by K.N. Lee
“No, we need you to find the criminal, Ysbal, and return him here to justice.”
His father stood and nodded to the assembled Patriarchs who stood in unison with a grace of angels.
Blaine regarded their movement with both awe and consternation as they departed from the room, leaving his father alone with him.
As the last left, Blaine turned to his father and growled, “Why me? You’re all more powerful, faster, and more capable of getting Ysbal back.”
“Because you’re our choice.”
“That’s not an answer, Father. But you never give straight answers, any of you Patriarchs…”
“Son, if you lived a thousand years, holding secrets that you could not share with anyone, you would understand my circumspection.” The Patriarch gave a wry smile to his son. “Come, inspect the chamber…”
“Before we do that, Father? Let me understand what you wish.” Blaine’s stomach muscles knotted in a core of fear. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. He forced a bit of saliva up but bile tainted the moisture. “You want me to find the cannibal and bring him back to the stasis chamber once again? Somehow, I am to find him and return him to the justice that the Patriarchs have meted out? Public humiliation? Father, I know Ysbal’s actions are an unspeakable corruption. But why not finally finish —”
“—We do not kill,” Solblaine interrupted. “For no reason other than to feed. That is our code. You know this.” Solblaine glared with thunder in his golden eyes. Menace riding on his robust voice.
“And just how will I neutralize him? He has the strength of an army of Sanguinary in his blood.”
“He is no more powerful than you or me. His lie is that he believes he is unstoppable. He believed that when he drained the blood of seventy-four of his own sons.”
“I remember, I was only a constable then…” Unbidden memories flashed in a stereotropic stop-time flitter of images. Ysbal running. A child. A choice.
“He believed what he was doing and convinced his own family of it. He thought he could breed a more powerful Sanguinary race by taking his delusional “next step” in the evolution of our kind,” said Patriarch Solblaine. “Only a few of the mothers got away and fled with their daughters who were deemed unworthy. They begged us to intervene,” Solblaine finished up the rest of the story. “But son, he is no more powerful a Sanguinary than you. Yes he is a Patriarch, but we can enhance your strength enough to match his. And you do have other assets. And you won’t be alone.”
The weight of the words sank in.
“We have an idea of where he may have gone,” Solblaine said.
“And the Numina constabulary, my bosses?” Blaine demanded. He struggled to keep the waver from his voice. Ysbal. They wanted him to go after Ysbal.
“That’s why you’re here. And we have contacted local authorities and the overarching Lunar Council of Ghael. You’re to go to the moon of Westmeath. There’s a group there that we have not worked with for many hundreds of years. The Assembly of Seannach.”
Blaine’s brow scrunched in disbelief; his mouth curled with a skeptic scowl. His voice held a mocking tone, “Seannach are a fairy tale.”
“No son, the fox kindred are real. And they are in very real danger.”
“The foxkin? Real?” Blaine shook his head. He could hear the thrum of his blood in his ears. Impossible. Seannach?
“Yes,” Solblaine said, his expression remained unchanged from the stoic mask his son was all too familiar with.
“Not nursery room tales meant to amuse children?” Blaine’s emotions fluctuated between outrage and incredulity.
“Yes.”
“Why … why—I—I.” Blaine forced his lips to a halt and tried to form a question. He focused on the empty chamber. “And he knows of them?”
“Yes,” Solblaine said and put a palm on his son’s shoulder. “You must understand, it is our sacred trust to keep all the Children of the Forebearers safe.”
But Blaine wasn’t listening. He was rubbing his temples, trying to erase the vision of foxes wearing boots and pointy caps while brandishing swords. Amid his nursery recollection, a bubble of memory buoyed to the surface, one that he thought was safely buried.
The echo of mad laughter. A terrible choice. Save one boy or catch a murderer…Ysbal’s voice whispered in a mocking singsong, “Davin, come to papa…” A sobbing boy collapsed into Blaine’s arms. He held the boy, Davin, as his father escaped to continue his murderous killing spree.
