“Let her go,” I said after a couple of deep breaths. My hands clenched and unclenched in frustration.
Hayk laughed, leaning in closer to Marlin so his cheek brushed her hair. “I’m a reasonable man. I’m willing to give up a valuable resource, but not without a little something in return. A small thing. A trifle.”
I stared in defiance, my jaw clenched, little aftershock shivers racing up and down my spine. I’d never truly hated anyone in my life. Until now.
I hate Hayk.
“What?” I snapped.
“I propose a trade. Your sister goes free, unharmed,” said Hayk, lingering on the last word, making it a chilling, travesty of a word, “and you lead us to the native Kind you were with this afternoon.”
I had been convinced he would ask for me in exchange. A sick disappointment tightened the back of my throat. What kind of twisted self-centeredness was my plan to sacrifice myself? Useless now.
He wanted Thunderbird. Just as Ken said.
“How about I call the police and you let us both go,” I said.
Hayk shook his head. “Tsk-tsk, Ms. Pierce. You disappoint me. Even if they listened to your crazy stories, do you think that I am vulnerable to the likes of the police?”
“Your position at the university would get complicated. I could claim harassment, maybe even get you fired,” I said.
His hand crept up Marlin’s shoulder, stroking her neck like she was a kitten. “It doesn’t matter anymore. My job, this masquerade. Once we take care of Ullikemi’s little errand, my years of painstaking research will bear fruit.” His movements grew rough. Red welts formed on my sister’s neck where he groped her. Wide-eyed and frozen, she could barely blink.
“Don’t touch her,” I said, pulling Marlin out of his grasp. Hayk let her go with a grimace of distaste.
“You have no idea what I’ve gone through to dig up all those languages, the people I’ve had to deal with,” Hayk spoke with his hands, weaving a complex pattern with the dagger. “Just a handful of phrases that were suitable, phrases that existed in a small enough proportion of languages that I could collect all the iterations.”
He was mad, rambling. I couldn’t see what any of this had to do with Thunderbird or Ullikemi. I shuffled backward a step, still-frozen Marlin like a block of wood in my arms. Now would be a good time for Ken to bust in with a rescue.
“And then finding Ullikemi’s stone. It gets very cold in the desert at night, young lady. But it was worth it,” he said, his voice soaked with a sick kind of passion, like a religious fanatic. He edged closer.
“You know all about magic, don’t you, Ms. Pierce? The Kind keep their power close. Understand my dilemma. I would like nothing more than to have no further association with you or your sister. But without Ullikemi, all my years of hard work are for nothing. His needs must be met, first, or I’ll be stuck lugging this stone around forever. Take me to the place where you met with the native Kind.” He was no longer a ranting super villain but his implacable calm was more terrifying than that false politeness had been. “Now.”
“No,” I said, and turned to book out the door. But Hayk’s monologuing had lulled me into a false sense of security. Before I’d taken a step, he lunged, imprisoning Marlin’s wrist against his chest and pressing the silver knife’s edge tightly into her skin.
“Not as clever as I first supposed,” said Hayk, “I was sure you’d understand my priorities.”
I weighed the damage his silver knife could do. A slashed wrist and escape versus betraying Thunderbird, Dad, and no guarantee of our safety.
Hayk tsk-tsked into the silence.
“Surrender to fate, Ms. Pierce. You were meant to bring culmination to my studies. For so long the Portland Kind eluded me—Ullikemi’s nemesis hiding so close, yet out of reach—then you came to PCC and for the first time since I moved to this soggy city, I had hope.”
A slender thread of blood trickled down the vulnerable skin of Marlin’s wrist. Would it be so terrible to lead Hayk to the arboretum? Surely Kwaskwi and Thunderbird couldn’t be traced from there. Even if Hayk could somehow track them through the air, they were far more capable of taking on this maniac than me. Behind Hayk, the roiling smoke of Ullikemi’s form darkened, the green-glass glints of the eyes flaring.
No, that wasn’t entirely true. The danger wasn’t just Hayk, but Ullikemi, too.
“Take me,” said Hayk. A quick slice and a diagonal cut across Marlin’s blue veins seeped blood. Hayk smeared the blood across the blade and his fingers. Marlin didn’t flinch. Couldn’t. Hayk had her perfectly frozen.
