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  The reminder of why I was here had me on my feet before Sakurako could prod me further. “What did you have in mind for today?” I asked even though I didn’t really care how my apprenticeship started.

  But Sakurako took my words at face value. “We are twenty years behind in your training, granddaughter,” the old woman answered. “Today we will begin to remedy that mistake.”

  WE RECONVENED IN MY grandmother’s study, a room decorated with reds and yellows and further warmed by a raging fireplace. Despite the moderate temperatures, however, I couldn’t stop shivering as I huddled beneath a vast lap robe.

  “Lighting a candle is the simplest example of pure magic,” Sakurako explained, creating flame on all ten wicks simultaneously without expending any apparent effort at all. The candles flickered out, then she turned to face me. “Now you try.”

  I didn’t want to, but this was what I’d signed up for. Learning to harness my kitsune nature and becoming my grandmother’s mini-me. Ignoring the stab of complaint where my mate tether circled around my belly, I pulled up my star ball...then drew a blank.

  Because—beyond blood magic, which was currently unavailable to me—the only thing I knew how to do was to physically toss my star ball at the candles and hope it sparked one of them on fire. But even I knew that was a terrible idea when loss of my magic made me droop and my hands were already shaking with a combination of exhaustion and cold.

  Then Sakurako’s fingers covered mine, her flesh warmer than expected as she pushed the star ball back inside my skin. “Not like that, granddaughter. You can’t waste your own energy so flagrantly. You need to send out magic you’ve sucked in.”

  My head was pounding so hard it was difficult to focus. But I squinted against the pain and forced myself to pay attention as my grandmother lit the candles a second time. Ah, now I saw what she was doing. Saw the surge of power flowing from elsewhere—from her honor guard?—into her chest then back out through her fingers, igniting into flame.

  Yuck. My grandmother was an energy vampire. And Sakurako must have understood my thought processes because she narrowed her eyes as she spoke.

  “This is your heritage, granddaughter. A kitsune mistress gains the admiration of her honor guard then she uses that freely given power to protect them in exchange. It’s an equal trade of energy, not so much different from what happens within a werewolf pack.”

  It was different. It was a whole-nother-ballpark different. Even as I assured myself of that fact, I stroked the tiny mating tendril still twined around my waist.

  “Don’t waste the werewolf for practice.” I hadn’t spoken a word since entering her study, but Sakurako carried on a conversation as if oblivious to that fact. “That bond is your most powerful source of energy. Save it for a rainy day.”

  “I won’t use Gunner’s affection. Rainy day or any day.” My voice cracked as I spoke but I was no less adamant for the show of weakness.

  “Then you’d better get to work on that honor guard, hadn’t you?” Sakurako countered. “The most expedient path is getting hot and sweaty together. Just remember what I told you about showing favoritism at such an early date.”

  Chapter 38

  The members of Sakurako’s honor guard lived in their own wing on the first story of the mansion, behind a long line of doors with no identifying features to hint at who slept within. Given no way of guessing who was in residence at the moment, I banged on the first six doors one after another, then stood back as sleepy males stumbled out in pajamas, boxers, or in one case entirely nude.

  “Um.” I looked them over, noted that my grandmother had definitely included physique in her requirements for service. Then my gaze caught on Yuki at the end of the line.

  Oyo’s former lover appeared delighted to see me, despite the fact that he must have been on the night shift like the others. And yet, his presence sent a queasy rumbling through my gut.

  “Yuki, go back to bed.” Turning away so I wouldn’t have to see the light in his eyes fade into disappointment, I addressed the other five men with more warmth in my tone. “I’d like to get to know you all better.” Then I dropped my hand down to the sword belted at my hip, raised my eyebrows, and waited for them to catch on.

  Then waited. And waited. For warriors, they were remarkably slow to get the message. Perhaps binding yourself to a kitsune mistress had a dulling effect on the mind?

  Whatever the reason, all five of them just stood there awaiting further instructions. So, at last, I sighed then elaborated. “Get dressed and show me where you keep your swords. We’re going to spar.”

