Demon Beast (Path of the Thunderbird Book 3)

by eden Hudson

  “Why didn’t you stop him?” Koida demanded, using the forceful speech tone of an authority addressing an underling. “You’re as evil as Singh, and you deserve to hang from your own sail beam.”

  “You uppity little sensha, is that what you used to slit the captain’s throat?” Rila nodded her pointed chin at Koida’s blade arm. The quartermaster widened her stance and cocked back her whip, trailing the bladed lashes of the Demon Fox over the planks with a scrape of Ro on wood. “Try to get close enough to me to use it. If you’ve got the nerve.”

  Righteous fury spurring her on, Koida dashed up the center of the gangplank. She needed to get on even footing with Rila. She’d never fought on uneven ground before, but she had heard time and again that being on the lower end put one at a disadvantage.

  With a crack, the lashes of the Demon Fox cut through the air, leaving behind glowing streaks of red in the lengthening shadows. Koida darted to the side, but Rila twitched her wrist, sending the bladed tips shooting after her. One landed with a thud in her left shoulder. Another tore into her left cheek.

  Koida screamed in pain. Wetness spilled down her jaw from the torn side of her face. With her right hand, Koida grabbed her cheek.

  The hairless quartermaster pulled back her whip for another strike.

  With sudden clarity, Koida realized that this was like a battle with Pernicious. If she let her guard down for even a moment—even to hold her own body together—she would be killed. She grabbed hold of Raijin’s Ro, just long enough to let the freezing cold wash over her and numb the pain.

  Then she let go of her cheek and took two running steps along the edge of the gangplank and launched herself at the gunwale. The bladed lashes of the Demon Fox changed direction and streaked toward her. Koida’s feet hit solid wood, and she swung her blade arm in a wide, arcing block. The lashes were sliced to pieces.

  Rila cursed and dismissed the destroyed whip, the Ro retreating into her heartcenter.

  In the brief opening while the quartermaster remanifested her whip, Koida sprinted along the gunwale at her. If she could get inside the reach of the lashes, Rila wouldn’t be able to use her favored weapon.

  Seeing Koida coming, Rila slashed the still manifesting whip at her. Koida vaulted over the glowing tendrils and dropped to the deck behind the quartermaster. Rila spun, snapping the lashes after her a heartbeat too late.

  From the corner of her eye, Koida saw sailors running toward them. Hush leapt down from the rigging, sais flashing bloodred in the growing darkness. She danced across the deck of the ship, her lean body and glowing weapons working in perfect tandem, hooking sailors’ arms and blades and throwing them with graceful twists and sharp thrusts.

  Koida glanced around for Cold Sun and immediately paid for her lapse in attention. Pain bloomed across her shoulder and back as Demon Fox lashes tore into her flesh. She screamed again as Rila tore the bladed tips back out.

  Berating herself for losing her concentration, Koida darted toward the woman. Rila backpedaled, clearly aware of Koida’s strategy and determined to keep her at a distance that made her lavaglass blade unusable.

  Unconsciously falling back on her years of bo-shan training, Koida manifested an off-balance amethyst stick and zigzag-stepped toward the woman.

  The glowing ruby lashes streaked toward her. Koida threw up her blade arm to block, ducking under it. The Ro tendrils wrapped around the black broadsword’s thick blade in glowing red spirals, the sharp ends pinging against the lavaglass.

  With a vicious snarl of satisfaction, Rila jerked downward, as if hoping to send Koida tumbling to the deck. Koida let the whip yank her lavaglass blade down. Over the top, she swung the bo-shan stick, bringing it down with a sharp crack on the side of Rila’s hairless head.

  The quartermaster grunted with surprise and stumbled a step to the side, grabbing her ear, but didn’t fall.

  Koida stopped in her tracks, stunned. Shouldn’t that blow have knocked the woman out? If she had landed a strike like that in sparring, any one of her masters would have called the match over.

