Calamity Rising (Deathwalker Book 1)

by Z. V. Hunter

  I couldn't see a damn thing in the darkness of the attic. It covered my eyes like a pall, and even the gentle glow from Lux's stone did little to penetrate it.

  "Yuki!"

  He sounded louder.

  Closer.

  The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I took a shallow breath. Opened my eyes as wide as I could. The shuriken pressed into my palm, poking my flesh.

  Still nothing but pure blackness.

  Scrape.

  Scrape.

  "Dark in here."

  I swallowed my reply and scooted back along the beam, hoping it didn't end and deposit me through the ceiling.

  The entrance to the attic slid open. The pale gray light spilled in, followed by the deformed hands of that Calamity. The head and teeth would be next.

  Did I say something about preserving my shuriken?

  Yeah. Fuck that.

  I threw the one in my hand, and it sliced through the air and squelched into the Calamity's misshapen shoulder. The thing screeched and spat but lurched forward nonetheless. Noxious saliva dripped down its grotesque front.

  I scrambled backwards, palms pierced by splinters. I sucked in great breaths of the surrounding fog. The air tasted like sour milk, and my heart throbbed—ready to burst.

  Another shuriken flew from my fingers.

  It embedded in a post near the Calamity's emerging head.

  "Shit!"

  My boots slipped on the wood, and I took one final scoot.

  I groped at empty air.

  Kicked.

  Tried to right myself, but I was too far over the edge.

  A moment later, I tumbled into darkness.

  12

  FALLING INTO A black pit while stuck in the Spirit World wasn't my idea of a great way to start the night. I'd rather have been doing a hundred different things including: my taxes, having a long philosophical argument with Lux, or even an over the clothes make-out session with Kuro.

  The last one was highly debatable.

  I expected to land any moment. Possibly break my neck. Or, at least, feel the smack of hard ground rush up to meet me.

  It didn't.

  Instead, I hung suspended in darkness. A pale light returned to the world around me. The Spirit Stone glowed. Gray twilight blinked beyond the window next to my nose.

  "Little help?" Kuro grunted. He clasped my ankle. To be fair, he held me over my boot, so I didn't feel him grab me.

  In the open space below a blur of gray shadows dropped straight into the first-floor hallway. I'd slipped back into the human world without realizing it.

  As Kuro tugged, I pulled myself up and he grabbed my wrist with his free hand. Together we tumbled back, me on top and him below. Our faces hung inches apart. Our breath mingled. Lips pursed, close enough to kiss. I almost licked mine and thought better of it.

  My heart pounded, but it had nothing to do with Kuro's proximity.

  Yeah.

  Nothing at all.

  Lux snickered. "You know there's a thin line between love and hate. And you haven't gotten laid in a long time."

  "Shut up," I grumbled.

  "What?" Kuro asked and his brows furrowed over those stupidly perfect green eyes.

  "Nothing. I—what happened back there? I heard you but—"

  "Me? What happened to you? We were in that room, and you vanished."

  I glanced around. We were in the attic. The dark beams and gaps in between them were visible in the fading light.

  "If I disappeared why did you come up here?"

  Kuro scratched his head, mussing his black hair. "I heard you and went to check it out. I thought maybe you'd learned something different with your power."

  He said 'power' like he was sucking on a piece of sour candy.

  Typical.

  My power invited Calamities. I might be able to communicate with them. See them. But it was a two-way mirror. I righted my coat and brushed the hair from my face. "Well, if my power is so distasteful why did you want it?"

  "I never said—" His voice trailed off.

  A faint light shone in the far corner of the attic. One that hadn't been there before. It came from a bobbing orb, pale blue, and it sounded like a desperately sobbing child.

  I doubted that's what it was, but Kuro noticed it.

  How had he noticed it?

  "She's crying," Kuro said and moved tentatively towards the orb.

  "Or it's a trick," I said.

  No miasma filled the attic, though the sensation of fear and loneliness hung in the air. A chill shot down my spine. Lost in a dark place. No hope of escape. Forever. Was that Miki or this Calamity? I couldn't tell.

