The Borderkind

CHAPTER 12

O liver and Kitsune sat together in a compartment on board a train bound for Vienna. Near the mountain lake where they had come through the Veil they had found a small village, brightly decorated with Christmas lights. It had seemed in its way just as mythical a place as the lands beyond the Veil, with its covering of snow and the smoke swirling from fireplaces and the smells of cooking food that came from the inn where they had found the information they needed.

They were in the mountains above Salzburg, Austria. With his American Express card, it was simple to get bus tickets into the city. The countryside had been beautiful, and the city, with its hilltop fortress looming above cobblestoned streets and grand architecture, equally lovely. Oliver had stood with Kitsune in a broad plaza and felt a longing for a simpler day, a time without danger to himself or those he loved, when he could just wander this peaceful, charming city. But if he did not hurry, he might never have a day like that again.

There was magic in the city, this time of year. In some indefinable way, the world of legends had begun to feel more ordinary to him over time, and this place, the mundane world, seemed somehow more fantastic and surreal.

He wished Julianna could have been there with him. She would have seen the simple magic of the place in a way that he knew Kitsune never could. During law school, and in the years since, they had fallen into the habit of purposefully getting themselves lost while driving. Whenever they were on their way somewhere-down to Boston or Portland or in the mountains-they would knowingly take wrong turns, just to see where these strange, unfamiliar roads would lead. Regardless of which one of them was driving, these adventures would begin spontaneously, and they would explore together.

The irony was not lost on Oliver; he only wished that Julianna had been along for this-the ultimate wrong turn.

Though he was an ocean away from home, just knowing that he was in the same world as Julianna was painfully bittersweet. He wished he could just book the next flight to the States-hurry back to her-but he did not dare, as long as monsters and Hunters still pursued him. His father was dead, and Collette the Sandman’s prisoner. If he brought such horrors to Julianna’s doorstep, he could never have lived with himself.

In Salzburg, Oliver and Kitsune had gone shopping, hurrying through various shops for clothing and a heavy canvas duffel bag. On the bus it had been simple enough to hide the scabbarded sword, at first in Kitsune’s cloak and then wrapped in Oliver’s pea coat. They had stored it in a locker in the train station. But there was no way that they were going to be able to get on the train with the weapon wrapped in a coat.

After their shopping spree, however, Oliver had buried the sword amongst the new clothes and toiletries in the duffel bag. As long as no one searched the bag, he thought they would be all right. If they’d had to fly instead of taking the train, there would have been complications because of the sword. Declared as a gift, and kept in checked luggage, he might have gotten it through-people brought swords home from Toledo, in Spain, all the time.

Still, it was simpler to stick to the train, particularly since neither of them had a passport.

He would have liked to check into a hotel for a few hours-to take the time to rest and bathe. Stubble covered his chin and the stale smell of his own body and dirty clothes filled his nose. But Oliver knew they could not wait. His one phone call was to a hotel in Vienna, to make reservations for the evening. The American Express had gotten quite a workout in a few short hours, but he had made one final purchase: their tickets for the next train for Vienna.

Only then-he and Kitsune resting comfortably against each other and drinking hot chocolate in the Vienna train station-did Oliver glance at a newspaper and realize what day it was. Or, by then, what night.

Christmas Eve.

He had sat up awkwardly and moved away from Kitsune, giving her an apologetic smile, making it appear that he only wanted to pick up the paper for a closer look. But he avoided her gaze for several minutes after that.

What was Julianna doing tonight? With all that had happened at home in Kitteridge, could she be celebrating Christmas with her family? Was that just arrogance on his part, to think that she would not?

God, how he missed her.

His breathless race through Salzburg’s streets and shops with Kitsune had been, despite the circumstances, a strange pleasure. She was extraordinary. And yet as much as Oliver embraced the existence of magic, he also longed for the ordinary. The world beyond the Veil thrilled him with each new discovery, and knowing that it all existed satisfied a yearning that had been in him since childhood.

But more and more, his thoughts were of home.

Kitsune was exotic and astonishingly sensual, and the obvious attraction she felt toward Oliver amazed him. To spark the interest of a creature of magic and myth changed, just a little, the way in which Oliver viewed himself. It was a confirmation of all that he had ever believed, that within him there existed a man capable of more than life as a dutiful son and staid attorney would demand.

