’s attention shifted away from the woman and her pathetic struggles. It returned to the open doorway.

Through it he could catch a glimpse of blue sky and white clouds. The sublime promise of freedom.

His latest captor appeared, a brutal, unkempt man with bearish features. Hyde.

Oh yes,
Tir thought,
I would enjoy killing this human
.

A look of distaste crossed the man’s features when he noted the tarp curtain extended only a few feet from the ceiling. “Worthless cunt,” he directed at his wife. “What’s taking you so long? You think they’ll stop to ask who owns the lizards? They’ll shoot us on the spot if they see them, and walk out of here without paying for what they came for.”

Hyde’s gaze shifted to the cell containing the corpse. He half turned in the doorway. “Raoul, get in here. Help this worthless bitch get the tarp down. Then haul Rudy’s body out of here. Put it someplace where the dogs won’t get it. We’ll deal with it later. After you’ve done that, stay out of sight until the buyers are gone.”

A toddler son followed the trapper into the building, then Raoul. Hyde’s hand settled on the knife he wore strapped to his thigh as his gaze followed the teen.

Raoul moved with the grace of a shapeshifter and had the edgy energy of one, though Tir had never seen him in any form but human. The teen’s attention went to the woman and then to the corpse. Covetous desire followed by satisfaction flared in his eyes before it was masked, making Tir stir with the anticipation of freedom.

There was buried hatred in the boy, fear. But there was also an animal urge to oust the alpha and claim his mate.

“Hurry up,” the trapper said, jerking a chain attached to his belt and pulling a collection of keys from his pocket.

He unlocked the dead man’s cell, remaining aware of what Raoul was doing.

Raoul finished lowering the tarp curtain and moved on to the task of hauling the corpse from the building.

Tir smiled slightly. Hyde didn’t trust the boy. He never left Raoul unsupervised in the building for more than a few minutes. Perhaps with good cause.

There was just enough of a similarity in the eyes to make Tir think Raoul might be his captor’s son, gotten on some other woman. The toddler’s mother was too close in age to Raoul’s, though given what Tir had seen of humans, she could just as easily be a half sister.

Tir’s attention flicked to the wereman trapped between shapes. He wondered if Raoul saw the same fate waiting for him when his usefulness was extinguished.

The woman tentatively approached, beckoning the toddler to her arms. Her voice was little more than a whisper when she said, “I’ll take Eston to the house.”

“No. The two of you stay with me.”

Hyde selected a key from the cluster in his hand and Tir tensed. Rage built when his captor opened a locked cabinet and lifted a taser gun from the shelf.

Despite his will to show no reaction, Tir’s fingers tightened on the bars of his cell. No matter what his tormentors did to him, he didn’t remain dead. The damage done would heal and his organs re-form. He was physically stronger than any human, but he wasn’t immune to pain or the effects of their weapons.

Hyde turned. He met Tir’s eyes and sneered. “Looks like I’ve already got a buyer for you.”

He walked toward the cell. “Get in the chair.”

Tir fought to keep his lips from curling back in a savage snarl. He refused to grant his captor a victory, already knowing the trapper enjoyed inflicting pain in any form.

With a casualness he didn’t feel, Tir moved to a chair stained with a hundred years’ worth of his blood. He sat, centuries of existence allowing him to win the struggle and keep his face expressionless. But hate slid through him like a cold glacier. There would be retribution, revenge for all he’d suffered.

The trapper unlocked the cage door. “Put Eston down and get in there,” he ordered his wife.

“Please, Hyde, don’t make—”

Fist and taser connected to the woman’s cheek in a casual blow. “I’m not going to tell you again. Get him tethered to the chair. They’ll be here in a few minutes.”

The woman trembled as she set her son down and entered the cage. The stink of her fear swamped Tir. And if he hadn’t long ago erected a barrier against human emotions, he would have felt it as well.

She scurried to the chair and hastily secured his already shackled wrists and ankles to it before darting out. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back, escaping the horror of his situation by letting his awareness drift through the open door to blend with the sound of birds and the rustle of leaves, the smell of the forest and wildflowers beyond the trapper’s compound.

Freedom. Despite the immobility imposed on him by the chair, Tir felt closer to it than he had ever felt.

He’d changed hands many times in the last century. And each time, more of his history was lost to the humans.

Hundreds of years had passed since the last acolyte meticulously restored the tattoos covering Tir’s arms—trying as he worked to get Tir to translate the unfamiliar images and symbols into sounds and words he could understand so they could be added to the parchment scrolls holding their meaning in long-dead languages.

