“What? No!” Wakana said, her words slightly slurred as though she’d been drinking.
Mai glared at Miho. “I will not leave her here. If we have to make a run for it, Wakana would be alone. We’ll make it out together, or not at all.”
All Miho could do was shrug. Voices carried from downstairs, shouting at one another. She led the way, hurrying down to the second floor, with Mai helping Wakana descend behind her. Miho hesitated only a moment, glancing around to make sure they were alone on that level of the house, and then she started down to the first floor. Now she could hear the voices more clearly-Kara’s, her father’s, Hachiro’s, and Sakura’s-and the words chilled her.
Halfway down the steps, she paused, holding her breath. Kara shouted at her father, who then began to scream at them to call for an ambulance. Something had happened to Miss Aritomo. But didn’t they know that she was the Hannya? Wasn’t that why they were here?
Miho crept down a few more steps, light from the living room spilling into the stairwell. Something touched her arm and she gasped and turned to find Mai beside her. Despite her fears for Wakana, she had left the other girl at the top of the stairs. That was good. Something awful had begun to unfold in the living room and Wakana would only be in more danger if they brought her into its midst.
Mai nodded to Miho, a signal for them to continue, and Miho obliged. They went down several more steps together, clinging to the walls, and now Miho caught sight of the Hannya wrapping itself around Professor Harper. And it spoke.
“ Remember, later, that he didn’t have to die. Know that I killed him because you interfered. ”
Miho reached out and grabbed Mai’s wrist. She stared, unable to breathe, as the Hannya opened its mouth- the dark beauty of its female guise giving way to grotesquerie as its jaws unhinged-and bent its head as though to tear out Professor Harper’s throat.
“No!” Miho cried.
She and Mai lunged as one and grabbed the Hannya’s arms, their weight and momentum helping them tear the demon away from Kara’s father. Its hiss of rage and frustration filled Miho’s ears, but she heard another noise-a shout of triumph-as Sakura threw herself at Professor Harper, practically tackling him as she forced him across the room, away from the Hannya.
As the demon hissed in their grasp it thrashed against Mai and Miho. Staggering backward, Miho stumbled over the unconscious Miss Aritomo, and then she and Mai were both falling in a tangle of limbs, dragging the Hannya down on top of them.
Mai screamed in pain and Miho flinched as tiny flecks of the other girl’s blood spattered her face. The Hannya writhed in Miho’s grip, flesh shifting as it twisted round, and once again it wore the face of the demon. This close, Miho saw it looked very little like the mask on Miss Aritomo’s wall, or the one she herself had tried to create for the staging of Dojoji. Its eyes had huge black slitted pupils, limned with sickly yellow, and nictating membranes slid over those gelatinous orbs. The demon’s wiry hair looked like dried, blackened cornsilk, and its leathern skin consisted of a million diamond-shaped scales.
“Get it off her!” someone shouted.
Sakura called her name.
Miho saw, just a few feet away, a long kitchen knife gleaming on the wooden floor where someone had dropped it. Bells began to ring, and the Hannya flinched, tensing and hissing. Miho took that moment to lunge for the knife, but the Hannya shrugged as though shaking off a blow and caught her before she could reach the blade. As it dragged Miho closer, its forked tongue darted out and struck her cheek and she cried out, but already a terrible numbness spread across her face and down her spine.
Mai wrapped an arm around the Hannya’s throat, preventing it from lunging any closer to Miho, but the demon grabbed hold of Mai’s left hand and twisted hard enough that the snap of breaking bone was clearly audible.
Mai screamed. The Hannya thrashed her off and came at Miho again. She tried to block its attack with her hands, even as she grew disoriented once more. Her palm caught on one of the Hannya’s horns, puncturing the skin and drawing her blood.
It darted in, so much like a snake, and bit her with a quick strike before pulling back. Those dreadful eyes studied her and the Hannya smiled.
As darkness began to swim in around the edges of her vision, Miho heard the ringing of the bells grow louder and more insistent. Then her senses began to fail her entirely, except that she could still smell Mai’s blood.
In the moment when the Hannya had been about to kill her father, Kara had frozen. Unable to breathe, unable to move, she could only stare as the impossible unfolded before her. It couldn’t be happening. Inside her head, she could hear herself screaming, but no sound came from her lips. The Hannya had locked eyes with her, pinning her with its gaze, but she knew that even if she hurled herself across the room she would never reach the demon in time to save him. She felt herself suffocating inside the Noh mask that covered her face.
Then Miho and Mai had surged from the shadowy stairwell and attacked the Hannya. As Kara gaped at their courage, Sakura ran at her father and practically tackled him, dragging him to the corner of the room, away from the chaos erupting at its center.
Hachiro and Ren began to shout. Mai screamed in pain. Kara saw blood. Sakura called out for Miho. Then Hachiro began to ring his bell and at last Kara snapped out of whatever momentary trance had paralyzed her.
She rang hers as well, and in a moment Ren and Sakura were doing the same. Leaving Kara’s father in the corner, Sakura moved in closer. Ren and Hachiro hurried to place themselves as evenly as possible around the Hannya and the three bodies that lay on the floor. Kara saw it all through the strange eyes of her Noh mask. Miss Aritomo remained unconscious, but Mai moaned, cradling her left arm, blood soaking into her shirt from a long gash in her face and a wound on her shoulder.
Miho fought weakly against the Hannya, beginning to go limp in its grasp. Just a few feet from them, the kitchen knife Miss Aritomo had fetched earlier lay on the floor. Kara wished she could get it and use it, but feared it might be useless against the Hannya.
“Louder!” Kara shouted.
She held the bell high and took a step closer, then another. The iron grew strangely warm in her hand and the smell of hot metal began to fill the room, and then she knew that all of their conjecture had been right-the bells were the weapon they needed.
Sakura, Ren, and Hachiro took her cue and they began to close the circle. It might only have been Kara’s imagination, but the voices of the bells seemed to join in a chorus so pure they became almost one sound, ringing together, loud and bright.
The Hannya shrank down upon itself as though to protect itself from attack. It hissed, but the sound of the bells contained the demon’s hiss, swallowed and silenced it. The shadows on the floor began to coalesce and the corners of the room grew darker, but Kara shook her bell harder, ringing it even louder, so that her fingers felt scorched by the heat of the metal. The others followed suit, and soon the shadows were only shadows, with none of the demon’s influence.
Its skin rippled, jaws opening again to reveal those needle fangs, and now its flesh seemed trapped between monster and serpent. It bulged and pulsed, shifting as if the Hannya were attempting to control its shape and failing.
The demon turned and reached for Miho, tongue darting out, jaws opening wide.
“Never!” Ren shouted, and stepped nearer.
The Hannya grinned up at him, fixing him in its yellow serpent’s gaze. But Hachiro, Sakura, and Kara matched Ren’s step, holding the circle firm, somehow caging it there.
Kara saw its gaze shift toward the prone form of Miss Aritomo and immediately she understood its intent.
“Hachiro!” she shouted. “Throw me the bag!”
Confusion filled his gaze, but he trusted her and did not hesitate. Hachiro tossed her the cloth sack that still contained two of the masks Miho had made for Dojoji. Kara dropped to her knees, still ringing her bell, and shoved her free hand into the sack. The first face she touched had horns, and she knew that wasn’t what she wanted. She yanked the other free of the cloth.
The Hannya started to move, but Kara leaped to Miss Aritomo’s side, covering her teacher’s face with the mask of Anchin, the monk who had resisted all of the Hannya’s attempts at seduction, and who had burned to death