“Okay,” I said. He cut her. He hurt Marlin. Panic frosted my lungs. Marlin’s blood was too red, too bright. I pictured Hayk’s silver knife buried in her throat. “Just don’t hurt her anymore. I’ll take you.”
Hayk smiled. The silver knife flashed again, this time opening a longer cut along the inside of Marlin’s elbow. Marlin cried out, twisting in his grasp.
“What the hell? I said I’d take you!”
Hayk pressed his palm to Marlin’s wound, covering his hand in blood. He thrust her at me so quickly I barely had time to snag her around the waist.
“Just making it official.” He strode over to the Vishap stone. His hand slapped the surface, leaving a bloody handprint that sank into the stone with a hiss.
“Im kyanqi xostuma misht uji mech klini,” Hayk said, the harsh syllables cutting into the room’s thick air.
The world dropped itself from under my feet, as if I were in an elevator going down way too fast.
“Your promise binds you,” said Hayk, folding his arms.
The rushing sensation came to an abrupt halt as Marlin gave a wracking cough. “He cut me!”
The pressure to leave, to rush away steadily built. My legs took me a step toward the door before I caught myself with a shake. This urgency wasn’t coming from me.
“Oh god, get me out of here,” said Marlin, fumbling in her pockets for her phone. It refused to appear.
“What did you do to us?”
Hayk considered my words. “Don’t play at ignorance.”
He’d done something just now with Marlin’s blood and Ullikemi’s power. I couldn’t not go to the arboretum now. My promise to bring him to Thunderbird drew me like flannel-shirted brew-geeks to the smell of Stumptown’s Probat drum roaster at work.
“I have to…I have to go to the arboretum.”
“Yet you are Kind, or Ullikemi’s power would not bind you,” said Hayk.
“Koi,” said my sister, low-voiced and shaky. “Let’s go. Please.”
“Okay,” I said. The sleeve of her sweater stretched up just enough so I could use it to put pressure on the long slice still oozing blood on her arm.
Hayk’s freeze magic no longer held her, but she was weak and confused. I had to get her away from here, to a safe place. A fleeting thought, instantly overwhelmed by a surge of need to go toward the arboretum. I had to go right now or my insides would burst.
Out the door it would have to be, the compulsion left me no room to think. I stepped through the open door. Ken was nowhere in sight. Something crumpled to a small, slimy ball in my stomach. I had been hoping.
Compulsion propelled me into motion. Dragging Marlin behind me, I started for the exit. Hayk followed close behind, forcing Marlin to tread on my heel.
In Herai dialect I murmured to my sister. “You’re going to get out of here. Your apartment isn’t safe. Do you have Dad’s old condo keys?”
Marlin didn’t answer. I paused with my hand on the metal push bar of the exit door. Where the hell was Ken? I couldn’t, didn’t want to believe that he’d run away and left me to deal with this alone. All that talk about promises? How was I supposed to get Marlin to safety by myself? My locked knees unbuckled, sending me lurching through the door like a drunkard.
“Marlin!” I said, squeezing her wrist.
“Yes,” she said. Her voice was a hoarse gasp, forced through a clenched jaw. I’d never seen
her so wordless, my self-centered, uber-manager sister unraveling.
“Do you have Dad’s keys?”
Hayk caught up with me before she could answer. His eyes were no longer pale blue but iridescent spots gleaming in the drab hallway.
“Lead on, we’ll follow,” he said in a deep, bell tone of a voice, not Hayk’s carefully manicured accent. It wasn’t just Hayk pausing on the bottom of the concrete steps. Ullikemi rode him; I was taking the dragon with me.
Chapter Nine
I held my breath at the bus stop, waiting for the line of students to freak out about Hayk. His eyes were glowing! Come on, even Portland isn’t that weird.
The black-haired guy at the front of the line never even glanced back once. I scanned down the row of girls lined up in front of us, wishing fiercely for an off-duty cop or even a heftier member of the Rose City Rollers. Turn around. Notice us.
