The cop was going to die tonight.

He just didn’t know it yet.

For Detec­tive Cliff Ingles, this was just another Sat­ur­day night in the south­ern metrop­o­lis of Ash­land, and he was spend­ing it the way he did all his other Sat­ur­day nights—slugging down drinks and ogling the sul­try vam­pire hook­ers at North­ern Aggres­sion, the most pop­u­lar night­club in the city.

Just before mid­night, and peo­ple packed into the night­club. Men in designer suits, women in skirts that barely cov­ered their asses, all look­ing for their par­tic­u­lar brand of poi­son. Blood, booze, drugs, sex, smokes. North­ern Aggres­sion offered all that and more, as long as you had the cash or plas­tic to pay for your par­tic­u­lar vice.

Still, despite the ver­i­ta­ble unwashed masses that sur­rounded me, I had to admit that the night­club had a deca­dent style about it. Crushed red vel­vet drapes cov­ered the walls, while the floor was made of soft, springy bam­boo. But the most strik­ing thing in the club was the bar that ran down one wall—an elab­o­rate sheet made entirely of ice. Runes had been carved into the slick sur­face of the ice. Suns and stars, mostly, sym­bol­iz­ing life and joy. I sup­posed the sym­bols were rather appro­pri­ate, given all the peo­ple get­ting hot ‘n’ heavy in the booths in the back of the club.

Either way, I’d spent the last hour sit­ting at the Ice bar—along with Cliff Ingles.

The detec­tive threw back his third whiskey of the evening, then leaned for­ward and mur­mured some­thing in the ear of the vam­pire wait­ress who’d brought over his drink. The two of them were near the cen­ter of the enor­mous Ice bar, about fifty feet away from my posi­tion around the curve and up against the far wall.

Ingles never had a clue that I was watch­ing him. No real rea­son why he would. If the detec­tive had both­ered to look in my direc­tion, all he would have seen was another woman drink­ing her way through a night out on the town.

Even if the detec­tive had noticed me, even if he’d come over and tried to pick me up, I would have told him exactly who I was. Gin Blanco. A part-time cook and wait­ress at the Pork Pit bar­be­cue joint in down­town Ash­land. A Stone and Ice elemental.

And the assas­sin known as the Spider.

The woman who was going to make sure Detec­tive Cliff Ingles quit breath­ing before the night was through.

But there was no dan­ger of Ingles notic­ing me. I wasn’t his type. The bas­tard pre­ferred to force him­self on young, help­less girls.

And with the five sil­ver­stone knives hid­den on my per­son, I was any­thing but helpless.

I took another sip of my gin and tonic and stud­ied my tar­get, com­par­ing the man in front of me to the photo that had been in the file of infor­ma­tion that my han­dler, Fletcher Lane, had given me when he’d told me about the hit.

Detec­tive Cliff Ingles stood six feet tall, which meant he was a good foot shorter than the giant bounc­ers who patrolled the night­club and kept every­one in line. Still, at more than two hun­dred fifty pounds, Ingles wasn’t a small guy, although his once trim, hard mus­cle was slowly giv­ing way to flabby fat under­neath his expen­sive navy suit.

With his thick, honey-blonde hair, wide smile, and square chin, Ingles wasn’t an unat­trac­tive man. But his brown eyes got a lit­tle nar­rower and a lit­tle meaner with every drink that he had. Now, he reminded me of a cop­per­head, all coiled up and ready to lash out and sink his poi­so­nous fangs into who­ever crossed his path tonight.

Ingles wore his gold detective’s badge openly on the leather belt around his thick waist, along with his gun, almost like being a mem­ber of the Ash­land police force was some­thing to be proud of.

I snorted into my drink. Every­one knew that the major­ity of the Ash­land cops were dirt­ier than the gang­banger graf­fiti that cov­ered some of the city’s build­ings. Ingles was no excep­tion. Fletcher had dug up all sorts of nasty bits of busi­ness that the detec­tive was involved in. Extor­tion, gam­bling, forc­ing vam­pire hook­ers to give him free­bies in the back of his city-issued sedan. Ingles was a real classy guy all the way around.

But he wasn’t going to die for those par­tic­u­lar sins. No, Cliff Ingles was get­ting my par­tic­u­lar brand of atten­tion because he’d raped a thirteen-year-old girl, beaten her after the fact, and left her for dead. Ash­land was a vio­lent city, full of bad peo­ple doing a lot of bad things. But Ingles was the low­est sort of scum for what he’d done to that girl.

