“No. I’ve a beast too.” I thought of the mothman DNA mixed into mine, the wings that sprouted from my back every few weeks. When they first showed up, I’d had Fenn rip them off. The next time, I’d had surgery. Fox didn’t bother me, but as a mammal, I wasn’t comfortable with insect parts. That felt less human, like too much was being lost. “Fenn—” I stepped up to him, grabbing his shirt, not letting him run from questions I wanted answered. “In that other place back there, more of you went coyote than normal. If you want to, you can go all coyote, right?”
“Well, uh.”
“You don’t want to. You’re not that comfortable with the kachina side of yourself, are you?”
“No.”
“But you took on that extra bit of change to reach me, to be there for me.”
His voice grew harsh, gruff, as if man and beast were speaking together, united on this one thing, “I’d die for you. I have before.”
And wasn’t that a surprise, that proximity let his dead body borrow enough of my lifeforce to reboot his own, healing him. That he could use me this way had made me doubt him, that and overhearing him talk to his dad about how useful having a kitsune around could be. I’d distanced myself from him for a while, but when he’d fought the Egyptian hell-beast Am-heh for me—summoned to earth last Halloween by ISIS—I’d relented in giving him the cold shoulder. I still wasn’t sure that was wise. So many people wanted to own me; I wanted someone around who simply cared for me, no hidden agendas.
“I try to avoid Dad’s old stomping grounds,” Fenn said. Time runs funny over there, not always linear. And you saw what it did to you.”
I stared at him blankly.
He explained, “That shadow force you used to bring us back to Earth, I don’t think you could have unleashed it anywhere else. You’re still years away from growing into the depths of your true power.”
I thought of Shaun, musing out loud, “Years away from anything I want.”
It was like Fenn could guess my thoughts, “Grace, Shaun keeps his distance because you’re jail bait. It’ll be two years before he lets himself look at you any other way, if then. Meanwhile, he’s not going to keep it in his pants. Guys are guys. You’re setting yourself up to be hurt. As for Onyx, if you can’t accept your shadow-man blood, how are you going to embrace someone else who’s living darkness? I may not be as exciting as some, but I will never hurt you.”
I wanted to believe that, but… What had his dad said when Fenn arrived?
“About time you got here.”
Fenn’s coming hadn’t caught his dad by surprise. Fenn had been expected. Could the whole thing have been a trick, something planned to encourage me to latch onto Fenn in the first place? I really didn’t want to believe that, but I couldn’t entirely rule it out. I couldn’t just ask him flat out either. I’d wind up hurting a friend, or getting a lie from someone pretending to be a friend. Neither would help me.
Why is love so damned complicated? Maybe I should think about becoming a warrior-nun. Are there any Shou-lin temples in Texas?
Grace! There you are! The voice in my head pulled me around. I saw Tukka and some of his buddies bounding down the hill, coming out onto the flat rock. He’d looked better in my dream, eating dream chocolate. In the real world, he couldn’t have any. Chocolate had turned out to be addictive, weakening him dangerously over time. That was how the miko had managed to capture him, and why I’d gone on a mission for Virgil to get my best friend back.
All two tons of his teal blue, leathery self stopped just a romp away. His lavender-pearl eyes drank me in.
“I always thought fu dogs were smaller,” Fenn said.
Tukka sniffed at Fenn with mild disdain, then turned luminescent eyes on me. Grace should have stayed in hospital. Tukka worried. We tracked you down.
He could do that, stepping in and out of the human world, the ghost world, or people’s dreams, but the Trickster’s world had apparently thrown him since he hadn’t found me there.
So how had Fenn? The thought bothered me.
Tukka noticed the brand on my arm. We get rid of that soon, if I have to bite off demon’s head.
That drew Fenn’s attention to it. “That’s not just some weird temp tattoo? Grace, when did you get a demon brand?”
I’d been keeping it under wraps—or rather, under long sleeves and sweaters. The fall season had helped me out there.
“Long story. Can we save it for later?” We were in the open, exposed. “How about you show me where we’re spending the night so we can get under cover? Besides, I’m hungry. Changing into a fox and back, getting kidnapped by the Trickster, and escaping across numerous dimensions makes a girl hungry.”
