Fox Among the Demons

by Trudie Collins

  Fox was not impressed. “You know I’m spoken for, even if I can’t be with her.”

  Komi made coffee and handed a mug to Fox. “Hear me out. I’ve kept in touch with some people who happen to know Soolin. Apparently she misses you and regrets that you two split up.”

  “Well that makes one of us.”

  “You are never going to get over Nat while you are still constantly thinking about her.”

  “I’m never going to get over her, period. And in what world would I ever want to get back with Soolin?”

  Komi grinned. “Who said anything about getting back with her? I’m talking about just using her for sex. It’s not as if she doesn’t deserve it.”

  Fox shook his head. “You know I can’t do that to a woman, not even her.”

  “Give it some thought,” Komi said. “We might be here for a while.”

  Fox shook his head once more. “Sorry Komi, I’m not like you.” He had nothing more to say on the subject so he went to his room and wondered how he was going to stop Soolin coming to see him the next day.

  “I told you it wasn’t a good idea,” Trey said when Komi rejoined his family. They had not heard any of the conversation, but the fact that Fox had shut himself away, alone, told them it had not gone well.

  “Good idea or not, I had to do something. Having to keep away from Nat is killing him and he’s not even prepared to try to move on. Meaningless sex would be good for him.”

  “What makes you say that?” Bolene asked. She loved her husband dearly, but even making love with him was something she avoided as much as she could. She didn’t enjoy it. For some reason that she could not explain, it made her feel uncomfortable, not physically but mentally. Every time he touched her she had to force herself not to cringe. She never lied to him about how she felt and he was sympathetic and understanding, never demanding more than she felt she could give. The thought of having meaningless sex with someone made her feel sick.

  Komi grinned at her. “It would be good for me.”

  ————————————-∞————————————-

  A few hours after Natasha had watched her friends travel to Yong, she returned to the hospital. She had borrowed a romance book from the library and sat in the chair next to Lucy’s bed and began to read it out loud. It wasn’t the type of book she usually enjoyed, but Lucy loved that genre and she was doing this for Lucy, not herself.

  An hour later, her throat was getting dry so she went to the canteen to get a coffee. Thinking nothing of leaving her things unattended in the room, she took only her purse with her.

  When she returned, she was startled to hear a voice coming from the room. It was soft and gentle. Whoever it was, she was reading the book that Natasha had left there.

  She cautiously walked into the room, doing her best to make no sound. The woman sitting in the chair seemed almost familiar. She was a tall slim woman with short blonde hair. Natasha was sure she had never seen her before, but her facial features rang a bell.

  The woman stopped reading for a moment and talked to Lucy as though she knew her.

  Natasha needed to know what was going on. “Who are you?” she asked, making the woman jump.

  “Hello Natasha,” she said once she had recovered from her momentary shock. “It is good to finally meet you.”

  “You haven’t answered my question.”

  When the woman smiled, Natasha knew exactly who she was. “My name is Maylan and I am your aunt.”

  Father

  “Get out,” Natasha snapped. “You have no right to be here.”

  Maylan made no attempt to get up. “I can understand your animosity, but I mean you no harm. I am here to help. I have been keeping an eye on you for a very long time. Ever since you were born, in fact. I have watched you grow up to be a remarkable young woman any aunt would be proud of.”

  “I said get out.” Natasha was not in the mood for talking to this woman. It might not be her fault that Lucy was in a coma, but she still didn’t want her anywhere near her niece. “Or do I have to call security?”

  “If you like,” Maylan said calmly. “But it won’t do any good. I am on the list of permitted visitors and have been sitting and talking with Lucy every day.”

  “How?” Natasha asked. “As her next of kin, I wrote that list.” She had begrudgingly put her human parents’ names down. While she wanted nothing to do with them, Lucy stayed in contact so it would not be fair to let her own feelings get in the way of what Lucy might want.

  “Magic,” Maylan said. “Like my sister, I am a witch. As are you.”

  Natasha shivered and hugged herself. It was her being a witch that meant she could not be with Fox so everyone at the hotel had agreed to never mention it in front of her. It was the first time she had been called a witch since she had first discovered her true parentage.

  Maylan saw her reaction and her face softened. “If there was anything I could do to enable you and Fox to be together, I would do it.”

  “How do you know about Fox?”

  “I know everything about you. As I said, I have been keeping an eye on you. I know that he and the Santash family have gone to Yong, taking Lukine with them, which is why I have chosen to reveal myself.”

  Despite not wanting to be anywhere near this woman, Natasha wanted to know more.

  “Why? If you claim you mean me no harm, why did you need to wait till I was alone?”

  “You already know the answer to that question. You must have already been thinking along the same lines. How did your mother know where to find you? There is only one answer. Someone at the hotel told her.”

  “Unless you did.”

  Maylan laughed, but it was a laugh full of sorrow. “My sister and I are no longer in contact. She suspects I helped her husband flee Yong with you and she is right. I did what I had to do to protect you. As a result, I can no longer return to Yong. As soon as Joonie found out I knew the truth about the reason for your disappearance, she cast a spell on me that I cannot break. Not knowing that you were here, she banished me to Earth. The ‘doors’ no longer work for me. I can’t step into them. She thought she was getting rid of me. Little did she know that this is where I wanted to be.”

