Fox Trap

by Jayne Fury

  They sat in silence for a few moments before he looked back up and made his next move.

  In the bright white light of Katrina’s Diner, the all night joint that Elly knew well, Blaine Cornell’s chiseled good looks showed no sign of his age. He looked about thirty years old, until you looked deeply into those bright blue eyes. Then he looked old. Really Old.

  Ancient.

  And an idea began to form in her head.

  At first glance his eyes were playful but now, across from her, they had a true purpose to them. And they were lying. But all’s fair, she reasoned.

  The man. Man? Sure, she’d go with that. Even though a long sniff of him told her there was something else there. The man had a touch of stubble on his jawline that lazed across it in a sexy un-careful way that made her shove her hand under her bottom until the urge to touch it was under control. Cornell’s brow line was almost feminine, in that each curved in a high arch before dipping down at his temples. His hair was slicked back but the top was swooshed in an old fashioned pompadour.

  Old.

  Did Detective Cornell believe her? He looked like he was smarter than that, but then so did a lot of constabulary and she’d still managed to fool the asses.

  No matter what, she had to keep the secret of the Seannach.

  Time and time again, they believed her lies. Lies formed out of necessity. Out of duty. To be Seannach meant living by the code that protected their kin since the time of Forebearers and the legend of the Freedom Road.

  What really happened in the alley threw her off balance. What she was expecting was a crazed Seannach that she’d have to take down. But when her quarry’s face distorted into the grotesque monster, her instincts reacted before she could stop herself. Her bones reshaped, followed by the familiar comfort of fur and the unavoidable ripping off her clothes. In hindsight, she really did need to carry something extra to wear in a larger purse. Like always, she forgot.

  Lost in thought, Elly looked at Cornell. He’d begun talking.

  “… I’ve been assigned to the case now. So you don’t need to stay on it,” he said.

  “Except that I will.” She leaned forward. “And I’m not going to give up.”

  “Because of the bounty?”

  “No, because I let him get away. Now it’s my job to make sure he doesn’t do that to anyone else.” She held her face firm, staring at him. He stared back, assessing her.

  Finally, his head dipped in a quick nod. “I’ll make you a deal, if you stay out of my way, I’ll…”

  “No. No deal. If you’re on this case,” her fingernail tapped the table, “then we’re going to run into each other. Too bad for you. There’s no way around it,” she said, her counter argument injected a challenge.

  The detective’s eyebrows raised at her and she caught another scent. Approval? Relief?

  “Which precinct are you from? I’m pretty sure I know most of the Westie detectives in this area.” She dipped another biccie in her tea, leaning one arm casually on the laminate table between them. It was his turn to be under the lens.

  “Ghael constabulary, not Westmeath. I’m from Numina,” he said.

  “Seriously? You’re a…”

  “Brotherhood,” he said, and tilted his head at her as if gauging her reaction.

  She stared back. But she wanted to scream.

  Scat on a stick. How was she supposed to get this wacky monster making a blood buffet of her kin, and still deal with one of them in her way? If Cornell was here chasing someone from Numina, this guy was one of his. The lightning bolt of connection hit her. But Cornell didn’t smell the same as the freak and she couldn’t tell him that, not now and not ever.

  Instead, she probed, finding a way to get information to him and back from him, without revealing the foxkin. “Wait, you guys never leave Numina, do you?”

  “What are we? Quarantined?” He sat back and the fake leather wheezed protest. “The Ghael Constabulary, unlike the Numina police, are not restricted only to our home moon.”

  She felt her face mimic his, the thin line of lips. The eyebrows furrowing. She jutted her jaw out. Deep down, she suspected that this whole line of scat led to the Numina bloodsuckers.

  “You don’t have to worry about me chowing down on your pals.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ve heard about your strict code of law. That’s common knowledge all throughout the lunars around Ghael, I think. You guys take inhibitors, right?”

  He scowled. “True,” was all he said.

  Elly pursed her lips. She needed to tread lightly. “Nobody goes to Numina unless by invitation.”

