by Carly Chase
She rose to her feet and paced around as she spoke, wondering if it would be OK for her to look in the one cupboard in the room on the offchance it had something she could use to make art with in it.
Ah, whatever, they did tell me to make myself at home, and it’s not like I’ll be nosy if it has Shiro’s private stuff in it. What am I going to do, read her diary? I can’t even read in this place!
The cupboard was mostly filled with bottles of a green liquid, with no label. It looked kind of like the green protein shakes Darren the gym freak from Anya’s office in New York had always insisted on drinking at his desk.
Maybe that’s what they are, some kind of vegetable juice to keep Shiro nourished while she’s unconscious and can’t eat, or something? I mean, they don’t seem to have IVs here, they must have to feed her something…
Out of curiosity, she unscrewed the cap of one of the bottles and sniffed the oily dark green liquid inside.
Yup. Smells a bit like pesto.
Deciding it was definitely Shiro’s food, she put it back, and searched the shelf underneath. As well as some mundane objects like a wooden bowl, spoons, and a hand mirror, she did find a small, cork-stoppered bottle of what looked like black ink, a couple of brushes, and a stack of small pieces of parchment, all cut to the same size, almost like little blank fliers.
Suddenly, there was the sound of a huge crash outside, and then a crackling noise, like fireworks. Alarmed, Anya shoved the ink, brush and papers she was holding into the deep pocket of her blue satin bathrobe, and dashed to the window, looking for a way to open the blinds and see outside.
But in the same moment, a disheveled looking Mamoru ran into the room.
“Anya, I think yokai are attacking. I’ll go out and help Reo fight them off. This house is well protected, so you and Shiro should be safe here, but whatever you do don’t go outside, and please, stay with her… I don’t know what you can do but if anything happens to me or… Well, just stay with Shiro, please.”
Anya nodded mutely, her mind full of questions, but aware that asking the panicking priest (who had clearly just woken up) anything non-essential was a bad idea. But as he turned to race back out, she quickly thought -
“Hey, is there a knife or, I don’t know, any kind of weapon I could have. Just in case?”
“Yes, yes, of course. Blades aren’t always effective on yokai, but it’s better than you having nothing. Check the room next to Shiro’s, you can find some knives and swords in there – take whatever you think you can use...”
And with that he was running, as the firework sounds, and now some strange, animalistic howls filled the air outside.
Her heart pounding, Anya quickly went to the room Mamoru had indicated, and realized that it was someone’s bedroom – perhaps Reo’s. Unlike Shiro’s room it had furniture and personal effects, including a screen with clothing draped over the top of it, and a writing desk with a haphazardly organized selection of scrolls on it. What Anya was looking for was on the wall though, where a rack held several different weapons. There was a katana, which Anya decided she would have no skill with at all, but there was also a smaller version, similar in design to the long samurai sword with its black sheath, only more around the length of a machete. Anya had never used a knife of any kind outside of the kitchen (and even then, not a huge amount, considering how many good takeouts were in her neighborhood) but felt she’d have a better chance of being able to use that than the larger swords, or some of the other stranger looking weapons, like the ax type things with chains hanging off of them… Even in her panicked state, the artist inside her couldn't help but think that both the katana she was forgoing, and the knife she was taking, were extremely beautiful objects.
With nowhere to put her new weapon in her unfortunate pajamas-and-robe outfit, she gripped its sheath in her hand and went back to Shiro’s side.
“So now I suppose we just wait, and hope your brother knows what he’s doing, huh?” she said to the sleeping girl, talking to quell her own anxiety. Just what would, or could she do if yokai somehow got into the house? She didn’t even know what they looked like, or whether stabbing them with her one weapon would actually affect them. What if they were like ghosts, and couldn’t be stabbed? What if they just laughed at her standing there with this big knife, in her bathrobe, trying to slash at them, and then took her life, or cursed her like Shiro?
