Two nights after Meele's startling revelation, I perched atop the chimney at Samu's house, alone in the darkness. Samu was off on a three day trip to Okinawa with Danny and Meele was pleading for more time from the Yukoi Council of Elders. They had this lovely idea that it would be nice for me to come visit again and both Meele and I disagreed. The fact I couldn't move my back through my range-of-motion exercises without hissing in pain and tearing the skin open again was all the reason we needed though we couldn't let on to that. Might be seen as a weakness I could ill afford. I was getting pretty damn tired of yukoi politics.
Above me the night sky was lit only by distant stars, the moon shrouded by the Earth's shadow. Reminds me of life at the moment, I thought with a rueful smile. Shaking my head, I stood, stretching my hands to the stars and breathing deeply of the crisp night air. Bundled up in long sleeves and jeans with boots as I was the chill in the air didn't bother me.
Looking around me I was suddenly struck by how odd it was not to see Trick-or-treaters bouncing from house to house on a candy gathering high, chased through the darkness by well meaning parents and older siblings. Halloween doesn't have any real meaning for the Japanese, though it had one for me.
On this night, of all nights, when the gate way between this world and the next is at its thinnest, even I could feel the cry of those dead and buried within the mountain Samu's ancestral home stood upon.
Samu had told me the entire mountain was owned by his family, from the very base up to the tip top very his home stood. Distant cousins now, true but family non-the-less. Generations of hanyu, humans and yukoi tied to the Tigushi family lay buried here in marked graves, sacred caves and raised carrions deep in the trees. Every body was a nail in the mountain's defenses, if one knew how to use them. Meele had told Samu and I of holy mikos, priestesses who could invoke the wards placed with the dead bodies, raising a protective barrier over the entire mountain. Apparently that ability was lost though, for Samu had said while he'd heard of it from his great-grand father as a child, it was thought to be legend, not fact.
What I could feel around me was not legend, it was fact. I wasn't sure if it was my familial ties to Meele and his kin or the fact that I was a hanyu, but the dead here clamored for my attention. I closed my mind off, steeling them outside to whisper through the trees instead of within my head. Even I cannot appease the dead who seek to talk to those dead and gone to ash longer then I've been on this world.
I think that was part of why Meele had left, not to say that placating the counsel wasn't important but avoiding the voices of those long dead may have been a larger factor the he let on.
It is often quite difficult to tell with dragon yukoi. They play their emotions close to their chests. Sometimes as a protective measure, sometimes just to be secretive bastards and others because they don't know any other way. Meele's rather emotional outburst was, at least for him, a startling new facet of him that even I had never seen.
This job had brought on so many strange things, Meele's outburst, me falling for the mark's best friend, seemingly prophetic dreams….
I laid a hand upon my chest, remembering the dream and the bullet that slammed between my breasts in it. The sensation memory was so great I half expected my hand to come away bloody.
Of course it didn't, just my imagination running wild, from the whispers of the night, the fact it was All Hallows Eve, Samhein, or from simple nerves I didn't know, nor did it really matter.
A sound in the almost liquid darkness drew my attention, a child's cry in the dark, terrified and shrill. I sighed, knowing full well it might be a trap and activating my bracers anyway. My hair was already pulled into a solid black hair wrap to keep it neat, body covered in the same monochrome color scheme, a regular thing when I'm in charge of my own wardrobe. The bracers added some additional protection plus extra power recourses- two full weeks of charging without use had left them almost overly full of magic and begging to be used. As was my kitana, strapped to my back, vexed with me for not risking it within the Counsel walls.
One doesn't take a magical kitana forged by a man hunted by the yukoi for such things into a whole den of the monsters and expect to walk away without answering where it was gotten. The sword's forger was hiding in America for a reason- he was retired and didn't want to be bothered. So I kept his secret, killed who he wanted me to, and he repaired my blade when it needed it. Pretty fair trade, far as I could tell.
I carried the kitana tonight because the guns seemed a bit overkill for a home in the mountains. Not sure why the sword seemed more appropriate but it did. Like taking a gun to a knife fight, the sword was also supposed to be overkill for anything I'd expected to find on this mountain.
Again the child's cry sounded, urgent in the dark, pushing away any other thoughts. It was closer now, as were the sounds of breaking branches, as if it were running away from someone or something large and fast.
A single leap took me to the soft ground of Samu's garden, a vault over the garden wall and off into the trees that covered most of the local terrain. I got about ten meters before stopping and listening closely, searching by sound for what I could not see, the child and its pursuit.
"Save me," came a cry from about fifteen meters ahead of me to my right accompanied by a crash and a shrill squeal of pain. "My ankle… help me! Someone… anyone…."
