Seven Deadly Shadows

by Courtney Alameda

  The minutes stretch so long, they might as well be hours.

  “Hey!” Araki-sensei, her voice muffled by the closet door. “Who are you? What are you doing in here? Is that a sword?”

  I press my lips together, praying silently that the Shinigami in White doesn’t harm Araki-sensei.

  “Be quiet, woman,” the Shinigami in White says. Her wooden geta sandals click on the linoleum floor. Getting closer.

  No, I whisper in my head. No, no, no. Turn around, go away. My palm grows sweaty in Shiro’s hand.

  “Only authorized personnel are supposed to be in the school after hours,” Araki-sensei says. “I’m calling the police.”

  “Very well,” the Shinigami in White says. “See how much good it will do you.”

  There’s a loud ding! like the sound of one of the school’s old phones being smashed against the floor. Araki-sensei shrieks, so high and piercing, it makes my blood’s temperature drop. I shut my eyes and bite my lip to keep quiet. All the memories of the night Grandfather died rush back at me, taunting me from the closet corners.

  Coward!

  Your grandfather’s dead because of you!

  Everyone will die because of you!

  The shinigami’s voice breaks through the closet door again: “Get out, or I’ll kill you.”

  A weeping Araki-sensei must comply with the demand, because the door to the teachers’ office slams a few seconds later.

  Click-clack.

  The Shinigami in White’s steps draw closer.

  Click-clack.

  She takes her time, rummaging through the room.

  Click-clack.

  A shadow falls over the line of light on the floor. I hold my breath, my heart bashing itself against my ribs.

  The door opens.

  I can’t see the shinigami’s face, nor any part of her besides the hem of her pale kimono. A single moth lands on her toe. I wonder if it can see me, shrouded in musty school flags and shadows, or if Shiro’s spell has worn off or worn down.

  After several torturous seconds, the shinigami closes the door.

  I don’t breathe again until the office door closes, too. Then Shiro and I slump together, our shoulders touching. We don’t risk so much as a word. He leans down and presses a kiss into my hair, breathing in deep. It’d be romantic if I weren’t so terrified all my insides were about to become my outsides.

  My phone rumbles in my pocket. Cursing in my head, I yank out my phone and check the messages.

  It’s from Roji: Send me your location now—we’ll open a torii gate for you. O-bei’s here and she says your life is in danger.

  I drop her a pin of my current coordinates, then type back to her. There’s a shinigami here, at my school—

  A white moth flutters down and lands on my screen. Its little pipe-cleaner antennae twitch as if to say, Caught you.

  “Oh no,” I whisper, fear gripping me.

  “Move!” Shiro kicks the closet door open. He darts out first, looking right, then left. “Hurry,” he says, offering me a hand. We race past the teachers’ desks, papers fluttering in our wake, to the big bank of windows on the far wall. I throw the latch on the closest one, but it’s painted shut. Wire mesh tempers the glass pane. Shiro punches the window, but it doesn’t shatter.

  “Try the other ones!” I whisper fiercely, hurrying to the next window and fiddling with the lock. None of them budge. My heart pounds in my throat, and I beg the latches to move. “Can you use the door-opening spell again?!”

  “That’s an air pressure spell!” Shiro shouts. “It won’t work on—”

  The door to the teachers’ office explodes open. A cloud of white moths swirls into the room, heralds of my would-be killer. I spin, putting my back to the wall of windows.

  “Enough!” the Shinigami in White shouts. “You die, now.”

  “I don’t take orders from dead people!” Shiro shouts. A plume of fire explodes through the room, roaring over the desks and setting their surfaces alight. The Shinigami in White leaps through the flames, brandishing her blade. Shiro dodges her first swing, then counters her second by grabbing a desk and flipping it upright. The Shinigami in White’s sword slams into the wood. Papers, lamps, staplers, and wire baskets roll off the desk’s surface, bouncing off her shoulders and body, and then crashing into the floor. The shinigami shrieks with rage, trying to wrench her sword free.

  With a shout, Shiro throws his shoulder into the desk. It topples over with a crash, trapping the Shinigami in White from the hip down. She claws at the wooden desk, her sword just out of reach. Shiro won’t be able to hold her off much longer, not without help.