“No… No, that can’t be how it’s going to end. If I was summoned here to fulfill some purpose or other, like Mamoru believes, then I can’t be destined to just die today, after doing nothing. It’ll be OK, Shiro. Reo and Mamoru will fend off the attack. We’ll be fine.”
Somehow even that logic didn’t help Anya truly feel safe, though, as the crashes and growls outside grew nearer.
Chapter 6
Ikari was already exhausted, and in considerable pain, but it was nearly over. He’d destroyed enough of the wards around the town, and now, the army of lower level yokai were flooding in. He’d recruited them with the promise of access to the town for a few hours – to take the humans’ food, their resources, whatever they wanted. All he’d asked them for in return was to defend him from the priests and any other humans while he made his way to the house where they were keeping Yuki, and back out again. The getting back out part, well, that might be more of a problem, depending on whether Yuki could walk and fight herself, or whether he’d have to carry her – which would make him unable to use his tiger form.
Finding Yuki wasn’t a problem anymore. For months now, he’d been able to see her anywhere, thanks to the glow he’d started to see coming from her soul.
He hadn’t told anyone, even Yuki herself, that she was his fated love. She was younger than him, and she’d know herself once she reached the right age. A kitsune reached adulthood when their fox form had nine tails. Last time he’d seen her, she had had seven. It wouldn’t be long before she was able to see the same glow coming from him, and he knew she would be happy – as kids they’d talked about how great it would be if they got to marry each other and play together forever. When he’d reached maturity and begun to see that their hopes were to be fulfilled, it had been all he could do not to tell her, but he didn’t want to take away the thrill for her of discovering it with her own eyes. But then the humans had taken her.
He’d known she was alive, and where she was, and had formed a plan to get her back – a plan that had the blessing of Yuki’s family in the kitsune village in the forest. It certainly wouldn’t have had the blessing of his own clan, but he was done with them anyway. The kitsune had accepted him, and once he and Yuki were married, he’d live with them instead. He was lucky his brother was the alpha, and wouldn’t be likely to let the tiger clan stop him living his life the way he wanted to, with the fox yokai. He had considered asking for Kiba’s help in rescuing Yuki, but no, this was for his love, something he had to do by himself to protect her and prove that he was his own man now. What kind of man would he be if he relied on his older brother whenever there was trouble, even if Kiba was one of the most fearsome yokai in the land? This was the fourth time he’d tried to execute his plan, but this time he had more yokai following him than ever, and he’d perfected taking out the barrier. This time, he would not fail.
The outskirts of the town looked like a warzone now, with yokai of all different kinds flying, running, growling – doing whatever they could to distract the two human men dashing about trying to fire off purification spells to destroy them. Ikari hoped not too many of the yokai got hurt in doing this, but he’d told them the dangers, and these were just low level yokai with the intelligence of reptiles, driven only by their own greed to take these risks. They weren’t doing it out of support for Ikari and his cause, just pouncing on a rare chance to get inside a big human settlement and do what they wanted. Besides, he had bigger things to worry about.
In his human form, because the priests would certainly have turned all their attention towards him if they’d known a tiger yokai was part of th
e attack, he’d crept unheeded through the residential part of the town where the battle was playing out, and towards the house Yuki’s light was shining from. Unfortunately, this house clearly belonged to the priest, as it was shrouded in its own level of protection.
What have those bastards been doing to Yuki in there? Why are they keeping her alive?
He couldn’t tell where the wards were, or even if they were normal wards or something in the structure of the house itself. He was going to have to just take the pain they were going to cause him, if he was going to get inside and find Yuki. The idea of it made his stomach lurch.
But she’s been inside there for weeks… She can’t possibly be awake with all of those wards, or if she is, she’s been in excruciating pain the whole time… Fucking monsters!
Deciding this was no time for elegance, he charged up the wooden steps leading to the door of the house with a loud battlecry, kicking through the door. He didn’t shout the words of his clan – his roar was simply her name.
