Or maybe this was some kind of glamour. Like a backdrop to remind them of home.
Because supposedly, traveling into and out of Kansas City was off limits right now.
Unless…you were a stoner bear or a ninja turtle god.
We climbed the steps and resumed our trek onto a path through a wooded forest that obscured the house behind us. I could still hear—and feel—the chanting monks but I could no longer see them. I suppressed a shudder, hoping this wasn’t the equivalent of taking the family dog out back behind the shed for a final goodbye.
Yín rounded a corner and glided to a stop. I followed suit and found myself staring up at a large statue sitting within a tall, three-walled, clay tile roofed structure. The three walls protected the statue from the elements while granting the ability for his disciples to gaze upon the weathered-stone statue—a man with a long wispy beard and formal robes seated on a throne of sorts. He was surrounded by flickering candles, but the walls prevented much of the wind from snuffing them out.
The stone figure gripped an elegant, slightly curved sword in one fist, looking as if he would never let it go, and he had one boot rested on the back of a large tortoise before his throne. A huge serpent was coiled around his other leg, facing forwards as if protecting its master.
“Xuanwu,” our guard said respectfully, bowing lower towards the statue than I’d seen him bow at any point so far tonight. “Or the Black Warrior, as he is often called. I will await you in the garden below when you are finished paying your respects.”
Then he promptly walked backwards a few steps, bowed once more towards the statue, and finally spun on his heels to resume his walk back towards the house.
I frowned at Yín’s back, not wanting to be disrespectful, but also not knowing exactly what he intended. Pay our respects? Maybe he thought we had come here to pray. After all, it wasn’t like we had actually told him why we had come here. Maybe there was something to be said for actually speaking. Then again, he’d told us this Xuanwu had been expecting us. Had he meant that in some spiritual manner?
Cain grunted. “So…” he said, spinning in a slow circle, checking our surroundings. Boulders dotted the small enclosed clearing, large enough to create a wall of sorts, and looking as ancient and weathered as the statue.
Claire leaned forward, sniffing the statue warily.
“Do you know anything about…Xuanwu?” Cain asked me, trying to replicate Yin’s pronunciation. “Ever heard of this man with many names? Xuanwu, Black Warrior, Black Tortoise…” he recited, trailing off.
I shook my head.
Cain was still scanning our surroundings, but he noticed my gesture and grunted. “I dated a Chinese girl once. That door reminded me of some of her constellation drawings.”
“Like the Chinese zodiac?” Claire asked, frowning thoughtfully.
He shrugged, turning to me with a frown. “You hit it on the head when you deciphered the front door. Pretty much summed up what little I know, and you’re sure you’ve never heard of him? Could have fooled me.”
“I was just guessing on the door,” I lied.
Cain snorted indelicately. “Right. Well, those four creatures are obviously well respected and worshipped, representing the elements, seasons, and probably a bunch of other stuff.” He pointed at the sword. “I don’t recognize any of those names, but I once heard a story about a warrior god with a magic sword that he couldn’t let go of. That’s all I’ve got.” He flung up a hand after a second. “Oh, and in case you missed it, ninjas work for him. I’m very observant,” he said dryly.
That didn’t make me feel better. Especially the magic sword comment. I pointed at the statue of the very human king. “Except he isn’t a tortoise or a snake. He’s got the creatures serving him.“
Cain shrugged. “No idea. Starlight must have been really high if he wanted us to talk to a statue. Will the real fat Xuanwu please stand up?” he asked, cupping his hands around his mouth belligerently.
Claire threw a rock at Cain, hitting him in the shoulder. “Unless you want pissy ninjas decorating you with shurikens for disrespecting their sacred statue, shut your mouth,” she snapped. Cain rolled his eyes, folding his arms pointedly. Claire, satisfied, turned back to the statue thoughtfully. “Do you think he can hear us?” she asked, leaning even closer to the statue. “Maybe he’ll come to life and grant us the power to break into churches,” she said in a hopeful tone. She cleared her throat politely. “Good evening, Mr. Xuanwu,” she said, doing her best not to butcher his name. “Your friend Starlight thought we should come to pay our respects and make your acquaintance. My name is Claire Stone.”
