by C. J. Anaya
He was fearsome to be sure, but Bishu’s kind heart and easy temperament were hard to overlook.
Angie was in trouble.
Ha!
“We come bearing gifts,” she announced, pulling out Twinkies, Ho Hos, and various packages of chips.
“Hand over the Ho Hos,” Kirby demanded. He dug in enthusiastically while I took a bag of corn chips and a Twinkie.
“Where on earth did you find this stuff?” I mumbled through a mouthful of chips.
“We discovered two vending machines—thank the gods—near the end of the building and took great delight in pilfering it’s contents,” Bishu said.
“In other words, we beat the crap out of them until they broke open,” Angie said, offering up a bag of Cheetos to Bishu. His eyes lit up at the sight of his favorite orange chips. He seated himself across from Angie. I took note of his knee slightly grazing her own. Angie noticed it too, if the startled spike in her emotions was any indication. I couldn’t tell if it pleased or frightened her…or both.
I had to figure out a way to block everyone’s feelings out. This was getting exhausting.
“Has Tie cut you off completely, then?” she asked.
I narrowed my eyebrows in confusion.
“How did you know?”
“He’s doing that brooding thing again. Exactly what he did the first time we met him. He’s no doubt punishing himself for inadvertently bonding you to Amatsu, but he needs to get over it and start making out with you. Isn’t that going to strengthen your bond?”
Bishu let out a chuckle, and Angie gave him a bemused look.
“What?”
“It is sometimes difficult for me to understand your meaning. What is making out?”
“Oh.” Her face colored for a moment as she tried to figure out how to explain it to him. “Well, basically it means you spend several minutes exchanging passionate kisses with each other…which generally leads to…um…other things.”
Bishu’s eyes heated with that weird green glow only nekomata are capable of.
“I see,” he murmured. “Thank you for clarifying.”
Angie lowered her eyes to her Twinkie and nodded.
“Incidentally, it takes more than kissing to strengthen the bond,” he said, looking pointedly at me.
“Not that I want to discuss my love life with any of you, but I’m really not ready for the physical intimacy you’re hinting at.”
Bishu’s eyes widened in surprise.
“You mistake my meaning, Healer. Physical intimacy is merely meant to solidify what already exists between you and your intended, and is only meant to be used within the bounds of marriage. The gift of procreation is powerful and profound, not something you take part in on the weekend with a one-night stand.”
“Whoa,” Angie said. “Who said anything about procreating? We’re just talking about sex.”
“In a way we are, but in a way we are also talking about the beauty and power of what sex represents. It facilitates life, love, and prosperity, and should only be shared within the bounds given by our First Parents.”
“Sounds archaic and old-fashioned,” she pointed out.
Bishu favored her with a gentle look. How he managed that with the face of a deranged panther was beyond me.
“The laws of the Universe are immutable, no matter how much time has passed, and no matter how drastically popular opinion has changed, but I’m getting off topic here. The point I’m trying to make is that your bond can be solidified and strengthened by connecting them together without the use of sex or even kissing. Spiritual and emotional connections transcend physical ones. That’s why lust is so very different and dangerous from feeling true, selfless love.”
Angie blinked a few times in response and let out a slow breath.
“I’ve never heard a guy talk like that before.”
Bishu chuckled. “Glad you’re referring to me as a guy considering what I look like. However, I have lived for thousands of years. I would hope I’ve developed a little maturity and perspective along the way.”
I felt Angie’s shock register at the reminder of how ancient the war god really was. Hmmm. How was that going to affect this strange connection she had with him? I hoped she’d get over it. After living two lifetimes and being bonded to an immortal I’d begun to realize that age was just a number.
I glanced at Kirby whose eyes volleyed from Angie and Bishu with suspicious interest. He chewed his food carefully and swallowed.
“Speaking of spiritual connections,” he ventured, “do you know why I can sense Hope’s ki when I close my eyes and try to search for it?”
