Tall grabbed the front of Kevin’s shirt and yanked him up until he stood on his tiptoes. His feet kicked out uselessly, hitting the older man’s thighs in the hopes that doing so would force the man to release him. Tall took his kicks without flinching, as if they were mere bug bites.
“You put up one hell of a fight, brat,” Tall declared as he raised his clenched fist. “Much better than I would’ve expected from a runt like you, but it’s all over now. Too bad that speed of yours won’t be able to save you here!”
Kevin closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see the fist as it descended towards his head with concussion-inducing force. His mind screamed at him, urging him to keep fighting, to not give up. He fought against those instincts, knowing that continuing to struggle wouldn’t help him, and instead waited with baited breath for the attack that would likely knock him for a loop.
And he waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
After several seconds of waiting, he wondered why Tall hadn’t hit him yet? Not that he was complaining, mind, it was just that he’d been expecting to experience pain by now. And where was that pain? Why wasn’t he on the receiving end of unadulterated violence already? And was it just him, or had the temperature taken a sudden nosedive?
“What the fuck?!”
“What’s going on?!”
“Waa!!”
Kevin’s eyes snapped open at the sound of surprised screaming.
In the years to come, Kevin would see a lot of strange and unusual things. More than half of those things would be the direct result of his actions. However, what he saw that day would forever remain in his memories as one of the most bizarre sights he had ever lay eyes on.
After all, it wasn’t every day that you saw people with ice crawling up their legs.
Wait. Ice?
Tall’s grip on his shirt loosened enough that Kevin pried himself out of the now shaking hands. He stumbled backwards, his balance skewed, knees reverberating from the sudden impact. Shaking himself out of his slight stupor, he looked back at the three shivering men.
He blinked, then rubbed his eyes and blinked again. Yep, he was not seeing things. That was definitely ice creeping up their legs. It had already made its way up their shins and calves and continued working its way up their thighs. Because of the bright sheen of the frozen liquid, it almost looked like some kind of mercury-type metal moving up their bodies as opposed to ice. Only the blue, semi-translucent appearance of the material, and the dropping temperature told him the substance really was ice.
At least he hoped it was ice.
Actually, he took that back—he hoped it was mercury. Wasn’t mercury poisonous to humans?
“W-what the hell is this!? It’s so cold!”
“My balls! My balls are freezing! They feel like they’ve turned into ice cubes!”
“Waa! Fuu muff informafion!” Buck said, which Kevin interpreted correctly as, “Waa! Too much information.”
“What the…?” Kevin tried to process the sight before him. Okay, think Kevin, think. These goons were beginning to look like human popsicles. There was ice covering the floor underneath their feet, and the temperature had taken a sudden nosedive. It was almost as if…
“Are you okay?” a voice asked from behind Kevin.
“Gya!”
Kevin screamed like a little girl―a very manly little girl―and jumped nearly a foot into the air. When he landed back on his feet, he spun around toward the source of the voice.
Light azure met glacial-blue.
He blinked.
Then again, for good measure.
“Ah!” He pointed at the girl who gaped at him. “You’re the girl I met back at the arcade!”
The girl looked at him for several more seconds, then scowled. “B-back at the... you IDIOT!”
Kevin stumbled back several steps.
“Are you telling me that you don't... that you don't...”
“Don't what?”
“N-n-n-nothing!” The girl squeaked. “Forget that! Are you telling me you only recognized me just now?”
“Just now?” Kevin tilted his head quizzically. “What do you mean? This is only the second time we’ve met.”
A large vein pulsed on her forehead. The temperature began to drop some more. Kevin shivered, his breath blowing out and releasing a puff of steam.
“You idiot! Jerk! I stayed after school and came to that stupid track meet just to watch you, and this is the thanks I get?! You don't even recognize me!”
“Uh… sorry?” Kevin said, not quite sure what he was apologizing for. Then he registered the rest of her words. “Wait, you came to the track meet to see me?”
