Free Spider-Touched by Jory Strong Page B

until she touched it that it belonged to Matthew—the stranger whose boat was carrying her away from the mob hunting her. And in that instant when she touched the thread of Matthew’s life, she’d seen Erik’s death without understanding the full truth of it or what crossing the witch’s path would mean.
    The first shimmer of pain pulled Araña from her memories. A nameless urgency made her push formlessly through twisting, multicolored strands—forward into some future moment—until a blue-black thread caught her attention and drew her to it.
    She couldn’t tell from looking at it what made this soul and life different from all the others, but she knew it was, knew the being it represented was like nothing she’d ever encountered before.
    The pain intensified, isolating her until the only choice was to reach out and grasp the thread in a spidery demon touch.
    There was a wrenching disorientation as darkness and nothingness gave way to midday sun and the Oakland skyline. She saw it through tattered canvas, the ripped side of a rapidly moving transport truck.
    They were several miles away from the red zone. She recognized the tallest building and knew it was near the maze. Beyond it was one of the buildings she’d seen when they sailed toward the docks.
    The truck was in an old graveyard. She noticed tombstones fallen among the weeds, a destroyed mausoleum with the words “Our Lady of Peace” above a doorway framing sky and forest.
    Movement to the right turned her attention to what was inside the truck, and even without a physical presence, the sight of the dragon lizards with their tails swinging back and forth in agitation sent terror whipping through her. They were contained, as were the hyenas trapped in a small cage above them.
    Next to the hyenas a wolf had bloodied its mouth gnawing frantically at the bars of its cage. The warded silver around its neck made her think it was a Were. Her suspicion deepened when she turned farther and saw the werecougar trapped between forms, his body vibrating with despair.
    The sense of the future, tomorrow , reverberated through her. Given the proximity to Oakland and the presence of the dragon lizards, she knew she must be in the truck belonging to the trapper the maze owner had spoken of.
    There was one last occupant in the truck, the one whose life she’d followed to this place and moment in time. But when she would have turned farther to look, searing agony prevented it, ripping her backward to the present.
    She expected an explosion of color, a thousand threads to choose from. Instead there was only the single, blue-black strand in an infinity of darkness.
    The pain stopped. Completely. In a way it had never done before while she was still held in the spider vision.
    Pure blackness gave way to night. A man lay on a bed of straw, bathed in moonlight.
    His wrists and ankles were shackled to a band of metal around his waist. An eerie sigil-inscribed collar encircled his neck, glowing icy blue.
    There was no sound in her vision walk save for the sibilant whispers, now joined by discordant notes of music, a fractured rhapsody she instinctively knew belonged to him.
    He had a face like the angels she’d seen in Erik’s art history books, too beautiful to look at and yet so enthralling she couldn’t look away. Black hair as long as her own rippled over his chest and back in erotic waves, making her want to reach out and tangle her fingers in it, making her crave what she’d never known and couldn’t have—the touch of a lover.
    Despite the length of his hair and the shackles imprisoning him, he was masculine perfection, the epitome of unfathomable power. And though Araña had no true awareness of her body, she had a phantom sensation of her breath catching and her cunt weeping with a need that would never be safely satisfied with anything but her own touch.
    The man’s eyes opened, his gaze meeting hers deep in the vision, trapping her in dark pools of blue. And in