Demon Beast (Path of the Thunderbird Book 3)

by eden Hudson

  “Touch me and I’ll make certain you never touch anything again,” Yoichi said.

  Lao backed away, stumbling off to a corner, though Yoichi doubted the leech had enough mind left to understand what he’d said. More likely Lao’s last shred of instinct had reacted to the threat in Yoichi’s voice and face.

  It had taken Lao almost a week to repair himself without the alchemy solution Youn Wha always put him in. His body was disintegrating as quickly as his mind, his skin coming back as cracked and sallow as old parchment, hair gray and wild, nails long as a corpse’s. The wind instruments on the far wall kept the air circulating in this place, but now and again, Yoichi caught the smell of decay.

  “Go fetch another lizard or snake, Lao,” he said. “Anything living. Just bring it back alive.”

  Mumbling something inane, Lao wove unsteadily toward the stairs leading up into the sunlight.

  Normally, the leech would have run back to Youn Wha as soon as he could move. Yoichi couldn’t say why Lao elected to stay with him this time, but he allowed it, mainly because Lao was a surprisingly effective hunter, even with a rotting brain. The extra pockets of Ro afforded by the small desert creatures had healed Yoichi’s burns and pulverized bones much faster than the plants’ slow stream of Ro.

  His crushed spine was taking considerably longer. Something delicate in it had been destroyed by his fall from the tower, rendering his legs useless. But even that would heal with enough time and Ro. Perhaps another week Drinking Life from the creatures Lao dragged in, and he would be walking again.

  “Food,” Lao said, coming to a standstill with one foot on the bottom step.

  Yoichi frowned and opened his mouth to hurry Lao along. But the gritty scrape of a foot on the sand-covered stairs stopped him.

  “Get out of my way before I cut you to pieces, Lao.” Koida’s cold threat echoed through the huge chamber.

  Yoichi restrained a grin and pushed himself up to sitting, back against the fountain, as she descended. There was a hardness to his sister’s features that hadn’t been there before. Dark crescents rested under her eyes, and her fair cheeks were shadowed. She looked as if she hadn’t slept or eaten since last he’d seen her.

  “Kill the leech for all I care,” he said. “I have no further use for him.”

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Koida sliced her arm through the air, the flesh becoming a gleaming black blade. It hacked into the side of Lao’s neck, catching on his spine. She levered it out and chopped through, face betraying no hint of emotion, even when the leech’s head dropped off and rolled away.

  “Is little sister coming to enjoy the taste of death and destruction?” Yoichi asked in the playful tone of an elder brother to a younger sibling.

  “He’ll grow it back,” Koida said, not returning the familiar speech tone.

  Yoichi wasn’t deterred. She had searched him out for a reason. He could be patient while he waited for her to reveal it.

  “It is possible,” he admitted, “though in truth I doubt Lao’s got another return in him. Leeches degrade much faster than Petals of Corruption.”

  He expected that revelation to give Koida a twinge of regret or disgust, but she acted hardly more interested than if he had begun reciting the last eight years’ grain tributes taken in by the Sun Palace. He didn’t allow his eyes to leave her face as she crossed the floor toward him, but he suspected that if he looked, he would see that demon adder on her wrist.

  “Why didn’t Lao’s Ro come to me?” she asked. “I killed him. It’s mine by right.”

  “I suppose he has got one more regeneration in him, then.” Yoichi shrugged. “If you want it so badly, crack open his heartcenter and destroy his heart. The Ro will come to you rather than return to his body to heal him. If you are capable of absorbing Ro, that is.”

  He let the last sentence hang in the air like a question.

  Koida frowned slightly in thought, then shook her head. “I’ve only ever defeated one person in combat, and none of her Ro came near me. Is that because of my deficiency?”

  “Yes.” Yoichi didn’t know if that was true or not, but it was in his best interest for Koida to believe he knew more than she did. “Did you come back to discuss how to cure it, or did you come back to kill me and take back the Ro of that Ji Yu trash?”

  “If I can’t absorb Ro, then killing you is a wasted effort,” Koida said.

