Fox Blood

by Aimee Easterling

  The Atwood pack wasn’t interested in including me in their rituals this evening, but my grandmother’s lackey had clearly taken the time to search me out. And as I noted his obvious Japanese heritage, I wondered if the reason might be shared blood.

  “I came to explain, to speak with you,” he said when curiosity held me in place. Then he proved himself clever by getting straight to the point. “Sakurako-sama has had a difficult life, so she builds up walls to protect herself. It takes some getting used to.”

  “Yeah, like eating raw fish.” The words flowed out of me before I could stop them. But, to my surprise, the human laughed rather than taking offense.

  “I’m Yuki,” he said, offering a bow but no comment about my assessment of his employer. “Would it be too forward of me to ask if you plan to accept Sakurako-sama’s invitation tomorrow? I hope you will choose to come.”

  “Invitation?” I’d gotten the impression my grandmother merely wanted to speak with me. But Yuki made this sound like an event rather than a simple conversation.

  “She didn’t explain.” Yuki laughed quietly, the chuckle warming me due to its similarity to my mother’s laughter when I was very young. “Sakurako-sama believes everything is on a need-to-know basis. But this, I think, you need to know.”

  We were walking as we talked, back toward my cottage. And I hesitated ten feet from my door, intrigued by this possible family member...but not enough that I wanted to invite him inside.

  “I’m all ears,” I offered. Then, as Yuki cocked his head in confusion, I realized that his stilted speech probably meant English was his second language. So—“I’m listening,” I offered instead.

  “The mistress wants to show you your heritage,” Yuki told me, accepting my explanation gracefully. And when I didn’t interject a comment, he elaborated as best he could. “It’s not my place to tell you where she wishes to take you or what she plans to show you there. But I’ll be coming tomorrow and would be honored if you traveled by my side.”

  Traveled. This wasn’t a decision I could make tonight while exhausted and lonely. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I answered noncommittally. Then, bowing a farewell to Yuki, I entered my cottage alone.

  Chapter 25

  Or I thought I was alone until a voice rang out from deeper within the darkened living room. “So you’re the kitsune.” Clearly, lack of lights meant very little when denning with wolves.

  I tensed, prepared for another ultimatum like the one I’d recently had dumped on me by Elizabeth. Only...this was no Atwood. I was pretty sure everyone in Gunner’s pack was either being soothed by their alpha or was protecting my sister. Meanwhile, the air within my cottage was redolent with the unfamiliar scent of bitter almond, suggesting my questioner was someone I’d never met before.

  Someone I’d never met but who just happened to know my identity. Ignoring my racing heart, I flicked on the light switch as if my world wasn’t crumbling down around me.

  “What’s a kit sunny?” I asked, purposefully mispronouncing the name of my own kind while assessing my uninvited visitor out of the corner of one eye.

  Despite being in another shifter’s territory, the broad, menacing stranger lounged on my plush sofa as if he owned the place, legs splayed and arms spread so he took up enough room for three people or more. I didn’t smell any fur or electricity to go along with the power pose, but something told me not to turn my back on this werewolf.

  I did so anyway. Walked past him without waiting for an answer then padded down the hall in search of the sister who should have been asleep in her bed. The air didn’t smell like Tank, Allen, or Kira, however, suggesting the trio had made a pitstop before obeying my order. Oyo on the other hand could pop out at any moment directly into the jaws of the strange, bitter-almond-scented wolf....

  In an effort to prevent that eventuality, I crouched down to peer into the darkness beneath my bedstead, stretching my fingers into the hole in the wall. When Kira had called to tell me the redheaded kitsune was missing, I’d assumed Oyo had heard about my grandmother’s arrival then dug herself in deeper. But the gap in the drywall was both empty and cold.

  “I’m speaking to you, fox.”

  Head under the bed, I’d missed the stranger sneaking up behind me. But I couldn’t miss the way he dragged me out of the darkness by my hips. Hard hands on my shoulders slammed me up against the wall before I could make a comment on being manhandled, and I silently berated myself for turning my back on someone much larger and stronger than myself.

