White Lies: (The Uruwashi Series #4) (9 page)

UM, come again?” Tristan asked with a scowl.

Wren’s solemn expression was enough to convince Tristan what he’d heard was true, but it was still hard to process. “Desmond didn’t tell you?”

“No he—I didn’t even know you were here. Look, Akane came to me and asked me to remove the troll. She never said anything about you.” But, as Tristan figured out the moment the vampire appeared, he’d been played again. Maybe he should just kill Yukihime. One last vampire kill to solve all his problems before starting over in the US.

“Naruhodo.”

Tristan frowned up at the vampire still pinning him to the cold ground. “You see what?”

Wren met Tristan’s eyes with his own mismatched gaze and lifted his eyebrow. “I told you, the kitsune were not to be trusted, not even their noble leader, Akane.”

Well, he already knew that. “Wha—”

“Uruwashi!”

Both men looked up when a naked kitsune woman ran into the clearing.

“This is no time for sex!”

Tristan flushed, realizing what it looked like with Wren straddling him like this. “Get off me, man.”

Wren gave him a half smirk. And just when Tristan thought he was about to be let go, Wren leaned down and kissed him squarely on lips. Tristan was too shocked to react, even when a slip of tongue tasted his bottom lip. The tang of vampire found his taste buds, and he jerked away from Wren’s mouth.

“Be careful with Kyō,” the other man whispered close to Tristan’s face, all but pressing his lips to Tristan’s cheek. “She’s the worst tempered and biggest liar of them all.”

“Get the fuck off!”

Wren chuckled, stealing another little kiss before Tristan shoved him off.

“What’s taking so long, Uruwashi?” the kitsune growled.

Tristan got to his feet, scrubbing at his face with the back of his hand, sneering at Wren just to keep from staring at the naked woman. She may be a shinwa, a fox even, but she had one hell of a sexy little body in human form.

“What?” he grumped and lowered his hand to wipe the blood off on his pants. “Am I not moving fast enough for you?” Sure, he didn’t trust all Wren had said, but there was a glimmer of rightness in there. Instinct told Tristan not trust anyone and right now he thought the kitsune were further from the truth than Wren.

“No! Why haven’t you killed him yet? What did he try to tell you? That he belongs here? That he’s not the bad guy?”

Tristan exchanged a look Wren. “Something like that.”

“He killed the humans, him and that troll. Whatever he told you is all lies. How can you believe him?”

“I don’t,” he answered with a nasty smirk. “But how do I know you haven’t lied too, hmm? Why should I trust you?”

Her yellow eyes widened and she stepped back. “I never!”

“Never, what? Lied? Why am I really here, trickster?”

Her round face scrunched up into anger. She pointed to Wren. “What lie has he forced on you with vampire powers?”

“You’re Kyō, aren’t you?”

The kitsune frowned. She was terribly adorable pouting, he wondered if she knew.

“You’re the one I cut in half in France.”

She gasped and stepped back. “
Kisama
,” she hissed the curse.

“Aw, now that’s not nice.”

Kyō curled her lips back and hissed a noise that should have come from her animal form. Her body collapsed onto itself and she was a tiny fox again.

Tristan lifted his gun and aimed to take her right between the eyes, knowing full well that it was only a temporary condition, her death. Before he could get a single shot off, the front of his brain tightened, searing down his sinuses and blacking out his vision. He screamed as a white hot pain exploded in his head like foam insulation, filling in every little space available.

Through the scream of pain he faintly heard Wren yelling. The words though were lost to the din. Almost as quickly as the pain came on, it was gone and Tristan’s vision returned. His breath caught when he looked up, seeing where he was.

He was on his knees in the middle of the clearing, but it was full-blown spring. The grass was fresh and green, the trees were heavy with pink and white cherry blossoms. The outer perimeter pine trees were lush and green. The air was cool but comfortable and smelled fragrant and clean. And the sun, so bright and warm. Was it more red than usual?

“What the fuck is going on?” he whispered, bewildered. “Uh, guys?”

There was no answer. He was alone.

Right?

A glimmer at the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was silver and rippling like the image of a mirage on asphalt. When he turned his head to look at it, it was gone, but clung to the corner of his vision. No matter where he looked, it hovered on the peripheral. He forced himself to calm down and focus on simmer without actually looking at it. Within seconds he caught an image off the mirage and gasped.

“Wre—Wren?” he asked, jumping to his feet. The moment he managed to look at the shimmer dead-on, there was that pinch in the front of his brain again, flickering his vision out for a mere second and then he was looking at Simon. The fae was standing three feet away, hands clasped over his stomach, expression drawn in pain. Blood, thick and dark was pouring from between his fingers. His mouth moved to form words but all that came forth was more blood. The red spread until it covered all of the grass in the clearing and started to boil.

“Simon!” Tristan reached out and Simon disappeared in a puff of gray smoke. Tristan stumbled and lost his balance, falling to his hands and knees. The boiling red blood that was now the entire ground was cold and tingled along his naked flesh.

“Oh shit!” Tristan started to panic when the blood seemed to be attracted to him. It slivered like a living thing and converged on him, making its way up his arm.

“No, stop!” he screamed as he tried to slap it off before it reached his throat. With a final gasp of panic and fear, he managed to catch his fingers under an edge and threw the throbbing, gummy ball of blood that’d tried to consume him.

It fell with a wet splat, bounced once and then fell again to burst apart into a cloud of iridescent dragonflies. The dragonflies swarmed Tristan, their tiny wings cutting his skin like razor blades. All he could do was scream and swat at them, inflicting deeper wounds until his entire body throbbed. At a loss, he collapsed onto the ground, curling up into a fetal ball, screaming out his frustration and agony.

