by C. J. Anaya
And I knew it all to be one outrageous lie.
“You are frustrated that you have no control over who is meant to live and who is meant to die. You think it unfair that the young, good, deserving people in this world are taken too soon, and even though you have the power to save them you are limited in what the Universe will allow. It pains you deeply, and you punish yourself for it when you don’t deserve such censure.”
My breathing became heavy as he voiced emotions and fears, doubts and frustrations that I had battled with my entire life. How did he know all of this? How was it possible?
“All you’ve ever wanted was to be normal. All you’ve ever wanted was to save everyone you could and bring back those you couldn’t. Like Kenji, Saigo, and even your own mother.”
I sucked in a heavy breath.
“You killed her,” I hissed.
“No,” he shook his head. “You were meant to save her. I never would have sanctioned that nekomata’s actions if I had known your mother would protect you by giving up her life before you could save it. I feel that so many unpleasant things could have been avoided if I’d only been given the chance to talk to you and explain to you my desire to work together, to create a better world where no lives are lost. No one is cut off from the presence of our First Parents. Where everyone is saved no matter the obstacles. Where you can be with your mother again.” He swallowed hard, and I stared in wonder at the tears forming in the corners of his eyes. “I will admit that your mother’s death didn’t pain me nearly as much as it does now.”
“Why?”
“Because of how much I sense it pains you. I am so very sorry, Hope. I will do everything I can to make it right. To give you the peace of mind that you need. I promise you, if you’ll join me, we can bring your mother back.”
“That’s not possible,” I whispered. It couldn’t be. Amatsu was the king of smokescreens and illusions, a skilled liar with a serpent’s tongue, but the way he looked at me as if I truly was his entire world, and the unveiled sincerity in his eyes made me wonder if this bond had changed the bad and ugly parts of him far more than either of us realized. Was it possible that Amatsu’s first taste of love had altered the core of who he had become and softened his heart? Was it possible that he truly cared for me even though the bond hadn’t developed naturally?
Could we, together, have the power to bring back my mother?
I shook my head, recognizing these enticing thoughts as more than just dangerous. They were destructive. No matter what he promised, he could never make good on any of it, and in the end, no matter what he professed to feel, they weren’t feelings that came to him naturally.
“It’s possible, Hope. Just say you are mine, and I promise you anything and everything is possible.”
“I don’t know what it is you truly feel, Amatsu, but I know in my heart I love and belong to Tie. No matter what you’ve done to me, that one truth will always remain constant.”
A sad smile stole across his face.
“You are not yet ready. It’s fine, my love. I can wait. I’ve waited centuries for that moment when you give yourself to me willingly. No use in crying over something that will eventually work itself out in the end.”
“Even when the bond is complete, I will still belong to Tie.”
“Oh, little Healer. Once our bond is complete, you won’t even remember Tie’s existence. All you’ll want, know, and need will be me.”
“No,” I whispered.
The finality of his words managed to break me from the hold his proximity had over me. I took one step back and then another. It was one of the most painful things I had ever physically or emotionally forced myself to do, but I knew if I could simply train my mind to hold onto what I knew to be true, then the bond would have absolutely no power over me. So I put one foot behind me, then another, and I watched as Amatsu’s features changed into a furious expression of barely repressed rage.
“You cannot fight me forever,” he hissed.
“Watch me,” I said. Then I took another step backward and allowed myself to fall as far and as fast from Amatsu’s presence as possible.
I gasped and immediately woke up.
***
The lights within the cabin of the plane were just low enough to illuminate shapes, but very little detail. I looked across the aisle and noticed a form hunched over my little Kirby and wondered if my father was checking on him. But when the hunched form stood, holding up something thin and metal, glinting in what little light there was in the cabin, I nearly choked in panic.
The being standing over Kirby was not my father. It wasn’t even human. Angie’s warning of Kirby’s death at the hand of a nekomata propelled me forward. I moved to intercept him, but a rough, furry hand with sharp claws clamped down on my shoulder and held me fast to my seat.
“Tie,” I croaked out.
“There’s really no use crying out for anyone to help you,” hissed the nekomata standing next to Kirby.
Another nekomata hovered above me just behind my seat. I turned my head to my right and noticed Tie unconscious, but seemingly unharmed. How could he not have heard what was happening? Why wasn’t Victor or Ms. Mori doing something to stop this.
How the hell had these stupid cats managed to get on the plane?
“What did you do to them?” I asked.
“Your friends have proved annoyingly resourceful, Healer. We’ve simply drugged their food to make them more pliant and less conscious.”
The monster behind me let out a guttural laugh. A few other unnatural sounds of laughter in the cabin led me to believe that there were at least four of them on the plane. Had they been the ones flying the plane? With their ability to take on the form of anyone they chose it wouldn’t surprise me. I cringed at the thought of how many people they had killed in order to board this flight and take over the plane before we arrived.
I cleared the panic from my thoughts so I could figure out how to prevent Angie’s vision from coming true.
