Shiro shot out from between the dog’s front legs and leaped at the underside of its jaw. The inugami’s head snapped down, teeth reaching for the kitsune.
Emi flung the shimenawa out. The loop flew over the dog’s head as it lunged. She yanked on her end of the rope, pulling it tight around the dog’s neck.
“Shukusei no tama!” she screamed.
Her newly replenished ki surged through her. The shimenawa and ofuda lit bright white with power. The inugami howled as a swirling wind rushed off its body. The shimenawa glowed even brighter and with a final agonized wail, the inugami collapsed.
Blue filled Emi’s vision—a swirl of sapphire with a white mask. Ameonna’s arm swung back and she struck Emi across the face. The world spun and she crashed onto the ground, scraping her arms and legs. A hand grabbed her hair, tearing it out of its bun as she was dragged back to her feet.
“How dare you interfere, pathetic human worm,” Ameonna hissed. “I will—”
She dropped Emi, letting her collapse onto the ground. The woman spun around. Behind her, Shiro—back in his humanoid form—stood over the inugami, one foot planted on the beast’s neck. He yanked his blade out of the dog as the glow around the shimenawa faded.
“Sune! My sweet Sunekosuri!” Ameonna cried, rushing toward her servant.
She waved her fan, sending a wild blast of wind at Shiro. He sprang clear as she reached for the inugami. Shiro circled the body and trotted to Emi. She sat up shakily, surprised to see blood smeared across her scraped palms. Her knees were equally bloody.
She had nothing on Shiro though. Blood running from his punctured arm coated his right hand and a steady trickle dripped from the cut in his left palm. The slice on his shoulder had stained his kosode bright crimson. His hakama was torn over the side of his left thigh and the material was wet with more blood.
“Shiro,” she whispered, horrified.
Ameonna stroked the inugami’s muzzle gently, then straightened to face Emi and Shiro. As she walked toward them with measured steps, the wind swirled around her feet.
“You killed my pet.” Her voice had gone husky with cold fury. “You will suffer the just punishment for his death.”
Shiro’s hand tightened on the hilt of his remaining short sword. “Get up, Emi.”
Trembling, she gathered her feet under her to stand beside him—not that she thought it would do any good.
Ameonna’s lips turned up in a tight smirk and she lifted her folding fan toward her opposite shoulder. The wind swirling around her feet went still as the fan glowed. She slashed the fan at a downward angle across her body.
Wind and water formed a rippling blade of silver power. It blasted toward them so fast that neither she nor Shiro had a chance to react. Whipping through the air as fast as a lightning bolt, it struck Shiro straight on.
Blood sprayed over the courtyard stones. He hit the ground on his back beside her, crimson rivulets gushing from the deep gouge that ran from his left shoulder to his right hip.
Her heart stopped in her chest as she stared, still crouched in preparation to rise so she could stand beside him. But now he was on the ground, his blood running across the stones. He was entirely motionless, his head turned away from her, white hair splayed across his face. Not even the faint movement of his chest, the rise and fall of breath, disturbed his utter stillness. Frozen in place, her body turned to stone, she didn’t move, didn’t even breathe.
He gasped. The sudden inhalation slipped out of him with an audible shudder and he turned his head, ruby eyes slitted and his face taut. He bared his teeth at Ameonna. Emi reached a trembling hand toward him but he was already pushing himself up. Somehow, impossibly, he struggled to his feet, staggering for balance in a puddle of his own blood.
Ameonna smiled icily. “Begging for more punishment, kitsune?”
Emi’s pulse pounded hard in her ears, deafening her. He was standing. How was he standing with those injuries? How was he preparing to continue the fight when he could barely hold his sword? Who had that kind of will, that drive to fight no matter what?
Ameonna’s smile widened and she once again raised her fan.
For Emi, the world stilled, crystalizing as she realized what she needed to do—what she should have done the moment the barrier had trapped them. As power gathered around Ameonna, Emi lunged forward and grabbed Shiro’s right forearm. With her other hand, she took hold of the bottom loop of the onenju around his wrist and pulled it down.
