by D. N. Leo
“What the fuck!” Lorcan mumbled to himself and sat up, leaning against a low coffee table nearby. It was clear to him that the two women hadn’t been able to move his dead weight without doing more damage to him, so they had treated him right on the floor in the middle of the living room. He felt as if energy was returning to him in strong waves—it was the same healing feeling he’d had when Orla used the dark magic to heal him in London. It was also the very reason they’d had to take refuge in the Daimon Gate. “Oh, why did you do that again, Orla?” he mumbled to himself. He grabbed his shirt, which was folded neatly on the coffee table nearby, and put it on.
He shook his head, feeling uneasy. Something strange was growing inside him.
Chapter 13
Lorcan found Orla with her hands on her hips at the end of the corridor by the kitchen, snarling at Chiyo, who was responding in a no less aggressive manner. The scene made Lorcan want to chuckle, but he didn’t think it wise to risk aggravating the situation.
“How’s a man supposed to get any sleep around here with you women practicing your Christmas carols,” Lorcan said from the doorway. Orla turned around and blushed a little as she came over to his side, hugging him gently.
“You shouldn’t be up. You were hurt very badly, and you can’t heal if you don’t rest.” There was a sternness to Chiyo’s voice again, and Orla recognized that she’d turned back into a doctor.
“I think you’ll find that I’m doing much better already.” He winked at Orla, and she smiled.
Chiyo obviously didn’t appreciate her patients talking back to her. “Go lie back down, and I’ll look you over.” She donned an arrogant tone and stared at Lorcan as sternly as she could. Lorcan nodded and returned to the living room. Orla trailed right behind him, being sure to sneak into the room before Chiyo this time so the other woman couldn’t throw her out. Lorcan did as he was told and lay back down on the blanket. Chiyo rummaged through her doctor’s bag and took out her stethoscope. She listened to his heart and lungs, claiming they were back to a normal rhythm. She lifted the bandage to have a look at the wound.
“You’re doing very well,” Chiyo concluded. Her tone was as smooth as still water, but her face betrayed her. Catching the look, Orla narrowed her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, but in anticipation, Lorcan shook his head, signaling Orla not to say anything. She obliged.
Chiyo cleared her throat. “You wound has healed.” Orla arched an eyebrow and said nothing as Chiyo began to remove Lorcan’s bandages. His injuries looked like they’d been healing for weeks instead of barely an hour. “How did you do this? If you could do this by yourself, then why did you come to me for help? You’re recovering faster than I’ve ever seen anyone recover. It’s a medical mystery. One that I would like to study.”
“He’s not a lab rat in a drug trial. You’re not going to study him.” Orla spat her words at the doctor. “And if he’s healed, may we have a moment in private?” Orla was surprised by the politeness of her voice.
Lorcan smiled. “I need to talk to her, doc. Would you mind stepping out for a few minutes?”
Chiyo glared at both of them, but kept her voice toned down. “You still need rest. The guest room upstairs on the left is yours. You’ll have your privacy there. I’m not leaving my own living room.”
Lorcan nodded. “Understood. I appreciate that.” He stood and went upstairs with Orla.
Inside the guest room, Orla flipped Lorcan’s shirt up and stared at the healing wound. “How did you manage to heal so quickly? The first time it was because I helped you, but this time, I know it wasn’t me.” Orla kept her voice low because she had the sneaking suspicion that Chiyo was listening at the door.
“I thought I was the one who’d be asking the questions. I thought you’d used the black magic again.”
Orla shook her head. “I’m not stupid enough to summon my ancestors while we’re in a place where we can’t go anywhere without your translator and my guide fox. In that case, we shouldn’t bother with the key at all because we’d soon be dead.”
“The key is no longer just our problem, Orla. The Host is now involved in all this.”
“I know, I know.”
“So you really didn’t use any magic on me this time?”
Orla stared at Lorcan. “Hey, you’re healed, but not a hundred percent yet. I can hurt you. You don’t want to upset me.”
