“Won’t they just grow back in again?” he asked.
“Yes. Damn it.”
“Hey, where’d you get that tribal tattoo?”
I stopped cold in my tracks, a chill shivering my spine. “What tattoo?”
“This funny black squiggly stuff between your wings.”
The demon mark, Wocky was supposed to have taken that off. “That lying, slimy, diseased piece of gutter filth!”
A rearing shadow joined me on the opposite side from Fenn. It turned human, becoming Onyx. He’d finally caught up. “You’re not talking about me, I hope,” he said. “I did my best to kill that demon for you. He’s just too—” He stopped, eyeing my breasts, a questioning look on his face. “Hey have those gotten bigger?”
Now Fenn was eyeing the girls.
“Don’t change the subject,” I said.
“Yeah, Onyx,” Fenn lied smoothly, without any sign of a betraying smile. “She’s talking about you. A lot of help you were!”
I swung toward Fenn. “You know, I gave him a chance to die for me and he refused to take it.”
Fenn looked scandalized. “That’s terrible. But you know, I did that already.”
“Yeah,” I said, “but not happily. You copped an attitude about it.”
“Yeah,” Onyx said, “what’s with that?”
Moving on, we reached some tents pitched outside the temple, just beyond the maples. There was a lot of equipment that had probably been air-lifted in. I heard the rumble of generators, and saw a maze of plastic pipes from some big tanks. The pipes went over the tents and down into them. We were separated. I went through my own opening and began to strip. By all means, the demon-cooties had to go.
I staggered into a stall and closed a plastic curtain. My body wanted sleep, badly. The feeling receded as a cold spray doused me, making me sputter. Soon, I was out of there, wrapped in a white sheet, with my arm extended so the doctors could take blood. “The blood’s not going to look right, no matter what,” I warned them. “I’m not human.”
One of the doctors flicked a glance at my tail. “Yeah, I already got that impression. If you’re like Cassie, that means you’re immune. It’s lucky you’re not human. You’d be dead.”
I yawned, nearly cracking my jaw. Always so freakin’ lucky. It’s got to be a curse. “Hey, wait a second! What about Shaun? He’s human. Is he…”
The doctor’s face was grim. “He’s in intensive care, but stable. We’re fairly sure he’s going to make it.”
I could have wilted to the floor in relief. I didn’t. Not quite that exhausted. I was eventually given pink scrubs to wear, and led to a cot where I curled up, soggy tail and all. Darkness claimed me. I don’t think I dreamed.
A scream startled me wide awake.
Inside me, Taliesina’s laugh echoed and faded. I caught a flash of her yellow eyes in the back shadows of my mind. She dissolved away, hiding from me.
I pushed up off the cot and blinked at a nurse having a hissy fit. She was pointing at me. “What’s this filthy animal doing in here?”
I growled and snapped at her … with my fangs?
I looked at myself. I was small now, covered in fur. I was a fox, and not in a good way. Someone came running, flapping a clipboard at me going, “Shoo, shoo.”
I leaped off the cot, straight out of my scrubs, and dodged everybody in my way. If I had to sleep in the woods, I was going to get some rest. I ran out of the tent, between the feet of a guard that was stomping in to investigate the disturbance, and plunged into the shade of an oak. I rounded the tree, and a few others, and slowed to a trot.
I felt deeply alive. My senses were sharper than I ever remembered. I saw a field mouse startled into a run, and snapped it up. Tasty. Crunchy. Oh, my Gawd! What did I just do?
Another body joined me in my run. A teal blue body. Tukka. He was looking a lot better than the last time I’d seen him. Well, fu dogs are tough.
I yapped a greeting.
He knocked me over with a flick of a paw and made like he was going to bite my head off.
Tukka!
His jaws closed. Joking, Tukka know it’s you under funny smell.
Smell? Oh, the disinfectant.
Where Grace going? he asked.
Like I’ve got a clue.
I slowed and stopped, surrounded by oak, dappled by shadow.
When in doubt, Tukka sleeps or eats. Just ate, full. He wandered over to a honeysuckle bush that was dormant, waiting for spring, and trampled it. Falling on his massive side, he looked at me.
I shrugged and went over, curling up next to him, my head pillowed on my fluffy tail.
Tukka got cool, new place to show Grace. Found it in the dreamscapes. Very tasty.
I shifted to see his face. Sadness hung there like a shadow. Longing stirred in his lavender eyes. Bitterness flavored his sigh.
I knew he was craving the precious chocolate I could no longer give him. He might always hunger for that stuff, and I’d hooked him on it.
I sighed as well. I’m so sorry.
Not a problem. Grace my friend, best pet I ever have. I forgive you. He flashed a big toothy grin he meant to be reassuring. We travel road of dreams, have fun, eh?
Sure, let me fall asleep and I’ll be right with you.
I closed my eyes and visualized fu dogs jumping over a fence. Somewhere around number nineteen, I slipped away.
Special preview of the next Kitsune novel by Morgan Blayde
DESTINY’S CHILD, Coming in 2013.
٭ ٭ ٭
He grinned like a gator discovering a huddle of plump frogs. “We have to hurry. The show will be starting soon.”
