by Jayne Fury
The confusion of being in between and not knowing how reverberated, layered in her mind, until she realized that there was a piece of the puzzle missing.
“Can you give me a lift back to my hotel? I want to drop these off at the precinct on the way, for samples.”
“Sure…” she said. And after that, she would have to call the Assembly to fix the evidence.
He gave her a sideways glance, she shrugged. “Not like you’ll get a decent read.”
“Oh, this is going to Ghael’s forensics labs, not local,” he said.
“Wh-what?”
Five
Teffia
The next morning Elly found herself on a ferry to Teffia with the wind blowing her hair, wild and free, in every direction as they crossed the water. She needed to know more about his race, the Sanguinary. There’d be books, somewhere in the main Seannach repository. And they’d know what to do about the blood samples.
So, she was headed to The Den. Before she departed, she left a message for Blaine at his hotel where she’d dropped him off the night before. It was at the posh end of Ballylock. In this part of the city, the scent was unmistakably human, unlike Blaine.
Blaine told her they’d prowl again tonight, so she took that to mean she had the day free.
The ferry ride, though short, always cheered Elly. The air smelled sweet and clean and full of salty kisses reminding her of beach parties with her kin. Oysters cracked open and eaten raw by impatient foxkin adolescents while the clams and shrimp steamed and awaited their post-swim exhaustion. Hot summer sand and innocence. All the scent memories flooded back. Happy memories. Smiling, she regarded the waves beneath as the boat chopped through the water, splashing a white wake. The morning sun bathed her in a dappled cloud soft light.
The Ghael detective brought the ideas of being offworld to her mind, a thought she had never entertained before today. The kin stuck close to home, to their den. There were four major cities on the moon of Westmeath and each had a hidden haven like this.
A thought, unbidden, wheedled its way to her consciousness. What would it feel like between the moons of Ghael, stuck in a shuttle, unable to smell the scents around you. Would there even be a scent? Anything? How would it be, without the use of her enhanced senses, in that sterile environment? Like being blind? Or deaf?
She shook the uncomfortable thought off. An unexpected chill sent a shiver shuddering down her spine. Even here on the sea Blaine’s presence in her life sent ripples across her smooth, uninvolved existence.
When she got to the dock, Elly’s feet kept moving in the rhythm of the sea. Her body rocked side to side as she walked the few steps from the passenger terminal.
The island retreat was where the Assembly had their main hall, disguised as a civic sports stadium. Deep under the ground, far beneath, the fox kindred had their lair.
Elly felt the delicious coolness of the earth surrounding her as she entered through the main tunnel. It smelled of earth and humus. There was the light sprinkling of baby smell. Someone must have just delivered a litter. The kit scent, soft like new green wild grasses, was overpowering as she passed the nursery. Compelled to stop in, Elly pushed the round door to the side. “Knock knock?”
“Hey, Elly,” said the caregiver who stood in her cartoon covered scrubs.
“Junebug, how are ya?” While the nurse was in human form, the vixen was not.
“Sandra?”
“Yes, last night, aren’t they adorable?” Junebug grinned at the vixen and her litter. “She’ll be in her canid form for at least a month while she nurses her new kits. They’re ravenous for quite some time.”
Elly knew that the kits would stay in canidiform for at least the first year of their lives before they would start to realize their human selves. Or maybe never. Most did figure out the transition but a few rare DNA strands remained and very rarely a full-blooded canid was born among the kit litters.
Elly nodded towards the nursing vixen. “Who’s the lucky father this time?”
“Amery,” Junebug said.
“That makes sense. Blond, bushy hair, I see a few of his line in there.”
“Not exactly full-blooded this time, Sandra?” Elly said watching the vixen and not expecting an answer. “This is her second litter this year?”
Junebug nodded. “Too bad it was Amery. He’s a real hound, that fox.”
“Half-bloods don’t tend to mate for life.” Elly said with a shrug. “Catch you kits later.”
Elly closed the door quietly behind her. Her heart broke.
Amery was a jerk.
