Scion of the Fox

by S. M. Beiko

  I didn’t want to break their embrace, so all I could do was rest my hand on her reassuringly. “It’s going to be fine. Just rest here and keep watch. If I get broken again, I’ll let you know.”

  Sil urged us on with a whine. “We must hurry.” I caught her looking worriedly upstairs instead of towards the basement door. Cecelia. She was torn.

  I frowned; I’d need Sil to help me take care of Arnas and couldn’t risk sending her off again. I’d made that mistake already today. Natti was taking off her winter tack, too; underneath she wore wrinkled cargo pants and a black sports top. She was primed to fight. But first . . .

  “Natti.” I turned towards her. “Upstairs, third floor. First bedroom on the right. I need you to check on . . . on my grandma.” The word felt foreign in my mouth. “Just make sure she’s okay. If anything’s disconnected — IVs, tubes, whatever — call 911.” I tossed her my miraculously working phone. “The power’s out, so her machines probably will be, too. And if it’s all fine, lock the door and get to the basement. Your Sub Zero trick will probably come in handy.”

  Natti grunted, cracking her knuckles and making for the stairs. Sil turned those gold eyes on me, ears flicking. I nodded, and she took off ahead of me. I looked to Phae and Barton one last time. “Put up the shield. Stay behind it. I’ll be right back.”

  “Famous last words,” Barton sighed, but he saluted. “See you soon, chief.”

  A globe of white light flashed around the two of them. I didn’t know how much longer Phae could keep it up, and I felt a clock start up behind my sternum. Time was already running out and I hadn’t even started. The dark corridor leading to the basement loomed like an infinite tunnel.

  I turned away from them and followed Sil into the shadows, feeling my way down the stairs with as much stealth as I could manage. I touched the solid concrete floor and felt a shudder rise to meet me. I froze, waiting for the quake to come. Ten seconds. Twenty. Nothing. I breathed, then hissed. “Sil?”

  She lit up right at my feet. It took everything I could to clamp down and silence a shout.

  I swallowed instead, taking comfort in her heat while it made mine flare. I touched her blazing tail, and my arm lit up like the torch I needed. God, I wish I could make my own fire, already. Unfortunately, basic training had been put on hold. I raised my arm, stiffening as the disarray before us came into view.

  I had grown accustomed to finding our way through the winding piles of junk and storage, but this time boxes, furniture, shelving units were overturned and scattered. The labyrinth had shifted. Now there were new columns, new pathways, blocking old ones.

  All the better for whatever hid down here, biding its time.

  “It’s trying to get in,” Sil murmured, her voice a susurrus of embers as her fur flickered.

  I didn’t bother asking if that were even possible, if anyone besides her could open the door to the summoning chamber. Anything could happen now. “What would he want down there?” I led us forward, waving my torch arm in search of a passable way to the hidden doorway. “I thought each Denizen had a chamber. For personal practice.”

  So silent was the basement that I could hear Sil sniff as she scaled an Easter Island head with ease, scouting ahead. She grunted, finding no way through, and returned to my side. “Cecelia was in the business of hiding secrets. Things of great value. A bird loves a shiny object.” Her whiskers twitched.

  I frowned in the black. Cecelia was in the business of keeping secrets. Great. More secrets. More lies. More riddles.

  We made our way far enough to reach the west wall of the house. Boxes and debris had toppled to create an enclosed tunnel the width of my shoulders, and it might just reach to the back wall. I flashed my arm towards it, careful not to kindle the surrounding cardboard, and Sil bounced in. She signalled, and I followed.

  “You think the Owls are looking for the targe, too?” Maybe they thought Cecelia had it, that Ravenna had maybe succeeded and given it to my grandmother, before . . . I tried not to think about it, my mother trapped in the underworld all these years.

  But why would the Owls put so much effort into stopping Ravenna, stopping me? Was the balance really so important?

  Sil read my thoughts . . . or maybe she was talking to herself. “Those fools will stop at nothing to maintain their precious Narrative. They’ll break their own rules, work with the monsters they claim they’re protecting Denizens from, feed helpless children to a snake. Cowards. All of them. Power mad. They’ll be the end of us all.”

