Year of the Tiger (Changeling Sisters) (10 page)

“Goodbye, Khyber.”

He spun me around far too quickly, so I was leaning over the balcony, the cold burrowing into the small of my back.

“Don’t do this. I can seduce him. The Buddha knows, when you’ve lived a millennium, you’ll give any sexuality its fair shot.”

I looked him square in the eye. “Goodbye, Khyber.”

He released me, and I gasped in the sudden absence of his touch.

“Fine,” he whispered, a glassy statue on the brink of the festival’s candlelight. “But this isn’t goodbye.”

I smiled. And then I went to Donovan.

***

The puppet show, the last act of the namsadang, was in full swing. I touched Donovan’s elbow, and that was all the invitation he needed. Suddenly, I found myself swept up in his arms, watching stairs disappear beneath me. I felt incredibly light. The beautiful flower lantern, a “soul-catcher,” as Khyber had called it, was tucked away under my pillow in the women’s sleeping quarters. I had nowhere else to conceal it, not with the massive necklace of subterfuge hanging around my neck. But he would come to trust me. I would discover where Donovan kept his soul.

The drum beat still throbbed from the floor down below. Donovan tossed me onto his bed, and I sank into silky white sheets more comfortable than any I’d ever known. The golden blankets felt snug and feather-soft against my weary muscles. When I turned, there was the naked man I’d seen from my first night in Eve, torso and muscle illuminated by moonlight.

I cringed back against the pillow. Donovan crawled under the covers toward me. I could feel the icy bite of winter’s wind nip my bare skin. Donovan gently grabbed my waist and leaned me back out the window, against the wind. I felt the breeze collect about my breasts and inner thighs. On a whim, I extended my neck back as far as it would go.

Stark white meadows shone in all directions beneath me. I panicked in the infinite darkness and grabbed for any warm handhold that granted security. My arms wrapped around the icy contours of Donovan’s shoulders. I hesitated, fingers skidding, but then he drew me roughly up against him in a stiff kiss.

“It’s time for you to make your choice,” he growled at me. “The cold of death that waits outside, or the cold within.”

“I just want to feel something other than cold,” I whispered into the golden hairs at the base of his neck, and he threw me down upon the bed.

I expected my clothes to be torn away, leaving me mute and helpless, but to my surprise, his lips brushed mine, dove-soft.

“What did that make you feel?”

“Warm,” I said. Deep inside me, something trembled.

“Not good enough,” he whispered, wet lips brushing against my ear. “I want you to be on fire.”

I was on fire the moment his hand slipped under my dress, finding my breasts and massaging them until they were throbbing. I moaned for him to leave my breasts alone, but his fingers continuously caressed my nipples anyway, teasing them until they stood quivering beneath his sensuous fingertips.

He explored deeper, tracing circles around my ivory stomach, and then paused momentarily at my hemline. I wore no panties. His breath sharpened. The amorous hand withdrew, only to reappear seconds later, slipping up my thigh and into regions I hadn’t even explored. I moaned, and he silenced me with a kiss of those golden lips.

My fingers scraped up his back. I could see those swan-white wings fully-extended above me, deepening to gold at the bone. I had to touch him back, didn’t I? And those wings were hauntingly beautiful.

Arching up against him, I allowed my fingers to dance up the soft feathers. They gleamed as brightly as sunshine in response, and I was reminded achingly of the day.

“Leave them,” Donovan ordered me harshly. “My lips are here.”

“I can’t look away from them.”

“Oh? Is that a challenge?” His stroking intensified within me, and I cried out, instinctively seizing his wings in both hands for support.

Suddenly, the whole world seemed to be raining glitter. A brilliant radiance built up and then rippled throughout the entire room, leaving me momentarily seeing white.

When the room swam back into focus, Donovan was no longer beside me. I peered over the edge of the bed to see a tall, dashingly handsome man kneeling against the floor, one hand pressed against his heart. Two scars of red, puckered flesh twisted from his neck down to his hips where his wings should have been.

“Prince?”

“Get out.” Donovan remained hunched, one hand still clutching his heart. “Stupid girl; I told you not to touch them.
Get out!
”

“Your wings—”

“I still have my wings.” His vacant teal eyes locked on mine, and I felt that mesmerizing thrill creep up my shoulders. “That is what you will believe.
Tell no one of what you saw here.
”

I fled from the room. A last peek back caught Donovan staring desperately at himself in the mirror, as if one day he would see a reflection looking back.

