The Nine

by C. M. Stunich

  I kept my hand locked on Ziff, just in case.

  With a howl, the red-brown creature lying in a lump on the pavement stood up and shook itself out, its now glossy pelt rippling in slanting orange beams of light from the street lamps. The coyote turned its head to look at us, a dog-like smile curving its lips. A massive male coyote typically tops out at around fifty pounds. This one … was bigger than a wolf, probably closer to two hundred pounds.

  A supernatural breeze swirled through the alley, shifting leaves and bits of trash. Ziff's hackles went up and he let out a scream as the coyote—aka Nix—summoned a circle of protection around himself, the strange runes lit up with gold. Most shifters relied on the moon for their magic and our power manifested itself as silver.

  This was completely foreign to me.

  "Don't make me tell you to go home again," Mik growled, pushing me out of the way as Nix lunged, bringing his magic with him. It swept over me like sunshine, almost unbearably hot but not entirely unpleasant.

  I stumbled back into a dumpster, taking Ziff with me, and watched as Mik met the edge of Nix's circle of protection with two open palms. Vamp magic was anathema to shifter magic, death to life and all that. But I had no idea what the fuck a skinwalker qualified as or where their power came from.

  Energy crackled between the two men for a moment before Nix abruptly dropped his barrier and used brute force instead, smashing into Mik and taking them both out of the alley and into the street.

  Fucking great.

  Public relations between supes and humans were bad enough.

  A bloody fight between a skinwalker and a vampire on a Tuesday night in the middle of downtown Denver? Fab.

  "Men," I told Ziff as I stepped out after the two assholes and paused.

  The sharp earthy scent of a foreign kitsune was one I wouldn't fail to recognize, not even in the middle of a garbage dump. Didn't matter how many competing smells there were, I'd be able to single out another of my kind.

  Especially if I'd never met them before.

  "Exactly right," the newcomer purred as I turned to look at … her.

  No doubt in my mind that this was Revel Jones, the vixen I'd found on the online dating site.

  My mouth dropped open and a surge of … fucking something went through me at the sight of her. It wasn't sure if it was jealousy or envy or what. But all of these feelings swept over me like a tsunami when I saw her standing there, leaning back against the wall of a nearby building with bloodred hair and eyes as sharp and bright as fresh-cut grass.

  She smelled like oak and pine, and her smile was as cruel as Nix's, only with a different heat level. He was cold as ice. This bitch, she was on fire.

  "There's always been one universal trigger, responsible for most problems in the world," she told me as she stood up and Ziff made this strange chirping sound in the back of his throat. It was a happy sound, despite the blood and magic and bullshit happening not six feet in front of us. "And do you know what that universal trigger is?" Revel asked, tossing gleaming ruby red waves of hair over one shoulder.

  She was pretty.

  Beyond pretty.

  And I was getting pissed.

  You sent off for a vixen for Fin, and you got one. Look at her. Just fucking look at her. My hands curled into fists, and I tried not to hate Revel Jones right off the bat.

  Didn't work.

  I despised her.

  She wasn't supposed to come until the end of the month! The end of the goddamn month.

  "What are you doing here?" I choked out as she swept past me in a black bodysuit that hugged her generous curves and made me fully and completely aware that I had less than half of what she did, both upstairs and down. Tits and ass. That was Revel Jones. That and full lips dressed in bloody red, eyes outlined in dark liner, and a swagger that I'd be hard-pressed to match.

  Fin was going to take one look at her, and I'd never see or hear from him again.

  I did not feel as I should about that.

  "That's not an answer to my question," she said with a wink and a grin. "The answer was men. You said it yourself, the universal pest." Revel stepped off the curb in boots that were as tall as my borrowed hooker heels. "And in answer to your question, a high-ranking kitsune Minister of State just bit the Prime Minister's ear off—while in fox form. My assignment was elevated. That's my boss' problem now." Revel flicked a look over her shoulder and smiled at me in a way that was simply dripping with heat. Sultry is what it was, that look. And if I hadn't known she'd flown all this way to meet Fin, I'd have said she was hitting on me.

