by Logan Fox
They didn’t have a wedding — from what I understand, Kane and Zee simply went down to the courtroom and got themselves a marriage license. I only found out a week ago, when Kane called to invite me over.
“Glad you’re alone,” Kane says as he takes a seat at a four-seater dining table. The moment he’s seated, Zee walks past and hands him their child. Kane takes her without looking, positioning the baby with practiced ease on his lap, absently lifting her pacifier and popping it into her mouth.
“Thought you’d be a stubborn fuck again and bring Red with.”
Zee makes an angry sound, and Kane glances at her from the corner of his eye. He doesn’t say anything but gives me a bashful smile when Zee turns back to making coffee.
“Doesn’t like me swearing around the kid,” Kane says, bouncing Mary on his knee. “How’s it going with the whole town council thing?”
“As well as can be expected.” I smile at Zee in thanks when she sets a cup of coffee in front of me. “Few of the more established seats keep insisting someone more senior takes my place.”
“Someone more inclined with their old ways, I’m guessing.”
I nod and inhale the scent of the coffee.
“Take Mary for a walk, would you?” Kane asks when Zee brings him his coffee. She pauses, narrowing her eyes first at him and then me. She makes another angry sound, but takes Mary a second later, crooning wordlessly to the baby as she heads out the back door and into the garden.
“Sounds serious,” I say. The coffee’s still too hot to drink, so I push it aside with my fingertips until it’s cooled down. “No Clover, no Zee?”
“Neither of them are gonna like what I have to say.” Kane’s eyes are down, his mouth an unhappy crescent.
“About the Church?” My saliva turns bitter now and I fervently wish the coffee was cool enough to wash away the taste.
“I’ve been thinking on what you told me, what Father said.”
I let out a cold laugh. “He was fucked on DMT. He would have said—”
“You told me he was draining their blood. Storing it. Using it for something.” Kane’s still more interested in the surface of his coffee than in looking up at me.
“That’s what I surmise, but for all we know, he was after the sheer enjoyment of torturing and killing young girls.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Kane grips the rim of his cup and starts twisting it on its axis. The ceramic scrapes the wooden table in time with the pauses in his words. “But you also said you couldn’t figure out where the Church was receiving its funding from. Even after that dick died. So what if he wasn’t fucked up. What if he wasn’t lying?” Kane’s gaze darts up, pins me. “What if someone paid him for that blood?”
I study him for a few seconds. “Who?”
He gives me a grim smile. “Most people would ask why. But I guess you’ve already figured that out, right?”
I sigh and lace my fingers together in front of me on the table. “Parabiosis.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” Kane says dryly.
“Scientists cut into a pair of rats’s flanks. They join the tissue, and when the wounds heal, they share a circulatory system.”
Kane’s lips twist into a disgusted sneer. “Shit was bad down there, but I didn’t see any of that—”
I lift a hand to cut him off. “What researchers discovered was that if they joined two mice, one old, one young, then the older mice would grow new neurons.”
“They’d get smarter?”
I shrug. “And younger.”
“And the young mice?”
“Would start showing signs of accelerated aging.”
Kane makes an angry sound and takes a long sip of coffee, watching me over the brim with unenthusiastic anticipation.
“There are several clinical trials underway to study the effect of young blood plasma on people with dementia or Alzheimer’s.”
“How young?”
I shake my head. “Not as young as those girls.”
“The younger, the better, right?” Kane sounds seconds away from puking, and I don’t blame him.
I have figured it out. At least, I think I have. And I left Clover at home because she doesn’t know about this — any of it.
She thinks I dealt with the threat, and so did I. I watched Father bleed to death as he gibbered in fear…but his words stuck with me.
My King. He wanted the young ones. The younger, the better.
At first, I’d thought Father had been speaking about the King of Hell. When the sheriff’s department had done a sweep of the church, they’d found fifteen of those yellow buckets in the lowest level of the building. When lab tests came back on the empty containers, they’d determined blood had never been stored in them. They were brand new, unused.
In the woods, they discovered several traps — the kind that would pull an unsuspecting animal into the boughs of the trees and leave them dangling. A blood bucket stood waiting near each.
There were three bodies in Shadow Fox Grove — Father’s, and two little girls. Only Father had a bucket under him, but animals had tipped it over and spilled his blood. Both girls’ throats had been slit, but no more than a few stray drops of blood had touched the ground.
Someone had taken their blood. Someone Father called his ‘King’.
“So what now?” Kane puts down his coffee cup and leans back in his seat.
“We find the King.”
Kane just keeps watching me.
“And then we deal with him.”
“By doing what? Reporting him to the authorities?”
“Or them. We could be dealing with an organization.”
“That’ll make it even harder to pin it on someone.”
“We’ll do our best—”
Kane sits forward in a rush. “No, Hunter. No one’s going to do anything. You know how it works. It’ll be just like it was with Father.” He inhales deep enough that I can see his chest pushing out. “We can’t let this happen again.”
Heat builds inside me. I swore to Clover that exact thing — that I would never let something as abhorrent as what was happening in Father’s Church ever go unnoticed in Mallhaven.
