Year of the Tiger (Changeling Sisters)

by Heather Heffner

  I crawled over, and she turned to me with surprising need, hugging the warm flesh of the living. When she spoke, her voice was dead:

  “I have killed the father of my child.”

  “Yu Li.” I brushed the bangs from her face. “Duck Young was already dead.”

  “Not dead! Only changed!” she insisted. “How could Maya bring out that dark side of him, unless it was always there, sleeping where I couldn’t see?”

  I winced. That accusation struck a bit too close to home. “So what if he had the potential to be an evil, murdering son-of-a-bitch? Don’t we all? It doesn’t matter. What matters, is that when he was with you, he chose to be a life-giver, a changer of lives, a light for the future. And that man still loves you and Young Soo. He always will. From somewhere far away.”

  “From somewhere far away,” she repeated, in Korean. But her shuddering subsided. “Okay. You have convinced me. Now please, convince my son.”

  We both lapsed into hysterical giggles, not because it was funny, but because we realized the futility of it. Miguel groped to his feet.

  “Damn! You weren’t kidding. Those motherfuckers are insanely strong. Um.” He stopped, looking awkwardly at Yu Li. “I’ll get you both some clothes.”

  “We can get them ourselves,” Yu Li said tiredly. “Just go find my son.”

  He raised his eyebrows at me. I shrugged. I was pleased I wasn’t the only one who had the honor of being on the receiving end of Yu Li’s blunt tongue.

  “The boy was healthy enough to run away,” Miguel decided. “You two, however, can barely talk without blood coming out from places it shouldn’t.”

  Yu Li glared at him frostily as he approached with cloth and bandages, but she didn’t resist. I just laughed helplessly at the absurdity of it all. Miguel was planning on playing doctor when his own arm dangled from its socket like a broken branch, and deep gouges wrapped around his neck.

  A sharp exclamation. Followed by successive swearing. I heard Rafael come back first, shaking his head groggily to make sense of his black-and-blue face.

  “Yu Li!”

  I watched, heart wrenching, as he went to her first, touching her head tenderly in a way that only couples who’ve been together for years do. Then he looked at me.

  His face tightened up like a storm cloud. Immediately, he attacked Duck Young’s dead body, destroying it with his kicks.

  “Easy, there,” Miguel said. “That’s not impressing anyone. We already did the hard part by actually killing him.”

  Rafael gave a low whistle. “Shit, you’re still alive.”

  “Don’t be so surprised.” Miguel shrugged, pressing a wet cloth to my neck. “I’ve survived some of the craziest acid trips and gang vendettas back home. An attack by a legendary vampyre prince? I guess. If that’s the best Korea has to throw at me.”

  “Ohhhh.” Una woke up to Saja licking her face.

  Rafael grabbed the cloth from Miguel and took over cleaning my neck up. “You’re not doing it right. Go get the Vicodin.”

  Miguel tried to put up a hand. “Yes, sir.”

  “Is it destroyed?” I asked in a low voice, clinging tighter to Rafael’s hands.

  His forehead tightened into knots again, and a frown creased his battered face. “I’m sorry, Citlalli. The soul is in safekeeping with the pack, but to destroy it…we don’t know how. It won’t go by ordinary means.”

  I slumped back to allow him to nurse me, defeated. I didn’t know what this meant. There was only one creature who did. Only one creature who held all the answers, about Raina, about everything…Khyber.

  “Citlalli? Are you okay?” Rafael hugged me as I spontaneously burst into tears.

  “I want my mother.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Remember why you wanted to keep all of this from her?”

  “Please.” I looked pleadingly over at Miguel. “I want to go home.”

  Chapter 19: Before I Fall Asleep

  I knew something was wrong when Mami didn’t ask any questions. She allowed Miguel and me to sleep undisturbed, and she was there with a wet compress when I thrashed about, convinced vampyre wings were whispering against my skin.

  I recovered long before Miguel got out of his first cast, however. I stood in the doorway, wereblood thumping through my veins, as I watched my eldest brother sweat in his sleep.

  He would live. Our doctor had fretted about his injuries, particularly an ominous one above his abdomen: three distinct claw marks. Where there had once been one, there was now a complete set.

