“If you need a victim, ancient kumiho, then don’t take him. I will come with you willingly.” She spoke it with her back turned toward me, so small, her short black hair scraping her shoulders.
Fred slipped back into his magnificent red fox form again, nine tails waving cautiously in the wind. “You won’t leave me?”
“If you leave them alone.”
“It’s a deal.”
“Una, what the hell are you doing?” I clanged my chains against the granite, loud enough to wake the dead, yet still, she didn’t look at me. “Don’t go with him! Go! Get out of this world! What have I ever done for you, that you would do this?”
Una shared a long glance with the red fox perched on the path, waiting for her to follow. Then she came and put a hand on my face.
“Butterflies in my stomach, when you looked at me. Anger, when you insulted me. Frustration, when I lacked the English words to fight back. But an electric thrill, when you said something nice. I was blissfully happy with my secret crush. But”—her dark eyes wandered back to Fred—“as you said, I break my own rules. Guardians of the spirit world don’t pursue outsiders for this very reason: We belong to another world, where our secrets are plain to the spirits we guard—the old, the dangerous, the jealous. To me, it was just a crush. My first crush.” Her warm hand slipped from my cheek. “But to the kumiho, you would have taken me away from him.”
“Don’t go.” I would have grabbed her if I could. I had to hope that my words were enough. Something hot and indignant was coursing through my veins as I burned holes in Fred’s head with my mind, something that should have been enough to snap these chains in half, but wasn’t. I’d found the sudden revelation about Una’s affections cute and unsettling back in the sea caves, but this time around, it had the weight to destroy a girl’s life. “For God’s sake, it was an innocent crush! I didn’t even know!”
“Yes,” Fred said, tails twitching jealously. “What do you think, now that you know?”
I stared at him in disbelief. “I don’t know! We haven’t even had five seconds to explore it!”
“My point exactly.” His jaw dropped in that leering grin. The nine tails expanded in a burst of golden fur to encircle Una, burying her completely. “Now you’ll never know.”
One. Her head down; her fingers let Saja’s skull clatter to the ground.
Two. Her eyes, hard and rigid like volcanic rock, found mine.
Three. I had a chance to say something. It came out as an animalistic snarl as I wrenched again at the chains. The ghosts finally looked concerned that I might break loose.
Four. My chance was over. Una looked at me and said, “Bury my dog.”
Five. A brilliant flash, so bright I had to turn away. The heat that gusted against my face was too hot, too soon, and burned painfully.
***
A branch cracked somewhere, laden down by man-sized icicles. I realized the ghosts were creeping over the clearing toward me, leaving no footprints.
“Well, that was unexpected,” one ghost complained, lacing his fingers over his gut. “Now we have to go all the way back to the palace and lug him along.”
“We could eat him.” The second ghost had floated close enough to drag a near-corporeal finger down my arm. A curious thing happened. His cheeks grew ruddy with warmth, and his finger felt heavier, almost substantial. He chortled in delight. “Look how much life is in him. Enough to turn us solid. Almost flesh.”
“The kumiho’s scent is gone.” The first ghost bustled closer. “He’s given up all claim on him. Why not dine? My mandu’s gone cold.”
“Whoa, whoa, there. I know times are hard, but that’s no excuse to resort to cannibalism.” My numb fingers pricked themselves on a chink in the chain. The ice had fractured it nearly clean through. I bashed my manacles harder against the rock.
“If we don’t eat you, then some wild animal will.” The ghost frowned at my ceaseless banging. “Stop that.”
The chain broke. I held up my free hands, grinning. “At least give me a head start. You ever think Maya sent you out here because you could use the exercise?”
That floating-thing gave them an impossible advantage over my numb feet, which stumbled over each other and couldn’t decide which direction to go. The only reason I didn’t fall was because I knew the snow would be the last cold bed I’d ever tumble into.
I stooped and began to cough non-stop. Snot clung to my upper lip, frozen, and I knew I looked a pathetic sight. I brought my cuffed hands up in a semblance of prayer, pleading, “Please. Don’t.”
