Year of the Rat, page 11
part #4 of Changeling Sisters Series
We killed many amongst the first wave. Sun Bin demobilized them with her kicks, and I finished the job with tooth and claw. The wraiths died like their fellow Children of Death, the vampyres. Beheading was best, or there was the slow, tortuous way, like setting them on fire. However, instead of a stake through the heart, these zombies died from a stab to the head. And that was no easy feat unless you had a gun, given that their craniums were impossibly thick.
In the end, the simplest way to kill them was what I had seen the vampyre lieutenant do to that woman in the final stages of Walking Death: slitting their throats. What was left of their souls escaped with a sigh into the nether matter of Eve, and the corpse shambled off to eventually collapse.
But the next wave wasn’t a pile of broken bones. These ones were newly made by Patan, Lord of Walking Death, and they were big and fast. Their eyes were puckered scarred flesh, and fresh lacerations carpeted their bodies. Their pale chests gleamed from where they had burst from their clothes after undergoing the unnatural growth spurt. The wraiths trampled their legless brethren in their eagerness to eat us.
The Winter Dragon threw up her hands. A chill deepened in my spine. Sun’s cold front was effective in slowing the incoming horde. Frost collected along their angry scars, and they swiped at us sluggishly. I darted amongst them in flashes of black smoke, my robotic claws slicing their throats and spilling souls.
But there were too many to get to in time, and Sun Bin grunted a plea as a group enclosed her.
“Citlalli,” she gasped, “something—wrong. Can’t hold—freeze spell—”
I flung myself into the circle, knocking down the first two like bowling pins. Sun Bin’s fingers sharpened into icicle claws, and she stabbed her attackers in the throats as quickly as if she were brandishing throwing stars. Landing like a cat, Sun Bin assessed the circle closing in before lashing out in a series of roundhouse kicks, sending her foes flying.
Cold hands scraped my back, trying to bury me. I twisted and thrashed, but their shadows loomed, and I felt one’s rancid breath in my ear. Panicking, I dug gouges in the earth as their teeth descended.
Then I was free. Whipping about, I saw that the zombies had been frozen in mid-lunge. What looked like that tear-stained girl’s reflection shimmered in the ice between them.
No. I lost track of her in a flash of teeth snapping my way. I bared my own. Only Sun has winter powers like that.
We saw a gap in the fray at the same time. Together, Sun and I bolted back down the street.
Volts sizzled up a nearby billboard. Ankor was calling us. We dashed for the alley, and the zombies chased us. I heard heavy breathing to my right and glanced at Sun. This was wrong. Yong Sun Bin never tired. My gaze swept down to her half-frozen hand. She seemed to be having difficulty retracting her claws.
The billboard crackled with more electricity, but the alley dead-ended. Spinning, I made out numerous shadows advancing, their faces hidden in the dark.
Suddenly, I heard Una’s war cry. Ankor and Taeyang pushed apartment rubble over to block the zombies in with us, their muscles bulging. Dust flooded my senses, and Sun Bin scraped up what ice she could to form a protective snow globe over us. Her arms trembled visibly at the effort.
Then the alley lit up on all sides with poisonous crimson characters. Names. There were lists and lists of names, all written in scarlet ink. Una stood on the fire escape above, her hardened face illuminated by the flashing billboard.
The zombies began clawing the walls to escape, but the Doorkeeper had signed their names to death. A moment later, they collectively collapsed, their empty eyes gazing heavenward.
I escaped from the alley as soon as I could. Shifting, I hobbled to the clothesline and put on as many layers as I could to suppress the shudders. Just the memory of the death curse’s heat set every part of my mind on fire. Sun Bin put a hand on my shoulder to steady me. She stood proud and unyielding once more. The only sign that her powers had malfunctioned could be found in her cuticles, which remained caked blue with frost.
“So. This was just a test of using temperature to kill the undead?” she asked Una sarcastically as the others joined us.
The petite Doorkeeper shrugged, her hands tucked in her hoodie’s pockets. “I wanted to test two ways. You failed. Death curse worked.”
