Year of the Rat, page 47
part #4 of Changeling Sisters Series
My heart glowed. When I looked up, I was surprised to find tears of joy shining in my eye. “I do like laughing at you.”
“Alek would have done this only if you cared, too,” Khyber pressed.
I stared at him. He loomed before me in the junk-cluttered alley with the grace of a prince but the mystery of a mythological being. He was neither quite here nor there. A creature who flashed his full glory for an instant in dreaming, but upon waking, left me questioning what I had seen. I had come here believing that at last I would know if the oldest vampyre in Maya’s line was friend or foe.
I still didn’t know, but I did know it was a risk I wanted to take.
Gazing up at him, I nodded.
Khyber kissed me once more just as carefully, as if fearful that if he pushed too hard, then I would crumble away. “Run, Citlalli. I won’t let them catch you. Tell your pack what you found here. Do you have the evidence?”
“Mikhail does.” My heart hammered. “Come with me.”
“I will not be welcome. Citlalli, you know it is too important to risk delay. You are the only one they will believe.”
The Were experiments. My buoyant heart thudded back down into a pit of panic and fear. Our hidden world was shattered; the dream dispelled. I looked for Khyber only to see the black winged vampyre sliding back into the shadows, when only moments before, I had felt his hands on my body and his lips tasting my mouth. Our gazes met.
Then I tore out of my human body into Wolf, desperate to shed the grief of leaving him behind with the Frost King. I landed on top of the dumpster with one spring, and in the next bound, I cleared the wall.
Chapter 59: Traitor
~Raina~
I smelled bear fur and blood. A lot of blood. However, when I opened my eyes, I was back in the main hall. Behind me, a tunnel of distorted ink paintings burrowed into the palace’s belly. Ahead was our way out, the memory maze just within reach.
My hands were bandaged; it was a contribution from Ichiro’s shirt, judging from the tattered look of it.
“We did it, Raina,” he said. The werebear stood silhouetted against the beautiful door to freedom. He looked intact save for the limp in his left leg from where his foot had been pried free from the samurai armor. “We reprogrammed the wall for the next roll to initiate the shortcut. We rewrote the game. It’s over.”
The massive quantity of water frozen in the giant tundra called me. But I remembered my soul’s attempt to build a dream bridge. I remembered the blank nothingness that awaited us on every side of this red tomb.
“Donovan has our mortal bodies, Ichiro,” I said as softly as I could. “We won’t be able to leave Eve yet.”
The words did little to rock his resolution. The werebear crouched beside me, his ponytail waving in the breeze and his dark brown eyes luminous. “Raina,” he said, trying to be as equally soft, “there is a fair chance Donovan already destroyed our earthly bodies. That leech is a deceiver like all of his kind. Donovan’s talk about surprising those who think they have survived… There is a good chance we are already gone.”
I didn’t move, stricken because I wanted to deny it…and more horrified because I had no way to know.
I thought of Citlalli, Miguel, and my Yong half-siblings in Seoul. If I were dead, then I chose to believe Eiji. I chose to believe I had made a difference.
“Let’s go,” Ichiro encouraged. “We can go anywhere.”
Ryoko disagreed. I saw her wreathed in the Death Palace’s shadows, looking more like one of the ink paintings than a human girl. She pointed back into the heart of the fortress.
Ichiro’s mouth thinned. “Stay here and save the outcast if you want, ghost girl. It would make sense, wouldn’t it?”
I noticed the werebear’s hand slide toward his blade, and I rose automatically to stand between him and Ryoko. “Ichiro, what do you speak of?”
Ichiro’s eyes blazed, but he didn’t back down. “Nyssa saw your little friend spying outside of the dungeon when you spoke to that kappa about getting us help. She was still yuki onna.”
I glanced toward Nyssa, who had been standing in silent observance by the steps. “It is true.” She glanced once toward Ryoko as if ashamed. “I did not know she was a friend.”
“And we still don’t know.” Ichiro grasped the hilt of his sword. His face was a white mask of fury. “What we do know is our messenger, Eiji, is dead. Just like my brother. Just like my packmates. Just like how Rafael Dominguez used the yuki onna to kill them all after he convinced us that we were friends.”
