The spider hissed loudly. Behind her, Shiro lay in the snow, motionless. Desperate rage bubbled up in her again and the wind churned, sending snow dancing all around her. She clutched her ofuda.
Once again, the spider rushed her, then it wheeled to one side and scooted up a tree trunk. Emi scrambled backward, craning her neck as the dark shape disappeared in the fog above.
Without thinking, she thrust her hand upward. A violent gust followed her motion, surging toward the sky. Tree branches creaked and the fog writhed as though resisting the wind’s push. As the mist dispersed, a dark shape directly above Emi manifested.
The spider dropped from the web above. Emi sprang backward, the wind pushing her and holding her upright at the same time. The spider landed directly in front of her, fangs extended, but she was already flinging her hand out. The incantation bloomed in her mind though she had no time to speak the words.
The binding ofuda in her hand struck the spider in the eyes as the words rang through her head. Sotei no shinketsu!
Blue light surged over the yokai, immobilizing its entire body. Emi grabbed another ofuda and slammed it down on top of the first.
“Shukusei no tama!”
With the words of the purification spell, the air around the spider flashed brightly. She crushed her hand against the ofuda, bringing every ounce of her will and concentration upon it. Heat built inside her—not from the kamigakari mark, but from deep in her chest, from deep in her heart. Ki surged down her arm. Light sparked all over the spider and wind gusted violently around them.
In a final bright flash, both ofuda turned to black ash beneath her hand. The spider collapsed to the ground and its form began to soften in the yokai death.
Emi staggered back. She’d killed the spider by purifying all its ki, destroying its life force. Shaking her head, she stumbled away from the body, one thought—one name—filling her mind until she could think of nothing else. Shiro.
She dropped to her knees at his side and touched his cheek. His cold skin chilled her palm. His eyes had closed and only his faint, shallow breath revealed the life he still clung to.
“Shiro,” she whispered. “Shiro, please wake up.”
The breeze shimmered over her. It was just a breeze, but somehow she knew to look up, to heed its silent warning.
The fog drifted through the clearing and within it a new shadow took shape. From out of nothing but roiling white, a figure coalesced into a solid form. The woman was petite, shorter than Emi, with a thin, willowy figure clad in a kimono of solid, shimmering gold silk. Black hair softly framed a beautiful face of delicate features—beautiful except for her eyes.
Her eyes were solid, lidless black orbs glaring from her gentle countenance.
The woman’s head turned, her long black hair swaying behind her. Bound in regular intervals by golden ties, the silky locks fell all the way to the ground, brushing the snow. She pursed her rosebud lips at the body of the spider before those ugly black eyes slid across Emi and dropped to Shiro.
“I would ask,” the woman said in low, sibilant tones, “which of you I should punish for slaying my daughter, but I see one of you has already paid the price.”
Emi gripped Shiro’s shoulder, her fingers digging in. “Who are you?”
“You hold him as though you still bear hope,” the woman observed. “You know he will never wake, do you not?”
“He’s not dead,” Emi retorted, her voice high with desperation.
“Oh no,” the woman replied sweetly. “He will not die for a very long time, but death he would wish for if he were capable of wishing now.”
Emi’s whole body went cold. “What are you talking about?”
“Ah, so you do not know.” The woman drifted closer, her golden kimono rippling with each step. “What are you, I wonder? You appear as no more than a human, but I can scent the faint presence of a kami in the air.”
Clutching her ofuda, Emi rose to her feet and stepped in front of Shiro. “I’m a human.”
“Perhaps you are, but you are not as human as the sweet morsels I have dined on these past months. My benefactor did not send you into my webs.”
“You—you’ve been eating the people from the shrine?”
“Ah.” The woman smiled knowingly. “So you are not the innocent wanderer you would have me believe, hmm? Since you know so little about my sons and daughters, I doubt you come to hunt monsters, as so many once did in years past. Do you search for one of the lost Kunitsukami?”
Emi straightened, struggling to focus while panic spun endlessly in her head. “What do you know about the Kunitsukami?”
