Spider-Touched

One

THE city was straight out of Araña’s nightmare. A reclaimed port rising from the devastation wrought by The Last War and the anarchy that followed when the supernaturals emerged from hiding.

Pain lanced through her chest in a spasm at the sight of it. An echoed emotion, the blending of reality and the demon vision she’d walked in ten years earlier, on the day she’d climbed onto Erik and Matthew’s boat to avoid the mob hunting her.

Oakland. She’d had no name for the city then, but its image had haunted her for years. Now, as she knocked aside the moisture gathering at the corners of her eyes, she wanted to claim it was the cold ocean breeze causing the tearing, but she knew otherwise.

A gruff male voice cut across her thoughts. “Stop daydreaming, girl,” Matthew said. “Free the jib and ready about.”

Araña did as ordered, freeing the line from its cleat as Erik took up the slack and the Constellation turned away from Oakland, a short reprieve even as the wind drew them deeper into the bay.

Emotion closed her throat as her eyes traveled over Erik, taking in the gaunt appearance of his features, the excess of clothing he required to keep warm. There’d be no cure in this city. No healer who could change the course of the wasting disease and restore him to health.

She wished she could turn aside the future she knew was waiting, the death to come, but her gift was useless except to bring pain and suffering.

Their eyes met, warm brown irises to the solid black of hers, and she saw only what she always saw—confidence, intelligence… love.

“That’s San Francisco,” Matthew said, drawing her attention away from Erik by pointing out the city across the bay from Oakland. “Vampires rule there, and only a fool deals with them directly.”

Erik’s laugh was soft, weak, but heartfelt all the same. “And the desperate. There was a time when we were forced to deal with them, until we worked our way into Thierry’s good graces and he mediated.”

Matthew grunted but didn’t reply. Araña smiled, remembering the old bookseller who’d visited them shortly after they’d taken her in.

The sails fluttered as the wind shifted. “Ready about,” Matthew said, and she automatically reached for the jib line, pulling it in when Erik loosened his.

They swung around, once again facing Oakland, steadily working their way deeper into the bay and then into the channel. They were operating under sail rather than using the Constellation’s motor because its heavy throb would draw attention to them and reveal the speed the engine was capable of when needed.

Guardsmen in camouflage-patterned uniforms patrolled the docks along with the heavily armed private security forces stationed on container ships. The sight of them tightened Araña’s stomach to the point of pain.

There was safety in the waters she called home, in the boat towns formed when crafts of all shapes and descriptions were tethered together on a calm sea.

There was safety in the small armed settlements held in land surrounded by packs of werewolves. But here…

Matthew and Erik were wanted men, though their days of piracy had ended shortly after she arrived in their lives. Not that they’d given up thievery.

She’d learned from the best and felt no guilt over the jobs she’d accompanied them on. Why would she?

It was hard to find evil in the deed when they earned their money helping one rich man steal from another while the vast majority struggled to survive in a land forever changed by war and plague and the emergence of the supernaturals.

In the books that were Erik’s passion, there were stories of a United States where civil rights prevailed, opportunity abounded, and humans lived in ignorance of the unseen. There were pictures bearing little resemblance to the places that now existed. Towering, gleaming cities turned to burned-out rubble and hollowed-out sanctuaries for the lawless as well as the desperate, most of it slowly being reclaimed by the forests.

Where human civilization made a stand, its nature was determined by those in power, all of them wealthy, all of them beyond the daily struggle for food and shelter. But whether those places were controlled by the religious—as the settlement where she’d spent the first twelve years of her life had been—or by politicians backed by guardsmen and police, they held only the daylight hours. The night belonged to the predators—natural and supernatural alike.

Araña’s eyes settled on Erik again. Only pride and the stimulants coursing through his system gave him the strength to help with the jib. He was in no condition to walk long distances.

“What part of the city is the healer in?” she asked as they neared the dock, her throat tightening on the words as the emotion of her long-ago vision surged from the past, washing over her in an agonizing wave to remind her that only death waited in this city called Oakland.

“The Church has influence here,” Matthew said. “There’s a section set aside for humans born with controversial abilities. The healer will live there. Best go ahead and put your glove on.”

Araña reached for the fingerless glove she was never without and slipped it over her left hand, hiding the brand burned into her flesh by a now dead clergyman. Her gaze flicked to Matthew. The hard set of his features hid his worry, but she knew it was there, just as she knew something inside him would die with Erik.

