Generation V (11 page)

She was Asian, with beautiful almond eyes, perfectly refined features, and a cloud of rich black hair that flowed over her shoulders. It was too dark to figure out exactly what color clothing she was wearing, but there wasn’t too much of it and it was fitting very well. A sleeveless tank top was short enough to show off her flat stomach, and her dark pants were practically sprayed onto her legs, and tucked into knee-high boots with a very impressive heel. She was grinning at us, with a little strut in her step, and her hands rested on her hips.

It crossed my mind that we were having a collective hallucination. Maybe I was seeing her, and they were seeing a camel. Or I was dead and heaven consisted of an anime fetish. Except she wasn’t wearing a schoolgirl’s skirt and kneesocks, so maybe not that. Also, if this was heaven, the ground was really dirty, I still ached all over from the kicks, and frankly there was something kind of intimidating about the way she was smiling.

Apparently my assailants were also confused. “Bitch, what the fuck?” the leader asked. I was thinking of him
as the leader because he had the most rings in his nose, and also he was the one holding my wallet. He also seemed to have the best command of the English language.

The woman thought so too, because she laughed. “Very eloquently put,” she said. “Now do me a favor and run along. You’re messing up my property.”

She didn’t even glance at me, but I gathered that I was the property in question.

My muggers didn’t think much of her request. “Fuck you, bitch,” the leader said. “And you’d better start running, because when we’re done with this fucker, you’re next.” But none of them moved. Whatever sense of menace was emanating from the woman, who could barely have topped five-foot-five and probably got carded every time she ordered a drink, they felt it too.

Her smile widened. “This is your last warning. And now I’m not even going to let you keep his wallet.”

“She’s crazy,” one of the beta thugs muttered.

“Yeah, get her,” said the other one.

“Too late,” she said. She lifted one hand off her hip and blew a kiss. For a long minute nothing seemed to happen, and I wondered if she actually was a crazy woman. I hoped not, because then I’d have to try to save her, and I’d already done an incredibly crappy job of saving myself.

But then the leader of the thugs let out an ear-piercing scream, echoed almost immediately by his cohorts. My wallet dropped onto my stomach, and they were running like track stars, still screaming, across the street and down an alley.

Their shrieks were disappearing into the distance. If we’d been
in a residential area, people probably would’ve been calling the cops, but here there was nothing but chained-up storefronts. I started to get up, but the woman had walked closer, and she pressed her boot against my throat, effectively pinning me down.

“Uh-uh,” she said, leaning down closer to me. I got my first close-up look at her face, and felt my stomach give a flip that had almost nothing to do with the recent blunt-force trauma it had suffered. “I think I like you where you are. Maybe you’ll cause less trouble like this.”

Behind her, there was a small scuffling sound and then a rhythmic clicking. I tore my eyes away from the gorgeous woman and my brief hopes that this might go the way of a
Penthouse
forum letter to look and see what was causing the sounds. It was a fox—its brilliant red coat, dark feet, and pristine white throat and tail tip visible even in the weak light from the half-dead streetlights. The fox sat down next to the woman and looked at me with golden eyes. Then it gave a wide, deliberate yawn.

I looked back at the woman, who was still patiently standing with one foot balanced gently on my larynx.

“Oh, shit,” I whispered. “You’re kitsune.”

She gave me an approving grin and tapped my nose with one finger. “Got it in one.”

The kitsune were shape-shifters
and tricksters. They were native to Japan, but one of them had come over right after World War II, and had petitioned my mother to live in her territory. Madeline granted it, and the kitsune had set up shop, quickly raising a horde (or, more accurately, a litter) of children. There were many types of supernatural creatures in her territory, but Madeline’s ties were the closest with the kitsune, who were universally female and could change from women to foxes. I’d only ever encountered them in their fox form before—after I was first brought back to live in the mansion, Madeline had hired the kitsune to guard the grounds. I’d had more than a few runaway attempts foiled by a fox’s nipping teeth. They seemed to take a particular enjoyment in the task, and I still remember the sinking feeling in my belly whenever I was halfway through the border hedge and heard the high, amused yipping of a fox. The last time I tried to run away, they let me get completely through the hedge before four of them jumped me at once, pinning me to the ground under a furry, wiggling pile of fox. They’d then driven me home with nips and yips, taking every opportunity to trip me and smack my face with their tails.