Bishu’s cat-eyes glowed with interest. “You have a connection with the Healer?” He looked at me and said, “I wasn’t aware you two were brother and sister.”
“We’re not,” I said. “Believe me, I wish we were, but Kirby and I met in the hospital where I worked when he had cancer.”
“And you healed him.”
“How did you know that?” I asked.
Bishu hesitated for a moment before answering. “His aura has been touched by death. I recognize it because I am a creature of the Underworld, though Kirby would never have been sent to that awful place, but now that I study it further it is clear that you have similar energies or rather impressions upon your spirits that you both share. You must be related in some way.”
“Believe me, we’re not.”
Kirby’s eye-brows puckered in thought. “Unless we share some great-great-great-great grandparent that we don’t know about.”
“But then the energies would be diluted. More like distant cousins,” the war god argued.
“What are we discussing?” my dad asked as he sat down next to Bishu and gratefully took the Twinkie Angie offered him.
“The plane is ready to go,” Victor interrupted. “Ms. Mori’s on board doing all of the pre-flight checks.”
Tie came next, barely able to meet my gaze. When his eyes quickly drifted to the group as a whole, I nearly let out a frustrated snort.
Did he think total avoidance was helping this situation? Didn’t he understand that I needed him, his presence, and his support, more now than ever?
“We are discussing Kirby and Hope’s similar energy imprints of the familial variety, very much like what you share with your daughter, Dr. Fairmont,” Bishu said.
My dad appeared mystified by that comment. His lips thinned in frustration. “I’m not sure what that means, but it sounds like one more complication I’m not ready for.”
I placed a hand on his shoulder, ready to explain what Bishu was getting at when the whirring sound of a helicopter began to grow in volume.
“Everybody get to the plane,” Victor shouted.
Our party stood quickly and began running toward the open plane, but the helicopter reached the runway and hovered high above us before we were even halfway there. Any normal group of humans would have had to take the time to land before setting out to overtake us.
Not these freaks of nature. One-by-one nekomata jumped from their helicopter, which was a good six hundred feet above the ground, and landed on their feet in a crouched position. There was now a long line of six nekomata spread out before us, blocking our path toward the aircraft.
I immediately grabbed Kirby’s shoulder and pulled him behind me, ignoring his grunts of protest. Seriously? Like I was going to let this kid fend off massive cats from hell.
The noise from the helicopter thundered above us. It moved off a few hundred feet from where we had landed in the middle of the runway blocking our path of escape. The helicopter stuttered to a halt and then the blades slowed as the engine cut off.
Eerie silence greeted us as our group stood lined up to face ferocious nekomata on a blackened runway on an obscure Island in Alaska.
“This sucks,” Angie whispered on my left.
At some point Tie had planted himself on my right. My father stood on Tie’s other side, Bishu stood next to Angie and Victor was on his left. Kirby li
fted himself up on his tiptoes and craned his head above my shoulder to peek out over our line of defense.
“Where’s Ms. Mori?” he asked.
“Bishu,” growled a nekomata in the middle of the group. “You dishonor your role as Amatsu’s first in command. How is this possible?”
I glanced at Bishu in surprise. He may have stated he had gained the demon god’s trust, but first in command? What kind of awful things had he felt compelled to do in order to gain that kind of confidence and trust?
“I chose my side at the beginning of creation. You willingly followed when Amatsu fell. I may have been forced into the Underworld, but I never consciously chose to follow him. I am now free to remedy the damage he has created.”
“Pity,” the nekomata growled. “Amatsu will not be pleased to hear that his most prized asset had to be put down. Now you will feel the agony of an eternal death, and I will take great pleasure in affording you that experience.”
Tie sighed in exasperation. “Why is there always such useless preamble before a good fight? Is it really necessary for you freaks to beat your chests and throw out empty threats? Anyone feel like they’ve just landed in the middle of an Avengers flick?”