It didn’t make sense. Donovan had no wings? But surely, I’d seen him flying during the opening ceremony in the palace. Could he have tricked our sight? I didn’t know what it would cost to perform such a magical feat, but for a vampyre of his stature to reveal weakness would surely be suicide.

I almost didn’t see Amrit until I ran into her. She thrust me up against the wall by the throat and sniffed at me, jealously.

“You didn’t fuck him,” she said in amazement, releasing me.

I stared determinedly at the floor, cheeks reddening.

“Why didn’t you fuck him? Just do it and get it over with. Then he’ll lose all interest in you. Trust me, I’ve seen it a million times.” Amrit tucked my disheveled hair behind my ears. “You’re not his type.”

Did she know that Donovan had lost his wings? It was a toss-up, but Donovan’s compulsion held me tongue-tied.

“I don’t think he wants to be bothered right now,” I muttered and hurried down the hallway.

“The talk’s already made its way around the court,” she called after me. “Everyone knows you chose Prince Donovan over Prince Khyber.”

Just as I go running back to the other one.
My slippers slapped the wooden floor soundlessly.
That should give them something to talk about. And Maya a reason to deafen, blind,
and
mute me.

I reached the top of the staircase and jerked to an abrupt stop. A sea of heads filled the floor below me, bathed in moonlight. All stood in unnatural silence.

Queen Maya rose from her throne and stood before the moon, spreading her cobweb-like wings wide. Moonlight peeked in through the holes. The Court of Eve watched her in absolute silence.

Her fangs clicked, like the sound of a trigger being pulled. Then she sank her teeth into the neck of a young girl draped across her lap. The girl struggled and flopped around for a bit, but Maya held her down until she stopped moving. The face of the moon slowly clotted with blood-red luminescence.

“You have been chosen,” Maya told the girl, stroking her long silvery-gold curls. “You will be my new body.” Then she snapped the girl’s head clean off.

I recoiled from the balcony. The girl’s clouded eyes were Lillian’s.

Crispin, the vampyre with wings of evergreen, stood by with arms crossed. Natalya cried out softly, and a ghost clocked her over the head for it.

“These bodies just don’t last like they used to,” Maya said conversationally, inspecting the headless torso as if she were examining a new garment. She held out one hand for Khyber to hold. “We shall retire to the Mirror Room. As for the rest of you, you are to dance until the moon sets.”

“Our Queen.” The ghosts knelt.

I watched Khyber’s black wings retreat down the passage toward the mysterious Mirror Room. No one who went in there ever came out right again. I shivered, remembering the fate of poor Olivia who’d been reassigned to stay in the Mirror Room, and had emerged a robotic, obedient version of herself. Who knew what Maya and Khyber were up to in there. It looked like I would have to capture Donovan’s soul by myself.

Except now I knew where it was.

Chapter 13: The Last Straw

I sat bolt upright in bed and seized Una’s shoulders.

“Una! We have to stop her! We have to find her NOW!”

Una’s palm slammed into my nose. I hit the pillow with a thud.

“Why do you wake me?” Una looked around our shadowed room. “No one here.”

“It’s about Raina, of course!” I leaped out of bed and began pacing the room. “She almost gave her virginity to…to…a freakin’ six-hundred-year-old man! She’s been brainwashed! She’s been compelled! I swear to GOD that’s NOT HER!”

“You and your sister both like older men,” Una commented. “How old is Rafael?”

I cast her a withering glance. “Okay, so when I was born, Rafael was learning his ABCs. But when Raina was born, this Donovan had lived through two world wars!”

“Prince Donovan? Not Prince Khyber?”

“Yes, the Frenchman. If he hadn’t been self-conscious about his body image, who knows what might have happened.” I clutched the covers to my chin in fear.

“This is painful, but it tells us nothing new.” She rolled over on her pillow again.

“Nothing new? How is watching my sister narrowly escape an undesired lover and then run headfirst into a sacrificial ritual for the Vampyre Queen’s new body not—” I stopped, mind working furiously. “UNA!” I grabbed her shoulders again.

She groaned. “What now?”

