“Blood is life,” Onyx said. “Life is power. Spilled blood calls magic, sustains vampires, and—according to ancient human traditions—seals contracts with supernatural entities.”
I flashed to my church: wooden pews holding down a blood red carpet, finely dressed bodies filling those pews, everyone looking up to a podium on a dais where a red-faced man in a dark suit and tie read from the Bible, “…All things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness!”
God had used blood—His own—to remove the sins of the world. Powerful indeed.
“Grace, are you all right?”
I blinked, pulling my mind back to the present. “Uh, yeah, go on.”
“Human thralls are made to drink vampire blood. That corrupts a human, bringing on death and reawakening as a new vampire. The old vampire retains control over the turned human. The miko has followed suit, bleeding her demon to fashion a talisman controlling it, and using more of its blood to link the demon to us.”
“She’s making you guys drink demon blood?” What would that taste like? A motor oil smoothie flavored with rust and turpentine? I nearly gagged.
Onyx’s smile turned cold and bitter. “Oh, she’s been more creative than that.” He held up his empty palm for me to see. His fingers closed into a fist, then reopened. A crimson crystal lay in his palm. The bead was long and pointy at both ends—designed to be shoved under the skin like an obese splinter. Warmth and humor returned to his smile. “Each of us had one of these projectiles embedded in our bodies by the miko’s magic.”
“And your being immune is a shadow man thing?”
He nodded. “We can take on the outward form of humans, but have no actual blood.”
“So if you get broken or cut…”
His voice went softer. “Only darkness pours out. And if we lose too much of that, we stay shadow until recovered.” He closed his hand and opened it again, reabsorbing the demon tear into his body where it could only rage impotently.
I shot a glance at Tukka in the adjoining cell. He’d come up to the bars between our cages and was peering through at me. He stood still, his eyes red lamps, hazing his face, making his teeth look as if they were blood-stained.
Onyx followed my stare with his own gaze. We fell quiet, watching Tukka watching us, knowing a demon remote-controlled him. A thin, icy voice came out of Tukka, male, but not his own. “Figuring it out, are you? Do you think that will save you?”
“It’s a start,” I said.
Tukka laughed, a rumbly sound like he might have been coughing up a cat. Turning from the bars, he stomped away to curl up on his piled hay. He lay there with his fu dog head on massive paws. After a minute, his eyes closed to slits. His breath came heavy and deep. He licked his lips in his sleep, and I thought, Instead of chocolate, he was swilling blood, bucketfuls, oceans of the stuff, in his sleep.
Until I got the demon’s tear out of him, I couldn’t be anything to him other than a chew toy.
My stare shifted to his collar. I smiled. Why give that to him, just for looks? I didn’t think so. I was willing to bet the collar covered up a lump where the blood tear had gone in under his leathery skin.
I decided to leave him for last, when I had more help. That left Fenn and Cassie. Since Shaun was off somewhere with the miko, he’d have to be last. But first … I turned back to Onyx, noticing that both his forearms were stretched across my knees. He leaned into me, looking up into my face. Had he been looking lower, at my boobs, I’d have kicked his ass.
He said, “What’s the human expression—penny for your thoughts?”
I whispered. “How do we get out of this cage?”
“We wait until they move us. The cages are spell-warded.”
“I don’t see any paper charms.”
“Just try leaving through the ghost realm and see what happens,” he said.
“I can’t. I’m too drained.”
“Then I guess I’ll do the honors.” He braced himself, hands pushing on my knees as he stood. His head passed mine. I half expected him to steal a kiss, but he behaved himself, pulling away without an expression. His dark eyes were bottomless pools of mystery as he backed to the cage door. “This is going to hurt.” He paused. Was he waiting to see if I cared enough to stop him?
I said nothing.
He shrugged, closing his eyes. His darkness welled from his flesh, absorbing clothes, skin, making an onyx statue of him. A three-dimensional shadow, he turned and thrust his hands between the bars. A snarl of black energy, edged with crimson, entangled his arms. Jags flickered over his head and shoulders.