After two hundred years of keeping that secret, Blaine had only one driving need. Truth. Tell the truth, find the truth, uphold the truth, and it would absolve him from his part in seventy-two deaths. He sought out clarity and clutched at something his father said earlier.
“You said I won’t be alone?” Blaine said as he buried the lie back where it came from.
“You’ll be working with a native investigator, one of Westmeath’s ex-police detectives in the private sector. The Assembly says she’s their best.”
“What about being among them? Their animal DNA?” Blaine asked.
“Don’t worry, you’ll have your off-world inhibitors. That will allow you to be among them without the blood urge. And you’ll have the Will on your side.”
“I barely know how to use it. I’ve never needed to, before. I don’t know…”
“The Will of the Forebearers is in you. It will choose the time and you’ll know what to do when it comes. You will be a true Guardian then.”
Blaine felt a lump rise in his throat. He’d never aspired to be a Guardian, one of the elite defenders of the Ghael moons, from threats beyond. He brushed off the weight of the legend and turned back to the threat and what the Patriarchs had assigned him to do.
“Is my contact a Seannach?” Blaine kept the apprehension out of his voice.
He handed Blaine a chip. “Data on the current status of murders on Westmeath is on that. Patriarch Icarus is using an ancient text to decipher Ysbal’s intents. The Council believes Ysbal’s construed our transmogrification as a gift that he needs to feed.”
“He’s feeding on them?” When his father nodded, Blaine’s stomach tied itself into knots. The slaughter had to be stopped. Davin’s face loomed in his memory… This can’t be happening.
“Son, it’s not an easy thing we ask of you. You’ll have to keep your knowledge of the foxkin a secret even to the Seannach. Their laws require secrecy or death.”
“Harsh. Is it necessary?” Blaine said.
Solblaine leaned his forehead towards his son. “Their Assembly has protected the foxkin for a thousand years.”
“That’s… what the old children’s verses said about foxkin? Foxes sly. Foxes lie—”
“Foxes’ secrets keep you alive,” Solblaine finished. He rested a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Keeping the secrecy is the only way they’re going to let us get in, get him out, and back into his prison.”
“Or they’ll kill him,” Blaine said. “Which wouldn’t be on us or a transgression of our law.”
“That is a corruption of law,” his father said, a warning tone rising in his voice.
Blaine canted his head to look at his father’s hand on his shoulder. “If that’s the case, and I must keep their secret, I’m not safe, either, Father. The Patriarchs are asking me to work with the Seannach, but pretend I don’t know what they are.” Blaine said.
“Yes, son. It means you’re going to have to lie. A lot.”
2
Naked in an Alley, Again
The thump-thump-thump of techno beat a hard tattoo against Elly’s chest, forcing her heart to pump in time. The light of the disco flashed in unison with each staccato tic-tic-tic of electric patter, driving her senses into overdrive, putting her scenting on high alert.
It was a hot night in Ballylock, the biggest city on the tiny moon of Westmeath, one of the twenty odd moons of Ghael. The strip was hopping for ladies night. The gas-giant, Ghael, lit the sky with the reddish-gold glow of mating season.
> There, out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw him, the one that matched the scent, the one she was hunting, the one that smelled of copper and books.
Prey.
Dark bangs shaded his eyes. The rest of his straight, black hair hung down in a sharp point between his shoulder blades. He had a perfect middle part that prolonged the illusion of length, splitting his bangs in the middle of his brow. Her gaze followed the line of his part down his nose and she was struck by piercing blue eyes and skin so pale the wandering blue lines of his veins showed across his temple and down his neck.
His long face went with an equally long, lean body clothed in a perfectly tailored midnight blue suit that shimmered turquoise as he placed his drink back down on the bar and pushed it away with one long, bony finger.
In the flashing lights and sweaty bodies that danced and jumped to the driving beat, this man was like a statue. His stillness made him almost invisible, except to the trained eye. The pulsing twenty-somethings danced as though they were one connected body of limbs, torsos, and heads; he oozed through them, towards her, but did not join the dance.