But he longed for the familiar comfort of Julianna’s arms, and for that look in her eyes that said that she saw right into his heart and knew him better than he knew himself.

Magical or not, Kitsune would never be able to do that.

It was Christmas Eve, and he yearned with all of his heart to be at home in Kitteridge, sitting in front of a fire with Julianna in his arms. All of the confusing things he felt toward Kitsune could not change that.

Guilt about the feelings she stirred in him made Oliver separate himself from her for a few minutes, but it was a useless gesture. Their journey lay ahead of them, and they would travel it together.

Now they sat together on the train, the fox-woman stealing glances at him that alternated between curious and suggestive. The mischief in her eyes was a constant, silent invitation. Yet even then, he kept his mind on Julianna.

Ever since they had crossed the Veil into his world again, he had intended to call Julianna. The day had been frantic, but when they arrived in Vienna, he would have the perfect opportunity. The more he considered it, however, the more he realized how selfish the impulse was. He needed desperately to hear her voice. But what would it accomplish, except to give her false hope that he might be home soon to sort out all that had happened?

When it’s over, he thought. When it’s all done, I’ll tell her everything.

The train steamed through the Austrian countryside and Oliver gazed out the window, breathless at the beauty of the place. Only dim lights glowed in the compartment and he did not bother to turn on anything brighter. Perhaps there was romance in that glow, but he focused on the ambience of Christmas that he saw in each town and village the train passed.

They stopped at a station and there were lights and ribbons everywhere. People on the train platform smiled at one another. He saw two conductors sipping coffee or something even more merry.

Kitsune’s scent filled him. Oliver glanced down and saw that their hands were entwined, and was not at all sure how long they had been this way. She smiled playfully at him, and arched an inquisitive eyebrow, as if to ask “What’s next?” His pulse raced even as he gave a shake of his head and chuckled softly. He chose to take her flirtation as more mischief. If it was more than that, he could not acknowledge it. That would lead to awkwardness, and perhaps a conversation he did not wish to have.

Beside him, Kitsune purred.

Once again, Oliver laughed. Her eyes sparking with that same playful glint, she joined in. They shared that moment of amusement as though the whole thing was a game between them, but they both knew that it was not. Oliver was grateful that Kitsune did not push the game to the next level. He could not help but be aroused by her, but it could never go further than that.

With a lurch, the train lumbered out of the station, picking up speed.

The door to the compartment rattled with a chill December wind that whipped through the train. The lights flickered. Eyes closed, Kitsune burrowed closer to Oliver and he did not pull away. He let her mold herself to him, but fought the temptation to put his arms around her.

Kitsune settled comfortably there, the trace of a smile at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes remained closed.

Merry Christmas, he thought to himself.

The train rattled through the darkness toward Vienna. Again, the lights flickered. There came a thump against the compartment door.

Kitsune stiffened in his arms, not sleeping at all. Her eyes snapped open. Oliver stared at the door. Had someone knocked, or just bumped against the door while walking through the car? The train rocked back and forth. Someone might easily have lost their balance and been thrown against the door.

A second thump shook the door, followed by a scratching sound, as though steel wool were being scraped along its outside.

“What the hell?” Oliver whispered.

Kitsune sat up and Oliver let her go. The two of them were very still, straining to understand the nature of the sounds outside the door. So that when the knock came-an ordinary sort of knock, three raps in quick succession-they both started in surprise.

Cautious, Kitsune rose and started toward the door.

“Yes?” Oliver called.

A voice replied in German, and then in English. “Passports, please.”

He let out a breath, only then realizing how quickly his pulse was racing. A dozen possibilities suggested themselves to explain the sounds they had heard, including something as typical as two people trying to get by one another in the narrow passageway outside the compartment. Living in constant danger had made him paranoid.

Kitsune glanced at him, jade-green eyes gleaming, her features tense. Oliver shook his head and gestured for her to step back. She went to the seat opposite the one they had been sharing and unzipped the duffel bag, reaching inside.

If it truly was the conductor outside the door, Oliver and Kitsune had already discussed the pantomime that would ensue as they searched for their suddenly misplaced passports. At worst, they would be left off the train at the next stop.

But the sounds they’d heard against the door concerned him. He glanced again at Kitsune and saw her sliding the Sword of Hunyadi from the duffel. Clearly, the sounds worried her as well. There was no telling what might be beyond that door.

“Passports, please,” the voice demanded, with another rap on the door. “Open, now.”

