Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3) (2 page)

Donovan:
Maya’s third son, originally from France. He tried to make me his vampyre bride. It is difficult to speak of him. He is seductive and cruel.

Aaron, Santiago, and Aleksandr:
the other surviving vampyre princes of Maya’s brood. They hail from Israel, Spain, and Russia respectively.

Fred:
a tricky nine-tailed fox. He fell in love with Una and tried to eat Miguel’s liver to become human for her. Una sacrificed herself so my brother could escape.

“Xec”:
a terrifying Dark Spirit who cursed Citlalli to a life bond with Khyber. Little is known about its true motives.

Prologue

~The Vampyre Princes~

The air had long frozen in their lungs and crusted over their wings before they came upon it: Mount Baekdu, one of the three sacred peaks of Korea, jutted up to brush the belly of the heavens. It was a dark shield on the border of North Korea and China warding off the dawn as of yet. Its caldera cupped the deep sapphire Heaven Lake, which had begun to thaw as of late spring.

The vampyre princes Donovan and Aaron dropped onto the rugged meadow, startling a herd of roe deer. Donovan immediately attacked a slower pregnant doe, his fangs sinking into her heaving neck. The doe panicked when she realized she couldn’t shake the undead monster off. She tripped and fell. Donovan held her head almost tenderly until he was finished draining her. The scent of warm, pungent blood lingered in the air.

Donovan rose. Blood stained his new wings made of human skin. His vacant eyes, two shards of turquoise, reflected Heaven Lake and his frowning older brother.

“What? I was hungry. When was the last time you flew from Seoul to the tallest mountain on the Korean peninsula in one night?”

“Constantly, to keep up my strength.” Aaron extended his royal violet wings and beat them twice, buffeting Donovan over his dead prey.

His younger brother scowled. “My original white wings would not have tired. Damn that werewolf Rafael for destroying them. Damn our brother Santiago for calling a summit on an actual summit.”

“Indeed,” Aaron said, eyeing the black veins pulsating within the tissue of Donovan’s unnatural fleshy wings. “Skin tears easily. We must be cautious. The Mother is gone. The spirit world of Eve is our enemy now that the White Tiger has returned to rule. And with our souls destroyed by the traitorous Prince of Sorrow, our next death…shall be our last.”

“I always told you we couldn’t trust Khyber the Crow,” Donovan sneered. “If that ugly coward wanted to die so badly, then I would have helped! Yet he turned to dear Raina and her wolf bitch sister
Citlalli
instead… How is it, dear brother, that Khyber is the only one still tethered to immortality? The Dark Spirits could have cursed him with anything after he double-crossed them! Why another life bond with that infuriating dog slut?”

“Why indeed,
mis hermanos
?” a new voice mocked. They looked up to see a man with eyes as gray as gunmetal, a golden-brown complexion, and dark facial hair standing on the rock above. He had a proud stance and still carried his three-foot-long Toledo sword from the days when he’d been a Spanish conquistador in the early sixteenth century. His golden wings snapped up around his head like the wrath of the sun, and his gleaming white teeth were ever-so-slightly sharpened. A tote bag rested on his shoulder.

Donovan remembered when they had first found Santiago. Their mother, the great Vampyre Queen Maya, had been drawn to the Americas by promises of magic and immortality. She’d hated being dependent on the Dark Spirits and had sought her own power. Her eldest three sons had come with her.

Khyber, Aaron, and he had functioned like a single entity back then—a vengeful hand of God. Donovan had never thought he’d fight alongside a Korean and a Jew, but Maya had shown them that nationality didn’t matter after death (and for the most part, they believed her). Graceful and thorough, the brothers had butchered, bathed, and drank from the rich rivers of blood flowing down the Yucatán during the Spanish conquests. They had followed the blood rivers up to their source, the great Aztec city of Tenochtitlán.

The Mother had let them play longer than necessary in order to pursue her depraved obsession with youth and immortality. Soon it came time to pay the Dark Spirits for their undead lives. They had rounded up a herd of Aztec boys studying to be healers and locked them in a pen. However, whilst preparing for the sacrificial ritual, a disturbance had arisen from the captives’ enclosure. Donovan and his brothers had rushed back to find a single conquistador smiling broadly as he cut down the pleading boys.

