Twisting my massive body and temporarily forgetting Collector, I approached my new attacker with glee. His shaky hands were covered in blood. My aunt’s murderer.
I whipped my webs around his neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
His eyes bulged from the pressure. His back arched from the way I picked his body up by his neck. I tortured and played with my prey until blood dripped from the pressure of my webs and his head rolled back. And then, with a snap, his neck crumbled under the pressure of my wrath.
A fitting death.
The door slammed shut, drawing my attention back to the man that started it all. But when I spun back around, Belvini was gone. He’d disappeared like the coward he was while I was distracted killing the guard.
But oh, I’d wait for him.
I’d spin my web.
I’d lure him in.
I’d kill him with glee.
Monsters weren’t born, they were made.
I found solace in the dark destruction of my demon. I allowed her to calm my mind with her potent brand of rage. She stalked the concrete room and wrapped up her kills with thick webs like silken trophies. All the while, I sunk deeper and deeper into her existence. It was easier to be the avenging monster than to be the girl who would grieve.
It was easier to accept my demon than to accept a world where Aunt Marie didn’t exist.
It was easier.
Chapter 26
Time didn’t exist in grief.
There was no passing by. There was no dusk on pain. The world didn’t light you up with a new beginning of dawn. It just highlighted what you’d lost in the dark.
So I stayed burrowed.
Consciousness was a strange thing when your soul was severed. I saw snippets of the world through my spider’s eyes. I watched her take vengeance. I watched her kill. Destroy. Lash out with venom and webs in a flurry of rabid ire.
She was vicious. She was malicious. She was beautiful.
The sway of her body as she splintered concrete and battered guards nearly rocked me to sleep. The roars and hisses from her mouth were like lullabies. Our realities had flipped, and I was now the one buried inside, like she was cradling me and keeping me safe while she faced the world and let it suffer her wrath.
Death followed her wherever she crawled. Every time she caught another fly, elation soared through her. I could feel her pride as if each kill was a present she was gifting to me.
For you, she whispered to me. For her.
No. I didn’t want to think about her. The tears that welled in familiar eyes. The head that landed at my feet. I couldn’t. Overwhelming despair crippled me.
So my spider went on.
Pain flared when they hurt us. Her rage boiled over when we were surrounded. Kill them all, she rasped. Kill, kill, kill, she chanted as more power besieged us.
I tunneled deeper.
Dark and nothingness were such cool, comforting balms. I wanted to stay here forever, I wanted to drift away and not have to feel.
But then...
A voice. Insistent. Loud. Demanding. What was it saying?
Motley, Motley, Motley.
No, not a voice, I realized belatedly. Three.
I sat up from the blackness that shrouded me. I blinked through her eyes so I could see. I observed like I was detached, watching things play out like a movie on a screen.
So much death.
Bodies were everywhere. They littered the ground like blood red rose petals down a morbid aisle. I took it all in—the ruined room I was in resembled some sort of massive storage area. It was large enough to hold my spider’s body, and there was a regiment of Spector guards surrounding my spider, guns all trained on us.
“Stop!” a voice yelled. It sounded like crackling fire.
I blinked down at the body standing before me. His back faced my spider, his hands filled with an orange blaze.
“The next person that shoots her will die by my hand,” he said.
My spider trilled. Mate.
But then a guard—one off to the side—moved to aim at my mate and shoot him. My spider hissed and lashed out, sending a long limb crashing into the one who dared harm my demon.
Guns fired. Popping bubbles of pain skidded off my body. My spider roared, ready to wipe them all out.
“Motley! Motley!”
My spider faltered. I paused to look. Two more faces came into view. One made of black stone and the other with hair as blue as the sea.
Mates.
A feeling of comfort washed over me.
Hands touched my spider. She was so tall that we towered over the males. I looked down, intrigued.
“Motley. You need to come back out now. Come on, Little Spider.”
I frowned. I didn’t want to come back out. My spider shook her head, backing up, but then the other one was there next. “Wid. You gotta come back, baby,” the gargoyle begged. “You gotta come back so we can take care of you.”
Didn’t they see? My spider was taking care of me. This was easier. I didn’t have to think, didn’t have to feel...I should go further back, burrow in deeper...
“Motley!”
My attention snapped to the demon who now had his full attention on me. His eyes smoldered as smoke dusted past his lips. “You need to come back out now, Wicked Love.”
A whine escaped my spider’s lips, and her fangs bared, but my mates weren’t deterred. They just came closer.
“You did beautifully, Black Widow,” Risk cooed. “You took care of her. But we need her to come back out now so that we can take care of both of you.”
My spider and I paused. Our eyes started to sweep the threat in the room again, but shadows and crows blocked our view. “Down here, Little Spider,” Crow muttered. “Just focus on us.”
“We’ll protect you now,” Tomb put in.
“We’ve got you,” Risk added.
And just like that, my spider started to shrink.
“That’s it. Good girl,” the demon purred.
I tried to hold onto her.