The first ghost floated lazily toward me, and didn’t even notice that I’d gathered back, ready to spring. I whipped the chain around his neck and jerked back, ruthlessly—hey, the guy had been planning to eat me—until his face turned a pleasant eggplant-purple. I didn’t stop, even then.
A dead ghost body did a funny thing: It evaporated into thin air, like an exhaled breath. I lost my balance at the sudden lack of weight. And because I’d pissed off the ghost’s bro. Red veins crept through the ghost’s eyes like angry ivy, and suddenly I couldn’t move. The ghost’s fury gave it substance, and its fingers jerked my hair back. It began to breathe deeply, from me. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was taking, but my energy leaked away as if escaping through an open window. The ghost moaned a little, and the claw-like fingers digging into my hairline tightened.
The winds shifted, carrying a wonderful smell: the rank stench of decay. A low growl at the ghost’s ear startled him. He lost his hold on me and toppled backwards, only to find himself gazing up into the pitiless blue eyes of a white wolf. Ruby-bright flesh still dangled from her jaws. She made her kill quickly, snow exploding from around her coiled haunches.
They’d said wild animals would tear me to pieces. The bitter irony of it, that the white wolf was really a woman who would do me no harm, wasn’t lost upon me as I lay senseless, my warmth seeping away into the snow.
This would make Yu Li the third woman to save my life. My younger sis had burned for me. Una, a girl I’d barely known, had gone to God knows what fate. And if I looked back at my whole goddamned miserable life, I could only ask, “What for?” The universe had spoken. It’d sent el diablo zorro to collect. But good people, being what they are, always throw themselves in the way of the bad ones. It always takes them instead.
I would have told the white wolf this now, if I’d been able, but my hypothermic mind spiraled into an empty black sky. I felt heavenly warmth curl around me from somewhere far away, felt a hot pink tongue lick my ear in reassurance.
They’d all been wrong. The winter would take me.
Chapter 36: The Were War
Raina scampered ahead like she knew where she was going. I let her. Anything to keep me between her and the creepy-ass head floating after us.
We burst through a patch of trees, interrupting one of the ghostly processions up the mountain.
“Live ones?” a long-faced ghost whispered through purple lips.
“It’s the Alvarez sisters!” Twin girls dropped their litters with fiendish glee, their fingers dissolving into obscenely long nails. “Get them!”
A werebear erupted from the snow drift, and with a roar that shook the snow from the trees, he cleaved the offering litter in half. Oranges, rice cakes, and persimmons rolled everywhere. Two weretigers loped past in that quiet, graceful way of theirs, swiftly gaining speed as the front bearers tried to run. The tigers bowled them over in seconds.
A gleaming golden snake, a ruby gemstone glinting from its nostril, slithered into the fray.
“Thaksin?” I asked, hardly daring to believe it.
The werenaga gulped down an orange whole before answering. “Ahhhh. I think I will stay here and guard the food. Stay with me, Citlalli? We can finally speak freely, here in Eve!”
A weary grin tugged at my face. “I rather liked our uncomplicated conversations about the weather, Pad Thai, and how we were feeling. By the way: I always wanted to tell you that I felt like
shit.”
“And I wanted to tell you that yes, it is fairly easy to ride on an elephant’s head, and the deadliest werebeast I ever faced was a vicious werebaboon from South Africa.”
I stared. “We have a lot of catching up to do. Thaksin, this is my sister, Raina.”
Raina put out a hand and then slowly retracted it, flushing. The werenaga inclined his head.
“Raina. We have heard much about you. This one has missed you so.”
“I’ve missed her.” She clung to my arm, somehow confident in my ability to restore things, now that we were together.
“Listen, Thaksin. I’m all for you staying here to guard the food, but Maya’s chasing us. We burned her fake body, but that creepy head lives on. Our only hope to kill her for good is to reunite with Prince Khyber.”
“He’s waiting for us on the summit,” Raina said softly.
The snake nodded. “We have staked and burned her physical body back in the sunshine world daytime nest. Even now, our werebeasts fight to hold the tomb against the vampyres laying siege. We will fight until all of the girls come home.” His jeweled eyes flicked to Raina, and I grabbed her shoulders to support her.
