by C. J. Anaya
“I think Victor was giving you the signal to sit next to him,” I said.
She paused before shoving a handful of noodles into her mouth and said, “What signal?”
“The one where he gave you a hopeful smile and patted the sleeping bag next to him.”
“Oh. That signal.” She ate the noodles and dug into her bowl for more. After a few more bites she licked her fingers and finally met my searching gaze. “I’m in avoidance mode.”
“I noticed. I thought Victor was who you wanted.”
“So did I.”
“And now?”
“We have other things to worry about.” She scooped more noodles into her mouth and vigorously chewed.
“You’re deflecting.”
She made a noncommittal sound and kept eating. It was probably all I’d get out of her at the moment. She had no idea how to address her feelings for either kami. She went from never believing she’d have a normal relationship to catching the attention of two hot gods who would never die. I figured if I were in her position, I’d be stuffing noodles in my mouth and avoiding eye contact with everyone too.
That night, I actually got some good sleep without a single interruption from Amatsu. The barrier surrounding my heart appeared to protect my dreams as well. I may have been sleeping on a lumpy, cold forest floor, but I was calling it a win.
The next morning we quickly packed up camp and resumed our travels. The early morning slowly slid into mid-afternoon, our careful steps and continued quiet becoming more monotonous than I thought I could handle. Angie had planted herself in front of me and Kirby this time, her intermittent mutterings the only thing breaking up the stifling silence.
“I’m all for safety,” she whispered, “but this jaunt through the woods is about as stimulating as Ms. Glespie’s lecture on the mating patterns of Canadian geese.”
“I don’t remember that one,” I said in a hushed tone.
“Be grateful. You owe me a spa-day, by the way.”
For the next few hours we continued our precarious trudge through the woods until we came to a thick grove of trees that appeared, for lack of a better description, scary beyond reason.
The bark of the trees was black and gray, looking as if they had been burned at some point and smeared with a thin layer of ash. They rose up taller than any redwood I’d ever seen in Northern California, and their spindly tree branches looked ready to reach down and snatch us from the ground.
Hachiman paused the line and turned to address us in a whisper.
“This particular patch of forest is quite dangerous but necessary to cross through if we want to reach the palace.”
“What exactly are we looking at here?” my father asked.
“The trees remain dormant so long as we are quiet and refrain from disturbing them,” Daiki said.
“That sounds easy enough.”
“The real challenge lies in our ability to block their mental assault,” Hachiman said. “The trees, known as Vampers, are a bit like psychic vampires, forgive me the clichéd comparison. They zero in on your deepest insecurities and use them to produce vivid hallucinations. Your emotional response feeds their appetite. Your anxiety, fear, anger, frustration, basically any negative emotion you experience will nourish their systems. When a Vamper is replete with negative energy, the ends of its branches will ignite and burn with green fire.”
“What does that mean?” Kirby asked.
Daiki and Hachiman exchanged grim looks.
“The tree is no longer dormant, and your energy will not be enough,” Daiki said.
“The trees are going to eat us?” Kirby asked.
I wasn’t sure which was more disturbing. The fact that Kagami’s forests had become the equivalent of a movie set for The Blaire Witch Project or that Kirby’s question had smacked of morbid interest rather than outright terror.
“They will use their branches to penetrate your skin and drain your body of blood.”
“Sick,” Kirby exclaimed in awe.
“I’m assuming there’s a way to avoid this?” my father asked.
“Think happy thoughts,” Tie chimed in.
“You can’t be serious.”
“He’s quite serious, Dr. Fairmont,” Ms. Mori said. “The very best way to get through this forest unharmed is to focus on one happy thought, one positive experience, and push that positive energy outward as a type of repellent shield. It will not appeal to the Vampers’ palate, and they will mentally retreat when they come up against it.”
“You’re gone a thousand years and the place goes to hell. Literally,” Angie muttered.
“Why can’t we circumvent the Vampers?” I asked.