  Though she hadn’t quite recovered, Rila lashed out with the whip. To keep the blade ends from embedding themselves in her stomach and chest, Koida had to pull her body out of line and slash across the tendrils with her moon broadsword. Because the slice connected on the unsharpened back of her blade, the whip wrapped around it once more. Koida twisted, this time yanking Rila before the quartermaster had a chance to pull her, then spun around, slamming her bo-shan down across the woman’s back and neck.

  The Demon Fox of Nine Tails flickered and went translucent, but somehow Rila maintained enough focus to keep from losing it completely. The quartermaster jerked back on the whip, pulling Koida toward her. Koida’s soft leather boots slipped on the deck, and her nose slammed into Rila’s sharp elbow.

  The amethyst bo-shan stick shattered, and Koida choked on the blood and mucus pouring down the back of her throat. She blinked rapidly, trying to see through watering eyes. How in blade and death was this woman still standing?

  Rila’s Ro whip disappeared, the ruby life force retreating up her arm and into her heartcenter only to pour out again a moment later into a wickedly curved knife. She swiped at Koida.

  Instinctively, Koida struck out with the moon broadsword, something between a High Shield technique and an off-balance chop. She felt a split second of resistance, then nothing.

  Something thudded to the deck. Rila froze in place, staring down at it.

  From below, Pernicious’s nine-note Petrifying Shriek of Legions cut through the clatter of Hush’s battle with the sailors. They went stiff with fear, paralyzed.

  Having heard the half-demon’s shriek her entire life, Koida wasn’t affected by it, but she went still anyway, following Rila’s bewildered gaze to the severed hand, neatly sheared off below the wrist.

  Blood pooled around the member and poured from Rila’s stump. Koida’s stomach churned, pushing burning bile up the back of her throat.

  Across the ship, a few of the sailors shook off Pernicious’s shriek and sprang at Hush. Koida glanced up in time to see the silent master spin one man into another. A third thrust a wickedly curved Ro sword at Hush’s back.

  Before Koida could call out a warning, a faintly glowing silver streak shot across the deck, slamming the sword-wielding sailor into the water below.

  Nael.

  Metal clanged against metal below, and the junk pitched. Pernicious screamed again. The war ram trumpeted, stirring all of the livestock below into a frenzy.

  As if the sudden uproar had startled Rila back into action, the hairless quartermaster manifested the curved ruby knife in her remaining hand. She screamed like a rabid mountain lion, springing at Koida.

  Too stunned to think, Koida let her training take over. She switched her feet and sidestepped the enraged Rila. As the woman’s momentum carried her past, Koida chopped at the back of the quartermaster’s knees. The lavaglass sliced through muscle and tendon. Rila tumbled headlong onto the deck.

  Fearing that the seemingly unstoppable quartermaster would somehow get back to her feet again, Koida kicked the woman in the side of the head as hard as she could. Rila’s hairless skull bounced off the gunwale. She went limp, motionless.

  For several seconds, Koida stood there, staring down at Rila, her lungs heaving, blood dripping from her cheek and numerous other wounds.

  Then hooves thundered up the ship-neck stairs, and Pernicious and the war ram burst into the dying evening light. Cold Sun turned his demon mount, the ram spinning more easily than such an enormous creature should have been capable of, and scooped Hush up behind him. Nael flitted along behind them like a sparkling silver shadow.

  Pernicious shrieked again, paralyzing the sailors once more, and dashed past Koida toward the gangplank. Shaking off her shock, Koida took a running step off the gunwale and vaulted onto the half-demon’s back. They hit the docks and tore off through the city, Cold Sun and Hush following behind while Nael kept pace above.
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  Shaking from the aftereffects of the adrenaline, Koida gripped Pernicious with her knees and dug the glass moon serpent from her robes. She almost dropped the puzzle box, but finally managed to get the tiny demon adder to latch onto her wrist. Numbness washed through her body, making her injuries and exhaustion disappear to the background of her mind.

  As Pernicious galloped away from the junk, shrieking at the top of his equine lungs, Koida twisted to look over her shoulder for pursuers.

  A young man she had never seen before stood by the gangplank, dripping water from his soaked clothing and hair. Below his bare feet however, the wood of the docks remained dry. A final ray of red-orange sunlight flared as the fiery orb sank below the horizon for the night. The dying light pierced the young man’s torso and made it look for a moment as if he were no more solid than a thin mist. He lifted a hand to Koida, then gave her a grateful bow.