Lorcan raised his arms, seeking peace and a truce. Orla smiled, tiptoed, and kissed him. She pulled him into her arms and embraced him, her body shuddering with emotions. “Oh God, you went down like a stone.” He held on to her and kissed her forehead. “I know I scared you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. The bitch bit you.”
Lorcan nodded. “Not everyone has a chance to be bitten by a fox. I told you I’m not a fan of furry animals.”
“It’s not remotely funny.”
Lorcan glanced at the small window which overlooked the roof of the ground level of the house. He felt something crawling underneath his skin. He shook his head and frowned.
“What are you not telling me?” Orla asked.
“What?”
“You heard me. You have that I’m-not-telling-her-just-yet face.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
She jabbed her finger at his chest. “You know what I mean. You’re a smart-ass. You always know.” She pushed him so that he was off-balance and fell down to the futon.
“Now that we have a room to ourselves, what do you say we really celebrate my ability to heal so quickly?” He wiggled his eyebrows at her, and Orla felt herself laugh for the first time in what seemed like weeks. She wriggled against him, and he groaned into her ear. “You know, if you don’t stop that, I’m not going to be accountable for my actions, missy.”
Orla didn’t say a word, just wriggled against him again.
Chapter 14
A pale fox-like face stared back at her from the mirror. It had been a long time since she had spared a moment for such vanity. People told her she was beautiful, but what was the use of her beauty? she wondered. She was raised to be the female alpha of her werefox clan, a rare group with an important and sacred mission that had started before her time, but now she just wanted to be an ordinary woman, entitled to live a life with the freedom to love and have a family.
She had bitten a man today. The tradition of the werefoxes was that biting was a mating ritual. Unless forced or acting in self-defense, biting marked a mate for life. When a fox chose a mating partner, it all started with an intentional bite. It was like human consensual sex. She smiled at the thought. She spent way too much time with humans.
The rules didn’t apply in her case because she had bitten in self-defense, and he was human. She could bite and kill any other creatures except foxes. She touched her lips. The tingling sensation of his blood on her lips and in her mouth still remained. What is this man? she thought. She had bitten humans before, but they had tasted nothing like this. His blood had actually forced her to shift into her fox form right in the middle of a fight.
Lorcan stared up to the ceiling, contemplating the next move for both of them. He sat up abruptly and jumped out of the futon. He heard Orla giggle. Lorcan looked down and darted back to the futon to grab his pants and put them on. He pulled out his laptop, started it, and sat on the floor to work.
“What do you have in mind?” Orla asked.
Lorcan didn’t hear her. He typed quickly, mumbled, cursed to himself, then typed again. Orla rolled deeper into the blanket. When Lorcan was engaged in his tech world, the smartest thing for her to do was to treat herself to a nap.
“Whoa, whoa! No! Fuck!” Lorcan’s curses drew Orla out of her daydream.
“What’s up, Lorcan?”
“Lost the signals. Goddamn it.”
Orla narrowed her eyes. “You’re not hooking up to your system in the Daimon Gate, are you?”
He nodded. “Just a thought coming across my mind. The gatekeeper who
attacked you, he wanted to bring Ciaran down. Exposing a computer manipulation is pretty low. But what if that’s all he’s got? All he was thinking about? Think about that incident again, Orla. Apart from you and me, who else knows about this within the Daimon Gate? No one except Prince Brandon, right?”
Orla sat up. “But Ciaran risked his life to change the data in the system to save Brandon. Why would Brandon want to harm Ciaran?”
“Well, that’s what I was checking into before I lost the signals. Ciaran mentioned that the princess had cheated the system—that’s why both the prince and the princess were facing the death penalty. Ciaran also said he owed the prince a favor, so he manipulated the system to reduce the death sentence to a demotion.”
“Shouldn’t Brandon be grateful for that?”