  “Did your brother get in a fight with a wild animal?” the doctor had asked.

  A good enough description of Duck Young, in my book, but even he didn’t have nails as long and sharp as knife blades. I thought of Fred’s slit-like eyes glowing with scarlet fire, and I shivered. The nine-tailed fox wasn’t going to get my brother.

  There had been a time when I’d doubted Miguel’s loyalty to me, when I thought he’d abandoned me for good. And maybe that had been true. But many things had changed. As our family members dwindled, the tighter we clung to each other, like shattered shells melded together by the tumultuous sea. Terror enveloped me as I saw, again, Miguel standing in the same room with Duck Young. But my human brother had emerged alive, a rare mercy from the universe. I couldn’t lose him.

  Mami gently closed his door, leaving both of us standing alone in the dark hallway. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken so many days off of work. Even though I was so much taller than her, I sank into her arms anyway, breathing in the familiar, soothing aroma of freshly rolled buttery dough, where the generous dabs of Coco Chanel couldn’t mask. Her arms felt as delicate as butterfly wings beneath my Were strength, but at the moment, she stood steadier than I.

  “Mija, when will you tell me what happened?” Her sharp eyes flickered to my missing finger, and I knew it wasn’t difficult to put this successive string of hospital visits together.

  “Just a crazy eighteen-year-old thing. You don’t want to know. Trust me.”

  “Then why do you keep running away from me?”

  I froze in her arms. “I thought you wanted Miguel and me out of the house.”

  She sighed, drawing away. “Yes. Those words came from my mouth. I can’t take them back. I chased away the last of my precious offspring, convinced that you would be less at risk if you distanced yourself from me. That this wretched child-killing curse from the gods wouldn’t take you next. And in the silence that followed, I knew what I’d done. Chased you out into the cold. Where I couldn’t protect you.”

  She slowly sank into the nearest armchair. “That’s all I wanted to do, Citlalli. I know you were so angry when I took you away from America. But I just wanted to protect you. I thought I could provide a better life for you than him. And here the curse was my fault all along.”

  The tears crept down my cheeks before I knew it. Wasn’t this what I’d always wanted to hear?

  “Why couldn’t you tell me before?”

  “About the curse? Oh, mija. I didn’t want to speak of it until I knew how to break it.”

  “No.” I shook my head impatiently. “Why couldn’t you tell me that you loved me?”

  “Because I didn’t know how.” She looked up at me. For the first time, she let me see the helplessness swimming circles in her eyes. “When your abuelo and abuela were killed by the gangs in Mexico City, I grew up alone. Nana was always cold and detached, in her own world, but I thought she did that so I would learn to survive on my own. And when I had you, I was convinced that I had to make you strong and independent, or else one day, if something happened to me…” Her voice trailed off.

  I swallowed. I’d never heard her speak of this. The details of Mami’s childhood had always been muddy, snatched from odd conversations with relatives and Papi’s drunken reminisces. How he’d fallen in love with a fierce daughter of Quetzalcoatl, a girl who’d come from nothing and built herself everything.

  I saw clearly now how much of
her hard-earned money Mami had spent on winning us from Papi. How much she had then poured into our education, pushing us to think ahead, to constantly think ahead. Hadn’t she petitioned for Raina and I to be admitted into a highly competitive all-English speaking private school, an honor rarely bestowed upon foreigners? How much money and favors had that cost? And I’d shoved it all away ungratefully, only hearing her anger when she berated me for not taking my studies seriously. I’d turned a deaf ear to the disappointment. The desperation. We’d emerged from two different childhoods and two different times, butting heads every time we’d tried to merge together.

  “I love you, mija.” Tears were spilling down what I’d always thought to be wrinkles, but what I now saw were time-worn familiar paths, trailing down her cheeks. “I only wish it hadn’t taken the loss of my eldest and youngest daughter for me to say it.”

  She sagged into me, and I caught her. I now realized what it meant to be eighteen. I was grown-up. I couldn’t afford to be the child any longer. Soon my mother would come to depend on me.