On the floor, a central disk dissected by an S became visible; a Tao symbol. The lines were made of crimson fire with black cores. More of the two-toned fire filled an outer band, filling it with kanji that seemed to swim in place, wiggling, rippling like a heat mirage.
A scream ripped out of Onyx. The energy crawling over him kicked him away from the door, dumping him on his butt. Back in human form, he stretched out across the Tao symbol. His muscles jumped, his nervous system outraged.
I shoved off the cot and flew to him, dropping to my knees beside him. My hand pressed to his chest as I stared into his face. “Onyx, are you all right?”
He groaned, eyes opening. “Sure, I can do this all day.” He struggled up with difficulty.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “How can the miko’s ward hold you when demon magic can’t?”
“The miko is strongest when she uses stolen power. The wards in these cages are powered by our life force. In effect, it was my own redirected power that stopped me.”
It made a great deal of sense. Asian martial arts had long taught the concept of using an opponent’s own energy to defeat them. She’d just taken the concept a little farther.
A bass harrumphing came from Tukka’s cage. Awake again, head lifted, blood-filled eyes ablaze, he laughed at Onyx’s pain and my disappointment. With a new brutality, his thoughts knifed into mine, That no way to escape. Use ruby slippers. He laughed again, finding this hilarious.
I winced at the contact. “Do me a favor, Toto, shut up!”
Chortling softly—for him—he laid his head on his paws and closed those obscene, bloody eyes.
Minutes crept by, made tedious by Tukka’s snores. Onyx and I talked softly. Somehow, the conversation kept coming back to me. “You’re a shadow man,” I said. “There’s not much stranger than that. I’m ordinary. My dreams include the prom, a waffle cone with scoops of triple-chocolate ice cream, and getting out of all this alive.”
“It’s the human in you I find most interesting,” he said.
“I’m not human.” No matter how much I want to be.
“Not by blood, but you were raised human. Your heart is human, even if you’re half kitsune and half shadow. That may be what saves you in the end.”
While I was trying to decide how to answer that, the ceiling lights went out. Onyx sat a few feet away, but I couldn’t see his face, even as a pale blur. Startled, my hand shot out, grabbing his sleeve. The slathering darkness had weight to it, pressing down like a quilt, intimidating my spirit with primal fear.
“It’s night time,” Onyx said.
“No, it’s not. It was early morning when I got here.”
“The lights go on and off around here at irregular intervals,” he said. “It’s part of the miko’s plan to disorient us, throwing off our sense of time. It’s about making us pliable. Beneath her professional façade, she’s just a lost little girl who wants to be loved.”
I thought of her walking around with Shaun on her arm, maybe in her bed, and white-hot fury awoke, driving away my unease. “I’ll love her all right, straight into an early grave.”
“You’d kill her?”
“Well, probably not. But I understand a little pain can be therapeutic.”
Yellow eyes glowered in the darkness of my mind. Taliesina’s thoughts brushed mine. I’ll kill her for you. I’ve got no problem with that.
“You do what?” Onyx asked.
“Uh, just thinking out loud.” I yawned on the last word.
“You sound like you need some sleep. Take the cot. I’ll wake you if anything interesting happens.”
“Well, I suppose so. I’ve been running day and night.” Not bothering to stand, I crawled across the floor to where I remembered the bed being.
Onyx’s voice followed me closely, “Dream of me, love.”
“As if.”
I lay on the cot and pulled the scratchy blanket up around my face. I don’t remember falling asleep or haunting oblivion where dreams can’t go, but eventually, I neared the surface of consciousness without breaking through, and a dream did claim me. But it wasn’t one of mine.
