Fox Trap

by Jayne Fury

  Deep inside, he knew that moment of trust had passed. They were already on the path, and no new revelations would change what was about to happen next.

  Blaine refocused. Now. Think about now. Sooner or later they would get to the lies. Maybe it was the Seannach blood on his tongue or maybe it was her, but he didn’t want to part ways with this smart and brave woman. At least not until they could trust one another. For now.

  “It’s attacking your friends. Is it taunting you? Luring you?”

  “Me?” She kept her eyes on the road and huffed. “It’s obvious he’s taunting you.

  Her words hit him like an icy spray of water on a hot summer day.

  Of course Ysbal was taunting him. Provoking him. Ysbal knew what Blaine had done so long ago on the day of the massacre. His honor was spattered with the blood of innocents. Blaine, as a young constable, might have prevented, minimized, the deaths if he only believed Ysbal’s mate. The woman was frantic. The description of inconceivable horrors spilled from her mouth as she clutched her son, Davin, begging the young constable to stop the carnage. Clan Fortiere was almost wiped out of existence that day. There was nobody to blame but Blaine Cornell.

  If only had not dismissed the ravings as those of an unbalanced mother, had trusted her. One did not question the word of a patriarch. They were above reproach. Honorable. Perfect. One of the ten that the Forebearers had laid their hands upon. Ysbal couldn’t be capable of the savagery she described amid hysterical sobs and gulps of air. It was too horrific. But Blaine had decided staring into the young boy’s bright blue eyes, to save him.

  Ysbal knew, and he was forcing Blaine to do it again. A lump rose in the detective’s throat. He turned his face away from Elly, stifling his own fears. Would he be able to make a sacrifice of one for the many and undo the dishonor?

  “Where do you think this guy might go? What kind of place would he hide? Does your kind have some kind of homing zone?” Elly asked.

  “Homing zone?” Blaine asked.

  “A den or something that makes them feel comfortable, more powerful? Able to recoup after something? The guy was some kind of drunk. Seriously, he could barely stand and then suddenly he took off like a rocket.”

  Silence stretched between them. Blaine felt foreboding seeping into his bones. He stopped himself before he saying, your foxkin blood is a narcotic for him. Why was Ysbal using foxkin blood? The stifling secrecy about who she was and how he knew was chafing. More so, it was impinging their ability to catch Ysbal. Still he said nothing for fear that he would blurt it all out, everything.

  Silence stretched between them.

  “I’m trying to figure where he’s gone based on the direction of he ran off in. The keening is up in the woods, but in the skimmer we can’t go off the road. It doesn’t work like that. Only combustion engines can go off-road, not magnadrives. They can only hover if there’s a mag road—”

  “—I know how they work,” He cut in. “We do have roads on Numina. Skimmers, even.” He huffed. “So, If we can’t get him in this, we’ll have go on foot.”

  Elly turned the wheel onto the next street and gunned it up a hill.

  “Where are you going?” Blaine asked, turning his body to look behind him and the road they’d turned from. They were headed up a hill now, towards woods. He could smell the forest as it got closer. “I thought we were going to where the keening thing was heard?”

  “No, a keening means someone died, they found a body. We’d have heard screaming or something if he was still there.”

  “Makes sense,” Blaine said. He felt a sudden admiration of clear-headedness. Half the constabulary he worked with wouldn’t be able to deal with what they’d witnessed, let alone the straight forward way she was putting all the pieces together.

  “No, I think he went off, found another victim for whatever he gets out of the blood.”

  “Strength, I think,” Blaine said.

  “That makes a ton of sense. He’s preparing for something. We could pinpoint from that kill zone, but likely nobody saw him. And we don’t have time to do that song and dance again.” Elly’s voice rose, adding a note of inquisitiveness, prodding him for the answer she deserved. “Speaking of… Why is he running around like he’s gotten hold of pure grade amphetamines? Is that how your kind usually react?”

