by C. J. Anaya
“Not this again,” Angie muttered.
Tie’s arm tensed around me. I put my hand on his knee and gave it a reassuring pat as I maintained eye-contact with my former fiancé.
“Victor, I’ve been awake and lucid for a week. The revelations from my past life aren’t going to change. I understand how hard this must be for you to accept, and I’m truly sorry for what happened. For everything—”
He let out a snort. “Please. I don’t need apologies from you, Hope. I can’t take anything you say seriously because the black blossom has done its job and severed you from me. We just didn’t know that for certain until you woke up.”
“Why are you being so stubborn about this?” Tie interjected, showing the first signs of impatience since we left the hospital. “How do you think she was able to remember her life in the first place? You weren’t capable of doing that for her.”
Victor slammed his fist on the table. “That’s because she already belonged to you. You severed her soul from mine a thousand years ago when you gave her that piece of witchcraft.” He looked around at a few early morning patrons gawking at him and lowered his voice. “You’ve changed everything and quite possibly sacrificed the safety of the entire world due to your selfish need to be loved by someone.”
Tie sucked in an angry breath and opened his mouth to speak, but my father, Angie, and Kirby all chimed in at the same time. I let it go for a few seconds, but since no one’s words were even discernible, I lifted my hand to grab their attention.
“Wait a second. Wait a second,” I yelled. “Geez, you guys, we’re scaring small children here.”
“She’s right. I’m terrified.” Kirby said.
I smirked and turned my attention to the group as a whole. “Can we, for once, discuss all of this without the yelling match?”
Everyone quieted down with my father looking especially sheepish. Ms. Mori’s presence brought out the absolute worst in him.
“Thank you. Victor, while your reasoning is sound, you’re completely disregarding the fact that Tie was able to do things only my soul mate should have been able to do, and that was long before he gave me that blossom.”
“Fine,” he said evenly. “Take me through it again.”
This was progress. We’d moved from denial to a willingness to examine the facts. It almost felt like Victor was working through a prolonged grieving process, and my heart broke for him because he had lost me several times in his lifetime. Compound that loss by several centuries.
Yeah. He was holding up fairly well, all things considered.
“Item number one,” Angie started in. Her words sounded a little husky, and I sensed her pushing down an aching sadness. “You were unable to fix her ki when she damaged it after healing her ungrateful wench of a mother.”
Ms. Mori glared daggers at her.
“Angie,” I warned.
“Item number two,” she continued.
I sighed and leaned back in my seat. I’d gone over the details of my past life with everyone in great detail. It dawned on me that maybe Angie needed to process it all just as much as Victor.
“Never once during the many times you kissed…that you kissed her in order to connect with her, did you actually ever succeed in doing so.” She turned her attention to me. “Did you ever see the same colors with Victor that you did with Tie?”
“There never were colors,” I stated. “Every single time he tried to heal my ki and connect with me, my ki rejected his.” I looked at Victor and reached for his hand across the table. “And I mean that in the kindest way possible. I never rejected you as a person, and I never will, but as my soul mate, my ki never recognized yours.” He squeezed my hand and stared back at me with eyes full of grief and sorrow…and possibly a grudging acceptance. “I’m so very sorry.”
His brave attempt at a smile was more pathetic than anything as he released my hand. I leaned back into the warm comfort of Tie’s embrace.
“Item number three,” Angie said. “When you tried to heal her ki with the Grass Cutter Sword this also failed…miserably.”
“I think we get the point,” Victor said in irritation.
“Do you?” her voice rose with emotion. “As I recall, you were the one who needed a quick recap in order to convince yourself that the Black Blossom essentially canceled itself out by severing her from her soul mate and then binding her back to the same soul mate. Shall I go into how Kenji himself stated that the prophecy got everything wrong or how Tie was the one who healed her ki completely when she was dying after saving her brother Saigo?”
“Angie,” I tried again.
“No,” she said, standing up and leaning over the table a little. “He needs to hear this, and he needs to hurt because of this. His crappy behavior isn’t about his belief that the Black Blossom has muddled your brain in some way. It’s about him and his feelings for you. Despite what he knows to be true, he is still in love with you, and he refuses to accept what is obvious here.” She turned her attention to Victor, whose angry glare remained glued to hers. “You’ve loved her and waited for her for centuries. You’ve believed in a destiny you couldn’t control and every sacrifice you made for it was all for nothing. Everything you’ve stood for and believed in has been ripped away from you, and now you’re trying to make sense of it. I get that. I do. If you need time to adjust to this situation then please take all the time you need, but do it in a way where we can all stand to be around you because you pretty much suck right now.”
I watched in fascination as Angie and Victor stared each other down with the kind of intensity meant for two people in love with one another.
Oh, this was very promising. Leave it to Angie to catch a guy’s interest by totally chewing him out. Victor was not one to take orders or have his authority flouted. I had no idea how this was going to pan out.
He swallowed hard and stood, towering over Angie by several inches.
“I will try harder to not…suck so much…if you will promise to stop taking hour long bathroom breaks.”
Angie’s smug smile teased an amused one of my own.
