Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3) (45 page)

Hesitantly, I studied Khyber from where he sat bound on the silver throne. His raggedy wings hunched on his shoulders like a ratty old blanket—the only thing to protect him from his brother’s jibes. Yet his face of shadowed valleys held more humanity than the two terribly perfect monsters beside him.

Santiago glanced upwards, his nostrils flaring. “I go to rally my men, Donovan,” he said. “That dratted Yong pixie has become the Celestial Dragon because your precious wife failed.”

Donovan’s fangs glinted in a snarl. “Watch how you speak of my beloved.”

Whom you ordered weather demons to kill,
I silently added.

Santiago rolled his eyes. “
Cada loco con su tema
. The only love is blood.” Pausing beside Khyber, the conquistador stabbed him in the shoulder and then twisted the blade, viciously. Khyber winced as black blood dribbled down his chest.

“
Gracias, señor
. I applaud your pride. You should have destroyed your own soul as you did ours when you had the chance,” the golden-winged prince hissed. “For now you will return to our side…but don’t think I will like it.”

Nodding to Donovan, Santiago glided down the tunnel like a sinister bat. Donovan sighed and turned to drag his elongated nail through Khyber’s blood. He cast Rafael and me a leering grin that lit up his vacant teal eyes as he bent down to inscribe the final character in the incantation.

“Since I despise you both equally, I’ll tell you what: I will let Taeyang kill whomever he wishes. Then, Khyber, you are going to accept your corrupted former self”—Donovan finished the curse with a flourish and licked the last drops of blood from his finger—“and then we are going to see what happens when a vampyre gets his soul back.”

Chapter 54: Face Gouger

~Citlalli~

Before our eyes, the death characters floated up one by one and began to sway like black mambas. Then they expanded, glowing laser-hot, iridescent green.

Taeyang cried out and fell to his knees, clutching his ears. Suddenly, he shivered and fell still. Rafael hesitantly sniffed the air.

Abruptly, Taeyang’s head snapped up. His sightless eyes swiveled in Rafael’s direction. The werewolf whined and tried to back up, but there was no escape. Taeyang stalked forward, falling into the hunched gait and set scowl of his vampyre self. A pair of serrated bone knives dropped from his sleeves.

Donovan laughed and punched Khyber in the shoulder. “You see, brother? My gift to you. Your soul will kill the weremutt, and your Dark Dog girl will live.”

Rafael lunged at Taeyang, and Khyber’s soul vanished only to rematerialize behind him. Inky blackness began to leak from the corners of his eyes, and then Taeyang launched into a series of whirlwind strikes. Rafael dodged, but the last one caught his shoulder. Snarling, the brown werewolf attacked Taeyang’s exposed left flank. However, the Korean boy caught him in a chokehold and then flung him across the circle. I swallowed. Taeyang was dissolving faster into his vampyre self by the second. The speed with which he moved was positively supernatural.

Wolf howled our frustration as the rope tightened around our ankle. But if I didn’t get in there now, then Rafael was dead.

Demon,
I called.

She didn’t answer. But I smelled the smokiness of Her presence.

I took a deep breath
. If I shift to you, how much of Wolf and me will be left once we’re through?

For once, there was no taunt in her reply:
Not much.

I bowed my head and felt Wolf’s wet nose bury against my forehead in understanding. When I opened my eye, smoke poured out from my mouth, and my throat hardened into charcoal. Then I erupted into flames.

The rope sizzled and then snapped. I dropped into fire wolf form between Taeyang and Rafael, my luminous golden eye dancing with ruby-red flames. Taeyang backed up, uncertain how to handle this new foe.

“Citlalli,” Khyber suddenly spoke. It was a plea. Taeyang cowered on the far side of the runic circle now, flinching as sparks blew his way.

“Yes,” Rafael breathed just as intensely behind me. “You can destroy his soul, Citlalli!”

Training my good eye on Donovan, I shot a fire bolt at his sneering face. Unfortunately, the death characters eagerly embraced the kumiho fire and glowed hotter still.

The former white-winged vampyre chuckled, lazing back on his throne. “Is that what happened after I locked you in the boiler room? I’d heard the rumors. A combustible wolf. Dear, dear, I hope it isn’t getting too hot in there for your little friends.” He absent-mindedly withdrew the False Yeouiju and twiddled it amongst his fingers. “So what’s it going to be, Fire Wolf? Will you destroy Khyber’s soul, thus ending any hope he has of ever moving on peacefully? Or will you refuse and watch Taeyang skewer your furry boy toy?”