Startled, Khyber had asked the man why he’d slaughtered the defenseless captives.

“These people are a weed growing rampant on the King of Castile’s land,” Santiago had replied, “and without their children, they will not grow back.”

Impressed by the man’s brutality, they had presented him to Maya. She had him killed and marked his corpse with the brand of the Dark Spirits. Santiago rose three days later with golden wings and a new allegiance.

“Where is Aleksandr?” Aaron asked Santiago about their last surviving brother. There had been eight vampyre princes once. Takakazu of Japan and Duck Young of Korea were dead at the teeth of the Seoul werewolf pack. Crispin of America had died fighting Khyber after their eldest brother had betrayed them all. However, Donovan had received reports that the hell-bent-on-revenge werewolf, Rafael, had struck the killing blow. He would have to make that mangy dog a priority kill. His death would be all the sweeter since Citlalli Alvarez, the one-eyed werewolf responsible for Queen Maya’s death—for taking Raina away—was rumored to care for him.

Donovan grinned, displaying crimson-stained fangs. He could work with that.

“Alek builds his armies in Russia,” Santiago replied, landing before them with a graceful leap. “Leave the Frost King be; he works best alone. And we shall need his legions of
rusalki
for what is to come.”

Aaron looked at him curiously. “What are you up to, Santiago? Who have you brought us here to meet?”

“The Were Alliance may have overthrown the Mother from Eve, but they have also suffered a crippling blow. On the brink of their new golden age, they will be at their most vulnerable,” Santiago said. His face was relaxed and patient, and his eyes were sharp with cunning. Santiago often bragged about his tutelage under Hernán Cortés: He knew when to fight in force and when to turn the enemy against each other. “If the shapeshifters have joined forces, then we must unite ours. The Mother’s mistake was to work
against
the Dark Spirits, not
with
them.”

Aaron frowned. “You are not the first vampyre prince to have attempted such. The Dark Spirits cannot be controlled. Most are unpredictable ghosts of vengeance and chaos.”

Santiago waggled a finger. “Come now, brother. You followed the Yucatán down to the central Americas the same as I, the week of the seven-day solar eclipse. You know of the Elder Dark Spirits who are out there.”

Aaron sucked in his breath. “You speak of The Twelve.”

“I speak of our mutual
purpose
.” Santiago opened the bag and dumped out something heavy: a body. It looked to be a young Korean girl who’d starved to death. The lines on her face were relaxed as if she were sleeping. Santiago nodded in satisfaction and then drew an ugly character on her forehead. “She will do. It likes to pluck out the eyes.” Then he kicked her body into the lake.

Donovan’s eyes began to redden as to the east, a fierce orange sun flashed between peaks, as if angry to find its sacred valleys polluted by the undead. The sun’s fingers spread further, like the wings of a phoenix, until the entire skyline blazed brilliant pink.

“Well? Where is your mysterious little friend?” he demanded of Santiago. “Unless it thinks we’ll be more useful as pillars of ash, then it had better show itself.”

“I forgot the other summoning ingredient.” Santiago smiled wickedly at Donovan’s crimson-splattered face. “Fresh blood.” Then he shoved Donovan’s head into the glacial waters of Heaven Lake.

Donovan’s eyes and throat began to burn while his back buckled under the sun’s advance. He opened his mouth to roar his fury. Crimson blossoms undulated out of his skin and into the deeper reaches of the water.

Suddenly, the entire lake vanished. Donovan blinked, staring down the charred throat of an eerie caldera.

“A powerful Dark Spirit has made a dwelling here.” Aaron helped Donovan to his feet. “Look.”

A storm front had amassed to the north so quickly that the three vampyre princes stopped to watch. Rolling winds tumbled forward in unnatural silence. They took on the form of charging bulls, which chased the dawn’s light with their stampeding hooves and a swing of their great heads. The avenging sunrise was trampled flat. Velvety night returned to the peak of Baekdu, ringing with the hoot of an owl, and underneath—a slow, dry hiss, like a disturbed snake rattling beneath the leaves.

He was so intent on the skies, Donovan almost didn’t hear the slow scrape of something climbing out of the caldera. A head of sticky, matted black hair emerged first, followed by a pale torso. Then the Dark Spirit blurred and reappeared directly in front of them. Slowly, it extended a hand.