My focus moved to my hand where I slowly reached for Tie’s. Once I accomplished that small task, I connected to his ki in a matter of seconds and began instructing his body to burn off the sedative as quickly as possible. I didn’t know what they were planning, but I didn’t like it one bit.
“How did you know we would be on this flight?”
“You don’t get to ask questions. Our master is most anxious to have you delivered to him as speedily as possible.”
“What did you do to Kirby?” I asked, ignoring his previous statement.
“I merely gave him a sedative. He didn’t eat quite as much food as he should have.”
I had to keep these idiots talking so Tie would have time to wake up. I couldn’t handle four nekomata on my own.
“Why are you even bothering with the sedatives? Why not kill them all and be done with it?”
“As long as they are alive, you will be more cooperative, and we can’t risk an actual confrontation with all of your protectors at once. Victor, Tie, and the empress are formidable foes on their own, but with all three of them together, we couldn’t hope to win an actual battle. There isn’t much room to wield our swords upon the plane. Much better to knock them out and steal you away than lose any of my men in the process. The possibility of success is higher, you see.”
Getting this guy monologuing was easier than I thought, but I needed more time. The drugs in Tie’s system hadn’t completely burned through him yet.
“And just what do you plan to do now? We’re several thousand feet in the air, most likely over an ocean. Are we all going to jump out of the plane?”
The glitter of the nekomata’s canines flashed in the low light of the cabin. I shivered inwardly and urged Tie’s ki to speed up the process. I was completely mystified as to how the drug could have affected him in the first place. His body shouldn’t have had trouble burning through it on his own.
Suddenly, the pressure in the cabin dropped as one of the exit doors popped open in the back. A
larms went off in the cabin, and I was roughly lifted from my seat and strapped into a harness. I reached my hand backward, hoping to connect with my captor and stop his heart, but he was one step ahead of me.
“Don’t even think about using your powers on me. If you don’t cooperate, then you will watch my comrades slit the throats of your companions one by one.”
I fully believed these creatures would make good on that threat. I couldn’t kill four of them at once with my bare hands. Not before one of them murdered one of my friends, but would they die if I did nothing at all? My head swam with all of the disastrous things that might occur if I did fight back. There might be casualties, but would I be able to live with any one of my companion’s deaths on my hands? The answer to that was a resounding no. I stood there and did nothing as I was strapped to the chest of a different nekomata in the group.
It took me off guard when the nekomata I was strapped to discreetly handed me something small and whispered, “For Tie.”
I glanced behind me to confirm what I had just heard, but the nekomata looked straight ahead as if he hadn’t just spoken to me. I carefully glanced at the object in my fist while the other nekomata inched their way toward the opening in the back of the plane. It was a tiny red dart filled with a brown liquid in the middle.
“Let’s jump before this plane goes down and all of us with it,” the leader yelled out. “The girl goes first.”
I don’t know why I decided to trust the monster I was strapped to, but somehow I knew that this tiny little dart was the key to saving everyone’s life.
“I won’t leave them,” I yelled a little dramatically and flung myself forward toward Tie. The nekomata didn’t fight me, and even accommodated me by stumbling a bit.
“Deal with her,” yelled the furry creature near the exit.
“Hurry,” my captor behind me whispered.
My hand found Tie’s arm and I quickly drove the dart into his shoulder. Then I connected to him to make sure I hadn’t just injected some kind of poison, not completely certain I had made the right decision in trusting the thing I was strapped to. The brown liquid immediately reacted to the sedative within his body and jump-started his nervous system. He jolted in his seat and his eyes fluttered open.
That was all I saw before my captor wrenched me away, lifted me from my feet, and ran down the aisle to the back of the plane. I had about two seconds to catch my breath and prepare myself for what was to come before the nekomata jumped from the plane.
Then we were airborne.
And it really sucked.
The need to squeal like a little girl was something I didn’t even try to hold back. I screamed like crazy as gravity took hold of my captor and me. The air stung my face and brought tears to my eyes. I was freezing. Worse than that, we were falling into complete darkness. Even though I knew we had a parachute and my captor wouldn’t jump out of an airplane without one, I still had one awful moment of panic as I considered the possibility that I was plummeting to my death.
My body jerked back when our parachute opened, then I let out a few expletives as our descent to the ground—I seriously hoped it was the ground and not the ocean—slowed from free-falling to gliding. Tiny spots of light broke up the dense darkness below. As we drew closer to the ground, my eyes made out a few campfires and soon we were landing gracefully on a cold, sandy beach. Well, the monster behind me managed a graceful landing. My legs and arms flailed in every direction imaginable. I accidentally clocked him in the nose and reveled in his grunt of pain.
Sweet satisfaction.
“Over here,” yelled a husky voice.
Another hairy beast to our left let out a grunt of acknowledgment. I moved to make contact with it, but the cat behind me clamped my arms to my sides, aborting my desperate attempt at some well-deserved revenge. I let out a shriek of frustration and kicked out behind me.
“I need you to behave, Healer. Believe me, you’re going to want to cooperate.”
