Year of the Tiger (Changeling Sisters) (29 page)

Jaehoon approached to help me fix the lotus lantern in place. “Your sister can change, too,” he murmured in my ear, and I blinked, puzzled.

Before I could ask what he meant, a hyena-like cackle rolled over the peak face, a bit too close for comfort. My worst fears were confirmed when wolves Kaelan and Ae Cha burst through the fog, the latter’s pelt bleeding profusely.

I waited for Rafael to appear, orange eyes round and full from the hunt, but no further shadow appeared.

“Dark Dogs.” Kaelan licked Ae Cha’s wounds, whimpering at his inability to ease her suffering. “They’ll be on us in seconds!”

“Where are the others?” spilled out of me.

“The vampyre prince Aleksandr attacked us, scattering our main front through the woods. Yu Li and Rafael lured him off, and we haven’t seen either of them since,” Kaelan managed between pants.

Jaehoon rippled into his great, beastly Alpha form. In his haste to change, the red fang necklace snapped. I stooped to pick it up for him, and he tossed his head at me impatiently.

“There’s not enough string. Keep it safe for me around your own small neck.” And, before I could argue, he growled, “Where do you need to go?”

Raina and I looked at each other. “The summit,” we said together.

“Raina, keep close!” And then I shifted. I ignored the welcoming hands of Demon and slid comfortably back into Wolf’s skin. My newfound muscles ached, but it was good pain, and the world suddenly came alive in shapes and colors. Jaehoon’s necklace clanged against my neck, strengthening me. I sniffed the air. Threat charging in from the east. Death meandering her way up from the south. We ran north.

The next howl scared me so badly, I stumbled. It was a hunting call. The Dark Dogs had found us, were practically upon our heels. I squinted up against the collecting snow drifts, but I could only see white. The wind hit, and we were regaled with an odor so foul that Raina could smell it, too. It was the reek of musty coffins exposed to fresh air, not just one—hundreds, and the stench oozed down the peak like an oil-tarnished river.

Dark Spirits.
They were gathering. I didn’t need to be told. Ae Cha whimpered, and Kaelan pawed irritably at his face.

I paused by Raina. “Do you trust Khyber?”

She ran her fingers through my coarse fur, delighted. “I do, Citlalli. But I trust you more.”

I understood. Whatever I did, whatever I chose, she would follow. They all would. We hovered in that snowbound landscape for an instant. The wind rippled through the mist like it was parting a great sea, and above, I could see a procession of great black-ice mountains, their peaks puncturing the belly of the sky. Cold air whistled through my nostrils as I craned my head upwards. It seemed impossible that we could possibly go higher, crawl through that hole in the sky’s belly, into the heavens. I realized there was a question I had never asked Khyber: Whatever had happened to his sisters, after they had climbed up into the sky?

The first of the Dark Dogs ripped through the fog, snarling and tossing it aside with its teeth. I grew stiff-legged with fear, but while I had been looking down, Jaehoon had been looking up. He nudged me now. A clear window in the mist revealed an old red staircase, switch-backing up into the clouds.

I barked a command. We dashed for the staircase, but something else was racing us to reach it first. The snow rustled as if something were tunneling beneath it, and suddenly, the great thorny leg of a rose bush broke through the surface.

“The black rose! She’s here, Citlalli!”

I immediately glued myself to my sister’s side, circling her protectively. The entire snowy bluff seemed to give way into a pit of black thorns. One lashed at my ankle, and Kaelan bit it in half. He began to choke, and Ae Cha hovered near him, anxious.

“Are you okay?”

“Poison!” The red wolf spit up something stringy and black. “Go. Just go!”

The forest of black thorns groped blindly toward the red staircase, and I saw Maya’s true goal: Cut us off from escape, so the Dark Dogs would tear us to pieces. Fear drove us all. I glanced around for Raina; she’d floundered in the snow drift. Ae Cha pulled her out—too gently, too slowly. The fastest thorn vine lashed out a long arm and roped around her neck.

We tore back to help her; Kaelan out-distanced me. Thorns erupted all around us. I bit into them, and their sharp barbs cut my mouth. I felt an odd, numbing sensation spread throughout my gums, so I quickly spit them out. I looked up. Ae Cha was pinned in a bramble cage that wrapped around her with deliberate tightness, like the constricting embrace of a python. Thorns stabbed her belly and neck; one pierced through her upper gum line; and the last slowly approached her eye. She whimpered, trying to move her paw.

