The Nine

by C. M. Stunich

  "Let me get that for you," Revel said, stepping up behind me to tie my pink sash around my waist, turning it into a giant bow at my lower back. But the way she did it, so slow and sensual ... I had to close my eyes and exhale to keep my emotions from turning into a storm. There was something about this place that made me feel like I was standing on a live outlet, drawing organic energy from the earth. With a little help, I threaded my tails through the hole in the back of my outfit and breathed a small sigh of relief.

  When I turned around to help Revel with hers, I found the kitsune woman with her kimono unbound, her bare breasts exposed, that beautiful tattoo of hers vibrant against her pale, naked skin. Her kimono was white with a symbol of the Japanese rising sun on the back of it. I got a good look when she turned around and let me tie her sash into a bow.

  "Here," Nix said, passing out tabi socks and zori shoes. For the unfamiliar, tabi socks are like toe socks, but with only a single spot for the big toe while the rest remain together while zori are essentially fancy flip-flops.

  I sat in the back of the SUV and slipped on the offered footwear, wondering why Nix hadn't just given us all this crap back at the house. My guess is that he wanted to check out my ass. I should've taken the moment to check out his, I thought as I stood up and brushed my hands down the front of my kimono.

  "Now what?" I asked as I started loading up on weapons: my katanas, my knives. When I went for my gun, Nix put a hand on my wrist. I felt this sharp, heady thrill go through me.

  "No guns at the temple; they won't work up there anyway." He took a step back from me, wearing a gray kimono with bamboo branches on it. His fur was still draped around his shoulders, his new earring swinging as he turned to look up the hill.

  "What's up there?" I asked as the wind teased the trees and a shiver went down my spine. Mik was watching me, his dark blue kimono dotted with ... little white foxes.

  "A god," he said in place of Nix, and my blood went cold.

  "How do you know that?" I whispered, because it suddenly felt blasphemous to speak any louder than that.

  "Can't you feel it?" Mik said with a sigh, pulling out a set of blades. He slipped the bandolier over his kimono as I did the same to my own.

  "Your employer is a god?" Revel asked, but Nix just smiled mysteriously and started up the steps.

  "God, goddess, sometimes neither," he said mysteriously as we started up after him.

  I'd only made it about three steps before a voice sounded from behind me.

  "What are you up to, little pet?" Bennett asked, and I froze. So did Mik. Not good.

  "Pet? Holy fuck, Thea, you better get these assholes in line or else I'll be forced to do it. You don't want to see what I do to men I teach lessons to." Revel turned to face Bennett's naked form, cocking a red brow as she sneered at him.

  "What the hell are you doing here?!" I choked out, wondering why people kept appearing out of nowhere and fucking up my day. Seemed to be kind of a chronic problem for me.

  "Mm," Bennett said, pushing his dark, shaggy hair back from his face. I noticed, however, that he didn't approach the steps. "I'm not feeling particularly inclined to share."

  "Then you can fuck off," I said, just before a strange noise sounded at the top of the steps, like a giant in pain, screaming their anguish to the dark forest. Scared the ever living shit out of me and broke the strange peace I'd felt since stepping out of the SUV.

  "What the hell was that?" he asked as Nix sighed, pushing his glasses up his face. He sneered at Bennett as he neared the bottom of the stairs. "If you're going to be here, you better damn well honor her wishes," he said, and I highly doubted he was talking about me. More likely, his mysterious employer.

  A god.

  And based on the imagery and the statues, I had a pretty good guess of who that was going to be.

  Inari Okami, the fox god/goddess/genderless deity that ruled my entire race.

  Nix moved back over to the SUV and tossed another kimono at Bennett, a black one this time. I was torn between grilling him to see how he'd managed to follow us here and perplexed about the noises now emanating from the top of the steps. To Mik's credit, he didn't say a damn thing about the alpha. He, too, was focused on the temple.

  I couldn't blame him.

  There was this keening sound now, vibrating the very molecules in the air.

  "Let's just get this over with, shall we?" Nix said, storming past me and sweeping his way up the steps.

