Year of the Tiger (Changeling Sisters) (34 page)

Then I felt its lips press against my ear:

–Taeyang wished to be free. He won’t be. This is our curse upon him. If he cannot suffer endlessly in the life bond with Maya, then he will enter into it with someone else– Xec licked the inside of my ear, its tongue formless and cold.

–You–

I tried to escape, but it was everywhere.

–You know where to find us…if you want to make a deal of your own–

The hazy afternoon light returned slowly to the forest after the Dark Spirit departed.

I couldn’t stop shaking.

***

The candlelit doorway glowed softly before me, but I didn’t go through.

I knelt on the floor of the cabin. The warm winds had blown dead leaves through the open door in our absence, but I didn’t catch Rafael’s scent on them. So I waited.

I’d thought this entire thing would be over with Maya’s death, but it wasn’t. Fears. My life, tied to Khyber’s. I prayed this didn’t mean what I thought it did. The Dark Spirits were liars. They could curse a
deal-breaker
to a thousand years as a cuttlefish, if they desired, but they couldn’t hurt me. Right?
Right?

I couldn’t believe Khyber had risked growing tentacles.

Rafael appeared as if he’d been blown in by the winds. He plucked leaves from his hair and slammed the door shut behind. “Namkyu will be waiting for us to return,” he said, but then I covered the few steps between us and kissed him.

His arms automatically sprang up to enfold me, and I was relieved to feel him kiss me back, his jaw knocking into my chin in his haste to trap me against the wall. His brown hair tickled my forehead, and I laughed, running my fingers through it and urging him closer. His lips were rough, salty, and sad. His hand touched the gauze patch over my eye.

“It was her,” I said.

“She took your eye. You took her life.” He gave a half-laugh, staring out the window at the melting river. “I can’t believe the Queen Bitch is dead.”

I crossed my arms. “Do I look like a pirate?”

He stared at me. “You—you brought down Maya, Queen of Vampyres. She drowned this land in night for half a century. And you’re asking how you
look
?”

That was all I felt able to talk about without crumbling into a million pathetic pieces. I let Rafael approach and carefully lift the bandage, watched him drop it with shock at what he saw there.

“Citlalli, there’s nothing. It’s like you never had a right eye.”

I raised an eyebrow. “So how do I look?”

“Like one hell of a sexy pirate.” His dark eyes glinted mischievously, and then his mouth crushed mine. He shoved me up on the table, and I fought hard to keep up with his kisses. I ended up clinging to his neck, breathing in his windswept scent to calm my nerves, and relishing the heavy warmth of him, tight in my arms. Finally, that frightening hold of the Dark Spirit faded away.

Rafael pressed his forehead against mine, breathing harshly, and his fingers wandered down to the red fang necklace dangling around my neck. I felt quiet steal over his body, and his face grew lake-still.

I immediately began babbling excuses. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know what it meant when he gave it to me. I thought he only wanted me to keep it safe! I didn’t think—”

“He would die.” Rafael touched the necklace once more. “Don’t…apologize. Citlalli…this is great.”

That was the last response I expected. “Raf, your, your
maker
is dead.”

“Like so many others. I knew.” Rafael drew back, nodding to himself. “The air around me felt different. The moment it happened.

“Don’t pity me, Citlalli.” He gave that small laugh and took my hand. “Seu Jaehoon sunsaeng-nim was a good man fighting an ugly war. But he’s not the first soldier I’ve known to die. He won’t be the last. Not until we kill every last one of the bloodsuckers. Now with the Vampyre Queen slayer to lead us, this time
they’ll
be the ones running.” He grinned, eyes full of fire. “So. Who shall we track first? Khyber? Or Donovan? I understand, after what he might have done to your sister—”

“Wha-a— I—” Bile rose in my throat. I hadn’t even
thought
about that. I’d kept a trained eye on every moment of Raina’s capture, up until the point when Maya had taken her soul. Then everything was a black patch. Donovan better not have laid a hand on her.

He smiled again and kissed my knuckles, taking my silence for agreement. But when he tried to pull me to my feet, I clung to the floor.

“Rafael. I can’t.”

His irritated sigh gave it all away. “What now, Citlalli?”

“I’m tired.”

His dark eyes regarded me warily. I could feel myself drowning of guilt in them.

“Don’t you feel tired, too?”