Thirty percent, I recalculated dismally, reading no remorse in Una’s sleep-deprived stare. We were past conversations and collaborative councils. Our stomachs and minds had shrunk to the point where we couldn’t think past tomorrow.
To my surprise, Sun Bin backed down. She glanced at her hands again and grimaced in pain.
“It was my idea,” Taeyang spoke up in Korean, looking for an instant as dispassionate as his vampyre self. “The kumiho showed us the way to lift corruption from good spirits. But what about using this method to kill the bad?”
“A Pandora’s Box,” I said softly, snakes still slithering in my stomach as I remembered Jeju Island and the Dark Spirits’ terrible magic. “Except you put something in it and made sure it would never come out.”
Taeyang put a hand on Una’s shoulder, his face glowing in admiration. “One day, Won-sunsaengnim makes funeral registry of Walking Death patients in red ink. When morning comes, they are all dead.”
Ankor shook his head in amazement. “In Korea, you must never write someone’s name in red ink. This means you wish death upon them. Ingenious.”
Una hesitated and then placed a hand on my trembling forearm. “Citlalli, I wanted to tell you, but I could not. To get these zombie names, I spirit walked. Every night I went amongst the wraiths in the tunnels and read the names on their IDs until I knew them all. But I felt Them watching.”
Our gazes locked. The Lords of Walking Death. How they liked to play their games from the shadows, an invisible presence that had reshaped Seoul. Of course they would be curious about a mortal soul powerful enough to spirit walk during the Red Night.
“All the time They watch me,” her lips rasped in my ear. “I can feel Them knocking on my mind, asking to come in. Some days I dare not speak aloud or They will find me again.”
I swallowed, remembering the painful bruising of Aleksandr’s compulsion when he had forced his way into my mind so quickly that I hadn’t known he was there. It wasn’t enough for these foul monsters to attack our bodies. Now they wanted our souls.
“Let’s get back to Yong Enterprises.” Ankor gestured toward the billboard announcing our presence to every leech in the city. “Earlier there was a strange fearling stalking Citlalli.”
“You saw her, too?” I shot a look around. “It’s weird. Her face wasn’t scratched off.”
“I don’t think that ghost was a fearling.” Sun Bin hunched her shoulders. “I didn’t get a good look at her, but when we were fighting, I felt someone else call on the powers of winter.” She hesitated and then blurted out the words I knew were killing her to say: “She was stronger than me.”
“You are starved and weak,” Una said quietly. “There is no shame, Sun Bin-a. Right now, we all feel this way.”
I looked around our circle of weary faces. A hundred zombies were dead thanks to Una’s trap, but we hadn’t even touched the true evil behind the spirit siege on Seoul. My gaze drifted to my bionic arm, which was impervious to the cold. It was a good start.
But I was nowhere near what I needed to become in order to win this war.
Chapter 18: Blame
~Sun Bin~
Citlalli greeted her packmates first thing upon returning to our sanctuary. They leaped around each other, hands touching and feeling in such a blur that I could practically see their tails wagging. As a reptile, I was properly disgusted. At the same time, I understood that since the Red Night fell, touch was all we had to make sure the other person was still there.
The tall, burly werewolf Namkyu suggested boiling snow to make a hot bath, and Citlalli was so excited that she jumped all over him. I shot a glance at my brother. As usual, he was pretending to be more interested in the dead light fixtures.
When I brushed past him, I couldn’t resist whispering: “If you stare long enough, they might turn back on.”
He followed me like a proper dongsaeng, trying to puff out his chest. “Yah, Yong Sun Bin, I am an energy dragon, you know.”
I folded myself against the wall, arms crossed as I watched the Doorkeeper and Blind Khyber debrief Ahn-juinnim—as well as that detestable American man, the Golden Mane. “How many times do I have to tell you, brother: you may address me as noona.”
As usual, my twin launched into a hissy fit whenever I brought up our respective ages. I listened with one ear about the “one minute head start I’d had into the world” while the other focused on Won Una and Mr. Defense Minister.
Una spoke so low that even my dragon ears had difficulty catching her words, but I saw her nod toward me. Ahn Yu Li followed her gaze, and her forehead wrinkled with consternation. Samson Carver held his face like a poker player, but the overly large feline was probably snickering inside.
