“No fucking way…” Brock’s voice was deadly.
“It could hurt the baby,” I explained to the warriors.
They nodded in unison. “We thought we had more time to let you ease into the shifts and acquire your powers, but talk to your doctor and see what she thinks you can do. Shift once now and we can take it slowly. The siren doesn’t know the exact placement of the gate yet, right?”
I was hoping not, but Calista was a wild card. I just shrugged.
“If we can find them today, stop the tsunami and kill them, it could buy us a few weeks until you can acquire all of your tails and close the gate.”
They both bowed to me, looking regretful that they’d had to be the bearers of bad news, and walked to the side to give Brock and me privacy.
Brock turned on me right away, his face animated with anger. “Didn’t that witch tell you not to shift too often? That it might jack up your powers?” The veins in his neck bulged; I stroked his bicep in soft, soothing motions.
“Yes, she did. And I’ve been cautious, as I’ll continue to be cautious. Let’s stop the sirens from bringing that tsunami to shore and then we’ll worry about the gate. I’ll shift at a rate that Sabine thinks is safe. If we kill the sirens, we can buy time before closing the gate.”
His agitation receded a bit while he seemed to come to terms with what the warriors had said. “Okay,” he said, but his nostrils still flared.
Tianna stepped forward, flicking a sheet of glorious coppery hair across her shoulder. How her hair still looked like she’d just stepped out of a salon after all we’d been through, I had no idea. It must be magic.
“Sorry to eavesdrop, dearies, but I’d also like to try to see how we can bring your witch magic through into your fox form,” she said. “There’s got to be some way we can combine the two to blow up this damn gate.”
“We’re not blowing anything up, remember, Tianna?” Haru said from where he stood a few feet away. “Evie will be closing the gate with as little collateral damage as possible. Reo and I’ve been training our whole lives to assist the kitsune to do this. We’ll get it done.”
She nodded. “As will I.” A smile pulled at her lips. “And if I get to blow shit up, that’s just a bonus.”
Haru opened his mouth to protest, but I raised a hand to stop him. “What about my, uh, dad? Can he help?”
Haru and Reo shared an uncomfortable look. Reo cleared his throat. “We’ve been trying to reach him, but he’s not answering.”
Great. My dad rose from the dead only to disappear again. Did the recent Akuma attack have anything to do with him not answering? My heart thumped. Shit. Was he okay?
“We’ll keep trying,” Haru said, “but in the meantime, this is our best bet.”
I nodded, shared a tight smile with Brock, and got right to it. Better to rip the Band-Aid off all at once. This gate could be wide open and leaking demons for all I knew. I needed to shift and get over there, stat, to check things out.
One more tail, coming right up.
I pressed my eyes shut, pictured myself as a rusty-colored fox, and let the fun begin. I grunted and groaned as my bones cracked and my flesh stretched in impossible ways. If the pain had decreased, I wasn’t noticing it. Panting and heaving, I tried to curl into myself, but already my body was beyond my control.
When I popped the fifth tail, I grit my teeth and growled ferociously. Then the pain began to subside until, finally, I was entirely a kitsune. I shook my furry head to clear the remnants of pain and bared my teeth.
Time to hunt some sirens.
21 Die Bitch. Just Die Already.
‘Smell that?’ I asked Brock as we ran in animal form toward the gate. The unmistakable brine scent of salt water permeated the crisp forest air.
‘Either the sirens are already on the property, or that tsunami is hitting sooner than predicted.’ He confirmed my thoughts.
My money was on those bitches being on our land. Why couldn’t the sirens be like the mermaids of my childhood dreams? All smiles, pearls, and granting wishes?
“We’ve got your back!” Tianna called out, and I glanced over my shoulder. The fae-witch was running full tilt behind us while Cass rushed beside her on his hoverboard. Haru and Reo were next to them, with a dozen wolves fanned out around them.
We had the craziest little crew, but something about it felt so normal, comfortable, like we’d been family from the start.
‘Tianna says to put up a shield in case the sirens are lying in wait,’ my bestie sent through our telepathic bond.
Good idea.
Pulling on my witch magic, I created a bubble of protection around my fox form, just like Tianna had taught me. It had become easier to identify my separate kitsune magic and witch magic within myself, but at the same time, they felt as if they were beginning to coalesce into one more powerful, unified force.
Brock, who’d been running next to me, suddenly stopped, peering down at my paws. His yellow wolf eyes were wide, muzzle open in shock.
Shit. What now?
‘Walk a little,’ he told me.
The others stopped and joined Brock’s wolf in staring at me. What? Had I manifested some freaky gift that I couldn’t see, like a unicorn horn? Obliging Brock, I padded forward a few steps.
Tianna gasped. “That’s so cool! Your paws don’t leave prints. You could walk in the snow and be completely untraceable!”
What the actual fuck did she just say?
