“Good,” he said quietly, still holding my hands. “Do you feel that need to protect? Feel how in control you are?” he asked. “How you merge into one?”
My fingertips began to tingle. “Yes,” I replied.
“Good. That’s how I feel, too. I’m going to attack, and I want you to remember that I’m in control of my birds. Not Spector, not my anger or fear, me. I would never hurt you, okay? And your spider won’t hurt me.”
“Why are you saying this?” I asked, opening my eyes.
“Because I don’t want you to fear me, Little Spider,” he replied in a playful yet meaningful tone. “Or yourself. Just think of this as a little play time for our demons,” he said with a smirk.
“If I have to tell you one more time, you won’t like what happens,” Oz’s voice boomed.
“No need to get your Spector sweats in a shit twist,” Crow called back. “We were just mentally preparing and all that.”
He looked to me with a nod, a smirk ghosting over his lips. “Ready?”
I let my anxiety go and did exactly what he said—viewed this as nothing but playful sparring between our demons. We weren’t going to let Spector pit us against one another. If anything, we’d show them how well we could band together. “My spider is gonna kick your feathered ass.”
Crow laughed, the sound warming me up. “You wish, Little Spider.”
With a clap of his hands, the entire outline of his body vibrated with moving shadows that misted off his body and then materialized into more birds.
While he built his feathered army, I didn’t waste any time. Holding my hands up, I started building a webbed wall between Crow and me, hoping to block them off. I forced webs to move with decisive energy. I flung my left arm out, and webs shot from my fingers and attached to the glass wall. I did the same thing with my right hand and then moved my hands in sync, adding more and more strands until there was a wall of a thin yet intricate web that separated us.
Crow smiled at me from the other side. “Well done, Little Spider,” he praised. “But let’s see how you do when they get past your little web.”
Dozens of crows animated on the spot, their bodies flying toward my web. They cawed and circled, looking for weaknesses in my wall, searching for an opening. One part near the glass had a small gap, and birds dive bombed through it with excited flaps of their wings. My heart rate picked up as I shot web after web at them, trying to catch them, but they zoomed out of the way.
“Have to do better than that!” Crow hollered at me with a laugh in his voice.
“Fucking cocky ass bird boy,” I grumbled to myself.
One of his birds shot through the web and came at me, nipping at my shoulder. Another whirled around my hair, cawing as it tangled its body inside the red strands. Another one got through before I could get the gap filled in, diving for my hands and curling its claws around my fingers, trying to get me to stop throwing out webs.
A crow landed on my shoulder and nipped at my ear, and I realized I needed to change tactics.
I shot my webs out, wrapping them around the birds one by one in little nets, where I set them on the floor. I smirked at Crow triumphantly. “Ha! I won!”
Crow’s violet eyes narrowed. “You really think that was it?” he asked.
Then shadows exploded out of his hands. Like a missile, it careened toward the center of my webbed wall, and then hundreds of birds were moving in a single intent, their beaks breaking through the barrier like a rocket. I screamed and dove for the floor, barely able to throw up enough webs to keep the birds from attacking me. I squealed and covered my head with my arms, knowing it was just a matter of time before they’d break through and cover me. I wasn’t afraid of Crow’s birds anymore, and I admittedly was having fun, but the birds still kind of made me anxious.
“Okay, okay! I surrender!”
“I win!” Crow called cockily, swaggering over. His birds immediately calmed and started hopping around, their weight bearing down on my little web cave. I could barely see him through the tiny igloo-shaped barrier I was crouched under. Hundreds of birds were all over the place.
“You cheated,” I huffed.
Crow laughed. “Did not.”
“Can you send your little murder away now before they start crapping on me?” I asked, my voice slightly muffled.
Crow scoffed. “My demonic feathered friends would never poop on you,” he said. “Unless I ordered them to.”
My eyes widened. “Don’t you dare!”
He laughed, and then all at once, the birds evaporated back into shadows and sunk into his body. With a relieved sigh, I flicked my wrist, and the webs parted for me, letting me crawl back out. Crow took my hand and helped me stand up. He smiled down at me, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. It was a roving, hungry one as his eyes took in my flushed face and heaving chest. Gently, he reached forward and plucked some webs from my hair.
“This is a good look on you,” he said, his voice low and genuine.
“What is? A sweaty loser?” I joked.
He shook his head, and then suddenly his mouth was pressing against the edge of my cheek, his lips skimming my ear. “No. You at one with your spider. Smiling. Playing. Using your powers.” His lips grazed up, and when his tongue darted out to lick the shell of my ear, my stomach flipped over. “You looked fucking sexy as hell, Little Spider.”
Before my heart could even stutter out a beat, Crow had pulled away, walking off, and I was left gaping after him with heat in my core and a black feather behind my ear.
Chapter 10
“You have thirty minutes to