The earth abruptly rumbled, and Donovan nearly lost his hold on the pearl. Ankor’s spiky head appeared first. Then he burst free from the ground, half-manifested with gleaming obsidian scales. The ore imugi’s eyes flashed with white-hot energy, and then he released a laser-beam from his palm at the startled vampyre prince.

“You have something of mine,” Ankor growled as he flowed to block Donovan’s escape.

The vampyre prince retreated to the far side of the circle. “What are you?” he asked softly. “You are no ore imugi.”

Ankor’s face crippled in pain. “Not fully anymore,” he hissed. “Now, give me the pearl.”

I barked for Ankor’s attention, pawing the enchanted cage in Khyber’s direction. Unfortunately, Taeyang took that window to aim a slash at my ribs. I warded him off with a slap of flames.

Ankor hesitated, his pulsing eventide eyes still fixated on Donovan. At the last second, he whirled around and blasted the chains free from Khyber’s arms.

That was all the invitation Khyber needed. Seizing the remaining bindings and tearing them in half, the Crown Prince then launched himself at the glowing runic circle. Khyber’s eyes bubbled up with inky black tears as he severed the characters trapping us. A knot unwound in my chest. I knew the exact moment the runic circle broke. Dank, salty air flooded my grateful lungs.

Donovan cowered as all five of us converged on him.

“Sloppy calligraphy as usual, brother,” Khyber said. “Now, where are you keeping Raina?”

“And what have you done with Sun Bin and Alpha Ahn?” I growled, my voice a sibilant hiss amidst my crackling fur.

Donovan abruptly began to laugh. “The Crow called my work sloppy,” he taunted, withdrawing the flute. “Who knows where in Eve they are?” And then he played a mournful, two-toned note—the call of an owl.

Once, twice—the cavern walls shook, and we backed up cautiously—three, four, seven times in all, the note played. Then Donovan summoned the Dark Spirit by cutting his own wrist for fresh blood: “Xecotcovach!”

The torches in the cave dimmed. For a moment, nothing happened. I prayed Xiang had dropped the remains of that terrifying Face Gouger into the sea. Yet in the next moment, I heard the
scrap scrap
of dragging feet. Frantically, I fanned my flames higher.

“Don’t look at him!” I barked at Ankor and then shot forth a volley of flaming arrows in the direction I’d heard Xec slither.

A dry rasp of laughter echoed directly behind me, and then black lips kissed my ear.

–You missed–

In my leaping firelight, the Dark Spirit’s cadaverous face was fully illuminated to reveal its rotting horned skull. A flap of limp black hair hung over its face like a bird’s wing. Yet its eyes remained long tunnels that swallowed my sparks whole. Then Xec’s jaw dropped in a scream.

The perverse noise was high, painfully shrill, and ended in a savage roar. We wheeled blindly about in the dark, covering our ears. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Xec leer over Ankor’s crumpled shape and then draw back its claws, ready to tear out the ore imugi’s eyes.

Demon surged through me with aggressive fervor in the presence of a rival. At my approach, Xec whipped out an arm and sent me crashing into a pile of shale. The Dark Spirit’s shriveled skin whined as the kumiho fire ravaged it, but it didn’t break.

“Face Gouger.” Donovan approached, extending the False Yeouiju in his gloved hand. “We must act now.”

Xec limped past, its left foot dragging with a steady
thump thump
. I shrank back so it wouldn’t see me and found myself face-to-face with the last creature I expected to see in the heart of the vampyres’ nest: a rotund leopard kit.

I swallowed down a bark of surprise.
“Mangdung?”

The leopard cat spirit put a paw to his mouth and then unclasped the basket from his back. “We heard the mist fell. I wasted no time. I knew you would need my help. You went to war without your best weapons.”

I drew away, snarling. Flames curled between my paws. “I am my best weapon.”

Mangdung regarded me calmly. “Not this way. You are out of balance, Lantern Maker. And it is killing you.”

Startled, I gazed down at the basket the leopard kit had unhooked from his back. A hodgepodge of lanterns tumbled out: some half-constructed projects of mine, and others of a benign household variety.

The spirit kit beamed. “I wasn’t sure which one would help you.”

“Mangdung,” I whispered, feeling my flames falter. “I can’t believe— How did you even get here?”

“I used a cockatrice wish.”

The charioteer chicken dragons. They could travel anywhere in Eve a traveler wished to go—only three times, no more. My golden eye softened, and I glanced at the gleaming lanterns longingly.