“Well, I would, if it were me, Orla. But a guy like Brandon, a guy who would attack a woman and kill an unarmed helpless man, wouldn’t behave in the same way as a rational person would. What if he considered the demotion to be worse than death? Maybe he would rather die than losing his privilege. In that case, by saving them, Ciaran may have actually taken away the prince’s right to die in privilege.”
“Who would have thought about that?”
“It’s not rational. Definitely not normal. But it can’t be as rare as being bitten by a fox!” Lorcan smiled.
“You bet. So you think the gatekeeper who attacked me is Prince Brandon?”
Lorcan nodded. “Pretty sure of it now. The data suggested he was demoted from gatekeeper of the Red Castle to a minor gatekeeper of a creek. It was like a sympathy demotion, a token position. That would have been an insult to him. And also, the data suggests that he had dismissed himself from his position yesterday and vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“Outside the Daimon Gate. My prediction is that after attacking us at Gate 131 and killing the defenseless gatekeeper there, he knew he would be facing severe punishment, so he fled.”
“Sadistic son of a bitch will seek revenge on us. If he returned Ciaran’s favor by vengeance, what would he make of us reporting him to the Host and aggravating his already bad situation?”
Lorcan smiled. “He’ll turn into a little ghost and haunt us for the rest of our lives.”
Orla sat up, pressing her forehead head to her knees. “I can deal with ghosts.”
Lorcan crawled over and hugged her. “You’re not doing anything by yourself. We’ll do it together. Personally, I prefer animals to ghosts,” Lorcan whispered.
She looked up at him, “You’re thinking of the werefox?”
Lorcan rubbed his nose into Orla’s hair and muffled, “Now that animal is definitely weird and mysterious. I’m not sure of my preference anymore. Can I lie down for another minute?”
“Sure you can.”
Chapter 15
Later that night, Orla was snuggling next to Lorcan, trying to sleep, when she sat bolt upright. She thought she’d heard something downstairs. She tried to look into the darkness around her with her dulled vision, but she could see only shadows and vague shapes. She was ready to lie down again, chalking it up to a figment of her imagination, but then she heard it again. It was a faint tapping sound, almost like in the movies where archaeologists tap away at artifacts with tiny hammers and chisels. She reached her hand out to Lorcan, gently shaking his shoulder. He mumbled in his sleep and rolled away from her.
Sitting in the dark, listening to the noises becoming steadily louder, a sheen of sweat beaded on her forehead. She began searching the dark room for something close at hand she might be able to use as a weapon. If she got up, whoever was breaking in downstairs would hear her and probably run away before they had a chance to question him.
“Lorcan! Wake up! Someone’s breaking in downstairs.” Her voice quavered a little as she whispered, and she was mildly embarrassed by it. She was not usually easily scared, unless it came to Lorcan getting hurt. She felt like one of those hysterical women in horror movies who always ended up dead because they were stupid. She shook him again, and this time he woke up. He opened his mouth to ask her what was going on, but then he heard it, too. He sat up like Orla, looking around as she had for a weapon.
“Do you really think we’ll need weapons? I think the two of us can handle him together. Come on. It’s the least we can do for our host.” The sarcasm dripping from Orla’s voice almost made Lorcan laugh, but he held back.
The two of them slid out of the room, inching along the corridor by trying to step only on areas of the floor that wouldn’t creak. They managed to get downstairs, although to Orla it felt like it took an hour. As they crept into the kitchen, they could see the soft moonlight shining down on a figure climbing in through the little window over the sink. They stood in the shadows, one on either side of the doorway, waiting for him to come close enough for the first blow. Orla had to control herself because the intruder was really bungling the situation. He’d gotten part of his shoe stuck in the garbage disposal, and she had to ignore the urge to turn it on. Lorcan must have been fighting an urge to laugh as well because she saw his hand go to his mouth.