“They span the entire width of the forest. It would take us weeks to reach the end of it and several more to circle back.” Hachiman locked eyes with me. “From what I gather, your bond with Amatsu and the ever-thinning veil will not permit us this precaution. Time is not on our side.”
“How far do we travel before we get through?”
“Two miles.”
“So the Vampers are like a vicious tree barricade, preventing everyone access to the rest of the forest.”
“It is a line of defense that Amatsu’s evil has concocted.”
“An effective one.” I let out a frustrated sigh. “Okay. So we all think happy thoughts, huh?”
“Channel your inner Peter Pan, folks,” Angie said.
“Just think of me in board shorts with my six-pack abs on display and you should be just fine,” Tie teased.
Angie reached across me and smacked him on the shoulder.
“Idiot. We’re facing a grove of lethal vampire trees and you’re cracking jokes.”
Bishu let out a soft chuckle behind us. “I only wish I’d thought to say it.”
Angie’s eyes slightly widened as she made eye-contact with Bishu. She quickly turned and faced the front of the line.
Hachiman unhooked the horse from its cart, and slapped it on the rump. The horse shifted and then took off in the opposite direction.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“We can’t take him through the Vampers. The poor horse would never survive it,” Hachiman explained.
“What about our supplies?” Angie asked.
“Load your packs with all the provisions you can carry. That’s the best we can do.”
Everyone followed his instructions. Within minutes we were packed and ready to proceed.
“All right, everyone. Step where I step, remain completely quiet, and use all of your mental energy to focus on the one thing that makes you the happiest. Do not allow any other thoughts or feelings to distract you,” Daiki said.
One-by-one we followed Daiki past the first few ominous looking trees and straight into the grove of Vampers. My happy thought was a mental snapshot of those I loved. Mom, Dad, Kirby, Angie, and Tie. I knew thoughts of Victor would lead to guilt, and thoughts of Ms. Mori would lead to anger, bitterness, and confusion. I kept my eyes focused on the tricky roots snaking over and under the dark earth as I continued my mental focus on my loved ones.
I drew a picture of Tie’s eyes, starting with their rich cobalt color, heightened by flecks of green and gold. I started in on the soft curve of his brows when a wisp of unease slithered against the happiness of my thoughts like an unwelcome intruder picking the lock on a back door. I focused harder on reconstructing Tie’s face from his nose to his high cheeks bones, firm jaw, high forehead, and short cropped, blond hair. The unease continued its repetitive jarring against my mind, but I doggedly persisted in ignoring it, recognizing it as an attempted mental assault against my perfect, impenetrable, happy thought.
Once I finally finished the reconstruction of a face I knew and loved so well, I took a mental step back to look at it as a whole and nearly tripped over a large tree branch, my mind skittering to a stop. The person I’d recreated in my mind wasn’t Tie.
It was Amatsu.
My distress disarmed me so badly the unease, which
had been a simple nuisance before, swooped in and descended upon me as if there had never been a locked door blocking it in the first place.
Guilt slammed into my system. How could I have painted a picture of Amatsu when Tie was the man I loved? How could I have allowed him to kiss me? Allowed myself to feel that kissing him was as necessary for me as breathing? How could I betray Tie like that and fall in love with someone so evil and so despicable he was literally labeled Demon?
My thoughts turned to the veil and how weak it had become. I had played a part in that. I just had to save everyone without any thought to the consequences, weakening the veil each time I did and allowing more nekomata to break through. Even Amatsu’s influence had grown stronger, his bond with me even greater now that the veil’s thin wall was riddled with holes.
And what kind of healer was I if I couldn’t save everyone? What was the use of these stupid powers if there were limits to what I could do?
And what would I do if Kirby was fatally wounded again? According to Angie his death had to happen, his future was sealed, and there was a possibility that any one of my companions could die on this journey. What if I wasn’t there to save them? What if my bond with Amatsu grew so strong that I failed to care whether any of them lived or died?
