down a little, but it was still nice out. Kiyo wrinkled his nose as we walked.
“Smells like…dead fish out here.”
I inhaled deeply. “I don’t smell anything.”
“Consider yourself lucky. You probably couldn’t smell how many people hadn’t showered back there either.”
I laughed. “I remember how you smelled my perfume back in the bar that night. I thought it was crazy. So super-smell is another kitsune perk?”
He shook his head. “Depends on what you’re smelling.”
We got into the car. He started to put the keys in the ignition, then decided he wanted his coat.
“Can you reach it? It’s behind my seat.”
I unfastened my belt and shifted around, practically hanging through the seats to reach his coat. It was crumpled and lying on the floor.
“Jesus,” I heard him say.
“Are you staring at my ass?”
“It’s practically in my face.”
I snagged the troublesome coat and leaned back, but his arm caught me and pulled me onto his lap. It twisted me in an awkward position, and I squirmed to straighten out my legs. I finally ended up sort of straddling him.
“I can’t believe you lectured me earlier about the dangers of losing control,” I chastised. His hands had slid down to the ass he so admired.
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Hey, I’m not complaining. Just surprised, that’s all.”
“I think it’s the fox in me.”
“Never heard that excuse before.”
“No, it’s true. You’d be amazed how simple the instincts are-and how strong. Sometimes I have to fight to not jump every woman I see. And then I always want to eat. Like I have this paranoid fear if I don’t stock up now, I could be starving later when winter comes. It’s really weird.”
It was compelling too, but wrapped up against him, I realized this conversation was wasting perfectly good make-out time. I unfastened his seat belt and then put my hands palm down on his chest. Leaning forward, I kissed him, pushing myself harder into his lap. His grip on me tightened.
“I thought you didn’t want to get involved with a kitsune.”
“Well…I happen to think foxes are cute.”
I wriggled out of my coat and then pulled off the tank top underneath, neither of which was easy to do with the steering wheel behind me. I rose up on my knees a little, putting my breasts near his face. His mouth showered my cleavage with kisses while his hands tried to undo the bra.
Meanwhile, my own hands unfastened the button on his pants. I reached down and slid my hand into his boxers.
“Eugenie…” he breathed. He managed to combine a cautionary tone with an utterly turned-on one. “We don’t have condoms.”
I moved my hand farther, suddenly very turned on myself by the thought of having nothing between us. “The pill, remember? Besides, contraceptive technology is a-”
The car suddenly lurched dangerously onto the side we weren’t sitting on. My back jammed into the steering wheel, and we half-tumbled onto the other side. Kiyo’s arms went around me, pulling me toward him in an effort to shelter me with his body and keep me from falling. Guess I shouldn’t have undone his seat belt earlier. Fortunately, the car didn’t flip all the way over, and a moment later, it slammed back down on the side we were sitting on with a jaw-rattling crash.
“What the-” I began.
In the dark, I could just barely discern Kiyo’s wide eyes staring beyond me, through the windshield. “I think we should get out of the car,” he said quietly, just as something heavy and solid slammed down on the hood behind me. I heard headlights smash. The entire car shook.
I didn’t need to be told twice. We kicked open the driver’s side door, and I scrambled out. A smell like rotting fish slammed into me. Kiyo started to follow me out, and then the car was lifted up from its front end and slammed back down to the ground. Glass and metal crunched as the motion tossed Kiyo back in the car. The windshield cracked like a spider’s web.
Fear for him shot through me, but then I finally saw the culprit, and fear for me shot through me.
It looked like one of the fuaths, I thought. A fachan, possibly. If so, he was far from home since they were native to Ireland and Scotland. Still, the Otherworld had become as global as the human world, and you never really knew what could pop up where.
He looked like something you might get if Bigfoot had sex with a cyclops and then their offspring moved to the Deep South and interbred for another century or so. He was almost eight feet tall and every part of his grossly muscled body was covered with hair-matted and smelly hair that needed a thorough washing. One giant eye, its color indeterminable in the starlight, peered out at me. One extra hand extended weirdly from the right side of its chest, and an extra leg hung off of its hip. The leg didn’t seem to help him walk; I wondered if it and the extra arm did anything at all or were just used for effect.
Seeing me, he left the car alone and started lumbering forward. Hopefully Kiyo would be able to get out now. I reached for my gun and discovered it was gone. Son of a bitch. It had slipped its holster either from grappling with Kiyo or when the car had tipped.
“Get my gun out!” I yelled back toward the car.
Meanwhile, I took a few cautious steps back, assessing how to handle the fachan. Fachans, despite inhabiting the earth, originated in the Otherworld. They could therefore be banished back there. They also crossed to this world in a physical form, which meant they could be killed. I had both athames in my belt. Silver would be more effective, but iron would probably do some damage too. Okay. I just had to manage one of those while keeping it from getting too fresh with me. No problem.
He swung one of his long, almost awkward-looking arms at me, and I intercepted it, stabbing him in the hand with the silver athame. I pushed as hard as I could, shoving through tendons and bones. The creature shrieked and jerked his hand back. My hand was on the hilt, but he moved too quickly, too strongly. He took the athame with him. Shit.
“Kiyo!” I yelled.
I took out the iron athame and darted over to his right side, opposite the car. The fachan was bigger, but I was smaller and therefore faster…right? My blade snaked out, digging deep into the soft flesh of his stomach. This time I made sure to bring the athame back with me before he moved and took this one too. Blood, looking black in the dim lighting, gleamed where I’d cut. I put some distance between us. I just needed to slow him so I could snag a few moments for the banishing.
But he wasn’t slowing. He hadn’t seemed happy about the injuries, but he still kept coming for me. I kept the distance between us, wanting to injure him without getting within his range. It was kind of hard when it felt like his arms were as long as my body.
He swung out his uninjured fist, and I ducked it, using the opportunity to draw blood again. As I did, something occurred to me. His blow, had it landed, would have done some serious damage. Very serious. It had had no purpose, save to inflict as much brute pain as possible. I could understand the tactical advantage of rendering me unconscious before sex, but being in a coma-or dead-might complicate the prophecy a bit.
My blade bit into him again, and I followed with a sharp kick to his side, dodging at the last minute. We soon developed a little dance. His large, muscled arms would swing out at me, and I would sidestep and get in my slash or kick. Considering my fight with the mud elemental had been two days ago and I wasn’t entirely in peak condition yet, I felt my performance here wasn’t too shabby.
At least until I moved too slowly, and he caught me with the edge of his hand-his extra hand. Apparently it wasn’t useless after all.
It was a glancing blow, but I flew backward, into the car, up onto the roof, and into the windshield. The glass-already cracked and fractured-shattered upon impact, and sharp, excruciating pain burned through the side of my stomach as I hit. The skin there was still bare and uncovered from where I’d stripped in the car. My head
