by K.N. Lee
“Rank meat.” He uttered the epithet and shook his head.
“What?” There was a catch in her voice. She turned her head up to him. Her eyes narrowed, turning to slits to match the thin line of her lips.
“It’s normal to be upset. This was a friend, right?” Blaine asked.
“It’s my fault… I chose Amery because… because he was a bit of a jerk last night, wanting back into my pants. Ysbal saw me with him. That was before you and I met in the alley.” she hesitated. He saw her mouth work as if more words wanted to come but there was a hesitation. Was it anger? At him?
Whatever Ysbal said to her, she wasn’t going to tell him. Did Ysbal know? The lies between them were stopping up the dam of truth, all because of that pesky Seannach secrecy pact .
“Hey.” He patted her shoulder, trying for comfort and to cross the bridge between them. If she could just trust him. But what could he possibly do? “It’s not your fault, if not Amery, another man or woman. But I am feeling like you’re a lot more aware of how close you came to this last night.”
Her head bowed, hair shaking, her body joined in.
An agonized sob escaped. Elly’s lips trembled as she spoke. “He tore Amery to shreds… didn’t even bother with the blood sucking bit, just tore him apart.”
No, he ate a few organs. Blaine wisely kept that to himself, for now. “A waste of a life,” Blaine said instead. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Elly watch as he got down on his knees and examined the ribboned parts of Amery more closely, paying attention to where the shreds in the skin were.
“What is it?” she stifled a sob though she didn’t get any closer to the body.
“I don’t want to upset you further.”
“Please, I’m not going to sit here being the blubbering helpless female, give me something to get angry about.” Her voice growled towards the end as she rubbed her eyes with a jerk.
Blaine allowed a small smile at the toughness of this foxkin. He bared his teeth. “You got it.”
Schooling his face back to a deadpan he looked away from the body to her. “He did take a little time with the blood, actually. I’m pretty sure. And I don’t quite know how he’s tearing the skin. I’m going to have to get some pictures and samples.” Blaine pulled an evidence bag out of his pocket.
“I know how… he changes. His jaw unhinges, it becomes a grotesque—”
Blaine sat up and stared at her. “He’s not…that’s not a normal Brotherhood transformation. Something’s very not right. What else?”
“Claws, massive claws.”
Blaine stared at her, watching her sit up, curiosity in her eyes.
“That’s not normal for one of you?”
“No, that’s not normal. We have… we don’t use claws. Our jaws don’t unhinge. Our bodies stay the same save for our teeth which elongate for, for…”
“Drinking blood?” she looked angrier by the second.
“Basically, it enables us to take the nutrients from flesh, yes. But Ysbal’s got another issue going on. Right now, I couldn’t tell you what it is.”
She was staring at him now, the intelligence in her eyes reflected Ghael’s light behind him. Elly’s anger had, as she predicted, brought her from her grief. He could almost see the wheels turning in her head.
“Elly, you can’t take him on by yourself.” She nodded back at him. It was almost an absent-minded gesture, acknowledging him while her mind was working on something else. He’d seen that look in many a detective.
In silence, Blaine wondered how Ysbal had undergone Guardian transmogrification. Only Guardians, designees of the Lunar Council, could take on other forms other than their own. He stared again at Elly. “And you’ve never seen that form before?”
“Form?”
“Elly, have you ever been off of your moon? To any of the other moons of Ghael?”
He watched as her shoulders straightened, her head canted a little, examining him with those foxlike eyes of golden brown. “No. Is there something I need to know?”
“Lots,” he said.
Elly snapped to her feet. “Well, scat. That’s just a fine smoking pile of scat. Why the hollow earth? I mean… there’s… I…” She wanted to tell Blaine everything that Ysbal said to her but it was against the code.. Circular logic and lies. Did he know? If he knew what could she tell him? Seannach lies were a swarm of flies, buzzing in her face, in her way, and always out of reach from being swatted away.
She stood, rooted to the ground, stymied by her own indecision, her oath, and the need to tell the truth.