  "Your boss' problem?" I started, blinking and realizing what while I was having this conversation, Mik was crouching on the roof of a parked car while Nix hacked up blood onto the cement and a crowd of drunken revelers gathered on the opposite side of the street.

  "Yeah, well, I'm the best of the best, but I am known for having a heavy hand. Politics … eh, like fine china coated in shit. It stinks like high hell, nobody wants it, and the slightest bump makes it shatter." Revel turned back toward the two men, her hair lifting in the same sort of breeze that Nix had just conjured. It was a response from mother nature, the energy in the world saying I see you and I'm here. "Last thing we need is this kind of crap. Relations work right now is fuckery at its finest."

  A circle appeared around her, drenched in silver. And the runes were all ones that I recognized. Revel's tails—a set of four—snapped forward as she swiveled her ears in annoyance, and sent a wave of magic out at Nix and Mik.

  There was no real power in it, just a bunch of smoke and glamour.

  But it worked.

  A large tour bus zoomed up between Mikhail and Nix, just before my boss launched himself forward. He reached for the edge of it, presumably to haul himself over, and found his fingers touching nothing but air. But Mik wasn't an idiot. He was old and well-trained, but so was Nix Locklear. That split-second it took the vamp to readjust his aim gave Nix the time he needed to retreat back, behind a rush of traffic that was part real, part kitsune magic.

  Our eyes met for the briefest of moments as he rushed past me, and Mik made to follow.

  Nix was … running away.

  With my hand still on Ziff's fur, I threw up an illusion of my own and … dropped all my clothes. Not what I meant to happen. I'd meant to throw a trash can at Mikhail—or at least make him think I was throwing a trash can at him.

  Instead, I ended up in the nude.

  It worked though and Mik stopped to look at me, pupils dilated, breath coming in heavy pants.

  "Thea ... " he started as Revel let out a laugh and stepped back onto the sidewalk.

  "Oops," she said with a loose shrug of her shoulders and a grin. "That was all me."

  With a flicker, my clothing reappeared—it was all an illusion, after all—but when both Mik and I glanced down the sidewalk in the direction Nix had run, he was fucking gone.

  I turned my attention back to Mik, and I tried really hard not to be afraid.

  But when he looked at me, I had to wonder if he was too far gone.

  "Thea." Mik's voice had dropped dangerously low, and he was bleeding all the hell over the sidewalk. Or at least, he was dripping massive amounts of crimson onto the pavement. It might all have been Nix's.

  "You know this guy?" Revel asked, her voice hardening and her green eyes sliding from my face to Mik's.

  Mikhail's hands came out faster than I could follow, and suddenly, he was latched onto my upper arms with enough force to make me cry out, slamming me into the wall and cracking my head against the brick. The crowd was already bored and starting to stumble off, but I could hear sirens in the distance.

  I wasn't sure if it was the human police responding or the NHSC—Non-Human Species Coalition.

  If it was the latter of the two, goddess help us.

  "Mik, we need to go," I ground out through clenched teeth. The guild and the NHSC did not mix. If they got the chance to round RADOPA members up, they did so happily. Iron, silver,
or wood bars—pick your weakness—and a justice system that was even more broken than the American one. If you can even believe that, that is.

  Mikhail though, he was not himself in that moment. His eyes were black and his breathing had stopped. He was staring at my throat in a way I'd never seen before. Gone was the calm, rational asshole that'd ruled my life for the last few years. In his place, was a monster.

  Revel reached down to a bag she had hanging off her shoulder and pulled out a revolver, putting the barrel up against the side of Mik's head.

  "Bullets loaded with rowan ash," she said with a loose shrug of her shoulders. "Just give the word and I'll blow his immortal brains out."

  "Don't hurt him," I said as Ziff hissed, and Mik continued to stare down at me unblinking.

  It was in that moment that I knew he was going to bite me. His head dropped so quickly, I didn't see him move. What I did see was Revel's gun tumbling through the air and clattering against the asphalt.

