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The spider seer was weakened, wounded, and too far now from her ally to expect aid. She was impressed that Stella could think so clearly, even in her grief.
There was nowhere for her to go. Liliana retreated back between the tables on the balcony.
Stella stalked her carefully, all eight eyes focused on her target. She tossed the tables aside with her extra limbs, overturning them without care.
There was no place for Liliana to run, and no chance of any attack she made having an effect. She watched eight feet of lethal warrior with four jointed spears coming out of her back, shiny black impervious armor, and toxic fangs the length of Liliana’s hands get inevitably closer. Stella had no weapons. She must have lost the cleaver when Pete threw her across the room. It didn’t matter. The widow spider didn’t need weapons.
Liliana hit the edge railing and stopped backing up. She tapped a spinneret to the railing as a safety line out of habit, though there was no such thing as safety right now. She hopped onto the table where the young couple had been dining when she climbed up earlier that day. It meant Stella would have to stab up at her, a less advantageous angle for the bend of her spider legs.
The demi-spider tilted her insectoid head and looked at the little seer with eyes that shimmered with eerie reflected light. Incongruous tears streamed from those inhuman eyes and across the shiny smooth chitin, smearing the spattered blood on her cheeks.
“I am sorry for your loss,” Liliana said, feeling strangely sad for the widow spider who was about to kill her. Stella might defeat Liliana, but the widow spider had already lost what mattered most to her.
“You gave us the chance to walk away,” Stella said, her voice hoarse and distorted through the fangs. “We could have raised Kristen’s daughters together. I just wish…” She drew in a ragged breath and smeared tears and blood across her chitinous cheek with the back of an armored hand. “I wish I could have convinced her to take the chance you gave us.”
Liliana nodded, a sadness filling her, not for her own eminent doom, but for the future path Stella had already lost with children and a beloved spouse at her side. Even as she crouched and raised her arm blades in defense, she said, “I wish the same.”
“I’m sorry it ended this way,” Stella said. She pounced up onto the table with Liliana and grabbed the loose fabric of the smaller spider-kin’s homemade blouse. All four sharp limbs struck down at the little seer at once while strong, armored arms kept her from dodging.
Liliana deflected two of the widow spider’s thrusts, but she could not deflect the third. The thick claw stabbed clear through her shoulder.
Agony shot through her body like lightning, nearly paralyzing her. She barely felt it as the fourth limb grazed her face, opening her cheek to the bone.
She grabbed the leg stuck in her shoulder out of reflex, then realized she had one chance left to take her enemy with her into death.
The petite spider-kin threw her weight backward with all her remaining strength, hauling the heavier widow spider with her. As she fell, Liliana curled into herself. She pulled her knees to her chin as her back hit the heavy glass tabletop hard. Her fall turned into a sacrifice throw, Liliana continued rolling back, planted her feet in Stella’s belly, and shoved with all her strength.
Stella’s faceted eyes widened in shock as the widow spider flew for the second time that night, right over the safety railing and into open air. The seams of Liliana’s blouse ripped, and it went over with Stella.
The widow spider’s hooked claw, still embedded in the smaller spider-kin’s shoulder, yanked Liliana’s body over the railing as well. She was helpless to stop it.
Liliana let go of Stella’s clawed leg and grabbed with both hands the safety line attached to the iron railing.
Stella’s weight yanked the widow spider’s barbed claw agonizingly out of Liliana’s shoulder, wrenching a scream from the seer.
As the arm with the torn shoulder stopped obeying her, the petite spider-kin lost her grip on the safety line with one hand. Blood streamed down her arm and dripped from her fingertips, falling just behind Stella. Down and down a dozen stories into the dark alley and the black unforgiving asphalt. Liliana’s right hand held, so only some of her blood followed her enemy down to the ground, not her whole body.
With a crunchy squelching sound, reminding Liliana of that sickening feeling she got when she stepped on a snail in the dark, the widow spider’s exoskeleton hit the asphalt.
Stella’s mother must not have emphasized the importance of safety lines as much as Liliana’s.
Liliana’s black blouse fluttered down and covered Stella’s shattered skull with embroidered red roses. The seer hung by one arm in her bloody leotard and torn skirt, looking down at the enemy that had so nearly ended her life.
The other woman had been a brave, honorable, and formidable opponent. The widow spider hadn’t even screamed as she fell twelve stories. Maybe, in her grief, Stella welcomed death.
“I am sorry too,” Liliana said softly. Two deaths of sister spiders now lay heavy on her conscience. Under other circumstances, she would have been proud to name both Stella and Kristen as friends. Her human eyes made hot tears stream down her face from pain of both the body and the heart.
A canine howl of pain and a crash of shattering glass brought Liliana’s attention back to her one true friend on the roof above. A guttural growl let her know Pete was still alive. He fought the gigantic spider alone now. And from the sound of that howl, he fought wounded.
Liliana struggled to pull herself hand over hand up the line the mere ten feet she had fallen, but she couldn’t. Her left arm screamed in agony when she tried to use it and would not hold any weight. Her bloody hand just slid off the line.
Pete trusted her. He was going to die fighting alone just a few feet away.
Blood and pain flowed in a pulsing river down her arm.
Liliana fought more tears. She had tried so hard to save her only friend. She murdered Stella and Kristen so Pete could live. Meaningless. He would die anyway.
The least she could do was die with him.