And I was here tonight to make sure that he never had the chance to do it again.

Pro fuck­ing bono.

Nor­mally, I didn’t work for noth­ing. Mine was a highly spe­cial­ized skill set, and I liked get­ting paid for it. I earned it, if only for all the blood I had to wash out of my clothes and hair after the fact.

And as the Spi­der, I got paid a lot to kill peo­ple. I’d been in the assas­sin busi­ness since I was thir­teen. Now, creep­ing up on thirty, I had more money tucked away than I could spend in two life­times. Which was one of the rea­sons my han­dler, Fletcher, kept nag­ging me to retire. The old man wanted me to live long enough to actu­ally spend and enjoy my ill-gotten gains.

So far, I’d only lis­tened to Fletcher with half an ear. Killing peo­ple was all that I knew how to do. What the fuck would I do if I retired? Take up knit­ting? Adopt stray pup­pies? Get knocked up by some guy, move to the sub­urbs, become a soc­cer mom, and try to put my bloody past behind me?

None of those things par­tic­u­larly appealed to me. Well, maybe the pup­pies. I’d always been a dog person.

But the sim­ple fact was that I liked my job. Sure, it was dark, dan­ger­ous work. But the blood and the screams didn’t bother me, and I’d long ago given up try­ing to save my own immor­tal soul from the fiery hell I knew I was des­tined for. Besides, every once in a while, I got to take care of some­body like Cliff Ingles. Got to make the city of Ash­land just a lit­tle bit safer in my own twisted way.

It was the lit­tle things in life that made me happy.

A bit of cool magic surged through the air, inter­rupt­ing my mus­ings. I glanced over at the guy tend­ing bar. His eyes glowed a blue-white in the semi-darkness of the night­club, as he embraced his power once more. The Ice ele­men­tal respon­si­ble for keep­ing the bar in one piece for the night was feed­ing a bit of his magic into the cold, mas­sive structure.

My own slug­gish Ice magic responded to the famil­iar influx of power trick­ling into the bar. I was an ele­men­tal too, with the rare abil­ity to use two of the four elements—Stone and Ice in my case, although my Ice magic was far weaker than my Stone power. Usu­ally, though, I didn’t think too much about my magic when I was out on a job. As the Spi­der, I didn’t use my ele­men­tal pow­ers to kill.

That’s what my knives were for.

Still, I uncurled my palm from around my drink and stared down at the scar embed­ded in my flesh. A small cir­cle sur­rounded by eight thin rays. A spi­der rune. The sym­bol for patience. My name­sake, in more ways than one. A match­ing scar dec­o­rated my other palm.

The spi­der rune had once been a medal­lion that I’d worn around my neck as a child, until a Fire ele­men­tal had super­heated the metal and burned the sym­bol into my palms, mark­ing me for­ever the night she’d mur­dered my family—

“Dis­gust­ing pig!”

The vam­pire wait­ress that Cliff Ingles had been propo­si­tion­ing spat out the words, then drew back her hand and slapped him across the face—hard. Despite the music that filled the club, I still heard the sting­ing crack of her blow at my end of the bar.

Wow. What­ever he’d said to her must have been pretty bad for her to react that way. Because the vam­pire was also a hooker, just like all the other folks on the wait staff. There weren’t many things you couldn’t do at North­ern Aggres­sion, which made me won­der exactly what sick thing Ingles had just suggested.

“Bitch!” The detec­tive snarled, his hand drift­ing down to the gun on his belt, like he wanted to pull it out and cold-cock her with it.

The vampire’s dark eyes widened, and she backed up a cou­ple of steps.

But before Ingles could pull his gun and retal­i­ate, one of the giant bounc­ers cut through the crowd, tak­ing up a defen­sive posi­tion in front of the wait­ress, shield­ing her from Ingles with his seven-foot frame. The giant’s shaved head glinted like onyx under the club’s black lights.

“Is there a prob­lem here?” the giant rum­bled, his deep bari­tone voice cut­ting through the puls­ing beat of the music.

I’d seen this par­tic­u­lar giant around the club a time or two when I’d been in here before. Hard to miss seven feet of solid mus­cle. Xavier was his name.

