Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3) (36 page)

I had to shake my head to make sure I wasn’t imaging things. The air wavered around the falling pebbles like a silent wind. Then moonlight fell upon the cave. For a moment, I saw the spectral nostrils of a horse-headed serpent thing sniff the pebbles and then ripple away through the air unseen.

I turned to find Khyber crouched at my side like a cool and collected shadow. “Weather demon. Young, from the looks of it. Only three wings and six barbed tails.”

“Did you say
barbed
?”

“More will be coming from the spire to guard the cave while the Red Company hunts.” Khyber pointed toward the knotted finger peak, and I caught a glimpse of thick tails rippling across the face of the tainted moon like spiked kites. The leaves carpeting the mountain abruptly shook with a tremendous force, as if coming to life.

I groaned, stumbling back into Khyber’s arms.

“Fine. Let’s get this over with. Fly me away, O Mighty Vampyre.”

“No, the skies will be unsafe.” Khyber grabbed my hand. “We must infiltrate their base from below.”

I locked eyes with him. Hell, no. He couldn’t mean—

Yes. He meant the cave.

Wolf’s ears stood on edge as we peered over the cavern lip and felt the wind whistle through our hair. Suddenly, a swarm of bats erupted from the great hole.

I jumped back, barking despite myself. Khyber plucked one from midair.

“At least one can be saved,” he murmured. We watched as an eerie white face coalesced amidst the mists and swallowed the colony whole. Its empty eyes turned.

Khyber immediately threw the startled bat. The weather demon’s eyes followed it.

Then sky and jungle disappeared from view. Khyber dove down the throat of the cave with me gripped tight in his clutches. I was left staring up at a rapidly disappearing circle of moonlight before cavernous darkness swallowed it whole. Ferns dripped water on my head, and on all sides, needle-sharp stalactites stabbed the earth like pillars.

We landed heavily on the sand. I threw off Khyber’s embrace. “I can walk by myself.”

“Good. You’re heavier than usual. How does a girl manage to put on weight on a deserted island?”

“I’m just trying to keep you in shape,” I replied sweetly. “Your tiny, pale-ass arms aren’t impressing anyone.”

“Sensitive, are we?”

But when a tree-sized stalagmite barred our way, Khyber swiftly strode forward to snap it in two. I laughed and brushed past him.

“I’m not the only one.”

We followed the tunnel deeper into the earth, and the air began to reek of decay. I wrinkled my nose as we passed graveyards of corpses. Some were animals. Others weren’t.

Khyber knelt beside the contorted skeleton of what had once been a man, his remains now splattered with dried blood. The vampyre prince bowed his head.

“I have nothing to give them,” he said to no one in particular. “How they died…their bodies gnawed down to the bones… These spirits will never know rest.”

I gazed around the remnants of the Red Company’s cruelty, imaging the vengeful Dark Spirit who had departed from each one of these fallen bodies to haunt the waking world.

“It is unwise to linger here.” Shoulders hunched beneath his black wings, Khyber swept down the tunnel. I hurried not to be left behind.

We came upon a vast subterranean lake, which flickered a poisonous shade of lime-green. Dozens of sightless koi fish flickered and shimmered like diamonds on the surface, but they were not the source of the glow.

“By the Mother,” Khyber uttered softly. “What have my brothers done?”

I leaned closer to squint beyond the circling fish. Along the bottom of the lake glinted hexagonal obsidian jewels, all stitched together by what looked like leathery skin. Then I realized that I was gazing upon the shell of an enormous tortoise. Toxins emitted from its skin, which collected in an eerie green mist upon the lake’s surface. Breath catching, I watched the noxious fumes waft up the throat of the extinct volcano.

“I don’t understand,” I whispered. “A giant turtle is the source of the Emerald Veil?”

Khyber gave a low laugh. “Be careful how you name her. She is the Black Turtle. The Doorkeeper. Or as you know her—Won Una.”

Wolf cocked Its ears. I blinked several times, unable to process that my good friend whom I’d dreamed of finding for so many nights was finally within sight and touch—and trapped in the form of a legendary turtle. All I could manage was: “How come all of my friends are turning into reptiles?”

“It would appear that my brothers tortured the Doorkeeper into her true form and then imprisoned her within this accursed island to serve as their base,” the vampyre prince said dismissively.