Fenn nodded once with adamant decision as he shuffled priorities in his head. “Right, follow me.”
Tukka huffed. Grace follow clan. We protect our own. He and three of his people surrounded me, nudging Fenn back.
He’d hopped smartly to keep his toes from accidentally getting crushed. Instead of getting angry, he smirked and waved the fu dogs on. “Sure, lead the way. Knock yourselves out. As long as Grace is kept safe, I can watch for people and things skulking about.”
The fu dogs retreated the way they’d come, herding me along an uphill trail toward the camp’s Admin Building and the surrounding cabins. My yellow-white sundress was not usual autumn wear. Fortunately, due to my kitsune power to travel the ghost realm, I wasn’t very sensitive to cold. I’d had to hide that growing up, taking clues from those around me. It was an odd relief to be surrounded by people at HPI that didn’t expect normal from me all the time. The same was true for being here with Fenn and the boys.
Leaving the hillside, we stepped up onto a forest plateau. The rich smell of pine was a cheerful hug. We passed several outlying cabins, stone huts really, each large enough for about ten kids. Tight accommodations for fu dogs. We took a wide, flagstone trail toward the Admin Building, ignoring dirt trails to various cabins that I hadn’t seen on my last, rather hectic visit. Soon, we reached the main structure. Just as I remembered, the three-story lodge was serviced by a gravel drive. An empty drive. The place had a long-shut-down air to it. Virgil’s people had done a good job of repairing the damage, and disposing of all the pet cemetery zombies we’d fought here.
There was no smoke from the chimneys and no lights turned on in the ground floor’s lounge, or the adjoining mess hall. The upstairs windows were dark, square eyes keeping their secrets. Last time I’d been here with Ryan—God rest his traitorous mothman heart—there had been soldier-of-fortune types in camouflage, helmets, and assorted weaponry casually leaning against the wood posts of the front porch. Federal Marshals had been scattered elsewhere on the property, looking for trouble. Trouble had come, and people had died.
I was glad this time no normal humans were at risk. Fenn and Tukka wanted to protect me and knew the risks. They could handle a lot by way of trouble. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to worry about them.
We went up onto the porch. Tukka ordered one of the fu dogs to take position there. The rest went inside with Fenn and me. I saw why a fu dog was needed on the porch. One of them had accessed the locked building by kicking in the door, breaking its lock and splintering the door jamb.
Fenn muttered, “If you’d just have waited, I could have picked the lock.”
“You can do that?” Without waiting for an answer, I fired off another question, “Can you teach me to do that?”
He flicked on a light switch and the lounge lit up in golden tones, as did the hall past an office, leading to the kitchen where I’d first met Shaun. Those memories drew me, that and the promise of food. Virgil had stocked the pantry last time. With any luck, the food would still be there, just needing to be cooked.
I also remembered a landline on the kitchen wall. I needed to check in with both my mothers. They’d be worried to death after my kidnapping from the hospital. I was a little worried too, remembering how I’d left my human mother sprawled on the hospital floor,
gassed like so many others. I felt a sudden flood of guilt at not having checked up on her before this, even though I knew Fenn would have told me if something really bad had happened to someone close to me.
I turned on the kitchen light and found the phone. I knew both of my mothers’ cell phone numbers by memory. Question was—who got called first? Whoever lost out was bound to go all drama-queen on me.
Well, might as well piss off both of them. I called Shaun’s number instead, remembering too late about Fenn’s heightened hearing. He’d know, even from the other room. And he’d be pissed off as well. Wonderful. I am so cursed. Why don’t I ever think these things through?
Shaun answered on the second ring. “Hello?”
“Hey, Shaun, it’s me.”
“Grace, where are you? Are you all right?”
“For now. Fenn and Tukka are looking after me. I probably won’t be able to get back for awhile. I’m where you and I first met.” Somehow, I didn’t want to use names over the phone. Some wanna-be spy part of me was being careful. “So how’s Cassie and, uh, mom doing?”
“As you’d expect, they’ve been freaking out. I think they’ve actually been competing to see who can be the most freaked out, if you know what I mean. I, uh, just a minute. Cassie is here.”