“Does my body look okay?” she whispered.
Thaksin hesitated. “You are one of five left, on the cusp of physical death. Return to your body soon, youngest sister.”
We moved on up the mountain. The Weres behind ravaged the litters, and then vanished into the woodland.
Rustling from above. We drew closer together. Coin-bright eyes blinked at us from the shadowy boughs. Cloud leopards. Seeing that we were friends, they disappeared as swiftly as they’d come.
Raina and I broke out onto a long, barren slope. The air felt thin and brittle up here, and we stayed close, lest we lose each other in the river of fog. Raina’s eyes glittered with tears beneath the breaks of starlight.
“We’ll find a way back to your body in time, Raina,” I assured her. “There are these great dragons called the cockatrice that can take you anywhere you want in Eve. Anywhere. ‘Course, you can only call on them three times, but I doubt we’ll be coming back to Eve anytime soon—”
“One of five girls,” Raina said bitterly. “Seven of us were supposed to marry her undead sons. Maya made so many false promises.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Does that surprise you?”
“There were supposed to be more than five.”
Rough growls prowled the gray mists. I found myself barking in response, and abruptly keeled over. Wolf and Demon had rushed up at the same time.
Raina took my elbow and we hurried, blinking against the water droplets collecting on our eye lashes.
The howlers pursued us, however, and we couldn’t escape them. The mists blew apart to reveal an indistinct shape, and I nearly cried in relief. I recognized that scent. It was my pack leader: Jaehoon.
“Juin-nim!” I rushed over eagerly now. “You found us!”
“We found you a long time ago, but you kept running away,” he chided, but his stern gaze softened as it turned on Raina. “Is this her?”
“Yes. This is my sister.” I pulled Raina to my side where we stood under scrutiny, shivering.
“Thank you for helping Citlalli,” she whispered.
Jaehoon gripped Raina’s shoulders, smiling at what he saw. “You are most welcome.” He turned and jangled a familiar lotus lantern before me. “This is what our hope looks like. Here. It likes you.”
I gawked with excitement as he pressed it into my hands. “You brought it?”
“Yes. We carried the youngest brother’s soul with us.”
“This is the last one Khyber needs.” I shot a knowing look toward Raina, hardly daring to hope. “We can send the vampyre princes on. To the real land of the dead.”
Jaehoon approached to help me fix the lotus lantern in place. “Your sister can change, too,” he murmured in my ear, and I blinked, puzzled.
Before I could ask what he meant, a hyena-like cackle rolled over the peak face, a bit too close for comfort. My worst fears were confirmed when wolves Kaelan and Ae Cha burst through the fog, the latter’s pelt bleeding profusely.
I waited for Rafael to appear, orange eyes round and full from the hunt, but no further shadow appeared.
“Dark Dogs.” Kaelan licked Ae Cha’s wounds, whimpering at his inability to ease her suffering. “They’ll be on us in seconds!”
“Where are the others?” spilled out of me.
“The vampyre prince Aleksandr attacked us, scattering our main front through the woods. Yu Li and Rafael lured him off, and we haven’t seen either of them since,” Kaelan managed between pants.
Jaehoon rippled into his great, beastly Alpha form. In his haste to change, the red fang necklace snapped. I stooped to pick it up for him, and he tossed his head at me impatiently.
“There’s not enough string. Keep it safe for me around your own small neck.” And, before I could argue, he growled, “Where do you need to go?”
Raina and I looked at each other. “The summit,” we said together.
“Raina, keep close!” And then I shifted. I ignored the welcoming hands of Demon and slid comfortably back into Wolf’s skin. My newfound muscles ached, but it was good pain, and the world suddenly came alive in shapes and colors. Jaehoon’s necklace clanged against my neck, strengthening me. I sniffed the air. Threat charging in from the east. Death meandering her way up from the south. We ran north.
The next howl scared me so badly, I stumbled. It was a hunting call. The Dark Dogs had found us, were practically upon our heels. I squinted up against the collecting snow drifts, but I could only see white. The wind hit, and we were regaled with an odor so foul that Raina could smell it, too. It was the reek of musty coffins exposed to fresh air, not just one—hundreds, and the stench oozed down the peak like an oil-tarnished river.