She’d dated him for fun. Everyone had. Last night at the bar she saw him with at least two other foxkin vixen. Reynard were, by their DNA, usually into more than one mate in a lifetime. But Amery was into more than one mate in a month. Still, he had the kind of charisma that made you not give a damn.
She’d almost succumbed. Almost gave way. Almost ended up like Sandra. Domestic. Common.
Elly wound her way through the alternating corridors, letting her nose guide her. She could first report into the Assembly. If she didn’t, would it matter? Besides, what would they do? Stop her? They hired her to track a killer that nearly killed her. Rebellion rose in her chest. Too many unanswered questions by the Assembly left a taste of distrust, dry and bitter. Why hadn’t they told her the lunar constabulary was sending someone? And that creature, it knew the Seannach. That could mean anyone else might know. No, there wasn’t a need now to tell them about Blaine.
The library then.
A Seannach library had the perfume of history. And dust. Yes, there were books, but there were also artifacts making it part museum and part library. It was her research lab. An old greying reynard, a maester of the library, was sitting in a comfy chair smoking a long white meerschaum pipe. The tendrils of smoke circled up from the bowl.
He looked like a fairy tale.
The maester’s ears were elongated with white tufts of hair, like clouds, sticking out on either side of his head. His face had grown more canid-like than human. Beady eyes, long nose, though still fleshy, pink lips curled around the stem while sharp yellow teeth bit down. “Come in child. I’ve been expecting you.”
“You have?” She asked.
“Of course, Elinor, you’re hunting a Seannach killer, you need to know more about it, don’t you?”
“Yes, Maester Paulen,” she said, but didn’t bother to ask him how he knew. He always knew. That’s why he was Maester, and why he sat on the Assembly guiding, conducting, preserving the interests of the Seannach. She didn’t need to report to the Assembly, he’d already found her. She should have known. Despite the foxkin being a secretive bunch, the old maester’s were the foxiest foxes of all the Seannach.
“There isn’t much I don’t know, child. And I do know that this thing, whatever it is, is hunting our kindred.” The words buzzed through her but Elly couldn’t quite put her finger on why. It would continue to nag at her until she put that chunk of the puzzle where it belonged. More and more separate pieces were forming. They just needed to be linked together.
“What can you tell me?” Elly scanned the room, turning her body in a half arc to follow her head. There were archways that lead from one book filled room to the other. Glass cases held artifacts in these rooms and there were overstuffed couches with bowls of candy kibble on lamp stands that cast a warm glow. All was quiet, keeping the noise in from unsuspecting people above, and keeping it out to those seeking rest below.
“Sit down, get comfortable,” Maester Paulen said and pointed with the stem of his pipe towards a worn blue velvet chair across from him.
“About the Sanguinary?” he reminded her as she sank into the soft cushion of the chair with a whuff of fabric and stuffing.
“Sanguinary. The Brotherhood of the Sanguine?” she said.
“Sanguinity, the Brotherhood of Sanguinity. The Council of the Consanguinity is their ruling body. The Patriarchs all sit on that Council.” Maester Paulen said. “Stronge
st of the Sanguinary, so they say.”
“Patriarchs?” Elly asked.
“The original ten Sanguinary that the Forebears made. Well, nine are left now. There was a kerfuffle about two hundred years ago.” The old foxkin maester pulled out a little leather pouch and began to stuff the aromatic nicotiana into the bowl of his pipe.
“A ker-what?” Elly settled in, bringing her thick ponytail from behind her back to across her chest. She tried resting her hand on the wingback arm of the chair but her entire body was taut, so she tugged the end of her ponytail, ready to listen with her whole body. The tiny pieces of the puzzle that Blaine had dropped casually as he spoke–though now she was certain nothing was casual about Detective Cornell’s words–fell into place.
“About two hundred or so years ago—I’d have to get the records—one of the Patriarchs did something terrible. We don’t know all the details, just as they don’t know all of our details. But they went from ten on the council to nine which was probably a good thing in case of a tie. You know, even numbers never do well when it comes to votes. I keep telling the Assembly…”
As the maester babbled off topic about the Seannach Assembly and their rigid practices, she got up and made herself a cup of tea. Her ears perked up, “…has been in a stasis jail since then.”
