ARAÑA’S silence bothered Tir. Not just the physical silence that had settled around her before they left the Were’s forest lair, but her emotional silence.

A wall stood between them, blocking her feelings from him. Its presence created a void, a hollow spot that had him reaching up to rub his chest. They’d passed through the red zone to the area set aside for the human gifted without speaking a word.

Tir’s lip curled in disdain at the word. Gifted. He’d met his share of them over the centuries and found them capable of cruelty beyond measure. Humans were never meant to posses such talent. They were dust, the walking dead, frail and unworthy. They were less than the most simple of beasts. They were—

He turned, aware she’d stopped walking. His cock hardened as his eyes traveled over her crouched form and he remembered the feel of her above him, the heated clamp of her channel and the silky texture of her skin.

She was nothing to him beyond useful help, he told himself. But the lie showed itself in the clenching of his jaw, in the flash of anger and need that had him wanting to return to her side and end the silence created by his threat.

His eyes hesitated on the hand bearing the brand, noting the fingerless glove she must have found among the weeds. Realization slid into him like a knife.

He looked around, studied the area and found dark stains on the ground. This was where her family had been killed. This was the place where guardsmen had thought to rape her.

Tir closed his eyes and reached for her mentally, only to be met by a wall of rigid control. She was stronger than most humans, though it had been centuries since he last cared enough about what one of them felt to do anything but try to block them out.

He pushed harder and could almost taste the tears held back, contained in a bottomless well of sorrow. For the first time in what he remembered of his life, he wondered if he had family that grieved when he disappeared. He wondered if he had ever loved another deeply enough that their passing from his life tore a rent in his soul.

He prodded at his lost memory, but there was no echo of pain, no resonance of sorrow. Nothing rose from the darkness.

Tir touched the sigil-inscribed collar, silently reminding himself the only thing that mattered was gaining the information that would allow him to translate the tattoos on his arms and achieve his freedom. She was a dangerous distraction, one he couldn’t afford.

He watched as she stood and moved away from him, obviously searching for something. She found it moments later, and before she slipped it into her pocket, he saw it was a wallet.

“We’ve got money for food and lodging now,” she said, her subdued voice coming to him on a breeze, along with the scent of her sadness.

Tir steeled himself to wait until she returned to his side. His hands balled into fists in an effort to keep from reaching for her.

He succeeded at the first, but not the second. Her dark pain-shadowed eyes had him cupping her face and trying to smooth the bruised look away with the pads of his thumbs.

Tir leaned in and covered her lips with his, found an unexpected gentleness in himself. She resisted his offer of comfort at first. But with the tender probing of his tongue in a request for admission, he broke through the barrier she’d erected.

Araña softened, opened for him. He tasted her sorrow as well as her strength.

Her hands went to his chest, her palms pressing to his nipples, sending jagged bolts of pleasure to his cock. Lust coiled in his belly as he found the contrast of bare flesh and gloved leather wickedly erotic.

Tir moaned, deepening the kiss. His hands left her face to pull her more tightly against him.

He felt her grief retreat, driven away by the hard press of his body to hers. Desire rose in its place, fanning the flames of his own and making him want to press her to the ground and take her until nothing remained for her but pleasure.

He plundered her mouth until she clung to him. Only then did he lift his lips from hers.

“We need to go to the occult shop,” she said.

Tir could feel her desire to escape more than just this place where her family was killed. His arms tightened involuntarily. Denial flared. She wouldn’t be free of him until he allowed it.

Araña made herself concentrate on the tasks that lay ahead. “We need to go to the occult shop,” she repeated, aware of the steady progress of the sun across the sky.

It could take hours of searching the shop before they’d know whether the information Tir needed was there. And before they sought shelter for the night, she wanted to know if the Constellation was still in its slip.

And if Rebekka and Levi are okay, the voice of conscience added, filling her with dread and guilt even as she knew there was nothing she could have done for them. It had been too late to change the future from the moment she’d touched Rebekka’s soul thread.

Tir’s arms dropped away, but her palms lingered on his chest despite her words. It took more effort than it should have to break the contact, to turn away from the illusion of safety and peace she found in his arms.

She forced herself to start walking, to retrace the path she’d marched at gunpoint. She numbed her mind and blocked her memories, refusing to revisit what she’d seen until she reached the place where the guardsmen’s vehicle had been parked.

It was sheer luck they’d driven past the occult shop on the way to the maze. Habit had made her memorize the route. On the ocean there were no signposts, no pedestrians to ask directions of. There were only landmarks close to shore and the stars above.

When they reached the shop, Araña stopped at the edge of the inscribed circle painted in red on the sidewalk surrounding it. The symbols were common enough, wards against noncorporeal beings as well as entities intent on mischief or possessed of evil.

“Can you cross it?” she asked, sweat trickling down her spine at the resistance she felt, the tightness in her chest. It would take effort for her to step over the line.

She hadn’t expected to have trouble entering the shop. But it felt as though something in the wards recognized the demon mark.

Tir answered by stepping through the circle and turning toward her, offering his hand. She took it and let him tug her forward.

Her breath left her in a suffocating rush, as if a spell tried to suck her soul from her body and trap it. A whimper escaped at the confirmation she was Hell-bound, and she was left trembling with the single step she’d taken.

“Can you proceed?” Tir asked.

“Yes.” It was too late to turn back now.

The spider burned on her shoulder, its fiery heat a reminder that the mark was fused to her being and there would be no separating it from her flesh. Her gaze slid over Tir’s bare torso. He was probably safe enough in the occult shop, but he’d need a shirt before they traveled beyond the area set aside for the gifted.

The tattoos on his arms would draw too much attention. They’d make him stand out and would turn him into a target for police and guardsmen alike. Beyond that, it would be better if, in addition to the trapper’s knife tied in its sheath to his thigh, he also carried beneath his own shirt the machete that was now strapped to her back and hidden by her shirt.

He pulled the door open. She felt the wards on the threshold, stronger than those circling the building. They pressed on her, as if instead of sucking her soul from her body, these would squeeze, forcing her spirit to flee into some magical trap.

The mark burned hotter. Araña had a brief thought of the demon Abijah, wondering if this was how he’d been captured. Then she forced herself through the warded doorway and into the shop.