Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3) (39 page)

“Yeoboseyo?”
Nyssa picked up her phone, suddenly alert. “Neh,
ajumeoni
. We’re on our way.” She grabbed my shoulder as if I suddenly existed again. “Come. Your mother has arrived and wants to attend your violin lesson.”

“I don’t want to play the violin,” I declared. “Tell her I haven’t had a chance to fight yet.”

Nyssa blew out a tuft of her hair impatiently. “Must you always be so difficult? You’ll fight next Saturday. Hurry! We don’t want to be late. You have an evening hagwon session after, and I’ve seen how much English practice you need.” She turned to her two middle school friends, suddenly mischievous. “During Sun Bin’s oral exam, she was trying to say, ‘I have a cough today,’ and do you know what she said?
‘I have a cock.’
”

All three of them howled with laughter, and I flushed angrily. Neither Nyssa nor my parents would explain the stupid English mispronunciation to me. My father had only remarked on Ankor’s perfect score and the need to send me to study abroad as soon as possible.

Nyssa finished her hysterics to find me no longer there. I vaulted from the bleacher and shoved my way through the students jostling around the sparring ring until I found him: Lee Geon-woo, the only undefeated fighter in our grade.

Geon-woo sighed. “
Aish
, Sun Bin. I already bested your brother and his friends today. Let’s put this off until next weekend. Look, your father is here. Do you really want me to clean the floor with you in front of him?”

I glanced around to make sure I had everyone’s attention. “I understand if you need a week to rest so I’ll defeat you in two minutes instead of one.”

Geon-woo’s gaze darkened, and then he jabbed a finger at the mat. “Ka.”

I caught a glimpse of my father and Ankor standing disapprovingly on the sidelines. My head gear suddenly felt very heavy, and my chest guard cumbersome. Then Geon-woo’s shadow draped me, and I assumed my fighting stance.

He was tall, so I stayed out of kicking range before skipping in and attempting a roundhouse. Geon-woo dodged, and I danced away before his gorilla fists caught me. If he lured me in too close, then I was dead. We parried back and forth across the ring, and then his foot snuck in. I fell face-flat on the mat, hard.

I rolled up and found myself on the defensive, blocking his punches. I twisted and then danced in again for a hatchet kick, but Geon-woo only smiled. His absorbed the blow so he could retaliate, and I saw his foot fly toward my head.

My eyes darkened to inky midnight, and my pupils morphed into silver slits like a lizard’s. Then I seized his foot and sent a burst of ice-cold shock zinging up his leg.

Geon-woo’s kick glanced weakly off my temple, but I refused to desist, sending jolts of paralyzing cold deeper. My dragon senses luxuriated in the feeling of his strength seeping away. Geon-woo groaned, and I made my move. Before he could blink, I added a three-hundred-and-sixty degree spin to my roundhouse kick. Geon-woo dropped like a stone.

The silence shattered with ear-splitting applause. My master nodded once, pleased. Ankor entered the ring to help up Geon-woo and then shot me a scathing glare. I ignored my sullen twin. He was upset because he hadn’t thought of it first. Geon-woo would never know, but he had faced a royal imugi. No one should ever be allowed to win against the likes of us.

I scanned the admiring faces for any sign of my father. I finally spotted him near the bleachers, but his back was turned. My mother had entered the gym because of the hold-up, and she had needed to rest on the bleachers. My cheeks burned. I knew I was going to get lectured about making her exert herself later.

A hand clamped down hard on my shoulder: Nyssa’s. Her nostrils flared, and I caught a glimpse of her inner nagi flash emerald green before she yanked me to my feet.

“Selfish brat,” she said, “let’s go.”

My inner Were still pounded in my ears, and I couldn’t force Winter’s icy claws from my heart in time. My fingers tightened around her wrist. Before I could stop it, frost shot up to her elbow. Nyssa’s eyes widened, and she whipped around to make sure no one had seen. But she didn’t let go.

Drawing me close, she slapped me across the face. Swift and hard.

“Stupid little girl,” Nyssa breathed. “You think that will work on me?”

“Nyssa-ya!”

My father beckoned from the exit. Holding my stinging cheek and trying not to cry, I allowed Nyssa to tow me out to the car. My mother and Ankor were already inside.

My father held the door open for Nyssa and then closed it on me.

“Yong Sun Bin.”

