Isao was backing away, clutching his face, fingers painted red, eyes fixed on the swaying silver at Ayane’s back. Atsushi was behind him, howling like a hungry baby, fingers shredded, forearms and biceps punctured as if he’d tangled with a needle-thrower. Takeshi lay curled on the bridge, clutching his arm, thin ribbons of scarlet trailing up toward his shoulder, spattered on the wood beneath him.
Ayane’s lower lip trembled, dark eyes wide with fear.
“Stay away from him.” Her voice small, shaking. “Do not touch him.”
“Monster,” Isao spat. “Abomination.”
The girl glanced at the boy behind her, back to Isao, cheeks wet with tears and blood.
“Just leave us alone,” she whispered.
Takeshi pulled himself to his feet, dragging himself away, scarlet footprints left behind. Isao and Atsushi also retreated, eyes fixed on the trembling girl, brimming with hatred. Leaves fell from the branches above, filling the gulf between them with patterns of orange and yellow and soaking blood-red, a slow and beautiful dance spiraling down, down toward the place they all knew it would end.
They were gone.
Ayane took hold of Kin, helped him to his feet. She was shaking so badly she could barely manage his weight. His stomach felt like it had been put through a meat grinder, every breath a battle, copper marching on his tongue. She slung his arm around her shoulder and led him away. Her voice was small and fragile as snowflakes.
“You told me the Kage were good people, Kin-san. That they believed in what was right.”
Kin wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, brought it away bloody. It hurt to speak the words. More than he could imagine. And yet he spoke them all the same.
“Maybe I was wrong.”
31
PRECIPICE
Blistered palms and aching muscles and sweat burning her eyes. The scarred flesh where Yukiko’s tattoo used to be a knot of constant pain, arms shaking with fatigue as she turned the hand cranks and propelled herself over the thirty-foot drop to the raging ocean below.
They were twelve hours and twenty-seven cables deep into the network now, the lightning farm a distant smear of light, blinking behind the rise and fall of the waves. The first half of each run was an effortless journey; the natural sag in the lines would propel them as if they were rolling downhill, the flying foxes giving off a high- pitched whine. But halfway, inertia would pull them to a halt, and they would have to turn the hand cranks along the rest of the line, up the steepening incline to the next tower. The few final feet were always the worst, and the ascent to the last tower had almost beaten her.
The wind pushed her back, rain trickling down her oilskin’s sleeves, the rope coiled over her shoulder a soaking, leaden weight. Headache swelling in her skull, a thing of knives and rust and broken glass. And all the while, she sensed long, sleek shapes coiling through the water below, staring up with hungry, slitted eyes.
A hush fell; a split second of stillness as if the storm itself was drawing breath. An arc of brilliant blue-white hit a tower not two hundred feet east of theirs. Yukiko watched raw current crackling across the neighboring cables, off toward the lightning farm. She wondered if she’d be fast enough to pull the pin on her harness if their line actually got struck.
Ilyitch had made the next tower, jumping down onto the small island it sprouted from. He turned back to her, shouted words she couldn’t understand. She gritted her teeth and kicked her legs as if she were running, hands shaking, gaining inch by agonizing inch.
In the last few feet, her arms were trembling so violently she could barely turn the cranks. Ilyitch climbed the tower and held out his hand. She snatched at it, fingers slipping on his own, wind buffeting her as if she were a dandelion seed. Lunging, he caught her sleeve, dragged her toward him, wrapping strong arms around her chest and pulling her in tight. She could smell him; cinnamon and honey, mixed with the faint scent of grease and rubber. They struggled to unhitch her flying fox from the cables, Ilyitch’s boots slipping on the tower as the contraption finally came loose. The pair tumbled onto the stone in a tangle of limbs and curse words, Yukiko landing atop the gaijin, her hair draped over his face. The flying fox landed beside them with a clang.
She rolled off him and they lay together on rain-drenched rock, breathless, too tired to move. Reaching out with the Kenning, pushing the bricks of her wall far enough apart to reach through, fumbling in the dark as her head throbbed. She could feel the female arashitora circling above, reveling in each peal of thunder. She could feel the cold shapes of the sea dragons circling the island, filling her with dread. She could feel Ilyitch beside her. And in the distance, she felt a surge of bright warmth that wore a familiar shape.
“Gods, Buruu…” she breathed.
Ilyitch was busy rubbing a bruised shin. Yukiko grabbed his arm and screamed over the storm.
“We’re close!”
She pointed north, dragged herself to her feet, pain and fatigue forgotten. Closing her eyes, reaching out beyond her barricade, she threw her thoughts into the void.
A long silence, empty and awful.
Buruu had curled up in the shelter of an obsidian splinter, curved against his back, shielding him from the wind. His belly had long ago ceased grumbling, his hunger reduced to a gnawing, hollow ache, clutching fistfuls of his insides. His thoughts still swam with the female’s scent, driving him near to madness, the stone around him gouged with frustrated desire. But even though he could smell her lingering in the storm above, the impulse had weakened over the last day: her mating time must be very close to its end.
Yet still, her musk made his blood sing when the wind blew the right way, breath coming quicker, shuddering need filling his mind. He fought it down, clung to the knowledge that he’d failed Yukiko, endangered her by giving himself over to it. He’d lost too much to the beast inside him, in darker days beyond the desire for recollection.
He’d almost lost her too.
The minutes ticked by like hours; rain and thunder and snarling ocean the only sounds, until a long, low growl shook him from his melancholy. Lifting his head from beneath his wing, blinking in the downpour. He caught the scent of old blood, a breath-brief snatch of ozone amongst snarling winds. He heard talons ring upon razored stone, shale crumbling beneath titanic weight. And then, piercing the dark, a long roar of challenge.
Buruu rose from his shelter, padded out into the open. The island they’d crashed on was perhaps three hundred feet across, crooked sheets of black glass slanting up toward the north. The copper lightning catcher rose
