Confused, Kara went and knelt in front of him, taking his hands in her own.
"You got away, Ren," she said, searching his eyes. "Was Hachiro still alive when you escaped?"
"Yes. But you are not listening. I'm trying to tell you that I did not escape. Yuki-Onna let me go."
Kara sat back on her haunches, staring at him.
"She what?" Sakura said.
"Why would she do that?" Miho asked.
Ren stared at his hands as if he were so ashamed he could not even lift his eyes. "She said I was too beautiful to kill," he said bitterly. "That eventually she would be too tempted and she would devour my spirit, and I would be dead and she would regret that. So she let me go."
"But she kept Hachiro," Kara whispered.
Ren nodded. "She made me promise not to speak of her, or to tell anyone what happened on Takigami Mountain."
A chill raced up Kara's spine and along her arms.
"But you just told us," Sakura said.
"Did she say what would happen if you did tell?" Miho asked.
Ren looked up. "She said she would come for me again and I would be in the storm forever."
The chill in the room was not Kara's imagination. Gooseflesh formed on her arms and as she exhaled, her breath fogged the air.
Chapter Eleven
A rush of alarm swept through Kara as she glanced at the window. She saw ice spreading on the glass, and she stood up, staggering back from Ren. He had broken his promise and now Yuki-Onna had come for him.
"No," she said. "We can't let this happen."
Sakura shoved past her, grabbed Ren by the hand and hauled him to his feet. Miho yanked the door open and the four of them raced into the corridor together. Doors were opening up and down the hall, boys poking their heads out, shivering in spite of their sweaters and sweatshirts. Some of the rooms would be empty — a lot of students were probably in the common areas or heading down to the cafeteria for dinner — but there were enough of them to get in the way.
"Why is it so cold?" one of them asked. "Is the heat broken?"
"Ren?" another ventured. "What's wrong? Why are you —"
"Out of the way!" Sakura shouted, shoving the boy outside.
Kara led the way, racing down the corridor to the central stairs. Her thoughts were awhirl, her heart slamming in her chest. Sakura and Ren came right behind her, with Miho bringing up the rear.
"Anything behind us?" Kara shouted.
"Not yet!" Miho replied.
"Where are we going?" Sakura snapped. "How are you going to outrun her?"
"I'm working on it!" Kara replied.
They reached the central staircase. The temperature had dropped so low that ice had begun to form on the inside walls. Her eyelashes stuck together when she blinked. Ice crystals floated like tiny snowflakes in the air.
"My God," Kara whispered in English.
"No," Miho said. "Not your God."
Think, girl, think! The windows in the stairwell rattled as storm winds gusted against them. Snow and sleet pelted the glass. With another gust, a crack appeared, and then another. Windows.
"Kara, look!" Ren called.
They all turned. Down the hall, back the way they'd come, a pair of ghosts stood in the corridor staring at them. Sora looked just as he had the last time they had seen him, except that his presence seemed little more substantial than Kara's pluming breath in the cold air. The other spirit was female and it took Kara a moment to place her — Chouku, one of the victims of the Ketsuki.
Before any of them could react, a blast of winter air filled the hall. Back along the corridor, the door to Ren's room froze over and then shattered, blown outward in a splintering of ice and timber.
Kara grabbed Miho's hand. "Go!"
They hit the stairwell and she nearly fell. The steps were slippery but the metal railing was so cold that it stung to touch. She hurried down as quickly as she could without falling, aware of the cracks that lengthened and spread in the stairwell windows above her head.
At the far end of the girls' wing, glass shattered. Kara heard screams. Doors banged and as they descended the stairs, the storm seemed to rush in behind them, snow whipping through the second floor, a blizzard filling the hall and blowing out from the landing, sweeping into the stairwell.
Miho slipped and fell backward onto the stairs, crying out in pain as her back hit the steps. She slid and tumbled the last few stairs to the landing between floors. Kara crouched by her, fear racing through her at the thought of Miho hurt, or dying.
"I'm all right," Miho said. "Go!"