Power rushed out of the beads and careened up her arm. For a terrifying instant, the beads clung to him, refusing to budge. Heat scorched her fingers and the ki of the curse raced up the veins in her arm like molten lead. Jaw clenched, she dug her fingers into his arm and ripped the loop of beads down over his hand.
The release of power exploded in her face. She was thrown backward with so much force that she was airborne, the buildings and trees spinning past her.
Then she hit the ground and her head struck the paving stones. Agony burst through her skull and she remembered nothing more.
Chapter 18
Emi’s eyes flew open. Memories came rushing back and panic flooded through her. Ameonna’s wind-and-water blade slashing Shiro open and his blood spilling everywhere even as he stood to fight again. And then she’d pulled another loop of the onenju off him, undoing the second binding on his power. Had it been enough or had it been too late?
She found the ground with her hands and shoved herself into a sitting position—a little too fast. The shrine courtyard spun around her in a blur of red flames.
Her vision steadied—but the fire didn’t go away. Small patches of flame burned all across the courtyard as though someone had splashed gasoline everywhere and set it afire. Puddles of water were interspersed between the flames; they reflected the flickering light and gave the illusion that the whole courtyard was burning.
Shiro stood in the center of it all, and at his feet was Ameonna’s body.
Rippling fire coated his two swords and ran up his arms in thin, swirling lines of flame that drew strange, constantly shifting patterns. Half a dozen floating orbs of fire, the flames white-hot in the center before shifting to blue and finally red-orange at the edges, formed a half circle around his back, hovering two feet away from him at elbow height. Behind him, formed entirely of ghostly white-blue flames, were three fox tails.
He stood motionless over the fallen body of his opponent, the only movement coming from the dancing flames and the slow lashing of his three phantom tails.
Emi pushed herself to her feet and pressed a hand to the throbbing spot above her right ear. Her hand came away coated in blood. Her shoes scuffed against the stones as she started forward and Shiro’s ear flicked toward her. He turned, the half circle of hovering orbs moving with him.
Red markings glowed on his cheeks and a strange symbol blazed in the center of his forehead. His red eyes also glowed faintly with inner power. He stared at her blankly, no sign of recognition in his empty expression. The two remaining loops of the onenju shone on his arm, wrapped as tightly as they’d been before she removed a loop.
She stopped, a half-dozen paces still separating them. The frantic thudding of her heart filled her ears as she met his vacant crimson stare.
“Don’t forget me, Shiro,” she said hoarsely. “You’re not allowed to forget me.”
He blinked slowly and something shifted in his gaze. His lips curved in his familiar crooked smile.
“You’ll forget me someday, little miko.” His voice was even hoarser than hers, rough and coated in a hint of an animal growl.
“I’ll never forget you,” she told him. “I’ll remember you to my last day.”
“Do you promise?”
Her heart gave an odd little flutter. “Yes, I promise.”
With a nod, he lifted his hands—two more symbols glowed red on the backs of his hands—and sent flames cascading over his swords. The blades vanished. He dropped his hands to his sides as the swirling fire designs on
his arms flickered out.
She had a moment’s warning as he swayed on his feet.
Lunging across the distance between them, she grabbed him as he tipped forward. He sagged against her and hot blood from the wound on his chest soaked the front of her blouse. She struggled to hold him as his tails of flames faded and the orbs behind him died away. Straining from the effort of supporting him, she lowered him to the ground. He slumped onto his back, breathing fast and his eyes scrunched shut. The markings on his face lost their inner glow, diminishing to simple red lines on his skin.
“Shiro,” she gasped. Her hands hovered over the terrible wound across his chest. She looked around wildly as though help would appear if she searched for it. The barrier around the shrine shimmered faintly. “Shiro, how do we get out of the barrier?”
He didn’t answer, his face contorted with pain. Desperation choked her. He was bleeding too much. Could he survive such terrible wounds?
The glow of Ameonna’s barrier wavered. Behind them, Ameonna’s body gave an odd twitch before going limp and lifeless. With one last ripple, the yokai’s barrier disappeared.
“Emi!”