The nekomata in the middle cried out in agony as his back arched in pain and he fell forward on his knees. His head was swiftly severed from his body as Ms. Mori came into view behind him, sword raised above her head and her body in one of those crazy lunge positions that would have made Jackie Chan proud.
“I would have to agree, Tie,” she stated as the nekomata on either side of their fallen companion stepped back in utter shock. “These beasts tend to talk too much.”
Ms. Mori attacked another monster on her left, taking full advantage of their shock. Tie, Victor and Bishu were already on their way over to help. Angie and I looked at each other before scurrying after them. I think we were both anxious to prove ourselves in a fight.
“Kirby, you stay with my father,” I shouted. It wouldn’t have surprised me at all if Kirby decided to follow. The nekomata at the very end of their line-up was waiting for me with its weapons stowed away where I couldn’t be injured. I had the advantage since he wasn’t allowed to kill me, but I held no such compunction when it came to this thing’s well-being.
I wasn’t so foolish as to tip my hand and play the aggressor. Since the creature was twice as large as me, and who knew how much stronger, it was necessary to use the nekomata’s own force against him. We circled round one another to the distracting tune of swords clashing and battle cries echoing through the frosty night air. My breath came out in a billowy white haze and my throat burned with each inhalation.
The thing finally got impatient and dodged forward, attempting to simply lay me out with a quick jab to my face. I stepped into its personal sphere with my right and leaned back as its clawed fist shot past me, the fine hairs on the back of its paw gently grazing my cheek. Reaching upward, I grabbed its arm and tried to ignore the awful sensation of rough fur between my fingers as I used its momentum to throw it over my shoulder and onto its back. Before it had a chance to recover, I slammed my foot across its throat and sent a wave of power through its ki, commanding the trachea to cave in on itself. I remained connected as its panic and pain washed through me.
Asphyxiation isn’t exactly pleasant. Not a fun way to die when you’re conscious right up until the very end. A sucking noise rattled through its throat as it tried to take in more oxygen. A green mist-like glow circled up from the body and inched its way in my direction, caressing my hand and slithering upward where a small part of it seeped into my chest and penetrated my heart. I sucked in a sharp breath and allowed the heady power of the substance to overtake me. In the back of my mind I thought I heard a familiar voice call out to me.
“Accept what power you need, my love. All that I have is yours for the taking.”
The voice was right. This power over life and death belonged to me. It was my right to decide who lived and who died. My god-given ability to reign over the souls of all the living and the dead.
I studied the creature’s eyes as it realized it had very little time left to live. Its panic and anxiety hit me hard, snapping me out of my watchful, almost clinical study of its condition, making me realize I was causing it undue suffering with the kind of indifference only a sociopath could produce. Where had that voice come from? Where had my thoughts taken me? This animal needlessly suffered as I remained a dispassionate observer.
What the hell was I becoming?
I released my hold and stepped back, shaken by my behavior. Shaken by those moments of cold calculation when I participated in its death as an emotionless observer instead of simply ending its life in the most merciful and humane way possible. And that voice. It sounded so familiar, but where had it come from and who did it belong to?
And why had I felt a powerful yearning for the person it belonged to?
The nekomata remained on its back, coughing and choking on its own trachea until Tie arrived and sliced its head off with a blackened sword from the Underworld.
I blinked at the blood spray, and cringed at the way the head rolled from the body.
“Hope?” Tie said in a tightly controlled voice. “Honey, are you all right?”
I glanced at him and noticed the careful way he looked at me, almost as if he feared I had become unhinged somehow and might have some kind of panic attack right in front of him.
I wanted to respond, but that seductive voice floated back to me.
“Tie may care for you, but he will never love and adore you as I do. He doesn’t deserve the woman you are or the woman I know you can become.”