  Aloud, though, I disavowed all understanding of the situation. “What’s wrong with you?” I blustered. “And what do you mean by calling me a fox?”

  The shifter silenced me the easy way, backhanding me so hard my head slammed into the drywall. Darkness tried to claim me as his hot breath flowed across my stinging cheek. And I tried without success to think of a way out of the situation that didn’t involve creating a magical dagger to thrust into my opponent’s gut.

  I can’t show what I am unless I’m ready to kill him. The knowledge chilled me even as it narrowed my options to...well, none.

  Meanwhile, the male who held me began speaking, his voice so cold I shivered despite every effort to appear impervious. “Let me spell it out for you, kitsune,” he murmured. “I’m an enforcer.” At my blank look, he sighed and elaborated. “I decide on life or death for werewolves...and all who come in contact with them.”

  “No, Gunner is the pack leader. His word is law.” This part wasn’t bluster. I thoroughly believed that fact or I never would have brought Kira to live in Atwood clan central.

  “A werewolf would know that is true only of problems that don’t threaten the neighbors.” My opponent dropped me so abruptly I slid down onto my butt rather than regaining my footing. “But enough about me. I want to hear about you.”

  This wasn’t a threat—this was a warning. So I did the only thing I could think of. I raised my hand to my mouth as if in terror. And, surreptitiously, I licked up a stray droplet of Edward’s blood.

  THE PACK BONDS FLARED to life so quickly that I almost thought they’d always been there. This was no time for analyzing magic, however. Instead, as the enforcer dragged me upright, I ignored his muttered demands and tugged as hard as I could on the solid rope that led from me to my not-quite-mate.

  “Gunner!”

  “Isn’t here to help you, kitsune.” A fist slammed into my stomach and I lost my ability to verbalize. Instead, I strove to send the pack leader an image of what he’d be walking into if he raced here to help me. I needed his assistance, but it was too dangerous for him to walk into this ambush blind.

  And Gunner must have heard me. Both heard and understood me. Because images now flowed back the other way in answer. Images of a gathering of alpha-leaning werewolves, the mass of them telling this stranger what to do.

  So, an enforcer was some kind of regional sheriff? I wasn’t entirely sure I understood what Gunner was trying to tell me. Rather than providing time for questions, however, he managed to send through two words loud and clear.

  “Get away.”

  Good idea. I both wanted to laugh at the obviousness of Gunner’s suggestion and to vomit from the sharp agony spiking through my gut where the enforcer had driven his fist. Instead of doing either, I let my legs crumple a second time...then I dove between the enforcer’s knees as he allowed me to drop.

  Only my opponent was fast and smart and ready for me. His foot came down on my spine as I slid past him. Then I was supine on the floor while once again struggling to regain my breath.

  “These are simple questions, kitsune.” His words seemed to come from the other end of a long tunnel, and I couldn’t have answered even if I’d wanted to with carpet fibers embedded in my mouth. “Which werewolves do you manipulate?” he demanded, sending my mind off on a tangent of guesswork.

  Did kitsunes have a pattern of behavior, insinuating themselves into werewolf clan centrals and tearing down not only that pack but the neighbors also?
Was that why Sakurako had come here, what had riled up non-Atwood wolves enough to send this enforcer to find me? Was that fate what Oyo was hiding from?

  “This is your last chance,” the enforcer growled as he flipped me over. There was a knife in his hand now, I noted. A knife that hovered so close above my left eyeball that I couldn’t focus on the tip poised to impale me.

  It was finally time to shift, I decided. I had nothing left to lose and everything to gain....

  Only Gunner leapt through the door in a whirlwind of cold air and enraged werewolf before I could get my magic together. He was mostly human—kinda human. Human enough to bellow instructions in my direction before diving onto the enforcer in the full skin of his wolf.

  “Kira is on her way to your grandmother’s. Join her and flee as far and as fast as you’re able.”

  And even though the enforcer laughed, frost spreading out from the stranger’s feet as if he was as magical as I was, I did what Gunner suggested. I turned tail and fled from the battleground that had recently been a welcoming home.