I mean to keep that promise. I must — I can’t bear the thought of living without Clover. Without having her by my side.
“I’ll take care of it,” I say. “Just like I took care of Father.”
Kane nods. He pats his pocket and seems disappointed that there’s nothing inside. I slide a hand inside my suit jacket and take out a joint. He stares at it for a second, and shrugs.
I light it, draw deep, and hand it over to him.
But he doesn’t smoke it immediately. Instead, he holds it up by the filter, watching the smoke coiling from its tip.
“No,” he murmurs quietly. He puts the joint to his lips and makes the cherry glow. When he speaks, it’s through volleys of smoke in a tight voice. “We’ll take care of it.”
“Kane, you’ve got a—”
“A responsibility,” he cuts in. “Just like you.”
Silence filters down between us. He takes another hit before passing back the joint.
“I can go places you can’t, Hunter. People don’t know me. They won’t notice me.”
I give him a grudging nod. Ever since I joined the Council of Nine, I can’t set foot in Mallhaven proper without everyone recognizing me. I even had reporters for the Mallhaven Times on the borders of my property the morning of the official announcement.
“What about Zee?” I ask quietly, before taking another drag.
“She’ll be fine,” he says, a small smile lighting up his face. “Anything happens to me, she’ll at least have Mary for company.”
I shake my head. “You have no idea how deep this rabbit hole goes, Kane.”
He snorts, downs the rest of his coffee, and snatches the joint from my fingers. “Neither do you, kid. But I guess we’ll find out together.” His eyes flicker to my cup. “Now drink up ‘fore that coffee gets cold.”
I
chuckle and take a sip of my now lukewarm coffee.
It’s a common store-bought grind, nothing spectacular, and it’s just a little too sweet and a little too creamy. But Zee made it. Zee, Kane’s wife, while Kane was holding their daughter.
Fuck — I don’t think I’ve ever tasted a better brew in my life.
Epilogue
Each morning, dawn struggles to pierce the thick canopy of Shadow Fox Grove. But, despite the struggle, every morning it eventually succeeds.
Rays of weak light filter through the leaves and branches to fall, finally, on the mossy forest floor.
Sometimes that light touches the cool, slick back of a beetle as it hurries over the mountainous peaks and valleys it must transcend every day.
The scales of a snake.
A bird’s feathers.
Some mornings it might even touch the fur of a fox late back to its burrow.
But this morning, this cold morning when the snow is just beginning to melt, it touches on something new.
Something cold.
Something dead.
A sickly ray of light picks out pale flesh. Folds of grubby white fabric. A face dark with dried blood.
As it touches dirty coils of dark hair that hang to the floor like trailing lianas, it makes them glow with an unearthly light.
A dirty halo for a filthy soul.
But over time, the forest reclaims everything. Bruised leaves heal. Broken branches are replaced. Dead animals are transformed into rich, black soil.
This evil soul will eventually decompose. Flesh will rot from the bone and land on ground hungry to receive it.
To consume it.
To transform that pervasive evil into nutrients.
Because no man is immortal. And, once dead, no man retains good or evil. Flesh becomes sustenance for the earth, and the earth shows neither mercy nor gratitude for what it receives.
A fox, on its way to its den, pauses with one paw upraised. It sniffs the air, and slowly approaches the half-frozen figure.
It’s undecided about the sharply-colored object beneath; it recognizes human constructs, and this is one. But the smell wafting from inside is too tempting…too glorious.
The fox overcomes its caution and comes close enough to smell inside.
Fear dissipates like melting snow. It tips the neon yellow bucket with an impatient paw and watches thick, red sludge ooze onto the forest floor.
There will be other predators larger and stronger than it. But for now, it can indulge peacefully in the half-frozen blood of this hanged man.
As pervasive as it is, evil cannot survive death.
Book four in the Blood for Blood Series is now available.
Click the link below to get your copy of The Agony Doll.
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About the Author
L. D. Fox writes deliciously dark and twisted stories for people that, like her, enjoy reading it.
Having grown up on names like Graham Masterton, Dean Koontz, James Herbert, Stephen King, Robert Jordan, and Terry Pratchett, her stories are an eclectic mix of the sadistically twisted, the epic, and the darkly comedic. She strives to create characters that are as immersive as the worlds she raises around them. Expect more than your average amount of plot twists, superb dialog, characters you'll either love or loathe, and a book hangover that's guaranteed to last at least few days, if not longer. She doesn't hold any punches - nor should she, for that's what she expects in the books she reads and what she offers to her readers in return.
She hails from the four-seasons-in-a-day suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa. She's so busy writing she doesn't have time for much else except the occasional indulgent Netflix binge. She loves hearing from readers, so don't be why to contact her and tell her what you thought of her writing.
Copyright © 2019 L. D. Fox
First Edition, License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This work of fiction is intended for mature audiences only. Please do not buy/read this e-book if strong sexual situations, multiple partners, violence, drugs, domestic discipline, and explicit language offend you.
