“Lindsay!” Lilian called out, causing the girl to turn around.
A grin sprang to her face when she spotted them. “Hey, guys! What do you think of the game so far?”
“It’s exciting,” Lilian said. “Not as exciting as watching my mate speed past everyone on the track, but still pretty exciting.”
Lindsay twitched as a wan smile appeared on her face. “Yeah, I suppose it would be impossible for even something as exciting as a soccer match to beat anything your mate does.”
“Very true.” Lilian’s sage-like nod made Kevin facepalm. “Now, if my mate was the one playing soccer, that would be a totally different story.”
“Right.” Lindsay sighed.
“Try not to look so depressed, dyke,” Iris said in her usual rude voice. “Lily-pad’s got the stud on the brain twenty-four seven. Nothing you, I, or anyone else does will ever be enough to compete with what he does. He could be staring at a wall, and she would think it was sexier than me stripping naked while pole dancing.”
“Nice imagery there,” Kevin muttered. To Lindsay he said, “try to ignore anything Iris says. She doesn’t really mean it. She’s just rude by nature.”
“Oh, whatever, Stud.” Iris draped herself across his shoulder, her right index finger making circles on his chest, her expression coy. “You know you love me—Goof!”
“Hands off my mate.” Were Lilian’s prim words as she smacked Iris down with a tail before anyone could notice. Iris fell to the ground, sprawled out, her black halter top askew, revealing more breast than it was supposed to.
Kevin felt a trickle of sweat leave a trail down the left side of his face. “Is it just me, or have we become a really violent group? Seriously, Eric’s always getting beaten up by girls and we don’t even bat an eye. Christine also tends to take her pound of flesh out of him, and you’re constantly beating your sister whenever she gets, well, whenever she acts like her usual self.”
“Hmm…” Lindsay actually thought about his words for a moment. “You may have a point. We have become pretty inured to violence. I wonder if this is what they call desensitization?”
Lilian shrugged. “Don’t look at me. All I’m doing is protecting your chastity like you asked me to. If you’d prefer I let Iris molest you…”
“I appreciate you protecting my chastity.”
“Ufufufu, the only one stealing your chastity will be me.”
“And now I’m afraid.”
Lindsay looked at Lilian and Kevin as they bantered, silently shaking her head. Something then tugged at her sleeve. Lindsay looked down at Christine, whose resigned expression caused everyone around to become curious. Kevin, who was still trading banter with Lilian, wondered what was going on.
“Look, I don’t want you to think this means anything special, but you did really good out there… and stuff.”
Christine glanced at Iris, who was dusting herself off. The vixen noticed her look, grinned, and sent her a thumbs up. Lindsay didn’t see the thumbs up, since she was busy paying attention to her friend, but Kevin did.
Did Iris tell Christine to compliment Lindsay?
It seemed Iris was nicer than she let on, or maybe she was trying to amuse herself by setting those two up. That was something he could see her doing.
“Heh… thanks.” Lindsay smiled at her friend, who looked away with a huff.
“Whatever.”
Just then, something began falling from the sky. Kevin blinked as something white drifted lazily past his field of vision. He then looked up to see…
“Feathers?”
They were, indeed, feathers. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of feathers fell from the sky, whiter than snow, purer than fresh rain. They glowed in the dimming light of the sun, ethereal-looking and holding an otherworldly appearance as they descended from the heavens.
Kevin felt exhausted as one of the feathers hit his head. It sank into his bones, this biting sense of fatigue. He slumped down, his eyes involuntarily closing, his breathing growing deep. Sleep. He wanted to sleep.
“Beloved?” a voice called out, but it was far away, like a fading echo.
With his strength leaving him, Kevin pitched forward. He didn’t hit the ground. Something caught him. He felt arms wrap around his middle, pulling him into a warm bosom. Having been buried in this chest many times before, he knew, instinctively, that this was Lilian’s chest. He sighed and let the Sandman take him.
He was so sleepy.
***
“Beloved? Beloved, what’s wrong? Beloved?!”