  “Mami,” I whispered in her ear, “I’m going to get Raina back. I might be gone for a little while, but I’m going to get her back. I promise.” I impulsively planted a kiss on her graying head. “Just don’t open the door to anyone. Okay?”

  Her frail fingers clutched my jacket tighter to her. “I already did, mija,” she said brokenly, in a voice so low I almost didn’t hear: “I already did. Forgive me.”

  She knew. I stepped back from her, shaken. This was why she hadn’t pressed about where we’d been, about what had hurt her precious children. She’d already seen what had done this to us.

  Vampyre hands slid over my throat from behind.

  “This is for Prince Duck Young,” a sibilant female voice hissed in my ear. I was too shocked to move. Wolf jumped up and down inside, frustrated. Mami still reached for me, weeping, as they dragged me down the hall. Then something hit my head and I blacked out.

  End of Part I

  Part II: Alpha

  Chapter 20: Widows’ Revenge

  When I came to, I was sprawled out on the snow-dusted ground with frost melting in my ears.

  Finally! Wolf exclaimed. This time, fight them off, okay?

  Wait, what’s going on? I asked, mind awash with confusion.

  Duck Young’s brides, Wolf hissed. Or widows, I should say. It took a certain amount of satisfaction from that. They’ve come to seek revenge on you. And they’ve been having a hell of a party of it, too.

  I realized I was naked. Naked on one of the coldest nights of the harsh Korean winter. No wonder I couldn’t feel anything. My toes had swelled up like frozen blueberries. My body looked like one, big, purple Otter Pop from Costco. The black night swirled dizzily above me, empty save for a few drifting snowflakes.

  “She’s coming around again!” The high-pitched voice, charged with false excitement, grated my ears.

  “What should we do to her this time?” Heavy footsteps thumped closer. “Elizabeth, you’re the eldest of us. What do you think?”

  My eyelids fluttered. I could see a picturesque woman from the 1800s sitting on a log and watching me. Dark curls tumbled down to her waist, and she came complete with china doll rouge cheeks and a parasol. Wolf’s ears flattened at the sight of her. She was the vampyre.

  The others were humans, or had been, before Maya had stolen their bodies. Now they were—puppets, I named them. Like Marisol. Heads tilted awkwardly, fumbling to make sense of their hands— God knew the last time they’d ventured out of Eve.

  The vampyre answered my question.

  “Do let her wake this time.” Elizabeth rose, her heavy woolen petticoat dragging trails through the snow. “It’s not fun if she doesn’t realize what’s happening. And this little rat-dog will suffer for what she did to our husband. But whatever you do, best do it quickly. You, who have not been graced with vampyrehood, will not last long in this world. Let your final burst of anger be her blood splashed across the snow.”

  A wispy blonde-haired woman, the one who had the squirrel-pitched voice, looked nervously around and stomped her feet in the chilly air. “I wish we could take her back to the palace. It’s bloody freezing out.”

  “You know very well why we can’t,” another grumbled. “That wretched Marisol would spill the beans to the Queen. She’s already demonstrated before that she’d place her sisters before her husband.”

  “Bitch,” the other spat. I felt a surge of pride. Damn right, Mari. Show ‘em.

  “She’s smiling!” Elizabeth had never taken her eyes off me. She shot forward in a blur and hoisted me up by the hair. The blonde approached. She had a whip. Of course she did. My raw flesh tried to recoil, but it was frozen stiff, like a fish in the farmer’s market. At once, I felt a sudden, nonsensical loathing for my mortal body: It was so pitiably weak. How many times had it rendered me helpless before my enemies?

  No, those are Wolf’s thoughts! But it didn’t make the whip lash sting any less. Too many painful sensations at once: warm blood dribbling over numb, goose-bumped flesh, the bite of artic-cold air leaking into gapping wounds—

  “That’s right,” Elizabeth said, twiddling restlessly with her parasol. Her nostrils flared as she smelled my fresh, hot blood. “I wouldn’t be smiling. Not when your own mother betrayed you. Did she forget to mention the deal she made?” she asked with false shock, kneeling to the level of my hanging head. “She agreed to offer you up without a struggle if we left your brother alone. As if we would be stupid enough to take him, anyway.” She gave a short laugh. “Another, far older power, has had its eye on him for a while now.”