He felt it more in his blood than his flesh when the swarm left him. Shaking, vision splotchy as he was ready to pass out, he slowly lifted his head. The blood drained from his face so fast he was sure he really would pass out. The dragonflies were grouping and making a shape that was all too familiar.

“A—Ash?” He blinked, unsure of his own eyes. “H—how… my god,” he whispered.

She stood just out of reach, completely naked. The grass was growing taller as Tristan watched and it grew vines that snaked their way up her legs and around her waist to stretch across her chest between her breasts. They tightened around her, leaving red lines in the smooth and creamy, slightly olive toned skin that was her human self. But on the left side, those vines cut right through the burnt leather that was her flesh, the destruction Lucien wrought. Everywhere the flesh split, a spit of fire burst forth. The tiny embers that drifted out shifted into the shape of tiny butterflies that fluttered off into oblivion. Her skull, it was bare down to the bone on the left side. Her chest heaved as she took in a deep breath.

“Ash?”

Her breath rattled out as her head came up slowly.

“Oh god,” he gasped under his breath.

“This,” she hissed out in a voice that sounded like Ash, but was wholly foreign at the same time. Her fangs were too long, stained in blood and gore. And her eyes were both sky blue but bled like a stigma. “This is what happens when you play with fire, Uruwassssshhhiiii…”

She lifted an arm to point at him and he recoiled, afraid of her in a way he’d never felt before. His right forearm burst into searing pain. When he looked down he saw that it was split open right to the bone, his skin hanging in ragged slivers down his elbow.

“N—no! Why?”

He watched in horror as the shredded skin bubbled and out poured an army of tiny silver ants. He gasped and fell back, beating at the ants swarming from his arm. Everywhere they touched, he went numb, but he didn’t let it stop him from slapping them with his hand even when he lost control of the hand and it was nothing more than lump of useless meat.

Oh god, no! What’s happening... what is this?

On the eve of his thought, the ants suddenly seized. He drew in a long, shaky breath and looked up. He was alone again. All around him were the tiny bodies of the ants, all dead. There was a soft pop and Tristan jumped, looking in the direction of the noise. It wasn’t until the fourth or fifth pop that he realized it was the ants. Their little bodies were all bursting open like popcorn to give birth to an ant the size of a baby mouse.

All over, the ground moved with popping ants. Frozen in fear, Tristan could only clutch his arm to his chest and stare at the spectacle. When the last of the ants burst free from their smaller exoskeletons, they all did an about-face on Tristan. He gasped, trying to scramble away from them but they turned tail first, scattering all over until only a single ant remained. The bastard was huge, the size of a ferret. The hiss that came out of it sounded wrong and made the underside of Tristan’s skin sizzle with near-pain sensation. The animal hissed a second time, its body shifting to take on the familiar form of a red fox.

“What the shit,” Tristan bit out and realized he was no longer in pain. He looked down and saw that his arm was whole again, his clothes in perfect order. A snarl jerked his attention back up and he gasped as the fox snapped at him.

Tristan cried out in surprise and managed to send a foot right into its face. Just the sight of the fox made his blood boil with anger. That anger helped him focus. This was all their fault. Fucking kitsune.

The fox sounded like a dying cat as it tumbled tail over head backwards. The second tumble sent it bouncing like a rubber ball and on the third bounce the red fox exploded like a water balloon.

Tristan threw his arms up to shield his face, but then realized it was pointless as each crystal blue droplet hung mid-air. They were stunning in their splendor, each a different shade of blue, shimmering and emitting soft light. There were shades of blue Tristan was sure the human eye was never meant to see.

The seasons changed around him. The sakura all dropped their flowers; the grass grew tall and wispy. The air grew hot until he was sweating under his winter jacket. The grass started to shrivel and recede. A breeze blew in, bringing with it dry autumn air. Snow started to fall, covering the dead grass and trees.

Tristan looked down and was shocked at his own hands. They were wrinkled and shook uncontrollably. Were they really his, these old hands?

He gasped and threw his hands over his ears when a shrill filled the air. As if the scream were a cue, time around the blue orbs started again and they all moved to melt into each other, growing and growing until it was a huge glinting sphere hovering in front of Tristan. He stood slowly, feeling unsteady and sore. His legs were weak and threatened to tumble him back to the ground.

God, his entire body ached in a way he had never felt before in his life. The memory of his once broken leg was a dull ache compared to what he felt now. He forced his legs to cooperate and looked up. The orb pulsed a ripple of silver from the center out, almost as if it sensed his attention on it. He thought he heard a voice.

“What? I, I can’t hear you.” Tristan’s own voice was foreign to him. It had been decades since he heard it last and it sounded so old now.

The orb pulsed again and the voice whispered louder from its depths. The voice, a man’s, sounded so urgent. He was pleading through the orb, pleading to Tristan.

“Tristan!”

His body jerked, eyes flashing open and fixing on the vampire over him. A sudden rush of fresh air filled his lungs and he coughed, knowing that he hadn’t breathed in a while by the pain in his chest.

It took him another couple of breaths to get his bearings. He was laid out flat in the snow with Wren kneeling over him. It looked like Wren anyway. Just to be sure, he reached out and touched the vampire’s cold cheek.

“Shit,” Tristan hissed, taking his hand back to swipe it over his face. “Was that—” He stopped, unable to remember the word.

“A
genkaku
, yes,” Wren confirmed. “The kitsune’s illusion.”

“Fuck,” he hissed sitting up. “It was like a really bad trip.”

Wren’s brow wrinkled to show his disapproval. Tristan only shrugged. Sure, he did things in his past that he wasn’t proud of, but he wasn’t going to deny they happened. Experiences were the way of life though, the good and the bad.

“I’m sorry,” Wren said softly as he reached for Tristan. “I had to cut you to wake you from the genkaku.”

“Explains why my arm fucking hurts.”