My anger, unease, and anxiety became an angry cacophony of disconnected lines of thought, circling round one another with no sense of resolution and no end in sight. I nearly tripped over a blackened root, ripping it from the ground. Stumbling forward, I reached for Angie’s arm to steady me, but the root managed to wrap itself around my ankle and a burning sensation scorched my skin.
I grunted in pain and ripped my ankle out of its grasp.
“Faster,” Hachiman said urgently. “They’re starting to wake-up.”
Our group picked up the pace, but out of the corner of my eye I noticed the tree to my right burst into green flames.
Not good.
Hachiman broke into a run and the rest of us followed as the trees proceeded to burst into green flames the moment we passed them. Tree limbs slithered forward, attempting to block our path. A branch pierced my skin and jerked me sideways, but Tie caught me around the waist and Victor came up behind us, pulling his sword out and hacking away at it. When the branch was sliced in two, the trees shrieked in outrage as a red, slimy liquid pulsed from the stubby end.
Our group moved into a more circular formation since being in a straight line made us easier targets. We continued our hurried escape, while everyone hacked away at every branch, limb, and root that ventured near us.
A rumbling sound reverberated through the trees, and then a huge, black limb shot out to my right, knocking Victor down and sweeping everyone else to the floor. It swiftly latched about my waist and lifted me off my feet while more limbs and branches secured my arms and legs in place.
“Hope,” Tie shouted.
He regained his footing and reached for my leg, but the limb lifted me higher out of his reach. He let out a frustrated scream punctuated by desperation, pulled back his arm and launched his sword as hard as he could. The whiz of the blade sliced past my face, barely missing my nose and landed with a thunk in the middle of the tree’s trunk. The tree made a wounded hissing sound. I looked to where Tie had embedded his sword. The blade had cleaved an actual face in two. Red liquid gushed through the angry wound as the limb holding me violently shook and then loosened its grip. I screamed and plummeted several feet to the ground, bracing myself for a jarring impact.
Tie caught me as I came crashing down, and barely grunted with the effort.
Immortals. Geez.
“Hope.” He buried his face in my neck and breathed me in as his arms clamped me to him.
“I’m okay,” I said.
I tried for reassurance, but the chaos surrounding us undermined that attempt. Our group hadn’t managed to gain any further ground, the path blocked off by a circle of trees engulfed in flames tinged in iridescent green. Human faces pushed their way through the black bark with mouths open wide in a frozen scream.
“Get back to back,” Victor shouted. Ms. Mori dodged a menacing branch and chopped it in half as it went for Kirby. The sliced ends sprayed her with noxious, red liquid. She cried out in pain. Kirby grabbed her arm as she slumped to the ground and dragged her closer to our group.
I ran to her side as everyone rallied around her.
“Keep them in the middle of the circle with your backs to them. We can defend ourselves better like this,” Bishu shouted.
I wanted to help them fight against the malignant Vampers, but the left side of Ms. Mori’s face looked like it had been dipped in acid. Kirby sat with her back against his chest, telling her everything would be okay as she did her best to keep her whimpers in check, but it was obvious she was in agony.
Not wanting to cause her added pain, I avoided touching her head and went for her hands, connecting with her to make certain her kami powers would allow her skin to regenerate. Just as I feared, the poison from the red liquid was tainted by the Underworld. There was absolutely no way she could heal herself, and there was absolutely no way I was going to sit there and allow her to suffer.
I gently nudged her ki aside and burned through the wisps of darkness permeated her energy while ordering the intelligences within her tissue to regenerate. The healing took very little time, but every moment in this hopeless situation was costly. We were horrifically outnumbered by a forest filled with Vamper trees thirsting for our blood.
It was like a horror scene from a bad B-movie, but the reality was even worse.
I opened my eyes and grunted in satisfaction as the last of her burns healed up and the pain in her eyes gave way to a resilience I grudgingly had to admire.
