Seven Deadly Shadows

by Courtney Alameda

  I half chuckle at this, wiping my eyes.

  O-bei draws a shaky breath. “But I need you to win, Kira. Promise me that my people will remain free. They have fought too long, and suffered too much, only to be pressed back into the service of a monster. If I didn’t believe you capable, I wouldn’t have saved your life.”

  “Okay,” I say, nodding. My vision swims now, and I run the back of my hand under my nose.

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise, Lady O-bei,” I say, bobbing my head. “I promise we’ll find a way to protect your people.”

  One by one, the others join us on the roof. Ronin finds us first, falling to his knees by O-bei’s side. She turns her face toward him, then reaches up to trace his cheekbone with a finger. Her hand shakes, then falters. Ronin catches it, cradling it in his own.

  Shimada and Roji arrive next. Shimada removes his hat, sinking to one knee beside Ronin. Heihachi crouches nearby, wiping his face with his palm. Yuza keeps a respectful distance, too, watching over the courtyard like a sentinel. Even Kiku seems to have found some manners. He sits on the edge of the roof, looking over and chewing on a bit of his beard.

  As the sun sinks to three-quarters gone, Shiro limps toward us. My heart soars to see him alive, and then shatters when I see the look on his face. Oni-chan pads next to him, both creatures battered but breathing. Shiro kneels across from his brother. O-bei reaches for Shiro with her free hand, and he clasps it tight. Her blood runs down the roof in a black river, collecting in the gutter at the edge. In the courtyard beyond, countless corpses are scattered across the ground—mostly ogres, but I spot the kitsune among them, too. Death lies everywhere I look.

  “Whatever . . . it takes . . . ,” O-bei rasps to her children. “You . . . protect our people. . . . Understand?”

  Ronin nods, his face devoid of emotion. Shiro sniffles and wipes at his eyes with the back of his sleeve. He meets my gaze for a moment, the despair he feels no doubt mirrored on my own face.

  “Finish . . . my work . . . ,” O-bei says, turning to Ronin.

  “Yes, Mother,” he says.

  “And you . . . ,” she says, turning toward Shiro. “Grow . . . a tail . . . it will make both of your mothers happy.”

  This makes Shiro half laugh, half sob, an unattractive combination that somehow feels like the only way to respond. I wish I could withdraw from this horribly private moment; it feels wrong to witness so much pain. And it feels worse to know that it’s being suffered for my sake.

  “Be good . . . to each other . . . ,” O-bei says, and each word feels more painful than the last. “Remember . . . you only have your brother. . . .”

  When the sunlight is no more than a glimmer on the tops of the mountains, O-bei slips away. Ronin reaches out and closes her eyes—a strangely human act. I cover my face with my hands, letting the tears pool in my palms. We have come so far, too far, to lose now. I don’t know how to keep all the promises I’ve made to O-bei, or to Grandfather, or even to myself at this point. Our hopes for a cabal now lie dead in my lap, and the Kusanagi remains little more than a holy heap of trash.

  “What happens to shinigami when they die?” I ask, hollow.

  “They cease to be,” Shimada replies. “It is the same fate Shuten-doji will suffer if we succeed.”

  In the east, the sky has begun to redden. We don’t have much time. I see only one path to success left to me, one last desperate ploy to win.

  As Ronin gathers O-bei’s body into his arms, I lift my gaze to Shimada. “Can you turn me into a shinigami, Shimada-sama? Is there time enough?”

  “Kira!” Shiro says in a half gasp, half reprimand.

  “We don’t have any other choice,” I say, rising to my feet. “I won’t let O-bei give her life in vain.”

  Shiro leaps up. “We can find another way—”

  “How, Shiro?” I say, taking the bag of broken shards and shaking it at him. “The Kusanagi no Tsurugi is broken beyond repair, and the blood moon is rising. We are out of options. We are out of time.”

  “That doesn’t mean you have to give your life!” Shiro shouts, a big vein throbbing in his forehead.

  “Enough,” Shimada says, stepping between us. “I agree with your shrine guardian, Kira. Even if there was time enough for your transformation, defeating Shuten-doji is not worth your life. Not when we have other options.”

  “Then what do you suggest we do?” I say, not a little coldly.