“Whu-Who? Sorry…” she said. The teaspoon in her hand suspended above the cup.
“Ysbal, the Patriarch that ate his clan. At least that’s what we understand. You never know with the Sanguines. They’re as secretive as the rest.”
“Ysbal? Ate his clan?” Elly reminded herself to close her mouth.
“Yes, Ysbal. Something wrong?”
She wanted to shout. This guy was a mass murderer? A cannibal? He’s one of the strongest of the Sanguinary. And he’s loose on Westmeath? But then she didn’t know if the old maester would react. He looked tough. But it was her job, or had been her job, once, to protect her kin from society’s predators. Elly still wore the mantle of duty. Maybe not so proudly as she once did, but she kept it close, unable or maybe unwilling, to detach herself from the honor guard to which she had once sworn an oath.
Ysbal. Here. Sure as scat on a sidewalk, her kin were in grave danger. Elly took an uneasy sip of tea and closed her eyes… the pieces weren’t coming together, they were drifting further apart. When she opened her eyes, the maester was eyeing her thoughtfully.
The old reynard smiled, his eyes darkened in contrast while his long teeth gleamed in the low light. “Humans, Foxkin, Sangs, we’re all secretive.”
Elly didn’t like the way he looked at her. She shifted in her chair feeling a heat rise from her chest to her cheeks. She envied the old foxkin. Maester Paulen was an elder and they were better liars than the rest of the foxkin. The old had more time to practice, and they wore the lies with ease.
“Yes, Foxkin lie. We do it out of necessity, out of habit. It is our nature.” She countered.
“Yes, and sometimes Elly, you don’t know when to lie and when to tell the truth,” Maester Paulen said.
“Ok, so why do the Sangs lie? Everyone knows about them. They don’t hide the way our kindred do. The Sanguinary are at the top of the food chain.”
“Yes, but remember… If it weren’t for their strict code of law governing their feeding and co-mingling, they would be hounded, too.”
“There’s a Sang here,” she said, her voice soft with a touch of probing intensity.
“Is there?” His voice said surprise but his smell did not. He smelled of pistachios and lemons. In Elly’s mind that screamed “fibbing old fart”. Harmless. Playful.
“And he’s investigating the murders,” she confided. There, that didn’t hurt.
“And you’re helping him?”
“Yes.” She said.
“Excellent. The Assembly chose well.”
And there was a flit across her belly. It hadn’t been there for some time. Pride.
Six
Amery
A rustling in the wind alerted Elly to a change in the weather. The wind was westward, and she was standing upwind. Her heart quickened. It was a hunt, but she wasn’t the hunter this time. Though that was the intent.
Just like the alley, all over again.
Only an hour before she was in the noisy club dancing with Amery, watching his brown eyes laugh, and his bushy hair flop back and forth. Meanwhile she wanted to punch him in the face, thinking of Sandra and his kits. But Amery had a use tonight. The place was full of fecund female foxkin. Amery had a talent for it, finding the most fertile. That would bring Ysbal, again.
The trap was set.
Elly was to keep an eye inside while Blaine watched outside.
But Amery spent too long in the restrooms. When Elly tracked him to the bathroom, passing gyrating slobbering couples down the dark hallway that smelled of sex and piss and vomit, she tasted fear and the unmistakable taint of copper and books. Tiny pebbles stippled across her flesh. The sweat on her brow grew cold.
Elly ducked out the back door of the club into an alley that led two ways. To her right was the street out front of the bar where Blaine was watching the doors. To the left was through to the next street. She followed the scent left down the slick alley. She hunched, creeping through shadows. Forgetting Blaine, Elly slipped straight into surveillance mode. The boom-boom-boom of the heavy house-techno beat covered her footsteps. Blaine might be her “partner” but she wasn’t going to let him watch if Amery transmogged to foxkin.
This Ysbal bloodsucker seemed to get off on scaring her people–at least he had with her. Scared her right to her bones and somehow prevented her from completely transmogrifying.
