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As Liliana watched and did nothing, Stella and Leslie removed their black T-shirts and shifted to demi-spider form. The hair on their heads withdrew into them as if growing in reverse. Their skin hardened into chiton like lacquered metal, Stella in shiny black and Leslie in brown with bands of black around her joints, both with distinctive red hourglass markings on their stomachs. Four extra limbs emerged from their backs with barbed, wickedly pointed tips, Leslie’s with black knee joints. With those pointed limbs, they pulled silk from spinnerets at the base of their spines just above their belt lines. They easily lifted and moved the over two-hundred-pound wolf-kin.
They took the knives from the sheaths he had hidden on his wrists and shins, back and belt, and tossed them to the side.
Liliana sat in her corner in the dark under the stairs and waited with all but her fourth eyes closed. With her fourth eyes, she watched what was happening on the other side of the basement door now in current time. The three formidable widow spiders bound Pete thoroughly in silk.
Pete weakly struggled against the spider women, even as they wound his body with more and more layers.
“He’s waking up!” Leslie commented, in a voice like the squeak of an old rocking chair.
“Impossible. It’s far too soon,” Lady Daphne, still in her human form, said. “I gave him enough to knock out a wolf-kin for hours.”
Stella looked up at her boss with bottle-green, faceted eyes in a face out of a nightmare. “He has red hair,” she creaked around large fangs. “Maybe he’s a Celtic wolf? I’ve heard they’re stronger.”
Lady Daphne seemed pleased at that idea. “Excellent. He will provide greater nutrition for the babes than an ordinary wolf-kin. Wrap him with double the normal amount of silk.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Kristen, the pregnant widow spider, waited for them to make her prey helpless, tears in her eyes. “You said he would be unconscious. He wouldn’t feel anything.”
“He is stronger than I knew, child,” Lady Daphne told her. “But this will benefit your babies. You must be strong for them.”
Kristen sniffed and lifted her chin, her hand stroking her swollen belly.
Pete’s eyes opened wide, adrenaline jolting him to a muzzy wakefulness as the pretty young woman shifted form. Her skin hardened and darkened to the dark brown of shiny leather shoes. Fangs as long and thick as a tiger’s emerged from her hardened lips and dripped a viscous fluid. Where a drop fell on the concrete, it sizzled and smoked. Four extra insectoid limbs with barbed stabbing tips and black knees sprouted from her back. The pretty blue dress she wore left her back exposed, allowing the extra limbs to move freely.
Liliana rocked back and forth and twisted the silken fabric of her red skirt in knots. She did not want to see this. She did not want to be here.
But she waited. She had to wait. She had to.
Pete’s scream echoed on the concrete walls of the stairwell.
Liliana covered her ears and buried her face in her knees.
Chapter 13
Binding Negotiations
Lady Daphne, Stella, and Leslie walked up the stairs a few minutes later, talking about plans to disappear to other parts of the world.
“Give everyone a bonus tonight when they complete their shifts,” Lady Daphne said. “Divide everything left in the safe evenly, then advise our sisters to hastily go their separate ways. We can meet again in a few months in…Texas, I think. I hear Austin is nice. I own a building there under one of my pseudonyms. I shall transport Kristen after she has fed. Stella, you and Margaret meet me in the restaurant kitchen an hour after closing.”
“What about the MP?” Stella asked.
Their voices were swallowed by pounding bass music as they opened the second-floor door and left the stairwell.
Liliana didn’t bother to follow them with her fourth eyes. She knew what they would do to Sergeant Giovanni. The spider seer knew when and where Zoe Giovanni would die, and had some ideas about how to save the soldier, if she could manage to survive that long. Right now, she had to try to save Pete.
The one moment when she had a slight chance to save him and not die had come.
She opened the door to the basement as quietly as she could and slipped inside. A wedge-shaped hunk of brick sat beside the entrance. Liliana slipped it carefully under the door to keep it from closing with a click and warning her prey.
The scent of damp stone and old blood clung to the cinder blocks and concrete along with a hint of something sharply acrid. Pipes and ducts ran everywhere, but the ceiling was more than high enough so Liliana didn’t have to duck under any of them. A bare lightbulb spotlighted the center of the room but left the edges in shadow. Two desiccated bodies in Army uniforms and webbing were stacked carelessly in the back corner. The shadows hid the details of their faces. Liliana carefully did not look. They were undoubtedly the other two missing soldiers, but Pete could confirm their identity later. The last thing she needed was more visions of horrific death right now.
She inched along the bare cinder block wall.
Pete sat propped against the opposite wall in a sitting position, his body completely encased in webbing. Only his head and neck were free. Two fat holes in the corded muscles of his neck oozed dark, thick blood, staining the white webbing. His neck had an ugly greenish color, and crooked branching lines of darker green radiated from the punctures down under the webbing and up onto his cheek.
He coughed wetly.
