Destiny's Child (The Kitsune Series)

by Morgan Blayde

  Theoretically possible. A long shot really. But all of my life’s highly improbable. This will work because it has to.

  The monster ghost was relaxing, having figured out that I was saving it bother by coming right to it. The eye opened its mouth even wider, its tongue rolling out to create a red carpet event. All we needed were the paparazzi.

  Almost there, I jumped with all my might, flashing past its mouth, rising up the flat cliff that was its face. And then I was falling into its face, plunging in just under its bulging eye. Ghostly energies jagged around me, searing me with the passing edges. I joined the screaming party, hanging onto consciousness and purpose. Flaming with aura, I used my own energy as a buffer against the beast I’d become part of.

  I’d built up enough momentum to sail through the monster, but that wasn’t my intention.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Spirits war and fuse.

  And there’s a murdered wind.

  It’s a monster-eat-monster world,

  that’s coming to an end.

  —Ballad of the Shadow Fox

  Tukka

  Haunts were nocturnal. Ordinary ghosts faded in the daylight, a union rule or something. It took an apparition of great strength to break that rule. An entity like the one I was now inside. The question wasn’t if it could walk the mortal realm, but if I had enough strength to pull it across the veil with me. I grabbed hold of space itself and gave the continuum a vicious yank.

  Jags of green and purple ghost-fire splintered against me, splaying past my body, ripping and burning at my toga, splashing against arms and legs, washing my mind in agony so I wasn’t sure if I was making progress crossing back, or just slowing baking myself in a supernatural oven. It not for the sheathing of my aura, my skin would have blistered open, cauterized, and blackened. Limbs might well have been blasted off.

  The energies around me ebbed and in that lull, I felt the electric tingle of transition. I dropped through the surrounding turbulence. The sand under me was back to glowing gold with the lifeforce of the enraged planet.

  And I was literally on fire, slamming into the sand, left behind as the super ghost faced the whirling sand and the screaming face poised above it. I rolled in the sand to extinguish the flames gnawing my toga. Weak—my own energies drained by the roughest crossing I’d ever made—I couldn’t even fight to my feet. I laid there as the spiraling sands spun me around the whirlpool. It seemed like I had a few more orbits before dropping down that maw, but Tukka and Fenn weren’t so lucky. They were almost at the edge, about to drop down the planet’s throat to whatever terrible fate awaited.

  The white fox came running with the circular currents of sand, using them to catch up with me. He dug in and slid against me, getting his head and shoulders under me, lifting me up cross his back as he rose with my weight.

  The ghost monster collided with the grit face, tentacles winding into the hovering funnel of sand. Anchored against being dragged down, the ghost-thing kissing the face in the sand. Screaming maws fused. Green and violet lightning curled back from them both, arcing to the golden sand, leaving islands of crystalline slag in the currents. One of the bolts sliced past Tukka’s head.

  And then the two monsters were sucked into each other.

  The sand stopped whirling. The hole to the underground closed. The wind fell silent. The sound of my pounding heart leaped out at me. A third of Tukka had sunk into the sand. Fenn was scooping it away, helping the fu dog get traction.

  And the Trickster was gone. In the final moment, he’d chosen to save himself, leaving even Fenn behind. The way Fenn clenched his teeth, his jaw knotting with rage, assured me that this had not gone unnoticed. In sympathy, my heart ached for him.

  What the hell is wrong with parents today? I wondered.

  They weren’t beaten enough as children, the white fox’s thoughts flowed like water through my own. Now in my day…

  “This is so not the time.” Hearing my voice, I was stunned at how raw and gruff it sounded.

  I stared at the ghost monster and the crystal mask of a woman’s face he now wore. The two things sank into the depression as Fenn and Tukka hurried away, coming toward fox and me. A moment later, there was no sign of an enraged earth or a phantom monster.

  Tukka saw me mounted on fox, staring at the sand where the double threat had disappeared. He nudged me in the ribs with his muzzle. No time for sightseeing. Really, really bad is about to get worse.