  Yoichi smiled. “Wasted effort has never stopped you before, little sister. Lao and your previous three training masters stand as proof of that.”

  Koida’s black blade shifted back to a sunburnt hand, sleeve falling over it once more with the soft rustle of fabric.

  “I was only able to absorb Raijin’s Ro because he gifted it to me.” She stopped beside the altar in the center of the room, looking over the cold pile of ashes there, then walked the final few feet to stand before Yoichi. “But you promised you would give it back if I did what you asked.”

  The perfume of millions of lotus blossoms exploded through his senses in the Whisperer’s excitement, but Yoichi allowed no more than an unreadable smile to show on his face as he waited for Koida to ask. The choice had to be hers. Even with the lies, persuading, and temptations he’d laid before her, she had to choose this Path.

  Koida knelt beside his currently useless legs, her violet eyes searching his.

  “Tell me, elder brother,” she said, switching to the respectful sibling speech tone. “What must your little sister do to become as powerful as you are?”

  Chapter Forty-seven

  MORTAL LANDS

  The guai-ray senses lit with an impending attack, waking Raijin from an uncomfortable half-sleep.

  “Murderer!” a shrill child’s voice rang out.

  Raijin braced himself. A rock skimmed his ear and dinged off the flat iron yoke locked around his head, neck, and hands.

  More stones pelted his face and body, only one large and sharp enough to open a gash in his hairline, while children shouted insults like “Water Lily coward!” and “old lady killer!” He couldn’t twist away from their attacks; the chains locking the yoke to the cobblestone street were too short to allow him to maneuver. He barely had enough slack to kneel instead of lie.

  The childish assault continued long enough without retaliation that one of the older boys got up enough courage to run up and slap Raijin in the face with a wet scoop of dung from the street.

  The guai-ray raged at the humiliation, and the jade Ro in his heartcenter crackled like building lightning, but Raijin remained silent.

  During the first few days he’d been shackled in the market square in Boking Iri, Raijin had tried telling his mockers the truth. All that had done, however, was draw more ire—from the adults worse than the children. Eventually, he had learned it was better to ignore them. In time, they would grow bored and go away. They did every day.

  Master Chugi had said that the Thunderer would have to suffer humiliation, pain, and death until even he questioned whether saving the world from the Dark Dragon was worth it. Growing up, Raijin had assumed the humiliation would be the easiest to endure, but he had been on his knees in the market square somewhere between five and seven days—he’d lost count after spending a day or two concussed by a particularly heavy rock to the temple. People had accused him of every murder, sickness, and death in the city, as well as a myriad of other vile crimes. They had thrown rotten foods, rocks, sticks, and dung at him, spat on him... One woman had even emptied a full chamber bucket on him before cursing him for poisoning the lovely Dragonfly of the Battlefield and telling Raijin that he and his power-hungry second princess whore could rot.

  He stank. His knees felt as if they had formed around the cobblestones he was kneeling on. The iron rubbed his wrists and neck raw, and his muscles alternated between numbness, prickling with needles, and searing pain. He just wanted out.

  In those first days, Raijin had tried every way possible to break free, but the yoke was chained too low to the ground to move, and the iro
n was too thick to bend or break. He couldn’t move enough to execute any techniques, though even if he could have, he didn’t know of one strong enough to cut through forged iron. He had tried lightning once out of frustration, but the electricity had leapt from the metal to shock a passerby without harming the iron. The kicking and cursing he’d taken for that had been severe, but admittedly deserved. He shouldn’t have tried lightning when he knew others were within range.

  In his darkest moments, Raijin wondered if death would take him back to the Land of Immortals to begin again, but he put that thought away. He had told Master Chugi and the Grandfather Spirit that he could suffer whatever he had to to save the world and stop the Dark Dragon. If he had to bear humiliation and scorn before he found a way back to Koida, then he would. It would end eventually. As the guards were fond of reminding him, the Rising Phoenix Emperor Shyong Liu Yoichi would return any day now to sentence him.

  Whether Raijin would be slated for execution or—much less likely—released, he knew that they would have to unlock the chains and let him stand to move him. He just had to last until then.