Truth. Scat-sucking nasty tar-covered truth.
As the thoughts buzzed, a little lazy ladybug of one settled in her mind. What are Blaine’s truths? Perhaps his would give her the courage to run through the swarm of lies and tell him everything. She plucked out one of his terms that had been bugging her.
“You call yourselves the “brotherhood”. What does that even mean?”
“It means just that, all Sanguinary are male. The gene is carried on through the males of our kindred.”
“So wait, you… there’s no female bloodsuckers?”
“No. Well, it’s extremely rare. And… don’t call me that. Though, I can see how you’d call Ysbal one.”
Elly grunted. “Fine. Sanguinary. Why did you ask me if I’d been offworld?”
He leaned his head, eyes not leaving her, “Because it occurred to me that other Ghaelers, other than ones like me from Numina, might never have met a Sanguinary before… or any of the other human hybrids.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“So… no, then.”
“No.” She felt a frown creasing her face and tried to take in everything he’d just dropped. “Are you saying there’s other Sanguinary types?”
“Yes. There are many kinds of kin,” Blaine said. She heard a halting stutter, almost indiscernible. “I’ve only ever been to Gilead and that’s what made me think. Gilead has sort of lizard hybrid humans on it. You never knew that?”
“Wh-what?” Pieces started to click into place, the jaw unhinging like a snake. The elongated claws that extended like a mole’s digging claws.
“We don’t have time for a history lesson of the Forebearers of Ghael… but if we survive this night…”
He handed her the constabulary link. “Call in a team, would you? I need to take these samples for myself, first.”
“I still don’t understand.” Numbly, she took the link and tapped in the address and the crime codes for their situation, codes she still knew, embedded in her memory from her life before leaving the force. Elly stood up and walked away, link in hand. In her bare feet, soaking in the earth, she let her actions and the soil’s energy percolate through her, from her feet to her head. Calm washed over her. With a mental shove, she pushed all of her questions into a box and labeled it “later”. Elly kept her back to the carnage and tried to find a solid thought to reorient herself. Her mission to stop Ysbal had to come first.
It was fleeting, this piece of normal, but Elly’s instinct told her that they both needed to pretend. For now they both had to concentrate on the killer and not that they were staring at Amery’s dismembered body, blood soaking through to the earth beneath. This was business. A murderer was on the loose. This team didn’t have any more time; it was slipping away.
“Tell them to bring a full rig for evidence collecting,” he ordered. While Blaine gathered evidence and Elly called in the locals, Blaine let his mind revisit what he had seen in the dim light as he followed Elly. Bodies changing shapes. First human to animal then animal to human. She… The fox… Ran. Her jacket arms flapping like an extra set of legs. Her reddish brown hair faded into the shadows. As she ran her hair had streamed down her back and looked, from afar, as though it became one with her body.
Curious at first, he watched her pull the stretchy dress down over her slim hips. Mortification followed as Elly’s exposed breasts, pointed and perfect, caught the light of the planetary glow. She was beautiful in both forms.
Blaine banished the thought and squashed the attraction into the admiration that was developing since meeting Elly. Strong, lean, muscular, and gritty… this whatever-she-was was tough as iron.
As he collected evidence, he noticed an oddity. There was both human and fox mixed, at least the hair of a fox and the tail. When would she realize that he had seen both? Then after she realized, when the shock wore off, what would she do? Would she report him to the Seannach ruling body, the Assembly? The conversation with Solblaine ricocheted through his brain. Would Elly kill him if she had to? To carry out the Seannach law?
He didn’t hear what the crazed killer was yelling or even comprehend why Ysbal didn’t attack her in either form, feed on her as he’d obviously done to the blond foxkin reynard.
The blood stupor looked to him like Ysbal was drunk or high on narcotics. The way he danced around, weaving and bobbing at the edge of gravity’s pull, not falling. Blaine had to know. His finger reached out to touch the blood. He put it to his nose at first, smelling it. It smelled like honeyed fruit. His mouth watered.