I shuddered at the rumble in his voice but forced myself to look up. Mun Mu’s jaw was locked, and his eyes glowed baleful orange, like dancing flames.

“I defeated Geon-woo today, Appa!” I whined. “Umma would understand! I thought you would be happy!”

“You endangered us all by revealing your powers,” Mun Mu said softly. “You will not be returning to the dojang with Ankor again.”

My jaw dropped. “This isn’t fair!” I cried, tears stinging my eyes. “I am the one who beat Geon-woo! Not Ankor! You should be training me!”

“Ankor can control himself,” my father reported, impassive.

I stomped my foot. “But Appa, I am your first-born! I shouldn’t have to be like Ankor! He should be more like me!”

“You are headstrong and listen to no one but yourself. If you heed no one else, then by all means”—my father swung open the driver’s door—“find your own way home.”

“Appa!” I pounded on the car, but Mun Mu revved the engine and pulled out of the lot. I caught a glimpse of my mother leaning against the window on the passenger side. Her blank eyes were somewhere else as usual. Then I was left alone in the parking lot, the wintry breeze swirling around my bare skin.

Usually I didn’t feel the cold. But today it buried me beneath snowy drifts until I couldn’t feel anything at all.

***

I resurfaced from the memory with a gasp, cold shock flooding me from the dark salt water lapping at my toes.

“Raina!”

There was Heesu frantically gesturing to me. I grabbed her hand and pulled myself out of the treasure chamber. I spared one last glance over my shoulder to catch a flash of silver in the bottomless abyss. Why had Sun Young shared that memory? Did she want me to forgive Sun Bin, so we could all work together? Did she think her first-born daughter should have been the finalist in my place?

Or had she simply been confused and wanted to show me more of the dark side of our father? Whatever curse held her there also held her tongue; Sun Young had already hinted there was much she couldn’t say.

Another wave doused my head as the ocean reclaimed its spirit tomb, and I fled after Heesu without another thought.

Chapter 47: Tica’s Sacrifice

~Citlalli~

I rested against the ashen rock and tried to remember a time before my world had plunged into unending tunnels of yawning darkness. The lava tubes switch-backed like veins across the body of the volcano. Our only guide was the strange “fire rock” path that the servant ghosts had mentioned. The red stones gleamed like rubies amongst the scarred tunnels, leading us further and further up the peak.

We reached a cavern that held an underwater lake, and Khyber signaled that it was safe to rest. I collapsed on its shores and gulped down water. I’d heard the droplets echo amongst the tunnels several miles back, and it had driven me mad plodding along without finding the source.

Khyber crouched by my side, watching with amusement as I lapped up the water as if dying of thirst. “We will stay here until nightfall. We are close to the summit, Citlalli. We must be sure the moon has risen in order to be at our full strength.”

I wiped a hand across my mouth and stopped, catching a glimpse of the cavern’s walls reflected in the lake’s waters. “This is another one of those cursed boxes, Khyber.”

“Burnt out, from the looks of it.” Khyber drew a finger down the charred slashes carved in the wall and then glanced toward me, where my hand was half-raised toward my throat. “You should be fine.”

I shivered and glanced toward the narrow tunnel that led to the summit. Where the fate of South Korea rested. Raina and the White Tiger needed the Emerald Veil brought down now. “How can we kill these weather spirits, Khyber?”

Slowly, he looked up at me. “By fire. That will reveal them, and then I can kill them. But you already knew that, didn’t you, demon girl?”

“Don’t call me that,” I growled, feeling Wolf’s hackles rise.

The vampyre prince gave a grunt of annoyance. “Did you think no one would notice? Even your own pack feels their guard rise around you, and they do not know why. But I do. I have felt it encircling your mind for a while now…the flames. My brothers thought you were warding yourself from our compulsion. But I know that you have lost all control. You don’t even know how much the demon has grown inside of you. Your mind isn’t protected. It is trapped.”

My single left eye blinked rapidly. Inside the hollowed crevice of my right, I felt heat smolder.

“Leave Her alone,” I said softly, surprising both Wolf and Demon. “She is part of us. Fred didn’t create anything that wasn’t already there.”

Khyber’s eyes flashed. “Please, human. There is darkness and light in every living thing. That is why you had one soul, where your angels and demons could coexist in balance. The kumiho may not have created anything new, but he did unbalance you. Shapeshifters with their half-beast souls are bad enough. Does your ‘Demon’ have a consciousness? Does She speak to you, little whispers about what
She
wants?”

