Page 35 of Foxin' Around

“Romance is what you make of it, I would say,” he rasped as his mouth descended over hers.

The taste of his lips was wrong. Everything was wrong and it was like some bubble of illusion popped. Disgust rose sharp and bitter within her and she recoiled at the putrid flavor of his mouth and tongue. Gagging, she wrenched away and backpedaled as she stared at the contorting silhouette standing in front of her.

“You’re not Syrix,” she whispered in horror, and the creature laughed.

Chapter

Twenty-Six

Syrix hung from the manacles that were digging into his wrists, his head drooping weakly. It was the sound of footsteps that made him stir as terror rose sharply and brutally through him. She could not be here! But she was. There was no denying his mate’s sweet scent as it floated over the carnage to him.

“Syrix?”

His mouth worked, but no sound came out as the lamia wearing his image and utilizing his voice stood at the bottom of the steps and spoke instead, luring Krystal down with her deceiving words. He had been fading in and out for hours, his blood drained to the point of rendering him unconscious before the creature had decided that she had taken enough to work her enchantment. Even now, many hours later, he could barely move, and his neck was a burning mass of fire where her teeth had pierced him. At least he no longer burned from within from the effects of her venom. But he was forced to watch and listen helplessly, just as she swore that he would, while the lamia spoke honeyed words and summoned his fox fire by which she finally convinced his mate to descend into the cellar.

His mouth gaped open as he tried to scream a warning, or even to frighten his mate back up the stairs and out of the Mallory cabin, if he was incapable of making intelligible words, but he failed. And he hated himself more knowing that this was all because of foolish pride in his capabilities as a strong and wily fox spirit. He had not believed that a single lamia could have ever defeated him within his own territory, and now the one being who was most precious to him was descending into death’s den.

He watched silently, helplessly, as she came into the light of the fox fire. She stepped willingly, though hesitantly, into the lamia’s arms, and he choked on his soundless scream as the creature wearing his face lowered her head to impart her terrible kiss.

He was certain that was the end. All it took was a kiss for the lamia to hold her prey within her thrall. His steeled himself for what was to come, though there was no stopping the tears that ran freely down his face. The hatchlings within their eggs seemed to stretch eagerly in response as the lamia’s lethal, hungry energy gathered. Terror tapped into the dwindled, nearly nonexistent reservoirs of his energy so that he strained against his chains, his body trembling with the grief that was slowly shattering him.

But then Krystal suddenly jerked away and stumbled back, impossibly breaking free from the lamia’s hold to stare at the creature with horror. “You’re not Syrix.”

From his vantage point, he could see the shock and a hint of fear that crossed the lamia’s true face beneath the web of magic, her tail winding with the smallest betrayal of uncertainty. But then rage rapidly grew from the lamia’s unease and she laughed, rising higher on her writhing tail as a look of revulsion and horror filled Krystal’s face.

“I suppose I shall not be nice, then. I was going to at least allow you to enjoy your lover’s face and form a little while longeruntil I envenomated you,” the creature mused, “but it seems that you are a less susceptible to my magic compared to those that came before you.”

Krystal’s eyes drifted around the room, and her throat worked from the bile that must be choking her even as her terror grew and flooded over Syrix. His body slumped and shook from it, but the clink of his chains against the wall finally drew her eyes to him and he looked up just in time to meet her eyes and see for himself the anguish in her gaze that he felt rippling through the air between them. He tried a tiny smile, something, anything, to soothe her even the smallest bit, but he failed to even do that much when a sob tore from her as she whispered his name.

“Do not worry, female,” the lamia crooned, drawing his mate’s attention back to her as she crafted yet another spell. Syrix felt the familiar claws of the spell as it closed around his mate. Gritting his teeth in agony, he watched Krystal fight against the magnetic hold of the lamia’s spell issuing from her gaze. The lamia smiled terribly. “Fortunately for him, his pain will be over soon enough, but I’m afraid that yours has only begun, for the last thing you will see within your sea of agony will be the pain in your male’s eyes the moment that I carve out your heart and feast upon it. Your lament of pain has come.”

