Fox Among the Demons

by Trudie Collins

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  “What would you like?”

  “I don’t know.” Fox grimaced. He had the feeling that he was going to hear that sentence a lot during the evening.

  He searched through the kitchen cupboards and found enough ingredients to make a semi-decent soup and there was fresh bread in the pantry. While he cooked, he talked to Natasha, bringing up things to test her memory, hoping to get a reaction. He failed.

  He talked about when they first got together, the time they danced at her line dancing class, telling Komi about their relationship. She remembered everything, except how she had felt.

  He went on to the time she had flu and he had cuddled her while reading. He was already in love with her at that point, though she didn’t know it at the time. He spoke of how he had felt when she got the splinter of kadar wood in her and she almost died and how he wanted to kill Komi for putting her in danger. None of it had any effect on her.

  She was able to hold a proper conversation, as long as Fox steered clear of anything to do with her feelings or opinions. She stuck to facts, nothing more. She told him where they had to go in the morning and seemed to have no problem with him accompanying her.

  “We have to leave early in the morning,” Fox said a few hours later. “We should go to bed.”

  “Alright.”

  “Can I stay with you?” He needed to be by her side while she was in this condition.

  “If you want. I don’t care where you sleep.” Her words hurt. They hurt a lot.

  “Go and get ready. I’ll be there soon.” As soon as he was alone, he sat down and put his head in his hands. He wanted to scream. He hated seeing Natasha like this. He gave Komi an update then braced himself for the night ahead. He knew it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  When he went to the bedroom Jamit had given her to use, his mouth dropped. She was lying on the bed, naked.

  “You should really put some clothes on,” he forced himself to say.

  “Why? It’s hot in here.”

  Fox didn’t have the energy to explain why he didn’t want to have to spend the night next to her naked body or how difficult it would be for him to keep his hands off her.

  He stripped down to his underwear, got under the covers and placed his arm around her. She didn’t try to move away. Then he began to talk. He told her why he had lied to her and how badly betraying her affected him, but, given the choice, he would make the same decisions again. He poured his heart out to her and begged for her understanding, if not her forgiveness. He spoke of how devastated he was when she said she wanted him to stay away from her and how much seeing her like this hurt him. When he finished, he closed his eyes and went to sleep.

  Natasha stayed awake for a while longer. A tear trickled down her face, but she had no idea why. She was still pondering this when sleep took her.

  ————————————-∞————————————-

  They were up before the sun and Fox gave instructions to the ‘hover’ car to take them to where Natasha needed to go. They ended up far from civilisation, at the base of a mountain. In the car’s headlights, there was no sign of a cave.

  “Are you sure we are in the right place?” Fox asked.

  “Yes. We are just too early.”

  It was a warm morning, so they sat on the ground and waited for the sun to appear. They didn’t speak. So far Natasha had shown no sign that she had listened to anything that Fox had said the previous night. He didn’t even know if she had heard him.

  Waking up next to her had been a joy, and a form of torture. For a while he could pretend that the last few months had never happened, that they were still a couple and blissfully in love. Then she spoke and reality came crashing down.

  The sun began to rise. Natasha turned to face the mountain and as soon as its rays hit the rock, she began to speak words that Fox did not understand. The rock face shimmered, then disappeared, revealing a large cavern, the inside of which looked more like an apartment than a cave.

  The floor was carpeted throughout. There was a small kitchenette at one end, along with a two-man dining table. One side contained bookshelves, full to overflowing with books, an armchair and a two-seater sofa. The other side of the cavern had a bed, bedside table and dressing table. A figure lay in the bed, sleeping.

  Unsure what to do, Fox waited for Natasha to move. She was looking around the cavern, taking everything in. Her expressionless face told him nothing of what she was thinking.

  When she walked into the cavern, he followed, silently praying that the entrance would not disappear once they were inside. She went over to the bed and shook the sleeping figure.

  When Jamit had talked about his sister, Fox had been expecting to find a grown woman, but this was a girl. She looked no more than fifteen years of age. Her eyes slowly opened and when she saw Natasha, she smiled. “Hello Nat,” she said in a soft musical voice. “I have been waiting for you.”

  “Who are you?” Fox asked. She was a pretty little thing, with long blonde hair and blue eyes. She was thin, on the verge of being malnourished.

  “My name is Sansa Diwoka. And you are Fox.”

  “How do you know my name?”

  She smiled and her whole face lit up. She was going to break more than a few hearts when she was older. “I am a seer. By touching someone, I know their past and their present. I can even see a number of possible futures. That is why I am being kept prisoner here. When Nat touched me, I learned everything about her, including who you are.”

  Natasha watched the exchange without speaking.

  “How can you be Jamit’s sister? You look too young?”

  “Seer’s don’t age the same as normal demons. I am closer to fifty than forty.”

  There was much more Fox wanted to ask, but one question was at the top of the list. “Why did she have to have her emotions taken away?”

  “The spell only works if it is completely emotionless. Have you ever tried to speak without letting any emotion into your voice? It’s impossible.”

  “Will she be alright?” He was aware that he was being rude by talking about Natasha as though she wasn’t there, but from a certain point of view, she wasn’t.