I refused to indulge what he already knew as smoke curled from my fingers.

“Try killing yourself again,” the vampyre prince told me coolly. “Let’s see which part of you comes back on top.”

I stared down at my charred fingertips and then smiled. “Fine. Maybe there is a part of me that wants to light the world on fire. But do you know what, vampyre? It hasn’t. It hasn’t killed innocent people or mindlessly served a deranged queen who wanted to kill your own sisters.”

Khyber’s head reared up like an asp’s, and I knew that I had finally struck a nerve. “Enough,” the Crown Prince snarled.

“Or what?” I asked sweetly. “You’ll ‘accidentally’ kill me, like you did Tica?”

“Unlike you, Tica was never as frustrating or as casual about the blessing of life,” Khyber said in an ice-rimmed hiss, taking a step closer. “Unlike you, from a young age Tica realized how little time she had left with her ‘
ohana
and the islands she loved. She fought for
every moment
of it. When she realized the cancer had returned, Tica refused to give up. Even if that meant making a deal with a vampyre.”

I tried to turn away, but Khyber blurred to stand in front of me, forcing me to stare down the truth in his stone-cold eyes. “You wanted to keep digging like a dog after a bone until you found the truth, girl. Hear this: After she fought off the bone cancer the first time, Tica thought she could return to a normal life.

“However, my brother Crispin, the so-called Vampyre Prince of the Americas, was angry that Hawai’i was slipping away from his control. The Hawaiian pantheon was still a powerful force in the root and memory of their people. Crispin made a deal with two of the Mayan Death Gods themselves, a pair known as the Plague Lords. He asked them to destroy the Hawaiian pantheon forever. This was the first I had heard that the Death Lords of Xibalba had awoken, and that two had somehow escaped into our world. The Death Lords come in in pairs, you see. Amongst The Twelve are two for disease, two for pain, two for destitution, and two for fear. The Plague Lords planned to enter Kuaihelani, the bridgeland of the Hawaiian gods, so they could consume enough power to free the rest of their brethren. They stalked minor Hawaiian gods to corrupt them toward their cause. Tica stood in their way, and so the Plague Lords sickened her again, as is their despicable gift.

“So I made a deal with Tica. My vampyre venom to fend off her growing cancer, in return for her blood, poisoned by the Plague Lords. I used the blood I drank from her in an attempt to stop a shark demigod who had been corrupted by the Plague Lords’ Pandora’s Box, much like the benevolent haetae you’ve encountered.” Khyber’s fists shuddered at his sides. “This shark demigod is known as Nanaue. As long as he served the Plague Lords, he was a threat to all of the islands.

“The only one who would speak to me amongst the Hawaiian pantheon was the snow goddess, Poli’ahu. She told me that the only way to defeat Nanaue was to wrestle with him until I absorbed him inside myself. It worked. I fed his captured spirit Tica’s poisoned blood in order to kill him. However, even as tough as she was, Tica began to suffer from the effects of the vampyre venom. She began to isolate herself from family and friends, in a delusion that I was her true love.” For once, Khyber had the decency to look ashamed. “You know the illusions a vampyre’s bite can create.”

I folded my arms to hide my trembling hands. Raina’s hushed voice brushed my ear, whispering of how one bite from Donovan had lowered her defenses and made her open to his advances.

“The night of her death,” Khyber continued in a low voice, “Tica’s mother and I were trying to save her life. However, during the ritual, the Plague Lords attacked. They wounded me, and Nanaue was able to escape from my clutches. The corrupted shark god was about to strike down Tica’s mother, but Tica stepped in the way. Her mortal body was struck down.

“However, her spirit succeeded in wrestling Nanaue into the spirit world of Eve and back to Kuaihelani, where the shark demigod could heal in peace. I do not know if Tica was able to enter Kuaihelani as well, but I do know that she will never again walk in the sunshine world. Over the years of my travels through Eve, I have heard tales of a fierce warrior spirit who guards the way into the land of the Hawaiian gods. It is said that this warrior rides on the back of a shark. I like to think that Tica finally found rest.”

Khyber’s gaze settled on the burnt-out characters of the cavernous Pandora’s Box. “So. Now you know, Citlalli. I am guilty of Tica’s death, but not in the way Rafael thinks. Tica was a fighter. She died to save her homeland from the Dark Spirits. And she was
no one’s
victim.”