  And that got them moving like I’d kicked over a hornet’s nest.

  I’D EXPECTED THERE to be a practice hall inside the mansion. But, instead, my five chosen warriors led me out the back and into a courtyard where flowering vines dripped and rotted off the rock walls and onto the ground. This was the result of kitsune magic, brilliant autumnal foliage killed before its proper hour by an unseasonal snow. Ignoring the shiver that passed through me at the realization, I split us up into three duos then proceeded to fight.

  We were practicing rather than engaging in true battle, but we still used real weapons rather than padded blades. “I’m Koki,” offered my opponent even as he dipped beneath my guard and nearly sliced through my jugular, the sun glinting brilliantly off his sword.

  Rather than answering audibly, my blade deflected his and twisted sideways to slice at his exposed fingers as a retaliatory measure. He grinned as he danced backwards, sword flying so rapidly it turned into a blur before my eyes.

  It was a pleasure to spar with a well-matched partner, even when he lunged nearly horizontally and managed to slice a thin nick in the only pair of jeans I now had to my name. I took advantage of the resistance of the fabric, however, and managed to cut the thinnest scratch across his forearm even as I told him, “I’m Mai.”

  Instantly, my opponent was bowing, speaking acknowledgement of my success directly to the ground. “I know who you are, Mai-sama. It is a great honor to lose to you.”

  I smiled...and that’s when it happened. A streak of magic arced like lightning away from his groin and into my center. It was lewd and unpleasant...and infused me with so much energy I thought I might have been able to levitate into open air.

  “SWITCH PARTNERS!” MY voice came out high and breathy, an almost orgasmic pleasure suffusing my core. I’d thought I was so clever choosing swordplay rather than bedplay...and yet it appeared the results were largely the same.

  But I grimaced and bore it. Learned names and fighting habits of four other devotees then gritted my teeth as, one after another, magical connections formed between me and the humans I crossed swords with. Only when the fifth tether threatened to dislodge my older connection to Gunner did I bend over gasping, drawing the concerned attention of the rest of the honor guard.

  “What did you do to her?” Koki demanded. “We allow the mistress to win always!”

  They hadn’t even been fighting to the full extent of their prowess? Grabbing Gunner’s tether in one fist so it couldn’t escape me, I didn’t bother to dismiss them. Just stormed out of the training yard and back into the mansion from which we’d come.

  Up the stairs, down a hallway, into the study where Sakurako had recently prodded me with beginner magic. My nemesis sat behind her desk with a book open before her, not bothering to glance up when I pushed my way inside the room.

  “Done already?” she asked after a moment of silence. Or not silence, but the harsh sound of me panting as I strained to cling to a slippery mate bond that kept trying to slide out of my grasp.

  Later, I’d wonder why I didn’t release the connection. Why I didn’t break the bond between me and Gunner and put us both out of our misery. In the moment, however, I merely demanded, “Put my mate bond back.”

  “I didn’t dislodge it. And I can’t replace it.” Despite the quietness of her words, Sakurako deigned to place one finger on the page to hold her place before looking up from her
book. Her eyes had all the warmth of hard nubs of coal stuck in a snowman’s head.

  “So how do I fix it?” I growled, sounding an awful lot like a werewolf. And I was somehow unsurprised when the old woman raised her left hand and gestured at the candelabra I’d failed to light earlier in the day.

  Yes, that was right. I felt like I’d eaten too much, like the last bite of dessert was hovering halfway down my throat wanting to come back up as vomit. The obvious answer was to bleed off some of the excess magic and hope my connection to Gunner would snap back into place once given sufficient room.

  So I focused all of my anger on those unlit wicks, expecting the process to be time-consuming and difficult. But, instead, I merely opened my mouth and breathed toward the candles...then watched wax puddle on the tabletop as the entire candelabra went up in a massive blaze.

