Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3)

by Heather Heffner

  Wolf’s nose twitched, catching a change in the winds: Ankor’s unnatural typhoon. How far had it traveled since breaking through the Veil?

  “Well, well, well. The beast cavorting in her natural habitat.”

  I attempted to snap to Wolf before remembering too late that it was midday. I couldn’t feel the moon’s power. Lightness rushed to my head, and then I doubled-over, clutching my abdomen. Even through the muck, I smelled blood. My stab wound had split open.

  Wings rustled. I looked up through my snarled hair to see Khyber perched on the branches of a gigantic cypress. Amidst the shadows, his blue eyes deepened to enigmatic shades of gray. A similar necklace of puckered white scars encircled his neck.

  “Khyber,” I whispered. Salt and blood churned in my throat, making it hurt to speak. “You died.”

  The vampyre prince snorted, leaping from the tree to the mossy ground. He reached the swamp’s bank before slanted sunlight scorched his wings.

  “How often do I need to tell you, dog?” he said. “We cannot die. That would mean an escape from pain.”

  I shivered in the mud, feeling the familiar chill of the void deepen the dread in my heart. “It was cold. And lonely. I wasn’t connected…to anything.”

  Khyber’s eyes slowly rose to meet mine. “You killed yourself.”

  “It was the only way the others could escape,” I rasped and then rubbed my scarred throat, unable to speak above a whisper. “Raina and Heesu are going to be okay. They escaped from the mist. I don’t know where the others are. I can’t feel the mind of anyone from my pack.” Yu Li. Rafael. Sun Bin. Taeyang. Bae.

  My heart twisted at that last name. Once more, Bae’s brown eyes clawed frantically to hold onto mine before Santiago threw him overboard. Khyber, an immortal vampyre prince, had survived. That didn’t mean the oldest and bravest wolf of our pack had.

  “When it is night, I will fly to try and find them,” Khyber said quietly. “Wolf girl, never do that again. If both of us were to perish without finding the cure to this curse…then both of us will languish in that bottomless void forever.”

  “I could say the same to you,” I snapped, cradling my abdomen. “What were you thinking, trying to kill a Dark Spirit with no plan?”

  That brought a faint smile to his lips. “You have no idea what the Face Gouger would have done had he lured your friends close. Do not worry, dog. I will make sure never to martyr myself for your kind again. I have never met a shifter worth beheading myself for.”

  I grunted, turning back to tend to my wounds. “I’m glad we understand one another. Now, why don’t you go find us a nice cave that doesn’t smell like dead people?”

  Khyber crouched to examine something in the reeds. “Incredible,” he murmured, pushing the grasses aside. I jumped as the little statue of a cheerful old man beamed back at us. It was covered head-to-toe in lichen.

  “Dol hareubang,” Khyber breathed. “A stone grandfather. This island must be close to Jeju-do indeed.”

  I inched closer. “What is it?”

  “An old tradition. My people used to place these statues around the home to encourage fertility.” Khyber glanced at me, and I was glad the mud hid my blush. “They also warded against evil spirits.”

  “So you are originally from Jeju Island,” I surmised. “Taeyang believes he is from there, too.”

  The vampyre prince predictably ignored any investigation I ever made into his past. His eyes trailed up the path behind the stone grandfather. “We will find refuge this way. My vampyre kindred despise these old wards.” Brushing aside the overhanging bracken fern, Khyber smiled. “Excellent. A pool where you can wash the reek from yourself. Come, wolf. I will not have you sullying our cave.”

  I didn’t roll my eyes because it would hurt too much. Sucking in my breath as another shudder of pain racked my stomach, I ducked my head. “I’ll be right there.”

  Khyber dropped the fern, but he didn’t leave. “Your wound has reopened. I can smell it.”

  Unable to reply, I managed to wave him on. Surely he would grant me this one mercy and leave me alone to my misery.

  But that was a joke. I could never be alone, unless floating in the emptiness of the void. I lunged first at Wolf, and then at Demon. Wolf gazed back with a mournful golden eye, hurt. Demon held back because She was entertained—not because She respected my authority.

  Alpha. Her voice dripped with sarcasm. When will you recognize the folly of hating yourself? I am merely a part of you, compartmentalized and given a voice. I am all of the passion you are too cowardly to explore.