  I looked at him. “What do you mean? It’s over, isn’t it?”

  You never that lucky, Tukka said. Grace cursed, remember?

  Fenn reached my side, standing beside Tukka. Fenn’s eyes were amber now, flecked with brown. There was a great deal of weariness in his face and in the slope of his shoulders. Leaning into me, he put one hand over mine and another hand on my leg. The scorched cloth of my improvised toga stank of smoke so my heightened senses found his odor elusive.

  “Are you all right, Grace?”

  “I will be if we can get out of here.”

  “No, you must fix the problem you’ve caused.” The female voice came from behind me, causing me turn on top of the white fox. It was Inari and her two-fox escort. The robes she wore were grass green trimmed with lavender. Her sash was a wide band of saffron. A painted fan was tucked into it. She wore the same beaded sandals as before. Under her, the sand had turned into rich, black loam, and was starting to push up stalks of grass thick with wild flowers. Like an expanding pool, the blessed earth rippled out, consuming the sand. A wild olive tree grew behind her, providing shade. Her eyes were emerald stars as she glowered at me, her voice a high-pitched yammer. “You have poisoned this world. It might very well die.”

  I smiled sweetly at her. “Plenty of others out there, and isn’t harvesting part of nature’s cycle?”

  Fenn muffled a laugh.

  Tukka looked away like he didn’t know who I was, but he was humming the Circle of Life from the Lion King movie.

  Really, just because some people once called her a goddess, people walk on eggshells. Well, I’m done taking crap from the universe.

  “Besides,” I said, “whatever ‘poisoning’ you’re talking about isn’t my fault. Every living thing has the right to fight for their life—tooth, nail, and claw hammer. That’s all we’ve done here.”

  There was screaming in the stands from the newly arrived Hysane. They dropped to their knees, tearing at themselves.

  “It’s started,” Inari said. “Their tie to this world spills its poison into them.”

  “Complete genocide,” the white fox said.

  Inari’s gaze was drawn to the fox. A look of utter surprise washed across her face. “Argent, you’ve been here all this time?”

  “Like you didn’t know,” he muttered. “Thanks for rescuing me.”

  She stepped forward, hand reaching for his marred face. “Let me fix that for you.”

  He swung his head away. “No, thanks. I’ve gotten used to being half-blind, and my missing eye gives me something to remember you by.”

  She drew her hand back. Her lips white, pressed together in anger. The emerald glow of her eyes intensified. “Have it your way. I free you from my service.”

  “You can’t fire me,” Argent said. “I quit.”

  The two celestial foxes with Inari growled at Argent’s disrespect. He bared teeth at them in return.

  Can’t we all just get along? Tukka asked.

  “Come see what you’ve done.” Inari shifted her green-star stare to me. The light of her eyes gave her skin a sickly hue, hazing the air between us. There was sense of movement though I stood still. The arena blurred, then changed colors. I grabbed on tighter to Argent’s fur, feeling like a prisoner on a high-octane carousel. The spin-cycle stopped and the scene was different. The arena had been left far behind. We were on a mountain road overlooking a green valley. A blue snake of a river wound through it, branching into a hydra-head pattern. Beyond were low hills that shone golden-brown in the sun.

&nbs
p; “Beautiful,” I said.

  “Not for long,” Inari said.

  She was right. Even as I watched, the far hills dimmed to a greenish-black. The river turned yellow-gray. Fish floated to the surface, belly-up. The green valley withered to dust, a wave of contamination sweeping through. There was a shuddering I felt all the way up the mountain. The valley cracked. Chasms gaped open, their depths steaming with magma. Yellow fumes of sulfur clouded the lower terrain, the merciful hazing of a dying world.

  “This is going on everywhere,” Inari said. “The underground cities are caving in. Without their power to move the earth, the Hysane are dying by the thousands. Your apparition has possessed the planet’s living energy, tainting it. This is all a reflection of that change.”