“Ah…” The girl’s face turned bright red… and then went from red to ice blue. “Ah…” Her mouth opened to speak, but no words came out, just a strange monosyllable that sounded like a gerbil getting strangled. It was almost as if something got lodged in her throat.
“Hey,” Kevin looked at the girl in concern. She really wasn’t looking so good. “Are you okay? Your face is all red.”
“S-S-S-SHUT UP! I-I-I-I’M F-FINE! JUST FINE!”
The girl exploded. Literally. Her voice was so loud it created a large gust of wind that blew Kevin’s hair away from his face, and made his eyes water.
It was also extremely cold. Several strands of his hair froze over as her breath hit them, making him comparable to a young Jack Frost.
The girl continued ranting, her facial coloration growing more vibrant by the second. “I-it’s not like I actually wanted to see you or anything! Idiot! I was simply staying after school for my own reasons, and decided to watch the track meet! That’s all! Don’t be so full of yourself! Hmph!”
“But you just said…”
“I-I-I didn’t say ANYTHING!” The goth girl's face looked like a neon sign. And was it just him, or had the temperature finally reached sub-zero? He was freezing! “Y-you’re just hearing things!”
“But I could have sworn I heard you say…”
“YOU’RE HEARING THINGS!”
Kevin opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again, and closed it one more time. Finally…
“You’re right. I must just be hearing things.” Just go with it, Kevin. Nod your head once or whatever and let it go.
Man, girls were so weird.
“So, you were at the track meet then?”
“Ah! Um! Y-yes,” the raven-haired girl stuttered a bit. “B-but, don’t think I came there just to see you! Like I said, I just happened to be in the area. Nothing more.” She nodded her head, as if reaffirming something. “I certainly wouldn’t stick around after school to watch your track meet. I had been doing other things when I finished early and decided to spend some time watching the track team compete.”
Oh. Well that made sense. After all, how could she have known he was on the track team anyway? They’d only spoken to each other once, and most of that consisted of her yelling at him. It’s not like he’d ever had a chance to tell her that he was on the track team. Yes, this was probably just one big coincidence.
“Right.” Kevin scratched the back of his head, then realized something. “Wait.” He studied the girl more closely, making her squirm under his gaze. “Were you the one arguing with Lilian?”
“O-oi! G-g-g-get us out of here!”
“F-f-fuck! This is g-g-g-gonna give me the w-w-worst case of b-blue-balls ever!”
“Shut up!” The girl shouted at the trio of complaining men. “Don’t say such crude things!” When the men opened their mouths to complain some more, ice gathered, taking the shape of three ball gags, which were then shoved into their open oral passages.
As their screams came out muffled and low, she turned back to Kevin and scowled.
“Yeah, I was the one arguing with that stupid fox! But she was the one who started it!” She crossed her arms and gave him a bit of glare, as if daring him to contradict her.
“Huh, so that was you,” Kevin mumbled, his he
ad tilting down in thought. “I thought you looked familiar, but couldn’t get a good glimpse of your face. I was also in a bit of a hurry and didn’t―wait.” His mind ground to a halt as he finally registering everything she’d said, including something he’d initially missed. “How did you know Lilian is a kitsune?”
“Because I’m a yuki-onna,” the girl stated matter-of-factly “While yuki-onna don’t really specialize in sensing other yōkai, we can still tell when one is near us. I knew that Chris was a yōkai of some kind the moment I saw him, though I didn’t know what kind of yōkai.”
“He’s an inu,” Kevin answered absently. “So you’re a yuki-onna. Aren’t they also called Snow Maidens?”
yuki-onna were another race of yōkai found in Japanese mythology. Also known as Snow Maidens, they appeared as ethereally beautiful women who were found in the snow-covered regions of Japan. He remembered reading a manga where a yuki-onna had gone to a school for monsters and fell in love with a human… along with several other girls, all of whom competed for the hero's affection.
It was a harem manga.