The blade flashed up. Ryoko cringed, but Ichiro was oblivious. “What? You scared now? You tremble when we call out your bullshit? You tried to kill this serpent woman before—an entrusted friend of the Yongs themselves. Why? Because you knew she could betray your secret?”
He swung his sword. Ryoko didn’t move, even when it came an inch from her throat. She was no longer a snow woman. She could no longer disappear from the hate raging in the werebear’s eyes. Ichiro took a step closer, backing her up against the wall. “Admit it. Those marks on your face are from the Death Gods corrupting you. You are a Child of Death, and now you have been called to serve your rulers’ purpose. Trading Dominguez for another master. How very fitting for a yuki onna. All you have ever brought is suffering.”
Ryoko turned—to grab my leg. She huddled on the ground, and I froze in mid-decision. Did I put a hand on her shoulder in comfort or push her into the way of the oncoming blade? I could not deny what I saw. That hideous six-fingered monkey hand, the marks decorating her—Ryoko was clearly marked by the Death Gods. I didn’t know what those runes said.
And someone had brutally murdered Eiji.
Yet Ryoko only groveled at my side and pointed, pleadingly, toward Nyssa.
I didn’t know.
“Ichiro-san,” I began, but he shook his head furiously, hair falling to hide his face.
“Don’t, Raina.” His voice rumbled with the growl of a bear. “I’m not interested.”
I glanced from his murderous face to Ryoko’s pleading tears. Slowly, I knelt beside her in solidarity. “Please,” I whispered to Ichiro, extending one of my ruined hands, “remember who is the real source of this evil. Remember Takakazu. Remember the Death Gods and Donovan. They did this to you then. They are doing it now. Please. Keep your eyes on who is truly to blame.”
“Damnit, Yong,” Ichiro rasped, his blade jerking back an inch from Ryoko’s throat.
I didn’t stop. “Please,” I spoke again, my voice small. “Don’t be like him. You’re not Rafael, Ichiro.”
At that, his pain-brimmed gaze darted to mine. I captured it. Rising, I refused to let him go. I put a hand on his sword arm.
“You are not him,” I whispered. “Ichiro, you once asked how Rafael was banished from his werewolf family. It is because he betrayed them in the name of revenge. He deceived them all—my sister, his Alpha—to do what he alone mandated was right. He chose to become a lonely god of revenge. And that is why I can never care for him.”
Ichiro remained motionless. He didn’t look at me, but I could feel his muscles tense. Abruptly, he strode forward, but he didn’t swing his sword.
“You—will—stand trial for what you have done,” he told Ryoko. “Before a council of elders of my people. You will answer for my brother’s death and the death of my clan folk.”
Bowing, Ryoko backed away. She kept her head lowered, but I could see the relief relaxing her shoulders. I folded my arms, trying to keep from shaking at the close encounter.
“Arigatou, Ichiro-san.”
The werebear sheathed his blade but said nothing. Nyssa hadn’t moved once during the exchange, her heavy-lidded gaze impossible to decipher.
“I know I am asking a great deal for you to trust one another.” I paused. “There is, of course, another explanation for Eiji’s death.”
All three heads perked up. I chose my next words carefully, speaking to the tiled floor: “Takakazu. The late vampyre prince lives on as a memory feeding off my blood. He was there when Eiji appeared to me.”
“Truly?” Both Ichiro and Ryoko’s heads whipped up in genuine surprise. But it was Nyssa I watched. She alone did not blink. And it happened so quickly that again, I thought I had imagined it—a curl of her bottom lip. The smattering of displeasure in her eyes. That glimpse of a person I did not recognize.
Eiji had named his murderer. He had pointed in her direction. But only now, in these little moments between when the match was struck and the shadows returned, could I see her true face.
And I realized I had seen her before. In a time or place not my own.
“He hid as an orange cat,” I continued. “I think it likely he is the one who told Donovan of Eiji’s mission to bring help from the Yamaguchi clan. What do you think, Nyssa?” I added. “I didn’t see Ryoko when Eiji appeared to us.”
Nyssa considered me for some time, her nostrils flaring as if sniffing for lack of resolve. Finally she said, “It was dark and disorienting in the dungeon. I may have been mistaken.”
I closed my eyes at her admission. I knew what I had to do next.