  “In a way, yes,” he said. “We only need to feed once a season on Numina, that’s about ninety Ghael standard days. Perhaps twice if there has been something particularly stressful like a broken bone or an illness. So, when we do, we have a festival. It’s revelry, you know. Dancing in the streets. And depending on your social scene, it can get a little debauched.”

  “So he was drunk, basically, on blood? Any old blood?” she asked. Her voice still probed, pushing.

  Blaine went for broke. If Elly was going to kill him because of some honor pact of the Seannach, she’d have to do it now and risk going after Ysbal alone. She was too smart for that. “This blood is different.” He dropped it in front of her like a cat gives a prize dead bird to its human.

  “Human blood, you mean?”

  “No, the blood of your kindred.”

  There, it was out in the open. Finally.

  Was she angry? Her lips were pulled into a tight line, eyes still focused ahead on the road. He couldn’t tell. Perhaps not. She stopped the skimmer abruptly and turned to him.

  He brought his hands up reflexively. Damn, she is going to kill me now.

  Instead of punching him, she rested her arm on the back of the bucket seat. Casual. In the middle of a murder chase, this foxkin female was casual.

  “Why did you—”

  “—You’ve known all along, haven’t you, Detective Cornell?”

  “Yes...” he said, feeling like a schoolboy being called out for some stupid schoolyard prank. “But… there’s something—”

  Elly held her hand up in the universal gesture of shut up, palm out. She snapped her hand closed as she brought it to her face. “I’ve got the questions here. I need to know, and you need to answer. Why did you lie to me?” The gold flecks in her amber irises made her eyes look as though they were a crackling fire, ready to consume him.

  Blaine felt the passenger side door handle digging in the small of his back. He took a deep breath. “Because the Council and the Assembly told me to. They told me that the Seannach had a code to keep their kindred a secret. And that you’d kill me.”

  “I still might, you lying sack of scat.”

  “Hey! I’ve only just found out about your kin. I thought Seannach were a myth.”

  “Some secrets are better kept,” she said.

  “Lies and secrets do nothing to help the innocent,” he said.

  “Lies and secrets protect the innocent,” she countered, her voice rising.

  Blaine stiffened. The anger rolled off of her, changing her sweat scent from confused to furious. “Really? And the lie between us? Just how has that helped protect the innocent?” He posed the question raising it with the vengeance of a sword.

  He watched her mull it over.

  Elly turned in the seat, facing front, arms crossed over her chest. It was her turn to be thrown off balance. The swish of her hair brushed soft against the seats.

  She tilted her head back to him. “Have your truths helped protect the innocent?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Elly snorted. “That, as my grandpaw-paw used to say, is a big fat lump of lie. You’re a cop, you have to lie to get people to tell the truth. Don’t even try to pull that line with me. I’m not buying it. Why’d they really send you?” She narrowed her eyes at him. Probing. It was the same question he’d been hiding from since The Solblaine, his father, had sent him to Ballylock. He looked away from her, to the woods they’d stopped in front of, listening to the trees rustle in the wind. “Because I could have stopped Ysbal the first time.”

  “How? He’s crazy.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw her, making a twirling finger sign at her temple. “Ysbal is not r
ight by any standard. You don’t go around eating your people.”

  “You knew?” He blinked at her.

  “Some crazy yawing-jawed monster tries to eat me, you tell me his name, and you don’t think I did a little extra checking? You think I’m going to come up on this maniac blind? Why don’t you just feed me razorblades cause I’m that dumb.”

  A smile crept over his face. She was possibly the most infuriatingly intelligent person he’d met in a long, long time.

  “And you carry the guilt, don’t you?” she pressed on. “I could tell that the first time I sat across from you at the tea house. You stank of lies - bitter citrus peel. You think you could have stopped him? Like I thought I could, until he leapt over a seventeen foot fence. You fool. No. You could not have. You’re just a glutton for the pain. Stop beating yourself up, Blaine. Or you’ll get us both killed.”

  The smile ran away from his face, he looked down.“Why did your assembly put you on this?” he asked.

