Page 9 of Explosive Chemistry

She released the silk cord and twisted her body to miss a tree trunk. She landed on her feet and rolled to take the momentum…right into a bunch of winterberry bushes.

Ow.

She groaned. New bruises and scrapes added their own shrill voices to the cacophony of pain her abraded skin and bruised shoulder were already singing.

As she extricated herself slowly from the bush’s branches, which tangled in her clothes and hair, she heard an angry inhuman bellow mixed with the grating sound of stone on stone. Three rapid pistol shots cracked and the brrrat of a burst of machine gun fire. Then…nothing.

There was nothing more utterly silent than a forest with all the beasts hunkered down from fear. Not so much as a bird or a cricket chirped for a long moment.

Then somewhere a jay made its namesake call, and the normal forest sounds slowly returned.

Liliana worked her way around tree trunks and through brush to get back to her friends.

Pete, Detective Jackson, and Lieutenant Runningwolf now stood over the body of an elderly Native American woman in the path. Sergeant Giovanni had made her escape and was some ways farther down the path, unaware of her pursuer’s temporary death.

Blood pulsed from the old woman’s right hand into a broad pool, then sank into the earth. As Liliana got to them, the enraged, wrinkled face faded to dull, striated charcoal gray. The body solidified into a vaguely human-shaped outcropping of flint that ran across the path.

Liliana let her shoulders sag. Pain saturated her bones. It would be nice if she didn’t have to fight any more giants until these new injuries healed. She took a deep breath and the adrenaline of battle started to fade.

Her friends had all survived the day.

She waved at Pete and Detective Jackson. “Please, do not put me in any reports. I was not here officially.”

Pete nodded.

Detective Jackson looked quizzical. “Why is that?”

Pete answered for her, “Apparently her kind is almost extinct because people in power keep putting bounties on their heads. Most of her family and the rest of her race has been wiped out. She’s afraid for her life if her refusal to die like all the other spider seers becomes known by the higher ups.”

Liliana smiled. It was nearly word for word what she’d told him. Nice to know Pete was listening, at least sometimes.

“I see.” Detective Jackson nodded gravely. “I never saw you.”

“Genocide.” Lieutenant Runningwolf’s face made an angry scowl that looked like he’d like to shoot someone again. “You won’t be in my report.”

Liliana smiled at the broad soldier’s belt. He’d just met her and immediately agreed to protect her most important secret. She liked him already. “Thank you all.”

She took a different path so she could avoid the forensics team. That path brought her to a different clearing where she stopped and looked around. Something about what she was seeing seemed familiar. The pine on the other side of the clearing grew slightly slanted, and the oak looked like a friend the pine leaned on when drunk.

There should be a bush and a patch of flowers beside them.

In winter?

Liliana walked into the clearing, moving over to the right until her view changed, and she could see the branches of a dormant bush. The ground beneath was nearly white with blooming wild hellebores. Some people called them Christmas roses. She’d loved discovering the lovely, little, white native flowers that bloomed in winter when she moved to North Carolina decades ago.

Now, she sat down on a low mound of disturbed earth with broad flat stones on top and started to cry.

Chapter 3

Winter Roses

For an unknown, miserable time, Liliana sat on the flat rock holding her legs tucked up against her body, her human eyes leaking tears in steady streams down her cheeks. Internally, she upbraided herself for focusing so hard on her friends that she completely ignored the warning her fourth eyes had given her.

This day was not the victory she’d thought. It was a truly epic failure.

Detective Jackson’s voice drifted down a hiking path that passed through this clearing. “I just want to check around the area, make sure there isn’t anything we missed,” the detective said to someone behind her.

“You want me to come with?” the voice of Lieutenant Runningwolf asked. “Watch your back?”

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