“I think that can be arranged.” They shook on this rather interesting agreement and then sat down as the waitress brought out our donuts and pancakes.
Tension defused.
Sort of.
“This is the weirdest conference I’ve ever been a part of,” my father said as he rubbed his tired eyes with his palms.
Tie’s soft chuckle next to my ear made me smile. His normally antagonistic attitude toward Victor had cooled considerably after he found out we were soul mates and Victor hadn’t been the cause of Edana’s death. He wasn’t quite so snarky either. He’d seemed much more relaxed than the Tie before or even the man I knew as Musubi. Obviously a thousand years was going to change an individual, so it was important for us to get to know one another all over again.
I looked forward to it.
“Now that the children have decided to play nice with one another, we need to discuss the immediate problem facing us,” Tie said.
Okay, so maybe he hadn’t lost all of his snark.
“I think we can all agree that the veil needs to be healed permanently and none of us know how that’s supposed to be accomplished at this point,” he continued. “Do we still need the Grass Cutter Sword if Victor was never meant to aid Hope in this healing? Is there something specific that I’m supposed to do or accomplish during the process? Does Hope need to ascend first, and if so, how are we going to make that happen if we can’t find Hachiman? Because without him, no actual marriage can take place.”
“What?” my father barked.
I nearly jumped at the force his voice threw into that question.
Ms. Mori dragged a hand through her hair, looking a little unhappy that this particular subject now had to be broached, especially since she and my father pretty much hated each other.
“Dr. Fairmont, while Hope doesn’t have to marry Tie before she ascends, the marriage ceremony beforehand might mak
e the transition easier.,” Ms. Mori said. “They’ll be sealed together. This is essentially a kami’s version of a human marriage, which was supposed to be performed by Tie, but since we are all going along with the misguided assumption that he’s the groom, we’ll have to have Hachiman perform the ceremony.”
“Hope and I think that an ascension will be possible without the use of the marriage sealing due to the fact that she’s half immortal,” Tie said.
At Ms. Mori’s surprised look, Tie explained what had almost happened in his hotel room, while I fought not to blush in my father’s presence.
Seriously embarrassing to have my make-out session recounted in detail right in front of him.
I gave my father a furtive look.
His clenched jaw was not a good sign. Oh, he was steaming mad right now.
“I would still feel better if we consulted with Hachiman,” Ms. Mori said.
“Me too,” Tie agreed.
My dad clenched his fists on the table and took in a deep breath. “And I’d so been looking forward to your long and illustrious college education before the subject of marriage was ever broached.” He leveled an icy glare at Ms. Mori. “She’s too young to get married.”
“Your culture and customs on the topic don’t really apply here,” Victor stated. “Not that I’m thrilled about Tie marrying someone who’s been my fiancé for several centuries, but we don’t have time to sit around protecting Hope from murderous nekomata while she goes off to college and studies whatever it is women think they need to know that takes them out of their rightful place in the home,” Victor stated.
“Remember how we talked about you not sucking?” Angie asked.
“Let’s stop the arguing right now,” I said, taking in a deep breath. I placed a hand on my father’s clenched fist and smoothed it out, hoping his labored breathing might smooth out in the process.
“Hope’s right,” Victor said. “We’ve been in one place far longer than necessary. We need to check out of our hotel and move to another location before any nekomata track us here.”
“Why check out at all? We’ve already got everything packed?” Angie said.
“Well,” Victor said, looking a bit confused. “Isn’t it polite to give notice of your departure?”
Angie stared at him blank-faced for a moment before raising an incredulous eyebrow. “We’ve got murderous cats on our tail, and the god of war is worried about hotel etiquette?”
“When does our flight to Japan take off again?” Kirby asked.
“Not until this evening,” Tie said. “Until then, we lay low and keep moving.”
“Can we at least finish our meal here?” Angie asked. “I’m wasting away to practically nothing. Girls gotta have some curves.”
Victor let out a maligned sigh even though I noticed him furtively checking out Angie’s hourglass figure.
“Fifteen minutes,” he grumbled.
“How generous.”
I intervened before their bickering turned into a verbal war none of us were in the mood for.
“Okay, so the plan is to reach Kagami, enlist Hachiman’s help in the process of my ascension, and find the prophecy in its original form,” I said.
“Wait, why do we need the prophecy again?” Dad asked.
“The translated one is incorrect. It says Victor is Hope’s soul mate, but Tie really is,” Angie said. She took a big bite of food, chewed, and swallowed it down before continuing. “The original prophecy should tell us how Tie’s supposed to help her heal the veil.”
“We also need someone to translate the dang thing correctly.” I added, eyeing my own plate and realizing I’d lost my appetite. Stress is a killer that way. “Have I left anything off the to-do list?”
I looked at Victor and Ms. Mori, waiting for them to chime in when something out the window caught my attention.
It wasn’t so much the way the two guys looked that screamed nekomata. After all, they both appeared to be your normal, run-of-the-mill humans.
It was the wary expression, tilt of their heads, and subtle lift of their noses, indicating they were sniffing something foul in the air that had my nerve endings tingling. My heart sank.
How on earth did they find us so quickly?
“We’ve got company,” I said. “Don’t everybody look out the window or they’ll notice us right away.”
