Taryn felt tremendous relief when the crack in the wall opened and no water poured in. The flash flood had gone as quickly as it had come, though the clouds still hung threateningly over the sky. She felt certain that it meant the two sides had clashed but had just as quickly broke apart. A testing of wills and strength before the main bouts began.

       Sylvie helped bring the wounded out of the passage and watched it close with a click as the last person left.

       “Amazing.” She said.

       The party created the rim of the canyon just as the sun was setting turning the desert into a bizarre fiery cauldron above and below. The sheer beauty of it staggered Taryn and she paused a moment to drink it in. Then her prisoner shifted on her back and she resumed walking towards the parking lot.

       “What are we going to do with him?” Bengal asked, coming to walk beside her now that it was safe to do so.

       “Take him to our camp and interrogate him.” Taryn said promptly. “We may not have the facility to hold him, but we don’t have the time to take him to one either. His power is growing, and he is fighting my spell. The binding is loosening all the time.”

       “We could simply kill him.” Bengal suggested.

       Taryn wasn’t surprised or horrified. She had seen too much in the past couple of years. She often wondered how many people would still be alive if someone had killed Jacobson before he brought Tenebrae Coulter to her hometown.       Maybe thousands.

       Ah, a treacherous little voice inside her head whispered, but who could have known? Before you, he was only a small-time operator, and seemed content to live out the last of his years as head of his own little sect in some secret society thing. No one could have predicted the lengths he would have gone too and the magic he would wield.

       Taryn knew that to be true too. The future could not be predicted. Not with any certainty. No one knew their fate until it was too late to change. The same was true with the good and the evil. And this man was powerful. Few humans could stop him as a tarantula the size of a big rig truck, unless they had rockets in their back pockets. And with his regenerative power, probably not even then.

       “No.” She said firmly. “I know what you are suggesting might seem the safest path, but we need information. More specifically, we need information about the demon inhabiting that spider. If we can destroy it or send it back to the netherworld, then it is worth the risk. If we cannot, then who knows how many more will pay the price before we stumble upon the means?”

       Bengal grunted, but said nothing. His eyes settled worriedly on her passenger.

       Taryn couldn’t blame him. If he got back his power, his men would have little chance of stopping the monster from his rampage.

       Taryn considered the problem. Her only solution was to sever his connection to the magic in his body entirely, but she had no idea of that would work, or if it would work and simply kill him, or if it simply wouldn’t work at all.

       After an hour they made it back to their camps. Taryn placed the man in the center where he promptly folded his legs under him and sat still as stone. One of the soldiers got a fire going, and still the solitary figure sat unmoved, as shadows flickered and danced around his body. To Taryn’s eye, it seemed that some shadows took the form of spider legs coming from his back. But surely that couldn’t happen, she had severed him.

       Well, if she hadn’t done a proper job of it, she would do so now.

       Leaving Sylvie to watch him, she went to the trailer and gathered her bag of herbs that she had learned. As she walked out she was surprised to see Little Cloud and Melissa standing by her trailer, looking shy and uncertain what to do now.

       Little Cloud’s eye latched on to the bag and she gasped in shock.

       “A Shaman Elder bag!”

       Her eyes widened in wonder.

       “I’ve only ever seen Grandmother with one of those!”

       Melissa stared at her, and then at her face. Taryn had a moment of surprise: in this light her eyes reminded her of something, but she didn’t know what.

       A pop from the fire reminded her that now was not the time to find out. She hurried to the fire and laid out the ingredients for the spell. The man’s eyes followed her with interest as she lit the tobacco leaves and started to chant. He waited for the spell to finish before he suddenly spoke.

       “Your spell is powerful. You are a strong shaman.”

       Taryn tucked the flap back into the bag. Her eyes met the man’s evenly.

       “I am a strong shamaness.” She said without boast. “But I am but one power arrayed against you.”

       “Yes. The other bears a powerful weapon.” He glanced at Sylvie. “A white man’s weapon.” He said derisively.

       “Do not discount its effectiveness. Many ancestors did, and they are no longer amongst us.”

       “They were weak. They did not follow in the path of the Tarantula God. Had they done so, they would have been strong.”

       Taryn could see there would be no budging the man. He truly believed what he said.

       And who was to say he was wrong, she told herself. After all, the early settlers were using cap and ball pistols and early rifles. Superior to bow and arrow in many respects it gave the settlers a powerful edge. None of the weapons wielded at the time though would have stood a chance against the Tarantula God. The spiders would have given the Antelope Skulls great power.

       But that power came at the cost of human sacrifices and pleasure at causing pain. It was not a good society at all. Americans at the time were no saints, but they had the ability to be compassionate. This culture did not. And that made the difference, Taryn realized.

       “Perhaps. Or perhaps other powers would have gathered to cast you and yours down again.” Taryn said levelly. She was pleased to see the man’s eyes darken in anger.

       “However, that is not for us to decide.” She went on. “What we have to decide for now, is whether we can have a peace. There is much that is good in the world now. It isn’t perfect, but everyone strives to make it a little better every day. You could join that effort. You and all your people. You have ancient lore stored in your heads, and you remember much of the old days that are now largely forgotten, even by the descendants. You have the opportunity to teach us much.”

       The man’s smile turned nasty. Taryn’s eyes narrowed. Her expression turned grim. Her voice emerged as if from behind a glacier, terribly cold, remote as the stars, as destructive as the earth.

       “Or you could threaten the peace that has been hard-won in this land. You could try to kill the innocent and devour their souls. But that will end your protection as a human. You will be a monster, hunted down. Destroyed by any means necessary. Obliterated, until nothing remains of your tribe, your history. Your culture. It will be wiped out. Your spells destroyed, and your gods cast into the black abyss to be utterly forgotten and never remembered! The threat you represent deserves no less. You stand at the crossroads. Choose your path swiftly! Do you agree to work towards peace!! Or is death your only reward?”

       Melissa and Little CLoud stared at her in utter amazement. Where had this elemental force suddenly appeared from? Taryn seemed unstoppable, barely suppressed violence and hatred on the edge of a string. Lightnings and hurricanes trapped in a bottle with a weakening cork.

       Even the prisoner seemed moved: he leaned away from Taryn as if suddenly aware of his own mortality. The camp held its breath.

       “You are strong.” The warrior muttered at last. “Strong as the Old Ones. But the Great Tarantula will be stronger yet. You and your people will fall, starting with your family.”

       Taryn heard the threat, but remained unmoved. To her ears the threat sounded hollow and empty. She heard the swift intake of breath from the camp however and knew others took it more seriously.

       Sylvie’s voice broke the momentary silence, thick with wrath.

       “If you think—“

       Taryn raised her hand, palm up. Without chant or song, a ball of fierce light burst into being, the colors shifting like a Northern Aurora. It hummed and crackled and seemed to speak with voices long past. Strange images rolled by like snippets from a movie; here, a sabertooth tiger stalked deer in a plain unaware of the human hunters following it; there, a wooly mammoth trumpeted its battle cry as it fought hunters that surrounded it. Men and women farmed and fished, loved and died, their lives passing in moments even as whispers of their voices reached out to tug on ears with scarcely heard murmurs.

       The camp froze, fixated on the light.

       “I would not be so certain of that.” Taryn said grimly. The man’s eyes took on an uncertain cast. Digging deep, he mustered the courage to taunt her.

       “We shall see indeed. The Tarantula shall devour your family as you listen to their screams and know your confidence was misplaced!”

       He tried to laugh, but it came out wrong. Taryn winced at the gurgle that emerged, it was nothing she had ever heard before.