I stopped my useless thrashing since he had the advantage with me trussed up to his chest like a five-month-old baby in a carrier. Not a very dignified fighting position. Three other nekomata waited for us on the beach. A few makeshift tents were already up and the rest of my kidnapping party moved forward to celebrating the capture of…me, I guess.
Seven nekomata.
I was a talented fighter, but didn’t think I could take on seven cats from hell. My limbs felt tight and achy due to the freezing night air. My chest hurt as I looked up at the sky, worried about my group’s fate. The liquid I injected into Tie had somehow counteracted the sedative, but I didn’t know if it happened fast enough. He had to get himself oriented and take control of the plane before they crashed, and I had no idea if he even knew how to fly a plane. Did Ms. Mori or Victor have any flight experience?
I sincerely hoped one of them had spent a small part of their immortality and their money on flying lessons.
Visions of Tie, my father, Angie, and Kirby dying in a fiery plane explosion constricted my air supply and made me feel as if I might throw up and then pass out.
What if they were injured or dead? I couldn’t get to them. I couldn’t get to Victor or even Ms. Mori. I couldn’t heal any of them.
“Healer,” said a guttural voice behind me. “You must calm down. I understand you are worried about your friends, but we cannot escape and go find them if you become hysterical.”
“Escape? Go find them?”
“Shhh,” it hissed. “If you announce it to the rest of the group then I’m dead and you’ll be in Kagami, delivered to Amatsu, and forced to be his bride forever.”
My head spun at this strange turn of events.
“His bride? Since when is Amatsu interested in marrying me? I thought he was still a prisoner in the Underworld.”
“He is, but there is a fissure, a small crack in the veil that has allowed several of us to get free over the years. He cannot leave the Underworld yet, but we can leave the Underworld through that fissure.”
My stomach sank. I absolutely had to figure out how to heal this stupid veil before that crack or any other cracks burst wide open.
“Where are we, exactly?”
“The Island of Akutan.”
“Say what?”
“Alaska.”
No wonder I was freezing. Even in the middle of March, Alaska was bound to be cold, especially at night. I couldn’t make much out in the darkness, but I thought I saw the outline of some very small mountain ranges in the distance. I didn’t know much about islands in Alaska, but I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be seeing any locals in the area anytime soon.
Which didn’t do much to lift my spirits.
On the other hand, it was probably better to avoid the inhabitants of the island. A run-in with seven nekomata was a death sentence.
“You helped me save them,” I whispered.
The thing behind me grunted as it untied me and cut off our harnesses. I turned to look at it and stepped back in surprise, craning my neck to meet its eyes. This nekomata was absolutely enormous. I hadn’t noticed it on the plane due to the commotion, chaos, and my worry for my friends and family, but this beast was an entirely different breed of nekomata. He wore the same leather pants and straps across his chest as the others, but he was a giant of a creature. Easily six-foot-eight and pure muscle. I did not like the dark power that pulsed around him, but I had to admit that it intrigued me due to its substance. Nekomata were inherently dark, with ki that felt corrupted and warped. They never exuded power or authority, but rather a stunted aura, hinting at the possibilities of what they could have been or what they used to be.
But this…behemoth had power, possibility, and even nobility oozing from him.
What was this thing?
“Yes, I helped save them.”
I startled at the deep rumbling of his voice as he answered my previous question.
“Why? Why would you do that? Aren’t you inherently evil or something?”
I thought I
heard a low chuckle which sounded totally out of place coming from him, but he didn’t respond. Another nekomata came forward and yanked me in the direction of their camp. My anger ignited and I pulled my arm back.
“Hey. Touch me like that again, and I’ll stop your heart faster than you can say Kagami.”
The nekomata threw back its mangy head and howled in laughter. The rest of the large cats joined in, banging their spear ends on the ground and chanting something in a language I didn’t understand. I figured it was better that way. The monster grinned large and wide, exposing its teeth before nodding its head to my captor behind me as if to say, “She’s your problem, bro,” and then walked back to his group of feline brothers.
“They do not fear you, young Healer,” said the cat behind me. “They believe your bond with our master to be too strong. It compels you to inflict no harm upon his servants.”
I turned to look at him.
“My bond with your master? What are you talking about? I’m not bonded to Amatsu.”
It was fascinating to watch the cat’s snout pull back in a grimace. Its hairy brow furrowed in confusion and its pointed ears flattened like a normal cat’s would if it had become agitated in some way.
“This situation is far worse than I anticipated. You cannot fight the bond if you cannot remember the moments you have shared with him.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I haven’t shared any moments with Amatsu.”
“You have. Every time you sleep. And each time you do, the bond gets stronger. Soon, you’ll remember only him and no one else. Not even Tie.”
My mouth hung open in shock.
“I don’t understand anything you just said. It makes no sense to me, but I’m getting the idea that you’re trying to help me and I don’t know why.”
The monster hung its head in shame. It was shocking, really. I’d never seen anything other than ugly grimaces and vengeful glares on these creatures, but this particular beast appeared sorrowful and repentant. Almost as if it possessed a soul that wasn’t completely tainted by Amatsu’s evil.