The wolf-kin hissed through his teeth at the sting of Liliana’s fangs piercing his flesh.
She inhaled his scent: faint traces of formaldehyde mixed with damp canine fur and soap. She had not shared venom in many years and never with a man so fierce. The spider-kin strained to the tips of her cold toes to lick the trickle of blood from the two small puncture wounds on his shoulder muscle. The coppery, salty taste made her shudder.
He groaned, and she felt the vibration under her tongue. She looked up at his face with all her eyes, smiling at the confused euphoria there. “See, red wolf. You are not dying.”
“If I am, then I’m going to die happy.” He chuckled. Then he blinked and shook his head as if trying to clear it. “If you bottled that, you could make a fortune.”
“Spider seer venom is worth many thousands of dollars per ounce, but I prefer to make my living in other ways and save my venom for those I choose.” Warmth flushed her cold cheeks. “Venom is meant to be shared with a lover, but you already have a lover. I’m sorry it was necessary to bite you, but you wouldn’t believe my words.” She reached up to stroke the pale eyebrow of the wolf and searched his fuzzy, floating mind and heart. “Do you still believe I am the killer you seek?”
The wolf grinned and touched his forehead to hers where she stood on tiptoe. “I get it. You’re a lover, not a fighter.”
Liliana stiffened and pulled back at the insult. “I just defeated a Celtic wolf in single combat.”
He laughed gently like a teasing friend. “It’s just an expression. You’re pure class.”
Liliana did not keep up well with current slang, but she was fairly certain that was a compliment. The image of her as a killer faded away in his mind. Even under the fog of her venom, Peter Teague understood that her bite could not have killed anyone.
He was still a Celtic wolf though, a hunter of Others. He knew what she was and where to find her. If the Fae colonel who controlled him realized the implications of her abilities, he would want her dead. Simply by existing, spider seers threatened anyone in power who needed to keep secrets. That was why people kept putting bounties on their heads.
Red wolves had killed spider seers far too many times in the past.
In Peter Teague’s heart was an overwhelming instinct to protect, especially children, and most especially any man or woman he cared for. It gave her an idea. “Kiss me, and I will free you,” she said.
If he kissed her, he would have more of a connection to her. He would be less likely to hunt her. And surprisingly, considering he’d just tried to kill her, she wanted him to kiss her.
The wolf was strong and fierce and beautiful. She only had four years to find a mate before she reached maturity, and the decision was taken away from her by biology. She hadn’t thought about her approaching maturity in some time. It snuck up on her.
The wolf hesitated, pale brows pulled together as if he were trying to remember something. It took a strong will to resist the suggestibility of her venom. The red wolf must find her truly repulsive.
Normals found her eyes terrifying, and even most Others found them unnerving. People who saw her with all her eyes open rarely thought of kissing. Screaming and running away was the usual response.
Liliana looked into the wolf to see what held him back, expecting a horrific view of herself. Instead, she saw the wolf’s beloved with the gentle smile. Thoughts of him held the wolf back from Liliana. She saw him put a ring in a drawer under his socks. He was just waiting for the right moment to ask his chosen mate to be his for life. He didn’t want to kiss someone else and betray his beloved.
His heart was completely given. Even with her venom in his veins, and an attraction to her, he thought only of his boyfriend.
Liliana’s own heart warmed at his loyalty to his beloved. It also saddened her, both because she desired him and because her fourth eyes showed that “No” would be the answer when Peter Teague finally got up the nerve to ask. “Your beloved will have a lifetime of kisses from you if he will but say yes. He can spare a single one for me.”
The red wolf grinned at her, wide and mischievous. Dazzling. “Okay, one kiss then.”
He pressed closed lips against hers, enthusiastic and sweet.
She closed all but the eyes looking into his heart and mind as she sank into the warmth of the brotherly kiss.
In his mind, she saw herself now. He thought she was scary and cute at the same time. Her eyes fascinated him, like exotic jewels embedded in her face. To him, her second eyes looked like polished metallic-jade cabochons in her temples; her third eyes were tiny black pearls. Her fourth eyes looked like opals to him, with their ever-changing swirling surface of pale purple, green, and blue in translucent orbs set above her brows as if in a circlet.
His inner image of her flushed her cheeks warm as much as the sweet kiss. Her eyes did not disturb him. He liked them.
Envy of his golden-haired lover stabbed at Liliana.
With a sigh, she stepped back from him. Any connection she could forge with a single brotherly kiss had been made.
She flexed her wrist to extend her arm blade to cut his bonds. She had to kill the tiger in her trap or free him, and she didn’t want him dead, especially not after she had kissed him and shared venom with him. The line she cast to bind him had caught her in her own trap. Treating this wolf-kin like an enemy was no longer possible. She had to set him free while venom made him docile.
Peter Teague’s eyes widened when he saw her blade. Piercing through the fog was an image of her killing him. The venom in his system made it impossible for him to truly feel fear, but his pale brows drew together. “I thought you liked me.”
Hurt feelings.
Liliana flexed her wrist to fold her blade back into the nearly invisible sheath in her forearm. The wolf still believed she would kill him, and the kiss was not enough to make her feel safe either. “I do like you, beautiful wolf. I just don’t trust you not to kill me in my sleep.”