Now that he was observing her more closely, she actually did resemble a yuki-onna. Her skin was so pale as to be nearly translucent, and her hair was darker than midnight. Lips of ice blue gave her a sort of frozen look, and those glacier-cold eyes seemed like they could freeze over hell. She was also very cute, like a porcelain doll that you wanted to take home and dress up.
“That’s right,” she nodded, “I’m surprised you know that. Japanese mythology isn’t covered in any of our classes.”
“I read a lot of manga,” Kevin told her. “I also watch a lot of anime.” He studied the girl, his mind brimming with wonder, curiosity and a hint of confusion. “But why are you telling me this? I thought yōkai weren’t really supposed to reveal themselves to humans.”
“There is a rule against yōkai letting humans know they’re not human, but it’s okay for me to tell you, because little miss fox-whore already spilled the beans about our existence.” The girl paused. Then she gasped. This was followed by yet another blue-faced blush. “Ah! B-but, I don’t want you to think I told this because I like you or anything! I was simply letting you know because you’re already aware of the existence of yōkai! That’s all! Got it?”
“Got it.”
Kevin resisted the temptation to take several steps back. What the heck was up with this girl? Why was she getting so defensive?
“So if you were with Lilian, does that mean you know where she is?”
“The fox?”
The girl frowned at him, making Kevin wonder if he had said something wrong… again. He’d apparently been doing that a lot with this girl. Why else would she get so angry at him?
He knew that he should have been angry with her, or at least annoyed at her poor behavior, but was too confused to drudge up even minor irritation.
After several seconds of awkward silence, she spoke up. “I don’t know where she is now. The last I saw of her, she was with that woman in the business suit.”
“Woman in the business suit…” Kevin’s eyes widened. “You mean Kiara?!”
He had known that she was responsible for sending those men after him, but he hadn’t realized she was here at the school. And she was with Lilian?! This was not good, not good at all.
“What the―?” The girl in the lolita dress gawked at the boy as he bolted past her. “H-hey! Where do you think you’re going?! Are you really just going to run off like that?!”
Kevin didn’t even stop running as he turned his head slightly to wave at her. “I’m sorry, but I really have to go! I don’t have time to stick around and chat!”
He had to make sure Lilian was alright. If Chris really was Kiara’s brother, then it meant she was also a yōkai, and not just any yōkai, but an inu. And if she was an inu, then Lilian could be in serious trouble.
He did stop running, if only for a moment, as a realization crossed his mind. “Oh, before I go, I don’t think I ever got your name.”
The girl looked at him strangely, head tilted and face a mottled mass of confusion, before she seemed to realize that he was right. She had never given him her name.
“Uh, it’s Christine, Christine Fraust,” she answered him, then added, “But you can call me Christy. That’s what my friend used to call me.”
There was a pause, during which time Christine’s face blanked as she went over everything she had just said.
Several seconds later she was a blushing wreck again.
“N-n-not that you’re my friend or anything! Idiot! Jerk! Hmph!” She crossed her arms and turned her head away from him. What a strange girl.
“… Right. Anyway, I really do need to get going. Thanks again for the rescue.” He grinned at the girl. “You know something, even though you’re a little odd, you seem like a really nice person—I doubt you would’ve bothered rescuing me if you weren’t. I hope we can be friends.”
Kevin turned again and bolted down the hallway, his hurried footsteps echoing along the walls as he left a blushing wreck of a yuki-onna in his wake.
Several moments passed. Christine stared after the blond-haired sophomore as he disappeared from view. Then…
“He wants to be my friend,” she whispered. She wasn't sure how to feel about that. It was kinda… well, there was just a lot wrong with it. She held a hand to her chest. Her heart was thumping rapidly. She wondered what this unpleasant feeling was.
And then she paused as the rest of his words caught up to her.