* * *
Stars lay all around me. I spun from their light, plunging past the slashing arms of galaxies, tumbling through flaming nebulas, my lungs straining to fill themselves with cold nothing. Planets whirled past as I neared a solar system with a dwarf yellow-white sun. The inner worlds were smaller. Two of them danced near, locked in gravitational arms as they jointly orbited the sun. One was barren rock and dust, pockmarked by craters. The other world was larger with tan and green continents and deep blue seas.
Red flames blackened my skin as atmosphere rubbed past. My wings ignited, searing to skin and bone. I howled in pain, breathing fire as I crashed toward the world that would be my prison. Intimate and inescapable, I felt the inner gnawing of solitude, and tasted the bitter cyanide of failure. My screams were echoed by others. Angels cast from heaven, we were falling stars on the way to becoming demons.
Heart hammering, I sat up, thrusting sleep away. My body was damp with sweat as I gasped for breath. I heard scuffing sounds as Onyx moved toward me, but my thoughts were elsewhere. “Damn demon needs to keep his dreams to himself.”
TWENTY-FIVE
BOTTA-IN-TEMPO: “attack in time”
while the adversary’s preoccupied
with a parry, feint, or bind.
Onyx’s hand found my shoulder as I sat on the edge of the cot. He sat beside me, the cot’s wooden frame groaning. There was no comfort in his presence. He wasn’t Shaun. Matching the coolness of the air, Onyx lacked warmth. He was emptiness and absence given form, a puppet without strings.
“Grace, are you all right?”
“I’m … fine … all things considered. Just a nightmare...”
His hand slid off my shoulder, going to a spot somewhere behind me. As he leaned back on his arms, his voice shifted, “I’ve heard of those.”
My shadow vision activated. I’d experienced this once before in the Shinto shrine, and had no control over it. What had been impenetrable darkness devolved into layers of black. The tones had varied textures, marking distance. Onyx glowed; radiant darkness hazing his edges, black flames danced in his eyes. I’d seen demons in the ghost realm all smudgy with flame-shaped shadow instead of auras, but this inverted energy was more. Whatever realm gave birth to his kind had to be like nothing I’d ever known.
Catching my interest, he looked back at me. “What?”
“I’m seeing you in a new way.” Literally.
He looked away, a slow smile coming to his face. “Well, that’s good, I guess.”
“Give me the demon tear.”
He went still as a statue. “Why?”
“I have an idea how it might be useful.”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
I twisted from the hips to smack his shoulder a playful blow.
He spun, spilling off the cot to the floor where he lay on his back, clutching his shoulder. “Owww! I think you broke it.” A grin—he didn’t know I could see—stretched his face.
I leaned forward, staring down at him. “Want me to kiss it, make it better?”
A startled expression wiped his smile away. “Uh, sure.”
I crossed my ankles, leaned back on my arms, and peered up at the ceiling with a smile on my face. “So, howzit feel to want?”
He scrambled up and loomed over me, his face clouded. “You’re a mean one.”
I felt entitled; this was the guy who’d tried to rape me in the Laundry room back at HPI. Sure, I’d liked the attention at first, but I told him to stop and he hadn’t. No means no.
The smile stayed on my face. “So what’s your point?”
I held out my hand, waiting.
Onyx dropped the red crystal bead in my palm.
I put the demon tear in a front pants pocket.
Fenn’s voice rang out from several cages away. “You want to see mean? Wait until I get you out of that cage.”
Cassie’s voice followed, “If we get out of this cage, I can think of better things to do.”
Fenn and Onyx said, “No.”
Time to be real about things. “Look, guys, I’ve never made a secret of the fact that Shaun’s the one I want.”
“Yeah, about that,” Onyx said, “looks to me like he’s taken. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the miko breaks that boy toy before long. She seems the type not to play well with others.”
“I’m not going to let her keep him,” I said.
“That’s well and good,” Cassie said, “but he’s too old for you.”
“Exactly,” Fenn said.
I sighed, knowing my heart was not about to listen to him or me. “I have no choice. I’m going to win him over. You’ll see.”