  Bennett slipped into the kimono and padded up to stand beside me.

  "This is the guy you just fucked?" Revel asked, and I cringed. Mik scowled, and continued on up after Nix.

  "Unfortunately," I said dryly, giving the alpha wolf a long, lingering look. "Don't think I've forgotten that you've now stalked me twice in as many days." I started up with Revel by my side.

  "I've never dated a bisexual girl before," she said, and then it was my turn to cock a brow.

  "Who said we were dating?" I asked, and Revel grinned.

  "I figure I'm dying, and it's my last wish. How could you deny a girl that?" My turn to smile back. "But really, this guy? He's a little ... basic, don't you think?"

  "If you're jealous, then fuck her. You won't find me caring or complaining," Bennett said, looking Revel over with a predatory gaze. And by predatory, I mean he looked like he wanted to slit her throat, not have sex with her.

  "Why are you even here?" I asked, but he didn't answer me. I had a feeling he wasn't planning on it.

  When we reached the top of the stairs, I found that I was actually winded. And I was in good shape, too, so holy shit.

  An open stone courtyard greeted us, surrounded by more of those stone torches and fox statues. Some of them were downright menacing, a good reminder that Inari Okami was not a solely benevolent deity.

  Across the courtyard, the temple stood watch over the forest, surrounded by cherry blossom trees, its columns made of stone, the screens that normally covered the entrances open. They led into a central room, its floors covered in straw mats with a shrine on one end. Incense smoke drifted in the air, and a ring of pillows sat waiting for worshipers.

  A woman sat there in a kimono, weeping into her hands, her long dark hair hanging down her back, hundreds of tails swishing around behind her.

  "Follow me and keep your fucking wits up," Nix said, his shoulders stiff and tense. He moved forward and I continued after him, letting Bennett take up the rear, Revel on one side and Mik on my other.

  As we approached, the woman paused in her crying, turning to look at us.

  When she did, I realized her face was not that of a woman, but a white fox, its long snout open and gaping with sharp, white teeth. She raised her nose to the air to sniff and I felt my spine go stiff.

  I was looking at a goddamn god.

  And not just any god, but my god.

  "Inari Okami," I whispered as she faded from sight like a ghost.

  "Holy shit," Revel said, drawing my attention over to the left of the room where a man lay on his back on a mat, blood and goo leaking from his pores. "It's the Fox Father," she whispered, noting the distinct orange color of the man's hair, and the blood red of his tails and ears. His skin was covered in hives as he lay there. Fuck, it looked like he was dead.

  From the right, I heard footsteps, just as Mik moved to intercept a woman covered in white, scraggly hair, blood oozing from her lips.

  A mad god.

  An infected god.

  One of Inari's nine lovers—I recognized the woman from the distinct cherry blossom tattoos at her ankles, tattoos that I'd based my own work on.

  "And now you have your answers," Nix said, watching as Mik used the force of the woman's charge against her to flip her over his back and onto hers. She landed on the floor and came at me with a snarl, giving me just enough time to block her with my katana.

  "Jesus Christ, Nix, you could've explained in advance!" I shouted as I shoved the woman back ... and found myself essentially pushing against a brick wall
. I was a fighting a god here, not a normal kitsune, and I could already tell that I didn't have much advantage on my side.

  "Not when a goddess has forbidden me to speak," he said, like I wasn't in the middle of fighting for my life here. Bennett stepped up and gave me the extra force I needed to shove Sakura Okami, one of Inari's wives, back a few steps.

  "What the hell are we doing up here?" I asked as Sakura let out a scream that shook the trees, loosing gusts of pink cherry blossom petals into the wind. "Why would she ask us to come up here? So we can fucking die?"

  "The goddess wants what the goddess wants," Nix said, like he didn't give a crap either way. But when the Fox Father stood up from his mat, weeping sores oozing onto the ground around him, and came after the coyote shifter, he changed his tune pretty quick.

