Foxes' Den

by Teresa Noelle Roberts

  Put a fox in a toy store and you could lose him for hours. That was all. Nothing to worry about, but it got annoying sometimes. If Paul meditated and reached out along the cord of their marriage, he’d be able to track him down and remind him about the dinner plans.

  Paul extended his senses, reaching through the silver cord. As he did, his mind brushed the strand that connected him to Akane. It was tenuous, but still alive. Without quite knowing why, he channeled energy into it. At this point he doubted they’d ever see Akane again—she was a wild creature back in the wild where she belonged—but in case she wanted to visit, he wanted her to know she was welcome. Eagerly awaited, even.

  That done, he stretched out again toward Tag. The room retreated as he focused, retreated until he could almost see where Tag was. Farther away than he would have guessed, somewhere to the northeast, up in the mountains. Once he had a better fix, he’d give a good tug on the cord. Tag was sensitive enough to feel it and be reminded to call.

  The phone rang before he even got that far, and Tag’s number flashed onto the screen. Victory! His poking around must have subconsciously alerted Tag.

  Smiling, he answered with, “Glad you remembered to call, love. I was getting worried.”

  Tag would laugh now. Tag always laughed when Paul worried. Even the times Tag had ended up in jail or narrowly avoided getting gay-bashed by irate loggers he’d bought umbrella drinks, he always shrugged off Paul’s concern.

  Instead of laughing, though, Tag said, in a small, subdued voice that quavered, a voice that sounded entirely unlike the confident Tag he loved, “You should be worried this time. I’ve been kidnapped.”

  “Where are you? Never mind, I can find you. I’ll be there. With backup.”

  “No, don’t!” Tag’s voice rose as if his throat tightened with fear. “They want you to come, Paul. They know who you are. They’re Japanese sorcerers, and they mean to use me to get to you.”

  Fine. He knew that now. He’d come in prepared to kick sorcerous butt. Not that butt-kicking was one of his great strengths—his magic was terrific for defense, less so for offense—but he’d figure something out. If nothing else, he was in good shape and pissed as hell. “I’m coming for you. Where are you?”

  “Somewhere in the mountains, about an hour out of town, but Paul, don’t. I don’t think they plan to hurt me, and I’m sure I can find a way out of this—you know I have a few tricks—but they want to kill you. Paul, darlin’, please don’t… They’re coming…”

  “I love you, Taggart,” Paul said, instinctively, helplessly. Tag had to hang up before he could get all the words out, but Paul knew Tag heard him anyway.

  I have a few tricks. That meant they hadn’t figured out yet that Tag was a dual. Sorcerers didn’t read auras easily, so they didn’t pick up on that kind of thing as fast as witches. But sooner or later, they would.

  Paul did a quick mental calculation of how many of his relatives were home at the moment, and of those, how many had magics that would be handy in a fight. Enough to deal with a few normy criminals without any problem, but sorcerers…not so much. All the fire-workers were in California fighting a wildfire, except for Siobhan, and he was not taking a thirteen-year-old into a combat situation, even if she was shaping up to be the strongest fire-worker in the family. Several people, including his powerful parents, were in Ireland for Yule, a lot of the green witches who had secondary combat-useful skills were in Africa at a permaculture conference, and the water witches were far less useful in the mountains. Auntie Roz was incredibly powerful, but she was a healer—and close to a hundred years old, which was old even for their long-lived clan.

  Almost as if the sorcerers knew. Then again, they were sorcerers. They probably did. Sorcerers were good at both mind-magic and good old-fashioned research. Tag worked with normies, whose brains were painfully easy to pick and who probably knew his in-laws were in Ireland. The wildfires and the permaculture conference were in the news—not front-page news, but anyone looking for information on the Donovans would find it.

  Too bad Elissa and her butt-kicking husbands weren’t around. But she was probably having a baby, oh, this very moment. Which was why Uncle Dermott and Aunt Jan and their other daughter Bethany were in the wilds of Canada with her instead of here where he and Tag needed them.

  The phone rang. Rather, it almost rang and he answered before it did.

