Destiny's Child (Kitsune series Book 3) (2 page)

The burn came again.  He was getting ti
red of waiting.

I rode out the pain, staying where I was.

The cold receded as he moved off, giving me space. 
That’s supposed to comfort me?
  I’d seen how fast a demon could move.  Wocky could move a block away and I still wouldn’t feel safe. 

The burn came again.  It lasted twice as long. 

I gritted my teeth.  “All right, already, I’m coming.”

Using a power I didn’t really understand, I pulled on the fabric of space, distorting the magnet field around my body.  Gravity slacked off.  I felt a moment’s queasiness.  Usually invisible, my aura appeared as an orange haze around my tingling body.  The tingle faded.  The streetlight glow went to a soft gray.  The dark green of my sweats faded to a darker charcoal.  I’d
crossed over
. 

And there, ten feet away, was Wocky.  His eyes were red coals.  His body was tall and thin, the skin looking half melted.  Black flame danced on him, something similar to a living aura, but not.  His great, black wings were in tatters, though they still served him.  He fanned them, a theatrical show of menace.  They clacked as he folded them against his back, creating a hard armored shell.  His hands had long-fingered claws.  His smile was that of a crocodile having spotted lunch.

“It’s about time,” he said.

I climbed to my feet and crossed my arms against my too-flat chest.  “What the hell do you want?”

“Yes, that is always the question, isn’t it?”

TWO

“Demons bed inside my head,

screaming red as bloody murder.

Nightmares rewind and I find

my heart in Never-ever.”

                                                        —The Heart of Never-ever

                             
                              Elektra Blue

I miss you, Tukka.

I wanted him at his usual place, running at my side through the woods, keeping a girl safe in the early morning hours, but I hadn’t seen him anywhere this side of the veil.  Sure, he had a clan of fu dogs to run, but I knew the real reason he was coming around less often—I’d betrayed him, unintentionally of course.  I hadn’t known fu dogs could get addicted to chocolate until I’d already hooked him.  In a flight of dark fancy, I had a mental picture of him—huddled up like a troll under some bridge, shivering from withdraw
al, sweating the sweet toxins from his two-ton body, the experience curdling me in his thoughts. 

My heart tore like ripped paper while my guts twisted into a knot.

It’s my fault I’m alone.  Sort of alone. 
Wocky didn’t count.  He was close.  From across the veil to the ghost realm, I could smell his demon stench.  He was here and not here, seen and not seen, depending on which side of the spiritual barrier you stood on, or your particular psychic gifts.  The usual line from Lewis Carroll slid through my head when Wocky was around:
The jaws that bite … the claws that catch.
If not for the ugly, sprawling demon mark branded on my arm, and the chance to get it off, I wouldn’t have come. 

And why Wocky wants to meet me here, I don’t know.

I stood in the middle of nowhere, at the base of a hill crowned with a three-story wreck of a house.  Weeds and calf-high grass surrounded the structure.  One of the round posts on the front porch had fallen across the steps.  The exterior needed paint, new shingles, and a lot more.  The lower windows and front door had been boarded, but many of the slats were torn away, strewn haphazardly about.  This looked like the kind of place high schoolers like me used for raves.

No use putting it off
.

I reached out with my thoughts and gripped the weave of space.  Don’t ask me how, it’s a kitsune—fox spirit—thing.  I tugged and the veil between worlds moved over me with an electric tingle.  My stomach fluttered, never quite getting used to stepping across the threshold, into lesser gravity.  What little color I saw in the gray of morning tucked tail and fled.  The ghost realm is all shades of gray, except for personal auras which become visible as if only energy is important.  My wispy orange flame was different from human auras because I wasn’t human, despite having passed for one most of my life, raised by a human family.

Really, it came as a shock to me, too, when I found out.

The orange haze around me bled into the ground, making it solid so I didn’t sink up to my eyeballs.  This created a constant drain on my aura.  Wocky didn’t have that problem or an aura either.  He had a kind of cold black flame around his half melted, awful self, and the ground didn’t want him anymore than I did.

I looked at the ruined house.  “We’re having a
kegger
?”

“A binging of a different sort.  Be patient, Grace, you’ll see.  Two of my favorite toys are here.”

“What’s a toy for a demon?” 
Do I really want to know?

“Ah, that would be telling.”  He folded his tattered wings into a hard shell against his back, and gestured up the hill with a claw.  “This way, Princess.”

Yeah, technically I was a long lost princess of the shadow world, but that and a buck would get me a donut.  The only thing that scared me more than Wocky was my shadow-man father.  I had two heritages I knew little about.  Kitsune and shadow-man. 

If only I were human…

I climbed the hill, trampling its winter pale grass, wondering if this was his way of getting me far from Tukka.  Once the real fun started, Wocky wouldn’t want it interrupted by two rampaging tons of teal blue fu dog. 
Toys?  Really?
  I might be only minutes away from getting ripped into itty-bitty, tasty pieces, or maybe he had new torture techniques to try out.  Still, I needed him to take back his demon mark.  There wasn’t a good chance, but I was desperate. 

“Did we have to come
here
?  I don’t like this place.”  In the rural wilds of East Texas, between little townships, you could scream for days and never be heard.

He grinned like a gator discovering a huddle of plump frogs, and latched onto my arm.  “We have to hurry.  The show will be starting soon.”

“Show?”  I breathed shallowly through my mouth, my eyes smarting from his rot and sulfur stench. 

He said, “Trust me; I seldom kill my dates.”

We’re on a date?