Even as the girl spoke, her glasses frosting over, she struggled to stand. Pain etched itself across her face but she started down toward the first floor. Kara glanced up at Ren and Sakura, saw they were all right, and beyond them she noticed the ghosts in the swirling snow, untouched by the wind, unmoved by their plight.
The lights flickered and she froze. No, no. We need light. Please not the lights.
But the wavering light glinted off of something around Sakura's neck and then Kara remembered the wards Kubo had given them. Her hand flew to her throat and she touched the round, smooth stone that hung from the thong around her neck. What had the old monk said? Demons didn't see faces, they recognized essences. Something like that. She and Miho and Sakura were hidden from Yuki-Onna for now, but they had to hide Ren as well.
Kara slipped and nearly fell. She caught herself on the railing and her fingers froze to the metal in an instant. Skin tore away as she pulled her arm back and she cried out, swearing loudly as she kept going. Injured hand tucked under her arm, she turned to Sakura.
"The ward Kubo gave us for Hachiro! Do you have it?"
Understanding flickered across Sakura's eyes, following by regret. "It's back in my room!"
The long cathedral window in the landing shattered at last. Storm-driven glass shards sliced the air around them, blown in with snow and sleet, wind whipping at them, stinging as much as glass splinters. A jagged piece slashed Kara's shoulder, and she stared in shock as blood began to seep from the wound. She was so cold she could barely feel it.
"Where are we going?" Sakura shouted to be heard over the howling wind.
"Not outside!" Miho said. "That would be insane!"
Kara faced them . . . and beyond them, through the shattered window up the stairs on the landing, she saw Yuki-Onna hovering in the air, swaying with the wind. Her white kimono seemed to dance with the snow and her long white hair flowed around her.
Don't look! Kara thought, remembering the stories, knowing that Yuki-Onna could freeze her with a glance.
"This way!" she called, racing down the next flights of steps toward the basement level. As she did, she realized that the White Woman had not been staring at her, but at Ren. Kubo was right. She can't see us!
The others had not seen Yuki-Onna, but they felt the storm moving in, the temperature dropping, the storm thickening around them. They all had cuts from the flying glass, but the air was so cold their blood barely dripped at all. Their fear drove them on, and Kara knew they had only one slim hope.
"Where are you going?" Ren called.
Kara hurried down the steps to the basement. "Somewhere with no windows!"
The others pursued her, and she saw realization ignite hope in their eyes. Behind the cafeteria was a kitchen with heavy wooden doors and no windows. A bank vault would have been better, but they had very little to choose from.
"It isn't going to work!" Ren said.
Kara shot him a hard look. "It has to!"
Other students were coming out of the cafeteria now, loudly complaining about the cold. The real storm reached them now, snow and sleet whipping around them, wind roaring into the cafeteria, blowing the doors in, scraping tables across the floor, and people started to scream.
Kara led her friends through the screaming and the chaos of the storm. Another scream cut the air, but this was different, and when she turned she saw Yuki-Onna glide into the room, ice forming on the
walls around her, crystallizing the floor and the nearest tables. A girl in a ponytail had looked at her and now stood frozen as Yuki-Onna approached, then bent to kiss her.
The kiss seemed to go on an eternity, though it was only a brush of lips. When it ended, the girl had been transformed, her body coated in ice, a statue carved of winter and death.
"Kara!" Sakura shouted, grabbing her roughly and pulling her along.
Then they were barging into the kitchen. But as her friends set about slamming and locking doors, sealing them inside, Kara could not get the image of the frozen girl out of her mind. She thought of Sora, who had died the same way, and of Hachiro.
Just a kiss.
When Ren embraced her, she didn't resist. The four of them huddled together for long seconds, the fog of their breath combining into a cloud, their body heat all that was keeping them from freezing completely.
Then ice began to crawl and spread on the inside of the kitchen door, just a few feet away from them, and Kara knew that they were out of places to run.