Ingles stared at the giant in front of him. His eyes cut to the wait­ress before flick­ing back to Xavier. The waitress’s hand­print marked Ingles’ cheek like a scar­let let­ter, not even start­ing to fade. But the detec­tive made a vis­i­ble effort to get him­self under con­trol. He might be a mem­ber of the Ash­land po-po, but Ingles knew he’d get his ass kicked if he kept push­ing things. Even cops couldn’t get away with assault­ing women—at least not in public.

“No prob­lem,” Ingles spat out. “The bitch isn’t worth it. I was just leaving.”

Xavier nod­ded. “You do that.”

Ingles’ eyes nar­rowed to slits in his face, but he reached into his pocket, drew out a cou­ple of bills, and tossed them on the Ice bar. Then, the detec­tive turned and started shov­ing his way through the crowd, head­ing for the door.

But instead of imme­di­ately fol­low­ing him, my gray eyes skimmed over the scene, flick­ing from the peo­ple three deep around the Ice bar to those groov­ing out on the dance floor to some old song by The Pre­tenders. Look­ing for trou­ble, search­ing for any­thing out of place, any­one who was tak­ing a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in my tar­get or me. I’d been an assas­sin for almost twenty years now, and I hadn’t sur­vived this long by being sloppy.

But once he made sure Ingles was really leav­ing, Xavier turned back to the wait­ress, and the two of them started talk­ing. To them, the detec­tive was just another creepy cus­tomer they’d had to kick to the curb. It hap­pened, even here at North­ern Aggres­sion, where very lit­tle was off lim­its. But no one else showed any inter­est in Detec­tive Cliff Ingles or more impor­tantly in me.

Which meant it was finally time to make my move.

I swal­lowed the rest of my gin, enjoy­ing the sen­sa­tion of the cold liquor slid­ing down my throat before start­ing its slow, sweet burn in my stom­ach. Then, I paid my own tab, walked away from the Ice bar, and saun­tered out of the club, mov­ing ever closer toward my prey.

The Spi­der was ready to spin her web for the evening.

#

It was late July, and the night air was thick with humid­ity the way it always was this time of year. Ash­land was located in the moun­tain­ous cor­ner where Ten­nessee, Vir­ginia, and North Car­olina met in the heart of the Appalachian Moun­tains. So muggy sum­mer nights were part of the region’s many charms. Even here in the city, more than a few fire­flies winked on and off in the dark­ness, their quick lit­tle flashes match­ing the smol­der­ing red glows from the cig­a­rettes of those smok­ing outside.

Even though it was after mid­night now, a line of peo­ple still stood out­side the night­club wait­ing to get in past the giant guard­ing the vel­vet rope in front of the entrance. Above his head, a neon sign shaped like a heart with an arrow through it flashed red, then yel­low, then orange. The rune for North­ern Aggres­sion, the sym­bol the nightclub’s owner, Roslyn Phillips, used to pro­mote and iden­tify her business.

I walked away from the club’s entrance, scan­ning the rows of parked cars, look­ing for Detec­tive Cliff Ingles. Ten…twenty…it didn’t even take me thirty sec­onds to spot him.

Because Ingles hadn’t got­ten far. The detec­tive had moved off into the park­ing lot and was now stalk­ing back and forth under­neath the gen­tly sway­ing ten­drils of a weep­ing wil­low. An anony­mous black car sat next to the large tree. The detective’s city-issued sedan. The license plate and descrip­tion had been in the file of infor­ma­tion that Fletcher Lane had given me. The old man was noth­ing if not thorough.

I looked at every­thing, from the peo­ple still stand­ing in line to Ingles to the few folks stag­ger­ing out to their cars in the side lots that flanked the night­club. Nobody gave me a sec­ond glance, and nobody was sober or close enough to the detec­tive to notice anything—especially not him dying.

Per­fect.

I smoothed down my black leather miniskirt and put a lit­tle swing in my hips as I approached the detec­tive. If I’d just come to the club to enjoy myself, I would have worn my usual out­fit of jeans, boots, and a long-sleeved T-shirt. But tonight, since I was going out on the town as the Spi­der, I’d dressed up a bit, just in case I had to use my fem­i­nine wiles to lure Cliff Ingles to my side long enough to stab the bas­tard to death.

Which is why in addi­tion to the leather miniskirt, I was also sport­ing a long-sleeved, red silk skirt and a pair of black, stiletto-heeled boots that came all the way up to my thighs. I’d even teased out my bleached blonde hair to TBH—Tennessee Big Hair—proportions. In short, I looked like a girl out to have an evening to remember.