  "At least pull out your weapon. Some Exorcist," I said.

  Kuro didn't look at me, but he pulled the blade free.

  I scooted after him, my hands still raw and covered in splinters. I pinched back a hiss of pain. The closer we moved, the more the orb faded. Then, as we were upon it, the light flickered out altogether.

  "It's a shame one of you doesn't have a flashlight. See what's hidden there."

  I frowned. Pulled out my keys and pressed the little penlight I kept there.

  A stack of pictures sat illuminated in the slender beam. Pictures like the ones Miki had drawn.

  "These look new. What do they have to do with the Calamity?" Kuro asked and reached out to finger through them.

  I snatched them from him. This was my investigation.

  Before I pulled away, he wrapped his hand around my wrist tightly.

  "It's that confidential case I told you about. This is a clue."

  His eyes narrowed. "A clue in a house with three dead bodies, and you haven't told the police for whatever reason. And no, I don't think you killed them, but I think something else is going on here. And this Calamity might be involved."

  "It's not. The girl didn't disappear here; she disappeared—" I snapped my mouth shut. Stupid. I needed to be more careful.

  He stared at me for a long moment. "Wait. Is this about those missing kids? Is it connected to that Longneck Woman I dealt with a couple weeks ago? Her daughter went missing too."

  I blinked at him. Opened my mouth to respond, but a dark presence filled the room. My stomach knotted with dread, and Kuro must've felt it too. His grip tightened on my wrist.

  "It just wants to feed. It needs to be sealed, and you have the weapon and the bottle. Give me one of them."

  Without a word, Kuro handed me the bottle. It was a small white clay thing that fit perfectly in the palm of my hand. The kanji for purity and containment had been written on it in thick black ink. I recognized Aki's handwriting and smiled. The sensation that radiated from it rivaled that of the presence in this place, and warmed the coldest parts of my heart.

  Kuro held his blade out. "Here."

  I stared at it. My fingers twitched at my sides, but I didn't reach for it. This had to be a trick. "That's your weapon."

  "And? I think you have more experience with Calamities than I do. Hard as it is to admit. Plus, I want to see how you work."

  It was far from the time or place for a blush to seep up my cheeks, but it did. Annoyingly.

  "He's testing you. Only question is how do you pass or fail?"

  The presence in the attic grew, but there were no sounds to accompany it this time. What happened to the scraping? Or the telltale thud?

  "Let's get out of the attic," I said and scrambled toward the door.

  No light shone from below, and a heaviness pressed on my shoulders. My eyes drooped, and the distinct tug of that thing pulled at my middle, like prying open the cork on a bottle of wine. I pinched my eyes shut and yanked back. Not gonna let it force me over again. Especially not in the attic.

  "Yuki, wait–" Kuro said, but his voice cut off.

  The Calamity's presence went out like a snuffed flame.

  "Kuro?" I called.

  He didn't answer, and my heart sank.

  This time, I was in the human world and he wasn't.

  "
Now, that's interesting."

  "I wouldn't call it interesting so much as I would call it a death trap. Shit. Now I have to get him back."

  "That's not what I said was interesting," Lux said, and the stone glowed brighter. "Look where he was. What he left. Just for you. Go ahead. Pick it up."

  Kuro's Calamity Weapon glinted in the stone's light.

  Bile filled my stomach, and my chest clenched. He was in the Spirit World without a weapon. Nothing to protect him. And if he really didn't have a Shade to step in and save him. . . If he died, it'd be my fault.

  "You could always leave him there. See if he could manage. He'll just become a Calamity and maybe curse you when he finds you again, but I'm sure you can handle that. I say you take this opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. You kill him, and take that pathetic excuse of a Calamity Weapon. It's a win-win."

  I scoffed, reached for the blade, and got a face full of spider’s webs instead. "Yeah, it's all fine and dandy until his family comes looking for him. Oh, and the last place he was seen was this house. With me. Then the cops get curious, and I end up in prison."

