A Dash of Demon (Fate’s Falls #5)

Chapter 1

One

LILAH

“You look good, but are you going to kill me?”

The berries don’t answer. Neither does the plant-identifier app on my phone, which, like everything else, requires signal, something I haven’t had since the parking lot disappeared from view two mornings ago.

Better not to know how the berries taste than wind up dead in an uninhabited forest. Tucking my useless phone into my back pocket as my stomach growls, I give the red berries one last look before leaving the abundant shrub behind.

Maybe that’s a sign that they’re poisonous. If the berries were edible, birds and any animals that can climb would have eaten them all by now. Flimsy logic, but it’s all I’ve got.

Sighing, I pull a protein bar from the side pouch of my small backpack.

It claims to be bursting with natural berry flavor, but I know otherwise.

Unless they’re talking about some mythical sawdust berry.

Because that’s what these bars taste like.

Not that I’ve actually eaten sawdust. But in the seven years I spent with Bart, my woodworking ex-husband, I inhaled enough sawdust while cleaning up after him to make a guess about its flavor.

Super. Now I’m not only hungry and flavor-deprived, my brain has circled back to the life I came here to forget about, if only for a week.

A week alone on a beautiful, peaceful mountainside. Sounds idyllic. Would be idyllic if I’d found some private little cabin to rent.

But no.

I loved camping as a kid. Even as a teen.

Then I met Bart and got swept away by his confidence and swagger, which turned out to be the charismatic veneer on his narcissistic personality.

Next thing I knew, I wasn’t Lilah anymore, I was Bart’s girlfriend, then Bart’s wife.

He didn’t want to go camping—therefore we didn’t go camping.

So here I am, solo camping on a mountain after finalizing the divorce. A chance to “find myself again” after seven years of modifying and sometimes silencing myself for the sake of “peace.” And yes, I also chose this trip so I could rub it in Bart’s face the last time I had to share air with him.

Except, instead of looking pissed off by my act of liberated defiance, he laughed in my face.

A cruel, belittling laugh I’ve heard more times than I can count.

Then he informed me he was also taking a post-divorce trip—to the Caribbean, with the hot little blonde from his company’s office who he’s been banging since a year before I scraped up enough courage to tell him I wanted out of our marriage.

I hope she cheats on him and gives him an STD. One that makes his dick shrivel up and fall off would be perfect.

“Fucking asshole,” I mutter around the mouthful of protein bar I’m having trouble creating enough saliva to swallow.

Finding myself again is not going as planned. Neither are finding any berries I feel confident eating, and if I wander much farther from the small, remote campsite I made instead of taking the numbered location assigned to me, I might not find my way back.

Maybe getting lost out here wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Then I’d be forced to be the strong, independent person I once was. The woman I’m determined to be from now on. The center of my own world instead of a footstool in someone else’s.

I can do this. Keep my bearings without sticking to a manicured trail. Forage for berries. Just like I used to do as a kid in the woods around Vernon. Back when I’d committed all the bushes and berries to memory and didn’t have to check a plant-identifier app.

Bearings and berries aside, something inside is telling me it’s not time to turn back yet, that I’m supposed to keep going.

That I’m on this mountain at this moment for…

something. I’ve only felt this sense of inner conviction once before, when I knew I’d do whatever it took to become a veterinary technician.

Caring for animals was absolutely a calling.

I’m not sure what this is, but the pull to continue climbing is undeniable.

Worry about finding my way back fades with each minute I trek up the mountainside. Totally illogical, especially as minutes tick into something longer.

I’m much farther from my little campsite than on any previous walk.

The view is the same in every direction.

Endless trees, their branches and canopies overlapping tighter as I gain altitude, blocking most of the sunlight.

And still, I keep going, increasing my pace until body heat turns the back of my shirt into a damp layer of ick sandwiched between my sweaty skin and the backpack bouncing against the shelf of my butt with each step.

The crunching of nature beneath my hiking boots and my heavy breathing are the only sounds in my ears. Until they’re not. I freeze on the spot, holding my breath as I try to pinpoint the location of the low whining that’s unmistakably an animal in pain.

A wild animal, my inner voice of reason whispers.

Even the most well-behaved domestic pets can lash out when they’re injured or in pain. That doesn’t stop me from heading toward the whimpering when I hear it again.

