All mirth faded from her face as she locked eyes with the very menacing, possessive alpha. The selkie was shorter than me and slim. Although she was covered in lean, ropey muscles, Brock probably weighed more than twice what she did. He drew up to his full height to tower over her, the muscles of his forearms tensed and on display. Any normal creature would be intimidated as all hell.
“What the fuck do you want?” Brock snapped.
The selkie glared at him for a full minute before stroking her wet hair, trailing her fingers across the long strands all the way past her bare breasts, lingering there. She was probably trying to draw Brock’s attention to her body, but my wolf kept his narrowed eyes pinned on her face.
She scowled. “The healing pool keeps my clan young and strong. To share its power would be foolish.”
Everyone in our group tightened their grips on their weapons. Tianna held a nasty-looking broadsword, and tilted it so the sunlight filtering through the trees overhead would glint across the deadly blade.
“We’re only asking as a courtesy,” I said, speaking for the first time. “We’re not leaving without using it.” Her eyes locked on mine. I didn’t even blink as she tried to intimidate me. Good luck with that, selkie bitch.
“Ahh, kitsune.” She grinned as the saliva glistened on her razor-sharp teeth. She was looking at me oddly—maybe behind me or right through me—in a daze. She stared for long enough that I decided we’d just have to knock her out or kill her.
“Oh, I see,” she finally spoke. “You seek to mend your katana and close the gate to the underworld. Well, why didn’t you say so? Come along.” She spun and slipped into the trees that surrounded us, her seal skin cloak dragging behind her.
‘I want what she’s smoking,’ Cass told me.
‘Totally,’ I answered.
Fuck. She’d read my mind. I probably should have thrown up a protection spell or something. Tianna would have reminded me to do it if only we’d realized selkies were mind readers. I hoped the selkie didn’t have any other unpleasant tricks up her sleeves ... uh, under her skin cloak.
Brock wasn’t buying her helpful act any more than I was. He positioned himself in front of me as we followed behind her, weaving through trees. “Why are you so cooperative all of a sudden?” His voice dripped with suspicion.
The selkie stopped in mid-stride and snapped her head back, scanning every member in our group with those wild eyes. “Because in the underworld, selkies are forced to be slaves for highborn demons. If that gate stays open and they invade Earth, our little paradise here gets ruined and we’re back to being slaves. Servitude doesn’t suit my people.” Her nostrils flared as she bared her pointy teeth again.
Damn, she was scary when she wanted to be. I gulped. I had no idea about the underworld’s hierarchy, and I didn’t even want to know what a highborn demon was, but it made sense in a way. Every single demon I’d ever met or heard about was power hungry. The stronger demons would attempt to control those beneath them.
Brock simply nodded, accepting her answer, and we kept walking. With Brock in the lead and me on his heels, we followed her deeper into the dense woods for several minutes before I heard splashing.
“I suggest you lower your weapons unless you want my girls to think you’re here to kill them.” She glared at our many swords and guns. “If you threaten them, they’ll tear you to shreds.” Her look suggested she’d do nothing to stop them. Heck, the crazy gleam in her eyes said she’d join them.
Hesitation pulsed through our group, but we all eventually lowered our weapons. Haru and Reo were the most reluctant, sheathing their katanas but keeping twitchy fingers close to their hilts.
When the selkie was satisfied we weren’t an overt threat, she led us into a cove where water flowed from the sea and into the forest, pooling in a small area. Eight seals with reddish eyes lay around the edge of the cove, and every set of eyes trained on us.
I swallowed. Even in their seal forms there was something off about them. It was probably the mess-with-us-and-we’ll-kill-you-good look they all sported on their otherwise pleasant seal faces.
“Ladies, these are our guests,” the selkie leader announced. “They’re here to repair a weapon so that the kitsune with them can close the gate to the underworld, and then they’ll be on their way.”
At the word kitsune, the seals’ eyes widened and one of them started to morph. I didn’t think selkies were technically considered shifters. They could become human for short periods of time but could never really pass for humans because they always had to be in contact with their seal skins. If stolen, the selkie would wither and die. They were more like land-sea hybrids. Never fully human, never fully seal.
The morphing seal stretched, becoming taller and thinner until her skin split right down the middle, exposing a human face first and then a human body. Molly, who wasn’t bothering to hide her amazement, gasped, mouth still hanging wide open.
Once the newly transformed selkie was in her naked form, the wet seal skin draped around her shoulders. “Kitsune?” she purred while eyeing each one of us. Her stare eventually landed on me and stayed there.
How did the selkies know I was the kitsune? It wasn’t like I was wearing a damn nametag or anything. Freaking mind readers.
I swallowed hard and pulled out the broken pieces of my blade.