My feelings toward the kitsune were not fond.

When Madeline decided that I needed protection with Luca in town, she’d apparently turned to tried-and-true methods of both containing and tormenting me, and had hired my current guard, Suzume Hollis, granddaughter of the original Japanese kitsune. While I limped and she strutted, the fox scampering at our heels, she took a lot of delight in telling me how she’d trailed me from my apartment and had watched my entire mugging.

I’d never seen their other ability at work before tonight, but kitsune could play with people’s perception as well. Illusion isn’t really the right word for it, since Chivalry said a kitsune could make something look so real that it would fool every sense, but it was what had driven away my attackers. Whatever had sent those three screaming for their mommies hadn’t been there for me, but for them it must’ve looked as real as I did. And if something had been chasing them, I hoped for their sakes that they had outrun it. A fox’s trick couldn’t kill them, but it might be able to scare them enough to bring out any congenital heart weaknesses.

“What kind of bodyguard doesn’t stop me from getting mugged?” I asked incredulously. My embarrassment that her first impression of me had been me getting beaten up by Bruins fans was offset by my anger that she hadn’t prevented it. Between that and the growing consternation I felt about just how good she smelled, I felt really exhausted.

“The kind who wants to know exactly how much handholding this assignment is going to require,” she answered.

“How much is that?”

“Apparently the same amount as walking a five-year-old girl across the street. Was assuming the fetal position
and trusting that they wouldn’t kick anything critical really your best plan?”

Fortunately we’d arrived back at my apartment, so I was saved the trouble of trying to come up with a witty comeback.

Occupying the sole handicapped spot in the parking lot was a low-slung and sleek little sports car, painted matte black and looking like it could break land-speed records. I felt a small cringe of embarrassment on behalf of my Fiesta, since it had to share the same lot as this automotive masturbatory fantasy. I silently promised to be a better owner and at least replace the bumper that was currently held on by wire ties.

“How did I not notice this when I pulled in?” I asked.

“Probably because you didn’t even look around. I could’ve been standing naked and waving pompoms and you wouldn’t have noticed.” Suzume opened the trunk of the car and pulled out a duffel bag. She tossed it over to me and I grunted a little as I caught it. It was so stuffed that I was amazed she had been able to get it closed—as it was, the zipper was barely holding on.

“No, that I would’ve noticed,” I muttered. Not low enough, because she snickered a little as she closed the trunk again. She unlocked and opened the passenger’s-side door, then tossed her keys on the driver’s seat.

She noticed my confusion. “My cousin Noriko drove me over.”

The fox yipped and hopped into the car. A minute later a naked woman a little younger than Suzume sat up and began to pull a sundress over her head with leisurely motions. I slapped a hand over my eyes, but the image was already burned into my retinas.

“Do you have a problem with nudity?” Suzume asked, her voice coming just beside my left ear. A shiver made its way down my spine, but I kept me eyes shut until the car started up and I heard it pull out into the street.

“No, no problem at all.” I said. “That’s the problem.”

Suzume laughed again, a warm, throaty chuckle that rubbed across my skin like fur.

I dropped my hand and glared at her. “Are you doing something?”

There was nothing innocent about her smile. “What would I be doing?” She stepped closer to me, and now we were nearly touching. She radiated heat. This close, she had to tilt her head up to look at me. I could feel sweat start to trickle down my spine. Her hair looked incredibly soft, and her full lower lip looked slightly moist. Everything about her said that she wanted a kiss.

I stepped back quickly, and the moment broke. “Fox tricks.”

“Maybe a little.” One step and she’d again bridged the distance between us, this time so close that her breasts just brushed against my chest, and I could feel the temperature rising again. “But aren’t you enjoying it?” Her eyes were as dark and velvety as the night sky, dancing with amusement.