They turned into the wind. “Drop the jib,” he said.

Araña lowered the triangular staysail then went to the front of the boat to gather and stow it in a waterproof bag. The mainsail followed and she secured it to the boom, their momentum carrying them close enough to throw a line to a thick-necked man who pulled them into an unoccupied slip.

“Pay at the end of the dock,” he said when the boat was secure. “If you bring trouble here, the boat gets impounded along with everything on board.”

He left without waiting for acknowledgment. Araña climbed from the boat and turned to offer her hand to Erik as Matthew waited, allowing Erik his pride but there to aid him onto the finger pier all the same.

“Where’s the spider?” Erik asked, taking her hand before she could answer him and continuing to hold it longer than necessary after he’d stepped onto the dock, the gesture telling her some part of him was already braced for his own death.

“On my shoulder,” she said, knowing without conscious thought where the demon mark rested, four of its legs streaking downward to touch her collarbone, its body so much a part of hers there was no change in the smooth texture of her skin—brown yielding to the solid black of the spider shape then becoming brown again.

She never felt the demon mark move, could only guess at the reasons it positioned itself where it did. But it was always present, as deadly to others as her flame-trapped visions were.

Matthew followed them onto the wooden dock. Araña resisted the urge to ask how far they had to go before they reached the healer. Their destination mattered only in that it offered them a place of safety and rest.

The pier was crowded with fishing boats and a few houseboats. She used the silence as they traveled its length to study her surroundings, to notice those who took an interest in them.

When they neared the small concrete building at the dock’s end, Erik murmured, “Camera. On the lamppost.”

She glanced surreptitiously at it, keeping her head ducked.

“You two keep walking while I pay for the slip,” Matthew said. “By the time they identify any of us—if it’s even possible—we’ll be long gone from Oakland.”

“Let me pay the fee,” Araña said, misgiving filling her, the framed “Wanted” pictures on the wall of Erik and Matthew’s bedroom crowding her mind, tightening the knots in her stomach.

Matthew shook his head. “If the camera is there for any reason other than scaring people into good behavior, then there will be others. For all we know the dock attendant wore one and took our pictures when he pulled us in. The technology existed well before The Last War. We’re safe enough. It’s been a long time since Erik and I were here.”

Araña had no choice but to follow Matthew’s dictates. No reason to dispute his logic. She and Erik kept going as he detoured to pay for the slip. They stopped only when they were beyond the lamppost and the camera.

She longed to take Erik’s hand in hers—the contact too brief when she helped him from the boat. She ached to turn into him, to wrap her arms around him and let the hot wash of tears escape to wet his neck as she told him how much he meant to her, how much she loved him. How he was father and older brother, best friend and confidant, irreplaceable and unequal in her life—even though she loved Matthew, too.

But she didn’t dare press her skin to his. The demon mark had killed for the first time when she was five and a stranger had grabbed her. It had killed again when she was sixteen and thought she was in love. She wouldn’t risk losing Erik that way, even though she ached to be held close and feel the brush of his lips and the soothing stroke of his hand, the rub of his cheek against hers in comfort offered and received.

Be strong, she told herself. Here in this city, that’s what Erik and Matthew needed from her.

As they left the dock area, Araña’s hands settled near the hilts of the knives she wore in inconspicuous sheaths sewn into the dark fabric of her pants. A gun would have made her feel safer, but they’d left them locked on the boat with the longer knives.

Along the coast and canals, in the settlements without enough wealth to pay for more than a few policemen, an open display of weapons was viewed as a wise precaution for avoiding trouble. The larger cities were different.

There they were viewed as a threat to society. People remembered that after the plague ran its course and the supernaturals revealed their presence, anarchy reigned for long years and the streets filled with violence and fear.

Eventually the armed services and guardsmen brought order and harsher gun laws. There was no way to ban them, not when any abandoned and unclaimed building was fair game for salvage. But obtaining ammunition was difficult and expensive, and the penalty for using a gun without just cause was death.

Araña’s hands curled around the hilts of her knives in an unconscious search for security as Erik’s breath grew labored with each step, until finally he said, “We can separate. It’s still early enough for the buses to run. I can take one and wait for the two of you just inside the area set aside for the gifted.”

“No,” Matthew said. “You and I stay together. Araña can—”

“No.” Her stomach clenched on the thought of not being with them. “I don’t want to be separated from you and Erik.”

