Stone Cold Fox Read online

  “All right,” she said at last. Taking a deep breath, she tried to think how to tell the old pain. But there was no gentle way to go about it—she would just have to come out with it, like ripping off a bandage. “There’s no nice way to say this,” she said at last. “I was raped.”

  She saw Reese wince but to his credit, he didn’t look away from her. Instead, his hand crept up to take hers. Though she generally avoided skin-to-skin contact with him unless he was in his Fox form, Jo let him hold her hand.

  “Go on,” he said quietly.

  Jo swallowed hard. “It wasn’t just once and . . . and it wasn’t just one man. They . . . it was done to me repeatedly, over a few days and nights. I . . .”

  She closed her eyes and suddenly she was back on the jogging trail in the woods by her campus apartment, so many years ago. It was late afternoon and the sun was beating down in brilliant profusion. But it was shady and dim in the shadows of the trees where Jo was jogging.

  She wore a pair of running shorts with a sports bra and a tank top. Her long hair was back in a ponytail and she wasn’t even thinking about her surroundings. Her thoughts were on the poli-sci midterm she was taking next week. Inwardly, she was reviewing her notes, wondering if the test was really going to be as hard as everyone seemed to think—

  “Hey, pretty lady.” The man popped out of nowhere, blocking the jogging path so that Jo nearly ran into him. He was wearing a plastic Batman mask—the kind trick-or-treaters wear on Halloween. Why would a grown man be wearing a mask in the middle of the day?

  “Excuse me.” She veered to go around him and suddenly another masked man was there. This one was wearing Bugs Bunny. The childish mask clashed with his big, burly frame. He was built like a linebacker running to fat, Jo noticed—he probably outweighed her by well over a hundred and fifty pounds.

  “Hey!” She tried to dodge again, to turn and go back the way she’d come, but a third man was there, already in her way. His mask was just a generic ghost with empty black eyes and a howling O of a mouth, but that scared Jo most of all.

  “Hello, baby,” he drawled, crowding forward so she was forced back against the big man wearing the Bugs Bunny mask. She hit his chest and thick arms wrapped around her like bands of steel.

  “We don’t want to hurt you,” Batman mask said, telling the first of many lies. “We just wanna have a little fun.”

  “Let me go!” Looking over her shoulder, Jo could see the college campus and even the dorm where she lived. It was all right there—so normal and safe out in the sunlight. But she had entered the shadows now and something told her she wasn’t going to leave them for a long, long time.

  She opened her mouth to shriek and a meaty hand clamped over her lips.

  “All right now—no need to get upset,” the ghost-masked man said. “We’re just going to go someplace private and get to know each other a little better. Okay?”

  It was most definitely not okay with Jo. Panic burned in her throat like bile and she kicked and wiggled and almost got away—but the man in the Bugs Bunny mask reeled her back in with a curse. Lifting her easily off her feet and tucking her under one arm, he took her off the jogging path. With the other two men following, they went deeper into the woods.

  “The bastards,” Jo heard Reese growl and realized with surprise that he was seeing this too. That somehow he was reliving it with her.

  She thought she should probably be shamed by the knowledge that he was seeing this—seeing her lowest and most vulnerable moment. Instead, she felt comforted—it was horribly hard to be here again and see her younger self being attacked but she felt reassured knowing she wasn’t alone this time.

  The three men dragged her to a cabin in the woods—really nothing more than a shack with a broken stove and a rickety iron bed frame without a mattress. There was nothing but box springs on the rusty frame but it had four posts. The men stripped her and tied her arms and legs down—one to each of these—spread eagle. Then they put a piece of silver duct tape on her mouth to stifle her screams.

  “God!” Reese’s voice in her head was hoarse and horrified.

  “You might not want to see this next part.” Jo’s own voice sounded cold and somehow removed. “It might be . . . difficult to watch.”

  “No . . .” Outside the confines of the memory they had both somehow fallen into, she felt him interlace their fingers and squeeze her hand. “No, darlin’—you went through it so I’ll watch it. But God—I just wish I could get my hands on those bastards. I’d kill every last fucking one of them!”

  So they watched together as the horror played out again. Jo saw herself, as from a distance, while the three men took turns assaulting her. She remembered the leering, bright plastic masks hovering above her . . . their grunts and the reek of sex . . . the trollish laughter as they did what they wanted . . . the pain of the wooden slats in the box springs digging into her back and bottom. And worst of all, the burning agony between her legs. She felt again the shame and fear for her life—would they kill her? Was the rape only a prelude to worse things to come?

  “I’ve heard other victims say they wanted to die,” she told Reese as they watched. “But not me—I wanted to live. I don’t know why, but I did. But I also wanted desperately to take myself away . . .”

  She watched as her younger self closed her eyes, a look of concentration on her bruised and taped face.

  Away, she remembered thinking. Have to get away . . . take yourself away . . .

  Finally, mercifully, the scene faded and she opened her eyes to see Reese opening his at the same time.

  “What happened?” he asked hoarsely and Jo saw there were tears standing in his eyes. He swiped at them with one arm. “How did you get away?”

  “I didn’t,” she said simply. “Not for a long time—not physically, anyway. But that was how I learned I was a witch.”

  “How? Did you blast them like you did with Carl and me at the Friendly Bean?” There was an angry growl in his voice—a thirst for vengeance that Jo herself hadn’t felt in a long time—not since she released the incident to the Goddess. Or tried to, anyway.

  “Hardly,” Jo said dryly. “I didn’t have that kind of power back then. No, that . . . that time I spent in the shack was the first time I was able to project my spirit into the astral plane. I wanted to get away so badly that the dormant power inside me became active. I was literally able to leave my body—my consciousness was anyway—and fly away.”

  “You did?” He frowned. “Where did you go?”

  “I saw a beacon shining in the woods and I went towards it.” Jo remembered the bright, golden light she’d seen and the feeling of home and safety that had enveloped her. “It was my mentor, Miranda. She was meditating and even though we had never met before, she sensed my presence.”

  “Were you able to tell her where you were?” Reese asked.

  “Not at first.” Jo shook her head. “I was too weak—too new at projection. I drifted back to my body even though I didn’t want to. It . . .” She took a deep breath. “It was some time before I was able to project myself away again. And then I only managed with Miranda’s help. She cast a spell, you see—to bring me to her—to strengthen my spirit.”

  “What happened then? How long . . .” Reese swallowed and there was a dry clicking in his throat. “How long were you trapped there?”

  “Three days and four nights,” Jo said, sounding more calm than she felt—at least in her own ears. “When I was finally able to tell Miranda what was happening to me, she called the police. She was friends with one of the detectives there—she’d helped him find a missing child in the past using her powers—so he was willing to go out looking for me.”

  “What happened to those bastards that hurt you?” Reese asked, his voice dipping down into a growl again.

  “They’re in prison,” Jo said shortly. “And no, you can’t sneak in and kill them. I’ve given all of this to the Goddess and purged myself of the need for vengeance long ago.”