Twi

by Romi Hart

  “Well, I can’t get through a wall of fire, Twilight! I don’t know what else I can do,” she sounded desperate and that made me feel the same way.

  “Go through the fire. Your fur will protect you. Just move fast. Don’t stop at all. Once you get your nose through the small opening, you’ll find the tunnel is bigger and your body will just fit. You’ll wiggle your body and use all four sets of claws to move…”

  She butted in, “I can’t do that! I don’t know how to use my fox body yet. Shit! He’s coming back. He’s seen me, Twi. With my white fur, I blend into the off-white sand that’s drifting around. But he’s seen me and he’s coming back.”

  “Run through the fire and come to me, now!” My heart pounded, making my entire body shake.

  “I can’t. I can’t do it, Twi,” she shrieked with her mind. “It’s over for me. This is it. I can’t believe this is it. I love you, Twilight Foxworthy. Never forget that.”

  For the love of Pete, this female is dramatic.

  Backing out of the narrow tube, I felt the heat of the fire as my tail was the first thing on me to make it out of the hole. Taking a deep breath, I held it and closed my eyes as I moved like lightening to get through the line of fire Codut had left to separate us. “I’m coming for you. Stay put, Val.”

  “You’re what? You’re going to be burned alive. Don’t come back for me. Keep going. Save yourself,” she pleaded.

  “Shut up and get ready. I’m bringing you back with me,” I sent to her so she would know what I expected out of her.

  “Through the fire?” even her thoughts sounded hesitant. “No. I can’t do that. You’re better off without me. Don’t come back for me.”

  The sounds of the dragon’s leathery wings as he swopped down closer to the ground sped me up. When I felt the temperature around me cool slightly, I knew I’d escaped the line of fire. Opening my eyes, I saw Val staring at me. “Come on.”

  She shook her head. “You’re on fire.”

  Rolling over a few times, I put the fire out then barked at her, “Come on.” I took one step toward the fire as the dragon blew new flames to replace the ones that began dwindling.

  “I can’t,” Val whimpered.

  With a growl, I leapt on her, grabbing the scruff of her furry neck then pulling her into the flames. “You are coming with me. Close your eyes and try not to breathe.”

  “Don’t!” she screeched in her mind as her fox voice yelped.

  I wasn’t about to leave her to become dragon food. “You can’t give up, Val. You can’t let him win so quickly. You’re not even ready to put up a fight.”

  It wasn’t easy, shoving her into the tiny opening in the ground, but I did it and then I moved in, pushing her with my head to keep her going deeper into the tunnel.

  The tightness of the walls smothered the flames that had covered both of us. “Am I still on fire?” she asked.

  “No. Neither of us are. Now use your front paws to reach out in front of you. Stick the tips of your nails into the hard ground, then pull your body along. I’m sure this will open up soon.”

  “And then I will most likely meet whoever dug this tunnel,” she sounded daunted by the future. “Thanks for making me first, Twilight.”

  “Sarcasm noted, my dear.” Had she come in on her own, she would’ve been behind me. “Just keep your wits about you. Whenever you meet up with the construction crew who made this little fortress, greet them by showing your sharp teeth and try to look mean.”

  Val’s white fox was adorable. I didn’t know if she’d be able to pull off a vicious expression in that form. But she would have to try. When animals came upon other animals, they always bared their teeth to prove they could eat them up if they wanted to.

  “I think I won’t be doing that,” she sent back to me. “I like to try to get along with others. Greeting anything with teeth bared and growling will certainly have them doing the same to me. And, quite frankly, I’m feeling rather charred and tired at the moment. Much too tired to try to fight anything.”

  “You can never show your weakness, Val. Come on, think about it.” I had no idea how long she’d last with her attitude. “You’ve got immortality now. Don’t let your gift go by, being too tired to fight for your life. You’ve got a very long one ahead of you but sometimes you will have to fight for it.”

