White Lies: (The Uruwashi Series #4) (10 page)

Wren nodded. “I tried to keep it as shallow as possible but you were in deep.

Tristan frowned, clutching at his aching left bicep. His jacket was soaked through with blood. Eh, maybe he’d have matching scars now.

“It was the best place I could think to cut you, my deepest apologies.”

Tristan was taken aback by Wren’s apparent, honest sincerity. “Thank you.”

Wren nodded his acceptance seconds before he shouldered Tristan so hard he knocked him off balance. Tristan fell back into the snow, landing on his left shoulder, which apparently was sore. He had to wait out the blinding pain and when he could see again, Wren was where he’d left him moments before. But he had a new friend by way of a red fox hanging from his extended arm.

“Seriously?” Tristan said to the fox. “You know you can’t really hurt him like that, right?”

The fox, Kyō he guessed by the scar around her middle, chattered at him but held onto Wren’s arm.

“Sorry, I don’t speak fox.”

Wren gave an annoyed huffed and a little shake, testing the rodent’s hold. “No, but I do,” he said with just a hint of sarcasm. Before Tristan could ask what he meant, Wren gave a good old fashioned vampire growl and grabbed the fox by the throat. She wouldn’t let go but that didn’t matter as Wren squeezed until bone broke.

The fox stopped thrashing and fell limp in his grip, finally dislodged from his arm. Wren’s smile set off Tristan’s alarms and he took a weary step back.

“Looks like I’ve a new hat to go with my boots.”

ASH crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. The snow was up to her calves and still falling. Her thoughts went to Tristan, hoping he was okay. She didn’t like him out on his own, but he was a big boy, he could handle himself. Something he’d proven more than once. Had she told him she was proud of him recently? She vowed to when she saw him next.

Yukihime passed behind Ash, stalking. Ash refused to turn. Instead she sighed and looked up, watching the snow as it drifted from the inky blackness that was the night sky. Ash always liked it here, the quiet, the way the earth felt in her core. Ash’s vampire self was deeply in tune with this place and she would miss it when they left for the States.

“Why are we here?”

Yukihime smiled over her shoulder, widening an arc around the younger vampire. “You haven’t guessed?”

Feeling Yukihime’s scrutiny like fingers exploring her body, Ash shut her eyes with a sigh. “You said you had something to show me. What is it, Yukihime?”

Silence followed and Ash opened her eyes. She’d felt Yukihime move in front of her and there’s where she found the Master standing, smiling darkly at her. It wasn’t a normal Yukihime smile and it made Ash a touch nervous.

“Fight with me.”

Ash flinched back at the implications Yukihime put into the simple statement. The words touched Ash’s soul and made her involuntarily take battle stance. “Excuse me?” she hissed out, forcing her body back to a relaxed pose even if she were wire tight.

“Just a friendly spar, my dear—Like the old days.”

Ash stared at Yukihime for a long time, body tense and at the ready. After a good consideration, she smiled, shaking her head. “This is not a fair fight.”

“Yare, yare! You are ever so right, my dear!” Yukihime motioned behind her and out of the snow came stumbling one of her servants.

Ash started, not having felt the boy anywhere nearby and wondered just how Yukihime had hidden him. Did the old vampire just show one of her secrets?

Yukihime’s smile was cunning when Ash met her eyes around the boy, now standing before the old vampire. “Feed from him and fill your seikonō. I want a real fight, a
good
fight.”

Ash’s smile slipped away. Did she know about Innokentiy? She must have, why else would she have asked Ash for such an aberrant display of her power?

She lifted her chin. Fine, she could show Yukihime a thing or two. “If I do this, I will not hold back. You may be my friend, but I am still very angry with you and wish to take that out on you. The vampire in me wants you dead. But the human in me seeks for compassion, even if that compassion leaves you mortally wounded.”

Yuki burst into laughter and hugged the boy before her. He barely moved, despite the long fangs pressed to his neck. He was hollow inside and it hurt Ash to see him like that, despite not knowing him. If she were more of a vampire, Ash would kill him right there.

“But you’re not,” Yuki chirped and gently pushed the boy forward. “You’re more human than any vampire I know. You seek mercy for those around you, but hate to pay the cost.” In the end, letting them suffer, as well as herself. It was a vicious cycle of need and regret.