The seven remaining seals either slithered out of the water or away from the edge of the cove, allowing me to walk toward it. The water was a bright, clear turquoise. I wouldn’t mind a dip if not, you know, for the crazed, murderous selkies that surrounded us. Crouching down next to the pool, I looked over at Haru and Reo. “Do I just dip the pieces in?”
The selkie leader threw her head back, her long hair trailing behind her, and laughed a high-pitched cackle. “Oh, baby, are you new at this?”
I cut her a glare, but her eyes glittered dangerously, as if she were unhinged. Probably better to engage her as little as possible.
Haru stepped forward, bowing to the water before kneeling before me. “The water is alive. A living, healing consciousness. Tell her your wish to mend your blade and then dip it in the water.”
Alive? The thought gave me the chills, but I nodded and thanked him. I also sent a cutting glare to the judgmental selkie behind me.
Okay, let’s get this done and get the hell out of here, I told myself.
I cleared my throat. “Uh, hello,” I said stupidly to the pool of crystalline water, but at my words, there was a stirring in its depths.
Oh God. This was a whole next level kind of weird.
“Please repair my broken katana. Thank you,” I told the water, wondering why no one was laughing at me. I was talking to water!
All eyes were on me. Even the seals watched with eerie concentration. I leaned forward and slipped the two halves, and my hands, into the pool. It was warm, like bathwater warm.
Almost immediately, a purple glow wrapped itself around my arms, sweeping down each hand and across the pieces of the blade, making the entire water glimmer with a lilac hue. Following some instinct that told me what to do, I merged the two broken pieces of my katana and held them together while the water appeared to be working to fuse them back into one whole. The water beneath me glowed so brightly it was difficult to look at.
The selkie leader stepped closer to the water to look over my shoulder. “The water spirit is using your own healing energy to fix the blade.” For once, her voice was pleasant, filled with awe.
Regardless, Brock, Haru, and Reo edged closer to me as well. Just because the selkie leader was playing nice didn’t mean we could trust her.
My eyes were bugged out of my skull, pretty sure my life couldn’t get any crazier, when Tianna hissed. I went rigid and so did the alpha and warriors behind me.
The smell of sulfur hit me just as the selkie growled, “Akuma!”
Oh. Fuck. Was anything in my life ever going to be easy again?
18 Holy Mother of Scary Demons
With my hands elbow-deep in the glowing water, the scent of sulfur intensified, which meant the Akuma drew nearer. Which also meant we were in deep shit.
“Don’t take your hands out until that blade is whole!” Haru barked as he and Reo pulled their katanas with a matching shliiing sound that I’d come to love.
“Akuma, as in the demon overlords that kill kitsune?” Brock asked, pulling two handguns from holsters on either side of his hips. He was ready to throw down, and by the sound of Molly’s shotgun cocking, so was my apprentice.
“The one and only,” Haru said as a fiery red ball zoomed through the woods and crashed onto the forest floor at the edge of the open cove. The ball of magic exploded and flames rushed from it, licking across the ground, igniting leaves and sticks that covered the earth as if they’d been doused in gasoline.
The Akuma had arrived.
Everything happened so fast I wasn’t sure where to look.
Cass’ small wings flapped wildly as he cut a straight line across the edge of the water to land at my side. One hand crackled with his magic at the ready, another dipped into his favorite fanny pack, fingers twitching above an array of Gran’s vials. With Cass there, he, Brock, Haru, and Reo fanned out to cover my exposed back, since I was stuck to the spot until my sword was repaired.
‘I’ve got your back, Ev,’ Cass told me for good measure. I knew I could count on my bestie in times like these.
More of the selkies transformed from seals to humanoids, crawling out of the water naked with seal skins on their backs and feral grins on their faces, sliding tongues across pointy teeth.
At the same time, four human-looking demons emerged from the woods, where the fireball had originated. Except there was nothing truly human about them. Their eyes were entirely black, without whites, and their skin was translucent. Black veins pulsed along their faces, necks, collarbones, and the exposed muscles of their arms; it was as if they bled crude oil. Two of them were roughly female in appearance, with long, stringy hair, and the other two appeared male, with short-cropped hair.
“Well, well,” one of the females said, gesturing to me. “It looks as if your powers manifested after all.”
She grinned, and her teeth were gray, tinged with black. Clearly the Akuma weren’t believers in dental hygiene. Yuck.
Without waiting for a signal, Brock unloaded one of his weapons into the approaching demons … and then all hell truly broke loose. The Akuma moved faster than vampires, which should have been impossible. One second the four demons were at the edge of the forest, entering the clearing that contained the cove, the next they were dodging Brock’s bullets and moving toward us at a blur. Before I could blink or freak out, they were right in front of us. They’d covered thirty feet in half a second.
Holy. Shit.
One of the demons popped right up in my personal space, wedging himself between my protectors and me. I started and, already off balance with both arms in the water, I fell to the side, tumbling into the pool of water.