For a moment, Lilian felt panic as Kevin slumped into her chest and closed his eyes, his legs and arms going limp. She kept her arms around him, holding him close as she called out to him, hoping that he would respond. He didn’t. He remained silent.
Questions assailed her mind. What was going on? Why wasn’t her beloved responding? She calmed down when she felt his warm breath against her chest. He was still alive, his breathing deep and even, almost as if he was… asleep…
Wait.
With a jolt traveling from the crown of her head down to her tails, Lilian looked around her to see that everyone else had fallen asleep as well. The people in the bleachers were dropping like flies. So, too, were the soccer players and the coaches. The only people who hadn’t fallen asleep were her, Christine, and Iris. Lilian absently noticed the long, black, white-tipped fox tail retract from Christine’s back and slither back underneath Iris’s skirt.
Much like Kevin, Lindsay pitched forward. The yuki-onna caught the girl before she could hit the ground, but because Lindsay was significantly larger and weighed more, Christine couldn’t hold her up. The lolita-clad girl slipped onto her knees with a grunt. Unable to maintain her hold, Christine fell back, and Lindsay slipped from her grasp.
“I got her,” Iris said, a single tail shooting from her back. She caught Lindsay, the tail wrapping around the limp girl before gently setting her on the ground.
“Good catch,” Lilian said. Iris gave her a thumbs up.
“What the hell is going on?!” Christine scowled as she climbed to her feet.
Lilian wanted to know the same thing. Her attention was attracted to another feather, which fell right in front of her. She blinked when it fell to the ground and then evaporated into light particles. Unlike Kotohime, Lilian wasn’t much of a sensor, but even she could tell that these feathers were created with youki. A lot of youki.
It has to be powerful to affect even Kevin…
She frowned. “This is…”
“Kitsune Art: Daoists Nirvana,” a voice said behind them.
Lilian turned around, Kevin still in her arms. Someone that she vaguely recognized was walking toward them.
“It’s a rather powerful technique, a sleeping enchantment that requires at least three tails to use. I wouldn’t expect a simple two-tails like you to understand how it works.”
The woman before her had blonde hair and blue eyes. Her body was garbed in a white lolita dress with a lot of frills and ruffled sleeves. Her slipper-like shoes made nary a sound as she stalked across the grassy field. She had a young face, childish almost, which created a juxtaposition with her prominent chest and wide hips.
The woman stopped several yards away from her, Iris, and Christine, who moved to stand protectively in front of Lindsay. She didn’t take her eyes off this girl, who Lilian finally recognized. It was the new student they had been talking about earlier. Fan Shen-something or other.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” asked Christine. Lilian wouldn’t have posed her question quite like that, but she wanted to know the same thing.
“Yeah, what the fuck are you doing here?”
… Okay, so maybe she would.
Three fox tails suddenly sprouted from underneath Fan’s dress. Her human-shaped ears became triangular and furred, moving up her head until they rested closer to her crown. She raised a hand slowly, dramatically even, as if she was about to make some great proclamation. She extended a single finger
and pointed at Lilian.
“Lilian Pnév̱ma, by orders of the Bodhisattva, you are hereby sentenced to death, and I, Fan Shénshèng, shall be your executioner.”
CHAPTER 2
ASSASSINS OF THE SHÉNSHÈNG CLAN
Lilian stared at the woman who was pointing at her, not quite comprehending the situation. Kevin was still asleep on her chest. She kept her arms wrapped around him so he wouldn’t fall to the ground. Yet even though she and her mate were in a position that would have normally been quite enviable, she didn’t take her eyes off the three-tailed kitsune in white lolita clothing.
Christine and Iris weren’t near her at the moment. Her friend was getting Lindsay to safety, and Iris had disappeared. Lilian knew that her sister hadn’t abandoned her. More than likely, Iris was waiting in the wings, hidden away to provide backup should the situation become untenable.
“I’m sorry,” she began after a moment, “but who are you and why are you going to kill me?”
The woman, Fan-something-or-other, tripped over one of her tails. Lilian almost winced when the woman slammed face first into the ground. The lolita-clad vixen shot back to her feet and hissed at Lilian like an angry nekomata.