Ash was shaking with emotion and when the boy shuffled up to her, she forced herself to calm. It’d been a very long time since she willingly bit another living thing for the purpose of feeding. Back in October, when Malik briefly took her for his own again, she fed off of two humans. Two humans died because she had no control over herself. And the worst part, while she took a little bit of their warmth for her own, most of their life was simply spilled out into the snow, wasted.

Before that, she’d tasted Haruka a few times, but never enough to warm her flesh, fill her belly. The shame she felt for feeding on the simple girl had her quitting before she ever really begun. And then, there was the faerie…

Remembering the hot tonic of fae blood sliding down her throat, Ash’s mouth watered. It was a gluttonous thing, draining Sebastian slowly the way she had. It was gluttonous and cruel. But, by the Goddess, it was glorious. Sure, most of the energy went to healing her body so that she had little to no seikonō to draw upon, but just the act of feeding again, and so often…

“Master?” the boy whispered, blinking up at her with huge green eyes.

Ash flinched at his voice and the sudden realization of his familiarity. Oh Goddess, he was another of Sebastian’s siblings. Just how many of this family did Yukihime own?

Too many.

Filled with a sudden rage, she grabbed the boy and with little restraint, bore her teeth into his neck. The poor little bird, he didn’t even flinch despite her ferocity. Her teeth slipped out of his flesh as quickly as they’d torn into it and the blood came rushing across her tongue in a torrent of heat.

His life poured into her with a rush of emotions and experiences. And she relaxed, basking in the peace of his existence. He was a simple-minded boy, not well in the head and yet okay with his life. He reminded her of Haruka, broken, yet happy—
ignorantly
happy.

Sacha
. His name was Sacha. But that was about all the boy knew of himself. The concept of brothers just didn’t compute in his brain. Instead, he preferred his solitude, playing video games, sleeping and eating. The occasional partner found their way to his bed, but he still rather play his video games. His only duty in his simple life was to feed vampires. It was a sad fate, but made the boy happy. Happiness was what mattered the most.

It was Yukihime’s laughter that made Ash bite into the boy again for another deep swallow and she looked up to stare angry eyes at her “friend”.

“Always the emotional one, ne, Asta-chan? One of these days you will learn to be a proper vampire and then, then you can call me friend.
Wakarmashita
?”

The rage boiled over and Ash pushed the boy aside, leaping over him with a great cry. Ash’s first instinct had her using her bare hands and when that first punch landed right on Yukihime’s cheek, she felt a surge of petty triumph. But the second hit never made contact as a blast of snow took her right off her feet.

With an oomph she landed on her back two-hundred yards back. The breath was knocked from her and not having anticipated such a blow, she opted to stop breathing for the time being. She didn’t need to and it only hurt when she was forced to stop, so why bother at all?

“Oh my, don’t tell me you aren’t even going to be serious?”

Ash sat up, snow slipping down the back of her shirt in a cold dust.

“I don’t want to play if you won’t be serious.” Yuki’s childish expression went dark, aging her pubescent mien into something dark and foreboding. “I want you to try, really try to hurt me.”

Ash laughed. “Just remember, you started this.”

Yukihime took stance though she never intended to use her fists. No, she preferred to use the gifts given to her and called upon her seikonō, drinking deep of her inner power. Without any pretenses or hesitations, she called out her summons, umibozu.

Ash was stunned at the old vampire’s audacity for only a moment and then she was dodging the great water-serpent’s, now made of sparkling ice, attacks. It may have appeared as if the summons was driving her back, but Ash had other things in mind as she grabbed a glob of volatile concentrated seikonō energy and tossed it at a very specific spot on the ground in passing, allowing umibozu continue to drive her back.

A moment later, already another fifty-yards away, a rotted body burst from the earth in a spray of frozen terra and snow. The jikininki barely found its feet before it advanced. Yukihime gasped, stumbling back as the carcass of a recently dead moon bear galloped for her.

“A
bear
jikininki?” the vampire screeched. Ash never told the child vampire what Pandora had really been and the vampire was none the wiser. It made Ash equally nervous and proud. Now that she’d shown her secret, the pride flooded in and she wished to surprise Yukihime again.

The bear snapped strong jaws shut inches from Yukihime. Something that might have been fear showed on the older vampire’s face. And awe.

To Ash’s delight, Yukihime was being driven back at the will of her bear jikininki. A moment later Ash moved. She moved quicker than she’d ever pushed herself to do and descended upon Yukihime from more than five-hundred yards away. Behind her, the remains of Yukihime’s umibozu scattered in the snow from the blast of seikonō she threw at it.