She followed the scent and tracked Amery’s. It was strong with fear, then terror, and finally blood. A lot of it.
Do not change… Elly… she thought as she ran, kicking off her shoes into the gutter and sprinting towards an Assembly sponsored playing field. Ahead of her was a gap in the fence. She knew it well; it was one she had used dozens of times to run if there was a need to bolt and disappear before transmogrifying.
As she ran, she peeled her jacket off, tied it around her waist, and hit the wooded path. Faster. Whatever was coming it was coming, like the wind. She would be stronger in canidiform, especially now that she was prepared for what Ysbal was going to do.
Her bones crunched. The flesh over her body sprouted a lush fur. While her arms were still mostly human, she pulled them out of the dress’s stretchy neckline, shoving it down to her waistline so that it formed a skirt over the jacket already tied there. The transformation forced her body to bend, elongate, until she was able to run on all fours.
And there went the bloomers, again. Riiiippppp.
Rat blazing scat!
In the twilight of her transformation, she was two until she was one again. All feral. All sentient. Separate and then together. A cascade of sensations flooded her, piquing her awareness as she ran wild and free through the petrichor of wet tall grasses and mossy undergrowth.
Now as the hair on her body grew longer, Elly’s nose elongated into snout, her senses grew keener, and her inner fox rejoiced. The ancient canid, her other self–the fox–knew exactly where she was going: the nearby den hole where her foxform would find shelter and safety. Four legs could get her there faster.
Copper. Blood. Old leaves and death. Putrid. It was putrid. The closer she came to it, the more she found herself needing to run and not hide. No. She told herself. It can’t get through the hole. No, fight! Fight it!
Not fully in canidiform, she slipped through a rent in the fence and caught the jacket’s cuff on the open wires. Threads popped. In the underbrush, before the trees, hidden from sight, the familiar slip from human to vixen completed as forelegs and hind combined in a force of energy that exploded into a gallop along the treeline. The vixen burst from the underbrush. It zigzagged, scrambled in and out of the overgrown brush, masking her path.
A screech that reminded her of nails across ice split the night air. Pri
mal fear shuddered along her spine.
She could smell the earth, inviting her to sink down into it, dig a hole and cover herself up.
There was another scent now. A familiar one.
Enticing. Delicious. Warm. Inviting. Cloying. Calling.
Was it meat? Fresh meat? No no no!
The aroma descended into fear. Harsh, choking fear. Her body pulled against the force of her will, mid-stride she leapt sideways, careening, and forced her legs to run towards the scent.
Elly’s foxform headed at full gallop, leaping and pouncing in a crazed dance across the playing field, further and further away from the safety of the brush and a safe bolt hole. Still upwind and flipping around, sniffing and yowling, Elly fought for control. If anyone saw her canidiform from afar, they would have thought it was chasing its tail. She stopped, forcing her legs to dig into the earth, tail high. She lifted her snout and sniffed the wind. There. The scent of fear rippled over her tongue with all its power and the force it compelled her. Her vixen self followed it, galloping in a straight line towards the end of the playing pitch.
In the clouded glow of Ghael, she saw it hanging from the crosspiece of the goal. A severed length of… fox tail. A bushy blond fox tail.
Mid-gallop, all four of her legs dug into the earth, sending her tail-over-head. In a twisting pirouette her fox form scrambled upright onto four paws, back legs back-pedaling. Her body swiveled as she leapt sideways and twisted midair.
And then he was there. Dark, blackish blue eyes blazed with a mad red glow. Blood dripped from his chin. He stood, laughing. Laughing aloud. At her.
Ysbal chanted, his feet barely holding him upright. “Little foxes… foxes… little foxes. Delicious little foxes. Why are you so tasty? Tasty blood?”
He staggered.
“I’m here to eat you. Tasty, tasty and then I’ll live forever. You know that? I’ll live forever little foxy fox. Missy fox. Delicious foxy. First, I crack you foxes wide open. Too bad, for boy foxy. But you’re a fine piece of female flesh when you’re not a fox. We shall have so much fun.”