  Then Koida blinked, and he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  LAND OF IMMORTALS

  Raijin swam down to the bottom of the cave pool and felt with his hands and guai-ray senses until he found a channel worn into the side. Water poured out of it, the current pushing against him as he pulled himself into the tunnel.

  Another memory flashed across the upper reaches of his mind. He was on his knees before the pool of the Grandfather Spirit, face pressed to wet stone while the enormous immortal guardian considered his request.

  “I can send you after Ha-Koi,” the Grandfather Spirit finally said, “but the Dragon has locked the mortal realms in an endless cycle from which it’s not possible to Ascend naturally. Unless you can stop her, you will never be able to return.”

  Ha-Koi’s name felt like a spear through his gut. The pain of her treachery burned in his mind as brightly as the day she had betrayed him, and yet he still loved her. It would have been so much simpler if he could just hate her.

  “I will stop her,” he said. “Any price you ask in return for sending me after her, I will give it.”

  The enormous spirit winced. “The Whisperer’s corruption is gaining purchase in my heartcenter, Thunderer. My immortal energy is turning dark. Purify it for me, and I will do this for you.”

  The memory faded like the last glimpse of darkness in an eclipse, leaving Raijin swimming out of the channel into open water once more.

  Immediately, the moderate push of the current changed, jerking him downward like an enormous hand insistent on dragging him to the bottom.

  Except there was no bottom. Raijin could feel that this pool went down forever. This was the true Passage to Eternity, endless depths from which there was no escape.

  The guai-ray was fascinated by that infinite deep. It called to him, promising enemies of impossible size and unknowable strength. Battles that would rage on into eternity. If he just stopped swimming, the abyss would pull him down, and he could explore a world of endless combat, perpetual rage and glory. If he just let go, he could fight forever. No more restraint, no more self-control, no more trying to live up to the prophecies he had been born into. Just freedom and blood and rapturous brutality.

  With a start, Raijin realized he had stopped swimming. The current was pulling him down to those bottomless depths, and he wasn’t trying to stop it. In fact, most of him was eager to go. What would it be like to exist without responsibility? Free to indulge every whim and desire without consideration for whom he might hurt or even simply not help?

  A pair of hands grabbed his right ankle. The instinct to attack reared up inside him, but Raijin sensed the twins’ wildly fluctuating signatures and stopped himself. One white fox had hold of his leg, and the other clung to the leg of the first.

  They needed his help. They couldn’t breathe underwater like the guai-ray could, and they weren’t strong enough swimmers to make it through this whirlpool on their own.

  Shaking his mind free of the demon beast’s bloodlust and his own reckless fantasies, Raijin turned into the current and kicked his way toward the surface. Swimming with only one foot was much harder, but he turned the guai-ray’s thirst for blood to the task, battling through the powerful undertow as if it were a wave of pack hunters.

  Finally, he broke the surface, pulling the twins up beside him. As they gasped and paddled to the stone lip at the edge of the cavern, the guai-ray’s gills closed, and Raijin took a breath through his nose and mouth. He coughed. After breathing the water for so long, the air felt dry and scratchy in his throat.

  This cavern was much larger than the last room, and from the opposite side came the roar of rushing water. It gushed into the pool with the force of a flooded river bursting its dam, the violent current joining with the rounded walls to cause the deadly vortex.

  The guai-ray didn’t like this space. The water was too loud. He wouldn’t be able to hear the approach of predators through its crashing. Raijin had managed so far without his eyes because his ears and the ray’s electrical sensory organs had taken their place. Unable to hear, he would only be able to feel things that entered the area the guai-ray senses could reach, and that wasn’t enough. This cavern was too big to sense as far as the edges.

  “Water!” Tsune spat the word like a curse.

  “Terrible,” Kitsu agreed.

  Raijin gave one more lung-clearing cough, then pulled himself up onto the stone beside the shivering white fox twins. He reached out with the guai-ray senses, but couldn’t feel any additional electrical signatures in the cavern.