“Asta!” Yukihime gasped as she was smacked down flat to her back in the snow. “You… you
flew
!”

Ash smiled triumphantly and drew her fist back. Yukihime gasped and pulled herself together, calling up a cloud of snow to stop the hit. When she’d caught Ash, she parted the snowy blanket to look her in the face, her own expression lit up with pure joy. “You have a fire in you today! You must come to—”

“Absolutely not,” Ash said calmly but firmly, interrupting the other vampire. “It was a miracle that I survived once in your bed, I will not test the fate of my luck again.”

Yukihime harrumphed, keen on her focus to keep Ash trapped. “Such a spoil-sport.”

“Think what you like, but I am no longer your puppet. I will be no one’s puppet ever again.” Not with the help of Innokentiy’s knowledge anyway.

Yukihime’s brows lifted in wonderment, her mouth falling into a surprised “oh” for a moment. “You’ve met an ancient. Who—”

Again, Ash interrupted her. Never once in her life had she heard a single thought from the older vampire, and not once did she
really
wish to. She was just that good at understanding the young woman’s mind. Sadly… “Who it was does not matter. What the ancient taught me is irrelevant. And no, I will not teach you a thing I learned from said ancient either.”

Yukihime tisked, a sneer slowly slipping in. “Such selfishness cannot be forgiven, my dear. It’s unkind and unmoral to not share such precious secrets. By the gods, you flew! That had always been fable.”

Ash laughed and flung her hand out in front of her. In a flash, Yukihime’s seikonō-built snow shield evaporated. The older vampire was too stunned to respond. “You, of anyone, speak of selfishness?” Ash scoffed and gave Yuki a little shove, lifting herself up. “I owe you nothing.”

“I saved your life!” Yuki hissed as she sat up. “Do you forget that? I was the one who saved you from killing yourself.”

Standing over the smaller vampire, arms crossed over her chest, Ash only glared. For the first time in—ever, she wasn’t afraid of Yukihime or anything she could do to her. Perhaps it was the immense knowledge she held now that gave her a false confidence or perhaps it was that she was finally seeing Yukihime for what she really was—a sad, lonely child, afraid of being left out and alone.

But the ancient vampire was right about one thing, she did save Ash’s life. No, more appropriately, she saved Asta’s life. But Asta was gone now, a persona Ash knew she never could, or wanted to for that matter, be again. And while Ash was grateful for her second chance, all of the wrong Yukihime had wrought since had paid for Ash’s debt of gratitude and then some. Yukihime, as far as Ash was concerned, was in the red.

“I think, after the hell you put me through following that tiny moment, we are even.”

“
Even
?” Yuki spit, jumping to her feet and tearing her kimono in the process. “How—
Even
!” Yukihime went off on a tangent in Japanese, most of it incomprehensible in her rage.

Ash sighed to herself and crossed her arms over her chest. She should have guessed a child like her would have a tantrum, just not so loudly. She wondered how long she’d have to wait for the vampire to calm down.

There was movement behind her and Ash looked back at the faerie and smiled. “Sacha?”

The boy nodded, glancing at the half-decomposed bear with interest. He wanted to pet it, but was confused by its lack of hair.

“Your brother is Simon, yes?”

The boy scratched at his hair, still in its natural red state and a curly mess. “Yeah,” he drawled. “But… I don’t really get that. Brothers? What’s that even mean?”

She glanced at Yukihime, still yelling and now making small craters in the field. What a way to let off steam.

“Do you like staying with Yukihime?”

The boy shrugged, never making eye contact as he looked everywhere but Ash’s face. “I don’t dislike it.”

She nodded. “Would you like to continue staying with her, or would you come with me?”

Yukihime stopped mid-tantrum and turned to watch, waiting to hear the boy’s answer.

Sacha, twiddling his hair around his finger, didn’t notice as his attention fixed on the bear again. “I don’t know, I guess… My last Master, he wasn’t so nice. He didn’t let me eat what I wanted or play games.” He shrugged again. “She lets me do what I want, so I don’t mind staying with her.”

Yukihime looked smug at her servant’s answer.

“What if you were offered all of that, but you didn’t have to feed anyone your blood?” The fact that her mouth still tasted of his life, wasn’t forgotten. She was grateful for that gift and would see that he was rewarded.