“Shaun!”

Lucas froze as he rushed to his partner’s aid when Ana raised the baton as a warning. She was taller than he had expected, almost as tall as Shaun. She lacked his sheer size, though she was all lithe muscles and graceful movements. The way she moved reminded him of the way he had seen Nic move when they had their little knife fight in his hotel room. Her hair was light, just shy of blonde, but not quite brown either. Her hazel eyes seemed to have the same undecided quality to them as Nic’s, shifting ever so slightly in the light of the room as she paced in a circle around Lucas.

“He’s alive. He’s got too thick of a skull to die from a couple of good knocks to the head,” she told him with an air of nonchalance.

“Ana,” he hissed, gripping the knife in his hand even tighter.

She eyed the golden blade in his hand without changing her expression. “Nicky lied to me, I see. The both of you are supposed to be dead. I wondered if it was you two crawling around upstairs. Did you find my home to your liking?”

It stung to hear her speak of them being dead so casually, as if it didn’t bother her in the slightest. He figured that after that phone call Nic had allowed them to overhear, and with all the struggles they faced to get this far, he wouldn’t be bothered by it. It was different to have the reality of her coldness staring him in the face. Some part of him had hoped against all odds that they were wrong, and that she hadn’t truly wanted him dead, or at least cared somewhere deep down inside. That hope was withering quickly in his chest, leaving an icy pain in its place.

“You know how to decorate, that’s for sure,” he told her, eyes darting from her to everything around them without turning his head away. He knew how quick she could be, considering how she had appeared to come from nowhere to take Shaun out with two blows. That also meant she was very strong, but he was guessing not as strong as a werewolf when they tapped into their full power. From what he could tell, the kitsune were more about ambush and speed than any real display of strength. He didn’t know how his own abilities would match up, but he was probably going to find out.

“What, didn’t you notice the signs? Trespassers aren’t welcome around here, Lucas. You can’t blame me taking a few precautions for my own security,” the same taunting tone that had once seemed playful now seemed to mock him.

“Must have cost you a pretty penny to set all of this up: metal shutters, a backup system that activated your funhouse when the main power source was taken out. You have to tell me how you’re making money so I can get in on it,” he shot back, trying to give off the same air of cool disinterest she was.

“You can make a lot of money from the deaths of the right people. Do you know what some folk will pay to make sure that certain people are gotten rid of? You’ve seen how vampires and fae live sometimes, imagine how much of that they’ll fork over for a little extra security, or revenge for one of their own. Now imagine that I can give them that, and all I have to do is arrange for one of you blundering hunters to bite it somewhere.”

“So, that’s it huh?” he asked, gritting his teeth despite his best efforts to not show any emotion. “That’s how you do it? You’ve been killing hunters this whole time?”

“Your kind deserves nothing better. All you do is stumble around the world, killing without thought to what you’re doing.”

“All of us?”

She shrugged. “Sure, you give a little bit of thought to what you’re doing, and maybe sometimes you have a pang of remorse. But let’s be honest, if you had to choose between a human being and say, something like me, you would choose the human.”

“Depends on whether the human is a backstabbing, lying whore,” he hissed, adjusting his grip on the knife.

Her eyes lit up in delight. “Oh ho, now I see a bit of fire. You used to be so cool, almost cold, when we first started talking. You warmed so slowly, I never thought I would ever get through to you. Even after years of being ‘friends’, you took forever to warm up and never quite went far enough for my liking. Now, when you find out the truth, I get to see the fire I thought I glimpsed every now and again? My oh my, does that come out in the bedroom? Perhaps I should have slept with you first just to see.”

Lucas didn’t know what difference it made whether she did or didn’t see the fire in him. He had trusted her, even if he had never outright admitted it. That trust had run deep enough that he would have accepted just about anything she told him. It hadn’t required him to be around her physically. Which meant that either she hadn’t known that until just now, or she was just playing with him. There was still an edge of playfulness to her words, but it had become cruel.

A realization hit him, and he laughed. “You don’t know as much as you make out, do you?”

She raised a thin eyebrow, a dangerous glint in her eye. “Meaning?”