  I tried to swallow my rising pulse. Sil seemed far chattier than usual, and I hoped it wasn’t a sign she was as anxious as I was. There was always so much she wasn’t telling me, locked inside that thousand-year-old head. She knew something and she wouldn’t give it away. Something that riled her and made her seem to blaze up with each breath. And was she getting bigger? I kept quiet all the same. I needed her to stay controlled, and her nervous energy was catching.

  The tunnel was running out; I could see the clear exit in front of us. “Yeah, well, too bad we need an Owl to finish the j—”

  The ground shook. We’d arrived at the back wall, and we crouched close to each other as the quake passed. I clamped my mouth shut, the echo of my voice ringing stupidly in my ears. The wall was a crumbled ruin, concrete churned into playground pebbles, but still somehow holding. The secret doorway that led to the summoning chamber was a rimey outline in the debris but was yet unbreached.

  Above it, buried in the man-made stone, was a horrible hulking shape that writhed its body, drilling itself deeper into the wall. With each of its movements, the ground shook.

  “So close now,” said a greedy, reedy voice from inside the wall, hungry and angry and wanting.

  I got to my feet; the aftershock hummed under us. I glanced at Sil; her fire seemed to be whistling in a hundred different directions, a flame for each hair on her body. She was growing — her back was as high as my hip now. “Nothing worse than a burrowing Owl,” I said loudly, trying to assert myself and maybe calm Sil down.

  The shaking ceased so suddenly that I stumbled and caught myself. The shape rolled over, a keystone in a knot of soon-to-collapse rubble. Its eyes were huge and semihuman, leaping off its face, arms and legs tucked tightly to its body. My jaw tightened, but kept my arm alight. When I flashed the flame, I could clearly see its pupils contract.

  They were my uncle’s eyes. The shimmer of a Rabbit danced across my spirit vision; a Rabbit trapped, a Rabbit afraid. A Rabbit begging for mercy.

  “He’s being controlled,” I murmured. “Or possessed.” It all flashed clearly in my head; he was controlled, all right, by the Owls who had been using him all along, promising him a return to power, the protection of his wife — promises already broken. Now they were fed up with his lack of results, and they’d decided to make him useful. To see what else he could get from the home of the former Fox Paramount and to make sure her granddaughter didn’t come back from the dead.

  “Leave this place, you filthy wretch!” Sil barked, her voice as big as her, her body growing larger still. I suddenly worried the whole basement would go up in flames around us. “There is nothing for you here!”

  His smile was ragged like a stamp’s edge. “There is. You are hiding it. A great power. A deep power. Here all along. And it could be mine. So shiny. I hear it calling me.”

  My spirit eye twitched, a whisper, an insistence — a shadow and a gem and a broken statue. I shook my head. Is that what Arnas — or not-Arnas — was after? A rock?

  Whatever they were doing to not-Arnas, it seemed as though their influence had made him into something as ugly and twisted as all his fears and desires. Our combined firelight made something flash at his throat — the dark bauble I’d seen on him before. Could this be what was left of my father’s power? And was it being warped now?

  “Any power you have is stolen!” I cried. “Give it back, and
maybe I’ll consider keeping your face intact!”

  The Rabbit shadow flashed again, pleading. But the Owlish monster inside the wall only deepened its smirk, swallowing the real Arnas back behind its horrible crunching teeth. His wide, twisted arms released, and I saw another shape, separate from its drilling body, come into the light.

  A pale face. A dark halo of hair. Deedee.

  “Come and get it,” the Arnas-thing mewled. And the house began to heave.

  *

  Natti braces herself against the wall before she can be flung across the hallway. She’s just made it to the third floor and to the doorway of Roan’s grandmother’s room, but there is nothing but bedlam. The walls shudder like they will shake loose; the ceiling cracks, threatening to cave. Luckily, the pipes from a bathroom down the hall have already burst and are drowning the carpet. With a flick of her wrist, Natti shoots the water from the floor and onto the ceiling, freezing the cracks and buying some time.