  “Also true, we don’t have much of a tourist industry.” He picked up the coffee cup and sipped. Well, one theory about the people shattered. They ate real food. That was a relief. Next thought was the night legend.

  “And really, how many actual days of sunlight do you get?”

  “If you’re wondering… I don’t melt, burst into flames or turn into shimmering sparkle dust when the sun comes out. We’re in the gas giant shadow most of our season cycles.”

  “But how do your eyes deal with the sunlight?”

  “About as good as they do in this diner.” He cocked his head at her. “Anything else?”

  “Your skin isn’t pale like the perp’s.”

  “I go to a sun center. Are we done with this?”

  “Yes.” As she said that, his scent changed from ashes and smoke to a pleasant sage and citrus.

  “If the attacker was a Sanguinary… then you being here makes a lot of sense.” She picked up the teapot and poured.

  She was going to run into Cornell. Now to figure out who to get in on his investigation and get the detective’s official help, to stop this creature from attacking more Seannach.

  The trick was to make sure he never found out about Clan Síonnagh, the Seannach, and their lives here on Westmeath.

  At least they’d gotten past him hiding his true nature which was a stupid notion. If the Seannach were truly part fox, there was so much he needed to understand but couldn’t. That yoke of ignorance was starting to chafe. But they’d removed one layer of lies between them, giving them. He caught himself before he breathed a sigh of relief.

  Being a Numina detective wasn’t a lie. The rest is only half truths. And he had to get through it to get Ysbal back to his prison on his homeward and get back there. Get away from this. Get away from the lies.

  Now to the rest.

  “Elinor, I’ll be brief. The Brotherhood of the Sanguinary wants me to find the man that attacked you. We suspect he’s involved in a number of disappearances here on Westmeath. My job is to bring him back to justice on Numina. I don’t care much for the local constabulary here, as you said, they’re afraid of him. But you aren’t.”

  “Hey, I’d be stupid if I wasn’t afraid. That’s a good way to get killed. But I’m not going to let my client down,” she said, still not revealing her real clients. She lied with ease and mixed in the truth with skill. And he almost believed her. That was the most disturbing part.

  That and her scent. It was earthy and filled with forest and wild flowers; her lies came sweetly.

  He couldn’t tell her the rest, not yet. It would terrify her.

  “I’ll offer you a deal. Since I’m away from my home beat, and I’m unfamiliar with Westmeath, I’m going to need a guide. I’ll hire you as a private contractor to help with the case.” He leaned back and watched his words sink in.

  Her lithe hands, with strong long fingers, gripped the teacup. The tea at Katrina’s was something he’d never tasted before, it tasted like citrus peels and something else...

  Wild heatherdown? No, that was a new scent that was seeping from across the table. Feral. Invigorating. It was as though he was standing in the middle of a windy marsh. The light, musky aroma of heather blended with woodsmoke. Was he mixing up her scent and the tea? No. He caught a whiff of boggy peat that was not in his tea. He remembered the scent from before, in the alley.

&
nbsp; Blaine looked up over the rim of his cup. He sipped and waited. This wasn’t going to be a hard sell but he let her give the pretense.

  “And what exactly does that mean? Guide? Private contractor?” Elly asked and crossed her arms over her chest. Her little boots tapped the table’s central pedestal. Once. Twice. Three times. It stopped.

  He realized she was waiting.

  “Just that, you guide me around. You know where all of these places are that the perp has been. You know how to talk to the people here, some of them won’t talk to a…” he was about to say ‘Sanguinary’, “an official.”

  “Right, so you want me to help you solve this case, get your guy. Stop him from killing anymore people here on Westmeath.” She poured another draught cup from the cozy covered teapot between them.

  He watched as she placed it precisely in the center of the crocheted doily protecting the table. She was deliberately testing him, making him wait. This ex-cop was using interrogation tactics on him. Turning the tables turned so deftly he barely noticed it. When he did, he felt his tongue like dried leather in his mouth.