A ripple of unease went through him. The voice did not sound right. It was not simply the matter of a foreign accent. The words seemed muffled.

“Open it,” Kitsune whispered from behind him.

Oliver turned toward her. She sat beside the duffel, holding the sword down behind it, hidden from view.

He hated to do it, but she was right. On the chance it really was the conductor, they would be ejected from the train for certain if the crew had to force the door open.

“Coming,” Oliver called as he walked to the door.

He unlocked it, then slid it open, tensed to jump back if attacked. The first thing he saw was the conductor’s hat on the woman’s head. In the passageway, lights dimmed for nighttime travel, he could make out none of the details of the conductor’s face. But it eased his tension a little to see that hat.

“Sorry. We were napping a bit.”

“Of course,” said the conductor.

In the dim light, her grin was Cheshire Cat broad. Oliver heard a strange sound coming from her, a kind of rustling that came from beneath the long blue coat with the railway’s insignia on the shoulder and breast.

Opening the door had been a terrible mistake.

She pushed off the conductor’s coat. A terrible rasp came from her body, which was covered with hair so thick it seemed like the yarn on a rag doll’s head. But it twisted and coiled and lashed out and something jabbed Oliver’s left forearm. He cried out and staggered back, and the cablelike tendrils that covered her body thrust out toward him, each of them tipped with a curved stinger.

His arm ached where she’d stung him and began to feel hot. Some kind of venom was moving through him. Oliver wondered if it was fatal and how many stings it would take to kill him.

On instinct, he grabbed the door and slid it shut. With all of his weight behind it, he drove it home, crushing several of those tentacles in a small gap between door and frame, but the stingers did not withdraw. They thrust out at his hands as though they could see him. Oliver swore but did not pull away. One of the stingers grazed his left wrist. He opened the door a few inches and slammed it again. A tendril was cut off and fell to the floor, leaking greenish ichor.

“Help me!” Oliver said through gritted teeth.

“Step back,” Kitsune commanded, her voice deathly calm.

“Are you crazy? I’m going to lock the door!”

A bouquet of stingers erupted through the narrow opening in the door, pressed themselves against the door edge and the frame, and then the handle was torn from his grasp as the stingers forced the door open with such violence that it rattled and slammed and he heard metal tear.

“Oliver, step back!” Kitsune shouted.

In fear he threw himself away from the door, falling backward onto the duffel bag as the Hunter swept into the room, stingers stabbing at the air all around her. The tendrils curled like a basket of snakes upon her head. Somewhere in that mass of darting stingers was a face, but all he could see were clear, perfect, blue eyes and that Cheshire grin.

“So pleased to make your acquaintance,” the Hunter said, and then it laughed, the coldest sound Oliver had ever heard.

Kitsune tossed him the Sword of Hunyadi, still in its scabbard. He lay on his back on the bench seat and snatched it out of the air. He began to draw it even as Kitsune attacked the woman.

The fox-woman did not alter her form. Fur cloak rustling around her, she lunged at the Hunter. Stingers darted out, jabbing into the shadows within her cloak. Kitsune whimpered through gritted teeth, and Oliver wondered how many times she would be stung, how many it would take to kill a Borderkind. But the fox-woman was fast. She grabbed the Hunter by the throat and used her free hand to rake the creature’s abdomen with vicious claws.

Then, Oliver was in motion. He slid the scabbard fully off the sword as he stood. Without a word he moved behind Kitsune and thrust the blade past her and into the mass of angry stingers.

The Hunter hissed, but the smile remained, as though the pain was a pleasure to her. Some of the stingers wrapped themselves around the blade and Oliver felt them pulling it, trying to tear it from his grasp.

“Move her!” he snapped.

Kitsune understood. Fewer stingers were jabbing her now but already there were angry welts rising on her flesh. She gripped the Hunter by the throat and twisted her toward Oliver, who used new leverage to shove the sword deeper, to twist it. The Hunter cried out and the stingers faltered for a moment.

He caught Kitsune’s eye, saw the fox-woman glance toward the window. Oliver nodded, and together they half lifted, half pushed the Hunter across the compartment. With all of his strength, Oliver used the sword to drive the thing against the glass.

It cracked.

The stingers began to twist again, darting at his hands, at the sword, and at Kitsune’s fur and hands, at her face.

