Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3) (26 page)

Mami turned in the departure gate as the intercom called out the last flight leaving for Incheon. She saw me running after her. My pink converses were untied and my dolphin stuffed animal discarded so I could run faster. Then she disappeared down the boarding corridor without a word. The doors slid shut behind her.

Stop!
I silently screamed after her.
You can’t leave me! Your choices made me!

“Raina.”

The airport dissolved into rippling midnight-black wings that rustled like leaves. Slowly, I turned to see Citlalli standing behind me, her head half-tilted in a mocking smile. Her curly black hair fell across her face, yet I could still see her maimed eye drilling a bull’s eye in my forehead.

Then I saw the stake she held in her hands.

“Stand still so I can kill you, Raina.” Still wearing that taunting grin, Citlalli sauntered closer. Her left eye grew golden and luminous, the captivating stare of a wolf paralyzing its prey in place. Her hand raised the stake. “Die so I can take your place and become the new Spring Dragon. It’s what you want. It’s what everyone wants.”

Cowardly, I tried to retreat. However, the feathers buffeted me back upright, their tips as sharp as thorns. “Citlalli, please—”

“Goodbye, Raina,” my half-sister said softly. “Don’t worry. No one will ever remember you existed at all.”

The stake flashed above my head. I instinctively reached out to the rains to save me. To my surprise, I felt water all around me, undulating against the wall of barbed feathers with gentle strength. I pulled, and the water came rushing in. I just had time to see Citlalli’s face whiten in shock, and then she was ripped through the swirling vortex and down into the depths of the lake.

I prepared to dive after her, but then sudden awareness flooded me with clarity. This was all a test.

So I left my sister to sink and kicked upwards, seeking the surface.

***

Coughing and spluttering, I crawled up on the shores of Heaven Lake. The night’s cold knocked the breath from me again. Teeth chattering, I rubbed my arms and rose to find myself surrounded by ghostly red-eyed tigers.

Bo Ra pushed her way through the circle of spirit tigers to offer me a blanket. “Yong Rai Na. Tell me. Did you pass or fail?”

I glanced at the sea of spectral blue beasts, their nostrils sniffing for any sign of deceit. Standing tall and proud, I raised my chin. “Pass.”

Bo Ra paced back and forth before her tribe, her claws growing long and lethal—to attack or bless me, I did not yet know. “Explain.”

“I want to live.” It came out in a whisper. Taking solace from the water lapping around my ankles, I managed to stare defiantly at the hungry ghost tigers. “My entire life, my greatest desire was to be Citlalli because she makes her own choices and accepts the consequences. I always lived as a consequence of someone else’s choice. Of Mami’s choice.” My throat tightened as I heard the cold hiss of the departure gate slam shut again and again. “I have suffered for so long because I never believed I had the right to make choices. I thought I never had the right to be a Celestial Dragon. Well, now it’s not enough for me to live. I want to make the choice to.”

Bo Ra moved as soundlessly as the night. I glanced up to find her otherworldly amber eyes a hairsbreadth from my own.

“It was very touching how the four imugi siblings worked together to defeat the Jackdaw,” the weretigress said softly. “However, you cannot all share the yeouiju. It is my task to eliminate one of the unworthy before I send you to the Third Guardian, the Monkey in Cambodia. Do you understand this?”

My heartbeat pounded in my head. How much of my Trial had she seen? Had she witnessed how close I’d come to letting Citlalli kill me and take my place?

Bo Ra folded her arms. “Whoever wields the yeouiju first will be the undeclared ruler of the other three. This Celestial Dragon will have years to study its secrets before the others even know how it feels to have a fourth claw split their skin. Who do you think will claim the yeouiju first, little water imugi?”

The answer dislodged from my chest grudgingly, a defeat: “Sun Bin.”

Bo Ra nodded thoughtfully. “Sun Bin is strong and merciless. She is confident and released her desire to be accepted by her father as easily as if she were shedding scales. If Sun Bin claims the yeouiju first, then many dark winters will haunt the world. Her sister and brother are subservient to her. Heesu resents Sun Bin’s teasing but longs for her respect, and Ankor was born in Sun Bin’s shadow. He will always be the second twin, unable to defeat her in combat. However, you see her not as family, but as the enemy. So, Yong Rai Na.” The chieftain’s head turned toward me with the lazy grace of a cat. “Would you challenge Sun Bin?”