Katsuo charged out of the darkness from beyond the courtyard, sword drawn. Fury and fear distorted his features as he bore down on her—and the helpless yokai in front of her. His sword glowed with ki as he lifted it for a lethal strike.
Without thinking, she threw herself on top of Shiro, protecting him with her body. “Stop, Katsuo! He saved me!”
“Move, Emi!”
“He’s the kitsune!” she yelled. “Calm down and listen to me! He is not the enemy!”
Katsuo lowered his sword halfway, his gaze flashing from her and Shiro to the two dead yokai in the courtyard. The inugami’s body had begun to soften like melting ice, the edges of its shape oddly blurry. She cautiously sat up, ready to throw herself over Shiro again as his shield.
Katsuo gasped and dropped his sword, reaching for her across the prone kitsune. “Emi, you’re covered in blood—”
She glanced at her blouse drenched in a crimson stain. “It’s not mine. It’s his. Give me your haori.”
Obediently, he shrugged it off and handed it to her. She wadded it against Shiro’s chest but there was no way to stop the bleeding. Panic made her dizzy. He was dying right in front of her and there was nothing she could do. What was she supposed to do?
“This is the kitsune?” Katsuo muttered. “Is he actually alive?”
She jumped like he’d struck her, terrified that Shiro might already be dead. She held her fingers over his lips until she felt his shallow breath on her skin.
“Emi, what happened? Where did you—”
“Caw!”
She twisted violently as a crow swept down and landed on the paving stones a few feet away.
“Yumei!” she gasped, half reaching for the bird out of desperation. “Shiro needs help! He’s dying!”
“The crow is called Yumei?” Katsuo asked suspiciously.
She stared at the crow, silently begging for some kind of confirmation. Yumei would come, wouldn’t he? He had helped Shiro before. The crow cocked its head and rustled its wings, then looked up.
She and Katsuo turned their faces to the sky in unison.
The huge black shadow of a bird swept into the courtyard. The enormous raven dove, black and red light rippling over it, and flared its wings as it neared the ground. Its form shimmered and morphed. Yumei’s feet hit the ground at the same moment he finished shifting. The air all around them went cold as his ki spread like icy, invisible tendrils that tasted of rage.
Katsuo shot to his feet, scrambling for his sword.
“Don’t, Katsuo,” she snapped, not rising. “He’s an ally.”
“I am no ally of yours,” Yumei hissed as he strode toward her. “What have you done?”
She managed not to recoil from him. “A yokai called Ameonna and her inugami ambushed us.”
Katsuo backed away from Yumei, his knuckles white around the hilt of his sword. He shifted to stand protectively behind Emi, wisely keeping the point of his weapon aimed at the ground.
Yumei knelt beside Shiro and tossed the blood-drenched haori aside to survey the kitsune’s wounds. Shiro’s breath was fast and shallow, and at some point, his face had gone slack from lost consciousness. If not for the barely perceptible rise and fall of his chest, he would have been indistinguishable from a corpse.
Emi opened her mouth to ask if he would make it, when the Tengu turned to her. His eyes glowed, his pupils so small they were mere specs in the pools of black-rimmed silver. He grabbed her wrist, pulled it across Shiro’s prone form, and used one talon to slice her wrist open.
She gasped and jerked her arm in his iron grip. Katsuo lunged over her, his sword snapping up. Yumei’s gaze flicked to him. A black shadow formed from nothing and slammed into Katsuo’s chest, hurling him off his feet. He hit the ground and tumbled away from them.
“Katsuo!”
She turned, trying to pull free, but Yumei’s grip tightened, his talons puncturing her arm. With his other hand, he pushed Shiro’s torn kosode aside to uncover his chest, then he held her wrist over the spot. With wide eyes, she watched her blood dribble onto Shiro’s skin. When a small puddle had formed, Yumei used one finger to draw a strange, complex symbol in the blood while still holding her wrist prisoner in his other hand.
Symbol drawn, he pushed her palm into the warm blood running from Shiro’s wound.
She cringed. “What are you doing?”
He turned her blood-smeared palm up and drew another symbol across it.