  Chapter 26

  Kira had to be my top priority. I knew this even as the pack bond informed me that Gunner was fighting...and losing.

  Meanwhile, shifters streamed past in the opposite direction, rushing to assist their alpha as the pack bond alerted them to Gunner’s fate. But they piled up in the doorway, frozen by the enforcer’s dominance and unable to set a single step inside.

  Gunner, for his part, was being shredded and battered. Blood stung his/my eyeball as I experienced the pain right alongside him, and he limped to avoid putting pressure on his front left foot.

  Still, Gunner fought with all the abandon of a werewolf protecting his partner even though I’d never overtly chosen him. “Hurry,” he suggested, the word warm in my belly. And I blinked back tears that blocked my vision, using my second-strongest tether as a guide leading me toward family and escape.

  “The neighbors are gathering.” Tank appeared out of nowhere with Kira wide-eyed and panting behind him. “We have to get you out of here before they block the exits. Did the enforcer see you shift?”

  “No.” That much, at least, I’d done correctly. But—“I can’t find Oyo. If she shows up in fox form, what will happen to Gunner then?”

  Tank didn’t speak, but his grim silence was its own sort of answer. Then we were in front of my grandmother’s camper, the massive bulk of it menacing in the dark.

  And for the first time since leaving my cottage, I hesitated. I’d parted from these near strangers with no real conclusion earlier, didn’t trust any of them despite my grandmother’s recent oath.

  Kira, on the other hand, had no such reservations. “Sobo!” Her voice—and her pounding fists—broke the silence. Lights flared on inside the RV a millisecond before Yuki answered the door.

  It’s going to be alright. Despite the pain I felt every time Gunner accepted a blow that was meant for my ribcage, Yuki’s appearance gave me hope. Sure enough, the human took only one look at our faces before ushering us inside the vehicle. Meanwhile, the rest of Sakurako’s entourage flowed out around us, began working in seamless synchrony to crank in the RV’s popped-out sides.

  “The best route away is east,” Tank informed me from beyond the still-open doorway. He wasn’t coming with us. None of these werewolves would leave clan central while their alpha was engaged in a deadly battle.

  Or maybe I’d misgauged the loyalty of Gunner’s pack mates. Because a dark shape pushed past Gunner’s most loyal underling, materializing into Becky with her bloodling pup cradled in both arms.

  Cradled...then extended towards me. “Take him. Please,” she begged, ignoring everyone else as she ran halfway up the stairs and attempted to thrust the sleeping pup into my arms. The female was terrified, hesitated only long enough to glance back over one shoulder before descending into a litany of promises I knew she couldn’t keep.

  “I’ll do anything for you if you’ll protect him. And he’ll help you. Werewolf blood is powerful. Curly, tell them you want them to take your blood if they need it. That you won’t fight against a cut.”

  The puppy hadn’t been sleeping, I realized. He’d been doing the only thing he could to help—keeping himself silent and still.

  Now, as his body slid away from his mother’s and up against my sweatshirt, he didn’t attempt to reverse the flow of his own motion. Instead, he peered up at me with dark eyes full of understanding, then he nodded his lupine head.

  But, of course, despite his cuteness, Curly wasn’t a puppy. He was a young werewolf, well aware of what would happen if the Atwood pack was overrun. I wasn’t exactly sure what that awfulness would consist of. And yet, given the slights Becky had faced from supposedly friendly shifters, I was able to take a wild guess.

  “You come too,” I demanded, pulling Becky up beside me. But she resisted and I had to release my hold so Curly wouldn’t fall to the ground.

  “No, I can’t leave my pack,” the other female murmured. For a millisecond, her hand extended as if to pet—or regain—Curly. But then the gesture aborted. And without a word of farewell to her only offspring, she turned on her heel and sprinted back toward the cottage where Gunner fought.

  TANK FOLLOWED HIS PACK mate, leaving me alone with two kitsunes, a bloodling pup, and five male humans. To my surprise, Sakurako slipped into the driver’s seat, taking the curves far faster than I would have been able to without risking a spill.