He laughed. “Yeah. I almost died of hypothermia, remember?”

“Of keeping tallies and scorecards! Of hating someone so much that your life loses meaning! I have Raina back.” I scraped the hair from my face, my lips trembling. “I just, want, to be happy with that. Maya’s dead, Raf. The white tiger will set things right in Eve. Why do we need to prolong the war?”

Rafael said nothing, gripping the sides of the windowpane until small cobweb cracks ran up the frame. I knew he wouldn’t like what I had to say. But when he began to laugh, a sad, dying thing rubbed raw with frost, I grew scared.

“Raf—”

“That’s
great.
” He cut me off. “You got what you wanted. It doesn’t matter what the rest of us want. What we
need
.”

“You don’t
need
revenge. You have me—”

“Who does Kaelan have? Your sister was one of five girls to get out of that vampyre nest alive. She was lucky. Kaelan’s daughter sure as hell wasn’t. She died
saving
your sister. Who do Ae Cha’s three children have? That drunk of a husband she ran away from in the first place?”

“So you’ll throw yourself after vampyres day after day? When does it all end, Rafael?”

“When the pain stops—” He might have started to give an honest answer. Then he shook his head. “They. Don’t. Deserve to get away with this.”

“Unbelievable.” I stood now, too. “You want to die. Just like
him
.”

Rafael’s eyes darkened until they were black, and I thought he might actually attack me. He knew who I was referring to. Then he gave a mirthless chuckle.

“Who the fuck is this girl?” he muttered. “Do the pack a favor,
Alpha
. Let your Were lead.”

I gasped, as if doused with frigid water. “Excuse me?”

“Quit playing, Citlalli. Your soul isn’t stable. I heard the stories from the mountain. How many of them are there?” He couldn’t bring himself to look at me. “How many are in there with you?”

There was no reason to lie. I’d promised Demon I wouldn’t bury her anymore. “Two. Wolf threw Itself in the way of Fred’s fire, and my soul split again.”

“A triad. I created a freakin’ triad.”

My cheeks flamed. “Whoa there, boy. Yeah, you started the whole ball rolling. But you didn’t ‘create’ me. I did this to myself.”

He kept his back to me, so I continued to berate him. “I don’t get what the big deal is. All Wolf and Demon have done is protect me. I wouldn’t have been able to defeat Maya’s four life stages without them.”

“Do you ever listen?” Rafael exploded. “What’s the Were equivalent of ‘four life stages’? Well, there’s your normal everyday person: a sole, stable soul. Next is the fate of us in the Were community: the dual-souled, in which you
must
keep your Were under control. Third is the triad, which happens to unstable Weres: a soul broken into three. The last soul stage is a myriad soul. Did you notice, there are no ‘quad’ or ‘penta’ souls. That’s because if your soul splits again, then that’s it! No one has ever survived a fourth split without losing their sanity.” He ran his hands through his hair agitatedly. “Jesus Christ, you’ve even
named
them. ‘Demon’? Do I need to give you any more proof that you’re on the edge?”

The air crackled between us with a thousand untold accusations. I suddenly saw a very different version of myself in his eyes: a one-eyed, feral creature, backed into a corner. An Alpha didn’t cringe. I knew, without a doubt, that if I stepped onto the dangerously falling bridge between Rafael and me, then we were finished. But what would happen after that, I couldn’t say.

“You were fine with me being Alpha not five minutes ago.” I raised an eyebrow. “So? Is this it, Rafael? I don’t jump to organize a hunt for Khyber, and you threaten to out me as ‘unstable’?”

“Does all Khyber have to do is miraculously show up at the last minute to save our asses, and he’s absolved of a thousand years of guilt? Citlalli, use your
head
. The oh-so-sympathetic Prince of Sorrow got everything he fuckin’ wanted! He’s free of Maya! Crispin’s dead; his brothers are routed. Khyber
can do whatever the fuck he wants
.”

“Not everything.” My hands trembled. I felt tears rising dangerously close to the surface. I didn’t want to tell Rafael this way. Not because I feared he would turn away.

But because I was afraid that he would never be able to turn away. From hunting me.