With a swift nod, she disentangled herself from Kirby and stood. He followed and grabbed her by the waist, unwilling to let her go, sobbing into her shirt while the rest of the group circling us sliced, hacked, and blocked every gnarled, blackened branch that came near them.
I watched Kirby as he clung to Ms. Mori and hoped she understood how lucky she was to have earned his love, much less his trust. I didn’t understand it fully, but there was no denying he needed her, and I would never begrudge him that no matter how numb I felt toward this woman.
My gaze locked with hers and I was shocked to note that her eyes held unshed tears.
“You’re his mother now,” I said. I hoped she understood the full implications of that.
“I know,” she said.
I gave her a nod and then looked toward the direction of our exit. My heart sank with the knowledge that we were nowhere close to getting out of this grove of Vampers. Our circle was completely surrounded and the Vampers were tightening their ranks. More faces came to life, fighting their way through the blackened bark.
Hachiman was taken first. A thick branch coiled around him and lifted him high as more branches reached for him. Angie screamed as a branch knocked her over, grabbed her leg, and tugged her away from the group. Bishu dove for Angie, but another limb caught him square in the stomach sending him flying backward into Daiki. They both went down and were immediately set upon by the relentless onslaught of black arms.
I moved forward, but tripped over a stealthy root. Ms. Mori kept Kirby close to her as she continued to deftly outmaneuver our adversaries.
Victor and Tie attempted to cut down the limbs, but roots rose up to block their path, sending them crashing to the floor. I pushed myself to my feet and rushed over to help, but a root shot up from the ground and latched onto my wrist. I closed my eyes and imagined sending a blast of power through it like Amatsu forced me to do when he possessed my body, but I honestly had no idea where that power had come from and didn’t have access to it. What I did have access to was the life force of the tree this root belonged to. For a few seconds I sensed its agony. It was a chronic illness incapable of receiving relief. I wrenched my wrist from its grasp and stumbled back in shock.
The Vampers were sick with an illness I couldn’t
get a handle on and their desperation for our blood made me wonder if that’s where I might find a cure. Maybe I could heal their disease before we lost this battle.
Without giving myself time to consider the possible downside to my decision, I broke through the circle and ran straight for one of the Vampers, dodging limb and branches as I went. When I reached the trunk, I placed my hands on its bark and tried to see if there was anything I might be able to connect to. A branch slithered around my waist and squeezed just as my mind latched onto a blackened, filmy intelligence. It was a sentient being in terrible torment. The evil from the Underworld had taken what was once natural and whole and twisted it into something vile and grotesque.
The purity of our blood and the energy within it, quenched the disease ridden Vampers’ thirst for light, for health, for a return to what they used to be. So that’s exactly what I gave it. I engulfed the blackened energy with all of my soul and allowed it to feed off the light I could give it. When a thin tree branch pierced my skin near my neck I allowed the invasion so I could channel more healing power through my blood and bond it to the tree in the same way I bonded my blood to Bishu’s cells.
I willed my ki to blot out the evil from within and offered the tree everything it wanted and needed to restore it to its natural state. Then I showed it how easily it could share the restorative properties of my blood with its fellow Vampers through its root systems, spreading the golden properties of my blood through their connection and making the interconnections of these organisms a pathway that delivered healing particles made up of my ki and blood. The filmy darkness of the Vamper’s ki soon morphed into its original brightness, taking what I gave it and sharing it with its fellow plant life. An entire ecosystem was put to rights with the healing elements from my immortal genetics. A mental picture of each healed tree sprang forth as each one connected with the next one and then the next, creating a complicated matrix of golden light that spread out farther than it was possible for me to visualize.
My legs shook from the blood loss and exertion of power used to bond the properties to the root systems. As my legs gave out on me, the limb wrapped around my waist, gently lowered me to the ground, and cradled me there as the sentient part of it assured me it would take care of me as I regained my strength.