  She didn’t look surprised that he knew, she just shrugged. “That part I didn’t lie about. I told you that the constabulary here are idiots. Ysbal was targeting the most pureblood of our foxkin. I’m pureblood.”

  But her body language said she had other secrets. “Doesn’t happen to have anything to do with why you left the constabulary, does it?”

  “No. I mean. Sort of. I think? They’ve been trying to get me to get back onto the Ballylock force for a while. But I won’t go. Because truth be told, there’s nobody in Westmeath that isn’t at least part Seannach. We’ve been here for what? Over a millennium? You think there’s any pure humans left? But the lies they tell aren’t protecting the innocent, they’re just … lies to lie. For the sake of lying.”

  “But you said lies protect the innocent,” Blaine pointed out.

  “Yeah.” She shifted uncomfortably. “They do, just maybe not all the time.”

  “Yeah,” he repeated. “Maybe.”

  They sat in the quiet. Listening to the birdsong and a faraway hooting of a hunting nightbird. Blaine could hear the wish-wash-splash of a stream nearby.

  “We have any more lies between us?” she asked, a softness to her voice he’d never heard there before.

  “None that matter,” he said and found himself matching the gentleness.

  “Then let’s hunt Ysbal.”

  She sniffed at him. Then sniffed again, breathing in the scents around her through her palate, tasting at the same time. There was a scent in the air that Elly’s fox senses couldn’t identify, a strange scent. Distinct from hers. Different from the murdering Sanguinary. It wasn’t blood. It was something dark. Death.

  “Do you smell that?” he asked.

  “I smell old books, like every time I’ve smelled him before. And there’s a scent like… like… rotting trees. Not like the metallic taste that usually comes with his scent.”

  He mumbled and nodded at her assessment. Maybe his scent glands were unlike hers. Maybe every kin had their own way of interpreting scents. Here by the forest it was easier to identify her surroundings or people. She could pinpoint without the confusing mess of inner city odors. “City smells here on Westmeath are probably different from Numina.”

  “Very,” he said. “Very different.”

  “You’ll have to tell me, once this is over. If we survive,” Elly said. The sound of laughter in the distance alerted them. Ysbal.

  “Is he looking to get caught?” Elly asked, incredulity layered thick on her words.

  “Unbelievable.” Blaine agreed, his own voice dripping with sarcasm.

  Elly flipped up the backseat of the car, revealing an arsenal of weaponry. She chose a long barreled repeat rifle and a crescent clip which clicked into place. Slinging it over her back, she turned to see him checking a snub-nose in his chest holster and another longer magnum automatic pistol which he kept in his hand. A quick nod and they took off on foot.

  “Your skimmer’s packing heat…”

  “Me and my skimmer have seen a lot of scat.”

  Elly steeled herself, checking her weapon. Adrenaline raced down her arms to her fingertips. She forced them to hold steady, focusing on each movement, clearing her mind, sinking into the rhythm of her heartbeat.

  “You got this?” Blaine’s voice held a steady baseline, soothing her frazzled nerves. Twice now she’d transmogrified in Ysbal’s presence.

  Twice.

  “I can’t…” It was strange saying it aloud. “I can’t change again in front of him. I won’t transmog near him again..”

  “That’s more like it,” Blaine said. And again, his voice transmitted confidence and clarity. Centering her. Creating a certainty that settled around her like a cloak.

  “Weapon helps.” He added, pointing his free hand to the long butt of her rifle.

  “Yeah, well. Claws don’t work so good with a rifle.”

  “I can’t imagine the recoil on that baby would be easy to handle on…” he paused. Uncertainty and respect in his eyes fielded a warm glow into her core.

  “A fox? Yeah, not so great.” She offered a smile and wink.

  “Time’s a-wasting.” Blaine pointed towards the sound of the laughter.

  “Let’s get this muck sucker.” A quick nod to him and they took off in the direction of the laughter. And to where the stench was strongest. They sacrificed stealth for speed, following the wooded path, weapons drawn.

  With one arm, Elly covered her nose and mouth, masking the depth of the scent. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Blaine do the same.