  Incredulous, I stared at her. “And you expect me to fix this? How?”

  “You brought the apparition from the realm of the dead. You must take it back.”

  Stiffening my spine, I sat up straighter on Argent. “You’re joking. I don’t have the strength to pop open a can of soda right now. And like I keep telling you, it isn’t my mess to clean up. This world made war on me, and a lot of people that died in the arena. What’s happening is simple justice.”

  “So you are turning to the path of the demon fox after all,” Inari said. “When word travels and you become known as a destroyer of worlds, the fearful will come hunting you. Armies will track you from world to world, to destroy you before you grow into your full strength.” Inari wore a triumphant smile. “Are you sure you want to open yourself up to that just because you’re unwilling to temper justice with mercy?”

  “I love chaos as much as the next cosmic force,” Trickster said, “but she’d got a good point, Grace.”

  I spun to see the crow sitting balanced on a pile of rock. When did he come back?

  Fenn sighed and followed it up with a low growl. “Dad’s right, for once. You have enough problems on Earth without drawing more from other dimensions.”

  Tukka agree.

  I think you’ve got to do something about this after all, Argent said.

  I looked into the back shadows of my mind. What do you think, guys?

  Does helping mean I get to eat something? my shadow self asked. I am very, very hungry.

  Taliesina’s golden eyes were bright stars. You wanted to build a reputation so others would leave you alone, but I can see where being too formidable can be even more trouble.

  On her furry back, Motherella fanned moth wings and waved frond-like antennae that looked like feather dusters. The real question we need to ask is: “What’s in it for us?”

  I smiled. Yeah, there’s something to that. Out loud, I said, “What is in it for me. You want me to put myself on the line; the decent thing is to pay me for it.”

  Inari’s eyes widened in shock. “Why, goodness alone ought to compel you to—”

  “Aaaannnnkkkk!” I said. “Wrong answer.”

  Fenn’s eyes were amber coals. He smiled; vicious, dark humor in his face. “So, Inari, what are you offering?”

  She fell silent. Her eyes stared into infinity as she perused her options. At last a tiny twist of her lips heralded a solution. “There is a demonic stain on your back. Its wrongness calls like a dying scream.”

  “Tell me about,” I said.

  “Take care of this matter for me,” Inari said, “and I will tell you how such marks may be easily removed, by one such as yourself.”

  In the back shadows of my mind, Taliesina’s ears perked up. Her sleepy eyes flared open. A solution to Wocky? Take the deal.

  Motherella sat on Taliesina’s back, antennae bobbing. Her compound eyes whirled a happy yellow-green. Take the deal.

  The darkness they occupied stirred. Take the deal.

  I looked Inari dead in the eye. “I’ll take the deal.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Strike the world, strike a coin.

  Every hero’s worth the cost.

  The Shadow Fox bargained well

  for something found to be lost.

  —Ballad of the Shadow Fox

  Tukka

  Inari raised her hands. A flash of light blurred her, and us. The light-play cleared and I saw she’d somehow taken us back to the arena. It had suffered much in my absence. The stench of death spoiled the air. The walls were cracked. The sand under me was soured, the white replaced with rusty brown as if the scraped-over blood of past combats had become a creeping mold with a will to conquer. An influx of Hysane worked steadily, hauling dead bodies away. They dealt with their grief by throwing me murderous glances, but none of the earth dragons raised the ground against me. Maybe they couldn’t anymore with the heart of their land contaminated.

  Tukka moved closer, Fenn balanced on his back. Neither one looked happy. The Trickster remained in bird form, his red-eyed Raven incarnation squatting on Fenn’s shoulder, preening without a care.

  Must be nice to be an idiot, I thought.

  “Wait here,” Inari said. “I will speak to the Hysane. If they want their world back the way it was, they will give us what we need.” She strolled across the sand, a white fox crowding her on either side. The wall shifted as she reached it, forming an incline, then a stairway up into the stands. She at least could still manipulate the earth. That showed the difference in power between dragons and a self-styled goddess.

