on the southernmost tip, seven or eight feet from the ocean’s surface. The northern shore stood perhaps forty feet above sea level, a bluff dropping into the teeth of the sea. It was from here the male approached.
Buruu answered the roar, all thunder and spittle, the stones beneath him quavering. He saw a shadow slink across the tumbledown stone on the bluff, saw the play of faint lightning across his wings. He didn’t recognize the scent, doubted any of his former pack would have flown this far south anyway.
He roared again, asking who it was that challenged.
The nomad shrieked its name.
The arashitora prowled closer, and a flash of lightning overhead gave Buruu a good look at his foe. Smaller. Younger. Barely past his blooding by the looks, the stripes on his haunches indistinct, claws still smoke- gray. The feathers at his neck were matted with gore, and he favored his right side. Buruu could see the nomad’s wings were intact, but long gashes trailed from his shoulder into the muscle across his spine. The nomad had avoided flight with the wound still fresh, but territoriality and the female’s failing scent had forced him to challenge as soon as he felt strong enough to win.
Buruu remembered what it was like to be a slave to that instinct, the monster within. He’d thought himself beyond it, that his bond with Yukiko had laid that demon to rest and washed the taste of his own from his tongue. But how easily he’d fallen back inside. How quickly he’d taken up the mantle of who he used to be.
He deserved what they’d done to him. What they’d taken from him.
Buruu roared warning that he would give no quarter. That this was not a ritual fight for mate or pride of place in a pack. That there was no Khan’s law here. That this would end in death.
Yours, came the reply.
Yours.
Yukiko had taken the lead, energized by the knowledge that Buruu was close. The agony in her muscles, sweat burning the raw blisters on her hands, all of it faded beneath an electrifying rush of adrenaline. She pushed herself across three more cables, barely stopping to rest between them. Ilyitch was lagging behind, and she would stop occasionally to look back and scream over the storm, begging him to hurry in words she knew he couldn’t comprehend.
Nothing mattered. Not the pain. Not the sorrow. Not thoughts of her father, or of Hiro or Kin or the Guild. She was an engine, a machine, cranking along iron cables one desperate foot at a time. Wind in her face, pushing her back, howling she was too small, too weak. Her flesh trembled and her fingers bled, weak and human and threatening to break at every hard-won foot.
But something inside wouldn’t let her stop; a fire burning within her chest that made her grit her teeth, suck down one more desperate lungful, force her arms to move one more foot when everything inside her screamed to stop, to rest, to buckle. And she saw it for what it was, saw that within it lay a strength far deeper than the watered promise found in hatred or fear or even anger. Saw in it a light that left no substance to the shadows she’d filled herself with after her father died. Saw it as the strength behind the wall she’d built in her mind, the bulwark to keep the Kenning’s fury at bay. And she saw it was all that mattered.
Love.
Inch by inch. Foot by foot. The flailing, grasping hands of the wind, the rain pounding like a nail-thrower upon her skin. Lightning struck a tower to the west, cascaded down the cables back the way they’d come. Too far away to remember now. Too much effort to think what lay behind. Worse backward than forward. Standing still meant lying down.
And then she saw it through the spray and hissing downpour. A hulking fang of obsidian shale, rising like an upraised fist out of the ocean ahead. She reached out with the Kenning, flinching away from the serpents beneath her feet, sensing three bright sources of heat to the north. The dimly remembered shape of the arashitora who had struck them, rippling with challenge. The blade-smooth lines of the female overhead, tinged with curiosity, drawn to the conflict despite herself. And the shape of her friend. Her brother. Her one constant in a world that had shifted and spun so violently over the last few months, she’d lost any and all sense of direction. She’d lost
Forward, she realized.
The way is forward.
The pair touched the way black powder touches naked flame.
A charge across broken stone, sparks curling on their wings and the glass at their feet. The nomad pounced into the air, talons spread like a fan of knives, roaring challenge. Buruu rose to meet him, sheared feathers and narrowed eyes, colliding with the force of a hurricane. The nomad seized a talonful of harness and kicked out with his hind legs as Buruu raked at his throat, blood purchased on both sides, crashing earthward amidst broken shards of obsidian.
Raijin pounded his drums as they rolled apart, Buruu lashing out with his claws and sending the nomad springing back with a growl. Fresh blood at his throat, repainting old gore, eyes alight with fury. Buruu’s own neck and gut were torn, water-thinned scarlet dripping from his fur.
He was bigger. Stronger. But weak from starvation. Still exhausted from his flight. And the nomad was faster. Younger. Hungrier.
He glanced over his shoulder, saw Yukiko working her way along the cables, perhaps fifty feet away. He glimpsed someone behind her, fell backward as the nomad sprang to attack, aiming a flurry of talons at his face. Buruu thrashed his wings, the broken mechanism along his spine groaning in protest, canvas feathers torn loose, gaining a few precious feet. Landing on a broken outcropping, retreating as the nomad lashed out again, sparks flying. Clapping his wings together, giving birth to a thunderous peal of Raijin Song; a sonic boom blasting the younger arashitora back across the stone. He clapped his wings again, raindrops shearing sideways in the shock wave, spraying into the nomad’s face.
The attacker circled away, roared in defiance.
Buruu retreated, put the lightning tower to his back, getting between Yukiko and two tons of furious thunder tiger.
She was drawing closer. Thirty feet now.
The nomad took to the sky, bloody wings launching him high into the air, swooping down into a razored dive. Buruu stepped aside, ground shattering on impact, lunging at the nomad’s wing and tearing away a mouthful of feathers. They fell into a snarling tangle again, talons locked as they reared up on their hind legs, flashing feathers and snapping beaks, low rumbling snarls of fury.
He felt Yukiko at his back. Stubborn as a mountain runs deep. Pain of her aching muscles in his head. Blisters on their hands. Desperate need.
Twenty feet away.
Buruu thrust the smaller arashitora away with a thundering roar, sending him twisting over onto his back. Pressing the advantage, he tore the nomad’s ribs, trying to seize a mouthful of throat as the young one rolled away. Wings thrashing, snarling as he scrambled to his feet, bright red droplets flying between the raindrops and painting snow-white fur the color of slaughter. It was the nomad’s turn to use the Raijin Song now, blasting Buruu back as the thunder from his wings threw puddles high into the shivering air. The downpour bent like a bowstring, droplets as fat as lotusflies splitting into blinding steam-thin spray.
The thunder tigers circled each other, both blooded and wary. The nomad crouched low, gathered for a spring. He looked beyond the crest of Buruu’s wings, caught sight of Yukiko on the cables, the gaijin struggling behind her. Eyes flashing. Pupils dilating. A guttural snarl of outrage.
Interlopers. Monkey-children. Meat.
