“The street design may not be convenient, but that doesn’t mean they don’t make sense. After all, where do all of the major highways end?”
“At military bases,” Aolani whispered. Tanks rolled across the islands, eroding the ‘aina and erasing paradise because of the perpetual threat of imminent attack.
Crispin nodded, purple-salami lips curving into a smile. “Yes, it seems that your islands are conveniently placed after all. Some sacrifices in comfort must be made to protect the people from the enemy out there.” He waved in the vague direction of the window.
“Yes, but then who will protect us from the enemy in here?” Aolani reported, glaring him straight in the eye.
The CEO chuckled. “My dear, you’re looking in the wrong direction. If there is an enemy to be found inside, then guess who that shall be?” He suddenly moved fast, impossibly fast, to stand behind her. Aolani felt dizzy. His enormous hands sprang up to engulf her upper shoulders, and he positioned her toward the mirror. Aolani blinked. It was her and only her. CEO Summers had no reflection—and yet she felt his fingers dig into her skin.
She whirled around, but Crispin was at the suite counter, stirring that sickening smelling Doll’s Eyes martini.
“Your kind will always be the internal enemy unless you choose to act…conveniently.” Crispin smiled at her and set his drained martini glass on the counter, the pair of white Doll’s Eyes rolling around the bottom. “Now, go see Secretary Reynolds about your new nametag. I have a board meeting to attend.”
He’d nearly exited the room before Aolani called out: “Mr. Summers, sir, I thought of a name for the new underwater hotel project: Ka Hale Pupuka.”
He paused, triple chins wriggling. “Oh? That’s quite pretty. What does it mean?”
“Deep Sea Paradise.”
“Lovely. It rolls right off the tongue!” He waggled a finger at her. “I told you, Lani: you have ambition. You can make a future here.”
Aolani waited until the door closed before snapping her nametag in half and dumping it in the CEO’s martini glass. She stormed out, aware of the weight of her purse and the treasure it held. Hopefully Ka Hale Pupuka would make it at least to advertising before they realized it meant The Ugly House.
Chapter 14: Rumors
~Tica~
I didn’t walk to school anymore. I floated.
I’d fall back from Jinho’s embrace with a gasp, pain gushing from the scarlet spring bubbling up from my skin. I’d watch Jinho’s cool fingers tend to the bite from far away, my mind already drifting free from my body. The pain couldn’t chase me. My bulky body of sinew and flesh couldn’t imprison me. Doctors’ needles slid right through me and nausea ate itself.
Dr. Kaiser didn’t understand. “Your condition has improved remarkably, Tica. Your body appears to have rallied on its own and is fighting off the cancer cells,” his voice echoed while my mother cried for joy and patted my shoulder.
I didn’t look at either of them, distracted by the giant eel spirit gamboling in the air above Dr. Kaiser’s head like a colorful kite. Jinho had warned me that his bite contained a powerful venom that drew the mind closer to the spirit world: Eve. It was designed that way so vampyres could feast on the comatose body while the mind flirted with the veil, astounded by what it saw. Where the impossible was possible. I could chat with ghosts. I could swim without fear. I trusted Jinho. He spaced out feeding times and only took just enough. That way I always came back.
However, when I came back, I wasn’t the same. My skin began to wilt under the sun until it was pasty, chalk-white. A side effect from the combination of vampyre venom and prescribed meds, I told myself. Then while eating hayashi raisu at Ryoko’s, I couldn’t keep down the hashed beef rice that we both loved. I bolted to the bathroom and returned shame-faced. I managed to swallow some of the grilled vegetables Ryoko’s grandmother prepared for me, but only barely.
At home I went through five stalks of celery and three mangoes. I was walking on eggshells around my upset stomach, and only raw vegetables and fruit didn’t come back up. I felt like Crispin, my skin sagging off my bones and my waist thinning. I was a drooping tree that begged to snap away and crash into the earth. These were the things I noticed before the next bite sucked me into oblivion.
Jinho’s fangs retracted from my shoulder. “That’s enough for a while,” he said softly. “You’re too close to slipping away completely, Tica.”