  “Yes,” Sansa said. “I can restore her emotions, but I’m not sure she wants me to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She is no longer in pain.”

  Sansa was right. Getting her emotions back was going to hurt Natasha a lot. Did he have the right to do that to her? But what was the alternative? She couldn’t spend the rest of her life feeling nothing. “Do it anyway.”

  Sansa took Natasha’s hand and led her to the bed. “You might want to sit down for this.” Natasha obeyed. Sansa placed her hand on Natasha’s forehead and closed her eyes. She didn’t speak. She was not a witch so she wasn’t casting a spell, but whatever she did, worked. Natasha started screaming.

  Fox ran to her side. He tried to take her hand, but she pushed him away. “She’s not going to be able to cope with this,” Sansa said. “She is feeling too much, too quickly.”

  “Do something,” Fox said. Sansa returned her hand to Natasha’s forehead and closed her eyes once more. The screaming stopped. Natasha’s eyes rolled into the back of her head and she collapsed backward onto the bed.

  “What have you done?” Fox cried out.

  “Put her to sleep, nothing more. We should leave. My captors usually only visit me once a week, but it is best to get away from here, just in case. Give me a few minutes to get dressed.”

  She went through a doorway that Fox had not noticed. The sound of running water reached his ears and he assumed that it led to a bathroom.

  Sansa was not gone long and was dressed in a pair of loose trousers and a short sleeved top when she returned. Her hair had been tied back at the nape of her neck. It made her look older, but not by many years.

  Fox picked up Natasha and cradled her against him as he followed Sansa out of the cavern. He place
d her in the back of the vehicle and climbed in beside her. As Sansa entered, she brushed against Fox and gasped.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I will tell you once we are on our way,” she said.

  Fox told the ‘hover’ car Jamit’s address then settled back into his seat. He put his arm around Natasha’s sleeping body and pulled her close to him. He noticed that Sansa was smiling at him as he did so.

  “Speak,” he said once the car started moving.

  “You believe that you and Nat cannot be together,” she said. It was a statement that he could not argue against, but she made it sound like an opinion instead of fact.

  “We can’t,” he said. “She is a witch and I am a wizard. One of us will kill the other unless we keep apart.”

  Once more Sansa smiled at him. “You’re not a wizard. I saw your past the moment I touched you. You are not your father’s son. Your mother had an affair and you are the result. I have no idea who your real father is, but I do know he is not a wizard. You have no magic in you.”

  Fox didn’t know what to say. He wanted desperately to believe what Sansa was saying, but he couldn’t let himself do so. If it turned out that she was wrong, having hope then having it taken away would destroy him.

  “Are you certain?” he asked.

  “I am never wrong.”

  Fox kissed the top of Natasha’s head. “Thank you,” he said. The words were inadequate for the gratitude he felt, but he didn’t know what else to say.

  The rest of the journey was made in silence. Fox kept kissing Natasha’s head and stroking her face, but she didn’t wake. Jamit was at his house when they arrived and said a hasty thank you to Fox before bundling Sansa into his vehicle and taking her to the safe house he had arranged for her.

  Fox retrieved Natasha’s bag from Jamit’s house then instructed the car to take them home. He had no intention of letting her out of his sight unless there was someone he trusted looking after her.

  Everyone was in the house when he arrived. “What’s happened to her?” Trey asked when Fox lifted Natasha out of the vehicle.

  “Nothing for us to worry about. She’s just sleeping.”

  “Will she be alright?”

  “Yes,” Fox said confidently. “She is going to be just fine. We both are.”

  Reunion

  When Natasha woke, she found herself in a strange room. She felt drained, physically and emotionally. She wanted to go home. She wanted to leave Yong and never come back. She wanted to return to her father and Maylan, but more than anything else, she wanted to see Lucy, to hold her in her arms and never let her go.

  Looking around, she decided she must be in Trey’s room, based on the clothes scattered on the floor. The picture of Lucy on the bedside table more or less confirmed her thinking. She was glad she hadn’t been put in Fox’s room, the room where she had found out how much he had betrayed her.

  She needed to pee so left the room in search of a bathroom. She heard voices coming from somewhere downstairs and hoped the bathroom wasn’t down there. She wasn’t ready to face anyone yet.

  When she had taken care of her needs, she returned to Trey’s room and picked up her bag. She intended to leave as soon as she could, but she wanted to know what had happened to Sansa so she couldn’t just create a ‘door’ and disappear. Also, there was Trey to think of. He wanted to see Lucy and she had to decide if she was going to help him.

  The stairs creaked as she went down them, alerting Komi to the fact that she was awake. When she reached the bottom, he held out his arms to hug her, but she stepped out of his reach. “Don’t touch me,” she said. She didn’t know for sure that he had been party to Fox’s deceit, but would assume he was until she heard otherwise.

  A hurt look crossed his face, but he quickly recovered. “I’ll make you a coffee,” he said. “The others are in the lounge. Fox is−” he started to say, but Natasha interrupted him.

  “I don’t care where Fox is,” she said.