My jaw hardened as I remembered Fred’s sniveling tale. How dare he let this happen and then bait Ankor into cleaning up his mess. As far as tombs went for that insufferable nine-tailed fox, this forgotten island was starting to look like a forerunner.

Khyber began walking backwards, gazing up into the infinite reaches of the volcano. Behind him stretched an ancient staircase, which was carved into the hardened lava of the caldera. Time had eroded its steps so there was only room to hug the wall in order to cross to the other side. I raised a hand in warning, but Khyber stepped gracefully onto the first step as if he had eyes in the back of his head.

He ran his fingers over the caldera’s walls and gave a satisfied hiss. “Yes. This is how they are corrupting them.”

“What do you see?” I joined him somewhat less enthusiastically on the catwalk stair ring. Gazing up, I realized that what I had taken to be natural fissures in the rock were actually characters of a horrid, foul language—the same symbols Khyber had used to show Yu Li the name
Xibalba
.

“This entire chamber is the biggest one I have ever seen. We are standing inside a Pandora’s Box, which has the power to corrupt spirits. Any entity can become one, if you know the Language of Death. Make a Pandora’s Box…and bad things come out. The last time I saw one was on the volcanic islands of Hawai’i.”

My head jolted as he dared mention the place where he’d driven one boy to a life of revenge.

“Citlalli,” Khyber spoke softly to the mountain’s belly, rubbing his fingers up and down the harsh slashes almost longingly, “do you remember why Rafael wishes to kill me?”

I went stalk-still. In my mind, a tendril of Demon’s smoke caressed an image of Rafael’s broken face. The green light from the lake cast odd shadows across Khyber’s rugged face, and my stomach abruptly tightened in fear. I didn’t like the way he was stroking that foul demon language. I didn’t like how he could possibly ask if I
remembered
why Rafael had abandoned his home, his life, everything, in exchange for hunting down one vampyre prince.

But after falling asleep to Khyber’s cool breath collecting on my fevered forehead every night, I realized he was right to ask. All this time, I had chosen to forget that I was life-bound to a monster.

“You murdered Rafael’s mother and his sister, Tica,” I whispered. “First you deceived them into loving you. Then you drank them dry. What Santiago’s Red Company did to those Jeju Islanders shouldn’t shock or disgust you. Next to you, they are nothing.”

Khyber’s hand began to tremble and then fell. “Yes,” he said, turning and hunching his black wings. “Tica was already dying, you understand. But if I could be the one held responsible…then that would create a hatred great enough to be my undoing.” He laughed bitterly. “Or so I was told.”

I stared at him, struggling to reconcile memories of Rafael and Raina as they each spoke of their respective encounters with the eldest vampyre prince. Rafael had told the story of a cold-blooded vampyre who had come to the sun-kissed shores of Hawai’i to test himself. Raina had spun a different tale…of a world-weary creature who had sought to end himself.

“Khyber,” I spoke slowly, “how would killing Tica help you die?”

The eldest vampyre prince’s eyes narrowed on me, icy with inscrutable darkness.

“Very clever, wolf,” he sneered. “Yes, Rafael’s sister, Tica Dominguez, was more than what she seemed. In other parts of the world, the gods have not disappeared as they have in the East. The Hawaiian pantheon still fought vigorously against the forces of the darkness that arrived on their shores. One of them, a boar god, mated with Rafael’s mother and spawned Tica, a demi-goddess. I flew to the Hawaiian island of O’ahu, figuring that if there was any place I could find my death, then it would be here in a land blessed by the sun, where the ‘
aina
itself was still being born.”

Khyber paused to regard the engraved walls, his gaze following the strange scripture all the way up to the volcano’s throat. “What I found instead was a plan to end the world.”

Chapter 43: Pandora’s Box

~Citlalli~

It felt dangerously intrusive to prod further into Tica’s death without Rafael here to snarl at Khyber, to shout that he was lying. I’d already defended Khyber to the pack when I knew very well that at the end of the day, all the Crow cared about was himself. Or rather, eradicating his consciousness that had persevered long beyond his mortal lifespan.

My cheeks burned. Hadn’t Raina already tried to care for this wretched creature, only to get her heart broken? Khyber wasn’t capable of sentiment. Our tedious alliance was useful to further both of our ends, but no more.