He tasted it. Immediately the tip of his tongue went numb. Narcotic? Before he could react, he heard a long low keening from far off in the distance..
He heard her react with a cry, deep in her throat, a reply of the keening followed by others from where the original came from.
“Elly? What is that?”
“That’s an ancient death wail, Blaine!” She whirled back to him and tossed him the link.
He popped up onto his feet, snatching the constabulary call-link out of midair. The energy of that one drop of blood, mixed with his inhibitors, was starting a war in his mind. It was as though his body was stretching away from him.
She was still talking as he dropped the evidence bag for the local constabulary. He stared, filtering through the facts and not finding the answer. He struggled against the clouding of his logic. Strings of logical thought were jumbling. One drop. Just one drop. “A death wail?”
“It’s how the people of Ballylock mourn. It can’t be coincidence. It’s in the direction Ysbal went.”
Blaine knew his head was nodding, but it was as though he wasn’t attached.
“We have to stop him. He’s killing them all. Blaine. BLAINE!”
8
The Shield of the Patriarchs
“Now. Blaine. Now!” She started to run, but this time she went back towards her skimmer.
Blaine followed her, at a good pace. He watched as she stooped to catch her shoes in her fingers as she passed the gutter where they had skittered. She must have kicked them off earlier.
Elly had the red skimmer running lights on when he jumped into the cloth-covered bucket seats all warm from the evening swelter. Top down, heads up, they both took in a long breath of the air. The scents of smallsummer, pristine and fresh, commingled with blood scent that followed Ysbal wherever he went.
Blaine had a full nose of it. It looked as if she did, too. Her face was set in grim determination as she pressed the accelerator.
Blaine jerked back in his seat as the skimmer took off. He felt the wind waking him from the heady rush of the one drop of blood he had tasted. Together, they flew over the streets, zig-zagging through the quiet parts of the city.
“Why isn’t Ysbal attacking you, I wonder?” Blaine said. Silence.
He wanted to ask another question but he felt like he had lost control and Elly was not only steering the car, but how the lies between them would be revealed. Her body looked relaxed, holding back like a good cop. She was letting him process through it. Allowing him time to find his way. Despite her outward cool, he knew she was angry, not just about the lies that he had told her, but about the violation of trust: he had withheld information and she knew it. Her body language practically sang it to him. Or maybe he was just projecting. Damn, she was good.
Deep inside, he knew that moment of trust had passed. They were already on the path, and no new revelations would change what was about to happen next.
Blaine refocused. Now. Think about now. Sooner or later they would get to the lies. Maybe it was the Seannach blood on his tongue or maybe it was her, but he didn’t want to part ways with this smart and brave woman. At least not until they could trust one another. For now.
“It’s attacking your friends. Is it taunting you? Luring you?”
“Me?” She kept her eyes on the road and huffed. “It’s obvious he’s taunting you.
Her words hit him like an icy spray of water on a hot summer day.
Of course Ysbal was taunting him. Provoking him. Ysbal knew what Blaine had done so long ago on the day of the massacre. His honor was spattered with the blood of innocents. Blaine, as a young constable, might have prevented, minimized, the deaths if he only believed Ysbal’s mate. The woman was frantic. The description of inconceivable horrors spilled from her mouth as she clutched her son, Davin, begging the young constable to stop the carnage. Clan Fortiere was almost wiped out of existence that day. There was nobody to blame but Blaine Cornell.
If only had not dismissed the ravings as those of an unbalanced mother, had trusted her. One did not question the word of a patriarch. They were above reproach. Honorable. Perfect. One of the ten that the Forebearers had laid their hands upon. Ysbal couldn’t be capable of the savagery she described amid hysterical sobs and gulps of air. It was too horrific. But Blaine had decided staring into the young boy’s bright blue eyes, to save him.
Ysbal knew, and he was forcing Blaine to do it again. A lump rose in the detective’s throat. He turned his face away from Elly, stifling his own fears. Would he be able to make a sacrifice of one for the many and undo the dishonor?
