Myths and Magic: An Epic Fantasy and Speculative Fiction Boxed Set

by K.N. Lee

  “You have?” She asked.

  “Of course, Elinor, you’re hunting a Seannach killer, you need to know more about it, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Maester Paulen,” she said, but didn’t bother to ask him how he knew. He always knew. That’s why he was Maester, and why he sat on the Assembly guiding, conducting, preserving the interests of the Seannach. She didn’t need to report to the Assembly, he’d already found her. She should have known. Despite the foxkin being a secretive bunch, the old maester’s were the foxiest foxes of all the Seannach.

  “There isn’t much I don’t know, child. And I do know that this thing, whatever it is, is hunting our kindred.” The words buzzed through her but Elly couldn’t quite put her finger on why. It would continue to nag at her until she put that chunk of the puzzle where it belonged. More and more separate pieces were forming. They just needed to be linked together.

  “What can you tell me?” Elly scanned the room, turning her body in a half arc to follow her head. There were archways that lead from one book filled room to the other. Glass cases held artifacts in these rooms and there were overstuffed couches with bowls of candy kibble on lamp stands that cast a warm glow. All was quiet, keeping the noise in from unsuspecting people above, and keeping it out to those seeking rest below.

  “Sit down, get comfortable,” Maester Paulen said and pointed with the stem of his pipe towards a worn blue velvet chair across from him.

  “About the Sanguinary?” he reminded her as she sank into the soft cushion of the chair with a whuff of fabric and stuffing.

  “Sanguinary. The Brotherhood of the Sanguine?” she said.

  “Sanguinity, the Brotherhood of Sanguinity. The Council of the Consanguinity is their ruling body. The Patriarchs all sit on that Council.” Maester Paulen said. “Strongest of the Sanguinary, so they say.”

  “Patriarchs?” Elly asked.

  “The original ten Sanguinary that the Forebears made. Well, nine are left now. There was a kerfuffle about two hundred years ago.” The old foxkin maester pulled out a little leather pouch and began to stuff the aromatic nicotiana into the bowl of his pipe.

  “A ker-what?” Elly settled in, bringing her thick ponytail from behind her back to across her chest. She tried resting her hand on the wingback arm of the chair but her entire body was taut, so she tugged the end of her ponytail, ready to listen with her whole body. The tiny pieces of the puzzle that Blaine had dropped casually as he spoke–though now she was certain nothing was casual about Detective Cornell’s words–fell into place.

  “About two hundred or so years ago—I’d have to get the records—one of the Patriarchs did something terrible. We don’t know all the details, just as they don’t know all of our details. But they went from ten on the council to nine which was probably a good thing in case of a tie. You know, even numbers never do well when it comes to votes. I keep telling the Assembly…”

  As the maester babbled off topic about the Seannach Assembly and their rigid practices, she got up and made herself a cup of tea. Her ears perked up, “…has been in a stasis jail since then.”

  “Whu-Who? Sorry…” she said. The teaspoon in her hand suspended above the cup.

  “Ysbal, the Patriarch that ate his clan. At least that’s what we understand. You never know with the Sanguines. They’re as secretive as the rest.”

  “Ysbal? Ate his clan?” Elly reminded herself to close her mouth.

  “Yes, Ysbal. Something wrong?”

  She wanted to shout. This guy was a mass murderer? A cannibal? He’s one of the strongest of the Sanguinary. And he’s loose on Westmeath? But then she didn’t know if the old maester would react. He looked tough. But it was her job, or had been her job, once, to protect her kin from society’s predators. Elly still wore the mantle of duty. Maybe not so proudly as she once did, but she kept it close, unable or maybe unwilling, to detach herself from the honor guard to which she had once sworn an oath.

  Ysbal. Here. Sure as scat on a sidewalk, her kin were in grave danger. Elly took an uneasy sip of tea and closed her eyes… the pieces weren’t coming together, they were drifting further apart. When she opened her eyes, the maester was eyeing her thoughtfully.

  The old reynard smiled, his eyes darkened in contrast while his long teeth gleamed in the low light. “Humans, Foxkin, Sangs, we’re all secretive.”