  “Portia, you’re not coming along,” he said. “Telepaths and sorcerers—bad combination.” Most witches could block out sorcerers’ mind-affecting spells, but Portia’s mind was open to pretty much the whole universe, which was why she rarely left the estate.

  “Bullshit. We’re already here. Get outside. Guillermo has the Angelini power over iron, and we’re both seriously charged. I can pull the water right out of their bodies if I have to.”

  Charged. That meant he’d found out about Tag’s kidnapping, and broadcast his distress so his twin heard it, while she and Guillermo Angelini were in the middle of getting it on. Being witches, they’d channeled the frustration into red magic to boost their power, but when Tag was safe, she was so going to give him a hard time about the interrupted date.

  If they all lived through the night. Red magic enhanced all your powers, even the ones you didn’t necessarily want enhanced—like Portia’s telepathy.

  He opened his mouth to protest. Predictably, Portia knew what he was about to say and countered it. “I can help you find Tag. I’m linked to him through you, and he’s scared, Paul. Really scared. I can feel it from here. Besides, how were you going to get there? You can’t drive. So get your ass into the car. We’re pulling up right now.”

  Paul thought briefly of arguing. Technically, he knew how to drive. He’d realized young, though, that he shouldn’t. His witch-sight was too powerful. He had to concentrate to see the ordinary world, the one cars were in, because if he didn’t, inanimate objects, including cars and possibly the road, would go transparent on him. There was no way he could maintain that kind of focus now, not if he were also trying to track Tag through their etheric link.

  He ran out the door without answering and slipped into the back seat of Guillermo’s car. It was a big, old American classic, not what he’d have expected from a witch from Rome, but then again, Guillermo had iron magic. Figured he’d want a car from the era where they were still largely steel.

  “Northeast,” he and Portia said simultaneously.

  Guillermo turned and smiled, an honest-to-Powers smile, as if relishing the coming combat. It reminded Paul that the Angelini family had been warrior-witches in the Middle Ages, using their metal magic to win battles. Some of them still guarded the Pope. Unlike Donovans, who tended toward more peaceful magics, Angelini skills were honed for fighting.

  Guillermo pulled out of the driveway so fast the oyster shells and gravel churned behind them.

  “Don’t worry, Paolo,” he said in a richly accented voice that Paul, at less stressful times, found incredibly sexy. “This car is a fine old car. Much steel in her. Already I have made a fortress of her, and I will make the wards stronger yet, so my Portia will be safe.”

  Paul waited for Portia to smack Guillermo, at least verbally. Crisis or not, she wasn’t going to let the guy get away with that possessive tone after only a couple of dates.

  When she didn’t, Paul let the link to his sister open a little more, focusing his witch-sight on her and Guillermo.

  Magic thrummed in their veins, danced across their skin. Guillermo’s silver-gray power and Portia’s blue and aqua cavorted together, weaving into a complex pattern.

  It seemed he had a new brother-in-law-to-be. “Congratulations,” he said, though his heart wasn’t in it.

  How could it be, when his heart was with Tag?

  “First we get your husband back.” Portia’s voice was soft, but firm. “Then we’ll worry about welcoming my future husband into the family properly. Take the coastal highway to Route 16, Guill. Fast. We’ll deal with the cops.”

 
; He should have realized that when you told a metal witch to drive fast, the car would start doing things that weren’t in the engineering specs.

  White-knuckled, sick with worry for Tag, Paul threw up a disguising illusion on the car and prayed that no one would hit it when it wasn’t quite visible. Had to hide from cops, though—for the cops’ sake.

  He’d kill anyone who came between him and Tag, and Portia and Guillermo would help.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was a beautiful night on the mountainside in rural Hokkaido, the stars bright above her, the air winter-crisp and freshly fallen snow making a glittering white carpet for Akane’s paws. Dawn was still many hours away, and she planned to enjoy the dark hours, hunt some mice and other tiny creatures, worship the stars, perhaps tease a dog-fox or two with her scent.

  But between one dancing fox-pounce and the next, the night suddenly shifted to rain, though it was far too cold for rain to fall naturally. The wind picked up, carrying ice and a sharp hint of sulfur that made her eyes water.