I may have been looking at Tie, but it felt like I was staring straight through him and seeing someone else standing in front of me, beckoning me forward. Someone with a white robe, devastatingly handsome features, and a look of desire so powerful I felt compelled to run and throw my arms around him. The apparition faded and then winked out of existence, leaving Tie standing in its place.
“Hope,” he yelled. He stepped forward and grabbed my shoulders pulling me to him and pressing me against his chest. “Hope, look at me.” He ran his fingers along my cheek and then through my hair, but the tenderness of his touch failed to thrill me as it used to. My eyes became glassy and out of focus. I placed a hand at his heart and tried to say something, but no words would come. All I wanted at that very moment was to be held in the arms of the man in that apparition, and I didn’t understand why.
“It’s happening,” said a familiar voice behind Tie. “Her connection with Amatsu is occurring while she’s awake. You must do what you can to heal the blackness in her heart before she becomes his.”
Bishu’s words reminded me of the connection between Amatsu and myself, and the reality of my situation came crashing down around me. My connection with Tie had been greatly damaged within the last few minutes, and somehow he had to fix it.
But did I want him to? It didn’t seem like the best choice to make. Wasn’t I happier being tied to Amatsu, a far superior god than the rest of these kami?
Tie pressed me close, but I stepped back and shoved him away.
“Don’t touch me,” I hissed. “I’m not yours to hold, touch, or take.”
Tie’s eyes widened in shock, the color draining from his face as he studied me.
“Her eyes are glowing green, Bishu,” he whispered.
Didn’t that mean I was coming into my rightful power? I gave him a smirk and took another step back.
“Do you really think I could ever love someone as weak and flawed as you?” The pain my words caused the man standing before me merely fueled my power. I drank from that pain and let it expand within me.
“She’s right,” Tie muttered under his breath. “I’ve never understood why she chose me.” His eyes held unshed tears. I wanted to walk over and drink my fill of them, but I was afraid any contact with this stranger before me might muddy my powers. I couldn’t remember who he was at the moment, yet I did k
now he was the reason I hadn’t reached my full potential. He kept getting in the way.
“Tie, do something,” someone said behind me.
I scoffed. What exactly did anyone think they could do?
I closed my eyes and focused on the green glow building within my heart. Darkness stole in and a sweet voice within my mind encouraged me to accept the pulsing darkness spreading through me. I took a deep breath and readied myself for the fullness of Amatsu’s bond to overtake me.
“Tie, if you do nothing you will lose her forever,” yelled the beast behind me.
I nearly let out a disbelieving laugh when I was scalded by vice-like arms as they encircled my frame. This kami, this undeserving immortal dared touch me? He connected to me, forcing his way through the dense barrier and penetrating the power within the recesses of my heart. My ki fought him at first, and the struggle became agonizing as the warm golds and ambers of his ki made contact with the dark pulse of the link that bound me to Amatsu. I struggled and shook, but my back arched as my body seized when I tried to fight him off and push him out of my heart completely. His determination to succeed took over.
Tie!
His ki began to feel familiar to me. His energy and light, his love and affection for me broke through the dark haze my ki had momentarily fallen under and the powerful feelings I’d felt for him over the centuries overwhelmed the darkness and held it at bay. Memories of our time shared together flashed through my mind, one after the other in rapid succession. I loved this god. I knew him and I needed him. Once his ki finally made a real connection and my ki responded in kind, his lips were suddenly devouring mine and pouring more light, warmth, and color within me than it ever had before.
I wrapped my arms tightly around his neck and returned the affection with the same urgency he gave, all the while the glow grew brighter and brighter in its intensity. Just when I thought it would overpower us completely, it hit a wall and could make it no further. There was only so much Tie’s ki could do at the moment, but the last spot of darkness linking my heart with Amatsu remained impervious to Tie’s ki. Tie broke away from me and stepped back in defeat. The anguish on his face was something I hadn’t seen since that awful moment a thousand years ago when he’d realized I was The Healer.