  "For someone who knows the justice system so well, you're foggy on the details, aren't you?"

  "Shut up," I said and grabbed the blade's handle. "My point is his family will want justice for their lost son, and they don't have any love for me."

  The blade's handle tingled unpleasantly under my fingers. Something about the surface felt slimy, though it looked perfectly dry, and the last thing I wanted to think about was slime. That slug filled my mind, and a shiver went up my spine. The blade hummed, like it was trying to speak but something powerful muffled the voice. My stomach turned.

  I shoved the blade into my coat.

  "Now where's the entrance to the Spirit World?" I asked.

  "Hard to pin down. Just like that Calamity. He keeps moving it. But it's strongest in two places. One is here, but it's closed now. Can you guess the other?"

  I poked the attic floor with my boot, looking for the exit. It had to be in that corner somewhere.

  Yes.

  There.

  I shoved it aside and jumped down into Miki's abandoned bedroom.

  I had a hunch, based on prior experience, that that thing had died in the attic.

  Doorways between the worlds open when something happens that allows a Calamity to pass through. The place of a violent crime is one such place. And it doesn't necessarily have to be the place where a person died. If they were stabbed in one room but died in another, the room where they died would have the doorway. In this case the Calamity, back when it was still human, dragged itself into the attic. The other door existed wherever the Calamity was buried. And if two doors were on the premises, that meant the Calamity was buried here.

  I glanced out the window. The street lamps buzzed on, and Kuro had left the gate to the house open. It creaked in the wind. I thought I saw blood on the ground, but that was probably a shadow.

  I'd been on the first level and the second and up in the attic. None of those were places you would bury a body. Hell, cremation was the new thing—had been for years. A nice and clean way to keep the dead where they belonged. It didn't always work, but I appreciated the effort.

  Old farmhouses like this didn't have basements, not full ones, but they certainly had root cellars.

  I groaned. "It's under the house, isn't it?"

  "Got it in one. How many centipedes do you think will gnaw on you before you stumble into it?"

  It looked like I was about to find out.

  13

  IF YOU TOLD me ten years ago, that I'd be crawling under a centuries old farmhouse to save Kuro Abe from a bloody slug-like Calamity, I'd have told you an unpleasant place to put your head.

  Yet, here I was.

  The entrance to the root cellar crouched next to the kitchen door on the outside of the house. It was hardly visible in the twilight, and more than once my fingers twitched toward my cell phone.

  I could call Aki.

  Ask for her help.

  Only look what happened when I asked for help last time.

  She sent Kuro, and now he was trapped in the Spirit World.

  I tucked his blade into one of my trench coat's inner pockets, but I still felt the squirmy unpleasantness from the weapon. I'd have to ask Lux about that later, though who knows if he'd tell me the truth.

  The door came up to my knees, and I had to crawl inside. Maybe the house settled over the last few hundred years, because no way in hell would I want to store vegetables down there.

  I decided against shining my penlight into the black hole for fear of what creepy crawly things I might find.

  Malevolent spirits who chase me through the night? Yes, I can handle those.

  Longneck Women? Perfectly fine.

  A Slug Calamity with razor-sharp fangs? Not pleasant, but like I said, I can deal.

  A roach and centipede nest? Please, no.

  Hey, Indiana Jones has his thing against snakes. I have mine against gross insects.

  I crawled in. My hands sunk into the dirt, and my hair trailed across it. Should've tied it back. Too late now. Something with too many feet skittered across my hands, and I bit my lip.

  Squeaked.

  Forced myself to move forward. Backing up meant certain death for Kuro.

  I focused instead on the Calamity's presence.

  The energy washed over me in waves and bile filled my gut. That foul odor that permeated the house emanated from this spot. It wasn't like there was much of a body left. I guessed there wouldn't be more than a few old bones. My fingers slipped against something smooth in the darkness, smooth and long with a knob at the end. Thighbone? Arm bone? Who knows? I'm not much for human anatomy, but I've seen enough bones. Felt enough bones to know what I'm touching.

