Silver Fox (Silver Shifters 2)

They were out in the middle of nowhere, trailing one of Cang’s minions whose scent the kids had picked up at Cang’s abandoned house. It was a good thing Doris had gone out of town for the weekend, Joey thought; she was somewhere safe and far away, and he could spend as much time searching for Cang as he needed to.

Because it appeared that the abandoned house was not as abandoned as they’d thought. People came back from time to time, which made Joey think Cang had some kind of lair in the mountains around town.

Xi Yong would follow them in Joey’s Jeep, as near as he could get since they were mostly offroad, bringing their clothes and providing backup. In the event that they did get into trouble with a ferocious red dragon like Cang, it would be useful to have a qilin nearby.

A qilin was an antlered creature with cloven hooves, a horse-like body and overlapping scales, elegant and jewel-bright as a dragon. Long legged-and long-necked, they had dragonish features, with large thickly lashed eyes, and manes that floating about their heads. They could run like the wind, even running a little above the ground, though they did not fly. They could easily match the speed of wolves and mythic foxes such as Joey.

And they could, Joey hoped, take on a red dragon in a fight. If it came to that.

It was near morning when the scent ended abruptly on the crest of a mountain in an area with very few houses. Wolves and fox prowled along the base of a high wall topped with barbed wire. The acrid stench of hot metal caused Joey to shift back to human.

The twins also shifted. Vanessa hopped on her bare toes as she said, “I hear the hum of high voltage. I think that wire is electrified.”

“So do I,” Joey said. “I can smell it.”

Vic shivered. “It’s cold.”

Joey said, “You two go back to Xi Yong and the Jeep, and get your clothes on. I’m going to do a little exploring. See what we’re up against.”

“Why? He’s here, right?” Vanessa asked.

Vic smacked her shoulder. “He’s a dragon! He could be anywhere—he flies. It’s his guys that drive. Now we know where they are. We have to figure out if he’s here.”

“Right. Right. Right,” Vanessa said, and cracked a huge yawn. “I’m not thinking because I’m tired and hungry.”

Joey said, “Unpack something to eat from the Jeep. We’ll regroup when I’ve had a chance to check around.”

The twins shifted and loped away, toward the road where Xi Yong had parked out of sight.

Joey continued on alone. Back in fox form, he extended all his senses, his tails weaving in and out of the layered dimensions. He sensed familiar meridians . . .

Doris?

He stared at the trees downslope, stunned. Impossible! But he knew her distinctive glow, like a thread of sunlight. She was not just emotionally near, but physically near.

He sat down, then carefully, delicately, concentrated. Yes—she was very close indeed. How had that happened? The aunties back in China would call that fate.

He considered his last conversation with Doris, painful as it was to relive how unsuccessful he’d been—how she’d shut him away. Not in anger, but in a complexity of emotions, with worry foremost. It was clear she expected nothing good to come of trusting him.

He forced that aside, recollecting her words. An old house, far from anywhere. Vacation homes . . . rich people who used them as summer resorts.

All of that would fit Cang. He had been born to a privileged family, and his becoming a red dragon had guaranteed high status in China’s celestial realm. He liked his luxury. No, he expected it. Demanded it. To provide that luxury demanded plenty of water, and he and the wolves had skirted a lake before following the scent to this wall. Southern California did not have many lakes surrounded by convenient mountains. Of them, this one no doubt was one of the most remote.

It was not surprising that Doris’s hermit of an ancestor and Cang would both end up building their houses near this remote lake. The difficulty was that Doris and her family happened to be here, right now, when Joey needed to search in their vicinity.

How would that look if he stumbled across her? Like he was chasing after her, when she’d made it clear that the next time she wanted to see him was at the writers’ group?

He rallied. Doris was at a house with her family to celebrate a holiday, not to hike miles into the wilderness. He could surely avoid meeting her for the two days of her stay!

He wrestled inwardly with his stubborn fox, who was already trying to invent tricky ways to accidentally run into her. No. We’re here on a hunt that might be dangerous. Our mate has to wait in safety.

However, he needed to know exactly where she was, so… so he could keep his team away from her. As well as himself. Yes. That was a good plan.

He oriented on Doris’s brilliant meridian, and followed it. The result was both exhilarating and dismaying. Doris’s family’s house lay in a sheltered valley directly below Cang’s mountain estate.

It was both sweet and painful to know she was near. Also, it was sobering to consider how close Doris’s family was to possible danger.

Still in fox form, he trotted back down the slope as snowflakes began to drift down, then ducked under a bush when he heard voices.