Chapter 33 The Demon Comes Yesterday
Reynard Van Crimson dug with teeth and claws through the most disgusting flesh that ever existed. It moved around him, both decayed and alive, fighting him as he dredged for brain. He shouted to the vodvod again, damning every lesson he’d ever been taught that Khain could not be killed.
SMACK.
Khain’s giant hand came around and caught him on the back and with an explosion of fire and light, they were sucked out of the Ula and into the Pravus.
The air choked Reynard, hurting his lungs.
The demon struck again. Reynard’s back snapped in a dozen places.
He shifted, healing, not feeling pain, only trying to stay alive.
Khain plucked Reynard off his face and squeezed him in a giant hand, crushing his ribs, breaking his spine again. Reynard shifted and shifted again, trying not to die.
Khain pulled his arm back, then threw Reynard like a baseball.
Reynard curled midair, protecting his head.
He slammed into a rock wall, pain exploding in him.
He shifted as he fell to the ground and shifted again, willing himself to hang on.
Khain scraped him off the ground and whipped him at the wall again.
Stay alive, just stay alive, just stay alive, he panted to himself, shifting and shifting and shifting. Khain stomped on him, then picked him up and whipped him at another wall, shouting and swearing. Reynard landed on the hard ground and shifted as best he could, his strength flagging.
“That’s enough,” a male said softly. “He learned his lesson.”
Reynard recognized the voice as one of his uncles, but in his agony, he couldn’t think of his uncle’s name.
Curled on his side on the floor as a man, naked and ice-cold from blood loss, he wiped blood and ichor from his eyes, trying to see.
He was in a large area, walls like a cave, with no color but grey and drab.
Males of all ages, all from his family, stood and crouched all around, watching, some pressed against the jagged, cracked wall, their faces filled with horror and shock.
Khain turned to the male who had dared to speak, slowly, his face murderous.
Khain grabbed the male up and threw him against another wall.
Reynard winced, finally remembering his uncle’s name.
Rhogun. Uncle Rhogun dropped to the ground, twisted and broken, then shifted into an arctophox, an oversized fox the size of a bear.
He stayed where he fell, silently watching Khain.
Khain pointed to two males and said, “Hold him.” The males hesitated and Khain’s temper blew. He grew even larger, then kicked an enormous, booted foot through all the foxen, scattering them, shouting and swearing and roaring in rage.
“REX!” Khain shouted like an explosion, making Reynard clap his hands to his ears.
Rex Brenwyn appeared from nowhere. Reynard growled softly at the sight of the traitor.
“Hold him,” Khain told Rex, shrinking down to man-size and motioning at Reynard.
Reynard panted on the bare ground, gathering his strength, considering his options, knowing what was coming. He could run but he could not escape the Pravus—all foxen knew that. There was nowhere to hide in the Pravus—all foxen knew that too.
Rex came in fast and grabbed him under the arm.
Soren, Rex’s no-good brother, appeared from nowhere and grabbed Reynard under the other arm.
Reynard fought, because Rex and Soren were assholes.
He landed a punch on Rex’s stupid fucking face and connected an elbow to Soren’s neck before they got ahold of him again, then he shifted, and clawed and bit at them.
Rex grabbed him around the body and slammed him to the ground, and they both fell on him.
Reynard shifted to a man again to fight, but Rex sprayed something in his face that choked him.
He bent, sputtering, spitting blood and bile out on the ground.
Rex and Soren heaved him upward, and then Khain came in fast, his right hand transforming into an oversized paw with three long cruel claws.
Khain swiped the paw and the claws dug into Reynard’s chest, splitting it with three jagged lines.
Reynard grit his teeth, holding in his agony.
He yanked his arms away from the two traitors and curled them around his marred chest, around the skin and flesh that had been so strong and clean just a moment before.
Marked. He was marked. His whole life he’d known this was his fate, and yet the moment still broke him. He backpedaled, his mind twisting.
Rex and Soren lunged for him again. He had no strength left to fight.
Khain strutted in front of him, an evil grin on his face, then he circled around behind.
Too late, Reynard realized what he was up to.
Reynard twisted and pulled and fought for all he was worth, but Khain put a hand on his head, draining what strength he had left with the touch, then he scraped off Reynard’s renqua, skin and all, with one malicious swipe of a dagger-like claw.
Rex and Soren dropped Reynard to the ground in a heap.
He shifted, or rather, he tried to shift, but his brain stuttered and cracked, and he could not manage it.
Reynard lay there, stunned and despairing, until at last, his mind turned over and he shifted, but not into his fox—into an arctophox.
The first shift into Khain’s marked beast was hard work.
His body strained to manage it. He felt bigger and meaner than normal, and immoral.
The shift into the beast felt wrong in a way that his fox never had.
Reynard shifted back into a man quickly.
The mark on his chest did not heal, it never would.
It would be this same open, weeping, dismal, wound until the day he died.
He whipped his head around, trying to look over his shoulder at his renqua, but of course he could not.
He touched his hand to the spot where his proud flag renqua had been.
The skin there was still red and raw and weeping.
