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Liliana admired the pretty dress through the concrete with her fourth eyes.
The young woman opened the door to the basement and went through without showing any sign of noticing the spider-kin crouched under the stairs.
This seemed to be an excellent hiding place.
She was deep inside the building that had seemed impossible to enter, and concealed well enough that even if her visions distracted her, it was unlikely she’d be attacked while vulnerable.
Now came the really hard part.
She took a deep breath to brace herself against the ugly visions. She could do it. She had to.
Where are Sergeant Giovanni and Pete, and when and how will they die?
Chapter 12
Wolf’s Bane
Liliana was immediately assaulted by the same image of Pete’s dead face she had seen so many times in the last few hours. Pete’s death was so close in time, so close to certain and so horrific, it was nearly impossible for her to see past it to anything else.
Dammit.
She pulled at fistfuls of hair on either side of her head. The spider seer desperately needed her fourth vision to obey her, but it showed her only death, again and again. Not what she needed to see to stop the death from happening.
She hissed with frustration and closed her fourth eyes.
With deep calming breaths, she fought for control of her vision.
It did little good. Every time she looked for Pete, she saw him die. Again.
If she was going to save Pete, she needed to see more than the horror show image of his staring dead face frozen in a silent scream.
Perhaps she should shift her goal.
Just Sergeant Giovanni. What will happen to her?
Warily, she cracked her fourth eyes open, focusing on the human military police sergeant.
Liliana saw a meat cleaver come down and sever the pretty soldier’s head while she lay unconscious on a butcher-block table.
The spider seer closed her eyes quickly.
No, she had to look. She couldn’t help if she didn’t look.
The moment she reopened her fourth eyes, she again saw Zoe Giovanni’s death.
Liliana flinched as the cleaver came down but fought her instinct to close her fourth eyes. Sergeant Giovanni’s death would at least be less agonizing than Pete’s. It would be painless and comparatively peaceful. The spider-kin forced herself to keep watching.
A muscular, dark-skinned woman in a black T-shirt and a chef’s apron continued chopping up Sergeant Giovanni’s body as if butchering an animal for food. A large plastic can sat nearby labeled “Edible Garbage.”
The room was clearly a large, professional kitchen. A door swung open and Lady Daphne Fairchilde herself walked through it. Through the door, Liliana glimpsed a darkened room filled with glass-topped tables. The wrought iron chairs were neatly stacked against one wall. “Well done, Stella. Margaret and I have the car nearly packed, and Kristen should be finished by now. Meet us in the basement once you’ve disposed of that.”
So, Sergeant Giovanni would be killed by a woman named Stella in the restaurant on the top floor, but it would be much later, after the restaurant had closed for the night and all the people were gone.
Lady Daphne was somehow involved in the killings, but Liliana did not understand how or why. Lady Daphne did not sleep with men, so she was highly unlikely to be pregnant. Why would a widow spider kill Other men with her fangs and eat them if she didn’t have to? Why would she have one of her employees kill Sergeant Giovanni? The sergeant was neither male nor Other, so she could not nourish unborn widow spider babies. Her death could not help a pregnant widow spider if there was one. What was the point of all this killing?
Liliana followed Lady Daphne backward in time. Having a different thread to unravel let her go around the vicious image of Pete’s death.
What does Lady Daphne have to do with Pete and Sergeant Giovanni’s death?
