Yokai (29 page)

She wanted to kiss him badly. But
first things first.

She glared up at Shuten-Doji. “Well,
you can bet I’m marrying this man,” she declared. “He’s the most
selfless, caring man that I know. And I kind of love him for
it.”

Brian’s eyes widened. “Wh –
really?”

“
Really,” Yumiko told him,
voice lowering. “It just took me a while to figure that
out.”

Brian looked so pleased that his smile
threatened to split his face in two. But in a moment, his face
hardened and his jaw was set with determination as he faced
Shuten-Doji. “Only one thing stands in our way.”

Shuten-Doji seemed amused, then shook
his head, a soft chuckle escaping his cruel lips. “Oh, fools. You
never even had a chance.”

He lifted something from out of his
pocket, the size of his fist, and flashed it at Brian. Yumiko had
to squint at the sudden flicker of light it sent into her eyes. But
when he held it up, she could see clearly that it was a square
mirror, like one that would be fastened to the inside of a locker
by a magnet.

Yumiko blinked at it
stupidly for a moment before realization dawned on her. Kagami,
Brian, was created by a mirror. Shuten-Doji’s mirror.
This
mirror. This
totem
. And once it was
destroyed, so was he.

She glanced over at Brian, and the
confirmation was written all over his face. He paled, his eyes wide
with disbelief. He turned to Yumiko with something like an apology
filling them. “I’m sorry,” he told her. Then, “I love
you.”

And then Shuten-Doji tossed the mirror
to the ground at his feet, almost casually, like the life it
supported was of little consequence.

But the life attached to that mirror
meant everything to Yumiko, and she launched herself at the floor
in a desperate bid to preserve the life of the one she
loved.

It seemed to fall in slow motion and
it seemed like years before she reached it, though only seconds
could have passed. And she knew the entire time she watched the
mirror that she would never be able to reach it in time. She hoped
for a miracle, prayed for one. Wished that it wouldn’t shatter,
that she could save it.

But it hit the ground out of her
reach, an edge soundlessly touching against the red carpeting
before the rest of its bulk slammed into the floor.

And her heart stopped.

The mirror broke into several pieces,
and the sound that reached her ears was like her own heart
shattering.

When she looked up at Brian, his body
was cracked like the mirror, like he was a mirror himself. And the
pieces fell away like empty husks and rained over the ground,
before disappearing, like he had been nothing but a dream the
entire time.

Chapter
Twenty-Four

Life is
fragile
, Yumiko thought as she stared at
the mirror on the ground in front of her.
Too fragile
. She reached out and
touched the broken glass, and grabbed the biggest piece, lifting it
to her face, not caring that it cut her, not feeling the pain, she
was so overwhelmed by the pain her heart was causing her. She felt
shattered herself, and even with Shuten-Doji a foot away from her,
she couldn’t find it in herself to care. She felt broken. She felt
lost. She felt like nothing mattered at all.

Tears came, and while something tore
through her body, something she didn’t recognize, twisting her
insides, she felt the tears slide down her cheeks.

Am I like this too?
She wondered, staring at the shards of the
mirror.
Am I as fragile as a
mirror?

Of course, since she had come into
being in the same way as Brian, it would stand to reason that she
had a similar totem out there. Where the original mirror was that
created her, she couldn’t have guessed. But when it cracked and
fell away in a rain of glass, she would surely follow.

She hardly cared however. She had just
seen Brian fall to pieces in front of her eyes. And she wanted to
kill Shuten-Doji very badly for it.

“
Master!” Ame-Onna
screamed.

Yumiko wasn’t sure how much time had
passed since Brian had been killed, but it seemed that the whole
room suddenly froze. Yumiko looked up to see all eyes on her. Reina
had her hands to her mouth. Shou looked angry. Tanuki looked sad.
Harionago frowned. Enenra only stared. And Ame-Onna was crushed.
She fell to her knees and crumpled into a heap, body wracked with
sobs.

