Hell's Hinges by SM Reine

Author:SM Reine [Reine, SM]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Urban, Thrillers, Supernatural, Dark Fantasy, Romantic
Google: 1ZSFDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B07LC3YBWY
Publisher: Red Iris Books
Published: 2019-01-29T00:00:00+00:00

14

J ames realized two things at once. He was going to get killed by a giant spider if he didn’t get inside Motion and Dance, and there was no way he could leave Betty out on the street. He kicked the chest inside, shut the door, and raced across the lawn. His feet slipped on the sodden grass. It was nearly impossible to dodge the legs as they pounded around him. Each one was thicker than his body’s circumference.

Four of the spider’s legs scraped down the roof of the studio, tearing off one of the rain gutters. The wards hadn’t had time to lock down again. There was nothing to protect the structure from physical attack. James stopped, swaying on the street as he watched. “No, no, no —”

A leg slammed into the eastern wall of the dance studio. It collapsed inward, sending dust pluming into the night.

“No!”

Another leg smashed against the sidewalk beside James.

Cement cracked under his feet.

James dived, rolling across the ground. One of the legs swung so close to his head that he felt the wind of its passing. The cables of its hair scraped his shirt. He came to a halt beside Betty. James bowed over her so that she would have some shelter from the rain, checking her throat for a pulse with shaking hands. “Betty?” There was fluttering under his fingers. Her head rolled side to side, brow crimping. She was dazed, but alive. “Thank God.”

Betty gave a dreamy chuckle in his lap. “I’m starting to think you don’t hate me.”

James’s feelings for Betty were quickly migrating far from hate. But at the moment, he had no room to feel for anything except his studio. His business, his home. The life that he had built with Elise.

Without one supporting wall, the roof was caving. The oversized spider scrabbled to keep its footing, and that just made the bricks crumble faster. Ridiculous thoughts flitted through James’s mind—thoughts of his insurance company, of how expensive real estate had gotten, what the neighbors would think—before finally settling on an internal, wordless scream of helpless horror.

The spider’s body hung between its legs high enough that a car could have driven underneath it. It had six-foot-long pincers tipped in glistening thorns. The energy radiating off of it reminded him of his aunt’s wood stove burning in winter. It reminded him of sharing burned movie popcorn with Elise in New York City.

It reminded him of the garden.

“No,” James whispered.

Its pincers parted like a woman’s thighs, and a voice emerged from the echoing depths of its carapace. “Don’t I know you?”

It felt like fingernails snapped through his skull, digging their tips into the center line of his brain to pull the hemispheres apart. An invisible gaze raked through James’s fleshy core. He clutched his head, trying to stop the pain—trying to keep his skull from getting crunched into a kernel.

“Bishop,” said the voice. “I do know you. Where have you been?”

It was Him.

The spider crashed closer. Its pincers retracted, preparing to strike.

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