Definitely the guy. The scent of her kin was strong around her. She made sure she was surrounded by the most potent of females, like the missing ones, some found dead by the Seannach Assembly’s constabulary goons.
Idiots.
Where they failed, she was now tasked to succeed.
In the five years since Elly Morgan quit her police job and struck out on her own, she had become a free agent, taking bounty and private investigation gigs. Working for the Assembly didn’t suit her. Invisible authorities had a tendency not to pay, even if you survived the job.
But when the Assembly of Seannach tell you to find the guy that was desanguinating and eating the organs of foxkin, you don’t say no. You go to work.
The vixen pheromone perfume worked. He was on the move and slid through the crowd.
Elly raised a brow and licked her lips. She swiveled hips and shoulders to the beat, swishing her bottom back and forth in an enticing dance that was already attracting the attention of every male in the room scenting for a mate.
“Hey,” a voice to her right broke Elly’s concentration on her quarry. She blinked, the guy was gone and a bushy haired blond was in her face, gyrating his body close enough so that she could feel every nuance below his waist. The scent of alpha hung heavy on him.
To her left, Elly caught the dirty look of a red vixen, pure hate rolled off her, smelling like the gagging thick sludge of pond scum.
“Hey, Amery,” Elly bunched her brow and gave a withering look up at the reynard. “I’m not your vix-fix tonight, hound. The red over there has stamped you. I can smell her stink from here. What’d she do? Pee on you?”
Amery ignored the remark and leaned in closer, still gyrating his lower body against her. In a loud voice meant to penetrate the sound system, he shouted close enough to her ear that she felt the vibration. “You smell lush.” He extended the last word out into a loud whisper as his lips brushed her lobe.
Elly turned her head to yell back into his ear. She got halfway through it when the music died. “Amery, You and I are …old his…tory…”
She jerked her head around to check the room. The flavor of amusement, minty, rippled across Elly’s tongue as she picked up the blonde’s reaction. The woman smirked at her, a derisive wrinkle to her nose that marred the perfect smoothness of her brown butter tan. The music host announced the break, cutting the awkward moment in half. Everyone else in the nightclub was too busy making for the bar, or the skimmers in the lot outside where the air was cooler.
Amery stood back and laughed. “Can’t blame me for another stab at it with old blood.”
Elly shrugged and gave him a wink. “Better luck next time, dog,”
“I’ll take you up on that, Elly-fox,” said Amery. He leaned down and gave her a peck on the cheek. “Old habits.”
“You just want me for my pedigree.” She half-snarled at him and slapped his shoulder. “Go on, sugar-doggy.”
Amery laughed and stepped back, winking back at her. Her gaze did not waver. The blonde vixen intercepted Amery, now her reynard mate for the night, and steered him outside.
When Amery left so did his mating musk. It was replaced by the aroma of copper and books, the scent surrounded her accompanied by something else, a new scent, a different kind of alpha musk. That wasn’t there before.
“Can I buy you a drink?” The voice was low, seductive, and hypnotic.
She grew taut as the sound seemed to slither along her arms prickling gooseflesh, the tiny hairs standing on end. Adrenaline shot through her core, sprouting sweat on her upper lip.
There it was, that familiar buzz was the drug she lived for: the heart-pounding thrill of trembling hands and the numbing tingle in her lips as blood pumped to every part of her in a split second. The rush tipped her into the dangerous dark well of weakness to control, overcome, and harness the power of the free fall.
Elly straightened her spine, she eased her shoulders back and swished her long hair from her shoulder with a brush of her hand as she turned to face those penetrating blue eyes. She purred with a touch of growl, “Why bother with a drink? Wanna go get dirty?”
She led him, moving her head to encourage her long auburn hair behind her to flip back and forth over her skin tight leather hot pant bottoms. Elly licked her lips in some of her best adolescent mirror practiced seductions.