“Then we stay together,” Matthew said, one hand leaving its position near his knife to curl around Erik’s arm in unprotested assistance. “We’ll turn up ahead.”

Already the bustle of the docks had faded and the reclamation of buildings slowed. Restored houses with iron bars and fortified doors stood next to burned-out buildings and rubble. If there were children present, they played inside or elsewhere.

They turned at the corner, their progress slowing with each block until Araña feared Matthew would need to carry Erik the remaining distance to the bus stop. Relief filled her when they got to a street where gaily dressed people hurried to their destinations and cars carrying the rich drove by.

Araña glanced upward. Despite the slowness of their progress, the sun slid relentlessly through the sky. They’d have to find shelter, either with the healer or at an inn. She didn’t think there would be enough time to get back to the boat by nightfall.

An old woman hunched with age waited at the bus stop, her hand on the arm of a pregnant girl no older than sixteen or seventeen. Both were dressed in black and adorned with amulets.

Witches, Araña thought, the vision rising up to encase her in nightmare ice when the old woman’s face lifted and Araña saw in reality what she’d seen ten years earlier in her vision. Sightless, cataract-covered eyes seemed to stare directly at her, finding the taint on her soul before shifting to where the spidery demon mark hid beneath her clothes.

Matthew’s hand gripped the hilt of his knife when the milky-white gaze moved unerringly to his face then Erik’s. Erik touched Matthew’s arm lightly and spoke to the witch. “Do you know where we can find a healer?”

“Your stop is the last one. It’s close to the red zone.”

The sound of a diesel engine drew Araña’s attention away from the witch. She’d taken the lookout position automatically while Matthew and Erik stood so it would be difficult for cars traveling along the road to see their faces. With a subtle hand signal she told them the vehicle approaching carried guardsmen.

She forced herself to appear relaxed as the brown and gray jeep with the machine gun mounted at the back slowed to a crawl near the bus stop. All three of the guardsmen were young, not much older than her.

Their body language marked them as the rich, younger sons of the elite, as did the way they undressed her with their eyes. Wolf whistles and lewd comments assaulted her as they passed. A block beyond the bus stop they did a U-turn and slowed again, but this time they kept going after they passed.

The bus came into view. It was old, something cobbled together from salvaged parts, but it was a welcome sight.

A jeep carrying guardsmen passed the bus stop coming from the other direction. An older, grizzled man drove while two others sat in the back, arms resting on rifles as their eyes scanned the streets. Their attention lingered on Matthew and Erik, or on the witches—she couldn’t tell which before they sped away.

Her eyes met Matthew’s. A small tilt of his head was enough to convey his intention to get on the bus as it came to a groaning stop.

Matthew and Erik climbed onto it first. Erik kept moving while Matthew stopped to exchange words with the driver about the fees. He paid for the three of them then followed Erik to the back.

The witches climbed on board next, also paying in cash. They took seats toward the front. Araña scanned the road one last time for trouble before boarding.

“You fear your gift,” the old witch whispered as she passed. “It’s a thing of great power. Come to me and I’ll teach you how to use it.”

Araña kept going, refusing to acknowledge either the gift or the offer. The bus lurched forward and picked up speed. She hurried past a mother younger than she was, who already had two children.

Erik and Matthew sat near the rear exit. Araña took a seat across the aisle from them so she could look out the window on the driver’s side.

They rode in silence. Each of them tense, lost in private thoughts.

Blocks later the bus slowed to a stop. The woman with the children stood and hefted the toddler to her hip before disembarking. The infant in a sling on her chest woke and began crying as the bus pulled away.

Outside, each new neighborhood looked poorer than the last. By the way the houses were positioned, new ones built alongside salvaged ones, Araña guessed the families claiming them were related or joined together for their common safety.

Laundry fluttered on lines. Children screamed in play as they chased one another and were chased in turn by dogs big enough to protect them if necessary.

She knew the instant the bus entered the area set aside for humans who were different, gifted—or damned, as some believed. The houses were marked with symbols, and the distance between them grew, affording privacy. Some of the sigils were familiar; some she’d seen only in Erik’s books.

The bus slowed to another stop, and the witches got out just as a long-bodied vehicle carrying guardsmen passed, going in the opposite direction. Araña shifted in her seat so she could look out through the back window at the truck’s occupants.

Fear soured her stomach. She thought it possible she’d seen them earlier, but she couldn’t be sure, just as she couldn’t know whether they patrolled a set route or if they were trying to get a glimpse of Matthew and Erik.