  “Where is he?” Raijin asked. He felt his way to the wall and stood. The ceiling was high above his head, out of reach. “The Great Akane?”

  Kitsu sniffed the air. “He should be—”

  A new sound overpowered the rushing of the vortex. A sound like boiling water. Bubbles rushing up from the bottom of an enormous pot.

  Tsune let out a frightened whine. Two sets of scrabbling nails hit the wet stone as the twins shifted to foxes and sprinted past Raijin.

  “Run, Thunderer!” Kitsu called back to him. “He’s in the pool!”

  “You can make it out!” Tsune cried. “The way’s unguarded!”

  But before Raijin could take a step, an enormous tentacle slammed into his chest. Needle-lined suckers tore into his skin, holding him fast as the huge appendage ripped him from the stone shelf back into the water.

  The guai-ray could feel the creature coming for him—a mass of grasping tentacles connected to an enormous head almost as wide as the pool they were in, a disproportionately small body whipping along behind like a tail. The tentacle wrapped around Raijin’s body pulled him down toward a snapping razor-sharp beak.

  This wasn’t right, a detached part of his mind protested. This creature was nothing like the Grandfather Spirit he had seen in the Thunderer’s memory. Had the Whisperer’s corruption changed the peaceful spirit so drastically?

  Raijin kicked at the tentacle and dug his fingers into the rubbery, slime-coated skin, trying to pry the needles free from his chest. The sucker would not budge. The water thundered with the snap of the creature’s approaching beak. The guai-ray in Raijin’s chest roared, furious at being overpowered so easily.

  Bloodstained Ro coursed from Raijin’s heartcenter and crackled through the water, a surge of electricity. The creature spasmed, its grip on Raijin tightening until his ribs creaked. A pained howl erupted from its beak in a flood of foam and bubbles.

  Raijin threw off another explosion of electricity.

  Furious, the creature bashed him against the wall. The long bone in Raijin’s left arm, no longer reinforced by the lavaglass he’d had since he was sixteen, snapped.

  Lightning flashed inside Raijin’s skull, half pain and half fury. He hurled every last bit of his Ro into a concentrated bolt, straight through the sucker pinned to his chest.

  The strike sheared the tentacle in two, and the Great Akane thrashed in agony. Blood gushed into the water, choking Raijin through the guai-ray gills.

  Raijin grabbed the lower half of the sucker that was still attached to
his chest and ripped the needles out. Left arm hanging useless in the water, he kicked toward the surface. He had to get to land. With such a small body and huge head, the Great Akane could never maneuver as quickly on land as in the water. Perhaps then he could reason with the creature.

  But even with two healthy arms, Raijin couldn’t ascend through the water fast enough. The Great Akane overtook him in seconds, trying to chomp him in half with its razor-sharp beak.

  So close, the boom of the beak snapping shut was deafening. Raijin felt as if his head were splitting open with each slam of the creature’s maw. The concussion waves it threw off were powerful enough to blow him toward the wall, and the suction created when it opened again dragged him toward the beak.

  Raijin’s only hope was to swim to the side of the enormous head and grab for any sort of purchase that would keep him from slipping into the snapping beak.

  He made it to the edge of the monster’s flat head, his good hand bouncing off of more huge tentacles. They were too big to get ahold of. He tried to swim for it again, but a slimy rope grabbed his wrist.

  It was a tiny tendril no longer than his arm, its needles so small he barely felt them latch on. There were millions of the miniature tentacles growing like hair between their larger brothers.

  Raijin wrapped his fist around a handful of smaller tendrils. The Great Akane twisted and zigzagged, trying to knock him free so he would be sucked into the beak. The boom of its chomping clashed Raijin’s teeth together and shook his bones, but his grip and the needle suckers of the short tentacles kept the concussion from throwing him off.

  The Great Akane changed tactics, scraping the edge of its face against the wall of the pool. Raijin could taste the ichor and bits of flesh filling the water as the furious creature tried to shear its smaller tentacles off. He felt the fistful of tendrils clutching him weaken. He couldn’t rely on them for much longer.