“Wait a minute, did he just call me weird?” Christine shook her fist, even though Kevin had long since left. “I am not weird you idiot! Jerk! Grrr…” She lowered her fist. “But he did say I was a nice person…” Her cheeks tinged ice-blue. She trailed off, her blush growing and her head attempting to hide in the collar of her black lace bodice, which didn’t actually have a collar to hide in. It didn’t stop her from trying, though.
Another moment passed.
“I wonder if I should have told him that Kiara is a yōkai as well…”
***
The moment the battle started, Kiara was already on the move. Bending her knees, she launched herself into a full-bodied sprint that put the speed Kevin displayed during his track meet to shame. She was so fast that her body became a literal blur, a streak of color that no human, and even few yōkai, would be capable of following. She covered the distance between her and Lilian in a split second, appearing right in front of the startled girl.
After reaching her red-haired opponent, Kiara’s right hand lashed out. Lilian only got a brief glimpse of deadly nails flashing in the light, before they swiped across her face.
“Gah!”
A strangled cry tore itself from Lilian’s lips as five sharp claws ripped through her face, shredding her flesh as if it were made of paper. Blood spurted out of the wounds immediately as her skin peeled apart. Dark red liquid splattered across the ground and Kiara’s claws.
Lilian stumbled backwards, eyes dulling and her body becoming limp.
A second later, she slumped to the ground.
And then disappeared.
“Heh, not bad.” Kiara smirked as she spun around. “But still not good enough!”
With her left hand making a wide, swiping motion, Kiara managed to smack away the two spheres of light aimed at her head. Each sphere flew off in a different directions. One headed toward the bleachers while the other hit the ceiling, exploding in a shower of light particles that rained down on the two supernatural creatures locked in combat.
“I’m impressed,” Kiara complimented as she looked across the gym at Lilian, who stood several meters away. “You know that you can’t compete with an inu up close, so you used an illusion to make me think you were right in front of me, while the real you snuck behind me. You even managed to fool my sense of smell.”
As the name implied, an illusion was the act of distorting reality. Most people assumed this meant weaving a complicated set of false images to f
ool a person’s sight, and while that was true, it was only a small part of what went into creating illusions.
Illusions didn’t affect just sight, but also scent, touch, taste and sound. In other words, an illusion could affect any one of the five senses. Skilled illusionists could affect more than one sense at a time. Masters of the art could affect all five at once.
Lilian was not a master of illusions. It had only been fifty-nine years since she’d gained her second tail―not enough time to become a master at illusions, or even an adept at them. She was still just a novice.
However, she was also a kitsune―illusions were a specialty of her race; their greatest art. The power they excelled at beyond any other. She would even go so far as to say that casting illusions was in her blood.
So, despite being a novice, she was still capable of affecting more than one sense at a time, though it took a lot of concentration to keep the illusion up, and she could only do so for a short time. Thirty seconds was her limit.
Thirty seconds apparently wasn't long enough to fool Kiara. Lilian had used her ability to weave an illusion that fooled Kiara’s sense of sight and smell, tricking the woman into thinking she was inflicting physical harm on her, when in reality, it had just been a well-crafted illusory image.
However, because neither her senses of touch or sound were affected, Kiara recognized the illusion for what it was, and reacted far more quickly than Lilian anticipated. The end result was an ineffective attack that Kiara swatted away like the light spheres were merely flies.
“But it will take more than a simple illusion to get the best of me,” Kiara continued, grinning from ear to ear and showing off her fang-like canines. “Still, I have to admit it was a good attempt. My brother would have fallen for that illusion easily. Then again, he’s an idiot, so I would expect nothing less.”
“I don’t want to hear any compliments coming from you,” Lilian scowled. “And what do you mean your brother?” It took the girl a second to remember that Kiara had mentioned her brother going to this school. It took her one more to remember another yōkai she knew that went to this school, another inu that she and her Beloved had a run-in with not too long ago. Her eyes widened to the size of dishpans as she stared at Kiara, dumbstruck. “Don’t tell me that…”
A Fox's Tail (American Kitsune Book 2) Page 21
