Yokai (27 page)

The satori looked vaguely ape-like,
with thick hair so brown that it was almost black. Its face was a
patch of raised brown skin, with unsettlingly human-looking eyes
set in it. The creature struggled fervently against the stakes, and
by the looks of its strong arms, it wouldn’t take long to free
itself, although it would be a painful experience.

“
Would the queen like to
cross-examine the prisoner?” Enenra asked mockingly as he set her
down.

Ignoring him, Yumiko stalked up to the
creature, who stopped moving at her approach. Its eyes took her in
at a glance and quickly grew wary.

“
The yokai hunter,” the
satori said softly.

Yumiko didn’t bother with
pleasantries. “Where are your companions?”

“
Like I would give up that
information willingly.”

Enenra stepped forward eagerly. “How
about unwillingly?”

“
Enenra,” Yumiko warned,
putting up a hand as a sign to stay back. He complied,
begrudgingly.

“
What are they reporting to
Shuten-Doji?” Yumiko asked, stepping closer to the
creature.

The satori snorted. “Everything in the
heads of your human friends. You are doomed.”

Yumiko smiled triumphantly. “You’ve
been cooperative already. You’ve given me two pieces of
information. I now know that Shuten-Doji is indeed at his castle.
And that you can only read the minds of humans, not other
yokai.”

Blinking, the satori looked stricken.
“You…what are you?” He blinked, then his face darkened. “I can’t
see into your mind either.”

Yumiko quickly unsheathed her sword
and struck it across his cheek. He vanished in an instant, leaving
bloody stakes embedded into the tree in its wake. She gazed into
her sword, where the image of the satori remained for a moment
before it disappeared.

“
Why couldn’t he read your
mind?” Enenra asked, then crossed his arms, watching her
thoughtfully.

“
I am protected from his
kind of attacks,” Yumiko said vaguely, and not really telling a
lie. “My visit to the spirit world as a young girl gave me many
advantages.”

“
How
convenient.”

Yumiko smiled at him, then stiffened
as a flash of light caught her attention over his shoulder. She
stepped forward and squinted through the trees. Something orange,
something burning. And it was heading straight for their
campsite.

“
It looks like Shuten-Doji
didn’t waste any time,” Enenra observed, scooping Yumiko up with
less care than before. “He must have heard something he didn’t
like.”

“
Must have,” Yumiko agreed
with a frown.

Chapter
Twenty-Two

“
Are you alright?” Yumiko
asked, running up to Reina, who was stomping the remaining fire out
of a tent.

Reina nodded, eyes wide and
frightened. “I am. It just rolled through camp and went after the
others.”

“
Went after?” Yumiko
stopped and frowned, looking back as Enenra drifted over. “What was
it?”

Reina shrugged. “It was…the most
disgusting thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“
I think she wants a more
detailed description,” Shou said, rushing over from another tent.
He met Yumiko’s eyes. “It was Wa-Nyudo. He was chasing the kappa,
burning them.”

“
Burning them?” Yumiko
frowned, then looked around the campsite more carefully. The forms
of two kappa were lying around the grounds, skin blistered and
blackened. All at once, the scent of burned flesh hit her and she
covered her nose and mouth automatically. “He’s killing them.
Evaporating the water on their heads with fire.”

“
He seemed mainly to be
after Ame-Onna,” Reina said, stepping back to examine the smoke
that billowed out from the tent she’d extinguished. One side of
canvas hung limply, angry black burn marks staining the edges of
tattered cloth.

“
Ame-Onna?” Yumiko
repeated.

“
Yeah. But the kappa were
protecting her. And Harionago.”

Yumiko blinked, processing this. There
was only one reason that Shuten-Doji would have sent a yokai after
Ame-Onna specifically. The satori had reported back to him, and
from Reina and Shou’s minds, he’d gleaned that Ame-Onna was the
only one among them who knew the totem that could kill
him.

“
Damn,” Yumiko muttered.
“Which way did they do?”

“
This way!” Tanuki said,
leaping over a log nearby and skidding to a stop. He nodded back
the way he’d come. “He’s got them cornered.”

