Stone Cold Fox Read online

  Lady Moon had given a silvery laugh.

  “Why indeed, Warrior?” she replied. “Wise you shall be, but never defenseless. I grant you the ability to change your Shifted form. You will be able to shrink to the size of the smallest mouse or grow as big as the cave lion at will. Go and use your power wisely.”

  Reese hoped he was using his power wisely now. His instinct told him that the girl in his shed would respond better to him in Fox form than as a human. Also, he was taking care to use what he thought of as his “little” size. He thought for a moment of going tiny—the size of a mouse—but rejected it. She would think that size was strange and he was too vulnerable in it. Likewise, he wasn’t about to show her his largest form—what he thought of as his “holy shit!” size. Seeing a red fox the size of a cave lion—which had been a huge prehistoric beast that put modern lions to shame—would only scare her.

  No, Chihuahua size was about right, he decided. Leaving his discarded clothing in a pile, he trotted out from around the side of the house and headed back to the shed.

  * * *

  Jo kept a firm grip on her athame and watched the door of the shed alertly to see if the huge man with the reddish-brown hair was coming back. She didn’t trust his seeming kindness or his promises not to hurt her. She’d heard such promises before—many years ago.

  “What’s the matter, baby? Where are you going? Stay here and just talk to us—come on, we won’t hurt you,” whispered a voice from her past.

  Jo shook her head, her long hair whipping around her dirty face as she tried to push the memory back. No—I won’t think of that now. I swore never to think of it again!

  It had been so much easier when she lived with her coven. Back at Avalon, the all-female retreat and commune she’d lived in for the past twenty-two years, she knew her place and her station in relation to her sister Wiccans. She’d had the Elders to look up to and the respect of the younger members of the community as she taught them spell-craft, weaving, meditation, and healing. On every Tuesday and Thursday she had ventured into town to teach a children’s Yoga class at the local YWCA. And best of all, she’d never had to come into contact with any men.

  Men. Jo shivered with disgust. Since being kicked out of Avalon, it seemed like men were the only people she saw. She’d been traveling in the forest alone in fear for her life for what felt like years—though it was really closer to two weeks. In that time she’d been attacked three times—every time by men.

  Jo frowned. Well, she thought all the attackers were male. The group in the forest certainly were men . . . until they suddenly weren’t human anymore.

  She thought of the male voices that had turned thick and growling, of the hungry howling and the blur of shadows in the moonlight as they became . . . something else, Jo didn’t know what. She’d heard of Skin Walkers before—evil beings that could skin an animal and wear the pelt to take on the form of the beast they had killed. But she’d never encountered them until the horrible night of the full moon—the first night after she’d been kicked out of Avalon, the only home she’d known from the age of nineteen.

  She’d escaped, but just barely and then the pain had started—the awful, burning, tearing sensation that made her feel like huge hands were trying to rip all her limbs out of their sockets. It felt like she was falling apart—like she was dying. And after a while, Jo had wanted to die—had wished for death and begged the Goddess to take her. A request that had not been answered, or she wouldn’t still be here wondering what was happening to her.

  The pain had been just another sign that something was going wrong with her—something terrible and possibly fatal. But Jo didn’t know what her mysterious new disease was or how to stop it. She’d only known that she had to keep moving somehow, despite the pain. Had to keep the Skin Walkers—if that was what they were—from finding her.

  And they weren’t the only ones stalking her either.

  Stumbling through the forest with the howling pack behind her and her body in agony, she’d come upon a white ash tree that had been struck by lightning. Knowing the magical properties of the wood—associated with protection and wisdom—Jo had rubbed her skin with the ashes she scraped from the tree’s blackened husk.

  The horrible pain had eased some and the pack of Skin Walkers had run past her in the night, mercifully oblivious to her presence as she crouched in the shelter of the dead tree’s split trunk. She’d stayed there all night, shivering and alone, yet not alone because always, always she felt a presence at her back—a menacing something that was glad to see her pain. The shadow creature coming for her . . .

  Jo pushed the thought aside. The shadow creature which had chased her into the safety of the shed couldn’t come out during the daylight hours—it was a thing of darkness, she was certain. Somehow she’d survived last night and she would again—she just had to find another safe haven before the sun set.

  Her mind returned to that first awful full-moon night. The ashes from the holy tree had helped hide her scent and the awful, tearing pain hadn’t reoccurred . . . so far. But there were other pains—less pressing but still enough to make her miserable—that the white ash tree’s ashes couldn’t help. Like the headache in her temples that wouldn’t go away. Or the strange throbbing between her thighs that seemed to grow worse all the time.

  Despite her pain and fear she had journeyed on, though she felt worse by the hour and the shadow creature kept drawing nearer. There was no repeat of the pack of Skin Walkers in the forest but a man had tried to pick her up as she walked wearily down the side of the highway. He seemed nice at first, then grew angry and grabby when Jo declined his offer. She’d had to fight him off with her athame, which wasn’t meant to be used as a weapon at all, but only a tool for ceremonies.

  The attacks had brought back bad memories—ones she’d kept buried for twenty-two years. She didn’t want to remember—didn’t want to think of that awful night in the park. And yet the present kept bringing back the past.

  She’d run back into the woods and done her best to avoid the shadow creature and get back to civilization—although she had no idea what she would do once she got there. Civilization, after all, appeared to be full of lustful, abusive men who wanted to take what she wasn’t willing to give. Clearly a woman alone wasn’t safe—not even a Third Level Wiccan like Jo. But where would she be safe? Where could she go now that the woods were too dangerous to enter?

  After making sure she was safe in the shed, she’d fallen into an exhausted sleep and woken in the afternoon with her temples throbbing and her aching head full of questions.

  Who am I? What am I? Where do I belong? What should I do next?

  These questions—once so easily answered—eluded her now. Her life was a mess and she had a strange disease—one she couldn’t even diagnose, though she had searched through both her own Book of Shadows and her old mentor’s for clues. She had no place to go and no one to love or care for her. Miranda, her mentor from the time she’d been nineteen, was dead and Jo hadn’t allowed anyone else to get close to her. Her life, once so grounded in routine and tradition, was out of control.

  I don’t want to live like this, Jo told herself. And then, somehow, she’d found the athame was in her hand with the sharp silver blade poised over her wrist. Most Wiccans kept their athames dull, the edges deliberately blunted. But Jo liked to keep hers sharp. She felt that chopping the herbs she used in her spells with the implement she used to cast greatly enhanced her magic.

  It wasn’t the first time in her desperate journey that the sharpened edges of her ceremonial dagger had come in handy, but Jo told herself it would be the last. She’d been just about to make the first cut when that huge man had showed up and scared her half to death.

  Jo had felt frightened and cornered—there was only one way in or out of the shed and he was blocking it with his big, muscular bulk. What was she going to do when he attacked, as she was certain he inevitably would?

  And then, to her surprise, he had backed off. H