“I know they forbid me to hunt humans—as is my right, my legacy. I am the Devourer of Souls, yet they confined me to this valley and allow me to consume only whatever foolish prey enters it. Do you know how few humans come here?”
The Devourer of Souls. Emi knew that name. “You … You’re Jorogumo?”
The yokai smoothed her hair, looking pleased to be recognized. “So you are not utterly ignorant. What do you know of me?”
Jorogumo was a yokai featured in almost as many tales as the Tengu, but her stories were far darker. Tales of the arachnid Devourer of Souls had given Emi nightmares as a child.
Before she could answer, a strange shadow fell over the clearing. The yokai’s head tilted back as she looked curiously at the sky, and Emi copied the movement. Above, the white fog went dark as though the sun had dimmed. The gloom thickened until an unnatural twilight had settled over the woods.
“Jorogumo.”
Emi recognized the deep voice, but the shivering tones that whispered of ancient forests, dark shadows, and long nights were entirely unfamiliar.
“Devourer of Souls, Queen of Arachnids, Mistress of Tsuchi,” the speaker continued, and Emi realized he was answering Jorogumo’s question. “Lady of Blood and Silk, and Spider Witch of the North.”
From out of the darkness, Yumei glided into the clearing—but he wasn’t quite the yokai she knew. His motions were slow, precise, cloaked in a predatory grace. The feathers that normally intermingled with his dark hair now extended beyond the back of his head from behind each pointed ear, and his eyes had turned wholly silver, devoid of pupils or sclera. In his hand he held a long black spear, the haft aligned with his arm and the bladed head pointed toward the ground.
And from behind his back, black wings slowly unfurled, long feathers flaring outward.
“Ah,” Jorogumo breathed. “Tengu, how long it has been. Has it haunted you, your failure to kill me all those long centuries ago?”
Yumei drifted to a stop beside Emi and folded his wings against his back. His pale eyes glowed faintly in the unnatural gloom.
“Though it would have been a kindness to rid the world of your filth,” he said without emotion, “I cannot say your existence has crossed my mind since our parting.”
Jorogumo’s face twisted. “You lie. You swore to destroy me. You would not forget.”
“You assume a wretch such as you would ever occupy my thoughts?”
The woman hissed furiously before regaining her composure. Tossing her head, she twirled a strand of dark hair around her finger. “If you have come to save your companions, you are too late. One has already fallen to my daughter’s fangs.”
Yumei’s gaze flicked to Shiro then back to the spider queen.
“The company you keep speaks of your fallen prowess,” she continued boastfully, “while I have grown only more powerful on a diet of fresh human blood and powerful yokai ki. Your companion will feed me even longer.”
Emi’s hands clamped around her ofuda. “Yumei,” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth. “Jorogumo mentioned the Kunitsukami. I think she knows something.”
“She would know nothing of such matters,” Yumei said without lowering his voice. “She is far beneath even the mention of the Kunitsukami.”
“Is that why you came, Tengu?” Jorogumo exclaimed gleefully. “Again, you are too late!”
“
She knows nothing,” he repeated indifferently to Emi.
Jorogumo hissed, her composure cracking again. “I am no lowly minion, Tengu! You think you are so mighty, blessed by the graces of Sarutahiko? No one can resist my venomous kiss, not even your precious master.”
Only because she was watching for it did Emi see the tiny flex in Yumei’s jaw, but he sounded as dismissive as before when he said, “Your lies do not impress me. You think I would believe you capable of bringing down the Daimyojin?”
Jorogumo glanced away before returning her glare to Yumei. “I assure you I have tasted the divine potency of his blood, and he did fall, caught in the endless sleep of my kiss.”
“Izanami helped you,” Emi said loudly. “Didn’t she?”
Shock flashed across Jorogumo’s face—an answer in itself. “However you came to that knowledge, it matters not. You will never leave this forest to speak of it.”
The spider queen fixed her unblinking stare on Yumei and spread her arms, the draping sleeves of her kimono fluttering. “You come to my valley, where I rule with all my sons and daughters beside me, where we gorge on human and yokai ki, and you think to challenge me? You, the pathetic, withered raven who once waged battle with his warrior daitengu at his side but has now come crawling before me without a single soldier to command? You cannot defeat me.”