“AE CHA!”

Up bounded the swarm of Dark Dogs. I herded the grief-stricken Kaelan away, forcibly. Ae Cha peered up at us, wild-eyed, but couldn’t speak. Then the thorns swallowed her; she was lost from sight.

Kaelan whined, clawed at me as we pelted back across the snow. He bit my ear, and I sank my teeth into his flank, viciously. I wasn’t losing him tonight, too. We quickly caught up with the others, who, for some insane reason, hadn’t started the mad dash for our lives up the staircase.

“WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?” I bellowed.

“Can’t you smell it?” Kaelan paced nervously. “Something’s not right.”

Jaehoon looked from the crouched Raina to the encroaching sea of black on the horizon. He looked directly at me.

“Do not lose the necklace I gave you, Citlalli.”

Odd choice of words, but I didn’t miss the strange look Kaelan shot me.

The yelps of the Dark Dogs…the ominous
crack!
of thorns breaking through ice…all of it faded as we ascended. Sleeping blue icicles plunged past the rail guard into harrowing darkness. There was no sound except for the grating squeaking beneath our feet. Far below, the Dark Dogs made no move to chase us. They milled around at the bottom of the staircase, yapping and grumbling.

“Why have they stopped chasing us?” Kaelan joined me at the precipice, sniffing the air suspiciously.

“I don’t know. Because she’s stopped.” We watched the thorns slowly wind up the railings, the hands of an elderly man struggling to stand.

“I didn’t know about you and Ae Cha. I’m sorry,” I said.

“She had kids, like me,” he muttered. “She was there when we rolled aside the stone to the vampyre nest. Forty girls, eyes vacant and sores festering. When I felt for Colleen’s heartbeat, Ae Cha was there.” He couldn’t continue, and I couldn’t bear to hear it. “Glad your sis is okay, at least.”

“Thanks to your daughter. Colleen saved her life, Kaelan.”

He nodded gruffly and turned away, face lost in the shadows.

A shrill scream pierced the darkness. Raina clapped a hand to her mouth before she screamed again.

“What is it? What do you see?” I bounded to her side.

“A vampyre prince!”

We followed her finger. A wraith-like shape drifted along the fog currents, not caring if he were seen. From the way his belly hung low beneath his bat-like wings, I knew who it was.

“Crispin. Maya’s fourth son.” I cautioned us back until we were hugging the glacial face. “Keep going, but for God’s sakes,
be quiet
.”

It might have worked; we wolves made no sound, and Raina walked like a ghost herself, tears streaming silently down her cheeks. I knew how badly she didn’t want to return to the Vampyre Court again.

The red staircase capped off at a long catwalk. It meandered its vulnerable way across a sheer drop, and then vanished around the bend. Clouds rolled in, completely obscuring our way except for a few feet in front of us.

Jaehoon gave us a knowing look with warm brown eyes, silencing our frightened whimpers (or in my case, unleashed profanity). He gave that strange Korean saying: “I will go first.”

He padded out across the creaking metal, and the rest of us relaxed enough to follow. Kaelan and I brought up the rear, keeping a wary eye on our flank. Raina groped along with one hand on the wall. Black ice coated these metal planks, and nothing short of ice skates would have stopped my human self from falling flat on my ass.

We were over halfway across. Raina slipped and caught herself on Jaehoon’s tail. She glanced back at me questioningly, as if asking permission. I snorted, bucking my head toward Jaehoon. It was his grandpa hairs she was picking out. Jaehoon merely twitched said tail in amusement. Beneath his next step, the metal groaned louder than normal.

In the next second, several things happened at once. I noticed an odd black stain, still visible against the thin dusting of snow, and barked my head off in warning. Jaehoon shoved Raina back as the metal squealed wildly and fell a good foot down the cliff face. Jaehoon clawed for safety, but his own paws scrabbled helplessly against the glassy ice coating the grating. There came another loud
wrench
as the bolts snapped off the wall, and then Jaehoon fell off the edge.

“Juin-nim!” I leaped helplessly toward the gap. No, no, no, this couldn’t be happening. We weren’t that high up.

I watched as the great gray wolf smacked his head against a protruding rock. Slid down the snow cushioning the gulch. Tumbled to the very bottom.

But then I saw him stir. I saw the muscles in his neck straining to lift his head. Enough to see them coming.

“Oh, God,” Raina whispered.