But nobody noticed Hayk’s eyes, or the strange way he stood, his arms undulating at his sides as if he were caught in an unseen current. Nobody did double takes at Marlin’s haggard face or her blood-streaked arm. Dragon glamour? Hayk? No smell of cardamom, just the usual musty rain and tang of Sitka spruce.
Was this how Kwaskwi and his Kind had hidden among humans so long; were we all so startlingly oblivious?
We. Ha! I no longer counted among the ‘we.’
“There’s a key under the aloe plant on the back verandah,” said Marlin in English.
“Speak Japanese,” I snapped.
Her face paled.
“Sorry,” I said, and pulled her closer. She’d always been the shortest, among our short family, and she looked as small and vulnerable as a child tucked under my arm. Panic rose in me again, as strong as the compulsion. I have to keep Marlin safe. Have to. In Herai dialect again I said, “When we get on the bus, stay behind. Hide. Promise me you won’t go back to your apartment.”
“I will telephone the police,” she said. “Text me your location.”
I shook my head. “No. You know what he did to you. The police have no defense against that.”
“I don’t understand. He must have drugged me somehow—”
I squeezed her tighter, channeling some of the frantic urge to move into a hug. “It’s not drugs, Marlin. You know what this is. You know Dad and I are different. Let me take Hayk where he wants to go, and then he’ll leave us alone.”
“And Dad?” she said, lapsing into English.
I turned my face so I could lay my cheek on top of her head. She was trembling. Me, giving her comfort. Telling her what to do. All topsy-turvy.
“He’s somewhere safe,” I lied into her tousled hair. Please make him safe. Please make her safe.
The metal squealing of brakes sounded. The bus made its ponderous way down the hill, window wipers going full blast. Ullikemi/Hayk was so focused on the bus, he might not notice if Marlin got left behind.
“You can do this, right? This…magic stuff.”
I ignored her question, pulling out my worn, faux leather wallet and fingering the crumpled bill inside. Marlin shook her head. With a hand still streaked with blood, she closed my hands over the pitiful offering. “Money, I have,” she said. “Koi, call me as soon as you…” Her voice trailed away.
How to finish that sentence? As soon as I got rid of the dragon? Saved Dad? Figured out how to find Thunderbird? It was all crazy, and despite Marlin’s pretense at calm speech, her shaking hands and too-wide pupils told me she was at the end of her rope. I bounced in place on the balls of my feet, the compulsion making my teeth ache.
She needed to leave this crazy stuff behind and get back to her world, the real world.
I could try to give her that, at least, even if the thought of getting on that bus with Hayk by myself left a taste like the bitter dregs of espresso grounds in my mouth.
“The bus,” said Hayk, turning his disturbing green gaze back to me. I gave my sister’s hand one last squeeze and stepped between her and Hayk.
He muscled past the black-haired slouching guy at the front of the line, eliciting surprised insults from the trio of girls in front of us, but no one moved to stop him as he jumped up the steps into the bus. Polite Portlanders at their finest, I thought to myself. What I wouldn’t give for an irate New Yorker or macho Texan cowboy right now.
Or a Kitsune, goddammit.
Ken had made me think he cared about me, about my dad, but he was nowhere in sight.
I paid my fare with a mumbled apology to the driver. I couldn’t quite bring myself to take the open space next to Hayk, but I slid into the seat in front of him, wanting his attention on me.
The door squeaked a protest as it closed, and then we were in motion. I resisted the urge to look out the streaked windows. Marlin needed the precious moments to get away, but Hayk didn’t seem to care.
“I thank you, little Baku,” he said in that weird voice. Not a bell, more like the reverb of sound traveling across watery depths. I shivered. Was it Hayk or Ullikemi speaking?
The bus crested the hill, leaving Marlin behind. I heaved a sigh of relief and my panic simmered down. My family was more or less safe. Now only I had to deal with Hayk.
“Save it,” I said, facing front again.
“Oh, but it’s only polite,” he continued, his voice a chill caress, damper than October drizzle on the back of my neck. This was Hayk speaking. “Without you, I might never have found Ullikemi’s nemesis. Ullikemi allows me so much more access to his power now.”
I hunched down, bracing my knees on the empty seat in front of me. Running my hands up and down my arms seemed to relieve a little of the pressure from the compulsion. How was I going to survive twenty minutes of this?