Yumiko quickly unsheathed the dagger
she’d taken from Brian’s bedroom and laid it in Reina’s hand. “Just
in case.”

Reina looked down at the dagger with
wide eyes and nodded.

Yumiko smiled tightly at her, then
pulled out her own blade as she ran, following Tanuki as he darted
over the forest floor, dodging trees and leaping over rocks. He was
quick, but Yumiko managed to keep up, although she couldn’t see the
terrain as well as he could and stumbled a few times.

When the smell of burned flesh hit her
again, Yumiko almost gagged, and missed a rather treacherous hole
in the path. She felt her foot sink into it, and suddenly she was
sprawled over the ground, her knees stinging. She recovered quickly
and jumped to her feet, wincing at the pain in her ankle. But she
didn’t have time to indulge her pain. She was lucky enough that she
hadn’t fallen on her sword.

Darting around a large boulder, Yumiko
stopped to stare as two kappa darted out of the way of a huge
ox-cart wheel that was consumed by flames. Two other kappa lay on
the ground, dead, although Ame-Onna and Harionago seemed to be in
fine shape, keeping their distance as the kappa drew the attention
of the flaming wheel. They were all trapped, however, as stone
walls rose on all sides, with the exception of a narrow stretch of
earth between two boulders where Yumiko stood with
Tanuki.

As the wheel shifted, Yumiko saw the
head of a man at the center of the wheel, wooden spokes painfully
driven through his flesh. His head was shaved, like a priest, and
while his flesh seemed to be burned in patches of painful red and
black, blistering and peeling to reveal bloody flesh beneath, he
still had a black beard, full and unruly, that seemed untouched by
the fire, but gave him the look of a terrifying wild man. His eyes
were white orbs, his dry, cracked lips hanging open in a stupor.
Yumiko had never seen such a horrid creature in all of her
encounters, and would second Reina’s earlier claim.

Wa-Nyudo made a sharp turn and drove
toward one of the kappa unexpectedly, catching it before it could
leap out of the way. In a manner of seconds, the kappa fell to the
ground, limp, skin sizzling.

“
Enough!” Yumiko roared,
stepping off of the path and holding her sword before her. “That is
the last yokai you murder, fiend.”

Wa-Nyudo paused and turned toward her,
his white dead eyes staring, as if assessing her.

“
Yumiko, get out of here!”
Ame-Onna ordered.

“
Not an option,” Yumiko
muttered, but Wa-Nyudo seemed to have made a decision, and barreled
toward Ame-Onna at top speed.

“
No!” Yumiko gasped,
rushing forward to stop him. But Harionago stepped up, swinging her
hair out wildly. As if she’d thrown grappling hooks its way,
several tendrils of hair struck Wa-Nyudo, grabbing hold of the
spokes, and swinging him off course. Harionago screamed as her hair
began to catch fire, like the strands were indeed limbs, but she
didn’t release Wa-Nyudo until he slammed into one of the stone
walls.

As Harionago reeled her hair back in,
Tanuki stomped on any strands that were on fire, effectively
extinguishing the flames. What she left behind was a splintered
ox-wagon wheel, struggling in vain to pull itself out of a pile of
debris. The horrible priest’s head sneered, grimacing as Yumiko
approached.

“
You will die alongside
Kagami,” Wa-Nyudo informed her in a deep, otherworldly voice,
although his lips did not move. “Then you will join him in the
realm of the dead.” As the last of the fire along one spoke died,
the head seemed to disintegrate, flesh melting away like candlewax
and dripping onto the earth, until all that remained was a skull,
its jaw hanging open in silent laughter.

“
Revolting,” Tanuki
muttered, padding over to the remains of Wa-Nyudo. “What is this
thing anyway?”

“
Wa-Nyudo,” Yumiko sighed.
“Supposedly, it comes from Hell.”

“
As do the oni,” Ame-Onna
said.

“
The oni?” Yumiko frowned.
“Then how does Shuten-Doji seem to have such a steady supply of
them?”

Ame-Onna looked thoughtful for a
moment. “He must have an agreement with someone in that
dimension.”