“I asked you to come with me,” I said. “I didn’t ask any of you to die for me. I’m the one Donovan wants. We must have faith that he has not killed us yet. Ichiro, take Ryoko to find help. A search party can recover our mortal bodies and guide us to where it is safe to return to them. I will remain behind to recover Rafael.”
Ichiro took a step closer to me, his dark eyes scrutinizing behind the grime smearing his face. He tossed his head in Ryoko’s direction. “And if you’re wrong and she kills me?”
I met his gaze. “You get to say I-told-you-so in the Beyond—whatever that is?”
Ichiro jabbed a finger in my chest. “Whatever that is…you better believe I will find you in it.”
I watched them depart, the air growing colder with each departing step. I was left alone with Nyssa. A whisper of Ichiro’s voice echoed amongst the lonely halls: “They say the Celestial Dragon could not be killed by any enemy. None could get close. So the enemy must have worn the face of a friend.”
“What assignment do you have for me, Yong Rai Na?” Nyssa’s soft voice held just a hint of threat. I wondered I had never heard it before.
“None. You may leave, too. Or stay. It is up to you. Since you accused Ryoko of being a spy, I did not want you to go with them if you felt unsafe.” I stopped before a painting and dipped my finger into the shimmering ink. It swirled around my fingers, smooth as silk and eager to be spun into shape. I began to draw. The serpentine wings of a dragon took form.
“That is kind of you,” Nyssa said. “Do you really intend to stay here and rescue the wolf who betrayed your sister’s pack? Is his life worth that of a royal dragon’s?”
“If I do not stay and rescue him,” I said, “then I would not be royal.”
Nyssa smiled and glided over to stand by my side. “That is something Heesu would say. You have changed since failing the Trials.”
Behind us, my painting came to life: the upper story bedroom of a teenage girl. Trust and respect glowed in her eyes as she sat in front of a mirror. A friend, a lifelong family member, brushed her hair. An orb of incomprehensible power sat on the bed behind them.
Ink Heesu’s eyes widened once before her friend snapped her neck.
Raina, she had whispered to me that fateful day on the bus before departing this world. I remembered her spirit pushing me to see past the veil into what had befallen Seoul. To see the Red Night creatures as they really were. As Nyssa really was.
Watching that scene made me crumple.
A woman knelt beside me. I knew this person wasn’t Nyssa. She was familiar and yet a stranger, someone I had caught glimpses of but never fully known. Now she gripped my shoulder as if she wanted to be comforting but had forgotten how.
“T-then why would you kill her?” I gritted out, my eyes shining with tears.
I felt her fingers dig into my skin. I wondered if she would deny it or if she meant to end my life here, like she had Heesu’s. But when the woman looked at me, I was struck by the zealous passion burning in her emerald eyes.
“Because I was a prisoner ready to escape,” she said.
I gasped when she let me go, unaware that I’d been holding my breath. The stranger swirled around to pace, her hands tucked behind her back beneath her delicately plaited braid.
“So. I wondered if you had begun to suspect.” She gave me a smile that was bizarrely proud. “Annyeong haseyo, Rai Na. It is good to finally meet you. My name is Eobshin. Like you, I have no family name. But unlike you, it is because I am the first. I used to be the goddess of wealth to my people. But a long time ago, your father took me and made me goddess to only one person: himself.”
I remembered the midnight-black snake that had awaited us in Angkor Wat during the Third Trial. She had effortlessly caught the spirit guardian monkey who had stolen Sun Bin’s purse. The twins’ mother had spoken of a mysterious shadow dragon who had participated in the Trials of Wisdom—against Yong Mun Mu. My father had cheated to defeat her, but it appeared that hadn’t been enough to silence his fears that she would someday challenge him again. I knew I stood before her now.
“How did you know?” Eobshin’s voice remained melodiously pleasant, but I could see her fingers tighten with the strength of constricting coils behind her back.
“Sun Young’s vision in the underwater tomb,” I said. “I understand it now. She wasn’t warning me about Sun Bin. She was warning me about you, in the only way that she could. Through memories.”
That was where I’d seen Eobshin’s true face, the one consumed with rage and detestation too old for a teenager when Sun Bin had dared use her powers against her.