Pushing through some bushy growth, I see the source of the mournful cries.

“Don’t be scared, I’m not going to hurt you,” I say softly, holding my hands out with the palms open as I approach the wounded red fox.

“I’m Lilah, and I’m a veterinary technician.

Which probably isn’t helpful to tell you since you’re a fox and don’t go to a veterinarian.

I’m a doctor’s assistant, and a good one. I’m going to help you, I promise.”

It can’t understand me, of course, but hopefully my tone and posture convey that I’m friend, not foe.

Beautiful amber eyes track my approach, but the fox doesn’t give any warning barks or screeches, and it doesn’t flinch when I kneel at its side.

Up close, the issue is clear without laying a finger on the creature.

The amount of dried blood on its hindquarter indicates significant blood loss.

“I need to see what caused the bleeding,” I whisper. “I’ll try not to cause more pain than you’re already suffering. I would never hurt you intentionally, okay?”

The fox whimpers once, blinking at me, then closes its eyes.

I’ll take that as permission to proceed, and hope I’m interpreting the signal correctly.

“I have some medical supplies in my backpack.” I slide the pack off and unzip it as quietly as possible.

After removing the first aid kit, I roll up my sleeves and put on latex gloves.

“I’m going to touch you now,” I say, then carefully place my hands on the bloody area.

My patient whimpers but doesn’t move, aside from the instinctive flinch from discomfort.

“Oh my god, you were shot.” The words come out sharper than I intended, but still, the fox doesn’t react.

Right now, getting bitten by this injured fox isn’t what worries me.

I haven’t seen another person since setting up camp, but there’s obviously someone in the vicinity.

Either a hunter, if that’s even legal in this area, or just a cruel human being.

All I can hope is that they’ve moved on.

“Okay, I have two options here. I can carry you down the mountain to my car, then into town to a veterinary clinic to have a doctor remove the bullet, or I can remove it here and then take you to a clinic. I don’t love the idea of digging it out of your hindquarter in the middle of a forest, but I think moving you with the bullet in place might be worse.

I have to be honest, though, little friend.

I can’t guarantee you’re going to survive, no matter what I do. ”

The fox lifts its head, though barely, and looks me in the eye, as if it understood every word. Its long muzzle opens enough to emit a soft chatter. Then its head drops to the ground, its eyes closing with what feels to me like defeated resolution.

“I’m going to try,” I say, prepping the area and grimacing at the little yips from my patient before opening a disposable sterile scalpel. “This is going to hurt like hell, and I’m sorry.”

Thank god for everything I’ve learned while assisting in surgeries, but this is not how I ever imagined putting that knowledge to practical firsthand use.

Mercifully, the bullet isn’t deep. Once it’s out, I clean the wound, apply suture strips from my kit as well as I can because of the fur I lack the tools to shave, then wrap the area.

“That’s step one done, but we’re not out of the woods yet,” I say, gently stroking the fox’s head.

Its eyes open, and it chatters again.

“Okay, now I’m going to pick you up and—” A sharp inhalation of air replaces the rest of my words. Still kneeling, I scramble backward into the surrounding brush as the impossible happens before my eyes.

The fox stops being a fox. Small becomes large. Fur becomes skin. Paws become hands and feet. Muzzle becomes a nose and mouth with human lips that part to say, “Don’t be scared, I’m not going to hurt you.”

My words, repeated back at me. “You…you’re a…

but you were just a…” I pinch my eyes closed and shake my head.

When I open them, he’s still there. A naked man with reddish-brown hair and eyes the color of single malt Scotch whisky.

“This isn’t real. Maybe I did eat those questionable berries and I’m hallucinating. ”

“This is all very real. I was a fox, and now I’m a man.

I’m a fox shifter, and you just saved my life.

” His eyebrows pull together when all I do in response is continue to gape.

“You didn’t eat berries from a plant about seventy centimeters high with deeply lobed, coarsely toothed leaflets and a stalk with a grouping of red or white berries at the top, did you? ”

“What? No. I haven’t seen anything like that.”

The man—or fox, or whatever impossible thing he is—nods once. “Good. If you see them in the future, don’t eat them. Baneberries are poisonous to humans.”

“What about to foxes who morph into humans?”