  Pain exploded through me, followed very shortly by pleasure, waves and waves of pleasure. My knees went weak and even though Ziff was frantically biting my ear and lips to try to rouse my common sense, I couldn't move. Hormones flooded through me, making my knees weak.

  "Don't hurt him?!" Revel choked out, looking between my boss and me with wide eyes and a clenched jaw. "He could kill you!"

  "He won't," I whispered as Mik tightened his grip and sucked harder on my neck. It was like he was pulling every molecule in my body toward that one single point, drawing all of me up and into him. He's eating you, Thea, for fuck's sake, I tried to tell myself, but the pleasure was so intense ... Not only that, but Mikhail was hard as a rock, grinding the bulge in his pants against me as he made these guttural, male sounds under his breath.

  Revel looked like she was about to puke.

  "Take Ziff," I whispered as my little familiar switched from attacking me to biting Mik. Revel moved around us and snatched the little fox, just before Mikhail moved his hand and clamped it over the shoulder where Ziff'd been standing.

  "I'm not leaving you here with this guy," Revel said as the sirens screamed closer and Fin's future bride picked up her gun. She glanced over as two cop cars—human ones, fortunately—pulled up on the opposite side of the road. Revel surreptitiously tucked her weapon into her bag and looked up to meet my eyes.

  I was struggling to keep them open as Mik drank past the point where he should. I felt it, like a switch was being flicked. Panic threaded its way through my veins, but I exhaled slowly and pushed it back, reaching down and giving Mikhail's hard cock a squeeze.

  "Wake up," I whispered, as my lids got heavy and one of the people across the street pointed us out to the police. "Wake up, Mikhail." If I could switch him from food to sex, maybe I could survive being wrapped in his embrace? It was something I'd wondered about for a long goddamn time, but never thought would actually happen. Now that it was, I was wondering why he hadn't tried this sooner … in a controlled environment, of course. As things stood, this was less of a dream than a nightmare.

  I turned my face and pressed my lips to the side of Mik's face. He was clearly in a primal sort of state, one that didn't leave much room for rational thought. Sex and food were both basic, animalistic acts, and I had the feeling I was only going to get Mik to focus on one of those.

  "That's it, I'm ending this before it gets out of control," Revel said, reminding me that she was still there. For a moment, I'd forgotten about her, about the police, about Nix. It was just Mik and me and the violent wash of hormones he was pumping into my body.

  Revel threw up an illusion to confuse the cops, creating a replica of us on the sidewalk two doors down. The two police officers paused for a moment, blinked to clear their heads, and then swerved that direction.

  "He has thirty seconds to knock this shit off or I put a bullet in his dick, if not his brain." She was so damn serious and, even though I didn't know her, I had a feeling she was telling the truth.

  "Come on, Mikhail," I whispered, massaging his cock and kissing the side of his cheek at the same time. He turned toward me with a small snarl and our lips met, the taste of my blood heavy on his tongue. For a split-second there, he was kissing me with all of that wild passion and that violent need … and then he was shoving me hard against the wall and stumbling back with a gasp, sliding his arm over his mouth and looking down at the blood with this terrified sort of facial expression.

  Mik flicked his sapphire blue eyes up to mine, his pupils rapidly shrinking back to normal.

  "Thea," he gasped as Revel grabbed for my elbow … and I collapsed.

  The mouthwatering scent of pure arabica beans brewing woke me, and I groaned. My head was pounding and my body felt loose, relaxed. Almost like I'd had really great sex last night or something.

  Wait. Where the hell was I?

  Rubbing sleep grit from my eyes, I blinked a few times and peered at my surroundings. Yep, just as I had suspected: this was definitely not my apartment. Where mine was homey, with every single item of furniture a lovingly restored antique that Chris had made for me in his spare time, this apartment was almost sterile it was so modern.

  Who the hell would live in such a cold environment?

  I rolled over to my back and lifted the buttery soft, charcoal gray sheet, only to pause again. Where the fuck were my clothes? Something weird was going on. If I had picked up some sexy stranger and come back to his place for a night of mind-blowing sex, I wouldn't have taken off my halter top and leather pants, but not my panties.