“Do you really not know why I’m here to kill you?! Are you really that stupid?!”
“Hey!” Lilian felt a surge of irritation bubbling within her gut. “I am not stupid! The people who call someone else stupid are the real stupid ones!”
“I’m not here to banter with you, girl!” The kitsune stood up to her full height. “I’m here to get revenge for what you did to Jiāoào.”
“Jiāoào?”
Lilian blinked. Why did that name sound so familiar?
“Are you telling me that you don’t remember?” Fan narrowed her eyes at Lilian. “Jiāoào Shénshèng is my beloved younger brother and Father’s heir. It was proclaimed by Lord Inari himself that Jiāoào would receive the ninth tail upon his ninth century of life, thus becoming the next Bodhisattva. However, thanks to what you did to him, my beloved brother can’t even speak, much less lead a clan. He’s become completely inert, incapable of interacting with the world around him, and it’s all because of you!”
Jiāoào… Jiāoào… that was… who was that again?
Lilian scrunched up her face as she tried to recall someone who went by the name of Jiāoào. It took a while because, to be quite frank, she hadn’t thought about him in a very long time. She only vaguely remembered the boy who had kidnapped her, and that was only because she had killed someone during that time. She still felt guilty about that.
“Oh! Now I remember!” Lilian would have snapped her fingers, but since her arms were full of Kevin, she didn’t. “Jiāoào was that jerk who kept trying to marry me! Ha, yeah, I remember him. My beloved beat the crap out of that loser after he kidnapped me!”
Fan went still. Her head tilted down. Shadows played across her face, somehow ominous. Her lips twitched into a macabre grin.
A shiver ran unbidden down Lilian’s back.
Maybe I shouldn’t have teased her so much…
“Did you just call my beloved little brother a loser?” she asked, her voice grating, like a katana scraping against concrete. Her body shuddered from head to tails in what Lilian could only assume was rage. “That does it… I’m through talking to you. It’s time for you to die, Lilian Pnév̱ma! Celestial Art: Spears of Light!”
Light particles gathered around Fan’s tails. Three spears composed of bright white light appeared, long and sharp, with wicked points that looked like they could easily cut Lilian straight through. They were shaped like a qiāng, a Chinese spear. Each one was over twelve feet in length and possessed a leaf-shaped blade at one end.
Lilian’s spine tingled. She couldn’t let those hit her. If she did, they would kill her for sure.
Fan grabbed each spear with her tails and tossed them at Lilian with unparalleled speed. The spears all converged on Lilian’s location…
… And then went straight through her as if she wasn’t even there. Seconds after, the spears struck the ground and exploded in rays of light. The light died down, revealing two small marks on the ground. As the Lilian and Kevin before Fan vanished, the real Lilian hid Kevin behind the bleachers, and then snuck around until she was behind Fan.
She already had her next attack prepared.
“Celestial Art: Flare.”
Fan leapt backwards as two compressed orbs of celestial youki flew at her from the front. The balls struck the ground, and then vanished like they had never existed.
“What?!” Fan shouted.
Standing behind the woman, Lilian would have grinned if such an action was in her nature. Two orbs of compressed light emerged from her tails, flickering to life. These weren’t illusions. This was her real attack.
Fan swiveled her head as though it was on a spoke, eyes widening when two more spheres just like the ones that had vanished came at her from behind. They converged, slamming into her with impossible force, and then detonated into two brilliant domes of light. Like an exploding star going nova, the light expanded into a single, giant dome with a ten-foot radius, consuming everything within its sphere of influence.
Lilian wiped some sweat from her forehead. It was a lot more difficult to combine attack, defense, and misdirection during real combat than it was during her spars with Kotohime. She had also put a lot of youki into that last attack, so she felt a bit drained. Still, she had to give herself a pat on the back. That was a jolly good show, if she did say so herself.
When the power from her attack died down and the dome disappeared, nothing remained of the spot that Fan had been standing on. It was just a ten-foot crater with a perfectly smooth surface.
“Did I get her?” Lilian wondered out loud.
“Kitsune Art: Buddha's Paradox.”