  Wonderful. I thought back to the strange trio of claw marks on Miguel’s abdomen, right above his liver. Fred’s innocent queries about his welfare.

  A snatch of a bygone conversation with Rafael about why the nine-tailed fox hated Weres drifted through my head:

  “Because we can turn into humans. Even with all of his power, he can’t.”

  Fred’s ultimate desire. What that had to do with Miguel, I couldn’t afford to find out. What if something happened while I wasn’t around to protect him? I strained in the vampyre’s grip. No. I had to focus on getting free. I couldn’t listen to any lies Elizabeth said about Mami. This undead bitch didn’t know anything about my mother.

  “She sold you out easily,” another wife goaded. “Trust me, there were no tears shed during our deal-making, unlike that little show she put on for you later. Probably had to soothe her dirty conscience.”

  Fight back! Wolf urged, but I recoiled away from that ominous black whip.

  No. I can’t anger them further.

  Useless. Wolf brushed me to the side irritably, and I lacked the strength to fight It. A real wolf never exposes its belly to the stomping moose.

  Picturing Duck Young’s widows as an angry moose herd made me lapse into irrational giggles. All eyes slowly turned toward me.

  “You find something funny, dog?” Elizabeth asked softly.

  “Oh, yes,” Wolf told them. “Because it is funny, isn’t it, that Duck Young didn’t shed any tears either, when he was professing to Yu Li that she was the only wife he wanted, and the rest of you could rot in hell for all he cared. Why, he would even help you get there.”

  “You fuckin’ lying twat!” the blonde shrieked like a harpy.

  Elizabeth paled further, a feat I’d thought impossible for a vampyre. “Kill her.”

  Thanks, I told Wolf glumly.

  The lone wolf howl stopped the wives dead in their tracks. It rose up to linger over the treetops like a trail of smoke, felt, but unseen. A heavy silence descended. Nothing could be heard except for the rustling of wind on far-off peaks. A branch cracked under the frost, and the blonde jumped. I cautiously sniffed the air. It was laden with the scent of cacao and palm tree.

  Another growl, much more guttural and ferocious, snarled from the patch of forest directly before us. The human wives threw up their hands and dashed away, back toward the fire. A
shaggy shadow blocked it.

  “DARK DOG!” the blonde shrieked.

  Rafael tore out her throat and then pounced on another wife before she fell. Elizabeth stalked toward the fire, but then stopped short. The flames scared her. Rafael solved her dilemma by clamping his jaws around the biggest burning log and hurling it at her. It caught her upside the head.

  The vampyre screamed and buried her smoldering head in the nearest snow bank. The other wives floundered around helplessly.

  “Get the guns, you idiots!” Elizabeth screeched.

  Rafael’s cold nose nudged my cheek. His lantern-orange Were eyes beckoned me to my feet, urged me to stumble after him into the woods. This wasn’t over yet.

  Change to me! Wolf pranced back and forth impatiently.

  I—can’t. My numb feet stumbled on dirty snow chunks. I’m so weak. Not just my body. The painful tango the pieces of my dual soul danced around one other was slowing, drifting further apart. The bridge between us was slim, woefully slim. If I switched to Wolf now, and the bridge broke—

  Rafael the werewolf turned to me, steam rising from his lolling pink tongue. He couldn’t understand why I didn’t shift. I took another staggering step forward. My human body was almost done for.

  Don’t limp. Run! Wolf bounded across the unstable bridge of our soul before I could stop It, and burst through the forefront of my mind.

  ***

  I am the night and the night is me. The cold looks, but it can’t find me. The humans and the Dead One look, but they can’t find me. I am loping out in front and I am sneaking up from behind. I have disappeared completely into the night.

  My tongue hangs out excitedly as I chase my partner deeper into the woods. Everything from his steady-sure gait to the confident ripple of his shoulders marks him as Alpha. My mate? I’m not sure. But I will follow him. I am the Omega. The outsider. I go with whoever offers the thrill of riding the night winds, whoever gives the chance to sneak up on prey unseen.