  “The same thing we did five hundred years ago,” Roji says, crossing her arms over her chest. “We run.”

  “Where?” I say, not sure which admission shocks me more, the fact that Roji’s willing to abandon our mission wholesale, or that she might have had something to do with the current state of the Kusanagi no Tsurugi. “It doesn’t matter where we go—Shuten-doji will find us.”

  “Then we keep running,” Shiro says, taking me by the hand. “I won’t sit here and watch you end your life, Kira. My job is to protect this shrine, and you are its beating heart. If you die, not only do I fail my vows, but I fail the person I care most for in this world.”

  My words flee. I open and close my mouth like a koi, as if Shiro has managed to suck all the air from the space around us. I have no clever response or snappy comeback, because my anger deflates faster than the heat can build inside me.

  “How can we protect the shrine if we abandon it?” I whisper to him.

  He folds my hands in his. “Sword first, then the shrine.”

  I press my lips together, hating that he makes good sense. If we leave the shrine, it will most certainly be torn to bits by Shuten-doji’s yokai; but if we don’t protect the Kusanagi no Tsurugi, the loss of the shrine won’t matter. Nothing will.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt this nauseating moment,” Roji says, crouching at the roof’s edge, “but we should move now. Moon’s rising.”

  The first sliver of a red moon appears on the eastern horizon. The shinigami turn their heads in unison, as if they can sense its energy.

  “Roji’s right, we need to leave,” Shimada says. “Split up. Meet in Undertokyo at the Red Plum Inn—Roji and I will guard the priestess.”

  The other shinigami melt into the shadows. Even Kiku leaps from the rooftop in a huff, muttering something under his breath about Shuten-doji. Shiro kisses me on the forehead. “I’ll see you soon.”

  “You’re not coming with us?” I ask, looking back and forth between him and Shimada.

  “Someone’s gotta keep an eye on Oni-chan,” Shiro says with a grin.

  “Better for each of us to travel alone,” Shimada says. “But we cannot take that chance, not with the shards of the Kusanagi.”

  “Let’s go, let’s go, people!” Roji says, hustling me toward the edge of the roof. “We literally don’t have all night.”

  As I drop to the ground, a flicker of light catches my attention. A golden ghost stands on a far veranda, dressed in an elegant red kimono. Her nine long tails fall behind her in an elegant, fluffy train. She radiates warmth, security, and kindness; almost like the shield that protected me in the Twilight Court, or the fire that sprang from my fingertips in the Iron Palace.

  “Kuzunoha?” I whisper.

  With a smile, she beckons to me. The air ripples around me. Time slows. Roji gets stuck leaping from the roof, as if someone hit the pause button on her in an action scene. Behind me, Oni-chan hovers mid-leap; and Shiro balances on one tiptoe, caught in the middle of his stride.

  I turn back, and the kitsune spirit disappears around a corner.

  “Wait!” I call, jogging after her, following the golden embers that float in her wake. They lead me to the gaping mouth of the motomiya, which now lies cast in shadow.

  The embers trail down into the darkened cellar.

  With a quick glance over my shoulder—and perhaps against my better judgment—I step inside.

  Thirty-Three

  Fujikawa Shrine

  Kyoto, Japan

  The cellar is empty.

 
; The last of Kuzunoha’s golden embers float in the air, sizzling out one by one. A whisper curls in one corner of the room. I turn to trace it, only to feel something scamper between my feet. My pulse flutters in my throat. I reach for my katana, remembering too late that I lost it fighting Tamamo-no-Mae.

  “Who’s there?” I say, stepping back as whispers take shape in my ears.

  “Outcast.”

  “Failure.”

  “Dishonorable.”

  “Mutt.”

  Something moves on the razor’s edge of my sight. It draws a raspy breath, then materializes in the cellar corner. In the dim light, I can barely make out the jagged outline of a pleated skirt and long, tangled locks of hair. The head spasms left as the body stutters forward, her joints popping in and out of their sockets with each step. Her head lolls back on her shoulders, exposing blackened pits where her eyes should be. A dark, oily substance drains from those sockets and dyes her cheeks black.

  “You will never fit in . . . ,” the ghost groans in Ayako’s voice.

  I step back. “I don’t need to fit in, not with a monster like you.”

