Destiny's Child (The Kitsune Series) Read online

  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.

  I ignored his comment on my fragrance, pointing back at the house. “How long has that been going on?”

  He turned his head to follow my gesture, and shrugged, looking back at me. “A few years, I suppose. I don’t really…” He tensed, gathering himself up into a crouch. His gaze swept the yard. “Don’t move,” he warned.

  “Why not?” I turned to scan the area. The rain had slacked and the clouds were parting toward the horizon where the morning sun shed a gray haze of light, but it still took me a moment to see what had put him on edge—pools of black sludge, hiding in the weeds. There were four stretched out sections, forming a curved, creeping, imaginary line of sorts.

  Shadow men? Is Onyx back from his father’s court?

  Each blob cast gloppy ribbons of shadow up into the air. Each fountain thickened, forming columns. Demons solidified, breathing laboriously as if they’d battled from across some vast space. Not shadow men after all. They carefully fanned misshapen wings, as if in pain. Scars furrowed their skin where ugly wounds had healed, old and new.

  I tried crossing over, pulling on the veil between the human world and the ghost realm. The usual electric tingle danced over me, but the veil didn’t shift. I was trapped by the supernatural interference of the demons’ proximity and could only shiver in fear as the creatures took note of me, dissecting my body with hungry stares.

  Damn it, Tukka, where are you?

  Taliesina, my inner fox, was a tight ball of terror. Her emotions were a thick, black fog that ate at my nerves, but we were both smart enough to know that running now would be instantly fatal. Predators chase what they see running.

  Pleased grins appeared. One of the demons reached out languidly, claws splayed in casual threat. “Shall we see how well this one screams?”

  I shrank in on myself, knees buckling sinking in the weeds as though they could hide me.

  “No,” Wocky’s voice lashed out. “Mine.”

  The claws hovered near me as the demon looked back at Wocky. “We have fought for you. We have bled for you, and drank our own pain. You owe us.”

  “No, she is destined to be the sword that rips away the veil of our prison, and my dark queen. I will not let you spoil my plans.”

  While grateful for his protection, his words worried me as much as the other demon’s.

  “You owe us,” the demon repeated.

  His friends took up the chant. “You owe us … you owe us…”

  “You’re challenging me?” Wocky’s voice was soft, sweet butter, milder than I’d ever heard it. “You’re forgetting your place, so I’ll remind you where it is—in the dust beneath my feet.”

  Teeth bared, claws raised, three of the demons ignored me, facing Wocky. Hard growls rumbled in the cold, dawn air.

  The fourth demon hung back. He watched his friends, but flicked a glance my way at irregular intervals.

  I kept very still, waiting for a moment when I could get clear, and remembered one of the lessons from my martial arts class: Don’t focus on any one thing; be moonlight falling evenly on the world. I needed to internally distance myself from the threat, what Shaun called being “centered.” I went to slow, deep breaths from the diaphragm, and used peripheral vision to see everything at once.

  Incredibly fast, someone made a move and they were all in a common whirl, except for my p
ersonal keeper. Without losing my visual non-focus, I watched my guard’s hands jerk with sympathy, as if he longed to be right in the middle of the snarling melee. The other demons were a chaotic blend of whirling shadow. I trembled, imagining too easily all that raw fury turned my way. I’d last half a second, if that long.

  It took a moment for me to realize something weird was happening, weirder than usual anyway. The blur in the background that was the house acted like a heat mirage. Its outline wavered. The effect went from mild to severe. Without all the training I’d done, I might have stared straight at the building, losing my non-focus. As it was, I simply stayed aware of the oscillation, the back and forth melting of two structures wanting to be in the same place.

  Instinct kicked in and—without moving a muscle—I tried what should have been impossible. I reached for the veil again, gave it a firm tug, and crossed over to a new ghost realm, taking a path the demon interference couldn’t block.

  Left behind, my guarding demon blinked out of existence.

  A flood of relief left me weak, sprawling in the … Huh? I lost my non-focus, staring with great curiosity. The weeds had been replaced with a kind of grass I’d never seen, with blades wide as rabbit ears. There were carved-crystal flowers that chimed gently in a breeze.

  I looked over at the house, only it wasn’t a house anymore. Limestone pillars lined the porch of something that might have started life as a Greek temple, before someone added lizard-bird gargoyles and a couple of glass-domed turrets at the corners. Three stories up, near the peaked roof of the central building, a huge window glowed, catching the sun. The stained-glass formed an eight-pointed star.

  Still wrapped in a light orange haze of aura, I climbed to my feet and noticed I had two shadows.

  Freakier and freakier.

  I turned to face the sun. Make that suns. One was three times the size of Earth’s. The other sun was a wanna-be, one-third the size of Luna back home. I’d left the shadow of my world for the shadow of a new reality. One more crossover and I’d be fully in this new world, seeing its colors, touching its textures.

  And the locals will probably burn me at the stake—if not eat me for dinner. This world’s people might not even be the upright, clothes-wearing type. Best not to go there. The real question is: can I get back to my world and…?

  THREE

  “Love estranged shall return,

  stranger for the journey past.

  Moon-pale shadows and spectral tears

  call me home at last.”

  —Bad Penny

  Elektra Blue

  And not get mauled by demons?

  Before trying for home, I needed to get where I wouldn’t be seen by frolicking demons if I popped into visual range from out of nowhere.

  I ran to limestone steps, past the sleepy glare of gargoyles, and climbed to an open entryway. On the threshold I felt a vibration sinking in, singing through my body—the sign of holy ground. This was an alien shrine of some kind. The space inside was cathedral-sized and mostly empty. Octagon tiles covered the floor. To the sides, wooden racks held dozens and dozens of fat, dripping candles. Ahead lay an altar with two bowls on it from which gray curls of smoke arose. There was no stage and podium like churches I’d been in, just a cloth-covered column.

