Black Truth, White Lies (Black Hat Bureau 3)

Me?

I didn’t want to be a match for it. I would come back later. With a flamethrower.

“We’re just passing through.” I held up my hands. “No need to get twitchy.”

“You are not welcome here,” it whistled through a beaked opening. “Leave, and never return.”

This guy couldn’t be an official member of the welcome committee.

Pretty sure reviews would have mentioned this to lure in the Harry Potter crowd with Aragog photo ops.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” I spread my hands in a gesture of peace. “A case brought me here.”

“Leave,” it ordered again. “Never return.”

“Is this how you greet all tourists, or am I special?”

The creature proved how unspecial it found me when it shot me in the face with sticky webbing. Like a total idiot, instead of reaching for my wand, I touched my cheeks on reflex, and my hands stuck fast.

“Little help,” I mumbled through the glob over my mouth. “Guys?”

A bestial roar shocked birds into flight as Asa caved to his daemon half. “Rue mine.”

Awkward his battle cry might be, but I was grateful for the thunder of his footfalls on the planks.

Pressure tugged on my skin, and I yelped when I got hauled forward a full step and bumped into the rail. I held on to it for all I was worth as the spider attempted to reel me in, face-first.

“I didn’t sign up for this.” Clay wrapped his arms around my waist. “I did not sign up for this.”

Lips cemented together, I mumbled at him to hurry, hurry, hurry.

Over the course of my life, I had seen some things. This? No one should see this.

The daemon leapt up, fisted a spider leg in each hand, and yanked it out of its web. It hit him with a thud that shook the boardwalk, and the tugging sensation intensified until I bumped into Clay while fleeing what I couldn’t see through the holes in my solidifying mask.

“You’re going to have to cook it,” Clay yelled over the din. “And quick. Before it envenomates Ace.”

This was going to suck.

Hard.

The only way for me to zap the spider at a distance was to use the web smothering me as a conduit.

I could cook it, yeah, but I might roast myself in the process.

The daemon roared and ripped a leg off the spider, throwing it over his shoulder. It hit me, stuck, and orange goo dripped through the gaps in the web onto my face. As the ichor stung my eyes, I concluded I would rather melt off my face than stand around mostly blind and wholly vulnerable.

Extreme?

Maybe.

You get shot in the face with spider butt juice, and then we’ll talk.

Mumbling behind my closed lips, I tried to get my point across to Clay. I rolled my shoulders to shake him free then tightened my fingers on the webbing and pushed as much magic into the fibers as I could summon without dragging Colby into the mix, since she would have to heal me solo after this.

“Ace.”Clay shouted the warning from behind my shoulder. “Hit the deck.”

A splash confirmed the daemon was out of my crosshairs, and I dialed up the magic until it burned me.