Yumei extended his spear out to one side, causing the feathers that hung from the haft just below the blade to sway. “Time has not improved your arrogance.”
She laughed, her arms still outstretched. “I should say the same for you. I will enjoy drinking your ki, Tengu.”
She lifted her palms skyward. As her hands rose, giant shapes descended from the twilight darkness. The massive spiders uncurled their legs and emitted eager hisses as dozens more of their smaller siblings dropped down to join them.
Jorogumo threw her head back, spouting a cackling laugh as fierce ki ripped through the air. The fog seethed and boiled, whirling around her and gathering into a dense cloud that completely obscured her form.
In a sudden gust, the cloud dispersed. The most enormous spider of them all rose on thick black and yellow legs, the ends tipped with hooked claws. Where the spider’s head should have been, Jorogumo’s human torso melded grotesquely to the arachnid body, her long hair and golden kimono splayed across the bulging abdomen. She lifted her human arms and laughed.
“Take your true form, raven!” she mocked. “Spread your great wings within these trees!”
Yumei unfurled his smaller wings but didn’t transform into the immense raven Emi had seen battle the kami Koyane. How could such a large form fight in these dense trees, their branches filled with ensnaring webs? But his human form, even with wings, was so small as he faced the monstrous spider-woman.
With no sign of fear, Yumei lifted his weapon. The darkness deepened and the shadows beneath the trees rippled. They writhed and danced, growing larger—growing solid. Wings spread from the shadows and red eyes glowed from within them—three red eyes per rippling raven. The birds pulled free of the shadows from which they were born and hovered weightlessly in the still air without a single beat of their spectral wings.
Jorogumo’s head swung rapidly back and forth as she took in the gathering army of shadow creatures. Yumei smiled, and Emi shivered at the sight.
“Did you forget, Jorogumo?” he asked softly, darkness sliding through his voice. “I am not a mere Lord of Crows. I am the Prince of Shadows, and always do my soldiers await my call.”
Fear crawled across Jorogumo’s face before she clenched her jaw. With a furious shriek, she flung herself at Yumei. Her horde of spiders rushed after her.
Yumei’s wings snapped wide. He sprang into the air and his shadow ravens dove like missiles for the oncoming spiders.
The Tengu and the spider queen crashed together as the spiders and ravens tore into each other. Emi cowered over Shiro, clutching him as ribbons of black and red magic, rippling with strange runes, uncoiled around Yumei. Jorogumo lashed out with her magic. The two forces collided and exploded outward. A wave of dirt and snow rained down on Emi and she curled around Shiro, shielding her face.
As the two yokai battled, Emi grabbed Shiro by the shoulders and dragged him away. Her muscles strained as she pulled him step by painstaking step. Heaving him behind a thick tree trunk, she collapsed beside him, panting as the ground quaked beneath the battle of ancient powers.
She wrapped her arms around Shiro and pressed her cheek against his face until she felt his faint breath on her skin. Tears slipped down her cheeks. Jorogumo had said he would never wake, and that even Sarutahiko, the most powerful of the Kunitsukami, had fallen to the spider venom.
As the earth trembled and the shadows writhed, Emi clutched Shiro to her and fought the sobs building in her chest. What was she doing here? What could she, a pathetic human, do? What had she thought she could do in this world of gods and monsters? She’d barely managed to kill one spider, and now Yumei had to battle the spider queen and her arachnid army alone.
She had failed Shiro. She had failed Amaterasu. Izanami and Jorogumo had already taken Sarutahiko down with spider venom. How could Emi free the leader of the Kunitsukami from a poison? How could she save him before the solstice? She was useless.
She squeezed her eyes shut as hopeless despair ripped through her.
Descend now, she screamed soundlessly. Descend now and take my body, Amaterasu! I can’t do this!
The cold emptiness within her offered no answer.
“Shiro,” she wept. “What do I do? What am I supposed to do?”
Something slammed into the opposite side of the tree trunk, the impact shaking snow from the upper branches. A flurry of black feathers fluttered down with the snow. Emi shot to her feet as Yumei hit the ground, his back to the tree and wings splayed. Golden threads—remnants of broken webs—trailed from him.