I smiled, swaying, and then fell forward to grab his shoulder. My homework lay scattered in one corner of the room, undone, and my custom surfboard lay in another, untouched. “I feel fine. It’s going to take a lot to get rid of Nanaue, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but he can wait. Your blood helps weaken him every day. It’s going to be a marathon, Tica. After we fused, it took me two years to control his hunger and learn his secrets. Now I can walk in the sun for a time, which is one of the oldest curses against my people.”
“Only a powerful vampyre prince could do it,” I teased.
Jinho nodded. “Yes, but I am no ordinary prince, especially in regards to my birth—” He stopped, gray-blue eyes rueful. “You clever girl.”
I giggled and flopped back on the pillows, the ceiling spinning above me. “Well, I wasn’t going to wait around for you to tell me. That ‘closemouthed as a clam’ saying was inspired by you, Jinho.” My hand reached for his. “It’s okay if we stop. I don’t want you to die.”
His fingers gripped mine painfully hard, and then he let go. “You should.”
He prowled around the room restlessly after that like an encaged panther. His dark mood bled into the contours of bliss fogging my mind.
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No, Tica.” The vampyre prince stopped and glared at me. “Don’t you have school tomorrow?”
I shrugged. “I’m not tired. Let’s stay up late and watch the sunrise!”
“Another time.” He paused by my side and kissed me on the head. “I must go track my brother’s movements.”
I frowned, displeased, but I managed to restrain myself from begging for more than a peck on the head. Jinho had taken to keeping me at arm’s length, never more than a kiss or a cuddle. We had to stay in control, he warned me. He had to stay in control. Otherwise, Nanaue might awaken.
“Did you translate the shark hide manuscripts?” I asked instead.
Jinho nodded grimly. “I’ve seen that scripture before. It would take a dead language to summon the dead. Apparently, Nanaue came back to this world because my brother and his Plague Lord cohorts summoned him.”
“They brought back Nanaue?” My brain struggled to think under the fog of bliss, and sharp pain spasmed in my forehead. “How about the coral box? Can you open it?”
Jinho brought forth the small box made of dead coral and placed it on my dresser. “This is a powerful thing you brought me, Tica,” he murmured, unlocking it with a twist of his feather key. I squinted. It was empty. However, more of the strange, unknown symbols engraved the box’s interior, their red jagged lines filling me with dread.
Jinho wasn’t looking at me. He was watching little green Mel climb down my window curtain. The moment the gecko drew close enough, Jinho’s hand sprang up and seized him. He placed the gecko inside the box and closed the lid, locking it shut with a savage twist.
Mel began to scream, a high, distorted cry that sounded like hissing radio static. The entire box rattled, emitting an eerie green light, and the air around us darkened. As his pleas grew longer and more intense, I couldn’t stand it.
“Let him go!”
Jinho was staring at the coral prison, a look of gruesome fascination on his face. I grabbed the feather key from him and released the lid. Mel’s scream deepened to a heavy roar, and something indistinguishable flew free from the box, disappearing through my window in a burst of green light. We were left staring at an empty cage, the insides now splattered with fresh blood.
I whirled about on Jinho, trembling and angry. “What did you do?�
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“An experiment,” Jinho said quietly. “This is how he is changing them.”
“That—mo’o—was watching out for me and my family!” In the echo of Mel’s scream, everything roared to life in hot, furious pain. I fell to one knee, craddling my burning shoulder. Pain swelled and reverberated through my bones like thunderbolts.
Jinho tried to take a step closer. “The venom’s wearing off—”
“Get out!” I pushed him blindly through my tears and slammed the door shut in his face. I limped back to bed. My spine spasmed, blood flushed my cheeks, and pain leaked through my ears, but I embraced it all.
I’d forgotten how it felt to be alive.
***
I'd forgotten other types of pain. Like jealousy, flaring to life like a viper in the pit of my stomach, when I spotted a familiar tall, jet-black haired figure leaning casually outside the school walls, talking to Aolani. His hand roved up to cup her chin for an instant, and Aolani laughed, glancing down as if suddenly shy.
“What the hell?” Lono paused by my side. “Tica, what is Jinho doing?”