“No!” I lost my head and began to howl madly. The Dark Dogs were on his body in seconds. The clouds swept over the drop-off again, and now it was Kaelan’s turn to pull me back, urgent barks warning me of danger from the sky.

Crispin came swooping down with a horrible grin twisting his pudgy face. A man-sized-long spear rested in his hands.

“He did this!” I barked, eyes snapping to the black stain. It had left streaks down the wall. Vampyre blood. Of course. Why hadn’t we Weres picked up on it?

“Then we don’t want to mess with someone who can rot things from the inside out!” Kaelan’s shoulder bumped me. “Citlalli! Think of your sister!”

That snapped me back to reality. I made the leap across the broken bridge. My stomach twisted horribly for a second, but then I thudded on the other side. I barked at Raina.

She couldn’t jump nearly as far, but Wolf’s jaws snapped out, catching her by the back of her jacket. I hauled her over the edge. We both looked up to see Crispin throwing his spear at us.

Up came Raina’s hands, and an icy draft of wind blew up from the chasm, pinning the spear directly above our heads. Crispin spluttered in the air quite rightfully with shock; Kaelan made the jump.

“GO!” We ran helter-skelter for the shelter of sparse trees beckoning up ahead, heedless of the ice. Pulling ourselves up on stunted spruce trees and barren pines, we at some point realized there was no higher place to go. Wind blasted up from deep pockets, rising and crashing over the mountain ridge bone like an Artic sea. Blustery clouds tore past, sucked into the luminous eye boring down on us from the height of the sky: the Moon.

We huddled beneath a lone rock. Raina rubbed her gloves together while I licked her face; yes, no one likes wet and sticky dog breath, but it kept her warm. Kaelan wrapped around her, tighter than a scarf. The lotus lantern burned dimly between us, our sole source of light.

Something heavy thudded on the outcrop above. Two pairs of eyes met mine: Kaelan’s alert, and Raina’s tired. I got up and ventured outside without a word.

I nearly didn’t pick him out of the darkness, what with his wings being as black as the night. He stood with his back toward me, gazing up at the moon as if it were the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Then the Prince of Sorrow turned and actually smiled at me.

“You did it, mongrel,” he praised, his eyes silvery sapphire oceans. “She’s very angry. I can feel it.” He turned again to throw his arms open to the wind, daring it to blow him away.

I bared my teeth against the cold. “We brought the last soul, Khyber.”

The vampyre prince nodded. “Bring it here, then.”

I padded toward him, suddenly wary, and making sure not to glance over my shoulder and give my pack mates’ position away. I joined Khyber at his camp on the peak. Six ice-encrusted lotus lanterns clattered loudly, half-buried in the snow. Duck Young’s soul beat against my body urgently, like a frightened heartbeat. I reluctantly parted with it.

Aaron’s. Donovan’s, thanks to my sister. Crispin’s. Aleksandr’s and Santiago’s. And the trapped souls of the long-dead Takakazu and Duck Young. We had them all.

Khyber did nothing. We sat side-by-side, as if waged in some mad polar plunge contest to see who could survive the bitter night the longest. I lost. Khyber felt nothing, didn’t bat an eye at the icicles caking his lashes—although he did seem slower. Less fluid. His jet-black wings drooped, blown ragged by the winds. I felt heartened.

“Well?” I growled. “The night isn’t getting any warmer.”

Instead of doing something useful, he asked me: “Do you know why we climb this high on Lunar New Year, Citlalli?”

“You secretly desire to spend the rest of eternity as an ice sculpture?”

“It’s the closest we come to the moon’s power.” Khyber drew in a deep breath, and his wings beat more fiercely.

“So you’ve reached your badass potential?” I asked eagerly. “You’re strong enough to destroy the souls now?”

Khyber cocked his head toward the lone outcrop, as if he could hear my sister’s teeth chattering. “I’m strong enough,” he said slowly, “to summon them.”

Strange whistles and bells tinkled in the air, and I saw the ghostly procession from the north crest the ridge. The ghosts carried the brides-to-be within golden litters. They had been dressed from head to toe in white gauze stitched with a lotus flower pattern, like some eerie imitation of a wedding dress. These were the girls intended to wed the vampyre princes tonight. I recognized Raina’s frenemy, Natalya. The Italian beauty must have wormed her way into another vampyre prince’s heart even as the clock ticked down, fighting to the very last like a true survivor. They were, as my sister had said, too few.

It appeared that in a vampyric wedding ceremony, it would be the groom who arrived last. I shuddered to think where the husbands-to-be were.