I crept closer, eyes straining to see in the near dark of the trees, ears picking up sounds of both the child and whatever was after it. A shake of my head and I moved further forward, far enough to see a small clearing. In the center of the clearing, sprawled across the lush grass, was a small boy on the ground with bright orange hair wrapped in a now rather tattered blue cloak with flames along its bottom edge.
It was the cloak that told me who the child was, Akihito, son of Dokkasomaru, Leader of the Fire Yukoi Clan. Not that it mattered, I was going to try to save him anyway, no matter who his parents were.
If I could, I thought, staring at the monster that now hunted the little boy. A rolling mass of crimson flesh, writhing in upon itself, with a gaping maw full of razor sharp teeth. Human-like arms, legs, hands and feet stuck out of the beast at random intervals, giving it movement. It was a nightmare, plain and simple.
A long tongue whipped from its mouth, wrapping around Akihito's right ankle, causing the boy to howl in both terror and pain. A flash of moonlight showed the ankle to be broken and swelling already.
"In for a penny, in for a pound," I mused in a whisper before darting in, sword drawn. I managed to get a good cleave in at the monster's tongue, lopping off the part wrapped around Akihito's leg.
The thing reared back, tongue thrashing around like a headless snake, howling in pain and anger. It turned most, if not all of those strange eyes on me, glaring I think. It was hard to tell with little light and the thing having more eyes then I could count on the fly.
It was a monstrosity, as if someone had taken the bodies of humans, yukoi and whatever else it could find and melted the torsos together, forming a mass and leaving only the eyes and that gaping maw as its features. The limbs that seemed to erupt from its flesh varied from muscular and male to delicate and feminine to slimy and so not human. Just looking at it made my stomach give a jerk though I managed to ignore it for now. Could vomit later, life saving first. Priorities.
Akihito lay behind me now, crying but soundless, shrinking away from me as well as the monster.
"Akihito-kun," I hissed, moving into a crab-like crouch, getting ready to attack the monster. "On my mark, get away. Follow my scent trail back to the house and lock the doors once you're inside, okay?"
Brave little lad that he was, Akihito managed to answer, "Okay… I think I can. Is that you, Cara? The one Momi-chan wants to talk to, from the Council?"
"Yeah, its me," I answered and the creature paused and studied for a moment, tilting its head, as if it could hear something I couldn't. I didn't care what it could hear, I just wanted it dead. Attacking children should be against the rules of the universe or something, at least in my book. I took a deep breath to steady myself and threw up a mental pain block. This was going to hurt, a lot and the block would only last for maybe ten minutes tops. But it would keep me from being distracted by pain.
"Now, Akihito!" I yelled as I launched myself at the monster in a roll that brought me under it. I didn't look to see if the boy had moved or not, I had bigger problems to deal with.
For every limb I hacked off the bottom of the creature, three more were there, clawing and kicking at me. At my best I could have avoided the majority if not all of them. But I was no where near my best right now and I was in trouble.
A well placed kick caught me on the hip and sent me sprawling out from under the creature, landing in a heap about ten feet in front of it, where Akihito had been. From the sound of things, he was moving toward the house as fast as he could.
The limb-monster knew this too and abandoned me, chasing off into the forest after Akihito.
Now I'm a patient girl, but to turn your back on me during a fight as if I'm not a threat? That's just more then any healthy girl's ego can take. And mine had gotten quite a bruising lately between being cut up by the ice cat and being told to stay home and behave by Meele earlier that evening.
Embracing my anger and letting it fuel my change into my full yukoi form, I yelled aloud as I ran after the thing, "I'll be damned if I let some squalling, putrid, piece of shit conglomeration such as you get the better of me! Turn around and fight like a man… er… a Yukoi! Yeah, that's it, fight like a real Yukoi, you idiot limb monster."
Though it didn't seem have ears, I can only guess that the thing heard me because it changed direction with a speed that surprised me, rushing toward me once more. Taunting had worked a bit better then I'd planned for.
"I'm in for it now," I whispered before bringing my sword up once more in a fighter's defensive stance, feet planted but ready to move. Like a matador with a raging bull, I called to the beast, hoping its fury would make it stupid. "Come here, you monstrosity. Come on, how many females invite you to do anything? Must be hard to get a date, though you must come in handy occasionally."
The screech that came from its mouth was a mix between a human woman's scream and a lion's roar. It grated on my ears and made me wish my hearing wasn't as sharp as it was. Grass, sticks and the earth itself crunched under its limbs as it rushed toward me, mouth wide, that long tongue lashing out at me.
I was ready for the attack this time and parried away the tongue, slicing off another two feet of it, opening another wound that bleed furiously onto the forest floor. Of course, its thrashing also got a good deal of blood on myself, but that was okay. Long as it wasn't my blood that soaked my clothing things were going well.
Rolling in its tongue, the thing tried a new approach. Grab and bite seemed to be its new game plan and it seemed determined to make this one work where the tongue had failed.