  Another sudden rumble pitches Natti through the doorway. Even before she can collect herself from the ground, her face registers a sudden heat, and she rolls, looking for the fire. Maybe one of the hospital machines exploded? It’s blazing in here, and —

  Well, it’s not the curtains or the bedspread or the machines. Even as the house caves in around her ears, the grandmother lays peaceful and still as a wax figure. Except the grandmother herself is up in flames, serene and unharmed in the heart of the blaze. The heat carries to the hall, and Natti wonders how long her ice-patch job will hold.

  Shit. She scowls as the house lurches again.

  *

  I feinted and leapt backwards, trying to avoid the storage landslide and the tumbling concrete and rebar. Arnas had wrestled his way out of his hole, each struggle of his mutated body shaking my resolve. The juddering threw me off long enough that he managed to nest Deedee in the rubble before he rocketed out and landed in front of us.

  He stomped his foot, heaving the stone floor apart. I thudded against the wall, rolling out of the way of a falling bookshelf as the seismic tremors heaved and worked the house from its foundation. I got to my feet in time to see Sil flash into her Fox-woman form, launching at Arnas with her mouth open.

  “Wait!” I screamed over the din, barely able to hear myself through the reverberations. The two of them locked together and rolled, the Arnas-thing shrieking as Sil lifted and slammed him face-first into the ground.

  “Traitor!” Sil howled, and she picked him up again. She didn’t seem at all like herself, all wisdom and serenity dissolved. “You killed her! My daughter! I’ll rip you into nothing!” Her face was animal and monstrous. I stopped breathing.

  She crushed his face in her massive hand and hurled him aside. Despite it all, the Arnas-thing seemed to be laughing, and he got to his broken legs easily, scampering into the dark like a shattered beetle. Sil-the-warrior fell to all fours and rumbled after him.

  I didn’t have time to register shock. Daughter?

  “Sil!” I shouted. “Stop!” But there was something wrong. Something had taken hold of her, too; something I had felt in myself at Omand’s Creek. There was little that could penetrate righteous rage when it was personal. I tried to follow them.

  Sil was the fire, now. And it had caught all the boxes and furniture around us. Hot and fast, it swallowed everything, and I lost them in the blaze.

  I pulled up short of a crackling wall of fire, shielding my eyes even though I knew it wouldn’t hurt me. Old reflexes I guess, but this was the angriest heat I’d ever felt. I dove in, regardless, and it hissed away from me as I peeled through, trying to find them.

  “Sil!” I screamed over and over until my throat was raw. I chanced a glance up, and wondered how long it’d take until the inconveniently wooden ceiling caught, too.

  I found them at the heart of the inferno. Sil stood over Arnas in all her brutal, mighty glory, so hot she was white, flickering blue, and she looked prepared to tear him in half. The creature laughed and laughed. The Rabbit-silhouette over him still flickered, though it was nearly gone.

  But he was still Aaron’s brother. He still needed help, even if he didn’t deserve it.

  Sil’s hand came down for the final blow and, without thinking, I leapt in front of it.

  *

  Phae holds tight to Barton’s wheelchair. The room is spinning, and she knows it isn’t really, knows it’s just reverberating, and she tries to dismiss the black spots in front of her eyes.

  “Phae?” Barton shouts. He holds tight to her, the best he can offer. His complete uselessness pounds hard into him. But he will give his life to protect her, just as she’s doing now for him.

  “You can’t do this forever,” he says into her ear. Her eyes are closed in full concentration, her hair-antlers brushing against his head. “You need to get out of here!”

  “I’m not leaving you,” she replies almost too quietly to be heard. Her beautiful brown skin is turning grey. She has nothing left.

  “You’re killing yourself!” Barton protests, hoping the hyperbole will make her snap out of it. Hoping that he isn’t right.

  Nothing would be worse than losing Phae. She protected him without question. She supported him without words. And if she did so at the cost of her life, his would be worth nothing in the end.

  It’s getting extremely hot, and Barton knows the destruction will only worsen. The heat probably means fire; fire means Roan. Hopefully she’s winning, but he can’t count on her now.