Rob Harper raced down the corridor, windblown snow stinging his face. He had to fight against the cold, which weighed him down. His arms and legs felt like lead, but he forced himself to run. He had left Yuuka and Mr. Yamato back in the dorm room shared by Wakana and Mai, protecting the girls and themselves. They were safer there, behind closed doors. The windows and the door were rattling in their frames but the storm in the corridor was much worse.
He had seen the smoke-serpent form of the demon Hannya, and its more monstrous, solid form as well. He had seen a ghost, at least once. His daughter had told him stories of worse things, of blood-drinking monsters and evil spirits and curses. But he had never imagined anything like this.
How is it possible? he thought. This wasn't just a blizzard gusting in through broken windows, but a storm raging inside the dormitory. The wind barreled through the halls with its own momentum, churning the air, leaving ice and snow everywhere.
He slipped, barely catching himself before his feet could shoot out from under him. Students cowered in the hall. Others poked their heads out of their rooms. Through one open door he saw that the windows had shattered and a bloody girl sat sheltered by her desk, pulling shards of glass from cuts in her arms.
As he reached the stairs at the center of the building he shielded his eyes from the storm and looked around. Kara and her friends had been going to visit Ren. His room was up ahead, in the boys' wing. But even from here Rob could see the shattered door that had blown off of its frame. It jutted, half-buried, from a snow-drift in the hall.
"Harper-sensei!" a boy shouted to be heard over the wind. "In here!"
Rob looked up to see a familiar face, one of his students, leaning out of an open door. The boy was gesturing for him to enter the room to get out of the storm in the hall. But Rob barely registered the kid, focused on the ruin of the door ahead. He slowed to a walk, struggling against the gusting wind.
"Kara!" he shouted.
"She's not there!" the boy called over the wind.
Rob spun to look at him. "You saw her?"
The boy pushed his too-long hair away from his eyes and pointed back at the stairwell. "They went down!"
One glance at the steps told him the descent would be treacherous. The arched, cathedral window had shattered and the wind funneled in from outside, battering the walls, driving sleet and snow in. He gritted his teeth against the cold as he tore off his jacket. The cold cut right through his clothes, biting deep, but he forced himself onward. At the top of the stairs he threw his jacket over the railing, using it to keep his flesh from touching the metal as he started down.
The soles of his shoes skidded on the steps but he managed to steady himself on the railing. Broken glass crunched underfoot as he rounded the corner of the landing and descended to the first floor.
"Kara!" he called, and he listened for a reply.
No one was in the foyer and for a moment hope withered in his heart. Then he glanced down the next flight of stairs toward the basement and saw a dark figure there, huddled in the corner of the stairwell. The storm had dusted over any tracks they might have left behind, but maybe this kid could tell him something. Rob rushed down to the landing between the first floor and basement.
"Have you seen —" he began, but then he snapped his mouth shut.
Ice crusted the dead boy's face. The corpse's eyes were open and staring in terror. Something had gone down the steps past him and frozen him to the spot. It could only be Yuki-Onna. The moment the impossible storm had begun, he had known that the Woman in White had come down from Takigami Mountain, but now he knew that the demon was hunting.
Professor Harper shouted his daughter's name again as he rushed down the last few steps. His skin burned with the cold and his bones felt brittle, as if they might snap at any moment.
The cafeteria doors hung open, one torn from its hinges but pinned to the wall by the storm. Snow coated the floor and walls, and drifted in corners. A shape that might have been a body lay under the layer of white and he tore his gaze away, refusing to believe it could be his daughter. A dead girl stood frozen solid less than ten feet away. A boy, alive and terrified, had curled up beneath a cafeteria table. Rob could hear him whimpering.
On the far side of the room, the Winter Witch stood in front of the thick, wooden door that led into the kitchen. The door was coated in ice and had cracked down the middle, and Rob could hear girls screaming on the other side. Yuki-Onna gestured with her hand and a gust of wind swept through the cafeteria and slammed against the door, shoving it open further, widening the crack. The girls were on the other side, trying to keep it closed.