  Retreating inward, Raijin turned his focus to his heartcenter, cycling his Ro. Not in the exercises he’d learned as a child, but the Thunderer’s Cross. Purifying the Water Lily grandmaster’s toxic Ro was taking much longer than the Grandfather Spirit’s had. The corruption and sickness were so deeply ingrained in Youn Wha’s life force that at times it seemed as if that was all it was.

  The ascending two-note blast of war horns drew Raijin’s attention back to the outside world. The children throwing the rocks and the people in the marketplace stilled for a moment, then everyone began talking at once.

  “That’s the returning home call,” a woman said. “The Rising Phoenix Emperor has returned!”

  “He must have caught the fugitive second princess.”

  “I hope he lops off her traitorous head and tosses her into the Horned Serpent River.”

  “Poisoning our Dragonfly like a jealous little coward.”

  “I always said a Ro-cripple will do anything to grab power. Should dash their heads open at birth, avoid this kind of evil.”

  A disgusted snarl rose up in Raijin’s throat. He ground his teeth, trying to remind himself that they didn’t know any better. They hadn’t been at the feast; they could only believe the lies they had heard. But that didn’t make their rancorous slander of Koida any easier to tolerate. The demon beast wanted to shock all of them dead where they stood.

  “Here they come!” a little boy shouted, ecstatic.

  The war horns grew louder, until their trumpeting mercifully drowned out the hateful voices of the crowd. Hooves rang out on the paving stones, dozens of horses and soldiers filling the market square.

  “The Rising Phoenix Emperor Shyong Liu Yoichi returns triumphant,” a crier bellowed.

  Raijin’s hackles rose as the cold, arrogant signature of Koida’s white-haired brother rode into the square on a high-stepping stallion. The guai-ray sensed a strange injury in the man, a deadness, as if his legs belonged to a corpse while the rest of him still lived, but it was quickly distracted by the creaky wheels of a cart following behind the new emperor. The stench of death and decaying meat surrounded it like a cloud.

  “Behold!” The crier’s voice rang through the square. “The body of the traitor princess, the coward who sought to make fools of the empire through trickery and poison, dead by our heroic emperor’s mighty Ro!”

  Raijin’s heart stopped.

  “Chased to the ends of the continent by the Rising Phoenix Emperor, the traitor second princess struck a craven blow with Water Lily evil, using countless pawns to destroy many brave imperial soldiers as well as an entire desert oasis of innocents. But our brave emperor overcame her in a feat of strength and martial brilliance unequaled in the greatest Heroic Records in our history, slicing off her head with a single stroke of his mighty Ro! Look upon her wretched body and rejoice!”

  Cheers broke out, filling the square with riotous shouting and praises for the heroic Rising Phoenix.

  Raijin reached out with the guai-ray senses, grasping for any shred of Koida’s signature. The electrical signature clung to the body until the Ro left. If he could find it, that meant she wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be dead.

  The guai-ray senses crawled over the square, hunting desperately through the signatures. Adults and children from the market, a feral cat, horses, the crier, soldiers in heavy armor, rats, a snake, Yoichi with his dead legs.

  A corpse. Rotting high on a wooden pole mounted on the squeaky cart, the better for the people of Boking Iri to see and cheer. Tattered silk fluttered around its legs in the breeze.

  Koida’s wedding robes?

  Raijin shook his head against the image the sound conjured, the raw skin of his jaw scraping against the iron of the yoke. That couldn’t be true. She couldn’t have been killed while he was chained there.

  The emperor came to a halt in the center of the square, the cart squeaking to a stop behind him. The raucous cheering quieted to a low murmur of excitement.

  “Citizens of Boking Iri,” Yoichi said, his pompous voice rising above the din, “I delight today in having served justice in the name of my beloved father and treasured first sister, but greater celebration is yet to come. For in the battle, one warrior artist joined me in standing against the Water Lily princess and her army of mindless savages. Hakiko, the only survivor of the desert oasis, fought at my side, killing as many of the Water Lily’s most powerful pawns as I did.”