  Elly didn’t like the way he looked at her. She shifted in her chair feeling a heat rise from her chest to her cheeks. She envied the old foxkin. Maester Paulen was an elder and they were better liars than the rest of the foxkin. The old had more time to practice, and they wore the lies with ease.

  “Yes, Foxkin lie. We do it out of necessity, out of habit. It is our nature.” She countered.

  “Yes, and sometimes Elly, you don’t know when to lie and when to tell the truth,” Maester Paulen said.

  “Ok, so why do the Sangs lie? Everyone knows about them. They don’t hide the way our kindred do. The Sanguinary are at the top of the food chain.”

  “Yes, but remember… If it weren’t for their strict code of law governing their feeding and co-mingling, they would be hounded, too.”

  “There’s a Sang here,” she said, her voice soft with a touch of probing intensity.

  “Is there?” His voice said surprise but his smell did not. He smelled of pistachios and lemons. In Elly’s mind that screamed “fibbing old fart”. Harmless. Playful.

  “And he’s investigating the murders,” she confided. There, that didn’t hurt.

  “And you’re helping him?”

  “Yes.” She said.

  “Excellent. The Assembly chose well.”

  And there was a flit across her belly. It hadn’t been there for some time. Pride.

  6

  Amery

  A rustling in the wind alerted Elly to a change in the weather. The wind was westward, and she was standing upwind. Her heart quickened. It was a hunt, but she wasn’t the hunter this time. Though that was the intent.

  Just like the alley, all over again.

  Only an hour before she was in the noisy club dancing with Amery, watching his brown eyes laugh, and his bushy hair flop back and forth. Meanwhile she wanted to punch him in the face, thinking of Sandra and his kits. But Amery had a use tonight. The place was full of fecund female foxkin. Amery had a talent for it, finding the most fertile. That would bring Ysbal, again.

  The trap was set.

  Elly was to keep an eye inside while Blaine watched outside.

  But Amery spent too long in the restrooms. When Elly tracked him to the bathroom, passing gyrating slobbering couples down the dark hallway that smelled of sex and piss and vomit, she tasted fear and the unmistakable taint of copper and books. Tiny pebbles stippled across her flesh. The sweat on her brow grew cold.

  Elly ducked out the back door of the club into an alley that led two ways. To her right was the street out front of the bar where Blaine was watching the doors. To the left was through to the next street. She followed the scent left down the slick alley. She hunched, creeping through shadows. Forgetting Blaine, Elly slipped straight into surveillance mode. The boom-boom-boom of the heavy house-techno beat covered her footsteps. Blaine might be her “partner” but she wasn’t going to let him watch if Amery transmogged to foxkin.

  This Ysbal bloodsucker seemed to get off on scaring her people–at least he had with her. Scared her right to her bones and somehow prevented her from completely transmogrifying.

  She followed the scent and tracked Amery’s. It was strong with fear, then terror, and finally blood. A lot of it.

  Do not change… Elly… she thought as she ran, kicking off her shoes into the gutter and sprinting towards an Assembly sponsored playing field. Ahead of her was a gap in the fence. She knew it well; it was one she had used dozens of times to run if there was a need to bolt and disappear before transmogrifying.

  As she ran, she peeled her jacket off, tied it around her waist, and hit the wooded path. Faster. Whatever was coming it was
coming, like the wind. She would be stronger in canidiform, especially now that she was prepared for what Ysbal was going to do.

  Her bones crunched. The flesh over her body sprouted a lush fur. While her arms were still mostly human, she pulled them out of the dress’s stretchy neckline, shoving it down to her waistline so that it formed a skirt over the jacket already tied there. The transformation forced her body to bend, elongate, until she was able to run on all fours.

  And there went the bloomers, again. Riiiippppp.

  Rat blazing scat!

  In the twilight of her transformation, she was two until she was one again. All feral. All sentient. Separate and then together. A cascade of sensations flooded her, piquing her awareness as she ran wild and free through the petrichor of wet tall grasses and mossy undergrowth.

  Now as the hair on her body grew longer, Elly’s nose elongated into snout, her senses grew keener, and her inner fox rejoiced. The ancient canid, her other self–the fox–knew exactly where she was going: the nearby den hole where her foxform would find shelter and safety. Four legs could get her there faster.