I clutched the strap of my shoulder bag, insides twisting. “I don’t know.”
“He’s with you,” Lono said. When I didn’t confirm it, he said again, louder, “He’s with you, Tica.”
I turned away. “I don’t know that, either.”
Of the three of us, only Mason didn’t seem surprised.
“They’ve been hanging out a lot together lately,” he muttered to his shoes, scuffing up gravel. “Been surfing Mako’s a lot.”
“Mako’s is locals’ only!” Spots of color appeared in Lono’s cheeks. “Why the hell is she showing him places like that, brah?”
“I don’t know, man,” Mason said quietly.
Lono snorted. “Well, fuck me. What the hell do we know about each other anymore? For starters, you look like death, Tica.”
I couldn’t answer. The smell of the local hot dog fundraiser had drifted over to my nostrils, and I was struggling not to puke. Just because the bites on my skin had scarred over to a dull purple didn’t mean the venom was going anywhere soon.
“Treatment has a few side effects,” I rasped finally. “The doctor says I’ve got this thing beat, though.”
“Tica wins round two!” Mason raised my hand enthusiastically. “When’s cancer gonna take the hint? You ain’t interested.”
Lono glared after Jinho. “How the hell could he leave you at a time like this?”
“I ended it. Trust me: I’ll get better faster without him.”
“Yeah, don’t hang with that guy. You need your real friends right now.” Lono unlocked his truck. “Anything on that doctor’s list against toking, Tica? You look like you could use a couple hits.”
I didn’t want to know what smoking weed would do to my quickly destabilizing mind. “Thanks, Lono, but I’m good. You guys go ahead. I’m gonna wait for Ryoko.”
Mason smiled at me and hopped in the truck with Lono. I wanted to ask if he’d brought up his best friend’s old habit yet, but I was too tired to even formulate the sentence. After what I’d asked Jinho to do, I was the last person to lecture Lono about drugs.
Ryoko left her afterschool tennis practice with a bunch of girls from our class.
“I swear, I saw him kiss her!” Leiko Ichikawa’s high soprano floated over, her cheeks still flushed from the match. “What on earth is Aolani thinking? Messing around with her best friend’s guy while said friend fights cancer?”
“Can we not talk about this?” I heard Ryoko say.
Maile Thompson glanced over, cheeks reddening. “Ryoko’s right, Leiko; be quiet! Tica’s standing right there!”
The waves of pain and nausea finally coalesced into something strong enough to bar them from hurting me: hate. It enclosed me in layers of icy, crystalized armor until I felt cold and dead…like him. With the usual waves of agony cooling down, I felt strong enough to stand.
“It’s okay, you guys.” I shrugged. “I’m not surprised Aolani hasn’t waited until my body’s cold before going after Jinho. She will do anything to get what she wants. After all, why do you think CEO Summers kept her on as an intern at Kalani Resorts?”
“No!” Leiko and Maile clapped their hands over their mouths, while the other girls looked away embarrassedly.
“Tica,” Ryoko said softly, “that’s not true.”
My heart thrashed wildly in my chest, and heat scorched trails up my cheeks. But I couldn’t back out of the lie now.
“How would you know? You weren’t there, Ryoko. She was also flirting with another fat cat—some rich Russian millionaire. She got all mad when I interrupted their privacy on the roof.”
The other girls began to nod. Leiko and Maile exchanged delighted glances. “Yes, yes, Nik! She couldn’t stop talking about him!”
Ryoko didn’t back down, her hands clenched at her sides. “Seriously, what the fuck are you on, Tica? You and Jinho, too—his eyes are all weird and green.”
The hate evaporated as swiftly as it had come. I stared at her, tongue-tied. I couldn’t take back my words even as they bounced off in fifteen different directions.
Chapter 15: Stop n’ Inspect
~Tica~
I was adrift in the ocean, the tip of my childhood surfboard gently bobbing against my chin as I gazed up at Koko Head Crater. Rain fell from above and below, and a double rainbow wrapped itself in a helix across the sky. Dawn’s rays broke through the gentle rain mist, burnishing the sea in a warm, coppery glow. Daylight had come too soon. I felt my head sink into my chest, and my surfboard began to drift away from me. That was fine by me. I had no desire to paddle back. I would stay in Eve forever.