Shouldn’t Yumiko be doing the same?
Shouldn’t she be paralyzed with loss and pain? She’d been through
enough loss in her life that she was intimately acquainted with the
feeling. She knew the sensations that normally followed such loss.
She had attempted to close herself off to everyone around her so
that she would never feel it again. So, why did it feel so
different this time? Why did she feel only numbness? Why did
nothing matter suddenly? Had she better prepared herself for it
this time? Had the time since her aunt’s death allowed her to adapt
to the inevitable crippling pain? Oh, she felt pain. She felt a
hole where her heart had been only a moment ago. She felt something
in her break, releasing tears and dread that roiled in her stomach
like a living thing. But she also felt something else. Something
that was building from out of that numbness, out of the years of
loneliness she’d endured. Strength. Revenge wrapped around her
chest and gave her strength. Nothing would fill that hole in her
heart better than killing Shuten-Doji with her bare
hands.

“
You,” was all she could
manage as she leapt to her feet. She lifted her sword and
Shuten-Doji watched her with a knowing smile.

“
What a pathetic end,”
Shuten-Doji said with a sigh. “Don’t worry, child. I’m sure the
love of your life is making new friends as we speak. I hear Hell is
quite wonderful this time of year.”

She lashed out with her sword and
surprised him, cutting through his breast plate with the razor edge
of her weapon. She jerked the sword up and the chest plate flew
from him, skittering across the floor, then toppling down the steps
with muffled clangs, racing to follow the path of the girl who’d
played the harp.

Shuten-Doji sneered, holding a hand
over his chest, where Yumiko caught a glimpse of a brown leather
bag, drawstrings closing it tightly, hanging from around his neck
like a secret. His totem. The object that would bring his death as
surely as it had brought Brian’s.

But Shuten-Doji wasn’t going to be
caught off-guard twice. With lightning speed, he shoved Yumiko’s
blade aside roughly and grabbed her throat. He lifted her up into
the air, his fingers digging into her skin painfully. His other
hand held her sword arm at bay.

Shuten-Doji’s eyes twinkled then, the
first sign of genuine pleasure she’d seen in them. His lips quirked
into a smile as he watched her struggle for air. “So fragile,” he
said softly. “Almost like you were made to break.”

Yumiko saw black and red dots angrily
swirling before her eyes. She heard Reina screaming, someone
shouting. But she knew something that Shuten-Doji didn’t. She had
the upper hand, even if he didn’t know it. Because he thought that
she was human. He thought that he could kill her without hunting
down a totem.

And he was wrong.

A plan formulated in her mind. One
last shard of hope that would allow her friends to walk away from
this. If only she could pull it off.

And then she heard the snap of her
neck breaking.

Chapter
Twenty-Five

Her neck breaking hurt. That was for
damn sure. It was a hot, sharp pain. It was almost intolerable,
nearly making her black out. But she couldn’t allow herself to give
in to unconsciousness. If this was going to work, she had to take
him by surprise for a second time.

Her body fell to the floor like a sack
of garbage, already forgotten by her would-be murderer. She forced
herself to relax, go limp. She loosened her grip on her mirror
sword, and felt it tumble out of her hand. But she didn’t relax the
other hand, the hand that no one would be watching.

Her vision faded for a moment as
oxygen stopped being carried to her brain, but then it resumed
again as she felt something knitting together. Something fixing
itself with a burst of warmth and a strange tingling
sensation.

She had to swallow a sob of
relief that it had actually worked. But it also confirmed what she
had yet to believe for herself. She
was
a yokai. There was no denying that
now. But that meant that human laws no longer applied to
her.

“
Can you use her blood?”
Shuten-Doji asked. By the sound of his voice, she imagined that he
had turned away from her.

“
Not after she’s dead,”
came Oni-Baba’s reply, growing closer.

“
A shame,” Shuten-Doji
said, his voice clearer again as he faced her.