  A second voice adds: “You can’t fight . . . Kira . . .” I whirl as a creature crawls from the well, this one pale with mud-splattered hair and fox ears. His eyeless gaze makes my whole soul recoil.

  “That’s not true,” I tell him, balling my fists at my sides. “You know I’ve been training nonstop—”

  “You’re an embarrassment to the family.” Spectral versions of my parents appear by the cellar door, side by side, their dark gazes empty of anything alive.

  “I am the only one fighting to keep our family’s legacy intact,” I say, pivoting toward them. “And all I have ever done is try to be an honorable daughter.”

  “Honorable?” someone hisses. I spin, shocked to find O-bei behind me. She steps forward, her sightless gaze boring into me. With charred lips, she says, “There was no honor in the way you let me die.”

  A sixth voice slices through the darkness: “Or the way you hid in the cellar while Ibaraki stole my life.” Grandfather steps from the shadows, oil oozing from his empty eyes. “You left me to die, you coward. You do not deserve to bear my name!”

  Those words hit their mark, sinking between my ribs and piercing my heart. I close my eyes. My throat tightens. “I did what you asked me to do, Grandfather,” but these words leave my lips on a whisper. My knees quake. The tremors echo through my bones and rattle in my skull. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “You’re such a burden, Kira,” Shiro says.

  “An embarrassment to yourself and to our school,” Ayako snaps.

  “I wish you hadn’t been born,” Mother says.

  They drag their bodies closer, their joints creaking and popping. I lift my gaze as the not-Mother reaches out and grabs me by the shoulder, driving her broken nails into my flesh.

  “You’re an outcast.”

  The specters circle me.

  “You are a failure.”

  Their hands fall on my head, my shoulders, my arms.

  “You aren’t worthy of your name.”

  They speak in one voice now—the more I listen to it, the more I realize it sounds like my own. It tears the air from the room, making it difficult to breathe. Their nails break into my flesh, finding purchase to drag me down, down, down. Straight to my knees.

  “You have already lost,” they whisper to me. “Give in, give up.”

  “No,” I say. The word is a small, hoarse thing. I swallow hard, focusing on one of Kuzunoha’s glowing embers. I shake my head and say, “No,” with more force. Gripping my sleeve, I yank the fabric away to expose my bracelet. The metal blazes, thrusting the shadows back. The specters shriek, covering their faces with their hands and bursting into clouds of black dust.

  “My name is Kira Fujikawa,” I say to the nameless thing I face. The dust rises from the ground and begins to coalesce into a new form. “I’m not a failure, not so long as the sun still rises—and nothing you can say will change that.”

  When the dust settles, I find myself staring into my own face. The creature has eyes like the backs of black beetles. She beckons me forward, asking me to join her at the empty altar. I step up, holding her strange, soulless gaze.

  “I’m not ashamed of who I am,” I tell her, taking the shards of the Kusanagi no Tsurugi from my back and resting them on the altar. “Not anymore.”

  The not-Kira closes her eyes and bows her head. She disintegrates mote by mote, the darkness spiraling away, leaving a brilliant, glowing being in its wake. I squint hard, holding up a hand to protect my eyes.

  In the cellar’s darkness, Kuzunoha glows like a golden star in the firmament. A floating crown of sunbeams spreads from the back of her head. She wears a multilayered Heian-era golden kimono, and her snow-white hair falls from her head in a long, unbroken sheet. My mouth drops open, so I bow deeply to keep myself from looking like a fool.

  “You cannot wield the Kusanagi no Tsurugi with darkness in your soul,” Kuzunoha says, her voice high and flutelike. She waves a hand over the altar, and my makeshift bag unrolls and opens, the silk lying flat at her command. The sword’s shattered pieces rise into the air and puzzle themselves back together, but they do not fuse.

  “Nor can I wield a shattered sword,” I say, daring to lift my gaze to hers. “How do I make the Kusanagi no Tsurugi whole again?”

  Kuzunoha smiles, filling my heart with the warmth of a summer’s day. “My child, you have carried the answer with you for years.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Do you not?”