  And that’s when I spot the sasumata. Every school in Japan has a set of these polearms—they look like long, blunted pitchforks. I grab two from the wall rack and rush across the room, tossing one to Shiro. He snatches it from the air, leaps onto the desk drawers, and slams the sasumata’s prongs around the Shinigami in White’s torso and upper arms. She swears and struggles, but Shiro keeps her trapped against the floor. When she tries to tut a spell, I leap forward, capturing her right arm against the desk’s back flank.

  Shiro looks up at me and grins. “You’re getting good at this.”

  “I guess that’s one way to put it,” I say with a grimace. The Shinigami in White grabs my sasumata with her free hand. I lean my full weight on the pole, engaging the calf muscles in my legs. I’m holding her, but barely.

  “Now what will you do?” the Shinigami in White asks us. “Keep me captive till the room burns down? Or hope your mortal police arrive in time to save you?”

  “Please, Yuza darling,” someone says from the hallway. “Do you really think I’d let you kill an ally of the Twilight Court?”

  I turn. O-bei stands in the doorway with a smirk. Even in the world of the living, she looks every bit as ethereal as she did in Yomi—her furisode is made from black silk patterned with glowing white chrysanthemums and shaded with the red shadows of butterflies. She wears her hair in an elaborate updo, and when she steps into the room, her delicate hair ornaments twinkle and ring.

  “Damn you and your lies, Katayama,” Yuza—the Shinigami in White now has a name—wheezes from the ground.

  “I sent my son to stop you the first time,” O-bei says, strolling to my side. “But since you are so very persistent, I thought a personal visit might be more . . . impactful?”

  O-bei knew about the train attack, and she didn’t warn us? I shoot a dark look at Shiro. He narrows his eyes, but otherwise, his expression is unreadable.

  “I’ll kill you all,” Yuza snaps.

  “I see you are succeeding in that goal,” O-bei replies, sounding bored.

  Yuza hisses, but she’s interrupted by the sound of heavy boots in the hallway. “Did you find them?” Roji calls. She pokes her head into the teachers’ office, her eyes going wide when her gaze lands on Yuza. “By the gods, is that Yuza of Osore?”

  “Indeed,” O-bei replies.

  Roji blinks. “Whoa. Do you want me to kill her?”

  “Oh no,” O-bei says, and her smile looks positively crocodilian. “No, no, my children. She comes with us. I have plans for our dear Yuza-san, the Black Blade of the Iron Palace.”

  Yuza closes her eyes, her face a mask. Even to my ears, O-bei’s pronouncement sounds like a fate worse than death.

  Twenty

  Fujikawa Shrine

  Kyoto, Japan

  The wee hours find me slouching over history homework, but I find reading about war while preparing for one is an exercise in frustration. It’s hard to focus on the present when the future keeps tugging on my ear. My gaze drifts to a book sitting on the corner of my desk—a battered library copy of otogi-zôshi stories, legends from old Japan.

  Sticking my pencil in my bun, I set the book of legends on top of my textbook. The old pages cough dust in my face. I sneeze, wiping water from my eyes as I turn the pages. It doesn’t take me long to find the tale of Yorimitsu, the hero who last slew Shuten-doji. The book
includes an illustration of Shuten-doji at Oeyama: his massive, crimson-red ogre’s head dominates the page, his mouth open in an eternal cackle. Black smoke billows where his hair should be, and—

  A knock sounds at my door, startling me. Shaking off my nerves, I swivel my desk chair toward the door and say, “Come in!”

  The door swings inward. To my surprise, Shiro stands on the other side. He leans against the jamb, holding up a pair of Kit Kats. “I saw your light in the window and thought you could use a break,” he says by way of explanation. “So I ran down to the twenty-four-hour konbini. Raspberry’s your favorite, right?”

  “Um, yeah.” I slide my glasses off my face, suddenly conscious of my polka-dot pajama bottoms and loose-fitting tee. “How’d you know?”

  “Easy,” he says with a shrug. “You always picked it when we were in Tokyo.”