Looking down, I walked a few more steps. The blades of grass didn’t even bend as my paws passed over them.
“Kitsune gift number five,” Haru commented, awe in his voice.
The power of shifting, purple healing magic, super scent, sensing demons coming out of the gate, and now this. I was starting to lose track. I guess having too many kitsune powers to remember them all was a good problem to have.
‘I like this gift,’ Brock told me. ‘It will keep you safe if you need to run and hide.’
I was processing what he’d said, and the many possibilities my new gift opened up, when I heard a whooshing sound like water coming from the direction of the gate. Spinning around, I took off in a sprint, Brock and the rest of our crew right on my heels.
We were still on the part of Brock’s property where the trees were sparse and the land between them clear and open. But we were about to enter the denser portion of the forest, where the trees grew close together, concealing the gate behind them. It was difficult to see beyond the trees, my vision obscured by thick tree trunks and low-growing ferns. Yet for a second, I thought I glimpsed her.
Calista.
That bitch killed Gran. She’d admitted to it and I still let her live. What the fuck was wrong with me? I should have drowned her in the pool in the ritzy gym. Fuck my job and fuck the bounty. I wasn’t playing by the rules anymore. My teeth were going to rip out her throat.
As we neared the area that surrounded the gate, the ground grew soggy. Brock’s paws splashed in a few inches of water, whereas mine didn’t.
Crazy magical shit.
The closer we got to the area of the gate, the more water there was. Brock’s large wolf paws were sloshing through it now. I was just trying to figure out why the sirens would be flooding the land when I spotted the gate to the underworld. A circle of spinning green light six to eight feet high glowed in the middle of the forest. A bright, green fog only I could see swirled in a continuous motion above and around the gate. And a tendril of thick, green sludge—a glowing sickly ooze—seeped from the crack in the gate—the source of all our problems.
Calista and her sister were identical from a distance. Long green hair that looked like strands of kelp hung to their waists. They were both lithe and lean in what looked like bikini tops and short skirts, but lined with long muscles. They were barefooted, as was a siren’s preference, to better sense the water beneath them.
They stood about ten feet to the right of the gate, looking away from it, scouting the ground around them. Behind them, the water was cascading into the gate.
And when they noticed, which they would, they’d have the location of the gate.
Shit, shit, shit.
Even without being able to see the gate itself, the water was flowing into it and disappearing. Anyone would be able to notice how the water in all directions dropped and vanished at one single point.
The bitch was smart. Calista had been doing this to see where the water traveled, knowing the gate was cracked open a little and that the water would flow into the underworld, revealing its location.
Brock must have realized her intent too, because he changed course, pivoting and running out into their line of sight, trying to draw their gazes away.
If the sirens managed to open the gate all the way and call through the army that I’d seen readying inside it, we were so fucked there’d be no unfucking ourselves.
The sirens spotted Brock right away. They sank into battle stances, knees bent, hands out in front of their bodies, and hissed, narrowing their eyes at him, and then at his pack of wolves assembling in front of them.
I decided I’d be of better use in my human form with my katana, so I started to shift as Reo and Haru made their way over to my side. In less than a minute I was standing naked in the water, which rose halfway up to my calves. I was ready to fight these bitches naked when Reo tossed me a loose sundress. Tugging the dress down over my head, I reached out and took the blade he also offered me. The moment my fingers wrapped around the hilt of my katana, purple magic flared to life along the newly restored blade.
Reo leaned close. “They’re demon in essence. Behead them and then stab them through the heart to be sure,” he whispered in my ear.
I nodded. Glad he was also on board with killing these psychos.
Brock and the pack were pushing the sirens away from the gate when a wall of water rose up behind them—where they wouldn’t see it in time.
“Brock, look out!” I screamed, and started running toward him.
The sirens were too powerful. It was unnerving. No one should be able to command a wall of water as massive as this one. It had to be at least ten-feet tall.
“I can see the lines of power. They’re pulling from the ocean!” Tianna said from beside me and I jumped. She’d come out of nowhere, running as fast as I was. Cass zipped up next to us on his hoverboard, trailing sparks of the golden magic he used to power it.
“How’s that possible?” I shouted, almost reaching Brock, whose wolf was now fully encased in a water bubble. “We’re like forty miles from the ocean.”
Those damn witches the sirens were allied with were powerful. Really powerful.
I didn’t have a plan; I wasn’t that type of fighter. I operated on instinct, and my instincts were telling me not to let the love of my life drown. While Tianna and Cass squared off with the sirens, I crouched without stopping to place my blade on the ground and ran full speed into the wall of water encapsulating Brock.
My body broke through the water and crashed into Brock’s wolf with such force that something snapped as my arms wrapped around his middle like steel bands. Pushing with all my strength, and using the advantage of momentum, I muscled us both out of the wave and onto the ground on the other side, all while keeping my katana from stabbing either of us, a feat in itself.