I remembered the muscles twitching in my arms as I’d tried to hold a simple ice dome over Citlalli and myself. I remembered the way the snow crystals had felt slow to respond to my command during the wraith fight. Insolent, even. My connection with the air had dimmed in this zombie nightmare world.
“Jenjang!” I’d struggled to control anger all my life, but I couldn’t stop it from gushing out of me in rivers at the pitying look on Yu Li’s face. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought I should have been born a fire dragon like my father. If Citlalli Alvarez was so frightened of her demon fox spirit, then she should give it to me. I would know what to do with it. I stormed down the hall to my room. Ankor tailed me.
“You do not know what Won Una told them,” he tried, and I rolled my eyes.
“Save it. How can they think I’m turning into you, a broken dragon who can’t control his powers?”
Ankor pulled up short, his face blackening behind his glasses. I saw his hand stray reflexively toward his unwanted earring and knew I’d gone too far.
“You know it was a Yeouiju that did this to me,” he said coldly, as if addressing a stranger.
“Yes. Just like the kind that killed our sister. Why do we bother with those bloody pearls, anyway?” I knew I was hurting him every time I opened my mouth, but I wasn’t afraid to speak about Heesu’s murder. My younger sister was dead thanks to an archaic Celestial Dragon ritual, and I would not dance around that fact. Heesu deserved better.
It should have been you, Eobshin murmured, and the blood froze in my veins.
“Maybe no one is meant to have them,” Ankor said suddenly and so simply that everything made sense and felt like a waste all at the same time.
“I should have,” I spat. “Everyone expected me to win, Ankor. It shouldn’t be her in the ground. It should be me.”
The crystals fueling the sliding door didn’t work anymore, but I still managed to slam it shut in his face.
Sleep didn’t come easy, but when it did, I saw a Seoul that was still alive and thriving, the home I used to know. I chased it back to find the family and world that still made sense. It was all a dream, but it was the only refuge I had left.
Chapter 19: Frozen Tears
~Sun Bin~
Before
University Exam Day was around the corner and over the moon, as far as I was concerned. I toasted Geon-woo, my shaggy-haired sparring partner from the dojang, and Daheun, a pretty classmate from homeroom. Then we downed the soju shots. Daheun’s eyes were uncannily large, and it was well-known that her mother had paid for her first double eyelid surgery on her sixteenth birthday. I grimaced and raised a hand to the server for another round. My mother was dead, so I didn’t have to worry about that sort of surgery nonsense. Appa’s idea of a present was a pair of silver Kali sticks from the Philippines, which I looked forward to thoroughly kicking Geon-woo’s ass with later.
Daheun slammed down her shot glass and leaned into my shoulder, snorting with laughter. “Another! I can still remember nasty old Pak-sunsaengnim drilling the quadratic equation into my skull!”
“Speaking of slave drivers…” Geon-woo muttered in my ear. I leaned back against the bar to see Nyssa enter the hip smoky lounge, looking distinctly out of place with her intricate beaded bun and her old homespun dress. She clutched her shawl as she bobbed her head around like a snake trying to spot me.
Daheun folded her arms. “Your foreign girlfriend’s here.”
I ducked my head, although I knew the werenagi would pick up my scent quickly enough. Nyssa could find a mouse at the bottom of a tar pit.
“For the last time,” I hissed. “She’s our family’s governess. Although she takes that commitment to a whole new level.”
“Why do you still need one? None of you are running around in diapers anymore. Besides, she’s not much of a paid help if she doesn’t listen.” Daheun prodded her shot glass around the table bad-temperedly.
“Yong Sun Bin.” My nostrils flared in pleasure as I caught scent of Nyssa’s soft lotus perfume, which chased away any concern I had about Daheun’s cranky mood.
“Nyssa.” I lazed back against the bar with the grace of a drunken sailor. My lips quirked in a smirk. “I was hoping you would join us for a round. Did tutoring my brother become too boring for you?”
