Page 14 of Spooks & Specters

“I’m the bigger bad.”

Carlos gurgled under her hand. She felt his throat move against her palm, and it was such a lovely feeling. Sounds tried to escape him, but they had a problem getting past her tight grip.

“You humans always tend to think you’re the top predator.”

Carlos’s eyes bulged.

“Yes, I said human.” Isadora let the partial shift continue. She knew what the human would see. Hopefully it wouldn’t terrify him into a heart attack.

She’d always been proud of her high cheekbones from her human form. She was even more so in this form, as they swelled, almost as if there was growth under the skin.

Which, there was.

Around her mouth, black pincerlike fangs pierced her skin and grew around either side of her lips. A small trail of blood dribbled down her chin. It always stung a bit when they formed, but it was brief and over quickly.

There was another brief sting as three pairs of little black eyes blinked open on her bulging cheekbones. Right above her eyebrows, her forehead tingled as it thickened to a sagittal crest.

The guy on the ground started screaming, but the sound was muffled thanks to the webbing over his mouth.

The human that she had by the throat also tried to scream, so she adjusted her grip. “None of that, now.”

Having seen herself in a mirror, she knew that there was also a set of black eyes on the crest. Her scalp burned slightly as what appeared to be black cables grew from her scalp and slanted backwards to intertwine with her bun.

The other banger who’d run off had noticed how her eyes had changed earlier. Some primitive instinct had told him there was a predator in their midst, and he’d listened. Smart guy. This one, however, had not.

Isadora grinned, exposing her jagged teeth.

The guy she’d pinned with her webbing was nearly hyperventilating from fear. The emotion spiced the blood and had such a lovely, acidic scent. Her mouth watered, and her fangs descended.

The scent of urine perfumed the air as the one she had pinned to the wall continued to swing at her, but his fist bounced uselessly off her face and body.Laughing softly, she shoved him several inches higher up the wall. His feet slammed against her thighs. He sank his nails into her wrist, not that it did any good.

His puny human nails barely breached her skin. At this point, he wasn’t even capable of screaming, thanks to his terror. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen that happen. Fear could actually rob a person of the ability to vocalize.

“You know, it’s such a shame. You are truly a handsome young man. There are so few of my kind that I’m almost tempted to try and transform you, but I could never trust you. I need a killer, but you’re rotten to the core.”

The banger continued to wheeze in her grip, even as he fought. The sheer terror on his face and his rabbiting heart made her hunger deepen. She could hear the blood pounding in his veins. She needed to finish this before he really did have a heart attack simply by staring at her.

Chapter Two

ISADORA’S FANGS dripped with the venom as she opened her mouth wide. Oh look. She just thought he was past the point of screaming. Apparently, she was wrong, according to the sounds echoing off the brick walls now.

She barely caught the flash of metal in the dimly lit alley before a blade sank into her side. Pain exploded through her, and she screamed—a high-pitched, eye watering screech. Fuck her sideways, that fucking hurt.

Anger clouded her mind, and she briefly lost control. Four massive spider legs exploded from behind her. One pair sprouted from her hip area, the other from her shoulders. The legs were made up of seven segments and had tiny hairs like a real spider. They towered behind her.

She barely managed to drag herself back from a full transformation. The last thing she needed to do was walk out of here naked, and that was exactly what would happen if she didn’t rein herself in. That could be more trouble than even she was willing to deal with.

Still, this mother fucker had hurt her. Snarling, she sank her fangs into his neck. They punched through the thin skin like a hot knife through butter. For her, it felt exquisite. For him? Probably not so much. Her venom released.

Like spiders, her kind passed venom through bites. An arachne possessed two types of venom—a lethal one they used to feed, which was a cocktail of many different types of chemicals, some of which were neurotoxins and cytotoxins.

This venom allowed her to immobilize her victim, then break down their tissue so she could ingest a liquefied meal. The other type of venom she had was used to change humans into what she was.Unfortunately, the success rate for transformingsomebody was practically zero. She had only attempted it once, and of course it’d been unsuccessful.

The beautiful young woman had died, and Isadora had mourned her death. She hadn’t tried since. But now was not the time to revisit the past, and shame on her for allowing herself to get distracted even for a second.

The gurgling screams coming from the young man she was feeding from stopped. These two punks weren’t capable of hurting her—the knife to her side was nothing really—but other paranormals could, even though she was practically indestructible.

In order to kill her, she had to be decapitated. The body couldn’t function without the brain, and as long as her head and body were kept separate, she could not regenerate. Because that’s what her kind did—regenerated.

---