  He made a sharp turn right, going off the path, into the darkening gloom.

  She followed him, hoping his spectral range was as good as hers. Though not as good as when she was in canidiform, the morphology of her eyes as a canid was far better for the dark.

  There was a break in the trees and a formation of rocks as they continued to climb the hill. That seemed to be where the scent was strongest. The highest rock had a jagged face. There were short boulders at varying degrees that led up to the top.

  She hit the first one with a hop. Not the seventeen foot hop that Ysbal took the night before but a substantial one.

  Blaine followed her.

  She continued her hopping from boulder to boulder while he was more careful, less nimble. He held his gun out, searching for more firm purchase. As she neared the top, her lungs near bursting, Elly took a deep breath and gagged. There, on the rock, was a lump of dried flesh and shredded black clothing. The remains of something humanoid. A fleshy skull protruded from what had been the neck of the garment.

  She was surprised that, even hidden in the depths of the woods, the locals hadn’t noticed a frenzy of daytime birds. Not to mention the increase of vermin that would come out at night and would attract the larger night hunting raptors. But they didn’t seem to be around. Neither vermin, nor raptors.

  The putrid scent was almost too much. She leaned over, holding her nose. “Ysbal isn’t here.”

  “Yes. He is.” Blaine said, picking up a rock and sniffing it. Then something gleamed. It wasn’t a rock, it was some sort of jewelry.

  “Is that an amulet?” she asked.

  “A shield,” he said.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s the Shield of the Patriarchs.” He stood, staring at it in his hand, turning it over and over, brows furrowed.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “This shield is only worn by a Patriarch. Elly,” he turned, still holding the shield. “When you looked into the eyes of your attacker…”

  “Really? This is that blue-eyed weirdo?” she interrupted.

  He swore something she didn’t understand. “His eyes were blue? Not gold? An intense gold?” Blaine demanded.

  “No, blue, almost exactly like yours but then they darkened to black, almost, and there was that weird red glowing moment I don’t even want to— ” She pulled out a scarf from her jacket pocket and tied it to cover her nose and face. He didn’t seem to be having the same trouble.
/>
  He held up the metal shield from the body. “Your attacker isn’t Ysbal, the murderer is not Ysbal. This… this is Ysbal.”

  Nine

  Am I Dinner?

  “This is… er, was Ysbal? Are you sure?” She looked at him, her own amber eyes carrying flecks of gold and disbelief.

  “This shield and the scent, it has to be.” He turned it over, holding it carefully with gloved hands and dropping it into an evidence bag he’d pulled from the pocket of his oilskin duster.

  “So who’s the perp?” she said, then added, “This body’s been here for some time.”

  “Yes, it seems that whomever freed Ysbal, brought him here and then turned the tables on him. Not sure how but I have a good idea of why.”

  There was a rustle in the brush. “You have no idea of why,” the voice wasn’t drunk or high. In unison, they turned to see.

  “Davin?” Blaine said. Davin? Why would he be here? Now? Why was he staring down at him, sneering, loathing in his voice. He was far from the sweet, blue-eyed son of Ysbal that Blaine had saved the day of the massacre.

  Out of the corner of his eye Blaine caught a glimpse of Elly, stock still, her eyes locked on Davin. Mesmerized. “Stop it! Leave her alone, that’s forbidden,” Blaine said. Warning command reverberated from his chest.

  “No.” The blue eyed killer stood on a high rock above them, grinning down. The light of Ghael dappling through the forest trees. “I killed him, but not for the reasons you think, Blaine. You love the truth, here’s a little truth for you: Ysbal was a murdering piece of scat. I killed him for my brothers and sisters. The day you saved me, you could have killed him. But you didn’t. So, I did it. It took me a long time to figure out my plan, how to get in, disarm the prison, and free him. How to take the groggy body off the planet and use his knowledge… trick him into telling me all of his secrets.”

  Blaine raised his weapon but it didn’t deter Davin, even when Blaine said, “You’re first born of a patriarch. You have an honor bond.”