They hauled back and slammed the Hunter against the glass again, using her skull as a battering ram. The window splintered and the Hunter’s head crashed through, scattering a million tiny diamonds of safety glass out into the night and the wind as the train hurtled through the darkness. But it was made to push out in case of an emergency, and the collision pushed the whole window from the frame. With the Hunter partway through the broken window, they gave one final push as Oliver slid the sword from her body.

With a scream of hatred and pain, the creature tumbled out the window and struck the ground, rolling into a ditch alongside the tracks at a speed that must have snapped bones and torn muscles. The wind screamed into the compartment and Oliver and Kitsune stood and stared out into the night, buffeted by the speed and the wind. Her hair and cloak flew around her. He glanced down at the viscous green blood on his blade.

“What was she?”

“I have no idea.”

Oliver glanced at Kitsune.

She gave him a sharp look. “No one can know every legend.”

But he had already forgotten his question. The welts raised on her cinnamon skin were bright red. There were at least two dozen that he could see, and undoubtedly more on her chest where the stingers had jabbed through her shirt.

Kitsune swayed on her feet. “You don’t look well,” she said.

Oliver smiled. The heat of his own stings burned through him and made his face flush. He felt feverish and there was pain in his hands and arms where the Hunter had stung him, but now a kind of numbness was descending upon him.

“Do you think we’re going to die?”

Kitsune frowned. “I told you, I do not know her legend.”

Shouts came from elsewhere in the train car. Oliver blinked. They had to get out of there. Had to, in fact, get off the train at the next stop. If this Hunter had found them, others must know they were on the train. And though it was a lesser concern, the condition of their compartment would likely summon the police.

“Let’s go,” he said.

He turned and bent to pick up the scabbard. Only as he rose did he realize how slowly he was moving, how sluggish his muscles. His whole body had begun to feel frozen, as though it was fighting against him.

Oliver forced his limbs to move, put the sword back into its scabbard, and dropped it into the duffel. He did not bother to zip it, slipping its strap across his shoulder. The numbness and stiffness of his body was increasing.

Kitsune stood at the ruined door of the compartment, looking out into the hall.

“Anything?” Oliver asked, his words slurring, his mouth leaden.

“Passengers, but they’re scared. Keeping well back,” Kitsune said. Her head bobbed sleepily as she spoke, like she was drunk.

“Go.”

Slowly, Kitsune staggered into the corridor. Oliver followed. How they managed to make it into the next car, and the next beyond, without a conductor stopping them, he didn’t know. Only when he remembered the conductor’s cap and jacket that the Hunter had worn and realized that at least one of them was dead did he understand.

When they found the ruined door and the broken window, they would come looking. He only prayed that he and Kitsune would be off of the train by then. For now, though, they kept moving until the sluggishness in his muscles became too much. Then he started to knock at every compartment door they passed. When he got no answer, he tried the door. Two of them were locked, which meant someone was inside, asleep. But the third one opened.

It was empty.

They staggered into the compartment. Each fraction of a movement was like swimming in wet cement. Oliver collapsed on the floor. Had Kitsune been human, he was certain she would have fallen before him. As it was she had only enough energy to close and lock the door before spilling onto the cushioned bench.

“Paralysis,” Oliver said. Or thought he said. He was not sure his mouth had properly formed the word. It was becoming difficult to breathe.

The Hunter’s sting paralyzed her victims, presumably long enough for her to kill them. Unless the paralysis was only the first stage of the venom’s effect, and death would result momentarily.

Completely immobile, they could only wait.

Kitsune recovered more quickly than Oliver. He was only human after all. Though they needed to reach Vienna for her plan to work, Oliver insisted that they get off as quickly as possible, before any of the train personnel figured out that the compartment they were hiding in was supposed to be empty, and that they had been the ones in the ruined compartment. Neither of them was in any condition to answer questions, or any mood, and Oliver still had no passport.

As she helped him from the train, carrying the duffel bag over her shoulder, they had both been too focused on the task at hand to register the name of the station. Wherever they were, it was no Salzburg. The town had none of the quaint, picturesque charm of that city. It was a dreary place full of garages, warehouses, and old factories.

They needed a car, and a map. Oliver had said they couldn’t be more than an hour or so from Vienna. Kitsune watched the skies and the windows of darkened buildings as they left the train station, wary of further attack. None came. In the train station, Oliver had found a ticket agent who spoke enough English to tell him of the car rental operation two blocks away, but it was a small town, the man had said, and Christmas Eve, and he did not know how late they would be open. There was no airport here, after all.