  “What’s in it for me?” she asked.

  “Closed case,” he said.

  To that she wrinkled her nose and rubbed her fingers together, drawing her hand back like snatching a ball from the air.

  “No bounty, but you’ll be compensated. Your usual rate. I assume you have a usual rate.”

  He watched her mull it over. Both hands together, interlocking fingers forming a cradle as she swirled the tea.

  “Ok, you got a deal.” She tilted her head at him. “But this guy’ll be hard to catch. You think you can take him down? Do we need some kind of special weapon to kill one of you vampire types?”

  “Vampires are myth. You don’t need a religious symbol or some special water. You don’t need a wooden stake. You don’t even need silver bullets.”

  “That’s werewolves,” she said.

  “Also legend and myth.” At least he hoped it was. Nothing would surprise Blaine, now.

  “Hmm.” She sat up, putting her teacup down. “Can you kill this guy with regular weapons. Why do I get the feeling this isn’t going to be that easy?”

  “We’re not going to kill him. We have to capture him and bring him back to Numina for justice, or did you forget that part?”

  She didn’t look like she’d forgotten. Not at all. Her perfectly plucked right eyebrow raised. Her voice turned from what he thought was a normal soprano into a husky sotto voce. “Uh-huh. So, you think you can get this guy trapped and back to your moon?”

  “I know I can, but I think it’s better if we work this together. I can protect you,” said Blaine.

  “Who says I need protecting?” she said with a half-smile on her face.

  It was his turn to raise a brow. He waved a forefinger in a circle, pointing at her, and stopped.

  She looked down at her second set of clothes that evening, and it was clear that she got the message. Elinor Morgan did not look happy about that. Not one bit.

  “I don’t like working with a partner,” she said.

  He shrugged at her. “I guess we’re going to have to figure it out. Let’s start the hunt.”

  Elly’s shoulders straightened and her back elongated as she sat up. The transformation gave Blaine pause as he rose from the booth. In a split second, Elly exchanged victim for tracker. It looked more natural on her.

  “Alright, where do you want to start?”

  “How about the bar where you picked him up?”

  Four

  Blood in the Alley

  Elly knew the scent of a lie. It was cloying like a bouquet of crushed fermenting honey flowers after sitting too long in the sun. There wasn’t a truth telling soul in the city of Ballylock.

  Truth felt uncomfortable. Sticky. Like tar on her fur, hard to hide and painful to remove. Her whole existence and that of her entire race was built on a carefully crafted lie. Secrets helped them stay hidden. She didn’t even know what the truth was, some days, like right now with Blaine Cornell. She wanted to know more. And that sticky tar of truth was going to get on her if she wasn’t careful. He was covered in good intentions.

  While Cornell ambled over to pay for their tea and those sweet baked crumblies that Katrina’s was famous for, Elly let her mind work over the problem. How could she get enough information about the Sanguinary out of Cornell to kill that Seannach murdering bloodsucking creep?

  It saw her. The thing knew what she was. Worse, he’d known what she was. Said it out loud, even. How did he find out about the kin? He had to die.

  That—and he was making a cursed feast out of her people. She’d eaten tea and biccies but all she could taste was dread.

  “Let’s go,” Detective Cornell said and jerked his chin towards the door. “Show me around, Miss Morgan.”

  Elly slipped out of the booth and followed him out the door.

  They left Katrina’s and headed back towards her skimmer and the nightclub that she’d picked up the perp in. “So,” she asked casually, “You have any idea of who this guy is? Did he do any killing on your homeworld?”

  “He’s a wanted criminal,” he said. Detective Cornell wasn’t looking at her. His head moved in a practiced surveillance scan. She followed his tracking to the crowd flowing out onto the sidewalk across the street. At the same time, he offered a crumb, “His name is Ysbal.” Cornell pointed at the neon blue and green sign that said ‘Ladies Night’. “Is that the club?”

  “That’s it.”