  Beside me, Kira cradled Curly, the pup so silent I thought at first that he was soundly sleeping. But, no, Curly was merely feeling what I was feeling—that brittle breaking in his middle as he was spirited away from every other member of the Atwood pack.

  Because my own connection to Gunner had begun to falter as the distance increased between us. I could no longer see what the enforcer was doing back in our cottage, only felt fists and teeth cutting into my mate as a dull, distant ache.

  Then even that bodily contact faded. And I gasped, unable to breathe around the thought that Gunner might have faded right along with it. I’d made the wrong decision, choosing Kira over my partner....

  Yuki was the one who noted my silent anguish, who knelt before me and clutched five of my frozen fingers in ten of his own. “We’ll make it out of here,” he promised...even as Sakurako slammed on the brakes and abruptly shut off both engine and headlights.

  Pay attention, I told myself, shutting Gunner’s fate away in a tiny box shrouded in black ribbons. I’d chosen my family over our romantic partnership; it was time to ensure neither Kira nor Sakurako was caught in the undertow now.

  To that end, I scooted around Yuki and peered out the windshield into darkness. There were snowflakes in the air despite the fact that it was only early October. Snowflakes that settled on the glass and might soon stick to the soil.

  How easy would it be to follow our trail with a blanket of snow on the ground to turn tracks into billboards? Our enemies wouldn’t even need a predator’s nose.

  “They’re ahead. A quarter of a mile,” the old woman said tersely. She glanced in my direction, raised one brow. “Your werewolf didn’t know what he was talking about. I hope you have another way out of these woods.”

  And, as I peered at the brand new yet abandoned vehicle Gunner and I had arrived in not long ago, I realized that I did. It seemed disloyal to reveal Gunner’s tunnel to strangers. Still, would it even matter that Sakurako knew about the secret passageway if the Atwood pack leader might already be dead?

  “Mai?” Kira’s voice was so small I barely heard her, but it slammed me back into the present and out of the abyss of loss. I’d resolved to protect my sister above all others. So I’d lead us to safety...then, later, I could fall apart.

  “This way,” I told them, descending from the vehicle so I could lead two kitsunes and five humans away into the forest. Curly I clutched to my chest as much to soothe me as to warm him. Meanwhile, behind us, one of the males sprayed an aerosol of de-scenting compound across the ground to eliminate o
ur trail.

  Chapter 27

  I was so shaken by thoughts of Gunner that it took a solid minute for the implications of that spray can to sink into my conscious thought processes. But then I flinched as the male in question slipped past my arm and into the tunnel I’d just pointed out, his possible identity making me want nothing more than to turn tail and run.

  Was this the male who’d tried to kill Gunner? Who’d thrown a javelin without imbuing it with his aroma? If so, I’d been looking at this issue from all the wrong angles...or, rather, I’d thrown in my lot with the enemy when I’d opted to include Sakurako and her lackeys in my escape.

  “It’s standard issue.” Yuki was the only one who noticed my hesitation, the only one who didn’t slip beneath the overhanging greenery and follow our companions inside. “Werewolves are our greatest e—” He paused, glanced at Curly still clutched in my arms, then chose a different word. “Danger. So we carry these spray cans to cover our footsteps, to protect ourselves from attack.”

  Sure enough, a similar canister appeared between his fingers...which didn’t make me particularly inclined to trust him more than his friend. But my grandmother reemerged from behind the veil of plants at that moment, grabbed my shirtsleeve, and yanked me inside.

  “Shift,” she demanded, her word lacking alpha compulsion but nonetheless spurring everyone around her into action. Kira’s clothes dropped into a pile along with the males’ cell phones, then my sister shimmered into fox form even as two different humans sprayed the pile of discarded possessions to make it harder for werewolves to find us using either biology or technology.

  So maybe Yuki was right. Maybe there were dozens of people out there carrying similar sprays meant to confuse werewolf nostrils. I’d stay alert, but my choice of allies had already been set in stone when I abandoned my mate.

  Still, I didn’t obey Sakurako, merely stood my ground and stated my case for remaining human. “I’m not leaving Curly.” I couldn’t carry the pup in fox form, and he’d last about three minutes under his own volition at a sprint.