  “You will when you’ve heard everything that has happened.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  Komi headed to the kitchen and Natasha entered the lounge. Bolene sprang from her seat to greet her but Natasha held up a warning hand. “Don’t come any closer. I’m only here to find out what happened to Sansa. I presume Fox has told you everything.”

  Bolene saw the warning look Trey was directing at her, so said nothing and returned to her seat. “Come and sit here,” Trey said, “and I will tell you all you need to know.”

  Of those present, Trey was the only one Natasha still trusted. She sat beside him and he took her hand. “How are you feeling?”

  “Completely washed out,” she said. “I want to go home and put everything behind me. I want to forget I ever came here. I want to wipe the hotel and everyone who lives there, other than you, from my mind.”

  “You can’t be serious,” Bolene said.

  “I am. I never want to see any of you again. Not only did you do nothing to help Lucy when she was dying, you actively prevented me from doing so. That is something I can never forgive.”

  “Fox made us−” Bolene said, but she was not given the chance to finish her sentence.

  “Fox didn’t make you do anything,” Natasha snapped. “He made his decisions and you made yours. I hold him accountable for his actions, but not for yours. That is completely down to you.”

  “You’ve got your emotions back I see,” Komi said as he entered the room. He handed her a steaming mug, but she didn’t thank him. “Will saying sorry help?”

  “No,” Natasha said. “It won’t.”

  Trey then told her all he knew about what had happened after Sansa had sent her to sleep.

  “What will you do now?” Trey asked her when he had finished his narration.

  “Go home,” she said.

  “Alone? Or can I come with you?”

  His request didn’t surprise her. For Lucy’s sake, she wanted him back on Earth, but there had to be conditions.

  “If you come with me, you will have to break off all communication with your family. And with Fox. Are you prepared to do that?”

  “If you had asked me that a few days ago, I would have found the decision a difficult one. Now it’s easy. I’m coming with you.”

  Bolene gasped. “Trey, no, you can’t.”

  He was saved from responding by Fox entering the house. He smiled when he saw Natasha. She hadn’t seen him looking so happy since before they had been forced to split up.

  “It’s good news I take it,” Komi said.

  “It is,” Fox said. “The wizards have performed all of their tests. There is no magic in me. I am not a wizard.”

  The words should have made Natasha smile, but they didn’t. As he walked up to her, she stood up and backed away.

  “It’s alright,” he said gently. “We can be together now. Everything has changed.”

  She made sure she was looking him straight in the eye when she spoke. “Nothing has changed.” He reached out to take her hand, but she slapped his away. “You betrayed me. I can never forgive you for that. Never.”

  He stared at her, stunned, and she stared back. He was the first to look away. “Come on Trey,” she said. “It’s time to leave.”

  “Just let me grab my things,” he said and raced out of the room. Natasha went out into the hallway and inspected the walls. They were devoid of pictures or paintings, giving her plenty of space in which to draw her doorframe. She placed her bag on the ground and took out her knife.

  “Don’t,” Fox cried out when he realised what she was about to do. She ignored him and sliced her thumb, wincing as she did so.

  With her blood she drew the shape of a door on the wall while whispering the words of the spell. She chose to use the second of the two doorway spells she had been taught, the one where the door needed to be manually deactivated. As soon as it was complete, she drank the potion to heal the cut on her thumb.

  “That’s amazing,” she heard Lukine
say as he looked at the empty space in the wall.

  When Trey returned, he had his bag slung over his shoulder. “Ready,” he said.

  “Take my hand,” Natasha said. “Don’t let go. To get the ‘door’ to work, all you have to do is think about where you want to go. I will take care of that. Just keep your mind as blank as you can.”

  “Please don’t do this Trey,” Bolene said. She was crying and Lukine had his arm around her, trying to comfort her.

  Instead of replying, he placed his hand in Natasha’s. Before stepping through the ‘door’, Natasha turned to face Fox. “Don’t try to follow me. I will deactivate this ‘door’ as soon as we reach the other side. If you are in between realms when that happens, you will be lost between the two forever.”

  Fox said nothing. He just looked at her, his face unreadable. “Ready?” she asked Trey. He nodded. They both stepped forward and disappeared.

  Komi had half been expecting Fox to run after them, despite Natasha’s warning, but he didn’t. Instead he raced up the stairs, grabbed the two bags he had packed while Natasha had been sleeping, then ran back down. He threw one to Komi.

  “Are you coming?’ he asked, indicating toward the door with his head.

  “You must be joking,” Komi said. “You heard how dangerous that is.”

  “I know where they are heading,” Fox said, “and I am going with or without you.” He held out his hand. “Do you trust me?”

  “You’d better not make me regret this,” Komi said and took hold of Fox’s hand.

  “Clear your mind,” Fox said, then they both stepped into the unknown.

  ————————————-∞————————————-

  “Where are we?” Trey asked when he and Natasha materialised on Earth.

  “I’m not sure,” Natasha said. She didn’t recognise the bedroom they were in. Sounds of someone taking a shower were coming from behind one of the closed doors.

  Trey took his hand out of Natasha’s. “What do you mean, you’re not sure? How can you not be sure? You brought us here by thinking of the destination.”

  “I was thinking of Lucy and we ended up here. You know what that means.”