  “What have I carried for . . .” I trail off, lifting my left wrist. My sleeve falls back, exposing my bracelet. I know the charms by heart—leaping tigers, blooming chrysanthemums, a dragon in flight. But two of the charms are shaped like suns—one charm portrays her face rising from the mists. The other shows her rays glittering from a cave. Time has tarnished and blackened their faces, but gold glints along their ridges.

  “These aren’t charms,” I say, sliding the bracelet off my wrist. “They’re menuki for the hilt of the Kusanagi no Tsurugi, aren’t they?”

  Kuzunoha’s smile widens. My hands tremble as I break the other charms away. Grandfather told me to protect this bracelet with my life; but he never told me the links weren’t just holy, but godly. Did he even know? Or was the secret lost to time?

  The Kusanagi no Tsurugi floats over the altar. Reverently, I fit the menuki into the hilt, under the diamond-shaped silk wrappings. I step back as a point of liquid light forms at the sword’s tip. It melts along the blunt edge, filling cracks and veining the blade with gold. The rust flakes away, perhaps blown by a kami’s breath. The hilt regains its luster, with twining birds, flowers, and blazing suns to decorate its hand guard.

  A tiny shooting star races from tip to tang, leaving a razor-sharp blade in its wake.

  Kuzunoha places her palms under the blade and hilt, lifts it, and offers it to me with a shallow bow. I accept it from her with both hands, bowing deeper.

  When I rise, she has gone.

  “Thank you,” I whisper to the darkness. “I will not fail you, Kuzunoha.”

  Once my eyes readjust to the cellar’s darkness, they find the faint outline of the cellar stairs. In the distance, I hear the shinigami calling my name. “Here!” I shout to them, taking the motomiya’s stairs two at a time. I emerge into the night, finding the shrine cast in red moonlight. Overhead, the moon has risen into the sky, its face stained red with blood. “I’m here!” I shout.

  The shinigami gather around the small shrine. Cast in the Kusanagi no Tsurugi’s glittering light, I find myself surrounded by the shinigami and the souls in their protection. Hundreds of human spirits follow in their wakes—old and young, all dressed in white robes. Roji has only women in her care. Heihachi cradles a single child spirit, and I know it must be Sana. The sword even casts Kiku in a gentler light.

  Shiro finds us last, and the spirits part for him as he
approaches me. He looks different in the Kusanagi’s light, his features a little more foxlike, with nine ghostly, black-tipped tails trailing in his wake. He wears his hoshi-no-tama around his neck.

  “You did it,” Shiro says, approaching me cautiously. I hold the blade up, displaying it to him. “How?”

  “The menuki were missing,” I say, and he grins. “I’ve had them on my bracelet all this time.”

  Shimada joins us. “No need to run now, eh?”

  “No, there’s not,” I say.

  A drumbeat rolls through the ground, quickening my blood. A great shock wave blasts through the shrine—doom!—making the buildings tremble. Cracks race like lightning along their walls. Tiles shatter and slide from the roofs.

  A second doom! rolls through the shrine.

  “They’re battering down the gates,” Shimada says. “To your positions, the enemy is upon us!”

  We race to the main courtyard. Out front, the shrine gates heave inward, their big wooden bones bent and twisted. Massive splinters burst from new joints in the wood, looking like broken chopsticks. I’m not sure how much longer our gates will hold—we might have seconds before the demons break through.

  Kiku charges forward, throwing his broad back against the shuddering gates. The remaining kitsune swarm around him, tutting mudras at the doors to bolster their defenses. Roji shouts something at me, but I can’t hear her over the groan of splintering wood. Shiro takes my hand and shouts, “We stick together, okay?” I nod, but before I can respond, the demons break through our defenses.

  The gates explode in. One door crumples like paper. The other one slams open like a pinball machine lever. It knocks into Kiku and tosses him like a rag doll, sending him sprawling across the cobblestones. With a roar, a massive oni charges into the courtyard, swinging his club in a wide arc. He must stand nearly ten feet tall, a towering, muscled beast in a tiger-skin kilt. Human skulls hang from a thick rope around his neck.

  Shimada and Roji dodge his attack. Two crimson-skinned oni climb atop the gatehouse, surveying the shrine. One crouches down, rubbing his thick beard with one hand. He looks over his shoulder, then gestures to someone or something outside our walls. The third ogre leaps down, brandishing a club at Yuza. She dances out of his range.