Page 41 of Spiders in the Grove

Naeva’s body trembles in Joaquin’s hands; tears rush down her cheeks—I don’t know what to do; maybe this is my moment, the most difficult test I’ll ever have to face being what I am now; maybe this is my one chance to prove—to myself, not to anyone else—that I can do this kind of work for the rest of my short life. I have to stay in character; I’m so close to unearthing Vonnegut—I feel it—and I can’t let anyone or anything get in my way. Not Dante or Frances or Sabine or any of the other innocent girls here, and not even Naeva. This is The Sacrifice, the moment when I must choose to let innocent people die, so I can kill one of the sources that feeds all this injustice—the death of a few for the lives of many.

I take a deep breath, and I choose. I choose to do the unthinkable. I choose to become…Victor Faust.

Joaquin forces Naeva closer to the edge of the stage; he wants to display her for all to see; still, no one other than Dante and Frances Lockhart appear distressed by what everyone in this room knows is going to happen soon.

“Let me tell you all a story,” Joaquin begins, his voice sharp through the speakers in the ceiling for all to hear, “of a girl who was to be sold years ago, to a private bidder ready to pay an inconceivable amount of money”—(everybody in the room looks right at Iosif Veselov)—“No, no,” Joaquin laughs, “it wasn’t Mr. Veselov—anyway, before the girl could be transferred, she escaped.”

Whispers rise over the crowd, and then die-out once Joaquin continues.

“Oh, you’re all going to love this—I should charge an extra attendance fee for tonight.” Joaquin smiles, playfully considering it. “But you won’t believe who helped her out of Mexico.”

“Who helped her?” a woman shouts from the crowd.

Joaquin pauses, his smile growing ever so darkly, and he sweeps his free hand in front of him and says, “El Segador, Leo Moreno himself!”

Gasps and whispers fill the theatre; stunned faces and heads turn to one another in shock; it all makes me feel like I’m wading numbly through a sea of devastation—everyone knows who this man is, and they probably all know the story, too.

“Leo Moreno?” the woman behind me says to the other. “Wow…so that’s the girl…just wow.”

“I knew Moreno was alive!” the man to my left says to the other. “If that’s really the woman he loved, somebody’s going to die in this place tonight, and I doubt it’ll be her!”

“So, that has to mean Leo is here. Right now. In this building,” another woman says to someone, her voice dripping with exhilaration; her eyes bounce all over the room in search of him.

“You heard that right, ladies and gentlemen!” Joaquin announces—challenges. “You’re looking at the one and only, Naeva Brun! And somewhere in this mansion is the once famous, thought-to-be-dead underground fighter who ruined his life for her!”

Now I’m the one turning my head, following the heads of the crowd, searching for this man who has yet to reveal himself.

“Come out of your hole, Moreno!” Joaquin says into his mic. “You have ten seconds to show yourself, and to surrender, or she dies!”

Everyone looks, in every corner, every shadow; voices rise and fall; in the midst of it all I set my sights on Iosif from across the room. He is the only one not looking; he is the only one who doesn’t care. He reaches into his suit jacket and pulls out a cell phone, sets it on the table in front of him. I can’t tell what he’s doing with it, and I wish I could get closer. He gestures at one of his guards, and says something to him. The guard then gestures at a server carrying a tray lined with drinks, and the server rushes over to the table. Iosif takes a glass of whiskey, then a drink, and sets it upon the table near his phone. He couldn’t care less about everything else going on; he is too important; he might even be irritated by the disruption of the only thing he came here for—I don’t know, because he remains unreadable.

“Ten. Nine. Eight.”

Joaquin’s voice, although very much a centerpiece in my mind, is softened by the man named Dante. He is sweating profusely; he’s also not looking for Leo Moreno to make an appearance, but unlike Iosif, Dante is very affected by what’s going on in the theatre. He can hardly sit still on his chair; he slides his index finger back and forth behind the collar of his shirt; he looks like he’s about to vomit, or pass out.

“Six. Five. Four.”

Frances Lockhart is crying; two of the girls sitting at her feet are doing their best to console her without being seen; they lay their heads on her thighs, and one is holding her hand. Frances dabs her cheeks with a cloth napkin, and tries desperately to control herself, but like Dante, she’s going to completely unravel any moment now. She looks at me from across the room; our eyes lock, and something passes between us—an understanding, perhaps; a kinship of some kind that I doubt either of us will ever truly know—before we look away from one another, toward the main entrance, and at a figure moving down the aisle.

“Ah, so wonderful of you to join us, Señor Moreno,” Joaquin says, victoriously.

The crowd gasps.

Every head in the room—even Iosif this time—looks in the same direction; a dense spell of silence stretches over the crowd, and not even the sound of breathing breaks it.

And then: “LEO!” pierces the silence like a bullet cutting through a glass window. Naeva struggles against Joaquin, but he presses the gun deeper into her throat. “Leo! Please! Don’t let them take you!” Tears barrel from her eyes.

The legendary fighter, the love of Naeva’s life, makes his way toward the stage with awed faces at his front and guns at his back. But he sees none of it—the only thing he sees is Naeva and the man threatening to kill her. His dark eyes churn with retribution; his fists are like iron hammers down at his sides, held in place by muscled arms and shoulders that appear to have been carved from stone; his face, filled with violence and fury, somehow appears soft, and young, with finely-chiseled cheekbones and perfectly-shaped lips. For a moment, I mourn him—what a waste it will be to see such a creature killed by such a beast.

Without a word, Leo Moreno makes it to the first set of tables next to the stage, and in a flash, before any trigger behind him can be pulled, he rounds on the guard closest to him, drives a sharp elbow into his face with a crack! and grabs the gun from his hands. Another one-second flash and Jorge Ramirez, sitting at the table nearest Leo, is now pressed against Leo’s chest, the barrel of the gun shoved against Jorge’s temple—it all happened so fast I’m still trying to grasp it.

“Let Naeva go, or I kill this one…first,” Leo speaks in accented English, and a wave of excited whispers blankets the theatre.

“Leo—”

Joaquin shoves the barrel of his gun deeper into Naeva’s throat, cutting off her cries; his smile is menacing as he looks down at Leo from atop the stage.

“You won’t kill him,” Joaquin taunts; he moves his head to indicate the crowd. “You’re outnumbered.”

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