  Entrances to the Spirit World that aren't marked by a Torii Gate are difficult to locate. Besides the sensation of the Calamity's presence, I didn't have anything else to go by. Sure, it was black under the house. Sure, I felt like throwing up my lunch on whatever bugs crawled over my hands and in my hair—oh Gods, they're in my hair. All I could do was blindly crawl around until I fell inside.

  And in the darkness, how would I even know?

  The heavy presence pressed on my shoulders, like a light switch being flipped on. Fear and hunger—a ravenous hunger—accompanied it.

  Well, I guess that's how I knew.

  Okay, time to finish this.

  I crawled out of the root cellar faster than I crawled in. I bumped my head, my elbows, scraped my shin, and tore my leggings again on my way out. I considered it a fair price to pay to get away from that cellar.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  The broken sign thudded into the post, and the pool of blood glinted in the moonlight.

  At least I was in the right place.

  I took one calming breath, shook out my hair and my trench coat, and charged into the house.

  Screw hiding from this Calamity. If I wanted to seal it, I'd have to get its attention.

  "Kuro! You better be alive you stupid asshole."

  Around me, the house creaked and moaned, and the heavy silence that it held for so many years roared in my ears.

  "Oh, it's not happy."

  "Good."

  I marched up the stairs, ignored my trembling and bleeding fingers, and reached for the blade tucked into my trench coat. I wasn't going to touch it until I had to. Until the Calamity was in my sight.

  Unlike a ghost, this Calamity didn't have a physical object that held it to one place. Something that needed to be sealed to seal it, like the Longneck Woman. It needed to be sealed itself.

  And that's what the Spirit Vessels are for. Since a powerful Priestess had blessed it, it could suck in the energy that the Calamity emitted, and when I slapped my seal on top, it would keep it there. I'd learned that under my mother's tutelage.

  My footsteps rang hollow on the stairs. When I got to the second-floor landing, all the doors crea
ked open.

  That was new. New and unsettling. Especially since I felt three hovering presences in the suicide room. Best avoid that.

  "If Kuro is one of those presences I'm gonna—"

  "Do what? Seal him in with that Calamity? You know he deserves it. That condescending asshole. 'Here, take my weapon because you don't have one.' You should just go in there and punch that Calamity in the face. Teach it what for."

  If it killed Kuro already which was likely, I might have to seal him too. But I wouldn't seal him with this Calamity. I wasn't that much of a bitch.

  "It's in the attic again, isn't it?"

  "You tell me. You're the Exorcist."

  Why couldn't Lux be helpful all the time?

  Still, I can't say that he never helps. He obviously helped plenty. Yesterday and today. I had to acknowledge that. Grudgingly.

  "I think he must be in the attic because the Kami hate me."

  Lux chuckled darkly. "Oh, do you really think the Kami think of you at all? And if they did, that they'd hate someone like you who could see into all their worlds and can not only kill them but death itself? I don't think hate is the right word."

  Not the time to think about that.

  I scrambled into the storeroom and climbed back into the closet. The door to the attic was open. The sensation that flowed from it, thick with fog, choked me. Pushed me back.

  Climbing up there felt like swimming upriver through honey while a bear yanked on my ankles. With a final grunt of effort, I pulled myself inside. The pure darkness that surrounded me before was here again. How many times had I been in that attic in the last hour? I hoped this was the last.

  And that I escaped alive.

  "Kuro?" I asked and wished my voice didn't have that slight tremor at the end.

  "Yuki? You—you're here?"

  That faint blue orb bobbed in the corner, and from its light I made out Kuro's face. His hair hung over his forehead, disheveled, the way it used to when we were in high school. His cheek bruised and puffy, he squinted at me, as if he couldn't really see where I was.

  "Yeah. I'm me. Are you you?"

  Kuro coughed. "You really think this Calamity is a shapeshifter? You said it just wants to feed. I think you're right."