Rob stared at Yuki-Onna. He had never seen anything so beautiful. Her kimono and her hair were both of the purest white. The curve of her neck and the line of her jaw, even at this angle, were incredibly sensual. She moved with the grandeur of angels, an otherworldly thing, and looking at her stole his breath away.
Then he heard his daughter scream again, and he wanted to kill the witch. Only then did the emptiness of his hands occur to him. How could he fight her? He had no weapon to attack her. But he could not allow her to kill Kara.
A metal chair had been blown against the wall and upended. Half-covered in snow, its legs thrust upward. Rob picked it up, brushed it off, and rushed at Yuki-Onna, raising the chair over his head. The snow crunched underfoot as he cocked it back and began to swing.
Yuki-Onna turned and stared at him. With a flick of her wrist the wind gusted and the chair was torn from his grasp, clattering onto a table a dozen feet away. Her eyes were totally black. If there had ever been color there, it had been entirely eclipsed. Those gleaming, oil-black eyes stared at him and then the beautiful creature smiled at him, showing a mouthful of tiny, jagged shark's teeth.
"Are you one of the cursed?" the Winter Witch asked, her voice the mournful howl of the storm.
The wind shoved him from behind, lifted him off of his feet, twisted and swirled him over to fall in a heap on his knees before her. Yuki-Onna bent, studying him with those soulless, eclipsed eyes.
"You feel like one of them," the witch said, frowning. "But you're not, are you?"
"Leave them alone!" Rob shouted.
Yuki-Onna smiled that dreadful smile again. "Oh, I think not," she said. And she lifted Rob off of the floor as if he were a child's plaything, pulled him close, and opened her jaws. Those shark teeth darted toward his throat . . .
"Dad!" Kara shouted.
The door had split in two. They had been trying to hold it back, knowing that it would be only seconds before the storm drove the splintered halves aside and Yuki-Onna swept in. Now Kara saw the demon — vampire, witch, whatever the hell the ice queen truly was — and she acted.
Thrusting her fingers into the crack in the door, she pulled inward.
"What are you doing?" Sakura shouted.
"Her father! It's . . ." Miho started, but she could not find the words.
Ren helped Kara, pu
shing his fingers into the gap and hauling the door open. Sakura and Miho got out of the way, now that they saw the horror unfolding just outside the door. Kara's hands were numb, with no feeling in her fingers. She could barely move them and only knew they were doing what she wanted because she could see them. Her nose was clogged with ice. Tears had frozen on her cheeks.
Yuki-Onna sank her teeth into her father's throat and Kara screamed.
Blood squirted, but only a few drops. The Winter Witch's tongue darted out and licked it up and then she began to suck. Several crimson spots appeared on that pure white kimono, and then faded into the cloth as though absorbed from within.
Kara lunged at the demon. Yuki-Onna did move. Kara passed right through the witch's body as if it were part of the storm itself, mist and snow puffing out and then reforming. Kara hit the floor, her mind still working, still raging to rescue her father, but her body would not work. She began to tremble and then to shake.
Is this a seizure? she had time to wonder, and then her head began to slam against the floor. Only the snow that had piled up around them saved her from caving her own skull in.
As it subsided, she saw Yuki-Onna drop her father's still body to the snowy floor. Trickles of blood ran from the dozen small punctures on his throat. Breathe, she thought, staring at his chest. Breathe, Daddy!
She saw his chest rise and fall and would have screamed in relief and gratitude, except that Yuki-Onna was there now, bending over her, the black pits that were the witch's eyes staring down at her, blind and unseeing.
"What are you?" the Woman in White said, her voice like the crack of brittle ice about to give way underfoot.
Kubo had said the wards would blind the demon, but Yuki-Onna saw her. The witch didn't know what to make of Kara, but she saw her. Or did she?
Yuki-Onna frowned. The hideousness hidden inside of her beauty subsided, the teeth hidden behind demure, if bloody, lips. The Woman in White glanced around.
"Where are you?" she asked.
Hope flickered in Kara's heart.
A Winter of Ghosts (The Waking Series) Page 14