The spider queen charged after him, her monstrous form emerging from the darkness as her cackling laugh shattered the silence. Yumei lurched forward and staggered up, the feathers of one wing bent in the wrong direction. Blood ran from rips in his kosode and splattered the white snow around him.
The monstrous yokai surged toward him. Evading her charge, he slashed his spear at her leg as she thrust the limb with lethal force. The hooked claw at the tip struck the tree where he’d been, splitting the trunk. White blood dripped from numerous cuts over the human and spider halves of her body but she laughed hungrily, unaffected by her injuries.
“Finally grounded, Tengu?” she shrieked triumphantly. “You cannot evade me forever! I will drink your ki before the sun sets!”
Cold spread through Emi as she clutched the tree. Yumei darted away, red magic undulating in his wake, and Jorogumo followed, power leaking from her body like glowing strands of spun gold. Among the trees, spiders and shadow ravens battled in a futile war—the ravens too small to do serious damage to the giant spiders, but the spiders unable to harm the shadow creatures.
His shadows might be impervious to harm, but Yumei wasn’t. The spider queen had been right. Alone and outside his territory, in a place where he couldn’t use his most powerful form, he was at a severe disadvantage. She was going to kill him—or deliver an incapacitating bite and trap him in the same eternal sleep as Shiro and Sarutahiko.
The breeze whispered across Emi, teasing loose strands of her hair. She could almost taste the tentative question in its caress.
Whirling back to Shiro, slumped lifelessly against the tree, she grabbed her ofuda from where she’d carelessly dropped them. After separating out the purification talismans, she pulled an arrow from her quiver and wrapped all five ofuda around the shaft. Leaving the quiver beside Shiro, she surveyed the battle: the surge of shadows and spiders, the violent clash of Yumei and the spider queen.
She turned to the tree beside her, its long branches winding above the battle. The breeze danced around her. Sticking the arrow in her obi, she took two running steps and leaped, reaching for the lowest
branch.
The breeze turned into a heavy gust that swept beneath her, propelling her up. She landed on top of the branch and wobbled dangerously before grabbing the trunk. Without giving herself time to think, she jumped for a nearby bough. Again the wind caught her, flinging her up. She grasped the thick branch and swung on top of it. Standing with her arms spread wide for balance, she ran along the bough, following it out over the clearing.
Below, the spider queen caught Yumei with her long foreleg, hurling him to the ground. She pounced, raising one clawed front limb. Before he could recover, she rammed the claw through his lower chest.
“You have lost, Tengu!” Jorogumo sang. “I have defeated you! Never again will I be counted as your inferior!”
Yumei, his spear still in one hand, bared his teeth at the spider as he grabbed the leg piercing his body. “I am not dead yet.”
Emi pulled the arrow from her obi. The wind swirled around her, an unspoken promise.
“You could never admit defeat,” Jorogumo sneered. She lifted another front limb, the clawed tip gleaming. “But no matter. I will—”
Emi dove off the branch. She sailed on a gust of air and plunged down onto the spider queen’s bulbous abdomen. The arrow was already in her hands, raised above her head. As she landed, she brought the arrow down, driving it between the yokai’s human shoulder blades.
“Shukusei no tama!” Emi screamed with every drop of willpower she possessed.
The ofuda and arrow transformed into blinding white light. Jorogumo reared back with an agonized shriek as light flashed over her body. Howling, she flung her arms back and grabbed Emi’s shoulders.
From below the spider queen, Yumei bolted up, his spear in his hands. In one smooth motion, he thrust the blade into her belly and up under her ribcage. Red and black light rushed up the haft toward the buried blade. Jorogumo writhed and screamed, and then dark power erupted from her body, rupturing her torso in a spray of white blood.
The blast flung Emi backward. She tumbled over the spider’s abdomen and fell off the rump, crashing to the ground. Piercing pain ripped through her ribs, reminding her of the blow from the spider earlier.
Dark Tempest (The Red Winter Trilogy Book 2) Page 14