She glanced back at Cain pointedly, gesturing aggressively at the ground beside her. Cain approached awkwardly, bowing his head to the statue. “My name is Cain. I’m here to babysit these two.” Claire elbowed him gently in the ribs. “I really liked your door,” he added, looking like he had no idea what else Claire wanted him to say and that he thought this was all a giant waste of time. “And your ninjas. They had really cool shoes.” Claire let out an exasperated breath and turned to me, motioning me to introduce myself to the statue.
Something about this just didn’t feel right, but I wasn’t sure what else to do so I smiled at the statue, dipped my head, and began to speak. “My name is Call—”
“I know very well who you are, White Rose. Even if you do not,” a low, grumbling voice said from directly behind us off in the thick trees. I spun in both surprise and fear, the baritone of the voice low enough for me to immediately assume death was breathing across my neck. It made Nate Temple’s friend, the Minotaur, sound like he had just hit puberty and the heifer he fancied had just asked him to the annual school dance in the pasture. Asterion had one of the lowest voices I had ever heard up until this point.
I squinted in the direction of the voice, not seeing anyone, and I began to grow very uneasy. Why was he hiding if he was a friend?
A gleaming black sword sheathe slammed into the rocky ground beside one of the massive boulders, and I jumped in alarm, following the sword upward to see a dark stone reptilian claw gripping the hilt—the flesh resembling scales rather than human skin like the statue we had just been stupidly introducing ourselves to. I also realized that the largest boulder before us, covered in lichen and tattooed by time, was not actually a boulder. It rose up from the ground, shaking free of the earth and snapping roots and vines that had grown over it during the passage of what had apparently been many, many years.
And we had woken him up.
Chapter 16
I saw wide, tree-trunk thick stone legs supporting it. Not human legs, but reptilian, complete with long, razor-sharp claws that reminded me of a velociraptor—times five. Each claw was the size of a handheld sickle a farmer might use in the field to cut wheat or weeds.
“Damned thorns,” the baritone voice grumbled at a particular thick set of brambles enshrouding one of his feet. “Without sunlight, they just fester and multiply.” He lifted the foot with an explosion of snapping, cracking roots tearing free of the earth, seemingly without much effort on his part, just annoyance.
The rest of the creature was hidden by shadows and low hanging branches so I couldn’t quite make out the source of the grumpy voice, but another claw slowly reached out from the trees—well above my head—and gently shifted a branch to the side as it stepped fully into the light cast by both the moon and candles.
A hulking warrior of a tortoise stood before us, his shell like jagged, obsidian armor that crested up behind his head to resemble a hood—the surface decorated with hundreds of scratches, dents, and other signs of past battles and close calls. He looked more like a living boulder than a tortoise—like a prehistoric statue come to life. The tortoise extended his head on an impossibly long neck, leaning down to sniff us, giving us a close look at his wickedly pointed beak of a mouth, easily long and sharp enough to rip us in half with a single bite. His eyes sunk deep within his hard face, and they were inky chips of smoldering g
lass as dark as a starless night sky. His face was covered in scratches and gouges, and he even sported a pair of thick rings pierced in his ear holes.
Only a hammer drill with a diamond bit and powered by an exploding star could have pierced those suckers.
As he moved, flakes of stone continued to fall free, dislodged from grinding against itself so that he was a walking cloud of dust and gravel—causing him to snort frequently, launching tiny stone shrapnel like shotgun blasts wherever his nostrils were directed. I realized he wore an actual fabric cloak or robe, but it was so brittle and frozen with time that pieces simply snapped off at his languid motions. He stared at me politely, lowering his head and blinking very slowly. He used the sword sheathe like a cane to support his massive bulk, even though it was apparent that the sword was anything but a simple cane. It thrummed with a low, pulsing energy that made my toes tickle in my boots. Not in an alarming sensation like they would have if facing a demon, but just the raw power of either the tortoise or the sword making the very ground tingle.