  “Oh,” I say, setting my glasses down on the desk. I pull my legs up, sitting cross-legged on the chair. It was one thing for Shiro to be in my sleeping space while we were in Tokyo, because we didn’t have any other choice. Back at O-bei’s inn, he and I danced around each other’s privacy, knocking more often than we needed to, and excusing ourselves to the balcony whenever necessary. Shiro had taken perverse delight in removing his shirt in front of me, which never failed to burn a blush into my cheeks.

  It was one thing for Shiro and me to share neutral territory—but even if this is a guest room, it’s still my private space in Grandfather’s house. The implications of him being in here could shift under my feet like quicksand. Perhaps I’m as old-fashioned as my mother, but it just feels like it means something to invite a boy into my bedroom. Especially this boy.

  K-dramas promised me that love was something that hit you out of the blue, like a star falling from the sky. Perhaps it felt that way for him; but for me, it crept up on little fox feet, slow and quiet, as if it didn’t want to startle me.

  “So . . . ,” Shiro says with a sheepish grin. “Can I come in?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, I nod. He crosses the room and sets the chocolate bars on top of the illustrations of Shuten-doji—one raspberry, the other green tea. Kit Kats are often gifted to students before exams . . . or, I suppose, to Shinto shrine maidens about to attempt a military coup against one of the country’s most reviled demons.

  With every breath I take, the blood moon gets a little closer to rising. We are not ready. Shimada and I still don’t know where the final shard of the Kusanagi lies. We have three shinigami pledged to our cause—five if you count O-bei and Ronin, I guess, but they won’t stay if we don’t manage to complete the cabal of seven.

  What’s more, I am not ready. No matter how much training I complete with Roji, I won’t be a master by the time the blood moon rises.

  “Kitto katsu,” Shiro says softly, which means you’re sure to win in Japanese.

  “I don’t know about that,” I say.

  He glances down at my reading material, leaning against my desk. “And reading horror stories about Shuten-doji will help?”

  “You know I like to be prepared.”

  “Overprepared,” he says with a grin.

  “Only when I can’t afford to fail.” I rise from my seat, slide the Kit Kats off the library book, and close it. “But I don’t feel like I’m doing enough, even though I spend every waking moment getting ready for the blood moon. The pressure of trying to balance everything is just . . .”

  I pause, not sure I can articulate how I feel without crumbling.

  “It’s intense,” Shiro says, wrapping his pinkie finger around mine.

  “Yeah,” I say with a sigh.

  He rests his cheek on the crown of my head. I turn my face toward him, drawn by some force I can’t quite name. Our noses bump. I giggle. A Kira of any other moment would be mortified to make that sound, but it draws a happy sigh from Shiro. I suppose it can’t be all that bad.

  “Can we finish what we started under the umbrella?” he asks, running his thumb along the line of my jaw.

  I ball one of my hands in his shirt. “You mean before we were so rudely interrupted?”

  “By an irritating oni.”

  “So long as you’ll still owe me a kiss under an umbrella . . .”

  A faraway scream rolls through the shrine, startling us both. Shiro pushes himself away from the desk, his muscles tensed, ears pricked in the direction of the sound.

  “What was that?” I whisper.

  “It sounded like a woman screaming,” Shiro says.

  “Well, I know that much,” I say, trying not to roll my eyes.

  Shiro puts a finger to his lips as another shriek slips inside the house. “Stay here. I’ll go find out what’s wrong.”

  “Are you kidding me?” I say, crossing my room. I grab a pair of skinny jeans from the dresser. “I’m not staying behind, not when someone is screaming in my shrine.”

  “You’ll be safer if you stay—” But he stammers to a stop as I shuck my pajama bottoms off, my underwear hidden by the length of my T-shirt. He stares, and for once, it’s his turn to blush.

  “You mind?” I ask, stepping into my jeans. “It’s not like I have time for propriety, here.”

  He faces the wall, chuckling to himself as he wipes his palms on his thighs. I button my jeans, tuck the front of my shirt into my waistband, and grab a sweatshirt from my closet. I toss it on as we head downstairs. Shiro opens the front door. I slip into a pair of flats, and then I follow him out into the darkness.

  The night stands at attention, cold and still, as if it shares our fears. We pause for a moment, listening. My breath clouds around my face. Another cry pierces the air, and Shiro takes my hand. We plunge through Grandfather’s wilting gardens, following the screams to the motomiya.