  Another cheer shook the square as a final horse and rider trotted to Yoichi’s side.

  As soon as the young woman rode into range, she lit up the guai-ray senses like a swarm of demon fireflies on a moonless night.

  Koida.

  She wasn’t riding her demon warhorse, and she must have been disguised in some way for no one to recognize her, but even without eyes, Raijin knew it was her. They had spent only days together in this life, but her signature was burned into the guai-ray senses like a brand.

  “Hakiko is a skilled warrior artist with a decorated Heroic Record,” Yoichi shouted over the people’s celebration, “and she will make a powerful first empress. Our wedding feasts will begin tomorrow with the execution of the traitor princess’s depraved consort—”

  Even without his sight, Raijin could feel as hundreds of eyes shifted from the white-haired liar and Koida to fall squarely on him.

  “—this treacherous assassin, Ji Yu Raijin. At dawn, the assassin forfeits his head to the royal executioner, taking with him the last of the darkness staining our empire.”

  This sent the crowd into throes of ecstasy. They praised the great and powerful Rising Phoenix Emperor who brought the light of justice to all corners of the empire, hailing, howling, clapping, and leaping up and down. Those closest to Raijin jeered and spat on him and threw whatever they had at hand.

  Ignoring their vitriol, Raijin reached out again with the guai-ray senses. Smug satisfaction radiated from Yoichi like a demon beast who had conquered a boundless territory and proven himself the strongest of all. The guai-ray bristled at it, but Raijin held it back. Koida was all that mattered.

  The guai-ray brushed over her signature, searching for any sign that she was being held captive, being forced to join her brother against her will.

  What he found was a flat calm like a smooth, endless ice sheet over a frozen lake. No flutter of excitement or infatuation, not even the combination of suspicion and fear she’d regarded him with during their first few meetings. She wasn’t afraid, and she wasn’t presenting one face while hiding another.

  His betrothed was looking at him, chained and disgraced, listening to the order for his execution, and she felt nothing but peace.

  The cobblestone street felt as if it were tilting beneath his knees. This couldn’t be right. Was it some sort of concussion dream? Perhaps the guai-ray senses had been damaged by that rock to the head.

  If Ha-Koi remembered herself, you w
ould be enemies, Misuru’s voice rang through his head.

  Leather creaked and hooves approached as Yoichi directed his horse closer to the yoke.

  The guai-ray snarled, overriding Raijin’s confusion with the desire to attack the new emperor. A furious surge of jade electricity crackled toward the surface, but Raijin instinctively grabbed it back.

  “Do you need a moment to say your farewells, Hakiko?” Yoichi asked, amusement dripping from each word.

  Koida drew closer, stopping at the arrogant new emperor’s side.

  “This filth slaughtered my father and my sister.” She whispered the words so quietly that only the three of them could hear, but her voice cut through Raijin like a vicious winter wind. “The only farewell he deserves is the kiss of the executioner’s Falling Blade Wall on his neck.”

  The pointed toe of a riding boot struck Raijin just above the ear, making his skull ring and muffling the din in the square until it sounded as if he were hearing it from underwater.

  “Let’s go, Yoichi.” Koida urged her mount into a trot. “I need to wash the stink of murderer off my boots.”

  Thanks, Reviews, and Free Stuff

  ENDLESS GRATITUDE FOR reading Demon Beast! I hope you enjoyed the time spent in Raijin and Koida’s world. If you’ve got time and feel like making your opinion of it known, consider dropping a review on Amazon or Goodreads. I’m always so excited to hear what readers think, and more than that, word-of-mouth and reviews are unbelievably helpful to a writer’s career. A sentence or two from you can make all the difference in the world!

  If you can’t get enough of the Path of the Thunderbird world and find yourself wondering what Lysander was like as a love-struck twenty-something and how he got from there to cynical drunk with a deadly abyss in his broken heartcenter, then might I suggest The Unnamed Path, a standalone short story featuring Lysander? You can get your copy free by signing up to my mailing list here: http://eepurl.com/griBNT. And you’ll also be the first to know when the next Path of the Thunderbird novel is ready to read.