I could easily imagine her ripping the phone out of Shaun’s hand, nearly taking a finger or two at the same time. Her voice exploded in my ear, making me wince and pull the phone away so I wouldn’t be deafened. “Grace, baby, are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
“I’m fine. I got away, and I’m being looked after by Fenn, Tukka, and some of his boys. When can you get here?”
“Where’s here?” she asked. “I can leave right away.”
I heard my human mom yelling in the background, “Not without me!”
I hurried to end the call while I could do so cleanly. “Shaun knows. Ask him. Listen, I gotta go. See you soon. Bye.”
“Grace, I—”
I hung up, sighing heavily, and realized that both Tukka and Fenn were staring into the kitchen, having listened in. Fenn said, “You all right, Grace?”
I nodded mutely.
Tukka said, Any food in here?
Fenn muttered, “That was going to be my next question.”
I smiled. “I’ll check. If worst comes to worst, I can call Shaun back and have him stop on the way to pick up an armload of pizzas.”
Two arm loads, Tukka said. Help me forget about sweet, yummy goodness of chocolate.
He noticed my glare and added, That I no longer want. Tukka tough, strong. No monkey on Tukka’s back. He turned his head though, as if to make sure.
Hiding a sad smile, I turned back toward the kitchen. My glance slid across the window set in the kitchen’s backdoor. The sunlight framed a shadow that I thought I recognized: a deathly pale face with a sloppy mane of red curls, clothing smudged by dirt. The shadow moved closer, placing a hand flat against the window. Since the surface stopped the hand, and this was daylight, chances were low this was a ghost. Ryan, the half-morphed mothman who’d tried to rape me. The mothman who’d force-fed me his tongue—until I bit it off and choked, gagging on his blood. Here was the traitor I’d left for dead after caving in his face and snapping his neck. Silent, he stared at me with big compound eyes that whirled with red and yellow.
Reaching my limit, I screamed like a girl.
FOURTEEN
“Angels weep at my grave as I dare awaken,
protesting all that was not lost
when only hope was taken.”
—If I Should Wake Before I Die
Elektra Blue
Fenn rushed in and swung me toward him, away from the horror at the back door. His arms encircled me and he dragged me to the side as Tukka burst into the kitchen, slammed the table and chairs out of his way, and galloped through the back door, shattering it and part of the jamb as he plunged outside. Waves of hate had rolled off Tukka. I’d have seen their actual color, but I wasn’t in the ghost realm. His growl started audibly, but quickly sunk to subsonic levels; a throb felt in the bones, a stir of nausea in the stomach.
Then I realized why. This wasn’t because I was threatened. That had been happening since I was a kid, too curious to leave the ghost realm alone. No, this was about Ryan being a mothman, mortal enemy to dogs everywhere. Mothmen ate dogs. No mothman was going to eat a fu dog, but still…
Another fu dog charged in from the hall, thundering through the kitchen.
I pulled free of Fenn, turning.
The fu dog ran out the ravaged door, then the third one passed through, hurtling outside. The last fu dog—stationed on the front porch—never showed, holding position with great discipline.
“Grace,” Fenn pulled me back around to face him, “what did you see? Why did you scream?”
“It was Ryan.”
Fenn stared.
“I’m not crazy,” I said.
Fenn continued to stare.
“You know we never did recover his body,” I said.
“Well, I suppose he might have been brought back to life somehow.”
I frowned at him. “What? You think you’re the only one who can pull off that stunt?”
“Yeah, me and my dad.”
“You better think again, kachina-boy.”
“Not my strong suit. I’m a man of action. Speaking of which,” he gave me a push toward the hall, “go around to the front porch and stay with the fu dog on guard.”
His push got me across the threshold. I stopped in the hall, turning back. “What about you?”
“I want to see what’s left of Ryan when Tukka gets through not-playing-well-with-others. Ryan came back from the grave once. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen again. And if there’s someone else out there using Ryan against you, maybe I can sniff them out. Though no one should have known we were coming here.”