Fenn growled in disapproval. “You have plenty of choices. Me, and all the wrong ones.”
Onyx jumped in with, “What does that human have that I don’t anyway?”
“Blood to start with,” I said. “A heart beat, and body temperature, and a job.”
“I have a job,” Onyx said. I’m a prince.”
“A real job,” I said.
Fenn snickered in the darkness. The sound broke off as the lights popped on. The sudden brightness had me narrowing my eyes. All of us fell silent, waiting, straining for sound. Even Tukka roused himself and moved up to the door of his cage. I noticed his eyes were lavender again. For now, he was out of the demon’s control.
I decided to take a chance.
I went to the bars between his cage and mine, and gestured him to come over. Moving ponderously, he approached. He stopped just in front of me. I reached through the bars to caress his big leathery face. I whispered, “How are you feeling?”
Tukka hurts—every part of him—but not so bad as before. Still want chocolate, but don’t have to have it.
He’d been through hell in a number of ways; beside putting up with the demon’s remote control, Tukka had been going cold turkey, fighting the withdrawal symptoms of chocolate all on his own. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you. I’m sorry I ever gave you any chocolate.”
Tukka stick with dreams from now on; can’t live on chocolate or regret.
“Okay, I hear you.” My hands slid to his collar, circling his neck, seeking the buckle. I found it and worked it loose, praying the demon was too distracted elsewhere to notice what I was doing here. He had so many people under his influence; I hoped fine control might be lacking.
As Onyx came up behind me, peering over my shoulder, I got the collar off Tukka. I held the spiked leather strap in one hand, feeling his neck for a small bulge under the skin.
Tickles, Tukka said.
“Grace,” Onyx hissed, “hurry, someone’s coming.”
“Get up by the door,” I whispered. “Don’t draw attention to me.”
Hurriedly, he moved away.
Ah, found it! But how am I going to get it out? My thumb tested the edge of the buckle on the collar. Not as sharp as I would have liked.
Tukka do it. You show him where.
He contorted, balancing on three legs as he lifted a forepaw to his neck. I grabbed his biggest toe, and guided the claw-tip to the buried lump. “Cut here, about an inch.”
He hooked the claw into his neck and ripped with a sudden jerk. He got a little more than I’d
asked for, also going too deep. Red blood splattered my hand, soaking into his neck fur. I pushed at the lump, forcing the demon tear out of the open wound. Through it all, Tukka made no sound, silently shivering in place, not even dropping his foreleg to the concrete floor until I was done.
“I’ve got it.” With fumbling fingers, I buckled the collar back on. I made sure it was snug, hoping it would put pressure on the cut and help it to close.
Past Tukka, I saw Fenn lunge against the front of his cage. On rounds, a kunoichi jumped out of reach, her hand going to the hilt of her katana. Drawing back, Fenn grunted in pleasure at her reaction. I knew he’d done it for me, risking punishment to keep what I’d just done a secret.
I slid the second demon tear in my pocket with the first, and moved over to stand beside Onyx. He looked at me and nodded approval.
The kunoichi stopped outside my cage.
Onyx tensed, readying himself to spring.
She pointed at him. “You, move back.”
He did, with slow reluctance.
I stayed where I was. The ninja was going to let me out. I couldn’t argue with that. She slipped a key into the lock. After a metallic rattle, the door swung open. I thought it odd that only one ninja had come for me, and she didn’t even have her sword drawn. She brought a hand to her mask and pulled it down to show her face. “Grace, it’s me.”
My eyes nearly bugged out of my head. “Sanchez!” I hadn’t seen her since the nightclub.
She looked around, putting a finger to her lips. “Quiet, there are others down here. We don’t want to draw their attention.”
“Virgil sent you in. He’s coming with the troops, right?”
“Wrong, we’re on our own. Virgil’s been called to Washington to answer for the mess that freak storm made. It was clearly unnatural, and he was on the scene, so…”
Tears and Shadow (kitsune series) Page 19