  “Still, I’m going to be nice. You wouldn’t understand, Twi.”

  “Are you calling me, stupid?” I found myself agitated that she thought so little of me. “I have been a fox-shifter my entire life. That’s over three-hundred years, Valentine Martin. I think I know…”

  She interrupted me, “You’re over three-hundred-years-old? Damn, you look awesome for a man your age.”

  “We don’t age past thirty in our physical forms.” I thought she would’ve guessed that much being that she’d researched mythical creatures for her show.

  “Wow. I’m going to stay young forever! No wrinkles. No lumpy, bumpy skin. No diseases,” her tone ecstatic, she sounded as if she was just grasping what she now had. “Oh, the passageway is getting wider up ahead. I can see it. Someone must have some sort of light further ahead. The walls of this tunnel look as if they’re made out of diamonds.”

  “I believe the ground is one enormous diamond. I guess the dragon made his realm from a chunk of coal. With his fire and the pressure he can put on coal, I am guessing that he made the diamond himself. Impressive, huh?” Even though I hated Codut, what he’d made was worthy of accolades.

  “We’ll have to try to knock a few chunks off before we head back home – if we’re ever able to do that,” she sent me.

  Finally, her tail was out from under my nose as she moved to one side. I came up next to her as she waited for me. “I guess you want me to take the lead now.”

  “Please.” She rubbed her nose against mine. “Thank you for saving my life, Twilight.”

  “Always, my dear.” She might not have accepted my invitation to be mine forever, but my heart still told me it wasn’t an idea that was off the table for her yet. “You are the other half of me, after all.”

  “I am?” She nuzzled my neck. “When you grabbed me back there and drug me into the fire, I thought we’d both die. I must admit that the idea of dying with you made me happier than the idea of dying out there alone.”

  “You’ve got a hell of a lot to learn about being immortal, my dear. What won’t kill us, will hurt like hell.” Looking ahead, I sniffed the air and had a fairly good idea what sort of creature we would soon face. I didn’t want to upset Val, so I didn’t even let the thought cross my mind.

  “So, our bodies heal at a rapid speed, huh?” she asked as she licked black ash from her white fur. “My skin doesn’t even burn anymore.”

  “Any wound, that’s not substantial, will heal within minutes. But deeper wounds, such as stab wounds, bullet wounds, and things like that, can take up to a few days to heal. Plus, it all depends on your mindset. Like all things, immortals can get down in the dumps and not care about living anymore.”

  “Not me.” She shook her head. “I want to live forever.”

  Laughing, I reminded her of how she’d just given up not ten minutes earlier, “Val, if you want to live forever, which you can do now, you will have to never give up the way you did back there.”

  “In my defense, there was a fire-breathing dragon coming at me. I had nowhere to go with a wall of fire in front of me.” Her fox shoulders shrugged. “I felt like I had to say my goodbyes.”

  “I love you too, my dear.” I rubbed my nose to hers.

  “I know you do. You ran through fire for me.” She rubbed her nose right back to mine. “Twice. Now, that is true love if I’ve ever heard about it.”

  “It is.” It might’ve been a thing no one would ever believe about me. But I was hooked on Valentine. So hooked, that I could no longer see living my life without her in it. And I could read her thoughts about me too. “It’s nice to see that you have come to your senses and realized that you�
��ve given your heart to me.”

  “Well, it’s hard not to. You’ve given me so much. I have to give you something back in return.” She smiled at me with sharp teeth.

  “Even when you growl and show your sharp teeth, you’re still too precious to be afraid of.” I began moving forward.

  She moved in behind me. “I was smiling, not trying to look fierce.”

  “You should remember that you have the face of a fox and the teeth of one then. A smile comes off as a growl even though you don’t mean it to.” The light source from ahead made the diamond walls glow brighter the further we went. “This is a great idea to get light into dark and dank fox dens. We’ll have to remember to use white to bring in more light, Val.”

