Endless alleyways and apartment buildings and dark windows and those rickety metal staircases on the fire escapes. He ran past all of it, the raucous sound of running feet behind him growing closer and closer with each ragged breath he took.

The men behind him sounded close, and a glass bottle shattered against the wall on his right. He shuddered, yelped, covering his head. His feet kept pounding into the floor, carrying him on and on and on.

He had stayed out later than everyone had told him to. It was late. He knew this. It was Viejo York. It was midnight. It was the witching hour.

There was a special kind of curse on the city at this time of night.

And he couldn't have been more than fourteen years old.

The shouts and hollers behind him only made him run faster, his feet burning with each dun dun dun against the unforgiving concrete. A puddle every few meters interrupted the dun dun dun with a tsh tsh. Whatever the puddle was made of was making his feet smell like piss and gin.

He was about to turn a corner, looking for something to hide behind. His gaze darted left and right; his body ready to jump at the slightest sound. They were still coming. They were so close. Just turn the corner!

And that's when the tears sprang to his eyes. His arms and legs—hell, his entire body—tingled and ached and shivered.

It was a dead end.

He'd known he couldn't put up a fight. He'd known it since he was small. But now, confronted yet again by his own inability, he wanted to slit his own throat. The footsteps grew louder until they were right against his back. The voices were victorious. The laughter was horrific. He closed his eyes, covering his face, biting his lips until they bled, feeling tears on his face, wanting to do anything but live.

His throat caught, and he choked, feeling the collar of his hood going taut against his neck, yanking him backwards.

"Empty your pockets!" a voice yelled, kicking him in his knees, and sending him to the floor. His glasses cracked against his face, making his black cheeks bleed.

"Gah!" he screamed, as a hand went over his mouth. He could feel blood on the side of his face.

"Señor, porfavor!" he heard herself screaming, begging. Tears fell out of his eyes, and his lips trembled. A foot on the back of his neck forced his head sideways, and he found himself looking up through tear-stained eyes.

"AYUDA! AYUDA, ALGUIEN!" he screamed, feeling feet pelting into his side. He thought he would go deaf with the sound of his own cries for help. There was a warm, metallic taste filling his mouth, and he coughed.

But then he looked up.

His eyes widened as he glimpsed something darting across the moon.

A muffled BOOM resounded from somewhere, and everyone went quiet. Everyone heard it. Not everyone knew what it meant.

The assailants—there were four of them—looked at one another with skepticism. The one with his foot on the poor boy's neck eased the pressure, but still didn't relent. Every guilty eye narrowed with suspicion, as everyone's gaze turned to the rooftops.

"Shhh!"

"What is it?" one of them whispered, as another put a hand to his mouth.

Then a strange figure—a darting silhouette—flew over their heads.

A gentle breeze stirred their hair. The only sound was the distant honking of horns and the ragged breaths and intermittent coughs of the man on the floor. Two of them cocked their guns, signaling for their companions to do likewise.

"What is it?" another repeated, as a dumpster shifted to their right.

"It's her."

"Who?"

There was a disturbing silence, but the boy on the asphalt was almost certain he knew the answer. A sliver of hope had wedged its way into his frightened, clenched chest.

"The spider woman," one of them finished, his voice almost inaudible.

THWIP!

A web landed smack on his mouth after he said it, silencing him then and there. He screamed—a horrified muffled sound—scraping at the hardening silk that kept his lips shut. His foot on the child's neck slipped, and the boy scrambled to his feet, fleeing into a corner, shivering and muttering prayers under his breath.

"Where are you?!" another assailant demanded, his gun firing randomly into the air for the mysterious figure he could not see. There was nothing.

THWIP!

Again! A web latched onto the man's gun, pulling it upward into the night. Then it was thrown on the floor in front of him, chamber empty.

The young man was whispering to himself now, feeling tears in his eyes. He was almost delirious with a lurid mix of suspense and relief and horror.

"Arañita! ARAÑITA ASESINA!" he cried, feeling the warmth of hope flood his insides.

"Where is she?" another one of the guilty cried, as yet another fired into the corner.

The shivering boy looked up again, glimpsing a slight figure on the adjacent rooftop. Her form was lit by the silver light of the moon. Suited in dark crimson and pearl white, her face was entirely masked, save for the long dark hair that flowed down her back.

She turned her masked head to look at the young man in the corner, raising a finger over where her mouth would have been.

"Shhhh…" her low voice whispered from the darkness before she vanished, leaping from the roof. He lost sight of her, watery eyes glistening as he sat in the shadows, the paralysis of fear having arrested his legs.

The thieves were silent as the grave now, back-to-back, listening and whispering and eyes darting every which way.

All at once, the mysterious figure landed on the concrete in front of the boy, shielding him and firing webs from her wrists with frightening speed. In seconds, she had bound one of the assailants, his arms and legs bound tight to his body, adding nicely to the previously thrown web to the mouth.

In the next instant, shots fired.

Without a moment to lose, she seized a nearby dumpster with strings of web, yanking it in front of her and her charge, shielding both of them from the bullets.

"It's going to be alright, just get out of here, get somewhere safe…" she said. She shot a web from her wrist, vaulting up into the air, and clinging to one of the enclosing walls. Her body flattened against the bricks, and she vanished again.

"You're going to have to try harder than that!" she said, from somewhere no one could see her.

All at once, a deluge of crackling, yellow webs flew from above them, shocking and paralyzing two of the four assailants. They fell to the floor in a quivering, convulsing heap, until their bodies stilled, and they lay there, motionless.

In the next instant, she had landed behind the remaining two, catching them off guard. As they hollered and blindly fired at her, she seemed to leap and flip and dodge each with the grace of a trained dancer.

"Ugh!" she cried, landing on her feet and vaulting out of their reach, swiping their legs out from under them with in one swift motion.

"Come on, guys, if you're going to do crime, at least make it a little hard for me!" she quipped, webbing one of their hands and feet to the floor, rendering them immobile.

"Now that's one, two, three…" she counted, her eyes narrowing as she realized there was one missing.

The last had scrambled away, running down the alley.

"They always think they can just leave…" she murmured, shooting a web at his back and yanking him backwards. He screamed pitifully all the way, landing on the pavement at her feet with a sickening THUD.

"Where'd you think you were going, pendejo?" she asked. You could practically hear the smirk on her masked lips.

"You know what? Better not answer that—" she finished for him.

THWAP!

She winced as she shot a web at his face, silencing him and webbing his hands and feet to the floor.

All four of the assailants immobilized, she stood a moment to catch her breath.

Laughing quietly to herself as she caught her breath, she realized she'd almost forgotten something. She looked every which way, until her eyes fell on the young boy whose cries for help had brought her here in the first place.

He still lingered behind the dumpster, adjusting his cracked glasses, and reshouldering the backpack he'd been carrying. His lips were parted, but no words came out.

"Estás bien?"

Her voice was like a warm blanket to him.

But he had no words with which to reply. There was nothing he could say, and his tongue was paralyzed. She placed a gentle hand on his shoulder, squeezing it gently.

"You're going to be alright…"

He just looked at her, his breath going in and out in intermittent, shaky gasps. His dark eyes were brimming with an unspeakable relief. He was safe.

Sirens sounded in the distance, and the faint glow of red and blue could be seen bouncing off the brick walls a few blocks away. The young man looked toward the sound, forgetting the masked heroine momentarily.

"The police will be here soon… I gotta run," she said.

He turned toward her, finding his words all at once. "Oh, pero—!"

And for the second time that night, the woman had vanished.