Tears and Shadow (kitsune series)

by Morgan Blayde

  “Sorry.” He stepped over Fenn and hopped up into the window. “Primal instinct.”

  “Keep a lid on it and go.” I shoved him out and followed, crouching on the sill, peering out with one hand gripping a shutter. Staring down, I saw Onyx on the ground, having landed perfectly. His pale face was turned up at me.

  He lifted his arms. “Jump, I’ll catch you.”

  “Are you sure?” He was a guy, but not much bigger than me. The drop was a little scary. I normally took them in the ghost realm where reduced gravity made things easier. I had an abundance of power now, but I was saving it for dealing with Shaun and the demon. I planned on sneaking back to the mansion before crossing over.

  Onyx flashed that cocky grin of his. “Trust me.”

  I turned in the confined space, and shimmied backwards, letting my legs dangle down the outside of the building. Supported on my elbows, my feet scrambled against the wall as I pushed myself away, falling backward with my eyes closed.

  I felt arms beneath my back and under my upper thighs. My side slammed against his torso, and my eyes flew open. He dipped with me and straightened, not even breathing hard, as if this were nothing special. His grin widened. “See, didn’t I tell you?”

  “You can put me down,” I said.

  “Well, if I have to…” He swung me to my feet, and took my hand in his. He jerked me into motion, and we were running in step, ducking under the low-hanging branches of the Japanese maples. We reached the midpoint of the grounds, where the deer-scare’s bamboo trough beat out its rhythmic challenge at the pond.

  There, a heavy shadow big as a truck cut us off. My first impression was that this was Torrent and the rest of the shadow men. Then the darkness thinned, compressing to a single individual thirteen feet maybe, and I knew I was wrong.

  His edges were blurry, not quite formed. He wore an all-black body stocking with loincloth, boots, and a wide belt of bronze with a circular obsidian buckle. The sword on his back, that part poking up into view, was four inches wide, in a black leather sheath with a blood-red fringe along one edge. He could have been anywhere from thirty to a well-preserved forty, with black-ice eyes under heavy brows, and short, spiky bangs that slanted across a high forehead like an inverted mountain range. Like all of him, his face radiated pure strength. This was not a person you’d ignore, even at normal size.

  Onyx staggered to a stop, catching me with one arm so I didn’t crash past him. Getting over his shock, he bowed his head, placing a fist over his heart. He played at humility, but I smelled fear as he straightened, body suffused with tension. “Your Majesty, I’m honored.”

  “Majesty? Onyx, is this your father?”

  Onyx shot me a look I didn’t really understand. “No, Grace. This is Lord Khorde, your father.”

  My father, in the still-solidifying flesh…

  I felt astonishment dissolving the usual wise-ass comments that bubbled up in me so easily. I only managed a subdued, “Oh!”

  THIRTY-THREE

  MEDIA PROPORCIONAL: in Spanish schools, the key concept of achieving and maintaining the proper distance between opposing weapons and bodies.

  Taliesina’s incandescent eyes splashed gold fire across my mind. Her excitement vibrated, sawing across me like a violin bow. Daddy!

  “Down girl,” I muttered.

  Khorde raised a hard, thick bar of an eyebrow as he considered me. His voice, a mellow rumble, hinted at bludgeoning strength held in restraint. “Greetings, daughter, we meet at last.”

  That was technically true; I’d only seen him once before—a flash of darkness—in Taliesina’s mind, back when we were taking on ISIS and their hell beast. It was the gift of Khorde’s shadow sword—added to my kitsune fire—that had saved me that day. But over the past month I’d been living on eggshells, knowing this time was coming.

  I crossed my arms under my breasts and gave him a rebellious glare. “I already have a father—the man that raised me. I don’t know you, but I get the feeling you’re way too much of a control freak for us to get along, so why don’t we forget the whole thing?”

  “You are insolent.” His face betrayed no emotion. “That trait is amusing in your mother, in you, less so. Your human father has failed to teach you courtesy, I see.”

  “The opinion of an inhuman monster, pretending to be human ,doesn’t really interest me,” I said. It just pisses me off.

  “Let’s cut to the chase,” I said. “What do you want that I’m not going to give you?”