Her palms glided over the sheaths containing the knives, and she gained a measure of comfort from the feel of the blades. “We get off still?”

Matthew nodded. “We can make it to the red zone if necessary.”

“It’s a safety zone?”

Matthew snorted. “It’s where the rich go to play without any worry about breaking laws. And because of it, it’s also where the vice lords and black magic practitioners live without fear of being arrested. It’s a death trap for anyone who doesn’t know how to take care of themselves.”

Erik’s soft laugh brought a smile to Araña’s heart along with a stab of pain. “The same could be said of the places we’ve called home for the last twenty years. The biggest difference is the rich don’t come to play with us.”

“True enough,” Matthew said, rising from his seat even as the bus driver announced the last stop on the route.

They stepped off the bus onto a deserted street. The houses for as far as the eye could see were nothing but rubble, with yards full of weeds and burned-out cars.

Uneasiness filled Araña, a terrible certainty that the witch had betrayed them with her answer. Your stop is the last one. It’s close to the red zone.

“Which way?” she asked, but the drone of an engine coming toward them made the choice an easy one. Instinctively they headed toward the nearest cluster of buildings and took cover.

Matthew and Erik freed their knives. Araña did the same, her heart skipping into a too-fast race when the long-bodied guardsmen’s vehicle that had passed only moments earlier jumped the curb and stopped.

Seven men got out, six of them young. The seventh was grizzled, old enough to recognize Matthew and Erik from the days they’d pirated in the waters near Oakland.

He directed three of the men to go across the street, then pointed at the row of destroyed and ruined houses where Araña crouched next to Erik, his voice carrying across the distance. “They had to have gotten out at this bus stop. Fan out. We take the men dead or alive. Either way we can claim the bounty on them.”

“And the girl?” a pale redhead asked.

“Probably a piece of diseased boat trash. Take your chances if you want to. But don’t leave her alive when you’re done with her.”

“Give me some credit, Sarge. I’m not that sloppy.”

Araña’s hands tightened on the knife hilts. She could kill. She’d been forced to do it before.

“If you get a chance, separate from us and make a run for it,” Erik whispered, his breathing already strained from the sprint to shelter. He shifted his knives into one hand and dug out his wallet, then slid it into the pocket of Araña’s shirt. “Don’t go back to the boat. It’s not safe and by tomorrow she’ll be confiscated. Hide among the gifted.”

Icy fear squeezed her heart. A terror born in her childhood and fed with ranted sermons about Hell and damnation, beatings that came with being judged as demon-tainted.

“I won’t leave you,” she whispered, refusing to let the thought of what waited in the afterlife make her abandon the men who’d saved her life and made her a part of their family.

When she would have given the wallet back to Erik, Matthew stopped her. “Keep it for now. Only two of the guardsmen have rifles. The rest have handguns. Eliminate any one of them and get his weapon and the odds start to change in our favor. We’ll hide and wait for them to come to us. We won’t outrun them.”

Araña nodded, hearing in Matthew’s words his own declaration. He wouldn’t leave Erik regardless of what happened.

Matthew moved around the corner to hunt the hunters. She found a place among a curtain of vines, one that allowed her to see the building where Erik melted into the gloom of a room that had collapsed except for a small area.

There was no sound save for the thunderous beat of her heart. It felt as if the world around them held its breath, silencing birdsong and insect noise alike, stilling the wind so there was no rustle of leaves or whisper of grass.

A guardsman appeared, the pale redhead with his own plans for her. He walked quietly, his arm outstretched and gripping a gun. His movements held a bold confidence, as if he were stalking prey and his possession of the weapon protected him from attack.

The thin leather of her belt could serve as a garrote, a way to kill without risk of a shouted warning. But it took strength and time, and with the others patrolling, she couldn’t take the chance of using it.

Her breath caught when he glanced briefly at the building housing Erik, and released it when the guardsman shunned it in favor of aiming toward the open doorway near where she hid.

In her mind she prepared to attack. Saw herself striking without hesitation as Matthew had taught her to do.

She let the raw need for survival turn fear into strength, conscience into primal instinct as adrenaline surged, honing her focus so all reality faded save for the need to kill her enemy.

He neared, his eyes flicking over her hiding place, dismissing it. The scent of sweat and cologne trailed him as he stepped past her.

She struck. Driving and twisting with the knife in her left hand.