  You are a devil given breath by eviler kumiho fire. As far as I am concerned, Fred is your maker.

  And yet you tremble, like a frightened little pup with its tail between its legs. Demon licked Her lips lustfully as Khyber prowled along the bank to avoid the sunlight. Why do you hide from him? We defeated his mother, yes? He should be our rightful prize.

  Dear God, I would never think like that.

  My revulsion gave me the power to shove Her back. But suddenly, ice-cold fingers seized a handful of my hair and wrenched me out of the swamp.

  “Your wound, wolf girl,” Khyber commanded. “I know the forests of the southern isles. Let me make a poultice before you bleed to death.”

  I snarled in his grip, splattering us both with mud.

  “Could the Dark Spirits have bound me to any other creature with less of a will to live? Stupid dog!” Khyber whirled from me as I began to smolder, and his ragtag crow wings scraped my face. Suddenly, the feathers stopped rustling. They folded against his back. Completely still.

  “Could it be?” Khyber slowly turned. His rugged face glowed as white as the moon with wonder. “The famous Citlalli Alvarez, the youngest Were ever to be appointed Alpha, is afraid of me seeing her—indecent?”

  I attempted a howl, but it came out more like a raspy hiss. That didn’t wipe the smirk off his face. Cursing, I scrambled up with my arms covering my breasts and a curtain of black hair hanging over my baleful one-eyed glare.

  “I’m not afraid of you or anyone else seeing me naked!” My legs shuddered. “Give me the poultice. I can take care of myself.”

  “Don’t be stupid, Citlalli.” His voice was cold and oddly harsh. It must have taken a lot for him to grunt out my name over the much favored “wolf girl.”

  “You have already lost an eye and a finger. I leave a girl with the patience of a dog to heal herself, and soon she won’t care who sees her naked. She’ll be dead.”

  “It was only two stabs—”

  “With a Toledo blade. I recognize Santiago’s handiwork. He is not good about cleaning his weapons.” Khyber prowled forward and extended a hand. “Come, wolf girl. I have lived many lives, in some of which, I was a medicine man, and in others, a lover to a great many women.” Khyber’s jagged black hair fell into his icy gaze as he leaned forward to sneer: “Your mutt boyfriend needn’t be worried. I am not attracted to reckless hotheads like you.”

  I blinked rapidly, the mention of the familiar brown werewolf throbbing like an old wound in my heart. However, Khyber was the last person I wanted to discuss my love life with.

  “Yeah, you like helpless maidens who mindlessly worship you, not the big, bad wolf who comes along and exposes you for the false shepherd you are. And Raina,” I added guiltily, “but she’s got half of Korea wishing she was theirs.”

  Khyber folded his arms at my summation of his ‘many romances’ and made a noise that sounded between a chuckle and a snarl. “So, you would rather die than trust a vampyre.”

  Wolf barked our consensus. Mine and Its’, anyway. Demon sulked and blew raspberries.

  Khyber’s stormy eyes crackled with anger. My vision blurred as he marched toward me.

  “I have left you to die numerous times before, Alvarez, and you always seem to survive by some miracle. Tonight, I am your miracle. I will save you, whether you wish it or not.”

  Blood pounded in my temples. The jungle rolled in iridescent gr
een waves. I pitched forward, my hand landing in his.

  ***

  The rain was the only thing thunderous enough to wake me. It pelted the ground like bullets, creating rivers where there had once been earth. I retreated further into the cave as branches whipped about, some wicked enough to take a person’s other eye out.

  So this was the type of storm a royal imugi was capable of.

  A single cry echoed amidst the mindless cruelty of the hurricane. I staggered to my feet by using a ledge to support myself. It looked like I’d been harbored in a forgotten shrine where golden Buddhas winked in and out of the shadows, and candles dripped wax into pools.

  A man staggered into the clearing. Vampyre blood poured from his neck and stained his collar black. He clamped his wings tight to his sides in order not to get blown away.

  “Khyber!” I stumbled out of my sanctuary to help him, still half-delirious. The vampyre prince gripped my arm. Our respective weights kept our feet firmly planted on the ground until we could reach the safety of the cavern.

  Inside, Khyber pushed me away and ran a hand through his wet black hair.