  "Let's get the fuck out of here," Mik snapped, grabbing my arm and dragging me toward the steps. But that's when I noticed that Revel wasn't moving. She was staring at the floor of the temple with a blank look on her face that scared the shit out of me.

  "Mikhail, stop," I said, pulling away from him as Nix snatched up a staff from the hand of one of the statues and spun it in a circle before cracking the Fox Father in the face.

  It was fucking sacrilegious.

  "Revel?" I asked, grabbing onto her shoulder. With a snap of her arm, she flung her hand out and cracked me so hard in the face that my lip split and blood poured down my chin, dripping onto my kimono and staining the white silk.

  When she turned to look at me, there was something in her face, her expression, that told me I was no longer looking at Revel Jones.

  Some kitsune could possess others; it was innate skill that many of us were born with but that didn't fully set in until maturity. And maturity for a kitsune was around a hundred years old.

  But a god?

  A god was much older than that.

  One of Inari's lovers had just taken over Revel's body.

  "Oh fuck," I murmured as Bennett hauled me backward and Revel knelt, nice and slow, grabbing a traditional wooden fox mask from the foot of the shrine, its smiling face painted with a menacing sort of expression.

  She stood back up and slowly, carefully, slid it onto her face.

  Without a word, she stepped onto the dais and plucked the katanas from the hands of the Inari statue. I'd picked my choice of weapon with influence from my goddess.

  And now I was going to get my ass kicked by one.

  "We need to go now," Mikhail snapped, as both he and Bennett dragged me back and toward the steps leading to the car. Nix was holding off both Sakura and the Fox Father at the same time. Pretty goddamn impressive, I must say.

  I left him behind, but I didn't want to leave Revel. Still, I knew that if I fought a goddess, I would lose. So I let the two alpha males drag me away, my katanas still clutched in my hands. But as we approached the steps, Inari appeared with her vulpine smile in place, dressed in the red and white outfit of a shrine maiden.

  The three of us paused as Bennett cursed under his breath, something like the fuck am I doing all this for a goddamn fox?

  The goddess and I stared at one another for a long, quiet moment, her purple eyes a match to my own. When she stepped toward me, both Mik and Bennett froze, but when my boss pulled out a knife and chucked it in her direction, it went right through her.

  Inari stepped up to me, putting her hands on either side of my face before dragging her nails down my neck and then my spine. I could feel her, even though the guys couldn't touch her.

  She continued touching me, moving all the way down to my tails, and when she got to them, she squeezed them as if she were my lover, making me gasp.

  As she touched me there, I felt this wild burst of energy explode through me, like a volcano erupting, spilling molten hot magic into my veins. The sudden return of my power made me scream and collapse, even with the two men doing their best to hold me up.

  That's when I really felt it, all of those connections I'd been making willy-nilly.

  I felt Bennett inside of me, felt his magic connect to my own like a long-lost lover. With a snarl, he jerked back from me and clutched at his chest, like the power was tearing him apart the same way it was doing to me. My mind conjured up images of him, hot and sweaty, fucking me into the bloody bed. Our connection became bright and vibrant, like a sunray cutting through the center of my skull.

  No wonder he was able to find me so easily; I felt like I could track him down on the other side of the world.

  Didn't explain why he'd tracked me down, but at least I knew how.

  On the opposite side of my soul, I could feel Mikhail, this intimate connection to him that was just begging to be explored. It made my neck burn, the spot where he'd bitten me throbbing like a snakebite.I clutched a hand to it even as I sensed an invisible rope connecting me to Nix, binding us together for the duration of our bargain.

  No wonder Mikhail had called me an idiot.

  As I writhed on the ground and tried to adjust to the flow of power, I thought of Riot and Fin. And I missed them so fucking fiercely in that moment that I knew I would be dating Fin again, that I'd be hunting Riot down and making him see sense. Because after all this, how could I let either of them go? How had I lived without them for so long?

  What the hell was wrong with me?!

  Someone—Mikhail, I believe—yanked me aside just in time to avoid Revel's katanas as they smashed into the stone where I'd been lying. My boss hauled me up to my feet as I struggled to blink through the rush of power.