This might be her last chance, and she
seized it for all it was worth.

Gripping the mirror shard in her hand
painfully tight, she leapt to her feet, earning a gasp from
Oni-Baba. Shuten-Doji merely blinked at her in shock as she thrust
the mirror into the tender flesh between his neck and shoulder
blade with enough force to drive it deep into his body. She felt
some of the mirror splinter upon contact, but it was solid and
sharp enough to finish the job. She grunted as she yanked the
mirror downward, slicing through his flesh, spurting hot blood over
her face. She tugged on the mirror as it sliced the soft flesh of
her hands to ribbons, ignoring the pain, determined to see this
through. And then she watched with satisfaction as she dragged the
mirror through the leather bag that dangled over his heart, tearing
it in half.

The color drained from Shuten-Doji’s
face as he stared at her, eyes wide with disbelief. She shoved the
mirror deep into his chest with the palm of her hand and stood
back, watching as his body seemed to split, ripped like torn paper.
He gasped and stumbled toward Oni-Baba, but the witch turned and
backed up against the back wall, staring at the scene in horror.
More of his skin ripped open, as if by some unseen sword, and blood
ran down the length of his body in rivulets. In the moment of his
death, his features relaxed and he seemed almost at peace. Yumiko
stared into his face and saw Brian there, a flicker of pity
coursing through her veins. Then he collapsed, shattering like ash
as he hit the ground.

And Shuten-Doji was no
more.

All was silent in the room for a
minute, before Reina ran to Yumiko and threw her arms around her,
gripping her hard, as if to make sure that she was real.

“
But you died,” Reina said,
pulling back to gaze into Yumiko’s face, which was still splattered
with blood.

Shou approached with Enenra and
Tanuki, and offered her a clean cloth, which she accepted
gratefully and wiped her face clean as best as she
could.

“
I can’t die unless my
totem is destroyed,” Yumiko said softly, voice shaking slightly as
she gave voice to the words that related what she was.

Reina’s eyes widened. Enenra grinned,
as if he’d known all along.

“
Yumiko?” Tanuki said,
hesitantly. “Have you always…”

“
I only just found out,”
Yumiko told him, then looked up at Reina. “I’m sorry.”

Reina shook her head, tears slipping
out from her eyes. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m glad
you’re alright.” She threw her arms around Yumiko again and Yumiko
let her embrace her, looking over her shoulder at Shou awkwardly.
He smiled and nodded to her.

“
Fix her neck,” Ame-Onna
said, shoving Oni-Baba forward.

Yumiko blinked and pulled back from
Reina to regard Oni-Baba, staring at her in wonder.

“
I didn’t see this,”
Oni-Baba shook her head. She seemed to be reassessing Yumiko, eyes
roving over her carefully.

“
Fix her,” Ame-Onna ordered
once more, prodding her roughly in the back.

Oni-Baba blinked, then nodded. She
reached out a hand hesitantly, as if seeking permission from
Yumiko, then gently touched the side of her neck.

Yumiko could feel a bone pushing up
against the skin of her neck. It wasn’t really painful, but she
felt pressure from it. It must have been unsettling for her friends
to see, given that it would be a mortal wound, should it have
happened to a mortal.

Oni-Baba nodded to herself, then
cleared her throat and spit into her hands, as she’d done before
healing Yumiko’s ankle. When the witch laid her slippery hands on
her neck, Yumiko closed her eyes, and bit her lips as she felt the
bone magically shift in her neck, as if it had simply decided to
change position. And then the pressure was gone.

“
Much better,” Tanuki said
as Oni-Baba stepped back.

Yumiko eyed Oni-Baba for a moment,
then crossed her arms. “How do I attach a totem to a
yokai?”

Oni-Baba blinked, mulling over her
question, probably trying to figure out why she would ask such a
thing. “You don’t. When a yokai is created, it is because of an
event. It’s a reaction.”