  When we reach the small shrine, my gaze falls to the trapdoor. It yawns open, the darkness inside perfect. Complete. A woman’s wail creeps up from the cellar.

  I start for the door.

  “Kira!” Shiro hisses at me, grabbing for my hand. I shake him off, entering the small shrine and easing onto the cellar steps. At the bottom, a small amount of light struggles across the floor. My ears pick up a guttural voice, one that drags through my belly and leaves me quivering. Its tongue—unrecognizable, foreign—sounds hard-edged and cruel, as if its speaker has a mouth full of nails.

  Shiro follows me down.

  The air grows colder as my feet hit the cellar’s dirt floor. The darkness runs thick, barely broken by the meager hitodama spheres bouncing along the ceiling. I breathe in through my nose. The dry, dusty air stings my nostrils and throat.

  The shinigami have collected here like shadows. Heihachi turns to me as I enter—he’s hovering closest to the door. His moth beats her tiny wings in alarm, fluttering over his shoulder. The others are crowded in a loose semicircle around one corner of the room: Shimada stands at the center apex, his face grim, his hands tucked into his sleeves. O-bei is at his side, her heart-shaped mouth drawn into a thin line; Roji has her fists on her hips, and a fifth person stands with his back to me. Despite his ashen-white hair, it takes me a second to recognize him.

  Ronin.

  “What are you doing here?” I say, charging into the cellar, Ronin in my sights. “I told you to stay away—”

  A shriek stops me. A woman in a dirty kimono kneels on the floor, shackled by her wrists and ankles. The gray metal reminds me of the shinigami’s blades—it glows with the light of a cloudy day. She peers at me through a snarled curtain of hair, the irises of her eyes swallowed by her pupils. Looking at her pokes holes in my sanity.

  “Yuza?” I whisper.

  She lunges at me, screaming. Oily tears leak down her cheeks, staining her skin. In the chilly light of her chains, she looks like a vengeful ghost. She strains for another moment, neck tendons popping, before she lets out a mournful sob and collapses to the floor.

  “What are you doing to her?” I ask. My revulsion puts my anger on ice.

  “Nothing,” O-bei says, stepping close
and placing a hand on Yuza’s head. Yuza growls. “Shuten-doji’s followers have cursed this one, and they now try to call her home. You must understand, Kira, we needed the talents of five shinigami to subdue her.”

  “You should have come to me for permission,” I say through my teeth. O-bei always sets them on edge.

  O-bei croons at Yuza, turning the other shinigami’s chin up and stroking her cheek. “Had I waited but one more moment, this one would have broken free and had a knife at your pretty throat—”

  Yuza shrieks like a police siren. Her body contorts, neck snapping back at an impossible angle. She collapses to the floor, reaching out to me with a shaking hand. I step back, right up against Shiro’s chest. He places his hands on my upper arms, bracing me.

  Even O-bei recoils as she screams again. Heihachi shudders. Only Shimada remains impassive, unmoved.

  “Can’t you help her?” I ask them.

  “No,” Shimada says gruffly. “Though I want to be clear: should we fail to destroy Shuten-doji, the shinigami in this room will share Yuza-san’s fate. Her curse may pass, but our torment will be everlasting.”

  “We will not fail,” I say, though I feel helpless watching Yuza struggle. If I can’t protect one shinigami, how can I expect to save seven?

  “There is one thing I could try . . . hmm,” Heihachi says, breaching the ring of shinigami to crouch at Yuza’s side. She swipes at him with one hand, but the malice in her attempt is overcome by her frailty.

  “May you know peace, sister,” Heihachi says, pressing his thumb to Yuza’s brow. His small moth balances on his knuckles.

  Tendrils of smoke rise from Yuza’s flesh. It swirls around her face, funneling toward Heihachi and sliding into his nostrils, his tear ducts, and his ears. He gasps in pain. Yuza’s breathing slows, and the tightness in her limbs eases. She collapses to the floor, drawing in a deep, jagged breath.

  Heihachi’s face pales, growing so gray I wonder if it will crumble like ash. A black tear bubbles from the corner of one eye. He wipes it away with a finger.