  Natasha wanted to know more, but felt uncomfortable having the conversation in front of Lucy. “Do you want to grab a coffee or something? We should find somewhere better to talk.”

  “Are you feeling brave?”

  “Why?”

  “Are you prepared to come to my home. There is someone there who wants to meet you and can explain things better than I can.”

  Natasha tensed. “Who?”

  “Your father.”

  Natasha didn’t relax. “And why would I want to meet the man who abandoned me with strangers?”

  “Because you don’t know the full story.”

  Natasha was unsure what to do. She had no reason to trust this woman who was claiming to be her aunt, but, so far, she had done nothing to harm Lucy. She took her communicator out of her bag, but just stared at it. She longed to talk to Fox. She agreed with Maylan that someone at the hotel must be in touch with her mother, but it couldn’t be Fox. Nothing anyone could do or say would ever make her believe that he would betray her. But who was it? She had become good friends with them all.

  She couldn’t contact Fox. How could she tell him that one of his family had helped Joonie poison Lucy?

  She put her communicator back in her bag. “Alright,” she said. “I’ll meet my father. But he had better have a good explanation.”

  Maylan volunteered to drive Natasha, but she refused the offer; she preferred to have her own transport in case she needed to leave in a hurry. Maylan drove slowly, so Natasha could easily follow. She led her out of the city and into the suburbs. She turned into the driveway of a small cottage and Natasha pulled in behind her.

  It had a small garden out the front, with a neatly trimmed lawn surrounded by rose bushes. A narrow path led to the front door, which was st
anding open. Natasha recognised the man who was standing in the doorway. His hair had turned from grey to white and he had shaved off his beard, but it was unmistakeably the man who had handed her over to her human parents in exchange for their dying daughter.

  Natasha stopped half way up the path, unsure if she wanted to approach him or not. Upon seeing her, his eyes opened wide in surprise. Then they began to brim with tears. She saw him say her name; he spoke too quietly for her to hear him. He took a step forward then stopped. He was as uncertain as she was.

  Then he ran forward and wrapped his arms around her. She did nothing to stop him. He hugged her tightly, but only for a moment. She made no effort to hug him back.

  He stepped back. “We have a lot to talk about,” he said, then turned his back on her and went into the house, closely followed by Maylan.

  For a moment, Natasha stayed in the garden. She couldn’t get a handle on her emotions. She was feeling anger toward the man who had deserted her, yet excited to be finally meeting the man who had helped to create her. She was sad for the lost years that they could have spent together, yet scared to enter the house and find out the truth about why she had been left on Earth.

  “Pull yourself together,” she said and forced herself to move.

  She followed the hallway past a couple of closed doors to the kitchen at the end, from where she could hear voices and the sound of running water.

  “Please, take a seat,” her father said when he spotted her loitering in the doorway. “The kettle’s on. Tea or coffee?”

  “Tea please.” She entered the kitchen and sat down on one of the wooden seats at the table. There was a lot she wanted to know and she didn’t know where to begin. She decided to start with an easy question. “What do I call you?”

  “Zem will do,” he said. “I can’t imagine it will be easy calling me dad.” His easy-going manner made Natasha relax a little. “I suppose you want to know why I haven’t been in your life until now.”

  Natasha nodded. While father and daughter talked, Maylan made the tea. She stayed in the kitchen, but didn’t join in the conversation.

  “What I have to tell you,” Zem said, “is going to be hard for you to accept, but I promise you I will tell you nothing but the truth. I didn’t steal you away from your mother; I had to take you in order to save you.”

  He went on to explain that throughout the pregnancy, Joonie always referred to her child as ‘my son’. Whenever Zem brought up the possibility that it would be a girl, she always assured him that it wouldn’t be then changed the subject. Zem didn’t care what sex his child was, as long as it was healthy, but Joonie became obsessed with having a boy.

  Unlike on Earth, Yong had no scanning equipment to see inside the womb and no spell had been created that could determine the sex, so until the child was born, nobody could be certain if it would be a boy or not.

  “I never questioned why Joonie didn’t want anyone around to help with the birth, other than me,” Zem said. “Not until later. The birth was relatively easy, but I was worried about what Joonie’s reaction would be when I told her that she had given birth to a beautiful baby girl. She showed no sign of being disappointed. Only later did I figure out why.”

  Zem paused and it seemed as though he was struggling to find the right words. “I should have known that she was just acting, but I was so caught up with the joy of being a father that I didn’t see any of the signs. You were only two days old when I discovered she was working on a spell. I didn’t usually go into her workroom so she didn’t bother to hide the evidence of what she was doing. I have no idea why I entered the room that day, but something, some sort of instinct, told me I should. I read her spell book. It took me a while to decipher it, but it soon became clear that she was putting together a spell to change your sex. She wanted a boy and nothing else mattered. She was prepared to risk your life to make you into the son she longed for.”