“Let go of Her, Lantern Maker,” Mangdung whispered. “You don’t need to become a demon.”

“Maybe I don’t.” Feeling the wildfire smolder as it reached my heart, I forced myself to remember Khyber’s icy breath and Raina’s cool, healing rain. Then I shifted. It hurt, as Demon had warned it would. Scabs crusted up to my elbows, and Wolf lay limp in a whisper of black smoke. I surveyed my withered hands with a sad smile. “But I do need one more flame.”

Behind me, Xec raised the False Yeouiju high. It shrank under the Dark Spirit’s touch, its luster fading to pale, sickly white. Donovan’s smile twisted in triumph, and he mockingly saluted us before ducking out of the cave. Horror rising in my chest, I realized that the Greater Dark Spirit meant to open the door to Xibalba here and now, on Jeju Island.

Opening its jaws wide, Xec slowly lowered the pearl toward its cavernous throat.

With not a second to lose, I seized a tall, twig-spun lantern that smelled like birch and hurled it at the monstrous Dark Spirit. My left palm blazed up like a scarlet comet, and I shot the lantern with an arch of flame to light it. Xec swallowed the garden lantern whole.

–What did you do to me, girl–

The Dark Spirit spluttered smoke and clutched its sunken abdomen. Its glistening skin folds shook. Rafael and Ankor rose to stand beside me while Khyber watched from afar. Mangdung poked an eye out from behind his paws.

Abruptly, Xec began to grow. Its chest and belly engorged, and its humanoid head shattered the roof of the cave. Laughing, the Dark Spirit threw back its head to greet the storm-tossed sky.

Rafael took a step back. “Mind sharing your plan for why you supersized a psychotic ghost?”

I smiled and folded my arms. The garden lantern created for the Garlic Spirit to sprout tall enough to court the Green Onion Spirit had turned out well. “Same plan: drive them
out
.”

From all corners of the sky, the White Tiger, Onikuma the Bear, and a badly bitten Xiang dropped down. Heesu stepped up last.

–Yes, gather, Life Spirits– Xec’s leer blotted out the sky as it swallowed the False Yeouiju whole. –So shall we descend to Xibalba together–

Heesu’s feathery wings faltered amidst the amassing winds, but then she thrust her dark pearl high. “The underworld will only receive one new resident tonight. All those whose eyes you stole will be
very
happy to see you, Face Gouger.” Then she struck the Yeouiju with her fourth claw.

The False Pearl began to erupt within the Greater Dark Spirit, imploding its skin inwards with the brutality of a black hole. Heesu’s mouth pulled back in a draconic snarl as she struggled to keep up. Channeling the power of creation through the Yeouiju, she shifted Xec’s skin into that of a mighty tortoise, then a mountain peak, then a cage made of diamonds. The False Pearl collapsed faster, and images blurred by so swiftly that I could barely see: a skyscraper, a tank, a titanium vault, a nuclear reactor—

The False Yeouiju obliterated them all. Finally, Heesu gave Xecotcovach the form of a microscopic water bear. At first we had no idea that she had shrunk the Dark Spirit down to the size of a bacteria, but then the Face Gouger began to supernaturally expand beneath the pressure of the False Pearl—expand, but not break. I glanced sideways at Ankor and saw him smiling.

Xec shrieked, its horribly enraged face blurring as the resilient micro-organism withstood the eruption.

Then, it was over. The False Yeouiju’s destructive white light winked out. The Greater Dark Spirit fell, burned and charred in its true form of the harbinger owl, at our feet.

Khyber and I approached first. Although it was little more than a horned skull lying in a bed of tattered feathers, Xec’s hollow eyes still found us.

“Do not let me die, Crow.” The Greater Dark Spirit’s true voice was startling. It was a low gurgle, its words almost undiscernible due to its brutalized tongue.

Khyber said nothing, but he handed me one of Taeyang’s bone daggers. He took the other.

“Beware, Fire Wolf!” Xec warned. “This is your last chance to make a deal! Only I can end your life curse.”

I cocked my head so my black curls tumbled down my face, and then I smiled at the dying Dark Spirit with my good eye. “I’m sure you are, Face Gouger. But let’s see how killing you works, first.”

Together, we staked the demon bird through the face. Xecotcovach’s skull split in a silent scream, and out poured all of the eyes the Face Gouger had gathered over time. They shot out in every direction, seeking their way back to their spirit selves in bolts of violet, green, and blue light.