“Where do you think this guy might go? What kind of place would he hide? Does your kind have some kind of homing zone?” Elly asked.
“Homing zone?” Blaine asked.
“A den or something that makes them feel comfortable, more powerful? Able to recoup after something? The guy was some kind of drunk. Seriously, he could barely stand and then suddenly he took off like a rocket.”
Silence stretched between them. Blaine felt foreboding seeping into his bones. He stopped himself before he saying, your foxkin blood is a narcotic for him. Why was Ysbal using foxkin blood? The stifling secrecy about who she was and how he knew was chafing. More so, it was impinging their ability to catch Ysbal. Still he said nothing for fear that he would blurt it all out, everything.
Silence stretched between them.
“I’m trying to figure where he’s gone based on the direction of he ran off in. The keening is up in the woods, but in the skimmer we can’t go off the road. It doesn’t work like that. Only combustion engines can go off-road, not magnadrives. They can only hover if there’s a mag road—”
“—I know how they work,” He cut in. “We do have roads on Numina. Skimmers, even.” He huffed. “So, If we can’t get him in this, we’ll have go on foot.”
Elly turned the wheel onto the next street and gunned it up a hill.
“Where are you going?” Blaine asked, turning his body to look behind him and the road they’d turned from. They were headed up a hill now, towards woods. He could smell the forest as it got closer. “I thought we were going to where the keening thing was heard?”
“No, a keening means someone died, they found a body. We’d have heard screaming or something if he was still there.”
“Makes sense,” Blaine said. He felt a sudden admiration of clear-headedness. Half the constabulary he worked with wouldn’t be able to deal with what they’d witnessed, let alone the straight forward way she was putting all the pieces together.
“No, I think he went off, found another victim for whatever he gets out of the blood.”
“Strength, I think,” Blaine said.
“That makes a ton of sense. He’s preparing for something. We could pinpoint from that kill zone, but likely nobody saw him. And we don’t have time to do that song and dance again.” Elly’s voice rose, adding a note of inquisitivene
ss, prodding him for the answer she deserved. “Speaking of… Why is he running around like he’s gotten hold of pure grade amphetamines? Is that how your kind usually react?”
“In a way, yes,” he said. “We only need to feed once a season on Numina, that’s about ninety Ghael standard days. Perhaps twice if there has been something particularly stressful like a broken bone or an illness. So, when we do, we have a festival. It’s revelry, you know. Dancing in the streets. And depending on your social scene, it can get a little debauched.”
“So he was drunk, basically, on blood? Any old blood?” she asked. Her voice still probed, pushing.
Blaine went for broke. If Elly was going to kill him because of some honor pact of the Seannach, she’d have to do it now and risk going after Ysbal alone. She was too smart for that. “This blood is different.” He dropped it in front of her like a cat gives a prize dead bird to its human.
“Human blood, you mean?”
“No, the blood of your kindred.”
There, it was out in the open. Finally.
Was she angry? Her lips were pulled into a tight line, eyes still focused ahead on the road. He couldn’t tell. Perhaps not. She stopped the skimmer abruptly and turned to him.
He brought his hands up reflexively. Damn, she is going to kill me now.
Instead of punching him, she rested her arm on the back of the bucket seat. Casual. In the middle of a murder chase, this foxkin female was casual.
“Why did you—”
“—You’ve known all along, haven’t you, Detective Cornell?”
“Yes...” he said, feeling like a schoolboy being called out for some stupid schoolyard prank. “But… there’s something—”
Elly held her hand up in the universal gesture of shut up, palm out. She snapped her hand closed as she brought it to her face. “I’ve got the questions here. I need to know, and you need to answer. Why did you lie to me?” The gold flecks in her amber irises made her eyes look as though they were a crackling fire, ready to consume him.
Blaine felt the passenger side door handle digging in the small of his back. He took a deep breath. “Because the Council and the Assembly told me to. They told me that the Seannach had a code to keep their kindred a secret. And that you’d kill me.”