  I moved closer.

  The column moved. Hands and arms emerged from … a cloak. Until that moment, the figure had stood so perfectly still, I hadn’t recognized it as a person. An oversized hood was thrown back. The cloak gapped wide, revealing a gown edged with black lace, and a narrow waist. The woman’s hair spilled free, a gray so pale I thought it white. And nestled between full breasts, she wore a necklace with a small, round mirror attached. Close up, she looked younger than I’d supposed. Her eyes roved the chamber, curious, unafraid. Several times her stare swept me without lingering. She couldn’t see me, but perhaps sensed a presence.

  Her lips moved, forming words I couldn’t hear.

  My inner fox trotted out of mental shadows. She leaped and whirled playfully, mockingly. I joined her in a happy dance, teasing the woman with the mirror. I hadn’t indulged in such childishness since first trying out my powers years ago. It would have been embarrassing if anyone could actually see me.

  I stopped to get my breath back. Though personally hilarious, this was likely to be pointless since I wasn’t planning to cross over for a close encounter of the weird kind, and they probably didn’t have a Star Trek universal translator anyway. Though, come to think of it, Onyx had been fluent in English when he first arrived on Earth.

  Well, time to…wait a sec…

  Her hand went to her little mirror, as her brow furrowed. A small frown twitched a corner of her lips. Irritated? She mouthed a demand of some kind, moving the mirror away from her body. It flashed as she angled it to splash candlelight around. She was warding off an evil spirit—me.

  Smiling, I didn’t take it personally. “Oooo, I’m scared.” After surviving any number of supernatural threats, a mirror fell flat.

  I strolled back to the front of the building, stopping just inside the space where a door should have been. In my world, this would be the living room of the old, boarded-up house. I let my focus go vague, everything a blur, and visualized the peeling wallpaper, the dirty carpet, and the abandoned couch, along with all of the condoms and foil wrappers on the floor.

  I hope this works.

  I don’t know how long I waited, but the scene faded in at last, and I was back where I’d started. And not alone. The female ghost was being stabbed repeatedly by the male. By this time, a little of the horror had diminished. I knew what I was seeing, and knew that this was only the echo of the real event—something no amount of wishing could change.

  A shimmer of green illuminated the kitchen. I looked that way as Michiko walked into the living room. Her front bangs were cut in a straight line above her eyebrows, and her black silk hair fanned behind her as she advanced. Like an anime character, she wore a Japanese school-girl’s uniform, a plaid skirt, white blouse, and dark jacket with school crest on one pocket. Her Asian eyes were dark except for a mote of green flame deep inside.

  “What are you doing here?” we asked each other.

  I jerked a thumb over my shoulder toward the front of the house. “Hiding from demons.” The sound of snarling combat was now being punctuated with howls of pain and someone’s delighted laughter.

  “Hold that thought.” Michiko walked up behind the male ghost psychopath with the knife and rammed her hand into the back of his head. He spazzed, eyes rolling back in his head, a scream tearing out of him that dissolved as his body turned to charcoal mist.

  Michiko said, “Bastard doesn’t know how to treat a lady.”

  The ghost woman on the floor still screamed, flailing under a knife that was only in her mind. Even without a partner, the dance continued.

  Michiko knelt and softly spoke with compassion that only fit her character once you got to know her. “The nightmare ends. Rest in peace.” She pushed a hand into the woman and she too became charcoal mist.

  Michiko stood and faced me. “That leaves a bad taste in the mouth, but someone’s got to clean up the glitches. Now, you were saying something about demons?”

  I ignored her question for a moment, asking one of my own, pointing at the spot where the ghosts had been, “They’re not coming back?”

  “No.”

  “Then we definitely need to get out of here before the demons find out we broke their toy.”

  “This way.” She held out her hand.

  I hesitated. That hand had just destroyed the remnants. But Michiko was my friend, and I wasn’t in need of a mercy killing—no matter what my older sister Sheri sometimes muttered beneath her breath.

  I took the offered hand. Michiko walked me through a bare kitchen, a solarium, and out a wall, into the backyard. I barely got out of the wall before Michiko went airborne, dragging me in her wake like a kite. She didn’t go for height, staying only a few feet off the groun
d. We used the house for cover, arcing over the hill, losing ourselves in the trees. Only then did Michiko slow our headlong flight to a more pleasant pace, pulling me up to drift beside her.

  “Not that I’m complaining,” I said, “but why’d you come here?”

  She turned a puzzled glance my way. “What do you mean? This is my job. After all, this is my territory.”

  “Your territory? You run things around here?”

  “Of course. Strongest ghost in a territory rules the roost, as you Americans say.”

  “Oh, my Gawd!” I suddenly remembered I had a breakfast date with Fenn that I was breaking. “He’ll growl all over me.”

  “Cutting class?” Michiko asked. “How naughty. Well, that’s all right. Once in a while won’t kill you. I should know.”

  “Yeah, and look what happened to you. You’re dead.”

  “Not from skipping. I was in a night club, mouthing off to a yakuza punk who wanted some underage tail. I told him in front of his friends just what he could do with himself. He didn’t appreciate the suggestion or the drink I threw in his face. He pulled a gun.” She looked at me, surprise etched on her face like she still didn’t believe it. It was a good thing we could go through trees, because she made no effort to avoid them. “He shot me. Shaun blames himself. I’d asked Big Brother to keep me company, but he had other things to do that night.”

  Adopted brother was more accurate. He’d lived with Michiko’s family in Japan for several years, undergoing strict martial arts training, one of the few westerners ever granted that privilege.