Now they strode through the dirty street and a freezing rain began to fall, tiny pinpricks of ice. Oliver had something in his hand, held between his fingers like an old conjure-man’s worry stone.

“What’ve you got there?” she asked.

He opened his hand and she saw the fat seed that the Harvest gods had given him.

“Sort of a lucky charm,” he told her.

Kitsune arched an eyebrow. “Not very effective, is it?”

Oliver slid the seed back into his pocket. “We’re alive.”

“There is that.”

Oliver smiled and took the duffel from her, obviously feeling much recovered. The cold made her feel alert and helped to shake off the numbness from her. Kitsune put up her hood, her fur protecting her from the sleet, and reached out for Oliver’s hand. He flinched a bit, then cast an apologetic glance at her and slid his fingers into hers.

“The lights are on,” he said, the hope in his voice the first real energy he’d shown since the creature’s venom had begun to wear off.

They picked up the pace, hurrying up to the little parking lot. The rental agency had a brightly lit orange-and-blue sign, but it was set up in what appeared to be an abandoned gas station. Kitsune did not spend a great deal of time on this side of the Veil, but she knew the world well enough not to like it very much. There were places of great beauty, and there was real magic in the human race-some of them, at least-but there was also despair and filth, and this town reeked of both.

Inside the squat little rental car building, a thick-necked, red-faced man sat behind a counter smoking unfiltered Turkish cigarettes whose herb-redolent stench choked the air. Kitsune hung back away from the counter, feeling the shroud of smoke covering her fur, and wrinkled her nose in distaste. The middle-aged bull of a man took a long draw from his cigarette and watched her with a gleam of cruel lust in his eyes. Only when Oliver had made several attempts to speak with him did he at last pay attention and then a horrible distaste curled his lip, as though they had come into his place of business covered in offal.

The man held up his hands in surrender. “No English.”

Oliver shifted the duffel bag to his other shoulder and glanced at Kitsune. “And I don’t speak German.” Again he focused on the man behind the counter as he reached into his back pocket and withdrew his wallet. He slid his American Express card out and snapped it down onto the counter.

“You don’t need to speak English to understand me. Car. Vienna. One night. One, ” and now he held up a finger, “ nacht.”

He tapped the American Express card.

The man behind the counter continued to regard Oliver as though he were some sort of leper, for at least a count of ten before finally reaching out and picking up the credit card and studying it. Then he looked up.

“I.D.”

“See,” Oliver said. “What language barrier?”

He handed the man a pair of cards, one of which was the international driver’s license he’d gotten in London. Kitsune felt sure the man would demand a passport, but after glancing at the license he picked up the credit card again, placed it beside his computer, and began typing, eyes on the monitor. The tak-tak-tak of the keyboard made her head hurt. The welts where the Hunter had stung her were little more than blemishes now, but they ached fiercely.

The man finished inputting information into his computer, then sat back and watched the screen, waiting for something. Approval, perhaps.

Then the man blinked and all trace of the hostility he had shown vanished. When he glanced at Oliver, it had been replaced by a kind of wary deference. He held up a finger to indicate that they should wait, and picked up the phone.

“What is it?” Kitsune asked.

Oliver shrugged. “Probably has to get phone verification on the charge or something. Nothing to worry about.”

The fox-woman pulled her cloak closely around herself, not at all convinced. The man’s demeanor had changed, his body language too, and though in the miasma of Turkish cigarette stench it was difficult to be sure, she thought his scent was also different.

In the short, hard-edged language of his countrymen, the rental agent spoke to someone on the phone. When he hung up, he showed them a placating smile whose falseness was inarguable.

“Oliver,” Kitsune cautioned.

He nodded, as if to reassure her. The man held up a finger again, indicating that they should wait, and then he went back to typing information into the computer. Every few moments he would frown as though what he read on-screen was not to his liking.

“What’s the problem?” Oliver asked.

“No,” the man said, smiling again. “No problem.”

He understood that much. Pulling himself away from the computer he looked out through the dirty glass of his little building and studied the cars in his parking lot, then ran his fingers across rows of keys hanging on hooks on the wall. The man continued to puff on that horrid cigarette and the smoke choked Kitsune’s lungs.