Watery resolve solidified into a wall inside my chest. “I would, Wise Guardian.”

The great cat’s smile grew. “Then for you to pass, one must fall.”

I thought of Ankor’s solitary thoughtfulness as he tended the campfire, and my face grew pale. “I don’t understand—”

“Prove to me that you want to be the imugi who will catch the yeouiju first. Tell us the way to sabotage Ankor,” Bo Ra commanded as her ghost tigers pressed eagerly around her. “What is a Trial he cannot pass? What desire makes him suffer?”

I backpedaled. “I don’t know! You’re the Second Guardian! Surely you already planned a Trial for him.”

“Ah.” Bo Ra folded her arms and smirked. “What makes you think I didn’t ask Heesu this very same question? And Sun Bin before her?”

Bile rose in my throat. It was from the lake water, I told myself. There was no way the cheerful, carefree Heesu would betray one of her kin. That fateful day Mami had left us for South Korea and a lit Miguel had abandoned me at the airport was a painful memory I hadn’t even shared with Citlalli, and I doubted our older sisters had told her what was really happening.

“I am going to eliminate one of you.” Bo Ra’s eyes flicked idly up to mine, but her face was as hard as tree bark. “It is you or him. You wanted to have a choice. So make one.”

Thus I told Bo Ra of how Ankor had to ride on my back the entire length of the Great Wall of China, unable to fly on his own. I told her that unlike Sun Bin, Ankor already saw through his father’s games. He felt the responsibility of being a Celestial Dragon the most keenly of all the Yong children. He was bitter about not interfering in the Were War. What Ankor wanted, more than anything in the world, was to be the leader the Were Nation needed.

But that leader would never be a broken boy who couldn’t shift.

Bo Ra rewarded me with the claw mark of her favor, and then she and the other ghost tigers retreated into the night as noiselessly as they had come. I was left to hike back down with the weight of my betrayal for company. And that night in my tent, I unwrapped the bandages Nyssa had tied and pressed a knife deep into my claw mark, determined to make it scar.

Chapter 31: An Unlikely Alliance

~Citlalli~

It was a very mismatched group who assembled in the lobby of Yong Enterprises. My entire pack was present, along with Mami and Miguel. The poor secretary had her hands full with my brother, who had the tendency to drift toward the restricted areas. Kaelan and Bae looked very unnerved by the fancy pig robot offering them refreshments, but Iseul and Moon laughed and patted it on the head.

Mun Mu arrived, flanked by a retainer of stern-faced bodyguards. I sniffed the air. They were some type of shapeshifting lizard men. The Dragon King greeted Mami and me with a kiss on the cheek, and then he and Yu Li exchanged bows.

“Annyeong hashimnikka,” Yu Li said formally. “I am honored to meet the King of Dragons and the Guardian of the East Sea.”

“As I am honored to meet the Alpha of the Seoul werewolves,” Mun Mu replied, his dark eyes flicking to me momentarily. “Citlalli always speaks highly of you as pack leader and older sister.”

Yu Li raised an eyebrow at me, and I shrugged. I might have let a few words drop like “adequate” and “shows potential,” but I didn’t want them to go to her head.

“You have welcomed us into your home at a time when we have none,” she continued. “The vampyres’ treachery destroyed our headquarters, and we are in need of a new den. For your assistance in this, great Elder Life Spirit, we give thanks. Kamsahamnida.”

Mun Mu’s smile grew. “We are pleased to assist the Seoul werewolves and eradicate the vampyre scourge from South Korea once and for all. I would only be too happy to show you to your new den, here in the belly of Yong Enterprises. You will not be disappointed. Ileana, you remember the way to Vault 7, do you not?”

My mother gave him a rare smile and stepped forward. “Every detail of its design is imprinted like a map on my heart.”

Miguel made a gagging noise and slunk over to Yu Li’s side before Mami could introduce him. We followed Mami and Mun Mu up the stairs to the neon-lit entrance of the hip bar, and Miguel snuck an arm around Yu Li’s waist.

“That was incredibly hot, babe,” he whispered, planting a kiss on her ear. Then Miguel danced away before she could smack him.

“Remind me not to be seen in public with him ever,” Yu Li muttered to me, and I gave a snort of laughter.