  Copper. Blood. Old leaves and death. Putrid. It was putrid. The closer she came to it, the more she found herself needing to run and not hide. No. She told herself. It can’t get through the hole. No, fight! Fight it!

  Not fully in canidiform, she slipped through a rent in the fence and caught the jacket’s cuff on the open wires. Threads popped. In the underbrush, before the trees, hidden from sight, the familiar slip from human to vixen completed as forelegs and hind combined in a force of energy that exploded into a gallop along the treeline. The vixen burst from the underbrush. It zigzagged, scrambled in and out of the overgrown brush, masking her path.

  A screech that reminded her of nails across ice split the night air. Primal fear shuddered along her spine.

  She could smell the earth, inviting her to sink down into it, dig a hole and cover herself up.

  There was another scent now. A familiar one.

  Enticing. Delicious. Warm. Inviting. Cloying. Calling.

  Was it meat? Fresh meat? No no no!

  The aroma descended into fear. Harsh, choking fear. Her body pulled against the force of her will, mid-stride she leapt sideways, careening, and forced her legs to run towards the scent.

  Elly’s foxform headed at full gallop, leaping and pouncing in a crazed dance across the playing field, further and further away from the safety of the brush and a safe bolt hole. Still upwind and flipping around, sniffing and yowling, Elly fought for control. If anyone saw her canidiform from afar, they would have thought it was chasing its tail. She stopped, forcing her legs to dig into the earth, tail high. She lifted her snout and sniffed the wind. There. The scent of fear rippled over her tongue with all its power and the force it compelled her. Her vixen self followed it, galloping in a straight line towards the end of the playing pitch.

  In the clouded glow of Ghael, she saw it hanging from the crosspiece of the goal. A severed length of… fox tail. A bushy blond fox tail.

  Mid-gallop, all four of her legs dug into the earth, sending her tail-over-head. In a twisting pirouette her fox form scrambled upright onto four paws, back legs back-pedaling. Her body swiveled as she leapt sideways and twisted midair.

  And then he was there. Dark, blackish blue eyes blazed with a mad red glow. Blood dripped from his chin. He stood, laughing. Laughing aloud. At her.

  Ysbal chanted, his feet barely holding him upright. “Little foxes… foxes… little foxes. Delicious little foxes. Why are you so tasty? Tasty blood?”

  He staggered.

  “I’m here to eat you. Tasty, tasty and then I’ll live forever. You know that? I’ll live forever little foxy fox. Missy fox. Delicious foxy. First, I crack you foxes wide open. Too bad, for boy foxy. But you’re a fine piece of female flesh when you’re not a fox. We shall have so much fun.”

  There was a long pause as she heard him take in a long open mouthed breath, tasting her scent. “Oooooh, yes. You’re even more foxy than that one, aren’t you? Full-blood are you? Full full full of pure-blood… SEANNACH! I want you. You are mine.” The Sanguinary was like lightning when he grabbed for her.

  His voice was so… beautiful. Lyrical. Soothing. Mesmerizing.

  Her body rebelled. It wanted to respond and leap into his arms. Elly’s legs pumped, she jumped back, her will winning over the compulsion. Jerking midair, she leaped to the side, barely missing his double-armed snatch.

  That’s right. She remembered now. It was such a beautiful sound that all she wanted to do was listen to him. So, that was how she ended up naked in the alley unable to fully change? And why didn’t she remember that until now?

  Clouds were forming overhead. She could taste the rain on the wind. Though the light of Ghael was strong, even at night, the clouds thickened and darkened the field. The shadows elongated, concealing his face but not his intent.

  “Why do they hide you all from us? Is it because you’re so deliciously tasty? How did we not know how very, very powerful your blood is to eat? You’re so different from other kin. I tasted the lizards ones, not as good. You pixies… No foxes. You’re foxkin. Not pixies. Yes. You’re like … candy. Only better. Like sex. Only better. The power in your blood has been denied to us and we were made to eat you.” Ysbal threw his head back and cackled.