“Show?” I breathed shallowly through my mouth, my eyes smarting from his rot and sulfur stench.
“Trust me; I very seldom kill my dates.”
We’re on a date?
Was he doing this just to irritate Tukka, or was he seriously courting me? Bad news either way. Both might even be true. Or neither. Demons were older than dirt. They’d had eons to get devious and wily. There was no way to really know his mind, but those who say “trust me” so breezily usually stab you in the back.
“You go first,” I said. I so need to breathe!
He shook his head sadly, but released my arm and led the way.
I let him get four precious feet away, and followed.
He went up the steps—thoughtfully kicking aside the fallen post for me—and paused at the door. His body flickered like a fire-cast shadow, momentarily losing substance so he could pass through.
Bravely, I followed across the treacherous deck. Several of the boards in it had already snapped under someone’s weight. I didn’t use the door, sliding right along the wall to a set of boarded windows. I ghosted through them, into a space that might have once been a living room, now choked with shadows. Wallpaper sagged off the walls. The ceiling light cover was missing an open socket with a new looking, spiral bulb suggested the place had electric service, unless maybe a generator was hooked up. A dirty carpet lay underfoot, littered with beer bottles and assorted trash. The only piece of furniture was a broken down couch. The floor in front of it was spotted with used condoms.
I wrinkled my nose. “Eeeew.”
Sitting a few steps up a staircase, the demon chuckled. “This place does have a certain … ambiance.”
“Yeah, I can see why you’d come here.” A loud scream knifed through me, and I jumped. “Holy crap!”
The demon smiled. “Ah, right on time.”
Across the room, through a wide arch, I saw shadows stirring in an empty kitchen. A woman appeared, backing into the living room. She was thin with long dark hair, wearing shorts and a halter top that didn’t fit the current winter season.
I looked beyond her to see what she was scared of. At first, nothing was there. Then the gloom coalesced into a man wearing dirty jeans and a wife-beater tee. His face wore grim determination, the look of the fanatic in his eyes. A butcher knife gleamed in his hand though I couldn’
t tell where the reflected light came from.
He raised the knife, lurching closer.
The woman screamed again, throwing herself blindly backwards.
I lunged to intercept the man, but shadow burst around me, hardening into Wocky. He held me, refusing to let me intervene, or cross back to the land of the living.
I struggled in his grip. “Let me go. He’s going to kill her.”
“Yes. He is.”
The man fell on the woman. Her last scream ended in a sharp yelp as the blade sank into her abdomen. She struggled weekly as the blade fell again … and again … and again, piercing lungs and heart. Her wild flailing stopped. Her face went slack as she collapsed in on herself, her chest and stomach damp with blood. A growing pool gathered around her body.
Tears ran down my face that weren’t only from Wocky’s atrocious smell. My voice roughened with rage, “Damn it, I could have saved her. I could have—”
“Done nothing,” Wocky said. “Watch.”
I relaxed in his hold, staring as the man stood, flinging the knife away. He staggered over to the stairs, his clothes splattered with blood. A strange serenity possessed him, ironing the emotions from his face. Zombie-like, he plodded up the stairs. His shuffling steps echoed down in an upper hallway.
I looked into Wocky’s shadowed-blurred face. “What’s he—”
The demon’s face betrayed nothing. He murmured, “Wait for it. Wait for it…”
I jumped at the crack of a single gunshot upstairs. Silence followed, the kind you get when nothing’s left alive. I blinked. “Murder-suicide?”
Wocky let me go, pointing at the woman’s body. It misted, loosing cohesion. In moments, no trace remained she’d ever been there.
“Ghosts?” I was confused. They hadn’t possessed visible auras like Crunch had, or Michiko.
“Bad copies,” Wocky said, “remnants. They’re not complete. This happens sometimes with violent deaths. Their spirits relive the event in an eternal loop.”
“And watching this kind of thing is your idea of fun?” Shouting at him was pretty stupid. Part of me knew that. Most of me though was too worked up to care.
“Why, certainly.” A close-lipped smile stretched his face. He cocked his head, staring at me as if I, too, were part of the program. “Didn’t you enjoy yourself?”
I had to look away from the awful emptiness of his gaze. “No. Take me home.”
“But we’ll miss the second show.”
“If you think I’m going to wait here and—”
A shrill, terror-filled scream rang out from the kitchen. Shadows stirred. The woman reappeared, backing into the living room.
I shuddered, turning my back on her, covering my face with my hands. “Please,” I begged, “make it stop.”
His claws scooped me up. I fell against his hard torso. So close, I had to hold my breath. The room spun and blurred and we were outside, in the weedy yard. I’d known the demon was fast but this…
I took a breath and wished I hadn’t. My Gawd, if he’ll take a long bath I’ll spring for a bar of soap.
He set me down and lifted my face toward his. The edge of a long claw scraped tears off my face. He licked them off his claw tip.
What the hell…
He saw me staring. “Human tears are demon wine,” he explained. “I’m a connoisseur.”
Table of Contents
Copyright
ALSO BY MORGAN BLAYDE
Acknowledgments:
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
Epilogue
An Excerpt from next Kitsune novel by Morgan Blayde
Tears and Shadow (kitsune series) Page 30