  As I was coming to, he yanked me toward the steps and ran smack into an invisible barrier.

  “Son of a bitch," Mikhail snarled out, pulling me close against his chest in a protective maneuver. Didn't last. I had no idea what Inari's goal here was, but she gave me my magic back ... and then yanked me from Mik's arms, throwing him as hard as she could against a nearby outbuilding.

  I could feel his pain radiating through our new connection. He was hurting, but he was still alive. That's about all the time I had to think before Revel smashed into me, my swords coming up at the last second and blocking her from lopping my head right off my neck.

  Her sash came undone, billowing out behind her as her kimono gaped and revealed that beautiful naked body underneath.

  My guess was that she was possessed by Aika, the second of Inari's two wives. The rest of her nine lovers were men.

  Stepping back, I braced myself for another attack, a little woozy from the rush of power but happy as fuck to have it back.

  "Bennett!" I shouted as the alpha wolf rose sluggishly to his feet. I probably shouldn't care what the hell happened to him, but this new, heady link of his power to mine was pulling me toward him with inexorable force. It was so powerful that I actually took two steps in his direction without realizing it.

  He snapped to and dodged as the Fox Father came at him, spilling infection across the ground as he stumbled, blindly toward the alpha male. The fox mask on the god's face was skewed to one side, blood and fluid leaking out from beneath it. The two holes where his eyes should be were nothing but black.

  Revel-Aika, or whatever you wanted to call her, came at me again, holding her swords straight back behind her as she ran, and then launching herself into the air at the last second. Using my magic, I threw up a small shield that she broke through as easily as if it were paper-thin glass.

  At the very least, that gave me enough time to roll to the side and avoid getting stabbed.

  "Wake up!" I screamed at her, even though I knew I wasn't going to be able to get through. If a disease ravaged goddess wanted to control Revel, there was literally nothing I would be able to do about it.

  Stumbling back, I extended my tails and snapped off a ball of foxfire from the end of each one, gathering the magic in a circle around my head. As Revel came at me again, I lobbed the balls at her feet, hoping to trip her up enough that I might pin her down and somehow ... I don't know, fucking restrain her. Because I wasn't going to kill her, that much I was
sure about.

  I fired off four of the nine foxfire balls before I realized they weren't going to do shit. I was sure Revel was a real powerhouse herself, but with the goddess possessing her, she was insanity personified. Each bit of magic that crashed into her feet, she dodged as easily as she were on an obstacle course, dodging obstacles for fun.

  The maniacal grin of her fox mask glared at me as she threw up three balls of her own foxfire using Revel's tails ... and launched them at Mikhail instead. He was hit in the chest and throw back yet again, but he recovered fast that time. With the front of his kimono burned, he threw himself at the mad goddess and ended up with Inari Okami herself standing in front of him.

  She lifted her mass of tails and a shimmer flicked across the hair behind her, creating another invisible barrier between me and my boss.

  Looked like she wanted me to take this fight on my own.

  She's testing me, I thought as I narrowly missed a slice from Revel's katanas. Her red hair billowed out behind her as she spun and followed through with a vicious series of swipes, one of which managed to catch me on the check, spilling crimson droplets of blood into the air. They seemed to hold there for a moment, shimmering brightly before they spattered onto the front of my kimono.

  All around us, pink cherry blossom petals swirled around, a river of flowers and sweet, sweet scent to accompany our fight by torchlight.

  "What does she want from me?" I asked when I noticed Nix was watching. He'd essentially foisted off Sakura onto Mikhail; I could see them fighting in front of Inari, just off to my left.

  "I haven't the slightest," he said, but even though he was sweating and wearing a massive amount of blood on his clothing, he didn't look concerned by the situation. "All I know is that Inari's lovers were infected by this disease, and she tasked me with getting rid of it. Beyond that, I can't say."

  I heaved a sigh, circling Revel in my zori shoes, my katana held up and out, my magic boiling hot and wild inside of me.