“I just realized, you’ve never known as much as you let on. Maybe on some level I knew that and was willing to let you pretend otherwise. But that’s how you’ve managed to get all sorts of facts out of me in the past, by acting like you knew more than you did. It’s a good game, if you can play it right, after all if the other person thinks you already know, why shouldn’t they open up to you? All you need is the right attitude and maybe a couple of vague, but specific bits of information.”

“One of my many talents. Is there a point to this?”

He shook his head. “Not really, just thinking aloud. Makes me wonder what else about you is fake.”

The baton whooshed through the air as she leapt forward to strike him. She had meant to catch him off-guard with the sudden attack, probably hoping to bring him down in one strike. He didn’t bother to parry the blow, he stepped away, twisting his body around to wait and see if there was a follow-up. There wasn’t, but she watched his movements with a renewed interest.

“Interesting,” she noted, her gaze roaming over him. “No human should have reflexes that good. And I know my body language didn’t give me away, is there something about your party trick that you didn’t tell me?”

It wasn’t anything that he had intentionally kept from her. But his senses had noticed an odd flare to that slippery feel about her just before she had tried to strike at him. He didn’t know why it hadn’t done that with Nic when they had fought, but he was thankful it had been there this time. Perhaps it was because he hadn’t quite turned his mental gift all the way off after having sensed around for her secret entrance. Unlike in the hotel room, when he had shut it off completely to focus on the fight. It apparently came in handy for dealing with a kitsune, something he hadn’t known before, and he certainly wasn’t going to tell her now.

“We all have our secrets and you didn’t get all of mine,” Lucas told her, now watching through that extra sense of his.

“I don’t need them.”

The finality of her words were as much a warning as the sudden flare in her hazy aura. She leapt, swinging the baton through the air toward him. He dodged to the side, grunting in surprise as she twisted to bring it back around in another swing. The haze around her was growing stronger, and as he ducked down to backpedal, he saw a glow in her eyes. She was done with their conversation, and Lucas.

Her sudden increased speed was unnerving, she was moving even faster than Nic had done in the hotel room. She twisted around, jabbing at his middle with the baton. Narrowly moving around it, he slid his knife along the edge of the baton and jerked it up to try to open up her defenses. Instead, she brought her knee up into his gut with a surprising amount of force. The air rushed out of his lungs, a flare of pain driving him backwards as he forced himself to focus on her.

She looked down at the baton in her hand, grinning wildly. Her canines had grown to a deadly length, and even her nails had sharpened to thick points. She tossed the baton aside, letting it clatter on the concrete floor several feet away as she advanced on him. Ana’s eyes glowed, even in the bright light of the room, and Lucas knew that she was hoping to end this quickly. It fit what he knew of her. She no longer held all the cards now that he had been able to predict her first surprise attack. Which meant she would need to finish him off before he managed to find a way to use it against her.

Any thoughts he had of keeping her off balance long enough to try to figure out a way to use that, were dashed almost immediately. Whatever allowed her to shift her form also gave her ridiculous speed and dexterity. Werewolves could be counted on to be powerfully strong, but even as fast as they were, they weren’t so quick that a well-trained human, like a hunter, couldn’t keep up with them. Even his fast reflexes weren’t enough to track her movements and react accordingly. She was just a blur of motion as she reached him, moving around him with the grace of flowing water. Pain burned through him as she avoided his attempts at counterstrikes, claws catching his arms, his middle, and even the side of his head before he was thrown to the ground.

“You know,” she began, the pitch of her voice having risen since she had allowed herself to begin to turn. “If I were human, you might have killed me. Too bad I’m not human, huh?”

He glared up at her, moving to roll away and hissing as her boot slammed into his lower back mid-roll. Shaun lay mere feet from him, stirring ever so slightly and Lucas wished he could delay her just a little longer. The two of them could provide more than a challenge for her, even with her speed. Lucas’ speed and Shaun’s strength had been enough to bring down any opponent so far. Their teamwork was almost always flawless. She had been smart to separate them before they could pose a combined threat to her.

