Page 102 of Mud

They didn’t.

A scream built up in me when I saw the animal sitting on its hind legs barely three feet away from me, moss-green eyes locked on mine. I bit my tongue and then my lips, and I squeezed the handles of my guns so tightly my hands hurt, just to stop that scream from ripping out of me and shaking this entire damn tree.

In front of me was a vulcera—a very specific kind of fox that, as far as I remembered from my Preternatural Beasts class in school, was found in only two places in the world (one of them was Alaska, pretty sure).

At first, my mind was filled with stupid, silly questions—likehow would a vulcera make it all the way to this place?Andwho let it in?Anddon’t they enjoy snow and ice and generally very cool weather?

Yes, all those questions stood, but none were going to change the most important thing here—that this vulcera was herefor meif the way it was looking right at me was any indicator.

The second most important thing was that I was going to really,reallydie in the next few minutes.

At least the animal that would end me was magnificently beautiful.

The vulcera is a type of fox, indeed, one of the oldest animals to have been touched and mutated by magic, possibly since the beginning of time. Their eyes have vertically slit pupils like a fox’s, and the shape of their face and ears and front of the body is identical to a fox, except the vulceras are bigger in size, and where a fox has fur, the vulcera has scales of a lizard, colored a deep charcoal. The lower part of its body, the back legs and tail, are those of a lizard, though not identical. Its back feet have larger claws and its tail is thick at the base, over thirty inches long, and thins toward the tip, which is as sharp as a blade.

It also has these curves, like petals of a flower on its back, longer at the base of its neck, smaller as they went down to its tail. The books call themantennas, and the tips of these curves are iridescent, shimmering in every color of the rainbow—the result of their magic in contact with oxygen.

I couldn’t really remember much else about the vulceras, except that they were excellent swimmers, hunted fish and rabbits and any kind of small animals, and their lizard-like scales were very hard to cut through with metal and wood. I’d never heard of a Greenfire familiar beinga vulcera before. I didn’t think we even had those in Maryland, to be honest, but the moss-colored eyes with those pupils that reminded me so much of catfairies were unmistakable.

Just my fucking luck.

“Hi, there,” I said for no apparent reason other than my brain trying to cling to survival by any means necessary—even trying totalkto an animal to make it out of this alive.

The vulcera turned its head to the side, its eyes curious. Judging by the antennas on its back, it was a female—males had very few, if any.

She stood so perfectly still, her front feet shaped like paws, while her back lizard-like ones pointed to the sides. Her tail fell off the side of the branch pin straight, and it almost looked like an arrow that showed me exactly where I was going:down.

“I’m sure you know by now that I’m Mud,” I whispered, licking my dry lips. I raised my hand to wipe my brow, then pointed my guns at her again. “So…are you going to just skip the show-off part and attack me?”

The vulcera turned her head to the other side, still as curious.

A second ticked by. I was surprised the guns hadn’t fallen from my hands yet, considering how they were shaking.

Then the vulcera moved.

With the gracefulness of a feline, she stood on all fours, raised her tail until the blade-like tip of it pointed at the back of her head, and she began to spin around. She was most definitely going to show me her magic—and it was even more beautiful than any other animal I’d seen so far.

The way she moved her paws would make you think that she was climbing invisible steps until she was a fewinches off the branch, spinning in the air, guiding herself with her tail. The antennas on her back came to life, spilling out those little fireflies not only in green but in red and blue and yellow as well. She spun around, moving her feet and legs and tail and neck as if she were in a choreographed dance, and goddess, Iwantedher.

I wanted her by my side every second of every day for the rest of my life. I wanted to look at her, pet her, swim with her, sleep with her, watch her breathe for hours on end. I wanted to feed her and bathe her and do every little thing with her right there by my side—and this insane urge that came to me so suddenly knocked the breath right out of my lungs.

That’s not where it ended. I saw her magic so clearly, saw her level and her endurance and her stamina—an image of her running up a mountain covered in snow popped into my head as she spun around in the air. I saw how she would reinforce my own magic, how’d she share hers with me, how her intuition would be tied to me, how she’d learn my body language to a point where it would feel like she could read my mind.

And, in return, I saw how I would give her purpose, how I’d teach her the ways of man, how I’d raise her consciousness to a new level simply by sharing a bond with her.

The feeling, these imagesin my head couldn’t have lasted longer than a few seconds, and suddenly I understood exactly why every player who’d bonded had laughed and played with their new familiar the way they had.

Fuck, that wasintense. So intense I wanted to grab her and steal her away from this game and keep her in my room forever. So intense that I’d forgotten I was in the Iris Roe, and that she was done showing me who she was and what she was capable of, so now it wasmyturn.

My turn to show her my magic, how much control of it I had, how much raw power. To show her what she would get in return if she chose to bond with me.

The problem was… “I don’t have any magic.”

My voice shook. The vulcera moved her head to the sides like a confused little puppy.

Tears in my eyes because, despite everything, I still didn’t want to fucking die.

“I’m…I’m sorry. Please don’t come closer. I don’t want to shoot you.”

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