Inside the revolving restaurant, Mun Mu turned off the neon light tubes and then hung up the “Closed” sign. He gestured for us to have a seat at the tables. Miguel and I both rushed for a seat on the edge of Vault 7’s round lip, overlooking the plunge down to the gray Han River below. Still grinning, Mun Mu pulled out a chair for Mami and then sat across from her.

“Hold on,” was the only warning he gave, and then he pressed his keycard underneath the tabletop.

All of our seats buzzed, and we gripped the tables to hold on. Then one by one, each table’s platform began to descend through the floor like tiny elevators. I stared up at the rapidly disappearing hole above my head as the platforms sank to a secret sub-level. Metal gratings snapped shut to seal it. The walls began to hum around us, and I realized that strange characters were painted on the concrete, like the ones I had seen Fred draw in the shipping crate. They began to glow, and I shivered as their red laser lights passed over my body. I felt a painful shock of static electricity, but nothing more.

We dropped for twenty feet and finally came to rest in a large bunker equipped with storage larders, training equipment, and surveillance footage.

“Damn,”
Miguel breathed. That pretty much summed it up. I spotted the training mat. For a half-second, I found myself searching for Rafael to test out the punching bags with. My heart a little colder, I pointed them out to Namkyu instead.

Mun Mu hushed our excited whispers and gestured to the mysterious characters inscribed on the walls. “Welcome, wolves, to your new den. This compound served my kind well during the Korean War. Maya’s vampyres could never penetrate it. The inscriptions you see on the walls will react to dark energy and obliterate the invaders. I am pleased you all passed the test.”

I exchanged glances with Miguel. We both rubbed our arms, the unpleasant prickle of the laser beams haunting us still. I, for one, remembered the laser field growing uncomfortably warm. I worried how much hotter it would get if Demon continued to gain strength inside of me.

Yu Li rose from her chair and bowed. “You honor us, Dragon King. It is unfortunate we could not work together sooner.”

Mun Mu’s eyes momentarily hardened into the molten lava of his inner Were, and all of the wolves whimpered. Demon was practically salivating at the glimmer of Mun Mu’s formidable power, but Yu Li remained standing in challenge.

Mami of all people stepped forward and put a soothing hand on Mun Mu’s arm. “Sometimes trust takes time to build, but there is nothing more reliable than the bond between family. Mun Mu, have I told you that Ahn Yu Li is seeing my son, Miguelo? Come here, Miguel!” she hissed. My brother quit eating the hospitality mints and slouched over.

I snickered and set about organizing the wolves to unpack our belongings. Miguel had wanted to date Yu Li. I supposed he’d never dreamed that would mean prettying himself up to be presentable to Were dignitaries from around the globe.

To my surprise, Kaelan approached to assist me in arranging our regional maps on the wall.

“These may be a bit out-of-date for the techno lizards, but nothing beats the touch and smell of a good old-fashioned map,” the Irishman said resolutely, stepping back to admire our layout of the Seoul vampyre nest locations. “You’ll keep them up for me, won’t you, girlie? Even if the Lizard King insists on scanning them all into his fancy computer?”

I caught the wistful trace in his voice and swiftly looked up to find his troubled eyes fixed on our map of the globe. On Ireland.

“You’re leaving,” I said in a low voice.

Kaelan extended a hand. “The Alpha gave me permission to return home and mourn my daughter. She knows my heart isn’t in this war anymore. It has been an honor to fight alongside you, Alvarez. However, that last battle against Maya took it out of me. I was so sure Colleen would have made it. That Ae Cha would have—” He stopped and turned away, blinking rapidly. “You and Yu Li see to it that Kang doesn’t get her kids, will ya? They deserve better.”

“I swear it,” I said firmly. “Kang doesn’t know who he’s messing with.”

Kaelan nodded. “Come see us in Ireland sometime,” he said gruffly, rummaging around in his pack. “We have a small wolf pack there. Nothing compared to the Brits’ ‘Royal Wolf Army,’ but we’re more fun. However”—he hoisted up a bottle of Guinness— “you’re not allowed to step foot on my turf until you’ve develop a taste for Guinness, you hear? I can’t have you embarrassing me in front of the fellas.”

I made a face of mock disgust but accepted the bottle. “The things I do for you, Kaelan.”

He laughed for the first time in months, and I couldn’t hold back the tears in my eyes for any longer.

“But what I have done for you is nothing compared to what you have done for me,” I whispered, pulling him in for a tight hug. “I will never forget how you supported me during the Were Council hearing, pack brother. Komaweoyo.”