“
Dimension?” Tanuki tilted
his head. “What do you mean? Isn’t Hell just…Hell? The afterlife?
Death?”

“
It’s where our souls go to
atone,” Ame-Onna told him. “It’s a place where demons rule. Where
oni rule. Some would say it’s worse than death.”

Tanuki shuddered and looked up at
Yumiko as she turned, wincing at the weight she put on her ankle.
“You okay?”

She nodded briskly. “I’ll survive.”
She glanced over at Harionago, who was fussing with her hair. “Are
you going to be alright, Harionago?”

The yokai shrugged. “As long as
another wheel from Hell doesn’t ambush us.”

Ame-Onna helped the last kappa to its
feet and bit her lip. “Only one kappa remains.” She wiped the dirt
from its back as it gazed down at its fallen comrades.

“
We were fools to come
here,” it croaked.

Yumiko blinked. “You can
speak?”

The kappa nodded, meeting her gaze.
“When it suits us.” It shook its head. “The price for saving Kagami
was steeper than we imagined.”

“
But it’s worth it, so long
as we save him,” Ame-Onna said confidently. “With him, we can bring
about an era of peace. We are all expendable as we work toward that
goal.”

“
All except for her,”
Harionago corrected her, nodding toward Yumiko. “She’d better be
worth it.”

“
She is,” Ame-Onna assured
her. She turned to Yumiko. “Wa-Nyudo was after me, which means
Shuten-Doji knows that I’m aware of his weakness.”

“
Yes.” Yumiko agreed. “I
think that’s a safe assumption.”

“
Then there’s no point in
keeping it a secret any longer. Shuten-Doji wears his totem around
his neck. It’s a pouch that contains the one love letter he never
burned all those years ago. The smoke of the others transformed him
into a yokai before he had the chance to add a final note to the
pyre. Destroy the remaining letter, and you destroy
him.”

“
Sounds simple enough,”
Tanuki commented, eyes flashing.

“
Getting that close will be
nearly impossible,” Ame-Onna cautioned, frowning at Tanuki. “He is
the best there is with a sword.”

Yumiko considered. “Then we have to be
smart about this. Perhaps we won’t even have to confront
Shuten-Doji at all. All we need to do is rescue Brian. After that,
we return to the mirror world, where he can’t follow. He won’t be
able to stop the ceremony from taking place.”

“
You would remain in the
mirror world until you turn eighteen?” Ame-Onna asked,
surprised.

“
If it means no more
death,” Yumiko told her. “Then, yes.”

“
Then I’m sorry to be the
one to put a damper on your plans,” a voice rang out from behind
Yumiko.

Yumiko turned to see Reina standing in
the narrow path that was their only escape route. Yumiko frowned as
Reina was pushed forward, revealing that her hands were tied behind
her back. She sent Yumiko an apologetic look as Shou was shoved
forward behind her, also bound.

Then two oni filed up the path and
stepped aside, each clasping the shoulder of one of Yumiko’s
friends in an iron grip.

Finally, Oni-Baba appeared from out of
the shadows and grinned around her as she took in Yumiko and the
remaining yokai. “Your little rescue party has failed, Miss Sato,”
the witch proclaimed. She met Yumiko’s eyes and smiled, utterly
delighted. “Shuten-Doji requests an audience.”

Chapter
Twenty-Three

“
Faster,” Oni-Baba hissed,
poking Yumiko’s back with a hand fan. “No point in delaying the
inevitable.”

Yumiko winced as she tried to pick up
her pace, and glared back at the woman. “I hurt my ankle. I can’t
go faster.”

Oni-Baba scowled and gestured to one
of the oni bringing up the rear of the party. “Carry
her.”

Yumiko stopped and lifted her chin. “I
refuse to be carried.”

The oni hesitated and looked to
Oni-Baba, who watched Yumiko warily. She gestured for the oni to
step back and approached Yumiko herself. “Sit down,” she
ordered.

Yumiko frowned and, looking around,
decided to sit on a low stone. She eased her bad foot forward and
Oni-Baba took it in her hands roughly, causing Yumiko to bite back
a groan of pain.