I wanted to go with Fenn, but he’d put on his tough-guy-looking-out-for-my-lady face. No arguing with that. I went away from the kitchen door, but not into the front lounge area. Alone in the hall, I pulled on the veil, crossing over to the ghost realm. The usual electric tingle stirred the fine hairs of my arms and at the nape of my neck. My stomach fluttered as gravity slackened, increasing the power of my muscles, like a human suddenly transported to Mars. Gray appeared as if the world had been magically turned to graphite, but my orange-haze aura blazed up around me, a visible reminder that this was not my world, though I’d trespassed here all my life.
I hopped toward the kitchen doorway. My aura kept the wall solid as my foot hit there, and I changed course. Floating into the kitchen, I found it empty. Unseen, I went outside, following Fenn like a ghost. He should have remembered I’m not big on doing what I’m told. He stood there, having nothing to do. Off the porch and under a pine, Tukka had one of Ryan’s zombie arms pinned down with a paw. Another fu dog had a paw on Ryan’s stomach, pressing down firmly. A third fu dog growled like a diesel motor, glaring down, drooling on Ryan’s face while baring sharp, white teeth.
Ryan didn’t struggle. He didn’t seem to mind the indignity of being a prisoner. His face lacked expression. His lips stayed closed, thankfully hiding the remnant of the prehensile tongue I’d gnawed off weeks ago. Eeeeww. I still dreamed about that sometimes, waking up in a cold sweat.
I launched from the edge of the back porch, going all flying squirrel in the lesser gravity. Fenn never looked at me as I drifted past him, landing near Tukka. Oddly, the fu dogs all turned their heads, registering my presence. Usually, I met Tukka in the ghost world or a dream. I couldn’t remember us being like this, on different sides of the veil. I hadn’t realized how sharp his senses were. He nodded a greeting, and turned his attention back to Ryan.
On closer examination, Ryan wasn’t looking too hot. His pasty gray skin gave no evidence of rot, but no sign of blood flow either. His wings had rips that hadn’t mended. His nose was crooked, broken, showing the damage of our last encounter. I was only glad he wasn’t all gaping w
ounds, and a wormy shambler like some zombie from a horror movie. I stepped past Tukka.
Ryan’s head shifted. His gray, compound eyes seemed to stare at me. I couldn’t see their red-yellow whirl, then I could. A smoky haze of black flame wreathed him. His body ghosted up through the fu dogs holding him down. They stared around, spinning, losing track of him. His wings fluttered. He came right at me. His mouth opened and his ruined tongue slashed about.
Tukka popped into the ghost realm, his teal blue coat shining with brighter light. His eyes blazed lavender as he caught sight of Ryan closing in on me.
Grace, watch out!
I had a split second to decide between crossing back to the human world, or dealing with Ryan myself. I gripped an imaginary sword hilt, pooling aura in my palms. A sword of orange fire with a core of obsidian shadow jutted up. The sword revealed both sides of my kitsune and shadow-man nature, but revealed nothing of the taint to my DNA from the mothman fluids Ryan had once pumped into my bloodstream and down my throat.
He fluttered—moth like—into my flame, paying no heed to the danger of my sword. The sword dissolved tissue, sinking into his shoulder, becoming embedded. No grimace of pain distorted Ryan’s eerie blandness. A film of frost spread out to whiten his whole torso. His wings beat as if in slow motion. He reached for me with the arm closest to his wounded shoulder, and the whole arm came off with a brittle snap, languidly drifting to the old pine needles littering the ground. That, too, caused him no distress.
The lights aren’t really on ‘cause no one’s home, I decided. This was simply an unthinking mess I’d made. I needed to clean it up, and put Ryan to rest for good.
I put a foot against his chest and passed on enough aura so he’d be solid before kicking him back a ways. My sword came out of him. I crouched in a guarded stance, getting ready to leap and take his head off in one swift pass.
But a winged shape fell out of the sky, bringing an awful stench. Wocky! The demon crumbled at the edges, going blurry, smoky, as he plunged inside Ryan, taking possession. The demon’s black flame strengthened Ryan’s smudgy energy. His compound eyes went from a red and yellow whirling to a solid, ink-filled black.
Destiny's Child (Kitsune series Book 3) Page 10