  Within my mind, Taliesina’s swimming eyes—like erratic golden moons—stared at me like I’d grown a second head, or maybe she was finally realizing we weren’t going to find common ground on this. Her voice lashed out, Grace, there’s no reason to be so rude.

  Isn’t there? I thought of Shaun at the mercy of a demon, waiting to be saved, soon to lose his heart to me as the heroine of his dreams. We had a long overdue future waiting in the wings.

  Moment by moment, Khorde was compressing, on the way to more of a human size. What suddenly scared me spitless was the idea that—unlike the other shadow men I’d met—he might be so very powerful, so deeply shadow—that entering our space and taking on flesh was no simple task.

  He said, “This willfulness is unbecoming a princess of the realm. I blame Cassandra. How did she ever think you could avoid half your heritage your entire life?”

  I stabbed the air with a finger. “Don’t talk bad about Cassie. She may have her psychopathic moments, but she loves me. You just want to use me. Now if you’ll excuse me…” I circled, giving him plenty of space.

  He turned with me, dark eyes cold and empty. “You should wait a while. You’re going to need my help. I’ve studied the demon’s spell through Taliesina’s eyes. I know how to—”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.” I didn’t want to owe him anything. Giving him any power over me was dangerous. Cassie had made that very clear.

  I called to Onyx, “You coming, or are you planning to grovel forever?”

  Hurriedly, he caught up. “You know, I really love that cruel streak in you.”

  Khorde said, “I will be there when you call, and there will be a price.”

  “Yeah,” I yelled, “heaven forbid you do anything just because you love me.”

  “Novel idea,” he said.

  “Screw you and the shadow you rode in on,” I said.

  Taliesin gasped. Grace! I’ve never seen you like this.

  Are you still here? I thought I told you to get lost.

  I didn’t think you were serious.

  As a bleeding corpse. Speaking of which, you’ll have to excuse me; I’ve got an appointment with what’s left of the miko.

  Taliesina sent me a mental picture of a red fox in a wind-blown, grassy field. The fox turned around to offer me a view of a bushy tail flicking in irritation. Fine, if that’s how you’re going to be, go on without me. Do it all yourself.

  I intend to.

  Fine.

  Fine.

  The bamboo rocker arm at the pool thunked loudly, adding a note of finality to things.

  I pushed off in a jog, weaving through trees and brush, until I came to the clearing where the mansion loomed. Onyx dropped beside me when I knelt, peering around the corner of a hedge. I spied shadow men at either end of the building, as well as the back entrance, with more of my entourage out of sight. I couldn’t trust they’d let me just waltz in and do what I needed to, not with Khorde on top of things, calling the shots.

  I whispered to Onyx. “I’m crossing over now.”

  “Fine.” His answer lacked fear or enthusiasm.

  That’s all right, long as he does his job. I reached out with my thoughts and pulled on the weave of space. An electric tingle caressed my skin. Gravity withdrew to a respectful distance, leaving me lighter. Color dimmed, going ashen, except for my aura which I could see now, a haze flame that seeped out of me, fueled by my life, and the life entrusted to me by Fenn. Instead of its usual orange, my foxfire had a yellow shimmer cl
ose to my skin.

  “Pretty,” Onyx said.

  He could see my aura. That meant he’d crossed over with me, even though I’d not had to pull him along by my touch. He had no aura. He was just … there, Onyx, a shadow pretending to be human. I asked, “Do you guys cross over, like me, or are you in the human and ghost realm at the same time?”

  “Same time, and a few other places as well. Shadow men are multidimensional entities,” he said. “If we walk out in the open, they’ll see us.”

  We were screened by brush, but I dimmed my aura as much as I could so I wouldn’t shine through the branches, betraying my presence.

  “And Khorde,” I asked, “if I were back there at the pond now, he’d look different than the way I just saw him in the human world?”

  “He is different from us all, much closer to the Darkness that spawned us. He was born with a strength that defies reason. Without careful control, he’d consume all the shadow-born as an ocean swallows rivers, adding to his vastness.”

  A chill shot through me at the thought of my newfound strength guzzled to nothing, leaving me empty, destroyed. “And this threat has hung over all of you, all your lives?”