  Akane knew that smell. Sorcery.

  She froze, one paw in the air. She tipped her head back, sniffed, strained her ears to catch noises that were out of place. She heard nothing, smelled nothing but sulfur and ice, but the moment of focus gave her time to realize the rain wet her spirit but not her fur. Something magical was afoot, and she was caught in someone else’s downpour and someone else’s sorcery.

  No, someone else was caught in sorcery, and the power of it brushed her. The stench was definite, but dilute, distant. It was still enough to make her stomach roil and her body ache with the memory of solidity.

  The animal part of her would gladly run from danger. Akane was no mere fox, though, but Trickster energy given earthly, if immortal, form. She had responsibilities. Most of them involved playing, but she was also supposed to keep the serious-minded from becoming dangerously fixed and damaging others with their rigidity. She of all people knew that a sorcerer on a bad day was the very definition of “so fixed he was a danger to self and others”. She never wanted to get near a sorcerer again, but if this problem didn’t concern her, why were its echoes assaulting her? It must be something that needed a kitsune’s attention—or her attention specifically.

  Akane mentally swore in Japanese and English and the ancient language of the kitsune, then forced herself to sniff the air again. Under the sulfur stink, she picked up evergreens and ocean. Hokkaido was a large island, and she was far enough inland that she shouldn’t be able smell the sea.

  Her keen fox nose named the evergreen scent as redwood.

  Oregon.

  Something tugged at her heart. Something pulled her toward America, where the sun had already set on a day not properly started in Japan.

  She shifted to a mostly human form, keeping the ears to hear better and all three of her tails because she could. Immortal as she was, her form shouldn’t matter, but it seemed easier to think clearer in the body with the larger, more verbally adept brain, the one where she could better filter the bombardment of her senses.

  The smell of sulfur dimmed to a more bearable point, and that, as much as anything, cleared her head. Unfortunately, what formed in her clear head was far from comforting.

  Paul and Tag were in trouble—sorcerous trouble.

  The trouble involved her somehow, if only because they’d saved her and she owed them.

  She needed to help them.

  That meant getting near sorcerers, and not merely getting near them, but getting confrontational with them.

  Nausea threatened her, and her heart raced fast enough that her ribs would surely break. She couldn’t do it. A sorcerer might be able to trap her again, might condemn her to more bleak centuries of torture in the wrong form.

  Then she threw back her head and chuffed from relief. No, no, this sorcerer could not do that. Oh, he might try, but it wouldn’t work, because she hadn’t done anything that would lay her open to a curse. She’d avoided dealings with the mortal world since she got her form back, and her dealings with Paul and Tag had been strictly honest. All right, she’d lied by omission, not telling the real reason she wouldn’t stay with at Donovan’s Cove, but the reasons she’d given hadn’t been false, merely secondary.

  And if a sorcerer did manage to trap her somehow, Paul and Tag could get her out of it—but only if she helped get them out of whatever mess they’d wandered into.

  “Inari, help this humble kitsune find a way to save my friends,” she prayed.

  And because she was not simply a devotee, but a little bit of divine energy siphoned off to play in the mortal world, she heard an answer. “You say these mortals are your friends, fox-daughter, and yet you left them.”

  “I wanted too much from them, more than I could rightfully ask or they could rightfully give. I wanted to stay. You know I wanted to stay. I’m part of you, so you know my heart. But they love each other so brightly, Inari, as only mortals can love. I didn’t want to risk damaging their bond. I’ve missed them ever since—and they need me now. Help me to help them and I’ll walk away content once I know they’re safe.”

  Again, the divine answered. “These are not merely friends. You love them. Only love makes one say such things and mean it, and I can see your heart, fox-daughter. It is a twisty road to love a mortal, let alone two of them, one of them Trickster-touched and the other a witch. But once you have set foot on that road, it will do only harm to force yourself from it. Go with my blessing and rescue your mortals. Consider it a Midwinter gift.”