  “Control will be next on our agenda,” Sakurako noted dryly, dropping her head back down to the book she’d been reading. But I caught a faint hint of a smile ghosting across her features and her eyes didn’t slide back and forth across the page.

  My grandmother was proud of my first attempt at pure kitsune magic. A week ago, such familial pride would have warmed the sodden lump in my stomach and threatened to create a full-on thaw.

  Now, though, I had interest in nothing other than the way Gunner’s mate bond wove itself amidst the honor guard’s tethers as it was cemented back into my stomach. That connection was now solid and immovable, exactly what I’d been aiming for.

  So why did I feel profoundly disloyal as I turned my back on my grandmother and took my leave?

  Chapter 39

  “Stay away. Stay safe.” I spoke before I’d fully woken, a dream of Sakurako stealing my tether and using Gunner as a blood slave sending me fumbling for the light. Only after I stared down at my stomach and easily picked out my mate bond did I relax my muscles. Two of the human males’ tethers had sloughed off during the intervening hours, but Gunner’s had burrowed deeper down into my flesh and stuck.

  Being able to physically see a connection that pulsed beneath the skin of my belly should have been disconcerting. But, instead, I stroked the tether gently while straining—and failing—to feel the werewolf on the other end of the line.

  Nothing.

  Closing my eyes, I reminded myself that Gunner was there even if I couldn’t communicate with him. Still, he was also at risk due to my proximity to Sakurako. I pursed my lips, fully aware that the smart solution involved breaking our mate bond immediately. But, instead, I resolved to find a way to maintain our connection without risking my werewolf partner to Sakurako’s wrath.

  A seemingly impossible task...so I’d better get right on it. Even though it wasn’t yet dawn, I pulled on clothes and padded out into the hallway. The library. Kira had emoted over that room before I’d told her she was leaving, and it seemed like the obvious place to start.

  Light was beginning to filter in various windows by the time I’d peeked into ballrooms and kitchens and guest rooms before finally arrowing in on my goal. But then I stood gaping in the doorway rather than getting right to work.

  There were so many books. Hundreds of them, thousands of them, spines spanning every inch from vaulted ceiling to tiled floor. This collection bore no resemblance to the few, handwritten journal entries Elle had found during the summer we spent sussing out my abilities. Instead, as I slipped book after book from the shelves, flipping through pages full of fox shifters and magic, I knew I’d struck the mother lode.

  The question was—how to find a needle in this tremendous haystack? The only solution appeared to be to read. Which is exactly how Sakurako found me three hours later, my nose in the tenth or perhaps twentieth musty old book.

  “Looking for something?”

  I jumped at her question, slammed the cover shut so quickly I nearly took off my own hand. Then the book was being yanked out of my possession by impatient fingers, the same pages fluttering open as my hostess pored over the title page.

  “Kitsune History for Beginners.” Sakurako raised one eyebrow. “Very basic information, granddaughter.”

  “In case you weren’t aware, that’s the level I’m currently at.”

  We watched each other in silence for one long moment before a hint of softness rose behind the old woman’s eyes. “Your mother was equally willing to admit to weakness. It’s a surprisingly useful trait.”

  She graced me with that same smile of a proud teacher I’d seen on her features earlier. And to my disgust, a cloud of confused acceptance promptly roiled through my gut.

  WE SETTLED INTO A PREDICTABLE rhythm thereafter. Mornings were for reading and practicing. Afternoons were for building bonds with my honor guard. Every day, I woke with a plea on my lips—“Stay away. Stay safe.” And every night, I fell into an exhausted slumber, alone in my solitary bed.

  “When will it be my turn to spar again?” Koki asked me a week—nine days?—later when we passed each other in the hall. He must have rotated off night shift because it was just after lunchtime, yet he appeared unusually bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

  “You cheat. It’s no fun to fight a cheater.” I tried to glower at the human, but he was too perkily cheerful to serve as the focus of my ire. The last time we’d sparred together, I’d been sure he was actually struggling flat out against me...until I’d slipped on a patch of mud and still managed to come out ahead.