  All the while she wanted to move. Wanted to leap, rip his throat out with her canid teeth. Scratch the eyes from their sockets. Kill it. But she was rooted to the spot, her body unable to respond as he tapped her canidiform snout. “You will be mine, little foxy fox. All mine.”

  He stooped to gather her into his arms but stood, suddenly. Alert lit his freakish eyes. “Oh… the reaping of a thousand suns, there he is!”

  The blood hungry Sanguinary swerved, his feet seeming to fall but ably danced back to upright in a drunken ballet.

  “Oh, Blaine. Poor Blaine. The Council didn’t tell you how lovely the scent a of a Seannach in heat is?” He called, heckling the figure moving towards them, fast.

  Elly felt the thrall dissipate as his focus turned towards Blaine.

  The Sanguinary detective was still far off, far enough that he couldn’t see her in canidiform, at least that’s what she hoped. Please.

  Blaine shouted. “Ysbal! You’re coming back with me!” He was met with derisive laughter.

  By sheer force of will she began to transform back into human form as he spoke to Blaine. Through the crunching of her bones and reorganizing of her structure she could hear him laughing. Then, just as he had done before, he took off faster than Elly had ever seen anything move, save possibly for a racing skimmer.

  She was fully into her human form now. Naked. Again. Mostly. She moved the neckline of her dress up from her waistline over her shoulders, squeezing her arms in, one at a time and retightened the jacket arms still cinched around her waist.

  In the dim light of the playing field, Elly stared at the space where the Sanguinary stood seconds before, hiding her view of the goal.

  Beneath the crossbeam where the Amery’s tail hung were his gnarled remains.

  Bait.

  “Amery… oh Amery.” Elly gulped for fresh air and found only the taste of blood and terror. It was thick and viscous in her nose and over her tongue. She spat the taste to the ground and blinked back the tears that threatened. As tough a vixen as Elly was, nothing prepared her for this. She stood, backing away from the rent body.

  Nausea roiled. She raised her arm and brought the back of her hand to her mouth.

  In the dim cloud covered shadow, she stooped to touch Amery’s disembodied and blood spattered hand.

  Among the shredded remains was a skull, but no eyes, no tongue, very little left of his cheeks. The body was worse, torn and rendered as though ripped apart by great claws. Elly stumbled, her feet barely registering the cool grass beneath them. Tears clouded her eyes. Guilt trickled like acid, burning a line across the neutrality she’d long ago honed as a detective. Guilt for using Amery
. Worse, not caring, almost as a punishment for being unfettered by commitment and free to propagate at will in Seannach society.

  “By loam and moss…” she prayed, then covered her mouth again as the taste of bile, not hers, but the scattered and ribboned remains of Amery’s bowels brought an overwhelming stink. Elly’s body swayed. The foxtail became a blur.

  Even before he turned back from chasing Ysbal, she could smell Blaine’s frustration, like wet wool. It trickled in over the earthiness of the pitch and seeped through the stink of the bile. The detective joined her, chest heaving, winded. “I… I…tried to follow,” Blaine choked out. He bent over, hands on his knees, drawing great gulps of air. “No sign of him...”

  “Why did you go ahead, without me?”

  Elly shook her head, unanswering. Slowly, slowly, as though surfacing from a slime filled pond, Elly began to process through the guilt and fear to recall the blood-drunk words of her taunter. Words he’d said before but she hadn’t connected. Foxy foxes. If Ysbal knew, did Blaine know, too?

  7

  Blood on the Pitch

  He knew she’d run off. She did. Of course.

  As a constabulary, he had sworn to uphold the law. As a Sanguinary, he had an honor oath to protect all the kin of Ghael. No matter how stupid they were, running off on their own… He tracked her the distinctive scent of Elinor Morgan. It was like the forest floor loam and moss, lush and green. But when she was excited or agitated it was the scent he picked up in the tea shop: boggy peat. He had let his nose lead him. All the while, dreading what he might find. Terrified of what he might find. Once again, the encounter with Ysbal Fortier and the haunting choice. “Davin, come to papa…”

  In the distance all he had seen was the drunken flailing of his quarry. When he returned to the scene, Elly was in her human form, wobbling, the scent of death filled the air. Elly sank to her knees to the blood soaked ground.