  Love? She hadn’t let herself believe the word, calling the feeling by many other names: lust, obsession, gratitude, fondness. The god who was her father/mother as well as her guide had seen the truth, spoken the truth.

  But the truth hadn’t set her free. The truth was sending her to a terrifying confrontation with a sorcerer, and, assuming that went well, to the far scarier task of figuring what to do about her feelings.

  She’d worry about that later. Right now, there was work to be done.

  Luckily, she could travel fast as thought—at least as soon as figured out where she needed to go.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The first wave of sorcerous magic hit while they were still on the highway, a cloud of virulent fuchsia that shook the car even with the protections Guillermo had on it. The car careened sideways on the rain-slick road.

  Paul closed his eyes and added, to the prayers he was already muttering for Tag’s safety, a prayer that they wouldn’t skid off the road and bounce down the side of the mountain.

  Guillermo muttered something in Italian. The car straightened itself out and stopped shaking.

  The spell still surrounded them. Voices niggled at his subconscious. Thanks to his own defenses and the shields on the car, he couldn’t understand them, but they beat on the car, trying to get in and infiltrate their minds. He’d been anxious to start with, but his heart was racing now, his palms sweating

  Tag. Was Tag all right? He’d managed not to imagine awful possibilities until now, but his mind jumped to an image of Tag very still in a pool of blood. Some sorcerers used blood sacrifices to raise power…

  No, the cord that connected him to Tag still glowed silver to his witch-sight. That flash had either been a sorcerous mind-fuck or his imagination running away with him, but either way he couldn’t afford the negativity. Magic depended so much on one’s mental state, and fear sapped your concentration.

  He thought of Tag in the shower this morning, slick with water, perilously close to late to work and not caring as he exploded into Paul’s mouth.

  A jolt of red magic sizzled in the air, pushing back the vile violet. A powerful imagination worked both ways.

  “Are you all right, Portia?” Guillermo asked, putting his hand on her shoulder.

  “Fine, just shaken up,” Portia said. “Bring it on.”

  Paul heard what she was thinking, though, and that was more or less, “No, no, holy Powers, no!”

  “Bullshit,” he told his sister. �
��You’re hanging in there, but you’re not fine. Guillermo doesn’t have a speck of blue in his aura, which will make your marriage easier in some ways, but you can’t lie to me.”

  “Voices,” she admitted. “I hear voices in the rain, and they cut me. I smelled blood. I saw blood. I saw Taggart…I know it’s a spell, and I know they lie, but knowing that only helps so much.”

  He leaned forward, kissed the top of her head. They were twins, but he’d been born first, which made him the big brother by one hour and change. He was entitled to be protective of her. “I understand. I can feel it a little. It must be worse for you. But Tag’s fine. And we’re going to make sure he stays that way.”

  He hoped he was telling the truth.

  Lord and Lady, why did the true-dreaming never show him anything useful to him and his?

  On the bad-day scale, this one had to rate as one of the worst.

  Perhaps Tag shouldn’t have hit the male sorcerer quite so hard. But what’s a guy to do when one second he’s pointing something out on a map for a nice, elderly Japanese lady and the next someone’s trying to shove a pillowcase over his head? Under those circumstances, you react. And if you’re Taggart Ross from Tennessee, you react with a good roundhouse punch to the face, a kick to the kneecap and a knee to the groin, all as close to simultaneous as you can manage without falling down.

  It might have worked too, even though his assailant turned out to be a sorcerer. Sorcerers were as vulnerable as anyone else to a dose of unexpected pain, and you could generally outrun someone who was doubled over his throbbing nads, holding a bloody nose and trying to figure out if his right knee still worked.

  Unfortunately for Tag, his other assailant was a sweet-faced lady older than his mama. It went against everything he believed to hit her—and never mind that Paul’s equally sweet-faced mother could raise ancient ghosts and Auntie Roz could literally rearrange your DNA, or, for that matter, that his own mama and grandma were crack shots. That hesitation allowed the elderly sorceress to open up with a few blasts of ice, and then something that stank like rotten eggs and left him temporarily paralyzed. They’d released the paralysis enough to force him to call Paul, then locked it down again.