–Come–

Aaron froze at Donovan’s side. “Xec.”

“Surely not the first Dark Spirit who offered Queen Maya vampyrehood?” Donovan demanded as the wasting apparition swayed before them.

–I am It. Xecotcovach, the Face Gouger. Destroyer of the first humans-made-of-wood. I am the Bird who plucked out their eyes and swallowed them. Afterwards, my god had no use for me and cast me to the winds. Now I serve a new master–

“The Twelve.” Aaron’s grip hadn’t loosened from his broadsword.

–The humans disturb my masters’ sleep in the underworld with their insatiable ways. The time has come for them to be reduced to dust again. However, they are protected–

“There is a new Spring Dragon in the East,” Aaron agreed. “Raina Alvarez, daughter of the great Yong Mun Mu. She is the Changeling Soul.”

–The Alvarez sisters have indeed revealed themselves– Xec said –but they do not know who they are. They do not know
what
they are. Raina is
imugi
. She is not a dragon yet. I already have agents in place who will steer her to us. Indeed, she and her dragon siblings will prove most useful–

The three princes managed to gaze upon the Dark Spirit’s face. The Face Gouger had no eyes of its own, only two botched holes. Its black lips were spread to the nubs of its ears: a dead man’s grin full of awful promise.

***

~Khyber~

The dream bridge broke with a violent snap. Intended or not, I didn’t know. But anger pounded in my skull, and I almost tore the door free from my hideaway bedroom. How dare that demon bird befoul sacred Baekdu
San
.

The
jjimjilbang
was silent in the early hours of dawn. No one was awake in the bathhouse, save for a stooped
ajumma
mopping the halls. She started prattling about how I’d enjoyed my sleep, but I shut her up with one look. I stalked down the stairs to the baths where I could lose myself in the quiet hiss of the spa’s steam.

I knew what was coming. I, too, had been there the week of the seven-day solar eclipse so long ago. The conquistadors had ceased their bloodshed against the First Peoples for an instant, fearing they had awoken something more horrible than the ugliness in their hearts. They always looked above to “the heavens,” and never to the earth below.

Its name escaped my lips—a thing half-buried to hide the worst parts I couldn’t bear to remember:

“Xibalba.”

The Place of Fear.

Once I had marveled at my vampyric power, my ability to kill with a touch. Now I knew there were entities out there older and greater than the vampyres. The Twelve Mayan Lords of Death who ruled the underworld of Xibalba were the
primordial. We were
their
children. My death touch, my undead existence…all of my accursed “gifts” stemmed from
them
.

Long ago, the formidable Mayan Death Gods would grow angry every time the mortal world interrupted their slumber. Before they had been locked away by the Mayan Hero Twins, they had plotted to transform all of Eve into a realm of pain, humiliation, and despair to punish the living for waking them so that they, too, would have no rest. It was rumored that the eldest of the Death Lords desired to eat the sun itself, feast on the ensuing wave of global anguish, and then sleep in eternal silence.

Not a bad dream. It would mean the end of the world, but I had to break this damn life bond somehow. The old Khyber would have been fully behind my brothers’ plan, but now I knew it meant putting Raina in danger. If she truly was Mun Mu’s daughter, then she, a newborn
imugi
, couldn’t understand yet the duties that came along with being the Spring Dragon: bringing the rains to thaw winter’s chill, watering a thirsty earth during drought, and most importantly, balancing the power of the sacred pearl only a dragon was wise enough to wield: the
yeouiju
.

I knew that if the world were to survive, then we vampyres must be rebellious children who departed our parents’ path. As much as I despised Maya, at least she’d understood this.

But now I had just watched my remaining brothers shake hands with a demon bird out of hell: the messenger.

I hadn’t believed the old legends, but Xecotcovach seemed convinced of the Alvarez sisters’ identities—especially considering the circumstances of Maya’s fall in the last battle of the Were War. If the demon bird reported back to its masters, then their servants would be coming. And they would strike soon, before Raina, Citlalli, or any of the shapeshifters realized a new horror was stalking them.

Korea wasn’t ready for the Death Lords of Xibalba. Only a dragon was.

Part I: Imugi

Chapter 1: Unburied Secrets