Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3) (35 page)

I blinked rapidly, the mention of the familiar brown werewolf throbbing like an old wound in my heart. However, Khyber was the last person I wanted to discuss my love life with.

“Yeah, you like helpless maidens who mindlessly worship you, not the big, bad wolf who comes along and exposes you for the false shepherd you are. And Raina,” I added guiltily, “but she’s got half of Korea wishing she was theirs.”

Khyber folded his arms at my summation of his ‘many romances’ and made a noise that sounded between a chuckle and a snarl. “So, you would rather die than trust a vampyre.”

Wolf barked our consensus. Mine and Its’, anyway. Demon sulked and blew raspberries.

Khyber’s stormy eyes crackled with anger. My vision blurred as he marched toward me.

“I have left you to die numerous times before, Alvarez, and you always seem to survive by some miracle. Tonight, I am your miracle. I will save you, whether you wish it or not.”

Blood pounded in my temples. The jungle rolled in iridescent green waves. I pitched forward, my hand landing in his.

***

The rain was the only thing thunderous enough to wake me. It pelted the ground like bullets, creating rivers where there had once been earth. I retreated further into the cave as branches whipped about, some wicked enough to take a person’s other eye out.

So this was the type of storm a royal imugi was capable of.

A single cry echoed amidst the mindless cruelty of the hurricane. I staggered to my feet by using a ledge to support myself. It looked like I’d been harbored in a forgotten shrine where golden Buddhas winked in and out of the shadows, and candles dripped wax into pools.

A man staggered into the clearing. Vampyre blood poured from his neck and stained his collar black. He clamped his wings tight to his sides in order not to get blown away.

“Khyber!” I stumbled out of my sanctuary to help him, still half-delirious. The vampyre prince gripped my arm. Our respective weights kept our feet firmly planted on the ground until we could reach the safety of the cavern.

Inside, Khyber pushed me away and ran a hand through his wet black hair.

“Stupid wolf. Now we’re both soaked.”

“I apologize. I should have let you get beheaded twice in one week,” I growled.

Khyber dabbed at his neck with a handkerchief, as if the wickedly deep wound were no more than a minor inconvenience.

“You don’t need blood, do you?” I asked warily.

“If I did, it wouldn’t be your tainted Were kind. A pig’s would be better. Here. Lie on your side.” Khyber reached into his bag and withdrew a trio of strange yellow honeycomb fruits. They smelled sharply acidic, and I cringed.

“Time to see how your stitches are coming along.” Khyber perched beside me and held up a knife. “Side, please.”

I held my ground. “You’ve been doing this for how long?”

“Three days and three nights.” Khyber gestured impatiently to my tattered sweatshirt. “And I much preferred it when you were unconscious.”

“In another lifetime, I’m sure you were beloved for your bedside manner.” I kept speaking to soothe myself as I lay back and tried to pretend that his hand slipping beneath my sweatshirt didn’t bother me. “Your patients probably knocked themselves out to escape your pleasant company.”

With one hand, he tugged down my shorts. His other hand ran up the ridges scarring my ribcage with such familiarity that I tensed up, suddenly wildly afraid.

“Don’t move or that could be arranged,” the vampyre prince said stoically. “Do you think this is any more pleasant for me?”

“Hey, at least it’s us warriors getting beaten up.” I attempted a laugh. “If it was Raina… I don’t know. Every night, I pray to God that she and the rest of the pack are safe. She’s been through enough.”

“And you haven’t?”

Before I knew it, Khyber touched my eye. My missing eye. The bed where it used to be. It freaked me out because he looked directly at what others avoided—but I supposed he was Mr. Death and all.

“Old Man Zhi got along perfectly well in Eve without either eye,” I snapped. “I’m just pissed because this hinders my ability to fight. You never realize how much you depend on something until it’s gone. You know?”

Khyber, as usual, wouldn’t tell me if anything I said ever resonated with him on a deeper level.

“I am glad Raina is safe,” he said instead, his breath frosting my abdomen as he checked the rudimentary threads holding my side together. “You are, too, you know. I will not let anything happen to my life partner.”

“I bet you wish it was anyone but me.”