  He shrugged, keeping his voice very low, “You get used to it.”

  I looked back at the house, imagining Wocky’s basement lair. “So, the demon is the least of my worries. Somehow that makes me feel better about what we’re doing here.”

  “Glad to help.”

  I reached out to take his hand. It had no warmth, but was still reassuring. I smiled reassurance back at him. “Trust me. Whatever happens, don’t let go of my hand. I want you with me when we get to the basement.”

  He looked at me without understanding, but shrugged. “Sure.”

  I pulled my aura into my body. The flames vanished, leaving a yellow-orange mottle that crawled over my skin. Without my aura making the ground solid under me, I began to sink. Once the earth became ocean to me, I’d dive underground and swim until I popped out into the open space of the basement. I didn’t think there was any way the shadow men would see us going in. If we were lucky, there wouldn’t be any of them in the basement to stumble over. I wasn’t here as their princess needing protection. I was a warrior who’d picked this battle, and I was determined to win.

  As if in quicksand, the earth was up to my waist and still rising. Onyx showed no sign of panic that I might soon pull him under, he’d just gotten a lot more still, more intense with his stare.

  “Do this often?” he asked.

  “I save it for emergencies.”

  “A little bit like a shadow slide. We sink through realities this way, but we lose form while doing so.”

  I remembered Taliesina’s fear of shadow sliding. “So I’ve heard. Would I find it … scary?” The ground was up to my chest and I’d pulled Onyx down so his arm was submerged, looking half-buried.

  He smiled. “Probably, the first few times. But I’d be there with you. I’d make sure you got back into your original—beautiful—form.”

  I was up to my neck and he was waist deep in the ground now, following my lead. With my free hand, unseen by him, I felt the flatness of my chest. “You really think I’m … beautiful?”

  “You have the kind of beauty that burns from the inside out. Once tasted, it’s never forgotten.”

  How sweet.

  The ground swallowed me, hiding my blush. I allowed a burst of aura to escape, like a rocket thrust, and dove blindly into the murk. I had only a general direction, and the basement was huge. I shouldn’t be able to miss it. In theory.

  I thought back to what Cassie had told me about kitsune balance, about feeling the movement of the whole world. Clearing my mind, dragging Onyx deeper, I imagined I was part of the ground, part of a world, spinning, circling a sun, a tiny speck in the universe, hurtling across the stars. For a moment, I felt the larger movements.

  They slipped from my grasp as I plunged out of a concrete wall, dropping to a hand and knees. His hand in mine, Onyx popped out of the wall behind me. Unlike me, he landed lightly on his feet without the slightest suggestion of a stumble. I hate it when guys make that kind of thing look so easy.

  He kept hold of my hand, also grabbing my elbow to pull me back to my feet. His eyes were locked on my face. He spoke in a hushed tone, “Neat trick. Very impressive, for a civilian, adding three dimensions to a battlefield.”

  I whispered, “What can I say? I’m incredible.” I looked around to get my bearings. “Now where’s the demon’s lair?”

  He pointed.

  I nodded, keeping my voice down, “Okay, if you’re sure.”

  We went around some stacked boxes, and found the double lines of cages we’d once been locked in. That caused my mental map to reorient. Now, I was as certain as Onyx that we weren’t far from the fenced-in bowl, the demon, and Shaun. I didn’t dare whisper. Pantomiming, I used a flat palm to represent the floor. With my other hand, I pointed at Onyx and me. I made a scoop, above then under my flat palm, coming up on the other side. I wanted Onyx to know I was taking us under the demon’s pit, and would surface inside.

  He nodded, but held up a finger in a wait-a-second gesture. Apparently, he had an idea too. His skin darkened to the same blackness as the clothes he wore. His body flattened to living shadow. In my mind, I saw Onyx and not the shadow man. There was nothing about him I found frightening anymore.

  Of course, I still freaked when he suddenly lunged, wrapping himself around me in ribbons of darkness. He clung to my body—the same way that Torrent and his shadow men had ridden here on the outside of Mouse Whisperer’s car—as a second coat of paint. Onyx had turned me all ninja except no mask covered my face. I felt violated at the extreme intimacy, but forced myself to chill. The darkness on me was behaving after all, no squeezing caresses or anything really invasive. Besides, wasn’t this the best way to smuggle an ally into the demon’s pit, as clothing?

