AllFreeNovel
Share Us
In a swift, smooth motion like an Olympic gymnast, she leaped onto the railing around her back porch, caught the edge of the roof, and flipped her legs up. Her feet landed on the slanted roof.
Wolves hunt by scent.
She threw one of her ballet slippers onto the sidewalk and the other clear out to the quiet, drizzly neighborhood street.
Her body flattened against the wet shingles just as the werewolf pelted into her backyard. Her heart pounded so loud in her ears, she worried the red wolf would hear. She opened her fourth eyes so she could watch him without raising her head.
He found her shoe, then saw the other.
Take the bait, wolf. Come on. Take the bait.
Sergeant Giovanni ran out the door next. The werewolf raced off into Liliana’s neighborhood, the human on his heels, rapidly leaving her little house behind.
Liliana smiled with fangs out.
You won’t be killing a spider today, Celtic wolf.
Detective Jackson followed the other two onto the porch a few seconds later and closed the back door politely. The police officer watched the soldier and the wolf-kin scientist run up the street for a moment, shook her head, and muttered, “I still say it’s a damn snipe hunt. If that lady knew anything about those dead soldiers before we arrived, then I’m the pope.” At a steady jog, she followed the other two into the shady neighborhood.
Whatever a snipe was, Liliana felt some kinship with the creature in that moment.
She didn’t twitch a single muscle until the detective jogged around a corner.
From perfect stillness to explosive motion, she skittered up her roof, leapt from the peak to the tall pine growing beside her house, then crept out onto the wiggly end of a high branch. With her wrist, she touched the rough bark. A dot of fluid from the tiny hole just below her palm stuck to the bark. As she pulled her hand back, a fine line of silk strong enough to hold several times her body weight formed where the fluid and air met.
The spider-kin looped the silk strand around the branch, drew an appropriate length out of the spinneret in her wrist, and scrambled down the line to the flat roof of the strip mall next door. She ran along the top of the long building, her feet clad only in knit tights, skimming lightly over the rough gravel roofs of the Troopers Army surplus store, the H&R Block, the barber shop, and the Virtual Fit net-based clothing store.
The roof was flat asphalt with gravel over it. Each rock jabbed her feet as she ran. A few spots of blood stayed behind as her wet tights ripped and shredded, leaving her feet bare on the rocks.
Thank goodness the red wolf was on the wrong scent, or he would have been able to follow her blood trail easily. She ignored the pain and built up enough speed to leap clear across the narrow alley to the roof of Emerald Arms. That should break up her trail a bit, even if the wolf picked it up. She landed neatly on the foot-wide concrete ledge of the custom weapons store’s roof and kept running. The concrete abraded the cuts on her feet, but at least it didn’t add to them.
When she reached the end of the block, the spider-kin shimmied down a silk strand to the asphalt parking lot. She leaned against the brick wall, catching her breath and assessing her situation.
The old gas station across the street had been converted to a Starbucks when gasoline became obsolete in the ’40s. With the entrance to Fort Liberty less than a block away, cameras hid everywhere. Camera drones circled overhead at periodic intervals. She had to move carefully to avoid them.
Liliana took her moment in a traffic lull to run across the street. She panted again, hidden under the cover of the Starbucks’ green-roofed entryway, watching with her fourth eyes until the sky cleared of camera drones.
She ran some more.
Down Fillyaw Road, the shade of neighborhood trees gained density and became a narrow strip of true forest. Persimmon Creek ran through there, winding its way behind and between the neighborhoods full of houses for off-base soldiers and civilian contractors. The cradle of tall trees beside the creek hid her from curious eyes and airborne drone cameras.
The little creek had a grassy walking trail beside it. Liliana hissed in relief when her raw feet touched the sandy soil and green grass. She slowed to a rapid walk, probably far enough away from the werewolf that he wouldn’t find her. She regretted sacrificing her shoes, but they had thrown the wolf off her scent admirably.
Liliana used her human eyes to see where she was going. Her fourth eyes opened to find out what the three people hunting her were doing. She kept her head down so her thick, black hair would hide the large lavender and teal eyes on her forehead if someone happened to look.
She focused on the red-haired wolf-kin with the blue eyes and the big boots. She needed to be careful with her attention split. It had taken Liliana decades to master her fourth eyes. Flashes of what might be and what had been could mix and wander through the visions of what was.
Her mastery of her most valuable and difficult gift was now to the point where she could perceive a double image, each sharp and distinct. It was as if she walked beside the creek far from the two humans and their hunting red wolf and beside them in her neighborhood at the same time. After decades of practice, her divided mind could now fully process those two sets of input and continue to do simple things like dusting or walking.
The three people quickly caught on that they had lost Liliana and stopped chasing randomly through her neighborhood. They returned to her house and took shelter from the chilly drizzle on her porch. Liliana hoped none of them would think to check the roof.
“Do you seriously think this Rain Man girl is our perp, Pete?” Sergeant Giovanni asked as they went up the wooden stairs onto Liliana’s back porch.
The wolf-kin nodded. “She fits the description, and she doesn’t have an alibi.” Liliana noticed Peter Teague did not mention she was spider-kin, and the killer was almost certainly a widow spider based on his description of the manner of their deaths. Possibly his Normal companions did not know about Others.
Detective Jackson shook her head. “Maybe a hundred women in Fayetteville fit that description. Another hundred more if you include Liberty and the surrounding small towns.” She rounded on the red-headed man, hands on her hips, and glared up at the taller wolf-kin. “Why are you so damn certain a mentally challenged fortune-teller, who doesn’t seem inclined to swat a fly, is a serial killer?”
Peter Teague shrank under the short policewoman’s glare. “She shares some other similarities to the killer…um…that I’m not at liberty to discuss, ma’am.”
