Page 56 of Spiders in the Grove

I raise my eyes to Javier. “I’ll bring you Victor Faust.”

He smiles, and then slides his hands into the pockets of his pants.

“I’ve never spoken to Vonnegut personally,” he begins, “but I know someone who has; she’s his liaison.”

So then Iosif isn’t Vonnegut—figures. And that means I was wrong all along about Vonnegut being one of the wealthy buyers.

“How do you know she’s spoken to him—seen him?”

He glances at me. “Because she’s confident,” he says, and then paces slowly. “The times I’ve met with her to do business with The Order, she’s carried herself a certain way; she’s more than an employee—she’s important to Vonnegut somehow. A mere messenger doesn’t make decisions for the boss; she’s confident enough to make decisions without first consulting him. She’d never do that if she didn’t have some kind of personal relationship with him.”

“Who is she?”

“Her name is Lysandra Hollis,” he says with a shrug, “if that’s her real name, of course.”

“Profile?” I ask.

His mouth pinches on one side, and I know what he’s thinking: Should he give me anything else?

“Blonde hair; brown eyes; she has a tattoo of a hummingbird on her ankle; twenty-eight to thirty-years-old—that’s all I have.”

“Good,” I say, “then let me go, and I’ll do what I agreed.”

Javier laughs under his breath.

He looks right at me. “I never said I was going to let you go, Sarai—I told you when I walked in here that I could never let you leave alive. And I said you’d bring Victor Faust to me, but I didn’t say how.”

I know; I haven’t forgotten.

“And you also told me,” I say, and I smile at him, “that I betrayed you long ago because I knew you’d never tell me where my daughter is even if I helped you.”

The smirk vanishes from his face. His eyes drop from mine, homing in on the gun in my hand that I took from the guard I choked to death an hour ago, and the ropes I wormed my way out of before Javier entered the room, lying on the floor at my feet.

The gunshot briefly deafens me, and Javier stands there for a moment, his features beset with shock. Blood seeps through the gray of his shirt, and through his fingers.

He drops to his knees, his hands still pressed to his midsection; he coughs and blood trickles from his mouth.

This is how it should’ve been the first time. And it feels good righting that wrong.

“Sarai…” he reaches out one hand to me.

I crouch in front of Javier, the one who made me, the darkness that’s been inside of me, and I kiss his bleeding mouth; I kiss him long and soft so that he’ll remember me, so that I’ll never forget him.

“You were right,” I whisper onto his lips, “I am the wolf in the chicken pen, mi amor”—I kiss him again—“and though I do have love for you, I can live with myself if you die.”

I put the gun to his temple and pull the trigger.

His body falls, and quietly I say goodbye before I’m ducking and rolling to dodge the spray of bullets coming at me from the doorway.

The second I have the opportunity, I take the shot from behind the sofa, and the guard falls. Running on bare feet toward him as the sound of boots and shouting fills the hallway just outside the room, I grab the semi-automatic from the dead one, and rush the others through a storm of bullets.

Niklas

Dead bodies litter the mansion grounds; no one guards the gates; I’d passed a small group of slave girls walking on the dirt road on my way in, and I knew something was up, but I didn’t expect this.

Fredrik is standing in the foyer when I walk inside, and I step around more bodies as I approach him.

I lean over and pick up a gun at my feet—it’s empty.

---