Anya heard the crash and the impassioned cry, and then she heard the undeniable sound of something coming up the stairs. Her eyes darted wildly around the room, as if there might be some answer somewhere, but she knew, from her shaking legs to her dry mouth, that a yokai was now in the house, and, from the weight of its steps, that it was nearly there, in this room with her and Shiro.
She positioned herself between the door and the sleeping girl, and, with no idea what else to do, drew the small sword out of its black sheath. Her hands were trembling, but she held the solid sheath in her left hand – recognizing that it maybe had some value as a shield - and pointed out the blade with her right.
The man who tore open the sliding door to Shiro’s room looked furious, but Anya saw that he was only a youth. Muscular and brawny, dressed in ragged scraps of leather, and with damp, long black hair sticking to his sweaty body, he didn’t look like anyone she had seen before, but there was no denying he was human – or thereabouts, knowing the small amount she knew about yokai. If he could adopt a human form, and if the emotion and passion in his expression were anything to go by, Anya was sure that trying to reason with him like a man was the only way she was getting out of this alive. He was panting as if in pain. Had he fought his way past Mamoru and Reo? Did he get here because the priest and his assistant were dead?
But before she could speak, the young man’s eyes had glanced from Shiro to herself, and there was a fury there that made her feel utterly defeated, before any fight or argument had begun.
“What did you do to Yuki?” the intruder yelled, his chest heaving as if it was hard to breathe, let alone shout, but he needed to do it anyway.
“I… I don’t know who Yuki is. Please, I have only been here a few hours, I don’t know anything...” Anya pleaded.
“Yuki! Yuki! The girl, there – Yuki is inside her. Why did you put Yuki’s soul in a human? What are you priests doing? It’s fucking sick!”
The youth tried to dash to the sleeping figure of Shiro, and Anya couldn’t manage her own body well enough to stop him, even though his ragged, labored breathing showed that he was weak, and she was the one with the weapon. He had a force in his presence that scared her, and Anya had never been in a physical altercation in her life.
I’m sorry, Shiro, he caught me off-guard – I won’t let him hurt you!
“Wait, please. I’m not a priest. I don’t know who Yuki is, but this is Shiro, she is the sister of the priest who owns this house. He summoned me today from another world and just left me to take care of her. I don’t know what else is going on, and I have never even seen a yokai before. I’m not your enemy. Please, please listen to me. We can talk, right? We can talk about what it is you want and this doesn’t have to end with anyone being hurt!”
To emphasize her intention to try and resolve things without violence, she put the knife back in its sheath, making sure that he saw her doing it, and slowly placed it on the floor next to her slippered feet. She hoped the gesture would carry a meaning to him, and that she hadn’t just unnecessarily disarmed herself – not that she had felt like she would really be able to attack him with it anyway.
“Shiro...” the fierce young man repeated thoughtfully, as he held a strand of Shiro’s hair in his hand – not menacingly, but more like someone who wanted to touch something just to check it was real.
“Yes. Her name is Shiro. She’s under a curse. That’s all I know.”
“Yuki had a human friend named Shiro. I told her human friends were pointless, but she said… She said Shiro was one of the good ones. I think…”
“Was Yuki a kitsune?” Anya asked, suddenly seeing a picture come together.
“Yuki is a kitsune, yes. She is alive, she is here. Inside this human. I can tell she is. It’s how I found her.”
“The priest said that Shiro has been unconscious ever since he saw her being attacked by a kitsune. He said he purified the kitsune though, and it cursed Shiro as it died.”
“Yuki is not an it. And she’s not dead, either. Your priest has been lying to you. Yuki wouldn’t have cursed her friend. Kitsune can’t even do stuff like that,” the man said, as if it were indisputable fact. Then, ignoring Anya’s protests, he stood and lifted Shiro, still with her blanket around her, into his arms. Even though he looked like he’d been through the wars, he picked her up as if she weighed nothing.