  “Stupid wolf. Now we’re both soaked.”

  “I apologize. I should have let you get beheaded twice in one week,” I growled.

  Khyber dabbed at his neck with a handkerchief, as if the wickedly deep wound were no more than a minor inconvenience.

  “You don’t need blood, do you?” I asked warily.

  “If I did, it wouldn’t be your tainted Were kind. A pig’s would be better. Here. Lie on your side.” Khyber reached into his bag and withdrew a trio of strange yellow honeycomb fruits. They smelled sharply acidic, and I cringed.

  “Time to see how your stitches are coming along.” Khyber perched beside me and held up a knife. “Side, please.”

  I held my ground. “You’ve been doing this for how long?”

  “Three days and three nights.” Khyber gestured impatiently to my tattered sweatshirt. “And I much preferred it when you were unconscious.”

  “In another lifetime, I’m sure you were beloved for your bedside manner.” I kept speaking to soothe myself as I lay back and tried to pretend that his hand slipping beneath my sweatshirt didn’t bother me. “Your patients probably knocked themselves out to escape your pleasant company.”

  With one hand, he tugged down my shorts. His other hand ran up the ridges scarring my ribcage with such familiarity that I tensed up, suddenly wildly afraid.

  “Don’t move or that could be arranged,” the vampyre prince said stoically. “Do you think this is any more pleasant for me?”

  “Hey, at least it’s us warriors getting beaten up.” I attempted a laugh. “If it was Raina… I don’t know. Every night, I pray to God that she and the rest of the pack are safe. She’s been through enough.”

  “And you haven’t?”

  Before I knew it, Khyber touched my eye. My missing eye. The bed where it used to be. It freaked me out because he looked directly at what others avoided—but I supposed he was Mr. Death and all.

  “Old Man Zhi got along perfectly well in Eve without either eye,” I snapped. “I’m just pissed because this hinders my ability to fight. You never realize how much you depend on something until it’s gone. You know?”

  Khyber, as usual, wouldn’t tell me if anything I said ever resonated with him on a deeper level.

  “I am glad Raina is safe,” he said instead, his breath frosting my abdomen as he checked the rudimentary threads holding my side together. “You are, too, you know. I will not let anything happen to my life partner.”

  “I bet you wish it was anyone but me.”

  Khyber placed a hand on either side of me and leaned in close, so his gray-blue eyes seemed to hang like suspended orbs in the darkness. “You…are…infinitely better than Maya. I spent a lot of time thinking about the last battle of the Were War. There were countless creatures present on the mountaintop that night, both human and nonhuman. Only you, I can honestly call a partner. Someone I can collaborate with. Someone I could entrust my soul to. And someone I listened to. A long time ago, you asked me to watch out for Raina the way I had once protected my sisters.”

  I froze, my breathing uneven. I hadn’t thought that had registered. Khyber had been cloaked in icy anger and cruelty back then. He’d basically told me he’d make life hell for Raina because I’d singled her out.

  “I dismissed you. But curiosity had planted its seed. I sought your younger sister out and found her suffering from the attention of my lust-driven brother. I knew full well what Raina was. But it was your plea that made me see beyond her face value as the Changeling Soul. You made me see her as someone’s family. Someone an older sibling would sacrifice herself for. And I was moved to intervene. I wanted to see for myself what made her worth fighting for.”

  He spoke to my abdomen now as he checked the stitches with awkward quickness. “Don’t you see, Citlalli? I looked out for your sister because you asked me to. So? Can’t you trust me…to look after you?”

  My head lolled back. That peaceful blankness of oblivion was back again. I saw Khyber’s otherworldly eyes hang over me, anxious.

  “How can your eyes be the color of slate and water?” I asked.

  “Because I disguised them with the power of the Dark Spirits.”

  Still more lies. How could I trust him, then? I leaned into his shoulder anyhow and felt his withered feathers enfold me like a tattered blanket before I slipped under.

  Chapter 42: Jungle Fury

  ~Citlalli~

  A faint tickle touched my mind and then vanished. It returned in a deepening kiss of flames. I shoved Demon away impatiently. However, She came back, and Wolf was with Her. Wolf’s howls I couldn’t ignore.

  Danger! Flee!