“Nekomata?” Kirby asked as he hunched down in his seat.
“I’m pretty sure.”
“Where?” Victor growled.
“The two guys hovering outside that window?” Dad asked.
He and Tie were facing the same direction as me. Tie’s body tensed as he spotted them.
“They’re coming in,” Tie said. “There’s no masking our entire group’s smell with two of them this close to us.”
Would they really risk making a scene in front of all these people?
A tiny bell on the entrance door made a tinkling noise, cheerily announcing the arrival of Amatsu’s lackeys. The moment they walked in, their eyes landed on me
Chilling.
Their green slitted pupils flashed and went black. Their eyes were only things that didn’t seem even remotely human. Cold, shadowed, and calculating in their intensity, both shifters gave me lecherous smiles.
Tie gripped me harder around the waist and stared them down. Ms. Mori shifted a little under the table. I assumed she was moving some deadly weapon into position. Angie kept her back to the scary duo and stared straight ahead. She appeared indifferent, but her emotions fluctuated between terrified and completely pissed off.
They’d interrupted her meal, after all.
Victor waved at them like we were all old friends which produced a laugh from one of them and an angry scowl from the other.
The tense stand-off was interrupted when a hostess came to seat them. Our entire group stared them down as they followed the tiny hostess to a booth on the opposite side of the restaurant.
This was surreal. To be in the same room with these creatures and act as if we were all just shootin’ the breeze disturbed me on so many levels.
I think we all knew how this would play out. It was a waiting game for them and a total gamble for us. We could leave now and hope these were the only two hunters in the area, or we could wait, strategize, and risk more nekomata finding our location. If we got up and left they would immediately follow and most likely attack us. Someone was bound to get hurt.
I kept my eyes glued to the monsters posing as decent human beings, wondering how we were going to get out of this mess without drawing attention to ourselves when Victor made that decision for us. He shot up out of his chair, strode across the room, and landed a wicked punch to the side of one creature’s face. His companion was too stunned to react before Victor’s fist began pummeling him too.
“Subtle,” Tie said, as he stood and reached for my hand. “I do love Victor’s style.”
Our group moved as one to the front entrance while Victor continued to give the two henchmen the beating of their lives. Patrons’ outraged screams hurried us along. It was comical to see the impostors crouching in their booth, with hands raised in an attempt to defend themselves while Victor rained down blow after blow upon their heads. They found themselves in an impossible position from which to outmaneuver him.
Sweet justice.
“What does he think he’s doing?” my dad said. “That hostess is calling the police.”
“Then we better get to our vehicle before the law shows up,” Tie said.
We all piled into a black SUV, one Victor had purchased a few weeks before, and waited for the man in question to get the heck out of that restaurant.
“Maybe someone should have stayed with him,” Angie said in the seat behind me.
“Believe me, ole Vicky can handle two sniveling nekomata,” Tie said. He started the engine and revved it while I looked out the passenger window, searching for signs of more lurking creatures.
“Were these two really stupid enough to come alo
ne?” I wondered.
“I think they’re scouts,” Ms. Mori said. “Soldiers sent out in pairs all over California and Oregon, possibly even Nevada, to pick up our trail. Once they find it, they send for the others.”
“Does this group want to kill Hope?” Kirby asked.
“I’m uncertain, child. One group wants Hope dead, the other wants to deliver her to Amatsu. Then there’s the reformed nekomata who are now kami due to the help of Hope’s blood.”
“But there aren’t many of those,” I said.
“No, but they will be difficult to spot since their aura doesn’t bounce off the veil like a nekomata’s does,” Tie said.
“I think if we leave now, we’ll be able to lose them fairly quickly,” Ms. Mori stated.
She was so calm about everything. It annoyed me to no end.
“Normally, I would agree with you, but I’m worried with how fast we were found. I’m not so sure Hope’s ki is being masked properly.”
“What?” I asked in alarm, but the back door swung open and Victor vaulted in.
“Go!” he shouted. “They weren’t alone.”
Tie didn’t ask questions before throwing the SUV into reverse and peeling out of the parking lot. As we made our way onto the highway, two white vans pulled out behind us. I jerked forward against my seatbelt when one of them rammed into the back of our vehicle.
“Seriously?” Angie shouted.
“Everybody buckle up,” Tie said.
“Get onto the freeway,” Victor demanded.
“Don’t tell me how to drive.”
“Quit arguing,” Ms. Mori said. “We have to lose them before we can find a different hotel for the night, and the last thing we need is an accident because you two can’t go one day without fighting like adolescent teenagers.”
Tie sped up and took the freeway exit at the very last second, losing the van right behind us, but not managing to shake the other one. A high-speed chase on the freeway was sure to get us pulled over.
“We have to get rid of these guys fast. Who knows how many of them are in the city looking for us?” Victor said.
Tie gunned the gas and sped another mile, pulling into the exit lane and staying the course until the last possible moment. Then he pulled back onto the freeway, but the van behind us wasn’t able to adjust and ended up taking the off-ramp before it could stop. Tie slowed down to fifty-five even though the flow of traffic was at a steady seventy miles per hour.