However, whatever Khyber knew about this dark magic imprisoning Una could be my one chance to free her.

I folded my arms. “‘A plan to end the world’ depended on the death of a sixteen-year-old girl suffering from bone cancer, eh? Wow, you’ve really begun to believe your own bullshit.”

Khyber’s brow furrowed in uncharacteristic anger. “Our enemy was cunning and often appeared as a friend. Tica and I were working together to stop them. Rafael knew nothing of this, of course. He was a young party boy who worked days as a boat captain going nowhere. It was his introspective sister who intrigued me. As for seducing her to
care
for me…” His jaw hardened, and his hands clenched into fists. “I warned her about the effects of vampyre venom. It was an arrangement born out of desperation. The soothing relief from my fangs in exchange for her poisoned blood. I needed Tica’s blood to kill a warmongering god. In the end, her mother and I tried to save her. But it was too late.”

He couldn’t speak further. Otherwise Rafael’s black-and-white mantra of revenge would unravel completely into a pile of colorful threads.

Swallowing, I turned my back just as two serving ghosts glided into the chamber.

Their mouths curved into identical “O”s at the sight of the elder vampyre prince, and then they fell to their knees.

“Vampyre Prince Khyber!” they cried. “Forgive us. Your royal brothers did not mention you would be arriving so soon.”

Khyber circled them slowly with his black wings tucked against his back in a stern and commanding pose. “I was to be expected?”

“Yes!” The fat one stole a glance at me, and I was disgusted to see drool pool from the corner of his balloon lips. “They said you wouldn’t keep away if they put the Changeling Soul in danger. We are to tell them when you arrive. However, if you give us this tasty morsel…then perhaps we can look the other way.”

“This one has some meat on her, not like these skin-and-bone islanders,” the second ghost added, and I scowled.

Khyber threw back his shoulders regally. “I am pleased there is still loyalty to the Crown Prince of the Vampyre Court. Enjoy her, my friends. I shall be on my way. Tell me, which is the quickest way to the summit?”

Eagerly, the hungry ghosts stalked toward me with their hands unclasped like talons. Despite their hunger, they still managed to spare an answer: “Behind you, lord prince. Take the lava tube on the opposite side of the lake through the maze to the very top. Fire rocks will guide the way.”

A smile played across Khyber’s face as he bowed out of the way. “Thank you. Since you have been so helpful, then let me return the favor with equally important information: I was not protecting this girl from you. Oh no; I was protecting you from
her
.”

Startled, the ghosts paused mid-step. The next second, a raging black wolf gouged out their eyes. The fat one put up a fight, but only because it was difficult to find its heart amidst its tons of oozing flesh. Defeated, both specters vanished with a sigh.

I whirled, panting, to find Khyber glancing with distaste at the silvery blood splattered on his boot. “Messy as usual, I see.”

Let me free,
Demon begged, itching along my skin.
Let me crawl up the walls of this cursed chamber and burn all of the foul words away. Let me free the spirit beasts that have fallen under the Dark Spirits’ spell.

Once we free Una.
I attempted to placate Her, but my pleas were growing weak, and She knew it
. I will not risk harming my friend further.

Demon grumbled.
Careful, girl. I grow weary of waiting for what I want…
Anything
I want…
She began to smolder with hunger. To my horror, it was directed toward Khyber. The vampyre prince stalked toward the ledge rimming the lake. Demon’s lidless eyes followed, lusting after the power rippling in his stride.

Thankfully, Wolf emerged to beat Her back, disgruntled at a Were pining over a vampyre’s cold, stiff scent. I shifted and pulled on my discarded clothes hastily. My long black curls tumbled over my face to hide my heated cheeks.

“Something wrong with your shifting?”

I started. Khyber had reappeared in front of me with his unnatural speed.

“Thanks for the backup,” I grumbled.

Khyber raised an eyebrow. “Did you not claim that at least I had you to protect me? I did not expect the Vampyre Queen Slayer to be so flustered by overfed servant ghosts.” He extended a hand, impatient. “Come. Nor do I trust a clumsy wolf to cross the lake without falling in.”

Suspicious, I looped my hands around the slope of his neck.

Our life partner,
Demon salivated.
Imagine the power. The masses would fall before us. We could rule Eve and the mortal world. No realm would be safe.