  “Are we going to have our very own fox den?” she asked with excitement.

  “We are.” I thought about Mist and how he’d be left out of my life in many ways now that I’d found my forever mate. “I don’t suppose you know any other females who might find an interest in Mist, do you? I hate to leave him alone.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. Zoe is out. That’s for sure. I can’t believe she jumped back in the portal and left me behind like that. And closed the damn thing too. I wonder how she did that.”

  “On accident, I’m sure. But I agree that she’s a complete ass and that she’s no good for my cousin.” We’ve got to get him out of that dungeon.

  Poor Mist. I knew he had to be so worried that he’d never get free. His faith in me wasn’t enormous. But that gave me hope that he wouldn’t sit tight and wait for us to rescue him. He would be conspiring with the others to gain their freedom.

  Even with help from the inside, I knew they would need help from the outside. Tieris and Mako were my only hopes of getting my cousin back. The best way to fight a dragon is by using other dragons. But I had no idea where their allegiance lay.

  “I hear you thinking, Twi,” Val sent me. “And I share your concern. What if we go to these other dragons and tell them what we know, and they capture us because they’re on Codut’s side?”

  “Perhaps we shouldn’t approach them together. At least if one of us is free, the other can attempt a rescue.” Plus, I didn’t want her to get into any danger. Especially since she was so quick to give up.

  It would take her some time to fully understand what her immortal fox body could do. I’d never thought about myself as having any special powers. But as I thought about all the things our immortal bodies could do, it made me see that I did have powers. I just hadn’t seen them as such.

  “Since you already know them, I would think it would be you who should approach them and I’ll stay back,” she mused as we kept going and the tunnel got wider and wider as we went.

  “I’m glad you agree with what I was already thinking.” We’re going to make a great team.

  “I think so too,” she agreed. “And I think that you thinking about me and what all I’ve gained by becoming a fox-shifter will help you see yourself as more than you have before. You can be a hero because you do have superpowers.”

  “Maybe, I do have some powers after all.” It took looking for them in her to make me see what I had within myself. “You’re good for me in every way imaginable.”

  “You know what I’ve been wondering, Twi?” she asked.

  And I did know. “You want to know if you have to kill and eat animals since you’re a fox now. But you have to remember that you can be a human too. That means that you don’t have to kill and eat anything. I’ve done it because I like to.”

  “You’re gross,” she let me know quickly.

  “I was born this way. You have to remember that I and most of my family were born as fox-shifters. So, acting disgusted by what we do will only serve to alienate you from other shifters who have always been shifters. And we can’t have that. You will have to become a leader if we’re to build an army large enough to defeat Codut. I can’t do this all alone.”

  “I’m sure I can get over my disgust for certain things.” Her mind wobbled a bit on that though. “It’s a good thing that not all shifters can read my thoughts.”

  It certainly is.

  22

  Valentine

  One of the things I was learning on the go was that when you had forever, it didn’t have the effect on you that you think it might. I had all the time in the world. But all I could think about was making sure that Twi knew that I wanted to be with him for as long as I was alive.

  “You know how people take their time with things?” I asked him.

  “I do know that you people can take extraordinary amounts of time to get to what you could’ve had all along. It’s mind-numbing, actually.” He jerked his head toward ahead of him. “I think we’re almost to the main cavern. Be ready for anything.”

  “Okay, I’ll try to be ready for anything.” I hadn’t gotten in complete touch with my fox yet. The natural instincts people spoke about where animals were concerned must not have pertained to people who became animals. “Anyway, what I was talking about was how people wait long periods of time before they give in to what they felt all along. And I don’t want to do that with you. See, I love you. I know that I want to be with you and only you. And I don’t know exactly how I know that, but I do.”

  “It’s instinctive, Val.” He looked over his shoulder at me as I stayed close behind him. “I think I know what we’ll find in there. More foxes. Sniff the air to see if you can smell them.”