The gun fired as his grip tightened on it reflexively. A cry escaped before the knife in her right hand found its mark, slashing across his throat and making arterial blood spray onto the vine and concrete.

Araña pushed him away and crouched, picking up the gun. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Erik emerge from his hiding place and grab the arm of a guardsman summoned by the noise.

They struggled. Erik’s back was to her, preventing her from using the dead man’s gun.

She rushed forward. A shot fired. And then Erik crumpled to the ground.

Animal sounds of rage ripped from Araña’s throat. She leveled the gun and pulled the trigger without thought, didn’t stop moving forward as the bullet slammed into the guardsman’s forehead, the force of it taking most of his skull and driving him backward into rubble.

And then Matthew was there, a rifle in one hand, his knife in the other. He knelt by Erik, the weapons dropping to the ground as he lifted Erik off the cracked, broken cement and cradled him in his arms.

Araña crouched next to them, agony swelling in her chest, incapacitating her, the present and past colliding in an overwhelming instant of anguish.

It was the scene from her vision. The death she’d known waited with the first glimpse of Oakland.

Matthew’s face was a mask of unbearable grief as he put Erik down and snatched up both the rifle and the pistol she didn’t remember dropping. “Don’t follow me, Araña. Run. Hide. Live for all of us.”

He disappeared around the corner before she could say anything. There was the sound of a gun firing, then another.

Araña cast a quick glance at the guardsman who’d killed Erik, but she didn’t see where his weapon had landed. She grabbed Matthew’s discarded knife as well as her own dropped one. A sob escaped as she turned her back on Erik and did as Matthew ordered. She ran, dodging rubble and blackened cars in an effort to escape the guardsmen.

Behind her she heard a shout go up, followed by the crack of a shot being fired from a rifle. A bullet grazed her side, the shock of it distracting her for a precious second from the hazard-laden ruin of what had once been a street crowded with houses. Her foot snagged on something hidden in the weeds, pitching her forward.

There was blinding pain as her head struck a rock. Terror made her fight through it and scramble to her knees to look for her knives.

The men were on her just as she staggered to her feet. The hard smash of a rifle butt to her chest sent her tumbling backward and struggling for breath.

A heavy boot landed a blow to the middle of her stomach, making her roll to her side and vomit what little she had in her stomach.

The dark-haired man delivering the blow drew back his leg, and she braced herself for a second kick even as she tried to gather the strength to surge upward, to at least kill one of her attackers with the knife she’d managed to recover.

The man with the rifle stopped his companion from delivering the blow by saying, “Enough already. I don’t want to fuck a corpse, Nelson.”

There was a raunchy laugh from the third man. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Shut the fuck up, Cabot. My cock was out of that girl before she died.”

The rifle barrel dropped to point at Araña’s hand. “Let go of the knife or I’ll fire. Putting a bullet into you won’t ruin our fun. You won’t bleed out before we’re finished.”

The demon mark was no longer on her shoulder. It was on her bare mound like an exotic tattoo, ready to kill the first man who touched his flesh to hers in an attempt to rape her.

Its presence gave her courage. Matthew’s last words gave her strength. She opened her fingers and let the knife fall away.

The blond guardsman named Cabot immediately holstered his gun and unzipped his pants. “I go first,” he said, pulling his cock out and fondling its hardened length.

The man holding the rifle kicked Araña’s knife out of reach before pressing the barrel of the gun to her forehead. “Push your pants down.”

Her heart pounded violently inside her chest, a seething mass of fear and grief and hate. Bile rose in her throat at the thought of revealing herself to these men.

She wanted to kill them. To see them writhing in agony. But only their faces and hands were exposed and the spider needed bare skin.

The waistband of her pants was wet with blood. Touching her fingers to it broke the barrier of numbness her mind had erected.

Araña fought against crying out as pain rippled through her, originating where the bullet had grazed her side. Her jaw clenched as she refused to show them anything more than their deaths.

She undid the buttons at the front of her pants. Her fingers trembled slightly despite her efforts to keep them steady and focus her mind on what she needed to do in order to survive. In the coming confusion she’d grab the dying man’s gun and—

He grew impatient and bent down, took a fistful of material and jerked, wrenching her pants and underwear to her knees. The sight of the spider sent him stumbling backward, his penis shriveling.

His two companions laughed. The one not holding the rifle unzipped his pants. “I’ll take your turn. Looks like we’ve got ourselves a lawbreaker. A tattoo like hers is illegal. I’m betting she likes it rough and bloody.”