Long fingers, ending in deadly claws, curled around his throat as she bent down, applying more weight to his back. “Don’t worry. After I kill you, I’ll kill him before he wakes up fully. You might know what happened, but you can die knowing that he won’t suffer the same pain.”

His mind raced to figure out a way out of her grasp, as her words weren’t meant to be comforting. She was relishing her victory already, enjoying the fact that she had bested him in combat so easily. Despair threatened Lucas as he felt her nails stroke his skin, teasing at the grip she would use to tear out his throat. They had come so far, survived so much, only to die at the hands of some manipulative werefox?

The weight on his back disappeared, the nails dragging across his throat as he heard her grunt. It hadn’t been her finishing blow, and he turned his head in time to see her picking herself off the ground a few feet away. As he rolled to look over his shoulder, he realized that the scratch had been simply a reflex from being knocked away. Nic stood over him now, his changeable eyes glowing as fiercely as Ana’s as he glared at her. He had the same sharp fangs and claws, and Lucas could sense the same mercurial aura about him.

“You,” she hissed, standing upright. “I should have known you were involved. How the hell did you get past my sensors?”

Nic smirked, raising a clawed hand and rolling his fingers mockingly. “You should know by now Ana, our kind is full of tricks. It’s kind of like how you didn’t even hear or see me coming. We’re terrible about playing with our food, aren’t we?”

If she had looked cold and disinterested when she had been looking at Lucas, she held equal parts hatred and fury as she stared at Nic. Her hands flexed, nails digging into the skin of her palm as she breathed heavily. Lucas’ eyes never left her as he slowly moved over to Shaun, who was picking himself up off the ground to squint at the two kitsune. Dull confusion gave way to realization, and then anger. That anger flashed at Lucas, who ignored it as he checked the wounds on Shaun’s head. The fact that Shaun was able to read the situation so quickly told him that his partner was okay, but he still winced at the sight of the gashes where she had struck him.

“You were supposed to kill these two, not help them break into my home,” Ana sounded as furious as she looked, no longer caring if she showed true emotion, and no longer able to control it.

“Yeah, we should talk about that before I kill you. See, we kind of trusted you for a while there, and I’m sure Lucas is just as curious as I am as to why you’ve been using us this whole time. I’m especially curious, since you’ve been using me to do your dirty work, using me to kill people. I have a whole list of questions, actually.”

“Money,” Lucas grunted as he helped Shaun up off the floor.

“That was just a fringe benefit,” she growled.

Nic tilted his head curiously. “And the main goal?”

“I wanted you to destroy everything you ever worked toward. You’ve prided yourself on thinning the herd, of both the supernatural and the mundane. When a creature went too far and stepped out of line, you stopped it. When a hunter went too far, you stepped in there, too. You’re so goddamn arrogant about how right you are, how good you are at assessing a real threat to what you see as the ‘balance.’ It was so easy to slowly make you undo all of that.”

Nic’s curiosity disappeared beneath his dark expression. “So it’s true, then. You’ve been feeding me the wrong information for years. How many people have I killed that didn’t deserve to die?”

The anger on her face twisted into an expression of cruel delight. “Not many…in the beginning. But in the past couple of years? Every single one.”

The sudden anguish on Nic’s face was as immediate as it was painful to see. Lucas only knew a little about what Nic’s personal belief about the world was, but he knew enough to know that she had just delivered a despairing blow to the core of his being. Nic had dedicated his life to maintaining a balance of sorts, one that Lucas could find himself believing in if he allowed himself to. There was no doubt that Nic strongly believed in that balance. Lucas had seen glimpses of it, such as when they had spoken to Erik and now, as he realized he had been forced to betray it all this time. This woman had single-handedly ensured that all the work Nic had done was perverted and used against him.

“Why?” Lucas asked, seeing Nic at a loss.

“Siblings,” Shaun breathed next to him, looking between the two kitsune in a look of total shock.

That one word was enough to pull Nic out of his ugly thoughts, replacing his sense of surprise with one that was less personal, less destructive. Ana looked at Shaun speculatively, her face blank and unreadable once more. Lucas’ glance however flicked between them, more interested in seeing what Shaun meant than focusing on the surprise they all felt. His eyes searched both kitsune’s faces, seeing the changeable eyes, the quality of their hair, the similar shape to their jawlines, and goddamn, even the angle of their noses.