With a violent hiss, the lamia wound forward, preparing to strike but was countered by a small shadow that streaked forward suddenly into the light with a shrill snarl. Fixi, his fur bristling, attacked, his teeth snapping onto the lamia’s tail with enough force that the creature whirled on him a shriek of anger. She whipped her tail, violently dislodging him so that the small fox went flying, but his attack did its job. Krystal was free from the lamia’s spell but, to his horror, she did not flee back up the stairs. Instead, she looked over at him with a fleeting, wistful look and attacked.

Sorrowed howled through him and he twisted weakly against his chains. His core essence within him churned and gathered with the desperate need that rushed through him as he watched the lamia whirl and slap his mate away with a heavy blow of her tail. She rose above his fallen mate, and though Krystal rolled out of the way in time to evade the sharp, bony tip of the tail from impaling her, he knew that, however valiant his mate’s efforts were, she could not win. The lamia as bigger and far more powerful, and the chilling smile on the creature’s face told the tale of just how much more terrible Krystal’s end would be. And he could not allow it.

His eyes slid closed in grief even as his resolution hardened within him and he continued to summon and focus on his core energy, the true essence of himself within his body. To do this, he would destroy himself completely and erase his right to existence, but he could not bear to watch his mate die, even if it meant that they would never meet again in this life or in the next. He would not have long to do what needed to be done before his fire was snuffed out, but it would have to be enough.

He drew hard on his energy, allowing his body to unmake itself as it did when he shifted between his two-legged and four-legged forms, but this time, he let his body go completely, allowing the last remnants of magic within his cells and tissues and organs to reshape as he took on the one form he had left to him. It was that which rested within every fox.

The fox fire.

Flames gathered before and around his awareness. He no longer had physical eyes made of flesh, but he could still see as he reshaped into a massive fiery fox. Such a form was not permitted in this world, not without divine benevolence. He could feel the weight of it against him as his essence reshaped, and time slowed down, and his mate’s struggles with the lamia moved in an impossibly slow dance as he witnessed it. Just to theleft of the battle, light gathered, and an essence of divinity filled the space as it took on the shape of a crowned goddess, her robes swirling around her legs with the ever-moving power and vitality of her higher essence. Elegant, coifed, and dripping with jewels over her saffron robes, she peered at him, weighing him, judging him.

“So, this is your decision?” she murmured. “You would seek this destruction, and sacrifice your very existence for this female?”

“I would,” he rasped.

“You would allow her to walk without you? Her heart yearning and incomplete?”

He bowed his head, knowing that his mate would hate him for making this decision on his own, without her. “Anything, if she will only live.” He swallowed down his pain. “She will love again, and find joy again, even if it is without me.”

“That is very noble of you,” the divinity observed, a hint of mockery in her voice. “Or should, I say selfish that you would wish her pain to spare your own pain of watching her die.”

His eyes narrowed on her. “As you like. I am not ignorant of the fact that death is but another journey, nor am I doing this to spare myself from the pain of watching her die. But… I love her. I would rather unmake my entire existence than allow her to suffer the terrible pain from such a death as the lamia would give her.”

“Love.” The goddess regarded him gravely. “And if I removed every bond you forged with her so that not even a memory of you remained, as the price that I demand? Would you be willing to make the same claims of devotion knowing that to her, you will never have existed at all beyond this moment?”

Pain lanced deeply within him, but he nodded, his fiery vulpine head bowing in assent. Her brows rose and then… she laughed and disappeared as energies compressed and explodedwith the rush of time and space once more realigning in a burst of activity. The lamia rose in front of him, her tail whipping as she sprung from her coils, her mouth opening impossibly wide so that her long fangs descended. Krystal stared up at her, her eyes widening with the knowledge of her coming death, when Syrix acted.

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