“Sun Young saw who I really was during her time travel to the future,” Eobshin agreed. “Your father used to fear me as his wife did. But over time, I became little more than a vanquished rival to him. A bank of riches beyond his wildest dreams. Enough for him and that other little boy, the Golden Mane, to reshape the Were world. With money to build everything, to do anything, what need had our former servants for gods?”
I staggered back. I remembered the bloodlust roiling in my father’s eyes when he had arrived to congratulate Heesu on her ascendance. I remembered the sick feeling of betrayal when he’d ordered Heesu to take my powers just as he had done to his siblings.
“So,” Eobshin said, “you have seen his true face, too.”
“I have.” I jabbed a finger at my ink painting, ignoring the pain jolting through my body. “But you haven’t answered my question. Why her? Why did Heesu have to pay for the sins of her father, whom she banished over his lust for power?”
Eobshin glanced at my drawing in annoyance. Before I could stop her, she placed her palm against Heesu’s face. Ugly darkness blotted out the room until it was raining ink.
“This goes far back beyond your tiny lifespan,” she hissed, her fingers thickening into claws. “Wealth used to mean something different. Once there were first nation peoples, content to live in wonder at creation and their place in renewing it. But now your mortal leaders—men like Yong Mun Mu and Samson Carver—all sell the same story of material possession equivocating success. Enough money will buy anything. And so it will, this thing called money which you mortals have built your world upon. They say keep making it and you will have happiness.”
Here she grabbed me, and I was too petrified to stop her. When she pulled away, my hands were burdened down with coins. It was enough money to pay off all of Mami’s business loans. It would secure my place at a university. It would tear down all of the world’s barriers to our family’s future. Ink tears flew from the paintings, spattering my cheeks. When I cleared my eyes, I held nothing but dust.
Eobshin raised her hands as she strode down the hall. Lavish tapestries adorned with jewels, statues made of gold, dollars mixed with won scattered with yen—all of it rose and fell in her wake. “You mortals say you want to create a perfect world without realizing you already destroyed it. Like you destroyed me. My gift is now to bring material happiness to only a few where once I brought plentiful harvest and family kinship to many. What kind of an existence is that? I am a goddess, and yet I am helpless before you. A slave to your ideas. Congesting, polluting, wasting without regard to others—all around you, the world has been stamped out to appease humanity’s greed. No wonder,” she breathed, her skin sucked in so tightly that I could see the bones in her cheeks, “your religion says salvation is an apocalypse. Your faith says you should all be wiped out. The Death Gods believe it. So do I.”
Her green eyes hardened into malachite as she circled me. I fought to keep the distance between us. The door to freedom suddenly seemed very far away.
“I don’t believe you,” I whispered. “Nyssa, you loved Sun. You comforted me during the Trials. You’re the person Heesu looked up to most in the world. You were…are…family.”
Eobshin’s laugh scattered every memory I’d ever had of her. “My dear child, there was never any Nyssa. That girl died the moment your father handpicked a poor orphan refugee to be my vessel. And as for being part of the prestigious Yong family… Open your eyes, child. I was never anything more than a servant.”
“So as one of our creators, your solution is for everyone to die. Send another flood and start all over again, like Donovan thinks. The right survivors will be chosen this time around. But right for whom?” The darkness bled through the halls like a smokescreen, cutting off all hope of help coming. I threw my shoulders back, trying to be brave, but I’d never felt more alone. “Killing everyone didn’t work last time, and it won’t work now. You’re right. There is no perfect world. It doesn’t exist. And yet you say you are a god with untold power. The power to help make things better. Why haven’t you?”
“You do not understand,” Eobshin said. “I want freedom. I do not want my existence to be a curse anymore. I will never be free whilst any of you live. Raina, dearest, the greatest mortal gift you were given was freewill. You make your own choices with the knowledge you alone have, be it right or wrong. But a god is a force, the sum of a whole, made up of the energies of many living things. One cannot achieve godhood without giving up freewill. It is letting things into you in order to grow until you are not the one in control. I, a god, am shaped by you. I am everything your people value. I am every wish, prayer, and belief. You shape my power. You tell it where to go. You show me what to become. And yet you ask, why kill Heesu?” The wealth goddess gave a ringing laugh, and every painting shattered into glass. I flinched as the pieces danced around me as sharp as blades, each shard reflecting my terrified face.