The alley stank of two-day-old garbage that almost masked the scent of sex. Almost. Elly’s above average scent abilities detected recent ‘activity’.
Clarity and focus, fueled by adrenaline, kept her aware of her surroundings and escape routes. He wouldn’t be able to get away–there was a seventeen-foot chain link fence at the end of the alley. The only way he’d get clear of Elly–and the snub nose pistol neatly tucked in her low boots–was into the street or through the fence.
This was going to be a shoo-in.
Just as they hit the shadows, he said, “You are Seannach… you smell… delicious.”
As he spoke, everything slowed.
In her peripheral she caught the shadow of his hand, extending. She launched herself backwards just as he came forward. But he was faster, and was on her quicker than any human or kin moved. And in an instant of panic, Elly lost control. She felt her body shift, thrusting her into the grayspace between human and her other self. It came with the ominous sound of shredding fabric.
He reached for her. She thrust and parried, trying for the snub nose in her boot but her body was already amid the shift. She wasn’t human anymore. She wasn’t quite Seannach, yet. She was a jumble of both.
Her eyes focused on his blue ones. His face elongated, his mouth seemed to unhinge, expanding wider than the human jaw was capable of. His tongue to rolled out, extending towards her. She was transfixed by the oddity as it drew closer. But just as his hand curled into a claw and grabbed for her half-shifted body, she flipped backwards and away, out of his reach. His claws slashed a gash across her arm, no paw, no arm. Helpless, she tried to gain control of her dual nature to transmogrify back into her fully human self.
But as abruptly as his attack began, he stopped. Her prey danced backwards, bouncing away from her as his chest heaved a pant. He glanced at the street, then at her, then at the chain link fence while his face transmogrified back to the former, less elongated ‘normal’ form she had seen at the nightclub.
“I’ll find you, tasty one.” He bounced again, towards the fence, and took it in two stupefying and impossible leaps.
Elly stood staring up at the seventeen-foot chain link fence her quarry just leapt over, mouth agape, arms crossing over her chilly chest, she wondered aloud. “Neat trick. How did I get the scat end of the transmog stick?”
Even though the dark alley stank with two weeks of garbage from yet another strike, his scent lingered, isolated by her heightened senses. Copper and books, and something else. Elly couldn’t quite put her finger on
it.
The closest she could come was “wrong”. But that didn’t make any sense.
“What spooked this guy?” she wondered aloud.
Elly turned around, feeling the comforting swish of her hair at the small of her back. There had to be something there in the alley, something that would cover her nakedness. Otherwise, she’d have to morph again. A forced morph was the last thing she wanted to do. Pressuring her delicate system to transmogrify twice in a night was painful. It left her ravenous and in a rage.
That misfired morph was weird, she considered as she hunted for a sack or something to cover her ragged state. She had never been unable to complete a transmogrification. Ever.
She remembered his eyes when her therianthropic body began to take over. They’d lit up in an eerie ecstasy. Seannach are good at staying hidden. For Elly, it was one of the best part of being one. One of the few best parts. But to be identified as one?
Nobody outside of the Seannach knew of their existence. But he did. He’d called her by her kin. And she’d never heard of this kind of kin before, not that she knew a lot about bloodsuckers, sure. But not ones that turned into monstrosities.
Blowing out a long exasperated breath, she took a step towards one of the dumpsters hoping to find at least rag bag of tattered clothes. There had to be something to get her out onto the sidewalk to change into the clothes in the back of her skimmer. She’d parked it just outside of the night club where she met the perp so it wasn’t far. Elly considered the risk of running out half naked.
Maybe not today.
Elly sniffed, mouth open, breathing through her mouth to taste the rank alley.
In a few moments the scent of old textiles and herbs became a bit stronger near one of the closed black bags. She rifled through the dust and papers and found an old sleeveless duster in a bag. Shaking it out first, she shrugged it over her shoulders. The threadbare cloth hung below her knees. She then ripped an old towel into strips and wrapped that around her waist, cinching it with a tight tug.