Tir wouldn’t have done it, couldn’t have even if he’d wanted to. If he had once known their meaning—which perhaps he had, given those years when his tongue was removed and, later, his lips sewn shut—he no longer did. But he was sure of one thing: the tattoos held the key to opening the sigil-inscribed collar around his neck and breaking the spell keeping him locked in human form, his memories and his power denied him.

Fear—the only emotion he was capable of feeling—rose up and threatened to engulf him. Even if he gained his physical freedom, the possibility of enslavement would exist as long as he wore the collar.

It had been decades since he’d seen the rolled parchment pages containing the history of the translations that used to accompany him each time he changed hands. Given the nature of mankind, he didn’t doubt the information had been stolen and copied into occult texts, but with the destruction and the devastation wrought by what the humans called The Last War, the knowledge enabling him to recover the meanings to the tattoos might well have been lost.

Tir blocked the fear as he had learned to block the pain and constant assault of human emotion. Outside, the rumbling of a heavy truck grew near, its brakes squealing as it stopped at the gateway to the trapper’s compound.

Without opening his eyes, Tir followed Hyde’s footsteps. He heard the gate open and men alight from the truck.

“You didn’t tell me you were bringing—”

“I’m here as a favor to an important man,” a smooth voice interrupted the trapper. “He wants my opinion before he pays your asking price. Shall we go inside?”

“Only the three of you. The rest stay here.”

The trapper sounded belligerent, though Tir could hear traces of suspicion and uneasiness.

“Unless we decide on the lion,” the smooth voice said. “I’m sure you’d prefer we transport him and save you the trouble.”

“Maybe.”

The compound gate closed. Its lock clicked into place.

Tir’s captor retraced his steps, his guests behind him. Before they came into view, the smooth voice murmured, “Is he blindfolded?”

“What for? He’s in chains and shackled to a chair.”

“Blindfold him. Or put a hood over his head.” There was power in the voice now, a hint that the man it belonged to was used to being obeyed without question.

The trapper stomped into the building and found a burlap sack. This time he didn’t bother to order his wife into the cell. He strode in, anger hiding his increasing nervousness, taking it out on Tir by roughly pulling the sack down over Tir’s face.

“He’s covered,” Hyde said.

Tir heard the soft slide of the knife from the sheath strapped to the trapper’s thigh and braced himself. He knew only too well the feel of that particular blade.

The wereman went silent as the strangers entered the building, his fear scent growing more pungent as Tir sensed him moving to the back of his cage and cowering there.

The lion and hyenas grew agitated. A voice Tir recognized from days past said, “The lion is almost as large as Zenzo. He’ll make a nice addition to the collection, don’t you think, Papa?”

“Only if the price is right, Tomás,” the third stranger said, and then to Hyde: “How did he come into your possession?”

“Trapped him up north.”

“And the prisoner?”

“Stumbled across him in a settlement while I was hunting in the Sierras. He was locked in a cell in the basement of a church. As far as I could tell, he was the only survivor. Everyone else was massacred. Werewolves maybe, or something else. There wasn’t enough left of anyone to tell what got to them first.”

“And you didn’t think to turn him over to the Church or the authorities?” the stranger whose smooth, powerful voice had insisted on Tir’s not seeing them asked.

“I’ve got expenses, and a man’s entitled to profit from his labors. Either can have him if they’ll meet my price.”

“I’ve yet to see a demonstration that his blood is truly capable of doing what Tomás believes he witnessed when he was here last.”

“I need to cut one of you. Which one will it be?” There was relish in the trapper’s voice, not only at the possibility of inflicting pain but at the prospect of making money.

“I’ll do it,” Tomás volunteered.

“No,” the smooth-voiced one said. “I don’t recognize any of the tattoos on his arms as those of a lawbreaker, which leads me to believe they might well be marks to hold a demon here. I’ll need to study them further before there can be any contemplation of presenting him to your great-grandfather. Until we know what we’re dealing with here, it would be unwise for you to mingle his blood with yours. Our host can provide a demonstration to satisfy us or we can turn our attention to the lion and start our trip back to Oakland. I want to be home before the sun sets.”

“Get in here, bitch,” Hyde said, greed winning out over the pleasure of tormenting his visitors.

Tir heard her low whimpers as she shuffled in to join the group. Her cry merged into sobbing as it had on other occasions, the child in her arms adding his sounds of distress to hers.

In that moment, Tir was glad for the burlap sack that would hide his agony from the humans. He braced himself, not for the pain that came when the blade of the knife slashed across his arm and cut to the bone, but for the noise assaulting his mind as her wound was pressed to his.