  Zem had been staring down at his hands as he spoke, but now he looked up. “I had no choice. I had to get you away from her. The spell had to be cast on seven consecutive days for it to work and I had no idea if she had already started. I knew she would not let me take you away if I confronted her, so I went to see Maylan. I told her everything. I was expecting to be laughed at, but she believed me. She told me what to do and made all of the arrangements.”

  Here Maylan took over. “From a young age, Joonie talked about her plans for her son, when she had one. She didn’t want a girl, because a girl would be a witch, whereas a boy would not inherit her magic. Magic runs strong in our family and she didn’t want to give birth to someone who might, one day, become more powerful than she was. When Zem came to me, I had no doubt that he was telling me the truth. I told him to go home and wait until she was asleep, then he should bring you to me.”

  “I did as instructed,” Zem said, “all the while hoping and praying that Joonie would not wake up. I got you to Maylan, who had arranged for me to go to Earth, under an assumed identity. The doorkeeper was a good friend of hers and agreed to let nobody know that a man had gone through the ‘door’ with a newborn baby.”

  “I had a friend on Earth,” Maylan said, “and I let Zem know how to contact her. I could not risk going with him, just in case Joonie came to see me when she realised he had gone.”

  “Maylan had already been in touch with this friend so she was expecting me. I have no idea how, but she had tracked down a couple with a daughter who was dying and she was confident that, with a little persuasion, they would agree to a swap.”

  “Hold on,” Natasha said. “Wait a minute. What do you mean by ‘persuasion’?”

  “She gave me an enchanted pipe. The smoke would make them more susceptible to suggestion.”

  Natasha was horrified. “You enchanted them into giving away their child?”

  “No. I just made them listen to my proposal. The decision was completely theirs. I just needed the magic to get into the house and not be thrown out.”

  Natasha wasn’t sure she believed him. Almost as if he was reading her mind, Zem said, “I don’t expect you to believe me, but I assure you that the magic smoke worked for a moment only. By the time I had finished speaking, its effects would have worn off. You probably don’t want to hear this, but your Earth parents made up their own minds, uninfluenced by magic.”

  Natasha wasn’t sure what to believe, but then she realised that she didn’t care. Her so-called parents had lied to her when given the opportunity to tell the truth, which, in her eyes, indicated their guilt. Knowing what really happened that night didn’t change the way she felt. “Carry on,” she said.

  Zem took a deep breath. “After the deed had been done, I returned to Maylan’s friend and between us we took care of the child until she passed away. There was nothing that could have been done to save her, not even using magic. I was ready to return to Yong and face the consequences of my actions, but Maylan came to Earth and persuaded me not to. If I was to keep you safe, I needed to keep away from Joonie. I couldn’t risk her being able to find a way of extracting information from me.”

  “Why did you do it?” Natasha asked. “Why give me away? Why not bring me up on Earth?”

  “I thought about it, but decided you were better off not knowing who, and what, you are. Giving you away was the hardest thing I have ever had to do.” He sounded sincere, but Natasha didn’t know this man; he could just be a good actor.

  “I loved your mother,” he continued. “Very much. Finding out what sort of person she was almost broke my heart. What sort of evil monster would want to put a dangerous spell on their own child? It’s amazing how quickly love can turn to hate.”

  The silence that filled the room was broken by Maylan. “When I became stranded here, I found your father. He was still in touch with my friend, so it wasn’t difficult. We decided to stay out of your life and watch you grow up from a distance. We wanted to be around in case you ever needed us.”

  Zem smiled. “We never wanted you to know anything abo
ut Yong or demons, so you can imagine how distressed we were when we found out you had befriended Komi.”

  “So you knew I had started seeing Fox.” Both nodded. “Yet you didn’t warn me. You allowed me to fall in love with someone I can never be with.”

  “We didn’t know,” Zem said. “We had no idea who he was or that his father was a wizard. We only found out by overhearing conversations, by which time it was too late.”

  “What conversations?” Natasha asked. “Have you been spying on me? How? I know you people can make yourselves invisible, but I have a necklace with the counter spell.”

  Zem and Maylan both had the decency to look embarrassed. “Most demons use enchanted bracelets to make themselves invisible when they go on a ‘kill’. I can alter the spell so necklaces with the counter-spell won’t work. I would like to teach you how.”

  Anger surged through Natasha. “Why? So I can become like you, spying on people and invading their privacy.”

  Maylan remained calm. “No. If you will let me, I would like to teach you everything I know. You have the potential to be a very powerful witch and I want to help you unleash that power.”

  “Why?”

  Maylan’s reply was the last thing Natasha was expecting to hear.

  “To fight your mother, of course.”

  Spell Book

  Unable to stop himself, Fox contacted Natasha that night. He told her about his appointment the next day and the plans the others had to track down the spell book. He didn’t mention Soolin’s visit or the reason Komi arranged it. Natasha, in turn, didn’t speak about meeting her father or agreeing to be trained by Maylan. Neither of them voiced what their forced separation was doing to them or how they hated being apart.

  The next morning, the demons all headed off in different directions. Lukine went to the local branch of the wizards’ training centre in order to ask if anyone had manged to find a cure for zantrane that he had not heard about. He was not hopeful, but there was no harm in trying.