Khyber placed a hand on either side of me and leaned in close, so his gray-blue eyes seemed to hang like suspended orbs in the darkness. “You…are…
infinitely
better than Maya. I spent a lot of time thinking about the last battle of the Were War. There were countless creatures present on the mountaintop that night, both human and nonhuman. Only you, I can honestly call a
partner
. Someone I can collaborate with. Someone I could entrust my soul to. And someone I
listened
to. A long time ago, you asked me to watch out for Raina the way I had once protected my sisters.”

I froze, my breathing uneven. I hadn’t thought that had registered. Khyber had been cloaked in icy anger and cruelty back then. He’d basically told me he’d make life hell for Raina because I’d singled her out.

“I dismissed you. But curiosity had planted its seed. I sought your younger sister out and found her suffering from the attention of my lust-driven brother. I knew full well what Raina was. But it was your plea that made me see beyond her face value as the Changeling Soul. You made me see her as someone’s family. Someone an older sibling would sacrifice herself for. And I was moved to intervene. I wanted to see for myself what made her worth fighting for.”

He spoke to my abdomen now as he checked the stitches with awkward quickness. “Don’t you see, Citlalli? I looked out for your sister because you asked me to. So? Can’t you trust me…to look after you?”

My head lolled back. That peaceful blankness of oblivion was back again. I saw Khyber’s otherworldly eyes hang over me, anxious.

“How can your eyes be the color of slate and water?” I asked.

“Because I disguised them with the power of the Dark Spirits.”

Still more lies. How could I trust him, then? I leaned into his shoulder anyhow and felt his withered feathers enfold me like a tattered blanket before I slipped under.

Chapter 42: Jungle Fury

~Citlalli~

A faint tickle touched my mind and then vanished. It returned in a deepening kiss of flames. I shoved Demon away impatiently. However, She came back, and Wolf was with Her. Wolf’s howls I couldn’t ignore.

Danger! Flee!

I hazily awoke and realized that the entire cavern had gone up in smoke. Through the entrance, I caught sight of a twin pair of green-tainted eyes wink at me.
Haetae.
These two were smaller lion-headed beasts the size of hounds. However, in their corrupted state they were the enemy all the same.

Sunlight cut through the hissing flames, and I realized it was day. The perfect time to smoke a vampyre from its nest.

Cursing that I’d winded up on a decidedly
not
deserted island with a vampyre prince for an ally, I toppled off the ledge and tripped over the bones of several small rodents. I grimaced. Clearly I’d enjoyed fine dining in my delirious state.

Khyber was huddled in the back of the cavern under his blanket of black feathers. I hesitantly brushed aside his jagged dark hair. The vampyre prince’s face was contorted and his eyes shut as he visited whatever safe place there was left for his kind in Eve.

Shaking him violently still succeeded in waking him up.

His cold fingers latched around my wrists, yanking me on top of him. Then Khyber’s nostrils flared as he smelled the smoke, and he released me to recoil in a crouch.

“How long until nightfall?” the exiled vampyre prince snarled.

I gapped at him. “I’ve been comatose! It could be next year for all I know!”

The vampyre prince’s eyes narrowed on the pair of haetae watching us burn to death with glee. Their grins faltered.

“This way,” Khyber said quietly. “A vampyre never chooses a nest without a back way out.”

We clambered down the slippery throat of the cavern and then made our way into greater darkness until the warning scent of smoke grew faint. Wolf’s pupil enlarged so I could make out the dripping ferns and puddles where strange blind koi fish circled. The number of Buddha statues multiplied. Their onyx eyes twinkled at me from between stalagmites.

“Old lava tubes run deep beneath this island,” Khyber murmured. “This is another sign that Halla San, the great extinct volcano on Jeju-do, is indeed close.”

“Do you think that’s where the others washed up?” I asked breathlessly and then paused to place my hand on my side as my stitches began to sting. Khyber immediately noticed, but I resolutely soldiered past him.

“Maybe,” was his informative reply.

“What
have
you been up to?” I asked, ducking beneath a stalactite. The tunnel was growing increasingly narrow, and my heart skipped a beat as the way ahead shrank to the size of a storm drain. “Besides leading haetae back to our hideout?”

Khyber’s cool breath gusted across the back of my neck, and I shut my eyes tight in an effort to escape the suffocating darkness. He didn’t
need
to breathe; he was a vampyre. However, apparently Khyber enjoyed making me cold.