“The body! The body!” I was so frantic in my efforts to get dressed that I couldn’t tell shirts from underwear. “Maya has a new body now! She took one of the girls’!”

Una watched me, eyebrow raised quizzically. “And?”

“Hyeon Bin told us he only saw the ghosts bring food by way of Seorak San, where the living would still have a need for it. You told me the girls’ bodies must be close to their spirit selves or else the connection will snap. Maya just took the body of a kidnapped girl. Don’t you see?
Maya’s body isn’t in the DMZ anymore
. It’s in Seorak San…near the Vampyre Court…which I will soon know the location of…” I dragged my fingers through my hair. “That has to be enough proof. It makes sense, doesn’t it?”

Una looked up at me. A broad smile flickered beneath the pale moonlight.

“Yes!” I hugged her. “I have to tell the pack! This was the last obstacle preventing them from infiltrating Seorak San. We’ll know where she’ll be!”

“But will Khyber’s body be there as well?”

 “He’d better make sure it is. If he really intends to die.”

“So? How will you know?”

My eyes narrowed. “I’ll know. When I enter the Vampyre Court.”

***

I’d been halfway through explaining my findings to Jaehoon, when the goshawk leader of the Were Alliance, Xiang, threw his book to the ground.

“Excuse me,” he demanded. “How does this little girl know these things?”

Then he and Jaehoon lapsed off into a heated exchange in Korean and Mandarin. I did catch the towering Xiang, whose intense bird-of-prey gaze had me searching for a bed to cower under, repeat the word,
“Kkum? KKUM?”
multiple times, with an increasingly high-pitched note of disbelief.
Kkum
.
Dream.
Ah, so the source of my intelligence was under fire.

“Excuse
me
, but people routinely changing into a whole circus of animals is believable, but dream-walking isn’t?” I’ll be honest, I only chanced it because Xiang’s English wasn’t so good.

“Citlalli, you must go.” Jaehoon didn’t break eye contact with Xiang. A staring contest between a wolf and a goshawk. I would have liked to see the outcome, but there were others I needed to subvert to my cause.

“What are they saying?” I asked Moon, who joined me outside the room.

She listened, ears quivering to attention. “Leader Xiang is demanding why a rogue wolf, who the juin-nim is supposed to be punishing, is allowed voice in the pack. He think the juin-nim is weak.”

“Why doesn’t he go back to preening his feathers and generally nothing like before?” I muttered. “Where’s Rafael? A-and the others?”

Moon shot me a cool, almost accusatory look. “Downstairs.”

“Is everything okay?” I swayed unconsciously on the top step.

“I think…everything will be okay. For you.”

Puzzled, I watched her retreating back. What was going on?

I bounded off the last step to see Young Soo curled up outside a closed door.

“No,” he told me, and then made a Do-Not-Enter motion.

“It’s okay.” I was surprised when Young Soo suddenly threw his arms around me. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

He stared up at me, eyes quivering, as if he could will me to understand.

“Just do it.” I jumped as Yu Li’s voice, high-pitched and icy, drifted through the closed door.

A chair rustling. Then, Rafael’s low reply: “I can’t.”

“Why is it hard? This is a direct request from your juin-nim. From your
creator.
”

“I can’t do it, Yu Li
-a
!” Then, softer: “I won’t.”

“Why?” I hated when she was like this, like a merciless wind intent on scraping the tiniest bit of paint off the wall. “You care for her. Why don’t you admit it?”

“Oh, that’s rich,” Rafael responded, composure slowly starting to unfurl. “Coming from the woman who can’t let go of her dead husband! You’re still obsessed with him! God, it’s like he was going to be the next president of South Korea!”

“He was a great man and Young Soo’s father,” Yu Li said. “Why shouldn’t I bring him up?”

Young Soo rustled anxiously in my arms at his name.

“You don’t bring him up for Young Soo,” Rafael growled. “You bring him up to critique
me
. Every time I teach Young Soo a few notes on the guitar, get him ready for school, hell, read him a damn
book
, you
always
interject how
he
used to do it. Every fuckin’ time, Yu Li! I can’t do anything right with your son!”

“You are not his father!” she snapped. I winced, covering Young Soo’s ears. This was going to end badly. Two Weres straining at the edge of their leashes at one another— This was going to blow up.