Dark Spirits. They were gathering. I didn’t need to be told. Ae Cha whimpered, and Kaelan pawed irritably at his face.
I paused by Raina. “Do you trust Khyber?”
She ran her fingers through my coarse fur, delighted. “I do, Citlalli. But I trust you more.”
I understood. Whatever I did, whatever I chose, she would follow. They all would. We hovered in that snowbound landscape for an instant. The wind rippled through the mist like it was parting a great sea, and above, I could see a procession of great black-ice mountains, their peaks puncturing the belly of the sky. Cold air whistled through my nostrils as I craned my head upwards. It seemed impossible that we could possibly go higher, crawl through that hole in the sky’s belly, into the heavens. I realized there was a question I had never asked Khyber: Whatever had happened to his sisters, after they had climbed up into the sky?
The first of the Dark Dogs ripped through the fog, snarling and tossing it aside with its teeth. I grew stiff-legged with fear, but while I had been looking down, Jaehoon had been looking up. He nudged me now. A clear window in the mist revealed an old red staircase, switch-backing up into the clouds.
I barked a command. We dashed for the staircase, but something else was racing us to reach it first. The snow rustled as if something were tunneling beneath it, and suddenly, the great thorny leg of a rose bush broke through the surface.
“The black rose! She’s here, Citlalli!”
I immediately glued myself to my sister’s side, circling her protectively. The entire snowy bluff seemed to give way into a pit of black thorns. One lashed at my ankle, and Kaelan bit it in half. He began to choke, and Ae Cha hovered near him, anxious.
“Are you okay?”
“Poison!” The red wolf spit up something stringy and black. “Go. Just go!”
The forest of black thorns groped blindly toward the red staircase, and I saw Maya’s true goal: Cut us off from escape, so the Dark Dogs would tear us to pieces. Fear drove us all. I glanced around for Raina; she’d floundered in the snow drift. Ae Cha pulled her out—too gently, too slowly. The fastest thorn vine lashed out a long arm and roped around her neck.<
br />
We tore back to help her; Kaelan out-distanced me. Thorns erupted all around us. I bit into them, and their sharp barbs cut my mouth. I felt an odd, numbing sensation spread throughout my gums, so I quickly spit them out. I looked up. Ae Cha was pinned in a bramble cage that wrapped around her with deliberate tightness, like the constricting embrace of a python. Thorns stabbed her belly and neck; one pierced through her upper gum line; and the last slowly approached her eye. She whimpered, trying to move her paw.
“AE CHA!”
Up bounded the swarm of Dark Dogs. I herded the grief-stricken Kaelan away, forcibly. Ae Cha peered up at us, wild-eyed, but couldn’t speak. Then the thorns swallowed her; she was lost from sight.
Kaelan whined, clawed at me as we pelted back across the snow. He bit my ear, and I sank my teeth into his flank, viciously. I wasn’t losing him tonight, too. We quickly caught up with the others, who, for some insane reason, hadn’t started the mad dash for our lives up the staircase.
“WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?” I bellowed.
“Can’t you smell it?” Kaelan paced nervously. “Something’s not right.”
Jaehoon looked from the crouched Raina to the encroaching sea of black on the horizon. He looked directly at me.
“Do not lose the necklace I gave you, Citlalli.”
Odd choice of words, but I didn’t miss the strange look Kaelan shot me.
The yelps of the Dark Dogs…the ominous crack! of thorns breaking through ice…all of it faded as we ascended. Sleeping blue icicles plunged past the rail guard into harrowing darkness. There was no sound except for the grating squeaking beneath our feet. Far below, the Dark Dogs made no move to chase us. They milled around at the bottom of the staircase, yapping and grumbling.
“Why have they stopped chasing us?” Kaelan joined me at the precipice, sniffing the air suspiciously.
“I don’t know. Because she’s stopped.” We watched the thorns slowly wind up the railings, the hands of an elderly man struggling to stand.
“I didn’t know about you and Ae Cha. I’m sorry,” I said.
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