“
Besides
fetching you water every five seconds and hunting for food,” the Prince of Sorrow growled, “I searched for a way up to the island’s peak. I believe our efforts should be spent destroying the source of the Emerald Veil. My brothers have imprisoned a legendary creature within the spire of this island, from which the mist emits.”

Una.
A dream from long ago brushed my mind—a charred black shell and the age-old rheumy eyes of a giant turtle.

I rubbed my arms. “Every five seconds, huh?”

Khyber jostled me as he brushed past. “You also made me bathe your forehead with aloe.”

“I don’t remember any of this.”

“For your sake, that had better be true.” Khyber threw an exasperated glance over his shoulder as he approached the rabbit hole tunnel. “What now, dog?”

I swallowed, glancing back the way we had come for any sign of fire. “Exactly that. I’m a wolf. We like wide, open spaces—not small, stabby crawlspaces.”

“This is the way out. Feel free to stay here and burn.” Shrugging, Khyber tucked in his wings and squeezed into the three-foot-high passage. He paused to give me a shred of sympathy: “I am a vampyre. My place is in the skies, where I can swoop down on my prey. Do not think this is any better for me.”

“Can I complain constantly at least?” I asked meekly.

I thought I caught a momentary smile flit across his face before Khyber squared his head forward. “Give me a head start so I can tune you out.”

The claustrophobic tunnel eventually widened out to a rainforest clearing. The corrupted haetae were waiting for us. I scented them amongst the cypress trees and gave Khyber a warning growl. The skies hovered on the verge of sunset. Khyber’s eyes deepened to dangerous dark blue as night’s welcoming shadows crept across the jungle. We remained crouched behind the boulders, giving no indication of our presence.

The smaller of the two haetae finally approached and sniffed the ground. It was met by a snarling, one-eyed girl with good aim.

The first rock whistled through its golden mane; the next two marred its pretty face. Both haetae turned tail and fled, but not before I landed a direct score on the larger one’s rump.

“And don’t come back!” I turned to Khyber and grinned, placing my hands on my hips.

The vampyre prince rolled his eyes. “Oh, they will be back. With friends.”

“Luckily you have me to protect you.”

The vampyre prince gave a brief smile, and it made his eyes dance like sunlight playing in the ocean.

He caught me staring and raised an eyebrow. I turned away in a huff. Hey, if I was going to be stuck fighting for my life on a cursed island, then my life “partner” had better have a sense of humor.

“What now?”

Khyber’s eyes glowed as the moon rose. “The haetae will be returning to their den to report to their little friends. Now,
we
hunt.”

***

The haetae led us through thickets of camellia bushes and bromeliads to the base of the volcanic spire. The stench of vampyre grew thick in the abandoned tombs we passed, making Wolf pace agitatedly in my head. Twice Khyber gestured to conceal ourselves when a scouting party from Santiago’s Red Company stalked past. The painted vampyres whistled cheerfully as they cleaned their rifles with their long, mottled tongues.

Khyber detoured from the haetaes’ trail and beckoned. I tailed him up along a cliff dense with bamboo trees. The high altitude relieved some of the vampyre stink. We crouched on the cliff’s lip, peering down at the vampyres’ mountain hideout.

A gigantic lava tube, the vent of some bygone eruption, lay beneath our overlook like a gapping mouth. We just had time to see the haetaes’ tails disappear inside. Moments later, the foreboding peal of a gong reverberated from deep within the volcanic fortress. It tolled twice more, but its warning was swiftly overrun by the whoops and hollers of the Red Company.

The crimson-painted vampyres spilled out between the cavern’s teeth like fire ants, shooting their pistols in the air and hefting long, blunt machetes over their shoulders. Several rode bareback on the formidable haetae. Even when corrupted, the great lion-dog guardians snapped at the vampyre soldiers’ boots.

“What are they after?” I wondered as the troops crashed through the tree line.

Khyber spared me a look of contempt. “Us.”

Demon hissed for them to do their worst, and Wolf clawed at my chest. I silenced them both with my overwhelming fear and allowed Khyber to slather more mud on my face.

Nearly an hour passed before Khyber gave me the nod to rise. He scooped up a handful of pebbles and scattered them over the cliff’s edge.