“Khyber had a deal with the Dark Spirits, Rafael: His soul would be released, in exchange for the souls of his brothers and the Changeling Soul. He broke his word. So, the Dark Spirits placed a new curse upon him: He will not be free of the life bond. Instead, he will enter into it with another…”

I finally looked up, tears streaking my left cheek. “Me, Raf. They chose me. As long as I live…Khyber can’t be killed.”

Rafael had faded to a dark smear in my vision. Hell, I didn’t want to see him. I couldn’t bear to see the look in his eyes. Disgust? Pity? Anger? He’d unwittingly created the buffer that would protect his number one enemy from harm.

All I knew for sure was that he left, because the door slammed particularly hard. I waited a good long while, but when the candles began to flicker, I left Eve without him.

***

I stared out the subway window, numb to the lively throng of the living around me. My stop was East Seoul Bus Terminal.

I watched many slush-bellied buses groan past, mucky from their trek over the pass to Seorak San, before I saw her: an odd, otherworldly girl, fallen from the stars. People gave her a wide berth and they didn’t know why. They didn’t want to meet her eyes.

She waited for the cross light to turn, and then walked jerkily toward me. The knot of unease loosened from my heart with each enclosing step. I ran anxiously to overcome that final distance between us, and we fell into each other’s arms in relief, faces harsh and worn under the cold light of day.

“Thank you,” Raina said simply.

I tried to smile, but it felt too foreign on my face. “Hey. I expect you to do the same for me one day.”

“Okay.” It was hard for her to remember how to smile, too, and that made me feel better. “As long as you get kidnapped by giant pandas or something. You know. Anything that will flee in terror at the sight of a dragon.”

“Now, don’t go rubbing that in Miguel’s face, now. He and Daniella are going to feel so left out.”

“You never know.” Raina looked thoughtful. “Miguel might secretly change into a sloth every solar eclipse. And Daniella might really be an—”

“Owl,” I said, fully confident. We laughed quietly and hunched our heads together as we walked back to the subway underground.

“Is she gone?”

I didn’t need to ask who. “Yes. I saw her move on myself. Mari’s at peace now, Raina.”

She nestled more comfortably against my shoulder, but her questions weren’t finished.

“Do you feel that, Citlalli?”

I couldn’t feel much anymore, except the pale sunlight streaming through a quick break in the skies, which hurt my eye. See, that was the third part of my soul. It wasn’t Citlalli the Aztec Warrior, brightest Star in the East: Now there only existed Wolf, Demon—and Pain.

But I humored her. “What is it, O Mighty Water Dragon?”

“I can taste it on the air.” Raina smiled. “Spring is coming.”

Epilogue: Home

We stood in the elevator and waited for the other to press the button. What a pair of lovely old ladies we made. Raina’s body, kissed near to death by the fanged lips of vampyre lovers, had collapsed twice on the way over here. I teetered blindly on her arm, resisting the urge to scratch the bandages over my eye. But there was nowhere more important to go than here.

“ ’Lalli, do you think you could sleep on the couch again?”

I glared at Raina with my good eye.

“Because I’m not going to leave my bed for a long, long time.”

“You better make room for me. We never watched the end of
My Name is Kim Sam Soon
, you know.”

She looked touched. “You didn’t finish it without me?”

My throat clogged. Raina snuggled closer. “Hey. Are you okay?”

What was meant to be an offhand chuckle came out as a half-strangled sob. I probably sounded on the verge of breaking down. The terrors and wonders of Eve. Una, kidnapped by a fox who’d gotten the best of me three times now. The uneasy fealty of the pack. Khyber, plotting God-knows-what, somewhere out there. Demon, plotting Devil-knows-what, right in here.

Rafael gone.

I draped one arm over Raina’s shoulder. “I’m okay. Supernatural boys suck, don’t they?”

She smiled warily. “Way more trouble than they’re worth.”

“So from now on, we are going to live nice, normal lives, dating nice, normal boys. No more spirit world. No more Khybers, or Donovans, or Rafaels… The most awful thing that should ever happen to us is finding out our boyfriends have been two-timing us at the PC Bang with the new exchange students from Singapore.”

Raina thought about it. “And then can I turn into a water dragon and drop them in the East Sea? Pretty please?”

I grinned. “As long as Wolf gets to chase them to the beach first.”

We limped out at our floor and rang the door buzzer. There was a moment of about two minutes’ silence in which my stomach flip-flopped, and my eye got all moist, again. Then Mami swung open the door.