“I wouldn’t do that. I’d only kill you when you were awake,” he said, with the unfiltered honesty of the venom in his veins.
Liliana chuckled. “I am not reassured, but thank you for trying.”
There was nothing for it. Liliana would still have to leave town and disappear. As much as it pained her, she would rather leave her clients unguided than murder this brave wolf-kin. She would have to be somewhere else when he was freed.
Peter Teague did not have one of the wrist phones everyone seemed to have this decade. She felt in his pants pockets.
He grinned and squirmed. “Hey, I thought you knew I was taken.”
She found a phone in his jacket pocket along with the spare clips. The phone was possibly older than the wolf. She wondered why he carried such outdated communication technology. Behind his back, where his hands were bound, she pressed his thumb against the screen. Zoe Giovanni was on his contact list. Liliana touched the number and waited. She got voice mail. For a moment, she considered what message to leave.
No. Not safe.
Liliana couldn’t leave Peter Teague tied to a tree in the woods for an unknown amount of time, helpless in the cold, until Sergeant Giovanni remembered to check her voice mail.
Celtic wolves had many enemies. Being defenseless at the wrong moment or trusting the wrong person could mean death.
She hung up.
“Besides Sergeant Giovanni,” she asked the wolf, “who would you trust with your life?”
“Doctor Nudd,” he said without hesitation.
Liliana touched the number for Nudd Home.
“What do you want this time, Pete?” the gravelly voice on the other end of the phone asked. The wolf’s phone was not quite as old-fashioned as her push-button corded phone at home, but it was definitely a few decades behind. There didn’t appear to be any holographic display, or even a flat video display that she could access, just voices in the dark.
“You are Doctor Nudd?”
“Yeah, who is this? How did you get Pete’s phone?” The voice had gone from annoyed to tense.
“He needs your help.” Liliana told the voice how to find them. “How soon can you get here?”
“What kind of trouble is Pete in? Is he hurt?”
“He is not seriously hurt.” There were two tiny trickles of blood on the wolf’s shoulder. Aside from that, he wasn’t even visibly bruised from their fight. If he were hurt in some way she couldn’t see, her venom would take care of it. “But he cannot defend himself.”
“I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
Liliana put the wolf’s old-fashioned phone back in his jacket pocket with the spare clips for his gun.
She opened her second eyes, closed her third and fourth eyes, and left the tiny island of human visible light to collect his weapons from the forest floor. She remembered to yank the two throwing knives out of the tree and to locate the long knife among the pine needles. The wolf-kin seemed fond of his knives.
“Anna?” he called to her as she walked away into darkness. “You’re not going to leave me like this, are you? You said you would let me go if I kissed you.”
Liliana placed his throwing knives next to the gun with its tiny bright light. She picked up his sword. It was well-crafted and very old. Liliana held it by the hilt. A fine, balanced weapon. Her hand felt warm on the hilt, and it fit as if it had been made for someone with hands her size. That seemed unlikely since the larger wolf-kin had also seemed comfortable wielding it. In the dark-seeing vision of her second eyes, it glowed softly. It must be enchanted in some way. She had a strong desire to keep the sword, but she had no right to it. Reluctantly, she laid the fine weapon at its owner’s feet. “I keep my promises. Your friend, Doctor Nudd, is coming. He will free you.”
“Why won’t you?”
“I need to go.”
“Where are you going?”
“Somewhere far away where you won’t find me and kill me.”
“You don’t have to go. It’s obvious you’re not the right kind of spider. I’ll go to Raleigh tomorrow, talk to Daphne, the widow spider you told me about. If your story checks out, I’ll know you didn’t have anything to do with the murders, and I’ll leave you alone.”
“Will you?” Liliana opened her fourth eyes, searching for future intersections between their life paths, but too many random images overlaid each other until she could see nothing regarding this wolf and her. It was like trying to listen to a single conversation while a thousand people talked at once.
Flux.
Her hands curled in frustration. Her fourth eyes always failed her when she most needed their guidance. The very act of trying to make an important decision made a mess of her visions.
Decisions made in the next few minutes would forge the direction of her future, affecting every moment from here forward. There was no way for her to see anything solid until she chose a path, and then it would be too late.
Peter Teague was trustworthy. She had seen into his heart and mind. He was an honorable being who sought to make the world better. He believed he was telling her the truth. But he also seemed completely unaware of the depth of influence the powerful Fae colonel had on his choices.
She certainly did not trust an unknown Sidhe, no matter how nice he was to look at.
She put her cold hands on the wolf’s warm cheeks and stood on tiptoe so she could touch her forehead to his again. He bent down to let her. “Farewell, beautiful wolf.”
“Pete. My name is Pete.”
“Pete.” Liliana tilted her head to one side, considering. “My name is Liliana. People mostly call me Madame Anna now because of my sign, but I like Lilly. My father used to call me Lilly when I was little.”
Pete smiled, relaxed with the carefree euphoria of her venom’s influence. He had such a stunning smile. It made her knees feel wobbly. It had been years…decades?…since anyone smiled at her like that. “Lilly,” he said. “I like it.”
Liliana caught a dangling silk line and scrambled up into the tree branches, into the darkness his eyes could not pierce.
In minutes, his friend would be there to free him. She should go.
But she didn’t.