  “Mai-sama, losing to you is such supreme pleasure. Why would I want to win?” As he spoke, the human raised my hand to his lips, eyes not flickering away from mine for even a second. And, in response, the surge of energy along our shared tether transitioned from a trickle into a flood.

  “I haven’t sparred with everyone yet,” I protested. “It’s not fair to fight against you a third time until everyone else has had a shot.” As I spoke, I removed my hand from his and averted my own gaze while butterflies danced in my belly. It was painfully difficult in that moment to remember the shape of Gunner’s face.

  “Not true,” Koki countered and began spouting off semi-familiar names. I counted on my fingers as he listed his compatriots, then I nodded definitively when he came to the end.

  “That’s seventeen,” I agreed. “But there are eighteen doors in the honor-guard hallway.”

  And, for the first time in our acquaintance, Koki turned evasive. “Mai-sama, perhaps now is not the time to...”

  “The eighteenth door is locked. I tried it yesterday. I want to know what—or who—is inside.”

  “Mai-chan.” The endearment wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it nonetheless raised a knot in my throat I couldn’t quite decipher. “Please believe me. You don’t want this.”

  “I do want this. Do you have the key or should I ask my grandmother?”

  Our standoff lasted for nearly thirty seconds before Koki caved beneath my stubbornness. He was the unofficial leader of the honor guard and we both knew it. Of course he possessed the requested key.

  So, silently, we descended to the ground-floor level. Koki reluctantly trailed me down the hallway before slipping a thin chain off over his head once we reached the end. The silver key waited there between us, Koki’s mouth compressing with the effort to restrain the warning on the tip of his tongue.

  I accepted the key but not the warning, noted how the metal was hot against my fingers while the doorknob was cold against my skin. I was suddenly unsure whether I did want to uncover this secret. And Koki confirmed that fact as his fingers drifted reassuringly across the back of my neck.

  “What you have to understand, Mai-sama, is that any of us would willingly sacrifice ourselves for the sake of the mistress. Kaito volunteered to help Sakurako-sama punish the wrongdoer and was chosen above all of us for his strength and loyalty. I also requested the honor, many of us requested the honor, and Kaito would do it all over again.”

  The door swung open as I struggled—and failed—to come up with an answer to that expression of extreme fidelity. And what I saw inside wasn’t as terrible as
I’d been led to expect.

  In the room, IVs trailed from a strange male’s body as he lay unmoving on a hospital bed. His chest rose and fell with regularity, but I didn’t see so much as an eyelash-flicker of voluntary movement in response to our presence or to Koki’s voice.

  This wasn’t a monster, but simply a man in a coma. The monster lay elsewhere in the mansion, far above this formerly locked room.

  Chapter 40

  “You’re going to fix this.”

  I slammed into Sakurako’s study in a high temper. And when the old woman tried to hide behind her book this time, I ripped the object out of her hands and flung it across the room. Elle would have been horrified at the way the book landed spine up, pages crumpling beneath the cover. But I was grimly satisfied to have broken something that didn’t live and breathe.

  “So you found Kaito.”

  “Is that your only answer? About a man who can’t even feed himself, who just lies there staring at the ceiling with no life force left for you to harvest?”

  I wasn’t actually asking, but Sakurako answered anyway. “Yes. It was a shame, but necessary. And, no, it cannot be fixed.”

  Necessary. Sakurako’s cold acceptance of her underling’s vegetative state forced the air out of my lungs and I found myself sinking into the nearest armchair. My own rage was abruptly extinguished, the future yawning out before me like a dark tunnel with no end.

  This is what I’d signed on for when I traded my future for Kira’s. I had no grounds for complaint when I’d offered myself up as Sakurako’s apprentice without requiring a single reassurance on her part.

  And Sakurako must have smelled the regret I drowned in because her voice gentled when she spoke to me. “Granddaughter,” the old woman said quietly. Then, when I failed to respond, her voice sharpened. “You will not be as weak as your mother. If you can’t handle the truth, then I will train your sister instead.”