“No, so cut it out,” I said, shoving her duffel into her hands and heading toward the building. I could hear her following me, and her eyes were practically boring holes in my back, but I refused to look back at her as I went inside. I was the master of my own body, I told myself. Then I told it to myself again, hoping that this time my body would actually listen. I also reminded myself that I had a girlfriend (admittedly one who had been cheating
on me for the better part of two months), and that it would be wrong to let another woman toy with me. Fidelity required that I reserve the right to toy with me to Beth. Though it was somewhat disturbing that Suzume seemed able to accomplish with a single look what Beth only managed with knee-weakening kisses and a conversational style that skewed toward monologues.

My body didn’t find that a very convincing argument, but I did manage to return to a presentable state as we marched silently up two flights of stairs and into the apartment.

Thankfully the door to Larry’s room was closed and for once there were no sounds indicating the presence of company. Suzume roamed around, opening every cabinet, surveying my DVD collection, testing out each of the drums still clustered around my sofa, even riffling through the pile of junk mail that was on what ostensibly my eat-in kitchen table, and really just served as a catchall for stuff. Everything seemed interesting to her, but when she lifted up the trash lid to look inside, I smacked it shut.

“Does a bodyguard really need to know what I’ve thrown out lately?”

She looked surprised. “Of course not.”

“Then why are you looking?”

“Because I’m nosy.”

I stared at her, and she gave me that bright smile again that flashed very white teeth. “Bathroom that way?”

I nodded. She scooted in, and a minute later I could hear her riffling through the medicine cabinet, then each of the drawers in the sink. Resigning myself to her search, I pulled a bag of peas out of the freezer and pressed it against my ribs. With the adrenaline from my mugging
and the sight of female nakedness faded, all of my aching spots from the night’s misadventures were making themselves known. With Suzume out of sight, but not out of mind, since from the sound of it she had now moved on to ransacking my bedroom, I took the opportunity to stuff a bag of frozen corn down the back of my pants. My ass was strongly protesting where I’d hit it on the sidewalk, and I sighed in relief as the cold started numbing it.

“Feeling better?” Suzume’s voice was right in my ear. I jumped about a foot, losing my grip on the corn, which dropped completely into my loosened pants. I struggled, much to Suzume’s bright-eyed interest, to retrieve it without resorting to shoving a hand down there, but all I did was get it farther wedged down toward areas that really didn’t need icing.

“Need a hand?” she asked.

“No, everything’s fine. Go back to cataloging all my stuff.” I managed to shift the bag into one of my pants legs, and now I could start shaking it out.

“This is more interesting than checking to see if your milk has passed its expiration date. FYI, it has.”

The corn was wedged behind one of my knees now, and I had the choice of dropping my pants completely or snaking a hand up from below. By now the condensation on the bag was moistening my pants.

I looked at Suzume. She looked back at me.

“Can I have a little privacy?” I asked.

She considered that for a moment, then shook her head. “No, this is fun. I want to see what you do next.”

I headed for the bathroom and shut the door in her face, flipping the old-fashioned lock on the doorknob. The mirror showed that I’d ended the night pretty worse for the
wear. I was dirty, the collar of my shirt had been half ripped off and now hung drunkenly down my back, and my pants were more than ready for another round of OxiClean. I felt embarrassed for just long enough to remember that I wasn’t trying to impress Suzume, and that from the rattling of the doorknob I had pretty limited time to retain a modicum of dignity. The lock held her off just long enough for me to free the corn and have my pants halfway zipped.

“Usually locks indicate that people want to be left alone,” I told her.

“Usually do,” she agreed. “But since I’ve been employed to guard you, normal social protocols don’t apply.”

“How long is this guarding going to last?”

“Until Madeline calls me off or her money runs out. Given how loaded she is, you should probably hope that the first happens.” Suzume started yanking at the bottom of my shirt. Surprised, I smacked her hand. She smacked back, and hard enough that I gave up and let her get the shirt off. We both stared down at my torso. Normally I think I’d be more impressed at the bruises along my sides, but at the moment I was wishing that I’d spent more time at the gym.