Lilian stiffened when the world around her changed. The grassy soccer field melted away, the bleachers disappeared. Everything vanished and was replaced by a barren wasteland, a world of craggy surfaces, a place so desolate that no life could exist there.
Within the center of this world sat a man. He was a very thin man, his frame emaciated to the point where Lilian could see his ribcage. He also didn’t have any hair. Adorning his thin body was a simple golden robe that seemed to shine with divine light. He sat in a lotus position, his body perfectly still, his breath coming out so slowly that Lilian wasn’t even sure if he was breathing.
He opened his eyes, revealing that he had neither iris nor pupil, and suddenly, the entire world exploded with violent energy. Fierce hurricane-like winds ripped at Lilian’s body. They swirled around her, tearing into her flesh and flaying her skin. Blood spurted from an uncountable number of wounds that appeared all over her as though invisible blades were cutting into her. She opened her mouth to scream, but all the air was sucked from her lungs, which soon collapsed as they were deprived of oxygen.
From that point on, Lilian’s life was filled with nothing but pain.
***
Kiara grit her teeth. Pain lanced through her back and chest as the kitsune kept moving, shoving his shoulder into her as he slammed her through wall after wall after wall. Her ears were ringing as brick and mortar shattered all around her like fragile glass. She tried to ignore the sound of her building breaking apart, along with the feeling of her chest being compressed and her back being battered, but even she could not stop the yelps from escaping her lips.
Even so…
“Don’t think something like this will be enough to put me down!”
With a roar, Kiara raised her arm and slammed her elbow into the crown of the kitsune’s head. The ground beneath his feet cracked. His knees buckled. Then, with a loud rumble, he crashed face first into the floor, which broke apart underneath the power of her blow. The entire floor they stood upon caved in. She and her foe fell to the next floor down.
Like any good warrior, Kiara landed on her feet. She wasn’t that injured. Her body had a few scrapes, and her back felt like a ca
r had dragged her across the road by her feet, but it was nothing serious.
As an inu, her body was far tougher than most other yōkai, able to withstand incredible punishment like nobody’s business and return it tenfold. That said, she was surprised. Kitsune weren’t physically strong unless they were using reinforcement, yet this one had managed to make her feel pain, and she could tell that he hadn’t used reinforcement at all.
There has to be some kind of gimmick to his strength?
They’d dropped into her training room, which was on the opposite side of her office. Sweat dripped from her forehead. Had she been any later in counterattacking, she would have been sent outside.
Fragments from the previous floor littered the blue mat. She grimaced as she realized how much it was going to cost to effect repairs. The fox who’d attacked her lay several feet away, face down on the ground.
“So,” Kiara started in a conversational tone of voice, “you gonna tell me why you’re attacking me, or am I gonna have to break my foot off in your ass and beat it out of you?”
The kitsune swayed as he clambered to his feet. She felt satisfaction upon seeing the blood that ran down the man’s face. Yet despite the head wound she’d inflicted, he didn’t appear all that affected by the damage.
“Dog… dog. Dog. Dog! DOOOOOGGGG!”
Kiara clicked her tongue as the man unleashed another one of those unusual battle cries of his and bull rushed her. Since she didn’t feel like taking another one of his attacks head on, she dove to the left, seconds before he would have slammed into her. He smashed into the wall behind her, which exploded into hundreds of tiny fragments that peppered Kiara and forced her to raise a hand, shielding her eyes.
“DOOOOGGGG!”
The kitsune came at her again, and Kiara dove aside once more. Another wall was destroyed. Kiara felt a surge of irritation. Did this idiot not realize how much damage he was causing? It was going to take tens of thousands of dollars to fix those damn walls!
Deciding to teach the kitsune a lesson, Kiara widened her stance. She spread her legs wide and bent her knees at 45-degree angles. She tucked her fist into her torso and called upon her youki, which surged into existence, flaring around her body like fire. With her youki unleashed, Kiara felt power flooding through her veins. She channeled the red aura into her fist, which became engulfed in a bright red light that all but blocked her appendage from view.
A Fox's Revenge (American Kitsune Book 7) Page 7