The man finally got himself situated, presumably cursing in Japanese. He wore a nice suit, and she thought that a little odd for a late night intrusion. He straightened his suit, then reached behind him, through the window, to pick up a small bouquet of roses. Okay, this had now become the strangest break-in that Orla had ever witnessed. And she’d been a part of quite a few. She stepped forward and dealt the man a quick blow to the nose, sending him reeling back. He threw his arms into the sink to steady himself. The roses went flying, and Lorcan ran to catch them. The man was blabbering in Japanese, which neither Orla nor Lorcan could understand, but at one point he raised his voice and yelled Chiyo’s name. Not two seconds later, a loud clattering came down the stairs, and Chiyo raced into the kitchen, turning on the lights. She was dressed to the nines, ready for a night out on the town. She’d managed to get a later shift at the hospital, and she’d been waiting for her date.
“Stop! What are you doing?” Chiyo assessed the situation quickly, then darted between Orla and the man, holding her hands out to halt the next punch. “Leave him alone!”
“I don’t know if you noticed, but this piece of trash here just broke in through your window. Do you want to be kidnapped and murdered in the middle of the night? It looks like you dressed the part.” Orla’s drawl made Chiyo’s cheeks turn red, and she didn’t look happy at all.
“Why don’t you sit down, and we’ll explain.” Chiyo had one hand up to her head like she was suffering from a very annoying headache. The man in the suit sat down at the kitchen table, put his hands in front of him, and waited quietly. Chiyo sat down, too, motioning for Orla and Lorcan to follow suit. They did so, but both of them now had suspicion in their eyes. “I’ll start from the beginning. This man is Goro Kagome. He used to belong to the group Yakuz.”
Lorcan interrupted. “You mean he’s one of those spies that you accused us of being? You threw us out without even listening!” Lorcan was beginning to let anger win out over curiosity, and that usually wasn’t a good sign.
“He’s not Yakuz anymore. He left them. It was difficult because he belonged to the worst branch of them, but he did it. We’ve been together for a while now, and the only way that we can see each other is in secret. I should have warned you that I had guests, Goro. I’m sorry.” Chiyo turned to look at the pair across the table from her. “And I’m sorry that I didn’t warn you that he was coming tonight. It would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”
Lorcan threw the roses at her. “Then I guess these are for you.”
Chapter 16
Lorcan didn’t know how late it was or what kind of nightlife was still going on at this hour, but he did know that he was tired after three rounds of lovemaking, and right now he wanted nothing more than to fall asleep with Orla in his arms. Orla had hoped for a restful and uneventful rest of the evening, but alas, there was no rest for the wicked. She yawned as she rose
from the table, and it told Lorcan that she was thinking along the same lines as he was. He put his arm around her, and the two of them headed back up to bed.
The rays of the rising sun were just beginning to peek through the lace of the curtains when Orla sat up again. There was a distinct clicking noise coming from downstairs that sounded like the heels of a man’s very expensive pair of shoes. She rolled over and closed her eyes again. There was no way she was going to lose any more sleep over Chiyo’s idiot boyfriend. But it took her only a few minutes to remember that she’d seen Goro’s shoes, and they were not the kind that had heels that clicked. Eyes wide, she sat up again and listened. Her movement caused Lorcan to sit up, too, and she held a finger to her mouth to indicate that he should be quiet. He took her hand and listened with her.
“I don’t think that’s Goro. He has different shoes.”
Lorcan raised an eyebrow. “We were fighting someone we thought to be a dangerous intruder, and you paid attention to his shoes?”
Orla shrugged. “It was after we figured out he was Chiyo’s boyfriend. I thought his shoes would look good on you.”
“No, thank you. I can choose my own outfits.”
“Should we bother to look downstairs? Or will it only be a waste of time?”
Lorcan was silent for a minute, then shrugged. “I think we should at least take a look at what’s going on. If there’s a plausible reason for another visitor, then so be it. If not, well, we can let the poor bastard have it.”
Orla grinned in the semi-darkness. Once again, the two of them crept out of bed and slid down the stairs in near perfect silence. When they came to the hallway, they saw a massive figure looming in the doorway. It was clear to the both of them that this was definitely not Goro. Orla blinked, shook her head, blinked again, and stared. Lorcan’s eyes widened.