  Barton grips Phae tight, pushing her gently away from him. This causes her eyes to flash open as the house rocks apart. They look at each other for a prolonged moment; even though Phae’s eyes are a clear, glassy white, Barton knows she sees him. Just as she did when she saved his life for the first time.

  Now it’s his turn.

  With all the strength that basketball games have given him, he picks her up and hurls her into the upturned sofa nearby. The shield is broken, and even in the chaos he can see her features relax past the surprise. She breathes again, colour coming back to her.

  Then the floor crackles beneath him. And he hears Natti scream, “Fire!” from upstairs before he plummets through the burning living room floor.

  *

  Sil’s ancient power shuddered through my forearm like an axe hitting a stump. But I stood my ground, feet planted over the bloody pulp of mutant-Arnas.

  Her fire cowl erupted. “Get out of my way! He’s mine!”

  I gritted my teeth so hard they should’ve turned to paste. I put up my other arm against her, bracing my body on hers. “We . . . need . . . him . . .” My fire started climbing, and I felt myself becoming the blaze around us. I was so dialled in that I could hear the flames goading us on. Begging us to stop. Telling stories of the dead.

  “He killed her! It was his doing! She’s gone because of him!” Her eyes were hatred, her gaze was death. Gold and iron and horror. And she had it all turned on me. Her nine enormous tails whipped the blaze up higher, faster.

  “I know!” I screamed back, my hair becoming fire, my body growing. “But this isn’t the way! Killing him won’t bring her back, Cecelia!”

  I didn’t know if I’d said it intentionally, or if it’d been an accident, or if I’d known all along. But I’d said it. And her eyes turned to glass, massive teeth and jaws going slack with sorrow. The burning house closed in.

  “My daughter,” she moaned, her flames still high, arm locked in my grasp. “I couldn’t save her. I didn’t know.”

  “I know,” I said again. “I know.”

  Then a scream ripped through her that made my head split, and her fire went out. She crumpled to the ground, and the light in her gorgeous, fearsome Fox face was gone. I stumbled backwards with the next tremor and heard a crack like thunder above our heads. The ceiling split open, eaten by the blaze. Not-Arnas was still laughing, choking on the smoke, and probably not long for
this world. I scooped him up into my flaming arms and he howled, either from the heat or from his broken limbs, and I dove out of the way as the living room came down on top of us.

  That was the last of the tremors. The earthquake stopped. And by some ridiculous stroke of luck, we’d avoided the majority of the cave-in, but the fire still raged. Sil’s body was still somewhere in the debris, but I’d have to stop the fire first. It was only a matter of time until it swallowed the whole house, and my friends were still up there. I stowed Arnas aside, and rounded on the fire, hands out.

  “Stop!” I cried. If I could light it up, I figured I could bring it down. It was a gamble. But I shut myself off to the heat, and coaxed it calmly. “It’s done, now. It’s done. Come back to me. Rest.”

  The fire seemed to pause, the smoke receding into it like a black gasp. It swirled backwards, then climbed down. It came to me as an obedient pet, wanting to please. When it reached my skin, I felt it fuse with my blood and marrow. It was part of me, now, even though I knew it had once been Sil’s. Cecelia’s. My grandmother’s. It came to me because my blood was familiar to it. I would’ve cried if I’d had the energy left.

  The silence of the house was deafening, especially after what had seemed like hours of uncontrollable mayhem. I felt myself shrinking down to the Roan that sort of resembled a normal girl, and I let my lungs relax. I looked at the Arnas-thing, still in one piece but moaning and writhing. I stumbled over and ripped the bauble from around his neck. He arched and screamed. I staggered back, and his body writhed as it reasserted itself into my uncle, looking slightly charred and terrified.

  “Roan!” I heard Phae shout. I scrambled over to the massive hole in the ceiling, and before I could ask her if she was okay, I found myself tripping over Barton and his wheelchair. He groaned and I fell to his side.

  “He’s okay!” I yelled back up at her. She was already at the top of the stairs, themselves badly damaged, and trying to climb down. Natti wasn’t far behind.