“I cannot breathe in here,” she said. “I’m going to wait outside.”

A bell dinged above the door as she left. Odd that she hadn’t noticed it when they entered. On the concrete curb in front of the rental office she stood and glanced out across the small fleet of rental cars at the town beyond. There was nothing left here of nature or magic, only the worst that humanity brought to the world. Pavement and metal and brick, smoke and garbage and cars spewing dark exhaust. Whatever magic there was in the season of this holiday of Oliver’s, it did not show itself here.

Several times she glanced back inside. Oliver stood tensely by the counter, glaring impatiently at the rental agent. The thick-necked man seemed nervous, and more than once she saw him peering out through the dirty glass at her, at the cars.

No. That was wrong. He was looking to the street.

Kitsune’s heart clenched. She spun, peered into the darkness of the town, and saw blue lights flashing in the distance. Her travels through man’s world had crossed centuries. Though they had been infrequent of late, she had been here often enough to know what those lights meant.

She pushed through the door with such force that the glass shattered. The man shouted as though he’d been shot. Oliver turned, staring at her as though she’d gone mad.

“He’s called the police.”

Oliver blinked. “What? Why?”

Kitsune shook her head. “I don’t know, but there will be time to discover that later. We must hurry if you want to get to Vienna tonight.”

She left unspoken the fact that if they did not reach Vienna soon, the plan would have to wait until the following night, and that would be another entire day’s delay before they could reach Collette.

Anger flared upon Oliver’s face. The rental agent was a big man, broad across the shoulders, with enormous hands, but when Oliver slammed his hand on the counter the man backed away instantly.

“Why?” Oliver shouted.

The man began to curse at him in German, throwing up his hands. Spittle flew from his mouth and his red face turned purple. Oliver swore, swept up his I.D. and credit card, then reached over to snatch a ring of keys from the wall, the heavy duffel bag banging the front of the counter as it swung forward.

The man tried to grab him but Oliver was too quick.

“Hurry!” Kitsune called.

They ran out of the little building. In the low thrum of city noises there were no sirens, but the lights had grown brighter. Down the darkened street, slicked with freezing rain, the police car was coming.

“How do we-” she began.

Oliver held up the keys, touched a button, and one of the cars chirped, its taillights flashing. They ran to it. The blue lights swept closer.

“Just get in and get down,” Oliver said.

The car was in the second row, third in from the end. Oliver pushed the duffel in and they tumbled inside, shutting the doors in the very same moment that the police car pulled into the car rental lot. They sat in the darkness, both of them breathing hard, as the police car stopped right in front of the little building.

A single policeman climbed out, glanced around once, and walked to the door. He stared at the broken glass and then entered.

Oliver put the keys in the ignition.

“Wait,” Kitsune said.

She opened the door, cursing the momentary flash of the dome light, and shut it quickly behind her. Then she was moving across the lot with an inhuman swiftness, racing along on fox feet. Inside, the car rental agent was shouting at the police officer in guttural German, gesturing wildly to the cars in the parking lot. The policeman snapped, pointing at the man, not pleased at all with being spoken to in such fashion. He held up a hand, wanting to make sure the rental agent stayed inside.

Cautiously, the police officer opened the door again, shoes crunching shattered glass.

By the time he stepped out of the little building, Kitsune had slashed both of his rear tires with unnaturally sharp claws. Unaware, he began to walk toward the darkened rental cars, brandishing a flashlight.

The fox dashed across the lot.

From fox to woman, she stood in a crouch and opened the car door. The dome light went on again.

The cop saw the light and started to shout.

“Drive!” Kitsune cried.

The engine roared as Oliver turned the key, and she practically fell into the car as he put it in gear and tore out of the parking space. The policeman shouted after them even as he ran back toward his car.

Seconds later they were out onto the street, racing into the darkness and grime of an unknown Austrian town, headed for Vienna in a stolen car.

The policeman would not be able to give chase. There would be others, Kitsune knew, but if they could get out of this little industrial town without being caught, she felt sure they would reach Vienna.

“What just happened?” Oliver said, and she was sure the question was directed more to himself than to her, so she did not respond. “Why are they after me?”

Kitsune said nothing, only watched the troubled expression on his pale features as oncoming headlights washed over them. She reached out and put a comforting hand upon his thigh. They drove in silence, the echo of unanswered questions drowning out anything else they might have wished to say to one another.