Was he doing this so Tukka—my favorite fu dog—would find out and be irritated, or was he serious? 
Bad news either way
.  Both might even be true, or neither.  Demons were older than dirt.  They’d had eons to get devious and wily.  There was no way to really know his mind, but those who breezily say “trust me” usually stab you in the back. 
Repeatedly.

“You go first,” I said. 
I so need to breathe!

He shook his head in mock-sadness at my reticen
ce, but released my arm, and led the way.

I let him get four all-too-short feet away, and followed.

He went up the rickety steps—thoughtfully kicking aside the fallen post for me—and paused at the door.  His body flickered like a fire-cast shadow, momentarily losing substance so he could pass through.

Bravely, I thought, I followed him across the treacherous deck.  Several of the boards had already snapped under someone’s weight.  I didn’t use the door, but slid along the wall to a set of boarded windows.  Immaterial here in the ghost realm, I
ghosted
through them, into a space that might have once been a living room.  It was choked with shadows.  Wallpaper sagged off the walls.  A dirty carpet lay underfoot, littered with beer bottles and assorted trash.  The ceiling light-cover was missing.  I saw a socket filled with a new-looking spiral bulb that suggested the place had electric service, unless a generator had been hooked up by the local party animals that drank here on weekends.  The only piece of furniture remaining was a broken-down couch.  The floor in front of it was spotted with used condoms.

Eeeew.
  I wrinkled my nose. 
Couldn’t they at least have swept those under the couch?  Would the dust bunnies have minded?

Sitting a few steps up a staircase, the demon chuckled.  “This place does have a certain … ambiance.”

“Yeah, I can see why you’d come here.”  Someone’s loud scream knifed through me.  I jumped.  “Holy crap!”

The demon smiled.  “Ah, right on time.”

Across the room, through a wide arch, shadows stirred in what had been an empty kitchen.  A woman appeared, hands clasped to her chest, stumbling backwards into the living room.  Thin, with long dark hair, she wore shorts and a halter top that didn’t fit the current winter season.  This told me we were both on the same side of the veil.

I looked beyond her to see what she was scared of.  At first, nothing was there.  Then the gloom coalesced into a man wearing dirty jeans and a wife-beater tee.  His face wore grim determination, the look of a fanatic in his eyes.  A butcher’s knife gleamed in his hand, though I couldn’t tell where the reflected light came from.

He raised the knife, lurching closer.

The woman screamed again, throwing herself blindly backwards.

I lunged to intercept the man.  Shadow burst around me, hardening into Wocky.  He held me, refusing to let me intervene or
cross back
to the land of the living.

I struggled in his grip.  “Let me go.  He’s going to kill her.”

“Yes.  He is.”

The man fell on the woman.  Her last scream ended in a sharp yelp as the blade sank into her abdomen.  She flailed weakly as the blade plunged in again … and again … and again, piercing lungs and heart.  Her struggle stopped.  Her face went slack as she collapsed in on herself, her chest and stomach damp with blood that looked black as well
-used motor oil.  A growing pool gathered under her body.

Tears ran down my face that weren’t only from Wocky’s atrocious smell.  My voice roughened with rage, “Damn it, I could have saved her.  I could have—”

“Done nothing,” Wocky said.  “Watch.”

I didn’t quite relax, but I stopped fighting his hold.

The man stood, flung the knife away, and staggered over to the stairs.  Clothes splattered with blood were contrasted by a strange serenity that ironed the emotions from his face.  Zombie-like, he plodded up the stairs.  His shuffling steps echoed in an upper hallway.

I looked into Wocky’s shadow-blurred face.  “What’s he—”

The demon’s face betrayed nothing.  He murmured, “Wait for it.  Wait for it…”

I jumped at the crack of a single gunshot upstairs.  A body fell.  Silence followed, the kind you get when nothing’s left alive.  I blinked.  “Murder-suicide?”

Wocky moved off, pointing at the woman’s body.  It had gone a monochromatic, icy blue, the edges softening.  She became mist, losing cohesion.  In moments, no trace remained that she’d ever been there.

“Ghosts?”  I was confused.  They hadn’t possessed visible auras like other ghosts of my acquaintance.

“Bad copies,” Wocky said.  “
Remnants
.  They’re not complete.  This happens sometimes with violent deaths.  Their residual energy relives the event in an eternal loop.”

“And watching this kind of thing is your idea of fun?”  Shouting at him was pretty stupid.  Part of me knew that.  Most of me, though, was too worked up to care. 

“Why, certainly.”  A close-lipped smile stretched his face.  He cocked his head, staring at me as if I, too, were part of the program.  “Didn’t you enjoy yourself?”

I had to look away from the awful emptiness of his gaze.  “No.  Take me home.”

“But we’ll miss the second show.”

“If you think I’m going to wait here and—”

A shrill, terror-filled scream rang out from the kitchen.  Shadows stirred.  The woman reappeared, backing into the living room.

I shuddered, turning my back on her, covering my face with my hands.  “Please,” I begged, “make it stop.”

His claws scooped me up.  I fell against his hard torso.  So close, I had to hold my breath.  The room spun and blurred and we were outside, in the weedy yard.  I’d known the demon was fast, but this…

I took a breath and wished I hadn’t. 
My Gawd, take a bath.  I’ll spring for a bar of soap.

He set me down and lifted my face toward his.  The edge of a long claw scraped tears off my cheek.  He licked them off his claw tip. 

What the hell…

He saw me staring.  “Human tears are demon wine,” he explained.  “I’m a connoisseur.” He sighed, backed away, and settled in the grass.  His wings snapped out, fluttering a moment before growing still.  “Your vulnerable naïveté forms a delightful bouquet,” he
murmured.