Cliff Ingles cer­tainly wouldn’t for­get meet­ing me.

I didn’t bother to walk qui­etly, and the sharp crack of my heels on the pave­ment soon caught Ingles’ atten­tion. The detec­tive glared in my direc­tion, but the hot anger shim­mer­ing in his brown eyes soon turned to some­thing darker and uglier as he took in my outfit.

I tossed my hair back over my shoul­der to take one more quick glance around, but nobody was star­ing in our direc­tion. Excellent.

I finally stopped when I was within arm’s reach of Ingles. I put one hand on my hip and struck a pose, let­ting him get a good, long look at me and all I had to offer.

“Hey, there, sugar,” I cooed in my best slow, sweet, husky, south­ern drawl. “Got a light?”

Ingles’ brown eyes flicked down my body and back up again, men­tally check­ing off parts of my anatomy one by one. Boobs. Thighs. And the sweet spot in between them. He must have liked what he saw, because a cold, hard smile lifted his lips.

“For you, dar­ling? Of course,” Ingles murmured.

The detec­tive started pat­ting the pock­ets of his suit, look­ing for his cig­a­rette lighter. While he was dis­tracted, I dis­creetly slid my right arm behind my back and palmed a sil­ver­stone knife—one of five that I had on me tonight. A sec­ond knife was tucked up my other sleeve, while one rested in the small of my back. Two more were hid­den in the tops of my fuck-me boots. My usual five-point arse­nal. Never left home with­out ‘em.

While Ingles searched for his lighter, my gray eyes scanned the area around us one more time. But the clos­est per­son was at least a hun­dred feet away, and the music drift­ing out from the club would cover any sound the detec­tive might make.

My hand tight­ened around the hilt of my knife. The weapon felt cold, hard, solid against my skin. The weight of it com­forted me the way that it always did.

Ingles finally found his lighter, flicked it on, and held it up to me. The flame wavered in the dark­ness between us, a tiny bea­con of sput­ter­ing light.

Ingles frowned when I didn’t imme­di­ately pro­duce a cig­a­rette, lean for­ward, and let him get a bet­ter look at my boobs.

“Hey,” he snapped. “Don’t you have a smoke on you? Because I’m not giv­ing you one of mine. Damn things are too expen­sive for that, these days.”

He paused, his eyes nar­row­ing and his smile get­ting that much colder. “Unless you want to trade me some­thing for it, darling.”

Fuck him for a cig­a­rette? I’d rather stab myself. Yeah, Cliff Ingles was a real class act.

But I gave him my most win­some smile, keep­ing up the cha­rade just a few sec­onds longer. “No,” I replied. “I don’t have a smoke on me. I’ve got some­thing bet­ter. This.”

I brought my hand around from behind my back and showed him the sil­ver­stone knife. The mag­i­cal metal glinted dully in the semi-darkness.

Ingles’ brown eyes widened in sur­prise, but before he could open his mouth to scream, my arm punched for­ward, and I buried my sil­ver­stone knife in his heart.

All the way up to the hilt.

Ingles drew in another breath, but before he could scream it out, I clamped my free hand over his mouth, my fin­gers dig­ging into his skin.

But the detec­tive didn’t give up. Since he couldn’t scream for help, Ingles lashed out at me with his fists, rain­ing hard blows down on my chest and arms. The solid impacts made me grunt. But I’d been an assas­sin a long time, and I’d taken my share of punches from giants, dwarves, and vam­pires over the years—all of whom were a lot stronger than the human detec­tive in front of me. Ingles’ blows hurt, but not enough to make me let go or drop my knife.

Still, we see­sawed back and forth there in the dark­ness under­neath the weep­ing wil­low for the bet­ter part of a minute before Ingles’ body began to shut down from the mas­sive trauma it had just received. When I felt the fight in him start to ebb, I pushed him deeper into the shad­ows, until his back was against the rough bark of the tree.

By this point, tears of pain or fear or what­ever dripped down Ingles’ fat face and spat­tered onto my red silk shirt—along with his blood.

“You know,” I said, twist­ing the knife in a lit­tle deeper. “It’s bad enough that you make the vam­pire hook­ers give you free­bies while you’re on duty, sup­pos­edly pro­tect­ing and serv­ing the good peo­ple of Ash­land. But to rape and beat that lit­tle girl like you did? That was just sick. Evil. And now, it’s going to be the death of you, Cliff.”