Despair yanked at Reynard and he beat it back.
He would live. He would survive. Every lesson he’d ever been taught about Khain rose in his mind and he threw them all out viciously.
He would kill Khain. Somehow. Someday. Someway. He would be the end of Khain.
Khain stood over him, growing and shrinking from giant-sized to man-sized, and back again, clenching and unclenching his fists.
“Foxen,” he said.
Reynard met the demon’s eyes, unable to erase the defiance from his face. Pain speared through him, starting at his mark, reaching up to his head and down to his crotch, seeming to split him right in half. Reynard dropped his eyes and bore it as well as he could. Finally, it stopped.
“Foxen,” the demon said again.
Reynard met his eyes again and again, pain threatened to rip him in half. Reynard did not drop his eyes this time.
Uncle Rhogun spoke to him in quiet, measured ruhi. Drop your eyes. Don’t challenge him.
Never.
Live to fight another day. We have a plan.
That got to Reynard. If there was a chance to fight, he would do what he had to do. He dropped his eyes. The pain amped up and continued, then stopped. Reynard stared at the dirt in front of him.
“Foxen.”
Reynard did not look up.
Look at me.
Reynard didn’t.
The pain ripped through him again and Khain laughed long and low.
Look at me, he said again.
Reynard looked. The pain continued, tearing and ripping at him.
Reynard dropped his eyes. The pain continued and the demon laughed.
Reynard bit his lips until they bled and writhed on the floor, no longer able to comply or deny.
The pain stopped abruptly, and Reynard melted into the rock floor, so glad just to be able to breathe.
Khain watched him for a few moments, then turned to Rex. “He’s with team delta.”
Khain abruptly disappeared from sight, with a few wisps of smoke marking where he had been. The males in the room murmured.
Rhogun went to Reynard and covered him with a ratty blanket. “Reynard, I’m sorry to see you here.”
“I’m sorry to be here,” Reynard said, dismayed at how weak his own voice sounded.
Rhogun was a good male and a good uncle, always had been.
He was Reynard’s mother’s brother and had disappeared on his way home from work two weeks ago.
Reynard had been part of the all-foxen search team that had found his truck overturned in a ditch.
They hadn’t called the vod, only towed the truck to Rhogun’s home. They’d all known what got to Rhogun.
Rhogun was wearing filthy jeans and a ripped T-shirt.
His hair was a mess, and his face and beard were dirty and disheveled.
He looked like he hadn’t had a shower or changed clothes since he’d been taken.
He still had his eyepatch. He’d worn one over his left eye for all of his life, due to being blind in that eye since birth.
Rhogun helped Reynard up and walked him to the far wall, then took him into a crack in it that opened up into a cave beyond.
Several males were clustered inside, all males Reynard knew well.
They were his own family—all Van Crimsons.
The demon had been resting for centuries, but in the last year, he’d stolen 38 Van Crimson males, most of them in the last two weeks—and here several of them were.
Someone gave him clothes, and he pulled them on slowly.
Rhogun spoke in ruhi, his body curled tight and stiff around his middle as he fought the pain of his mark.
Khain is attacking at dawn—a full-on assault on Serenity.
We’ve all got instructions about where we’re supposed to be and what we’re supposed to do, but some of us are escaping. We’ll get you out of town.
“I can't,” Reynard said. “I have a Tether.”
“Right but look here on the wall.”
Reynard looked at where his uncle was pointing but saw only scratches on the rock. He shook his head with the last of his strength.
Rhogun pointed at his own face. You know this dumb eye of mine? Not so dumb after all.
He lifted his eyepatch, revealing an eye that was devoid of color and dead looking. He covered his other eye and looked only through the dead one.
It’s instructions, he said. At the top here it says, ‘How to soften a Tether.’ This is from Boe, it has to be.
It’s a foxglove concoction, and it says it softens a Tether enough that we can go up to 20 miles outside of Serenity without headaches or confusion and Khain won’t be able to sense us, even if we’re marked.
Reynard shook his head, barely able to believe that this was happening to him, his brain rejecting the words he could not see. “What if it’s wrong? What if it’s a trap?” he said.
“Things can’t get worse than they are right now, fox,” Rhogun said softly, and the other males murmured in agreement. “This is all we’ve got. It’s either this or do Khain’s dirty work.”
“Never,” Reynard said. Pain speared through him, and he cleared his mind, softening his defiance enough that he could stand it.
Rhogun got right up in Reynard’s space and spoke in ruhi. He’s planning another poisoning.
Reynard clenched his fists, anger suffusing him, giving him energy. His family hadn’t lost one female to the poisoning 30 years before, because they’d heeded the warnings and taken precautions.
“I definitely can’t go then. Someone has to warn Dred.”
Rhogun considered. “Yeah, there is that.” He looked at the others, then back. “Ok, you do it, we’ll figure out a way to get you wherever you want to go.
“Put me in the hole,” Reynard said, his strength and will flagging.
Rhogun nodded and said he would. Reynard sat down on some blankets and leaned back against the wall, falling into a stuporous sleep the moment his eyes closed.