26 – It’s Actually Fuchsia

Troy sat in the hard chair in Remington’s cold kitchen and bent over his work. He practiced his writing, the same six words over and over again, a pile of crumpled paper building on the floor next to him.

His hand cramped. He’d been writing all night and all day, and he didn’t think he could write one more letter. Troy stopped writing, dropped the pen, and flexed his hand, rubbing his forearm. He grabbed up the spoon and shoveled caviar into his mouth with it, thrilled when he didn’t spill out even one tiny egg. He was way better.

He hadn’t slept at all, well, maybe an hour at dawn, before the house woke up. Remington hadn’t been around and Troy wondered where he ate his meals.

Speak of the cat, the front door opened and his scent pushed in front of him. Remington came in the kitchen. He crossed the room, passing Troy, grabbing up some of the silverware Troy had never quite figured out how to use.

“This is for campfires, hot dogs, marshmallows, that kind of thing, and you don’t stick it in your mouth,” he said, pitching the long fork looking thing into the sink, then grabbing up the claw and the pliers. “And these are for seafood, something you should stay away from for now.”

“Seafood, got it,” Troy said. “How do you hold a pen, Remington?”

Remington gave him a funny look, then he came in close and demonstrated. For a felen, he was an awfully nice guy, and of course, Troy would do anything he ever asked. Like Conri, he got a lifetime pass for everything he’d done for Track, Treena, and Ella.

“Interesting,” Troy said, trying to emulate what Remington had done. Everyone did it a little bit differently, and so far, none of it was working very well for Troy because he had ham hands. Big old useless hocks at the end of his arms that could punch and grab perfectly, but they didn’t want to do this fine shit.

Remington had gone to the sink and was washing something, staring out the window, his body tense. Troy stared at his back. He’d never asked a felen how they shifted. Maybe he should.

“Do you see that crack in the face of the bluff?” Remington said, turning to Troy and pointing out the kitchen window to his backyard where it touched the forest that led to the stark bluff face.

Troy nodded.

“The earthquakes must have opened it up. It was only a foot wide yesterday, now it’s at least six feet wide.”

Troy got up to look, but his brother called him.

Troy, where are you? Trevor asked clearly in his head, probably from home.

Rowr, Track added in Troy’s mind.

Troy smiled. Hey little buddy, that was really good. Your ruhi is strong.

Rowr, Track agreed.

Remington’s, Troy told his brother.

We need to go to Mugshots today, get your mate’s name. Me and you together, Troy, we need to at least know where she lives.

Troy had known it was coming. Totally, but can you just give me a few more hours? There’s two things I need to get good at first.

Ok, this afternoon then.

Can you ask Ella if she can help me make a bacon bouquet?

A bacon…

Yeah, you know, bacon, curled up like a rose and fried crisp, and then you put it on a paper stalk and give it to your female.

Does she… like bacon?

Troy stopped to consider. He had no idea. But of course she did. Who doesn’t like bacon?

Troy, one more thing, no more cat pranks, you hear me?

Troy grinned. How did it go? Did he freak out?

He did freak out, in fact, he’s pissed, and one of the cats won’t leave. We can’t catch it, either.

Troy nodded his head. Nice, but then Remington opened the little window over the sink and the fresh forest air filtered in to Troy. Did he smell… foxen?

He shot to his feet and headed outside, cats swirling in and out of his way in a never-ending stream as he went down the porch steps and out around to the back of the house. A portion of forest was close to the back of the property. Most of Serenity was like this, no one razed a property of its trees completely, and the public safety departments of the government bought up as much forest property as they could, wanting to ensure Serenity stayed as much forest as it was town.

The forest behind Remington’s place was small, only a few miles long, heading up a bluff, then petering out, and starting again down the other side, and only a mile wide to the next subdivision on the other side, but it was thick.

Just a fox, he decided. Not foxen, but still… it wouldn’t hurt to take a lap through the woods, make sure nothing was hiding.

Troy plunged headlong into the trees, ready to do just that, when his wolf leaned in close. Troy turned and looked behind him and Remington’s house. There, on the back of the house, a place where Troy had never had a reason to go before, was a purple-pink door that must have led into a basement.

Troy abandoned the forest and headed for the door, walking straight up to it and putting his hand on it, then he turned around quickly. From this exact vantage point, he saw what looked like a slim trail leading directly into the center of the trees.

Troy started down the path at a quick pace.

He didn’t run until he smelled peppermint.

***

Grey lay flat on his back in forest, his heart pounding, his ears ringing. He stared up at the trees, imagining the KSRT swooping in on him at that very moment. He didn’t know how long he had been there or how he had gotten there or what in the hell had just happened, but he knew he wasn’t in the Pravus anymore, that much at least was obvious.

He was back in Serenity.

Grey struggled to a sitting position and pulled his shirt away from his chest, peeking down the neck hole at his body. He had not been marked.

Before he could think about that, his senses told him someone was coming toward him through the trees. Grey went still, ready to fight or bolt, until he smelled fox. Rex and Soren’s disguise. He also smelled goofy assholes Zane and Bane, trailing behind them. Someone had gotten those bad bears out of prison, and hooked them up with Khain. Rex got Grey’s vote. Seriously, though, how had they disguised their scents so well? He sniffed himself, knowing he couldn’t smell if he smelled like himself, but imaging he smelled like fox just the same.