Usu­ally, I wasn’t this chatty when I was killing some­one. But the soft mur­mur of my words helped to cover up the detective’s muf­fled gasps and the scrape of his limbs flail­ing against the tree. Still, if any­one had been curi­ous enough to look our way, he would have thought that the detec­tive and I were hav­ing a grand old time screw­ing against the tree.

But only one of us was get­ting fucked over tonight, and it wasn’t me.

I yanked the knife out of Ingles’ chest, and more of his blood splashed onto my clothes. The warm, sticky fluid coated my hand, but I barely noticed it. I’d wash it off later, the way I always did.

By this point, the fight and life was all but gone from Ingles. I let go of him, and the detec­tive slid to the soft ground beneath the tree. His breaths came in shal­low, raspy gulps now, and I knew that he’d be dead in another minute. Two, tops.

Still, I crouched down next to him, bloody knife in hand, just in case he made a last-ditch effort to do some­thing stupid—like try to go for his gun and shoot me.

“Who…the hell…are you?” the detec­tive wheezed out the words.

“Some folks call me the Spi­der,” I said in a soft voice. “Per­haps you’ve heard of me.”

Ingles’ mouth twisted. “Fucking…assassin…bitch.”

“Yeah,” I drawled. “That’s me to a T.”

Those were the last words the detec­tive ever said. Forty-five sec­onds later, he rasped out his last breath and was still. Ingles’ head lolled to the side, and his brown eyes stared at nothing.

But my job wasn’t through just yet. Because when the girl’s mother had reached out to Fletcher Lane through var­i­ous anony­mous chan­nels, when she’d decided to ask the Spi­der for help, the mother had made a spe­cific request about what she wanted done to Ingles’ body after the fact. Couldn’t blame her for it. Hell, maybe it would make the next twisted bas­tard think twice about things.

Rather than fum­ble with the detective’s belt buckle, I used my knife to cut through the leather, then his pants and box­ers. The fab­ric ripped with a whis­per. And then, I used my blood-blackened blade to slice off the thing that Ingles had held most dear.

When that was done, I wiped my knife off in the grass around the body and tucked it back up my sleeve. Then, I slowly stood up and looked around, my eyes once again peer­ing into the darkness.

But no one had noticed me killing the detec­tive or cut­ting into him after the fact. The scene looked the same as before. Peo­ple still waited in line to get into the night­club, still smoked, and still stum­bled drunk­enly out to their cars.

At this point, I should have been mov­ing through the park­ing lot and get­ting the fuck out of Dodge before some­one tripped over the detective’s body and raised the inevitable alarm. But instead, I found myself star­ing down at Cliff Ingles.

The detective’s eyes were now just as empty and soul­less as those of the girl that he’d raped. Fletcher Lane had shown me a photo of the girl when he’d asked me to kill Ingles. The girl had had a look in her eyes that I recognized—a shat­tered, bro­ken expres­sion of lost innocence.

Of every­thing lost.

I’d had the same look for months after my fam­ily had been mur­dered. Even now, all these years later, some­times I still caught a glimpse of it when­ever I stared into the mir­ror just a lit­tle too long.

Maybe it was because I’d been thirteen—the same age as the girl Ingles had raped—the night my fam­ily had been mur­dered. Maybe it was because in Ash­land, there were some peo­ple who just deserved killing. Maybe it was because Fletcher Lane hadn’t sent me out on a job in more than a month and I was bored.

But I’d looked at the girl’s photo, and I’d told Fletcher that I’d do the job for free.

Detec­tive Cliff Ingles had bro­ken the girl with his hor­rid actions, and I’d made him pay for it tonight. Maybe know­ing that he was dead would bring the lit­tle girl some peace in the end.

Maybe not.

Either way, I’d held up my end of the deadly bar­gain. The Spi­der had done her work for the evening. I’d helped in the only vio­lent, bloody way that I knew how.

And now, it was time to go home and wash the blood out of my clothes once again.

So I stepped over Ingles’ body and headed toward the back end of the park­ing lot away from the lights and noise around the front of the nightclub.

As I walked under­neath the weep­ing wil­low tree, a moun­tain breeze rus­tled the tree’s branches, and the soft, trail­ing ten­drils kissed my face the gen­tle way a mother might show affec­tion for her child. For some rea­son, I stopped and waited until the breeze and the ten­drils died down before mov­ing on.

The late sum­mer fire­flies lit the way as I stepped into the wait­ing darkness.