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“I like tigers,” Liliana said.
“Huh?”
She had made a mental jump and left him behind. Again. Their last few exchanges could not accurately be called communicating. The more eyes she had open, the more pieces of her mind operated at once and the less her mind worked like a human mind, or like the minds of most Others.
She closed her second and fourth eyes to help focus her mind, isolating herself with him in the tiny island of white light.
“Tigers are beautiful and deadly.” She reached up to push a lock of the fierce wolf’s bright red hair away from his pretty blue eyes. “I have a tiger in a trap.” She ran her fingernails along the side of his scalp as if he were a pet, hoping it would calm his fear. “I do not wish to harm this tiger, but if I let it free, it will eat me.”
“I’m not like that.” She saw a shading of hurt in him, as if she insulted him by being afraid of him, but the sickly green of his fear faded a bit. Knowing she feared him seemed to make her less scary.
“Celtic wolves killed my parents, most of my brothers and sisters and their children. You are the terror of my childhood.” She petted his hair again, because she liked how it felt and because it seemed to calm him.
He ducked his head a little in shame. “I know what Celtic wolves have done, historically, but I’m not them. I’m no mercenary. I’m not even a soldier.” His jaw muscles tightened, and he lifted his chin, stubborn pride streaking white-blue through his aura. “I refuse to kill anyone just because someone orders it. That’s why I never enlisted, even though both my parents were soldiers. If being different was enough reason to kill someone, then someone should have killed me a long time ago.”
Liliana tugged on the silken lines around the wolf’s throat to loosen where they cut into his skin. It was hard not to like this wolf. “You believe I’m the widow spider who ate soldiers, so you will kill me.”
“You’re the only spider-kin I know of in Fayetteville or anywhere around Fort Liberty,” he pointed out. He had sensible reasons for his belief. He offered them to her as both explanation and to give her a chance to refute them.
“Spider-kin are rare. I do not believe there are any other seers on this continent.” She carefully did not mention her surviving sister and niece in Europe. Better if no red wolf ever knew of their existence. “I only know of one widow spider in North Carolina, but just because I only know of one does not mean there aren’t many more. Widow spiders like to nest near each other in groups.”
Perhaps Lady Daphne, the widow spider, could explain to the wolf that Liliana could not possibly be the murderer. If he became convinced Liliana was not a killer, he wouldn’t hunt her. She also didn’t want this orphan wolf to think badly of her.
The wolf’s mind considered the possibility he had the wrong spider. “Where can I find this widow spider?”
“Lady Daphne is not your killer either. She lives in Raleigh, which is more than an hour away by car and twenty minutes by bullet train. She only has sex with other women, so she cannot be pregnant.” Liliana was not particularly fond of Lady Daphne, but she would not knowingly betray anyone but a bitter enemy to a hunting red wolf. “If you give me your word you will not kill her, I will tell you where she is.”
“I give you my word I won’t kill her, unless I must to keep her from killing me or someone else,” the red wolf swore carefully.
Liliana smiled. Precise oaths like that were the kind sworn by people who kept their word. She told him where in Raleigh to find Lady Daphne’s hotel and night club. It was called The Mirror. Raleigh was far enough away from Fayetteville, she doubted Lady Daphne knew anything useful about the soldiers’ murders. At least she could confirm the nature of widow spiders, and how they differed from spider seers.
“Is there anything you can tell me that might help me find the real killer?” he asked her.
She could see he still didn’t trust her, but he had seen her eyes, all of them. He believed she could see what he could not and was willing to give her a chance to convince him.
She chuckled at the thought she saw form in his head. It wasn’t like he was going anywhere in any case.
“Pregnant widow spiders kill only males. You said the widow spider has killed two men?” Liliana asked.
“Six soldiers went missing. Four bodies have turned up so far, and we suspect the others are dead as well, but we haven’t found them yet. We could only locate witnesses or evidence for two of the murders, and they both involved a woman who looked like you.”
“They were all Others, yes? No Normals?”
“Yeah. That was weird. There’s at least a hundred Normal soldiers for every Other. Private Simmons was raccoon-kin. Corporal Araus was crow-kin. The other two we found were Fae of both courts, a seelie sand-djinn and an unseelie pine goblin. So the killings are unlikely to be politically motivated. I don’t know about the two soldiers we haven’t found yet. I can’t test every soldier on the base for divergent biology, but they all reported to Colonel Bennet.”
In his mind, Liliana saw the colonel with the scarred face talking to Peter Teague. “Do whatever is necessary. I won’t lose any more of my team.” The tall Sidhe looked upset and very angry.
“If the widow spider has killed so few men, then more must die,” Liliana told Pete, her mind still lingering on the image of the intriguing Fae colonel. “They will all be Others. If she does not consume one Other male each week until she gives birth, her unborn children will begin to die. If she does not feed for too long, then the widow spider herself will die.”
She saw his heart that had begun to soften toward her now harden to sharp edges with the wolf’s determination to stop her before she could murder another innocent soldier.
Liliana sighed in frustration. The more information she gave him, the more Peter Teague believed she was the murderer he sought.
“Why are you so certain I am the killer?” she asked him. He might refuse to answer, but from five decades of coaching clients in the right questions, she knew it never hurt to ask what she really wanted to know.
He shrugged as best he could with his arms bound awkwardly under her web. “I only have your word for the whole widow spider thing. You’re the only spider-kin I’ve ever met or heard of. You match the general appearance of the killer and know intimate details about the killer’s MO. The victims were wrapped in webbing like this, and you’re carrying around the murder weapon in your mouth.”
“Oh!” Liliana put her hand over her mouth. Her fangs. He believed she was the killer because of her webbing and her fangs. “But my venom is not poisonous!”