  I drew a deep breath, facing the passageway to the cage. This way, I didn’t have to bother swimming through the ground. I could just stroll over nonchalantly and pull the shadow man wool over the demon’s eyes. With a jaunty stride, I sashayed forth to battle.

  Coming abreast of the fence, I glanced inside the pit, up at the ceiling. The same green writing burned up there. I stared down at the center of the bowl. The gray concrete looked like a dry swimming pool with luminescent green graffiti everywhere. The center of the pattern had changed. The demon and my beloved Shaun now stood within a circle at the heart of a six-pointed star made of two triangles. A larger circle enclosed the star, and the whole thing had a fallen, stretched out eight superimposed on it—the symbol for infinity. The crystal tear was still in Shaun, a ticking time bomb. I had to get it out. Soon.

  Shaun looked my way, eyes red with demonic control, and said something I couldn’t hear.

  The demon in the miko turned her dead face to glower up at me. Using her dead lips, he smiled a greeting. “Oh, nice, we have company. Come in, my dear. We shouldn’t let a little betrayal come between us. I’m not holding a grudge. Honest.”

  Somehow, I didn’t believe him.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Derobement: avoiding a beat or bind.

  Shaun’s red eyes burned into my skull, hitting with near palpable force. Fear for him sent a shiver down my back, helping me to be less afraid for myself. Still, my pulse raced into overdrive. Adrenaline brought a copper taste to my mouth, and I had to curl my hands into fists so they wouldn’t shake—but what choice did I have?

  I followed the fence to the open gate, passing through. Each step down the side of the concrete bowl, across the ghost-green glyphs, seemed to increase the gravity, hurrying me toward my doom. The writing on the ceiling helped to paint all of us the same spectral shade.

  I reached the edge of the spell circle, the master control for the rest of the spell-in-progress. “Mind if I come in?”

  The demon’s grin widened. “ Such is my fervent hope.”

  I pushed forward and felt not
hing, no tingle of energies, or unnatural resistance in the air. Shaun didn’t move. Neither did the demon as I entered striking distance. He probably intended to play with his food.

  I stopped an equal distance from Shaun and the demon. The big crystal chunk was still on the floor, at the exact center of the pattern. It caused the glowing symbols near it to pulse arterial red instead of green.

  I loved Shaun, and every fiber shrieked at me to get him out of here, but a kitsune-born instinct was telling me to go for the crystal. That made no sense; I didn’t know how to use it against the demon, and the dead miko wasn’t going to tell me.

  The demon’s smile collapsed into blankness, as if even his humor was a mask. “I’m trying to decide if you are very brave or very stupid.”

  I snorted. “Tell me when you get it figured out. I’d like to know too.”

  “You will have to be punished of course.”

  I looked at Shaun, my heart breaking. “You’re doing that already.”

  From the corner of my eye, I saw the demon’s head turn to follow my gaze. “Ah, that’s why you came back. It’s love, then. That means you’re being stupid and brave.”

  “You have me. Let him go. Please.”

  The demon growled at me with the miko’s high-pitched, cultured tones. The sound was far from convincing, but accompanied by a demonic vibe that was scary as hell all on its own. He said, “I don’t give up my toys so easily.”

  It was something a collector like the miko would have said, if she weren’t dead. I wondered if her resurrected body was having an effect on her demon tenant.

  I shook off the thought, my stomach cold and heavy with fear. I was stalling. Time to throw caution to the wind and hope for the best.

  Onyx was waiting for my signal. I just had to let him loose. My right fist hung by my side. I opened my hand and stretched out a fold in my denim leggings. I gave the fabric a sharp twist.

  Onyx unfurled, fluttering across the small distance to the demon who raised clawed hands by reflex. It didn’t help him. The sheet of darkness clung like paint, swathing the demon, jerking them both into erratic tangents like a staggering drunk. Rocking from being suddenly released, I took a breath, steadied myself, and scooped up the red crystal. By then, Shaun was on me. His strong arms crushed me against him, which was—perfect!