Rex sneered down at him, looking like Jeff Bridges on a good day, while Soren was still trying to play the part of doting, fatherly cowboy, with his too-big, silver mustache and his dour expression. Zane and Bane both looked like Grey felt. He imagined they wouldn’t be marked either, and so their trip out of the Pravus would have been a doozy, like his was, while Rex and Soren could pop in and out like Khain.

“Have a nice trip?” Rex asked him.

“Eat a dick,” Grey said. He pushed himself to his feet, hating that he looked and felt like an old man when he did it.

Soren gave them a cut-the-shit look, then addressed Grey. “What’s the plan?”

“Why are you asking me?”

“You’re the wolf.”

Great, so that’s how this was going to go? “Where is he?”

“At the cat doctor’s clinic.”

“Remington?”

“Yeah, Remington.”

Grey’s head swam, making him want to curl up into a ball on the forest floor. What was wrong with him? He could not think clearly.

“How many guards are there?” Grey finally spit out.

Rex and Soren gave each other a look.

“We don’t have eyes on the place,” Rex said.

“Well that’s easy then. Here’s the plan in its current entirety. Get eyes on the place.” Grey swayed on his feet but tried not to let anyone see. Maybe he was just having a hard time adjusting to the normal world again. But even so, he saw a glaring error in the plan.

He asked Soren, since he was a little lower on the dickhead scale than Rex. “Can’t you just pop right into the room, snatch him up, and pop him back into the Pravus? Can’t Khain?”

Soren shook his head. “No one can travel from the Pravus directly to a location that has a high density of wolven in it, not even Khain, it’s something to do with the renquas. You should know that. Plus we can’t get him back over ourselves. Khain has to pull him through a spider crack.”

Grey digested all of that, deliberately not asking what a spider crack was. Had he gone through a spider crack? His neck crawled and both calves itched at the same time. He shuddered and tried to brush all three spots at once.

Wouldn’t the Citlali love to hear all this information? Wouldn’t the KSRT? There had been countless discussions about Khain’s limitations and abilities, but still no one knew for certain what they all were.

He tried to put on his indignant face, but it was hard with imaginary spiders crawling all over him. “You know, you could have led with that. If we’re going to do this, I need to know everything there is to know about your operation, your skills, and your limitations. We’re not just going to waltz in and find them sleeping on the job, you know. They will fight us all like they are fighting Khain himself.”

Rex and Soren both nodded grimly. They knew it. Good.

“How big is our team?” Grey asked. “Do we even have a team, because we aren’t going to get him out of there with just the five of us.”

“We can get a team,” Rex said, “Of up to thirty foxen, but only twelve of them are well-trained.”

The wind shifted, picking up and whistling slightly through the evergreens around them. Soren’s face went dreamy, and he drifted away from them all.

“Where in the fuck is he going?” Grey said to Rex.

Rex watched him, his eyes narrowed. “Soren, what’s up?”

“I… I caught a scent,” he said, but he was moving fast and they couldn’t quite hear him. They jogged to catch up with him.

“What scent?” Grey said, but Rex was already grabbing his brother around the throat in a headlock, trying to force him the other way.

“Oh no you don’t,” Rex said. “We don’t have time for this bullshit right now.”

“What bullshit?” Grey said, lifting his nose in the air, trying to scent anything that might give him a clue to what was going on. He scented many things, and sorting through them took a few moments, but soon enough, he scented a female, one far away, at the edge of the forest, maybe in a yard or on a porch.

He almost recognized the scent.

Grey stopped and looked around at the forest, letting Rex deal with his brother. He knew where they were, and he knew who was making the scent. He’d met her a long time ago.

“Is he after one of the mates?” Grey hissed to Rex, his alarms pinging wildly, his wolf snarling from inside.

Rex had also gone still and silent and motioned to Zane and Bane to get back, get down, get away from the trail.

They hadn’t even seen the trail, but it must exist, because someone was walking down it, heavy boots slapping on almost-dry mud, with no whickers of plants and trees pulling at him as he passed through space.

Grey froze. Wolfen. Grey could see him between the underbrush, a tall male with brown hair, wearing the unofficial KSRT work uniform of dark khakis and a plain dark t-shirt. Grey did not recognize him, and now, the only question was, were they far enough away that he wouldn’t scent them.

But once Grey got a look at the guy’s face, he stopped worrying. The guy was even more lovesick than Soren was, only able to think about that scent. Fool.

“Who was that?” Grey whispered after he passed.

“Troy Burbank,” Zane grunted.

“Whoa,” Grey breathed. “How in the fuck did that finally happen? Did Trent shift, too?”

“We don’t know how it happened, and no, Trent’s up north,” Zane told him.

Grey started talking without thinking. He was just that good, and this opportunity was just too good to walk away from. “New plan,” he said. One Khain would like so much better.

Rex wouldn’t like it, but Rex could eat a whole bag of dicks.