  I looked at the back of Argent’s head, an easy task since I was still riding him. “So, fox, you’re done with her, huh?”

  Totally.

  “Then why are you still here? What’s in it for you?”

  I’ll figure something out.

  “Grace,” Fenn’s voice was a low rumble of concern, “this is not a good idea. I know you need to power-up in order to face the monster ghost, but you don’t know what the Hysane energy may do to you. They aren’t human. Their life-force could be bad for you.”

  Tukka not like either, he said.

  “None of us here are human,” I reminded them. “Fenn, it’s no different from the time you let me drain you so I could free Shaun from the miko’s control.”

  “I didn’t like that either.”

  “I have to do this. I need to get free of Wocky. Who knows when the next chance will come?”

  “Still don’t like it,” Fenn muttered.

  I looked up as the sunlight dimmed. Yellow-brown clouds were piling higher ads I watched. Bluish jags of lightening flashed, webbing the sky. The poison in the world was spreading. The planet might still have days, maybe weeks, but the longer the problem went on, the more damage would occur, and the harder it would be to tear the monster ghost loose from the planet’s soul.

  I dropped my gaze to Inari. She was surrounded by Hysane. They knelt before her, paying strict attention to her words. I wondered if they thought her an avatar of their world—and if so, why she looked human. Whatever, their thoughts, I had a feeling the dragons would go along with my plan.

  Sure enough, moments later she headed back with an entourage of earth dragons. Their scaled faces were tight with anger, but they smelled of fear. I think they knew that if I couldn’t fix their world for them, they wouldn’t be able to carry on as they always had. In fact, they might even have to find another world.

  Inari had them form a line, while sending runners out to bring in even more of the surviving Hysane.

  I slid off Argent to face them, and Fenn came around to stand behind me—literally having my back. “You’re not kissing them, are you?” he asked.

  When I’d taken energy from Fenn, that’s how I’d done it. I was definitely changing my methodology here. I draw the line at lip-locks with lizards.

  The first dragon-man laid his hands over my outstretched palms. His eyes were hate-filled and glaring. His words were hisses. Since he didn’t have one of those throat translators on, I didn’t know what he was saying.

  Nothing good, I thought.

  From this distance, I could easily make out the fine scales of his face. He lashed his tail vigorously, forcing the gu
y behind him to stand well back. My donor bared fangs, but made no effort to attack. I had the feeling that whatever happened hereafter, the Legend of the Shadow-Fox was going to be a big thing to these people. I only hoped it would discourage them from rebuilding of places like this.

  My thought reached for him, the way I reached for the veil to the ghost world when I wanted to cross over. With my hands, I tried to feel the crawling tides of his aura. My eyes widened. No one else reacted as a glow appeared—a violet haze flecked with dull copper. “You see that?” I asked Fenn.

  “See what?”

  “Never mind.” I looked past the first Hysane donor and felt surprise. I could see their damaged auras, all the way down the line. “Let’s do this the easy way,” I called out. “Everyone grab the tail in front of you and hang on.” That should speed things along.

  Inari gave me a nod when they were ready.

  I closed my eyes and metaphysically inhaled. Their aura flowed along the circuit to the dragon-man I touched. Violet flames danced over our hands. A kind of dense mist rose from the fire, a bleeding of lifeforce. I inhaled the aura, blanching at the fierce, electric taste of burnt copper on my tongue. Like siphoned gas, his aura came, riding inertia, dragging other energies along as well as I’d hoped. My own orange haze appeared, turning muddy, an almost root beer color. I’d felt fluctuating spikes pf pleasure when drink Fenn’s lifeforce. This was more like drinking battery acid with a twist of lime.

  I shuddered but held on, letting my charge build.

  Seeing my reaction, Fenn wrapped his arms around me from behind. The golden light of his aura seeped into me, clearing my palette.

  “Careful,” I said. “I could take too much.”

  On his shoulder, Raven said, “Not likely. You have more control than you realize.”