“You,” he intoned, “are helping me save the kitsune’s life. Unless you object?”
“I—no, I’ll help. What do I have to do?”
Yumei released her arm and cut his own wrist. “You will be the conduit through which I give him the ki he needs to survive.”
He took her other hand and pushed it into the dark blood running down his arm. She flinched again and swallowed hard.
“Can’t—can’t you do it the same way he did for me?”
“No. In this condition, direct exposure to my ki will kill him.” He finished drawing another bloody rune across her other palm. “You will be both bridge and shield.”
He wiped his hand in the blood running from her wrist and drew a fourth matching symbol across his own palm. She watched as he took her hand with his blood on it and entwined their fingers, pressing the symbols tightly together.
“But Yumei,” she whispered, “what will your ki do to me?”
His eyes rose to hers, glowing with his gathering power as his other hand closed around her opposite wrist in a firm grip.
“Try not to die,” he said. Then he pushed her hand down on the blood rune on Shiro’s chest.
Heat flared beneath her palms and a strange magic licked at her skin, tasting her. An instant later, burning power surged into her arm from Yumei’s hand—and then her entire world turned to agony. A maelstrom of fire whipped through her, seizing her lungs, blinding her eyes. The Tengu’s power tore her apart as it cleaved a path through her body and rushed out again.
It stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
She collapsed beside Shiro, muscles trembling, senses sluggishly returning. Her chest ached and fire settled into the kamigakari mark on her chest.
Katsuo grabbed her, dragging her away from the two yokai. “Emi? Emi, are you okay?”
Lifting her too-heavy head, she squinted at Yumei as he leaned over Shiro. She felt like she’d been flayed alive and cooked on an open flame. Had it worked? Had Yumei given Shiro the ki he needed to survive his wounds?
Katsuo got a better grip on her, raising her mostly off the ground as he pulled her farther from them. Her vision blurred, distorting her view of Yumei picking Shiro up. The Tengu’s form was rippling and dancing almost as though black wings were rising off his human back. Despite her effort, her eyes slid closed as agony and fatigue rolled over her, sucking her down into oblivion.
> Emi’s eyes slowly opened. Her bedroom ceiling met her blurry stare.
Her body ached and her head throbbed terribly. She touched her forehead, discovering a bandage wrapped around her head. Bandages covered the heels of her hands and white gauze formed a thick pad around her wrist where Yumei had cut her.
She gazed dully at the bandage, remembering the slicing pain of his talon across her skin, her blood pooling on Shiro’s chest, and the strange symbol Yumei had drawn in it. Her blood and Shiro’s had mixed upon one hand, her blood and Yumei’s upon the other. Such strange magic. But it had worked, hadn’t it? Shiro had survived, hadn’t he?
Again she saw Shiro standing over his fallen opponent, tails of white-blue fire behind him, symbols glowing on his face and the backs of his hands. That image of him was burned into her mind, and she would never forget it. He had been magnificent.
Do you promise?
She squeezed her eyes shut at the memory. Her weak, aching muscles protested as she sat up. Sunlight streamed through her window, and judging by the angle, it was almost noon. She touched the bandages on her arm, her thoughts consumed with worry for Shiro.
Footsteps clacked on the wood floor in the hall, growing louder. Emi nervously sat up. She’d run away from the shrine in the middle of the previous afternoon, and on her return, two terrifying yokai had attacked her—not to mention her two yokai “allies.” Fujimoto was no doubt furious with her.
The footsteps stopped.
“I have the lady’s lunch,” Nanako sneered from the other side of the door.
Emi opened her mouth to respond but another voice answered first.
“The kamigakari is still sleeping,” Katsuo answered coldly.
Emi blinked. Why was he outside her door? How long had he been there?
“The lady has slept enough.”
“She’s injured.”
“She has a few scratches.” Nanako’s sneering tone grew more pronounced. “She owes everyone an explanation for what she did—and what she brought upon us.”
“She doesn’t owe you anything,” Katsuo snapped. “You’re not in charge of Emi or this shrine, Nanako.”