A sharp bite on my toe snapped me out of it. Muscles heaving, I crawled up onto my board and surveyed the honey-tinted waters for any sign of a shark. There was none. Only one determined humuhumu charging toward me, tail pumping hard, eyes masked by two black bandit streaks. I gasped. It was him.
He soared up out of the sea in a burst of prismatic light, showering me with rainbow water droplets. His feet whistled down until they hovered above my board, and then I saw him.
“Daughter,” the shape-shifting god said. I gapped and my mind came alive like it hadn’t for weeks, shifting through all of my childhood folktales until I came up with a name:
Kamapua’a the boar god was my father.
I should have known. The humuhumu was his sea form. According to Aolani, humuhumunukunukuapua’a meant “fish with a nose like a pig.” Scorned by his first father as an illegitimate “hog” child, and rejected by the second as a liar, Kamapua’a soon found it easier to become the defiant, adventurous pig his first father called him, plundering the islands and seducing women as he desired. He first changed into a reef triggerfish to flee into the sea after his old lover Pele sent lava from Kīlauea to chase him.
In other legends I recalled of him, he could bring the dead back to life.
Kama was ferociously handsome with thick black curls, a white malo, and a shoulder cape of boar fur. I could see how my mom would have been intrigued, no matter what time period of dress he showed up in.
The boar god laughed at my gasp of recognition. “Daughter!” he boomed again, the force of his voice chasing the rain from the sky. “You have much wisdom for one so young, but you also have much to learn. There is too much poison in your veins, my child. You must leave Eve now and reclaim yourself.”
I would have given anything to freeze this moment in time. I had a trillion questions to ask my father, but I was mindlessly enthralled by his presence. He filled me with the kind of inspiration that Poli’ahu killed with her cold, creeping frost.
Kama bent and gripped my chin so I could stare up at the mirror image of my dark earthy-brown eyes. “This world is not yet for you, my daughter,” he said kindly.
“But I am so tired,” I whispered.
“You must go back now,” he wheedled persistently. “Your mother has too much poison in her veins, too.”
That woke me up. “My mother? That’s impossible. She doesn’t know about vampyres.”
Kama smiled sadly. “She knows about me.”
I understood. Ana Dominguez had always believed in the unseen things.
“Hurry!” the boar god cried, drawing back the waves to gather around my surfboard. “One day, Tica Dominguez, you, too, shall change your form, but now is not that time. Flee!”
The waves drew back to monstrous black heights, and I realized that in the flares of sunrise, I could see them watching me: dark mo’o. They took the forms of shadow tiger sharks, metastasized octopi, horned whales, and one extremely large megalodon, whose mouth was the size of a deep cave that could drink the bay whole.
“Tica,” Kama whispered, “surf.” Then he released the tide.
That was one big motherload of an order, coming from my estranged immortal father who’d shown up only once before in my life to mutter mysterious things at me. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t just unleashed the biggest wave I’d ever seen, maybe a triple overhead. But the set was building bigger behind, and it contained a dozen evil spirit creatures, so I got my ass straight on the board and leaned back.
The wave cracked through me like a wrecking ball.
I shot through the air, my old waterlogged longboard suddenly as light as a feather. The giant black wave’s awful roar chased me, and I stared down a slope of building-smashing water. Yeah, screw skiers and snowboarders. They should try it when the earth beneath them was moving. I had maybe a millionth of a second to catch this wave, or else I would be crushed to death by one hundred tons of merciless, pounding currents.
Shark shadows darted beneath the wave, but I didn’t fear them. Whether they were Dark Spirits or not, we both shared respect for the waves. If they managed to eat me while I was flying on foam and lost dreams, then more power to them. The wave roared its hunger to the skies, building up, up, higher, and higher, as if it intended to swallow the newborn sun. When the water finally began to freefall toward the earth, dozens of questions ran across my mind, chiefly: how much did I want to survive?
Year of the Boar- Tica Page 9