  Sniffing, I found a musky scent that was similar to Twi’s. But there was a mustiness about it that made me think the foxes might be kind of sick. “Are these normal foxes or shifters?”

  “They have to be shifters, my dear. But they’ve been through something terrible. You can smell that about them.”

  With more fox-shifters ahead of us, a sense of urgency filled me. “Twilight, I accept your previous offer to be with you forever. Graciously, accept it. I’m not even saying this right. It’s like you proposed marriage to me and I just said, okay, sure I’ll marry you. But I really want to be with you.”

  “I know you do.” He snickered. “And you’re petrified that one of the fox-shifters we’re about to run into will spark my interest.”

  “Oh. You read that in my mind, did you?” I felt more than a little embarrassed about that.

  “Should I worry the way you do about you finding another male interesting, Val?”

  “No.” I honestly don’t think another male could ever satisfy me the way Twi can.

  “Yeah, I know they can’t. And the same goes for me.” He’d read my mind.

  And that bothered me a bit. “Is this how it’s going to be? You in my head and me in yours? Like all the damn time?”

  “Not when we’re in human forms.” He chuckled. “Which we can’t be while in this situation underground. So, for now, your mind is wide open to me.”

  “That goes both ways, Twi.” I felt my face heating with embarrassment and wondered if my white fur was turning pink with the flush I felt.

  “Fur doesn’t change colors the way skin can, Val,” he let me know.

  “Well, thanks for informing me about that.” Just as I saw the chiseled out opening that would lead us into the area where the other foxes where, I had one more thing to ask, “Can they read our thoughts too?”

  “Normally, they could. But since we’re not picking up any of theirs, I don’t think they’re getting any of ours either. Something isn’t right with them,” he said as he got to the opening. “And we’re about to find out what that is.” Growl, bark, bark, snap, snap. “Back away! Give us room to come in!”

  All I could hear was whimpering as the other foxes moved back. I came in behind Twi, finding the foxes thin and shaking. “We’re not here to hurt you.”

  Twi sat back on his haunches as he looked at the four foxes. “Can any of you communicate with us?”

  Four sets of sad eyes looked at him. It was as if they were deaf and mute. “He did this to them. This must be what happens when he puts them in the cage
s in the dungeon.”

  “They’ve been out here for a good while. Their weight shows that they haven’t eaten in a very long time. Even shifters need food to hold a healthy weight. We don’t need it to live, but we do need it,” Twi pointed out.

  “This makes me sick to my stomach.” I went up to one of the females and lowered my head to put my chin on her shoulder to show her that I cared about her. “We’re going to get you all out of this place so you can be you again.”

  “Don’t make promises that you can’t keep, Val,” Twi cautioned me.

  “I am going to keep that promise.” Codut had taken away everything from them all. Taking away their ability to communicate was beyond any torture I could fathom. “If I have to sneak up on that man while he’s sleeping and stab him in the only place he’s vulnerable, then I will do that. He is beyond evil in my eyes.”

  “You’re not going to be doing that.” Twi walked around the circular space they’d managed to carve out. Not even one more tunnel came off of it. “It took them all to dig this out.” He looked at their feet.

  I did the same, finding them battered with no claws left. “They can’t heal the way they could before. He took that away too.” Fury filled me as I tried to think of a way to get them all out of Codut’s horrible realm. “If we can get them out of this realm, do you think they’ll get better? Or might he have done something to them all that will affect them forever?” A thought flashed into my mind. Are they no longer immortal?

  Twi heard it all and answered, “They do seem to be aging. If this isn’t reversible, then time is of the essence. They lose a bit more of life with each passing moment they spend here.”

  “What could he gain by keeping them here until they eventually die?” I didn’t think that could be what he wanted them for. “Is this merely a scientific experiment for him? I mean, what sort of agenda does he have that would include having a bunch of useless creatures at his disposal?”