The sheathe seemed made of hoarfrost—ancient crystals stained the same color as the rock—as if ice had continually repeated to grow over older ice, again, and again, and again. Hundreds, if not thousands, of times.
The tortoise slowly turned to Cain, dislodging more gravel at the motion, and blinked slowly. “Well met, warrior. Your explanation was both correct, and glaringly incomplete.”
Cain was staring back at him suspiciously, his fingers gripping the hilt of his dagger. “I’ve always been more of a hands-on learner,” he said in a low, warning tone. “Friend or foe?”
“I have been both over my many, many years,” the tortoise said calmly, his basso voice making my teeth rattle.
Cain drew his dagger outright this time, stepping protectively between the two of us. I opened my mouth to protest but the tortoise simply swiveled his head and long neck at a glacial speed to regard me over Cain’s shoulder, and I knew the look in his eyes was a silent command for me to shut my mouth.
He slowly shifted his attention back to Cain, looking both disinterested and polite as his neck shortened by retreating back into his shell.
You know those ridiculously stereotypical movies where a scrawny Chinese guy is picked on by a gang of loud-mouth, arrogant bullies? And how the Chinese kid—no matter how many cruel taunts, finger jabs to the shoulder, or other disrespectful acts the bullies hurl at him—simply smiles back, dips his head politely, and apologizes for offending them?
And how the bullies just keep on pressing him for a reaction…
Until the Chinese kid becomes a blur and suddenly all four or five of the bullies are lying on the ground, whimpering as they clutch their wounded limbs. And how the Chinese kid smiles and helps them back to their feet as if he was some kind of Good Samaritan who just wanted to help the poor boys?
Yeah. This felt like that. Cain apparently hadn’t seen the same movies as I had.
The tortoise blinked lazily, staring right at Cain from only inches away. “Have at it, man-child,” he said in a patient, almost bored, grandfatherly rumble.
Cain didn’t even hesitate, lunging straight for the tortoise’s face with his fist in a powerful blow. I heard a very faint clicking sound and thought I saw the tortoise shift slightly before Cain’s fist struck his cheek. The impact created a shallow divot in the tortoise’s face—looking like a crater from a small asteroid hitting earth. The tortoise dipped his head patiently. “Again, man-child,” he rebuked.
Cain narrowed his eyes angrily—perhaps at the repeated nickname or the fact that his blow hadn’t seemed to cause the tortoise any noticeable discomfort, despite the visible crater. Something else danced in the far depths of Cain’s eyes, too—shock? Momentary hesitation?
Cain feigned a jab, and my ears caught that faint clicking sound before Cain pounded the tortoise’s beak with a right cross even harder than the first strike, creating another, wider crater. Chips of stone and ice crumbled free this time, and I noticed the tortoise’s robe had even shifted at the force of the blow.
The tortoise smiled—I think—at me obliquely. “Watch closer, White Rose. See, don’t look.” Then he turned back to his aggressor, Cain. “Best three out of five, man-child?”
Cain was staring at the tortoise in open disbelief. I’ll admit, the tortoise’s ability to withstand pain was astonishing, but I was missing something much more important here. What exactly did he want me to watch for? See, don’t look, he had said.
Cain gritted his teeth and I stared intently, following the tortoise’s suggestion. I heard another tiny click before Cain came in with two solid punches followed by a swipe of his dagger. The punches landed true, but the dagger kissed only air—the tortoise having moved a hair’s width away from contact. Cain stepped back, panting loudly and looking furious. Even as I watched, the four impact craters on the tortoise’s face had begun to ice back over, repairing themselves. The tortoise looked like he had just woken up from a long nap or was in the process of tolerating a toddler’s temper tantrum. He blinked lazily, as if trying to see how slow he could do it. To me, it simply looked like he was constantly on the verge of falling asleep, his eyelids slowly drifting closed before he caught himself.