  Fragments of the night before came trickling back to me, so I lay still and allowed them to come. Something about telling Chris I needed to get laid because FInley fucking Wilde had gotten under my skin.

  We'd gone out to a shifter club, I remembered that much and then …

  I shot up with a gasp.

  Blue-Eyes! The sexy, psychopathic kind of guy who wanted me to call him Sir. I must have gone home with him after all. That certainly explained the cold, lifeless décor of the apartment.

  Why couldn't I remember anything past leaving with him, though? I hadn't drank that much to warrant passing out. Had I?

  "Oh good, you're awake. Here." A steaming cup of pitch-black coffee was thrust under my nose, and I gaped up at the person holding it.

  "Mik?" I frowned at my vampire boss in confusion, then looked around the open-plan apartment again. "What the hell are you doing here?"

  He frowned back at me, his sapphire blue eyes narrowed. "Just where exactly do you think you are, Thea?" His gaze ducked down to my chest, and I scrambled to cover my naked breasts with a sheet.

  "Uh, clearly … not where I actually am," I muttered, feeling my face flame with embarrassment. "So maybe you could fill me in? The last thing I can remember is leaving Split Skin with a guy, and then I woke up in a strange bed wearing nothing but my panties."

  Mikhail's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You thought you'd had relations with that mangy mutt? Holy shit, Thea. I gave you a little more self-respect than that."

  In a lame attempt to cover my embarrassment and the sting that his words carried, I cleared my throat a few times. "Okay, so if not him then …" I waved a hand between my vampiric boss and myself, feeling my cheeks flame even hotter.

  "You think …" Mik screwed his nose up in what could only be disgust. "No. No, definitely not. Absolutely not. That is most positively not what happened."

  "No need to sound so horrified about it," I muttered, tucking the sheet tighter around my chest like a suit of armor.

  Mik grimaced. "Please don't start right now, Thea. I brought you back here to my house only because you passed out when I fed from you. I've never taken a kitsune's blood before, so I wasn't sure what lasting effects it might have on you."

  "This is your house?" I gaped, peering around at the stark, modern sort of interior. "Never would have guessed that."

  He huffed a noise and placed the thick looking mug of coffee on the bedside table, seeing as I had yet to take it fr
om his hand. "Why not? What did you think my house looked like?"

  "I don't know." I shrugged. "More castle-y? With like … cobwebs and lots of red velvet?"

  "Fucking hell, Thea. I'm not that old," he growled in a way that suggested, if he had any feelings, I would have just hurt them. Good thing he had none, right?

  "Hold up." I rubbed at my forehead with one hand, leaving the other to grip the sheet tightly to my chest. "You fed on me?!"

  The memories were coming back a little clearer now. I vaguely recalled the fight in the alleyway and out into the street with Blue-Eyes … Nix! Holy crap, I’d almost fucked the same man I’d been booked to kill this weekend!

  "Sorry." Mik shrugged his broad shoulders, already dressed in one his signature black coats. "I hadn't expected Nix to take so many cheap shots, and you had a graze, so I could smell your blood. Couldn't have been helped."

  "Uh-huh, right," I murmured, nodding and running a hand over my unmarked throat. I remembered what had happened now. The terrifying pain of his fangs striking and then the euphoria that followed … I was equal parts relieved and disappointed that we hadn’t fucked after all that.

  "Your clothes got some blood spilled on them and it was just safer for everyone if we got rid of them. Your kitsune friend took Ziff home, too." Mikhail didn't look even the slightest bit apologetic, but then again he was a vampire.

  "Ziff was okay?" I asked, changing the subject, but quietly uncomfortable that Revel had taken my little friend. She was a total stranger; how did I know she would remember to feed him or scratch him behind the ears?

  "Seemed fine after he stopped trying to bite me. You know, you should teach him better manners, Thea." He scowled at me like some sort of scolding grandparent. There wasn’t even a trace of that sometimes-humour I got to see him in. Already, I missed it. It was as if Mikhail was throwing up an extra layer of protection between us by being a mega-ass. His usual dickishness just wasn’t going to cut it today, was it?