“Holy shit,” he swore. “You’re brother and sister? Why didn’t you tell me?”

The question had been directed at Nic, who looked confused. “I don’t have a sister. I was an only a child. My mom died when I was a teenager, my dad was…well, he was absent. Died a handful of years ago.”

“You killed him.”

The venom in Ana’s words was so potent that Lucas was surprised he didn’t see it drip from her exposed fangs. The questioning look on her face had disappeared in another wave of pure hatred. She was already forgetting that Shaun and Lucas were standing there with Nic. Once more, her attention was focused solely on him.

Shaun shifted beside him. “Ya killed your own dad?”

Nic lifted his chin, looking defiant. “Yeah, and? Wasn’t much of a dad to begin with, and you would have killed him too. He was a monster, an insane monster.”

“He was not a monster!” Ana all but shrieked, taking a step toward Nic.

His eyes flashed to her, his own anger finally rising behind his gaze. “He was. The kitsune might not be the judges of greed and misdeeds that we once were, but he had gone beyond even that. He was killing whoever he wanted, based on his own twisted beliefs. It was bad enough when he was kidnapping and torturing petty thieves or drug addicts. But then snatching people off the street when he caught them in a lie, a white lie? Do you know what he was doing to those people? Even the most heartless of vampires would have winced at what he was doing. So, you’re goddamn right I put him down, like the mad animal he was. Bad enough that he left me and my mother, left her with a son who was something she could barely understand, and left her with nothing. Bad enough that I had to find out about us through stories and legends, that I was left alone in the world without her around and him not being around at all. But to find out that my own father was an insane monster? Who tortured and butchered innocent people?”

Nic was shouting now, his hands balled into fists at his side. There was so much pain and rage radiating off him that it was almost physically painful to watch. It was the first time Lucas had seen beyond what Nic chose to show him, and his heart ached for him. Shaun’s anger had faded to a look of understanding and even pity as he watched Nic. The larger man was at a loss for words, his grip on Lucas tightening.

“So, you killed him, leaving me without the only parent I ever had,” Ana said coldly, unmoved by his display.

“The world’s a tough place, bitch. Doesn’t make it right to try to make it tougher,” Nic shot back just as coldly.

“Is that anyway to talk to your sister?” she asked, coyness returning with her cruel air once more.

“You aren’t my sister. We might share blood, but that’s it.”

“Well, I plan to shed a bit of that shared blood,” she tapped an ornate looking knife at her hip. “What do you think? Should I tear your throat out, or drive this blade into your kin-slaying heart?”

He moved with the same startling speed that Ana had, fast enough that Lucas almost missed it. She was ready for him, shifting to one side as he swiped to deliver one of her own. Ana’s claws swiped through thin air as he moved quickly out of the way and set up his next attack. The two kitsune dodged and weaved around one another, striking out where they could.

“Revenge,” Shaun muttered beside him before launching himself at the two of them. Lucas didn’t know if Shaun was trying to kill them both or just Ana. It didn’t matter, as Ana twisted about behind Shaun in a flash. Still slow from the blows to his head, Shaun could only thrash as she kicked the back of his legs and slammed her knee into his chest. Both Lucas and Nic responded by rushing her, which she nimbly avoided with a hop away.

Nic’s gaze flicked down to Shaun as Lucas bent to try to help his partner up again. It was all the opportunity Ana needed, and she lashed out at Nic. Her blow caught him in the chest causing him to wheeze as he tried to stumble away from the follow-up. When he was paying attention, he could just about keep up with her attacks and dodges. That one hit, however, had knocked him off balance enough that he was struggling just to keep himself from being killed by a stray blow. The rest of her blows landed, but without a successful follow-through, and as Lucas watched, he could see they were going to wear Nic down quickly.

Knowing that Shaun was only temporarily stunned and in no immediate danger, Lucas threw himself forward. Ana twisted as she sensed him coming, but as he brought the knife up in a sweeping arc, he knew that she had reacted too slowly. She had been so caught up in trying to bring Nic down, she had lost focus on everything else around her. It cost her a precious moment, and he drove his knife into her side. It sank in cleanly, causing her to double over as the wound hissed and steamed where the gold met her flesh. He yanked the knife clear and brought it up again with the intent of driving it into her exposed chest.