“Give me your gun, Nelson,” the man with the rifle said, holding out his hand.

“I’m not going to fuck her with it. Not till after you have a turn with her.”

“Gun.”

A petulant expression came and went on the dark-haired guardsman’s face. He unholstered the weapon and slapped it onto his companion’s outstretched hand. “I want it back. I want to finish her with it.”

A shudder went through Araña. She found it easy to imagine any one of these men brutalizing her with a gun and then firing it inside her as his companions looked on.

Erik and Matthew had always ensured her safety, but life among fugitives and societal outcasts had stripped her of what was left of her innocence when it came to the atrocities men were capable of. The settlements and floating boat cities were full of women left disfigured by the violence done to them.

“Hurry up,” the man holding the rifle barrel to her forehead said. “We’ve still got to haul the bodies to the truck then find out if Sarge was shitting us about there being bounties on the two men.”

Araña closed her eyes against the wave of pain that crashed through her heart with his words. A tidal wave of grief threatened to drown her.

She wanted to scream out her rage and anguish. Instead she fought her way through it, for Matthew and Erik, as well as herself.

Her eyes opened when her assailant climbed on top of her with a grunt. She was barely aware of the feel of his hand and cock brushing against her skin as he tried to find her opening. And then he was rolling away, screaming and shrieking, his penis and hand swelling as black streaks of poison spread.

She grabbed the rifle barrel, deflecting it. A bullet slammed into the screaming man, putting him out of his misery and sparing him long moments of torment.

Araña hung on to the rifle, fighting to wrest it free at the same time she tried to use her grip on it to pull herself up, in the hopes the spider would be able to find skin and kill again.

The tangle of her clothes around her knees interfered. A kick to the chest sent her backward.

There was the sound of a bullet being chambered, and the end of the rifle was once again placed against her forehead. But death didn’t come, though the blond guardsman whose penis had shrunk at the sight of the spider said, “Kill her so we can get out of here.”

“I’ve got something better in mind. We’ll take her to Anton and Farold. They’ll pay good money for her, no questions asked. Then we turn around and double it by going to a betting club and watching while she runs the maze.”

“She’s a witch,” the blond said, aiming his pistol at Araña, his voice shrill. “Look at what she did to Nelson. Look at the glove on her hand! Look at it! I bet she’s been branded by the Church.”

“Don’t turn into a chickenshit just because your dick shrunk. Good thing it did or you’d be dead. If she could have killed us with a spell, she’d have done it. I’m betting we’re safe as long as we don’t touch her.”

“I don’t care! Out of seven of us, look how many of us are left. You and me, Jurgen. You and me. Everyone else is dead.”

Anger tightened the rifleman’s face. “Use your brains before you piss me off, Cabot. Think about the edge knowing what we know would give us at the club. Tonight they’re running convicts in the maze. They’ll let them loose to have some fun with her before setting the hunters free. We’ll make a killing betting on her.”

The guardsman pulled the barrel back from Araña’s forehead, trusting that she’d prefer to remain alive, to take her chances elsewhere rather than die where she lay. “Take off the glove.”

She pulled it off, revealing the brand burned into her flesh when she was twelve, when an exorcism failed to rid her of the demon mark.

“We’ll get more for her once Anton or Farold sees it,” the one called Jurgen said. “Maybe Anton will even let the demon out in the maze tonight.”

His blond companion backed away, but he nodded. “Okay, but I’ll shoot her if she tries to touch me.”

She was ordered to her feet and allowed to restore her clothing so she could walk. At their command, she emptied her pockets. They took her keys to the boat, but not Erik’s wallet. Somewhere between the first dead guardsman and the one the spider killed, it had fallen out of her pocket.

“Move,” Jurgen said, indicating the direction with the rifle barrel.

Fresh blood poured from the wound in her side. Pain stabbed through her, but it was nothing compared to the searing agony as Araña passed Erik’s body and then Matthew’s.

The need for revenge burned at her core, intensified when the blond, Cabot, said, “What about collecting the bounty? What are we going to say about Sarge and the others being dead?”

“We’ll radio it in to headquarters and say we were ambushed while trying to bring three people in for questioning. We’ll tell them we’re still chasing the third one. Let them send another unit to collect the bodies. Even if it turns out Sarge is wrong about there being bounties, after what happened here, nobody is going to care.”