“What… What are you going to do to her?”
“I’m taking her back to Yuki’s family. Then I can find out what happened to her, and whether or not I need to come back and destroy this damn town and your priests.”
So he hasn’t already killed Mamoru and Reo.
Anya stood between the man and the door, but she wasn’t sure what to do. She wanted Shiro to be safe, but now she wasn’t sure if she was actually better off with this yokai man or not. Mamoru hadn’t told her the whole truth, unless the yokai was lying now, but why would a yokai with human intelligence have come here to take Shiro if he wasn’t in some way involved with the whole thing? If he had just wanted to harm a human woman there were plenty of them, she assumed, out in the town, and there was also Anya herself, who he had shown no specific malice towards once she’d told him she wasn’t a priest. Hadn’t she herself questioned whether Mamoru’s view of the yokai as unanimously evil was dangerously simplistic? What if the yokai could cure Shiro, where he had failed?
She made up her mind.
Though, I don’t look forward to explaining this to Mamoru.
“Wait… If you are going to take Shiro, please, you don’t know how to look after her while she’s in this state. At least take some of the food the priests have been giving her to keep her nourished.”
She went to the cupboard while the man’s fierce, golden eyes watched her suspiciously. She took a few of the bottles of the green liquid out and, with them bundled in her arms, walked over to the yokai. She was surprised at how unafraid she felt now, being so close to one of the things she’d heard only terrible stories about, but he seemed entirely like a young man, concerned about a friend to her. He somehow seemed just, honest. Like someone who probably didn’t consider deceiving people as a strategy.
But then she remembered what Mamoru had said about kitsune being tricksters.
What if I’m making a huge mistake?
“Are you a kitsune too?”
“No. I’m a tiger. What concern is it of yours, anyway, human? And what is this stuff?”
“No, no reason… I’m curious is all. We don’t have yokai where I come from.”
“Yeah, your human brethren probably wiped them out or something. I bet your priests here would do the same if they could. Although, whatever they’ve done to Yuki makes it seem to me that they’ve gone beyond just killing us now and are up to some other evil shit… Now I’m gonna ask you again, human. What is in the bottles?”
“It’s just some kind of vegetables and oil and stuff. They’ve been giving it to Shiro to keep her body nourished while she’s been unconscious, I t
hink. She needs some kind of food.”
The man looked at the bottles with skepticism.
“If it’s just food, then you won’t mind drinking some of it, will you?”
“Well, I...” Anya realized she wasn’t completely sure the bottles were food, but if they weren’t they were probably medicine. They were one of the only things in Shiro’s room, and it seemed unlikely the priests would keep anything harmful in here when they had that whole magic circle room downstairs to keep anything creepy in.
Besides, the liquid had just smelled like pesto. How bad could it be? And the man had a point – how could she expect him to give it to Shiro if he wasn’t sure it was safe.
“Sure,” she said, trying to look unconcerned, unscrewing the bottle.
Well, I hope this doesn’t turn me into a frog...
She took a sip of the liquid, which did simply taste like oil and herbs – like a salad dressing or something. Not unpleasant, though not something she’d normally swig out of a bottle by itself.
“There. See, it’s fine.”
And those were the last words Anya said before she snapped out of consciousness and fell to the floor, landing, luckily, on Shiro’s futon.
Chapter 7
Just outside of the barrier – or at least, where the barrier usually was – Kiba stopped in the woods and, under cover of darkness, transformed back into his human form. He quickly dressed in the clothes he’d been carrying in his bag around his neck. He didn’t wear much, given tiger yokai used to the mountains didn’t really feel the cold. Dressing in just simple scraps of leather allowed him to easily carry his clothing when he wanted to be free to switch between his human and tiger forms, and also protected his more sensitive parts. It wasn’t customary among civilized higher yokai to walk around naked, anyway.