Use your time. Think.
My brain whirled round and round and would not settle. I couldn’t overpower Hayk physically, and this compulsion meant I had no choice but to go to the arboretum.
So I would lead Hayk to the arboretum, and if Kwaskwi and Thunderbird were somehow there, they would deal with him.
I hoped. And if they weren’t there?
I pictured Hayk whipping out a magnifying glass, crouching down to examine the ground for clues like a demented Sherlock Holmes. Would Kwaskwi leave a magical trace? Maybe Ullikemi had some kind of tracking ability for flying creatures.
A small sound halfway between exasperation and a laugh escaped my lips. I braced myself, expecting a comment in Hayk-Ullikemi’s disturbing voice but heard only the moaning of the bus as it took a curve.
Except. Except that not all the passengers in the side-facing seats at the front of the bus had the dozing stare of commuters on a drizzly day. The black-haired guy Hayk had cut in front of in line had his purple hoodie pulled up over his head despite being inside the bus.
The guy’s face was turned three quarters profile my direction, and I caught the flicker of his eyes, far too attentive and active.
I sat up and the guy immediately craned his neck around to face forward, leaving me staring at the vivid purple cotton of his hood.
No, it couldn’t be. I rubbed my eye with a fist, dismayed to see faint smears of Marlin’s blood had stained my cuff. I’d walked right past the other passengers, my social blinders on full. His hoodie had the kanji for “Kitsune” on it next to a stylized graphic of Taiko drums.
Ken? Hope tickled my insides. The guy settled back into his chair. His nostrils flared, once, twice, testing the air. Oh god. It is Ken. I made fists of both hands, letting my ragged nails bite my palms.
He hadn’t cut and run. He was here, following us. I pressed my nails more tightly into my skin. Damn it, I was not going to go all squirrelly with relief at that idea. He clearly had his own agenda, and letting me walk into Hayk’s office alone to get Marlin was proof of that. He let Hayk slice Marlin like her blood was no more precious than dirt. Where was Mr. Funny Disguise when Hayk forced me to take him here?
Too little, too late.
How I’d felt when he kissed me didn’t matter.
I was on my own.
Sitting in front of Hayk played havoc on my raggedy nails, but the enforced stillness was causing my madly flowing adrenaline and rapidly beating heart to slow.
Other needs piped up with urgent messages. Hunger. I needed to pee. I would gladly strangle Greg-ever-chipper for a latte. Too bad there wasn’t a Dutch Brothers at the arboretum. Only over-priced tourist coffee at the zoo corner of the giant tourist parking lot.
My mind persisted on this inane loop-de-loop until I realized the bus was pulling up next to the concrete bunker of the Washington Park Max stop, and I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do beyond leading Hayk to the bench at the bottom of the Vietnam Memorial where I’d seen Kwaskwi.
A quick glance at Hayk confirmed no sign of expectation on his face as we neared the stop. Right. He didn’t actually know where we were going. Maybe I could skip the arboretum, let the bus take us onward to the Rose Garden. But as the bus doors swiveled open, the compulsion gave such a wrenching jerk to my internal organs, I sprang up out of the seat.
Hayk quickly followed me down the steps and onto the concrete sidewalk. A sunbreak appeared in the clouds. A shaft of light cutting through the murky weather made Hayk’s curly hair appear like a soft halo which clashed jarringly with the almost devil-like intent apparent in the green eyes. Not impatient, but intent waiting—like Marlin’s cat when you were opening a can of tuna.
No, not a cat. A dragon.
Right.
I surveyed the area as if I were looking for the right path. A flash of purple hoodie was visible through the trees. I took a deep breath and stepped into the crosswalk, forcing several vans full of tourists to screech suddenly to a halt.
On the other side of the street, the path leading to the Vietnam Memorial entrance morphed into dirt, bounded on both sides by dripping evergreens and cypress. A few college-types and athletes dressed in damp running shorts were visible, most walking down the hill toward the parking lot.
I tried a step toward the parking lot myself, but it was like trying to push myself through frozen Jell-O, my limbs would not obey me, and a cold absence of heat stroked over my skin despite the multiple sunbreaks that had opened up all over the park.
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