“There is always next time, man-child,” the tortoise said gently, the corners of his beaked mouth crinkling with cracked ice at the motion. We stood in silence, frowning. Why did he look and sound victorious when we’d all just seen him get royally pummeled by the world’s first murderer? And what had caused those clicking sounds? I shot Cain a curious glance, only to see him muttering darkly under his breath as he stared down at his own chest.
I gasped as I saw three neat slashes tearing entirely through the fabric of his shirt, revealing thin red lines on the skin beneath, as if Cain had been slapped with a willow branch.
Cain slowly lifted his head to stare at the tortoise in bewilderment. Claire stood entirely motionless, her mouth hanging open wide enough that I could have stuck an apple inside.
The tortoise chuckled good naturedly. “I’m faster than I appear,” he explained, leaning back as if to stretch out his spine. I heard several loud cracks, sounding like calving icebergs as he moved. Then he regarded me pensively. “Go ahead, White Rose. You won’t be satisfied until you make your own attempt, and I would rather you try sooner than later,” he said with infinite patience.
I didn’t waste time with words as I reared back and hit him in the chest with a blast of air strong enough to send anyone else flying a dozen yards. The moment before contact, I felt a cool breeze across my chest, followed by a relieved, almost relaxed sensation as if my motion had loosed up something in my muscles like a good stretch.
I hadn’t used my magic in a while, and it felt good to let off some steam.
My blast of power landed true.
And the tortoise simply exploded like shattered glass. Both Claire and Cain let out a startled gasp. The shards of ice and stone exploded around us in a thick cloud and we turned our backs, forming a huddle to shield ourselves from being eviscerated by shell shrapnel.
“Yippee Ki-Yay, Splinterfucker,” Cain chuckled gleefully as bits of ice and shell continued to rain down around us.
I punched him in the arm without looking at him, glancing left and right warily. No freaking way I’d killed him that easily…
Chapter 17
The sound of falling ice and gravel soon faded and was then replaced by silence in our clearing, and I realized I could still hear the soothing chanting from the house—as if they hadn’t heard the…bombshell.
Too soon.
Maybe the sound simply hadn’t concerned them, so deep into their meditations. That was good. No inbound silence of ninjas. Then again, if they were coming to kill us, we probably wouldn’t have heard them—
I heard a dry, wheezing chuckle from behind me and immediately twirled, my hands up defensively, fearing a silence of ninjas ready to descend upon us. My chest felt less constricted and cold at my movement, and I won
dered if one of my jacket buckles had come loose in the explosion. I also hoped my coat was strong enough to deflect a swarm of matte-black blades.
Instead of ninjas or blades, I found the tortoise seated on the ground behind us, his back to the statue as he regarded us with a tranquil look on his face. He sat cross-legged with his sword rested across his lap. One hand still gripped the hilt, but the other was palm up supporting the sheathed blade between his claws.
“Damn it,” Cain breathed unhappily.
The tortoise was alive, and none the worse for wear. I let out a breath of relief. Seeing him seated before us, I got a pretty clear look at him in full context. He embodied grace, wisdom, and patience…yet I thought I sensed an undercurrent of lethality in his posture. As if his natural calm state was always one heartbeat away from killing everyone around him. Not to imply that he looked like a serial killer lying in wait—but that he looked ready to unleash carnage at any moment.
I narrowed my eyes, wondering what the hell was going on, and how he intended to retaliate against my attack. Xuanwu slowly extended his neck—at least four or five feet—seeming to strain at the apex before languidly twisting his head. Then, with a quick jerk of his head, he cracked his neck as loud as a string of firecrackers, sending shards of frozen gravel off like shotgun pellets, peppering and damaging the statue. Cain cursed, covering his face as the tortoise cracked the other side of his neck and then let out a long, relieved sigh. “Ah. Much better. I should have stretched before sword fighting.”
His neck looked long enough to almost seem serpentine as it slowly slithered back within his shell, and I found myself wondering about the serpent aspect of his being.
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