Time stood still for a second, but it felt like forever. He knew that he should drive the blade into her chest and end it right here and now. She had used him for her own personal vendetta against a man who hadn’t even known who she was beyond what she had told him. It hurt that he was just one more weapon to drive into Nic’s heart, and he hated her for what she had done. Yet, the moment of shock and pain on her face made him hesitate and just like Ana, it cost him.

“Fucker,” she hissed, the back of her fist slamming into his face.

He hit the ground and let out a pained groan, the fire in his face spreading across one whole cheek. Shaun struggled somewhere behind him and he heard a pained grunt come from Nic somewhere in front of him. Lucas couldn’t see what happened as he tried to make the room stop spinning. Ana’s face swam into view as she bent down and wrapped her hand around his throat, lifting him up to stare into her hate-filled eyes.

“I guess I need to deal with you two before I play with my dear brother,” she snarled.

There was a swift movement behind her and the ugly expression on her face turned even uglier. Her grip on him slackened, and she stumbled, hand desperately clawing at her back. Lucas could see Shaun standing behind her, a dripping knife in his hand. She turned in a graceless shuffle to face Shaun, bringing her arm up to try to claw his throat out. As Shaun’s hand came up to catch her arm, gripping it tight, Lucas could see the ornate sheath at her hip no longer held a knife.

“Fuck you.”

Shaun’s words were so calm, so even, despite the undertones of his own anger. The knife she had planned to use on Nic was now covered in her own blood, plunged deep into her chest. She gasped, all the air driven from her lungs as she spun in place. She moved like a drunk, stumbling to her knees before Lucas, who was trying to push himself up from the ground. She knelt before him, trying to wrap her hands around the handle of the knife in her chest. Lucas didn’t know if she knew pulling it out now would only hasten her death, but maybe some part of her did, and wanted it to be over with.

“You were one of my only friends,” he told her sadly, leaning forward to grasp the knife and yank it free.

Blood poured in a steady flow from the wound, spurting briefly as the blade was pulled free. Her eyes went wide, panic and uncertainty shining there in pure, unfiltered emotion. The glow of her eyes dimmed to nothing, and then the light behind her eyes went with it. Lifelessly, her body slumped forward with a dull noise that made Lucas close his eyes.

“Lucas?”

His eyes opened slowly, taking in the sight of Shaun crouched before him, his bulk blocking the sight of Ana’s body. The knife was no longer in his hand, sitting instead in its sheath on the floor beside him. He didn’t remember letting go of the knife, any more than he remembered Shaun moving closer to him. For a second, he let the agony of the moment wash over him. The only friend he had left now was Shaun, his partner, occasional lover, and last remaining piece of something that he could call family.

Lucas nodded jerkily at him, not wanting to say anything. It was over. The deed had been done, and all he wanted to do was to get out of there. Get as far away from this place as possible and curl up in a nice warm bed. Maybe he could convince Shaun to wrap his big body around him, providing a solid wall of warmth beside him.

“Fucking hell,” came Nic’s pained voice from over Shaun’s shoulder.

The kitsune was looking human again, his eyes back to their normal human, yet odd, color. There was a new mark on his face however, courtesy of Ana, no doubt: A long cut that was still bleeding, slashed from one corner of his forehead down across his brow, the bridge of his nose and ended on his cheek. It didn’t look deep, or at least not deep enough to be too worried. It was a head wound, so the bleeding made it look worse than it actually was. The fact that it was both one single slice and not several, and that it wasn’t healing as quickly as Lucas expected a normal wound to heal on a werebeast told him Ana must have used the knife.

“I’m gonna have a new scar, aren’t I?” Nic asked, sounding put out.

Shaun’s gaze turned to Lucas, anger flickering behind his look of concern “You both gotta lot of explaining to do.”

“Can we eat first? I’m starving,” Nic whined.

Lucas smiled, “Let’s get out of here.”