  “How did you get him to follow you?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said and stepped down into the road to cross. The boom-boom-boom of the dance music spilled out onto the street along with dozens of young people in various stages of inebriation or drug-induced titillation. Elly looked up and down the street before they crossed. “I didn’t have to try, he latched right onto me.”

  “Hmmm.” He lifted a chin towards a pair of the young people. “That normal around here?” The bar scene was filled with Seannach, they sniffed the air and looked at her. The side glances at Cornell made her feel uneasy, traitorous. She caught their eyes but made no other attempt to communicate. Amery was there with his sassy good looks and bushy hair, he twitched smirk at Elly and tilted his head over to Blaine then waggled his brows. For his part, the detective politely ignored him.

  She couldn’t blame the foxkin for looking. Blaine was striking. Different. The blond looked back at his female partner and continued their lively conversation never missing a beat.

  “Yeah, that’s normal.”

  “Did Ysbal fit in? Blend in?”

  She wanted to say, No, every single Seannach in the joint could smell something weird about him. Which was troubling since all of his victims were foxkin, why didn’t their hackles go up? They all smelled him. They all ignored him.

  Another mystery.

  “No. But somehow, everyone seemed oblivious to him. I’m still trying to work that out. He doesn’t even look like he’s from around here, like you, but paler. Easy to spot a foreigner.”

  Stepping carefully around a shiny red skimmer, she led the detective into the bar. “This way… uh, what do you want me to call you?”

  “Blaine,” he said. No hesitation. “Just Blaine.”

  “I’m Elly.”

  “Pleasure.” His voice was clipped, his shoulders rising. Elly saw him put his hand over his mouth and take a long breath. She smelled distress.

  “We can come back…” she offered and put her hand out. He was going white as death. Even her skin, considered fair by Westmeath standards, was a contrast. She reached for his hand.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “You’re not fine. Your face is white and your hand is starting to shake. Let’s go. Now.”

  Though he shook his head, he followed her. “Let’s go to the alley where he turned into a berserker on me. You ok?” But Blaine’s foot stumbled. She caught him. “What in the name of the Forebearers.”

  “It�
�s my inhibitor… ” Blaine said. “It had an odd reaction to the scent. I can’t identify it.”

  “Can you make it to my skimmer? How did you get here? I’ll put you in a taxi and you can…”

  “No, I’m better.” Blaine straightened up and looked at her. “There’s something not right in there. Something. It smelled so sweet it was almost putrefied. How did you not smell that?”

  “I smelled hot sweaty bodies ready for…” Mating. “Good times,” she finished. Seannach in heat. A Vixen in heat had the very scent of blood on her. And nightclubs on this strip were filled with them.

  “No.” He looked pensive before he admitted. “Blood urge, it was stronger than the inhibitor. Mind if we go back to the alley?”

  They walked around the crowds, keeping as far from the scent as Blaine could handle. She watched him carefully, looking for signs of the weird behavior like Ysbal’s The glowing blue eyes and ecstatic arousal he’d shown right before he morphed into a fang-faced horror. But Blaine only seemed to return into his detective self.

  They walked around the damp alley for a bit. It was as she had left it and the same as every other city alley in Ballylock. Ugly. Dirty. Full of garbage and scat. Westmeath’s rotation cycle was forty standard hours and provided twenty hours of sunlight and twenty of night as it turned on its axis on the trip around Ghael.

  Blaine had Elly go through all the motions of the attack, step by step. She did it with clinical efficiency. It helped her work through her own reaction, to review, stay focused. Then, he had Elly stand back while he went to work, her heart squeezed with a twinge of jealousy of a life she gave up. Gave up because… the Westmeath constabulary force sucked scat.

  He did all the right things, picked around the areas, swabbed the blood, placed it in an evidence bag.

  Blood? That wasn’t her blood, was it? She did get a good swipe at this Ysbal guy. But he also got a good swipe at her. Seannach blood, when in human form, was easily human to the casual samples. But she was transmogrifying when he cut her. At least she was half in and half out of foxform.