  I hazily awoke and realized that the entire cavern had gone up in smoke. Through the entrance, I caught sight of a twin pair of green-tainted eyes wink at me. Haetae. These two were smaller lion-headed beasts the size of hounds. However, in their corrupted state they were the enemy all the same.

  Sunlight cut through the hissing flames, and I realized it was day. The perfect time to smoke a vampyre from its nest.

  Cursing that I’d winded up on a decidedly not deserted island with a vampyre prince for an ally, I toppled off the ledge and tripped over the bones of several small rodents. I grimaced. Clearly I’d enjoyed fine dining in my delirious state.

  Khyber was huddled in the back of the cavern under his blanket of black feathers. I hesitantly brushed aside his jagged dark hair. The vampyre prince’s face was contorted and his eyes shut as he visited whatever safe place there was left for his kind in Eve.

  Shaking him violently still succeeded in waking him up.

  His cold fingers latched around my wrists, yanking me on top of him. Then Khyber’s nostrils flared as he smelled the smoke, and he released me to recoil in a crouch.

  “How long until nightfall?” the exiled vampyre prince snarled.

  I gapped at him. “I’ve been comatose! It could be next year for all I know!”

  The vampyre prince’s eyes narrowed on the pair of haetae watching us burn to death with glee. Their grins faltered.

  “This way,” Khyber said quietly. “A vampyre never chooses a nest without a back way out.”

  We clambered down the slippery throat of the cavern and then made our way into greater darkness until the warning scent of smoke grew faint. Wolf’s pupil enlarged so I could make out the dripping ferns and puddles where strange blind koi fish circled. The number of Buddha statues multiplied. Their onyx eyes twinkled at me from between stalagmites.

  “Old lava tubes run deep beneath this island,” Khyber murmured. “This is another sign that Halla San, the great extinct volcano on Jeju-do, is indeed close.”

  “Do you think that’s where the others washed up?” I asked breathlessly and then paused to place my hand on my side as my stitches began to sting. Khyber immediately noticed, but I resolutely soldiered past him.

  “Ma
ybe,” was his informative reply.

  “What have you been up to?” I asked, ducking beneath a stalactite. The tunnel was growing increasingly narrow, and my heart skipped a beat as the way ahead shrank to the size of a storm drain. “Besides leading haetae back to our hideout?”

  Khyber’s cool breath gusted across the back of my neck, and I shut my eyes tight in an effort to escape the suffocating darkness. He didn’t need to breathe; he was a vampyre. However, apparently Khyber enjoyed making me cold.

  “Besides fetching you water every five seconds and hunting for food,” the Prince of Sorrow growled, “I searched for a way up to the island’s peak. I believe our efforts should be spent destroying the source of the Emerald Veil. My brothers have imprisoned a legendary creature within the spire of this island, from which the mist emits.”

  Una. A dream from long ago brushed my mind—a charred black shell and the age-old rheumy eyes of a giant turtle.

  I rubbed my arms. “Every five seconds, huh?”

  Khyber jostled me as he brushed past. “You also made me bathe your forehead with aloe.”

  “I don’t remember any of this.”

  “For your sake, that had better be true.” Khyber threw an exasperated glance over his shoulder as he approached the rabbit hole tunnel. “What now, dog?”

  I swallowed, glancing back the way we had come for any sign of fire. “Exactly that. I’m a wolf. We like wide, open spaces—not small, stabby crawlspaces.”

  “This is the way out. Feel free to stay here and burn.” Shrugging, Khyber tucked in his wings and squeezed into the three-foot-high passage. He paused to give me a shred of sympathy: “I am a vampyre. My place is in the skies, where I can swoop down on my prey. Do not think this is any better for me.”

  “Can I complain constantly at least?” I asked meekly.

  I thought I caught a momentary smile flit across his face before Khyber squared his head forward. “Give me a head start so I can tune you out.”

  The claustrophobic tunnel eventually widened out to a rainforest clearing. The corrupted haetae were waiting for us. I scented them amongst the cypress trees and gave Khyber a warning growl. The skies hovered on the verge of sunset. Khyber’s eyes deepened to dangerous dark blue as night’s welcoming shadows crept across the jungle. We remained crouched behind the boulders, giving no indication of our presence.