Nyssa put her hands on her hips, and I struggled to keep a straight face. This was dangerous. Her dark eyes flashed with beautiful anger, and I dropped my gaze lower, only to become entranced by the way the red cloth clung to the slender curve of her body. Heart suddenly pounding within my chest, I flushed and turned away.
“Yah, Yong Sun Bin, I am speaking to you,” she snapped. “Ankor is at home studying like he is supposed to for the day that will make or break your futures. Exam Day is no joke, Sun Bin. Keep up this disgusting drinking habit, and you’ll wind up serving the drinks instead of ordering them.”
Geon-woo and Daheun guffawed into their hands. I tried to protest, but Nyssa struck with lightning speed, rummaging through my purse until she found the fake ID. Glowering at the bartender, she tore it in half.
I calmly finished the rest of my drink. “One down. Guess you’ll have to go through my room to find the others. You’ll never guess where I’ve hidden them.” I waggled my eyebrows suggestively, and my friends snickered.
A vein twitched in her temple, and her dark eyes began to emanate a faint emerald glow that matched her dress. I turned my back and ordered another drink, enjoying the delicious heat rolling off her in angry waves. The prim and proper Nyssa losing it in a bar? That could be entertaining.
She didn’t take the bait. “Your father was right to choose Ankor as his successor after all. You may be brilliant, Sun Bin, but intelligence does not run a company. Hard work and sacrifice does.”
I cocked a hand in a half-wave without turning. “Yes, Umma!”
I knew the exact moment she was gone, the door swinging behind her with a parting whisper of lotus perfume. I leaned in to my cronies anyway. “Is she gone?”
Geon-woo raised an eyebrow and tilted back his beer. “I was hoping she would try to carry you out of here.”
“Another hideout busted.” I blew out a strand of hair and then slapped a fistful of won bills on the table. “Let’s get out of here.”
“We can go back to my place! My parents aren’t home.” Daheun’s hand brushed mine. Warmth pooled through our fingers, and I snatched my hand away as if burned. Daheun stared at me, hurt and confused as I grabbed Geon-woo’s arm.
“We want to be alone tonight, Daheun. But we’ll catch you tomorrow for study hall, m’kay?” I planted a kiss on the top of her head. “Come on, Geon-woo.”
“Yes, ma’am!” He quickly drained his beer and followed. I ignored Daheun sitting alone and twisting a napkin on the barstool. Heat still burned in my ears at the memory of another’s honey-brown eyes darkening in lovely anger.
You like men. My jaw locked, and I stared straight ahead as the cold night air hit our faces. Liking anyone else is wrong.
∞∞∞
Two years later, a cab dropped me off in front of my home in Gangnam. My black hair rippled over my Oxford rugby jacket, and my violin case was strapped over my left shoulder. Grabbing my suitcase, I rolled it up the walk and entered the gate passcode.
It didn’t bother me that no one had greeted me at the airport. Appa was in board meetings until late, and my twin brother Ankor still had a week of exams to go at the American school MIT before he’d be on holiday break.
Pausing, I gazed down the sloping hills to the bus stop. A familiar figure stood there with her favorite beaded green shawl draped over her shoulders to brace against the winter’s chill.
For as long as I could remember, Nyssa had been there, waiting for us to come home. However, for the first time, I recognized that there was something wrong with this picture. While the rest of us were changing—entering universities far away, attending investment meetings, and dreaming of our career goals—Nyssa remained the same. She was a couple years older than me. With all of us including Heesu on the verge of leaving the nest, her role was finished. Complete. She had escorted us, more or less intact, into adulthood. And yet, she was less a person and more of a force tied to Yong Mansion. She had never spoken about any future beyond these walls.
Or maybe it was because I had never asked.
The bus was just pulling away by the time I arrived. Through the throngs of laughing school children in uniform, I caught sight of Nyssa greeting my younger sister Heesu with a hug.
I began to jog before I caught myself. Falling back into a strut, I stopped just short of the corner and waited for them to notice me.
“Unni!” Heesu blurred into a flurry of green feathery wings before trapping me in a hug. I laughed before I could stop myself and then kissed her shiny black head. Her hair was now styled in a short pixie cut.
