“Not telling you what you’re doing.” Yoshi stood slowly, took Jurou’s hand and hauled himself out of the muck. “Telling you what we’re doing.”
Hana glanced at Jurou, the boy’s face pale and pained. But he stood beside Yoshi, smeared in rot, squeezing his hand tight. “Please, Hana…”
“I’m not dying for folks who’d gladly light me on fire,” Yoshi said. “I’m not waiting for the bushi’ to kick down my door again, drag me to die blind and starved in the belly of Kigen jail. Not for people who wouldn’t spare a drop of piss for me if I was dying of thirst. Not now. Not ever. Now you think about that, and you decide if they’re worth dying for.”
“Your brother’s right, Hana.” The siblings glanced over as Akihito got slowly to his feet, clutching his bleeding thigh. “You should go with your family.”
Yoshi blinked, confused.
“Doubtless,” he finally nodded.
“This is my fault,” the big man said. “I should never have brought it into your home. Never placed your family in danger. I’m sorry.”
“Akihito…” Stupid, girlish tears welled inside her and she clenched her teeth, stamping them down into her boots. “I can’t turn my back now…”
“You should go. I’ve seen enough of my friends die over this. Over what I could have done and failed to do.” He stared down at those broad, clever hands, smeared in blood and filth. Shrugging helplessly. “I don’t want to be carving spirit stones for you too.”
“Mreowwwwl.”
The four of them looked up, Daken’s silhouette peering down at them from the storm drain above, etched in black against the scalding, garish daylight.
“I’ll keep moving,” Akihito said. “Exit a few blocks down, nowhere near you three.”
“You do that,” Yoshi growled, sparing him a toxic glance. He held out his hand to Hana, eyes locked on hers. “Come with?”
The tears were flowing now, spilling and burning down her cheek. Hateful, horrid things, making her feel a weak and frightened girl, the child she’d tried to kill long ago. She was thirteen years old again, small and afraid, shaking so hard she couldn’t stand. Yoshi rising from the ruins, fists clenched, drenched in scarlet …
She couldn’t leave him now. Not after all he’d done. All for her.
All for me.
Hana hung her head. Took one step toward her brother, a few inches and a thousand miles, reaching out to clutch his hand. She looked back at the big man, blurry through her tears.
“I’m sorry…” she sobbed. “Akihito, I’m so sorry…”
“It’s all right,” he said, forcing a smile. “You’ve done enough. More than most.”
The big man spared an apologetic glance for Yoshi and Jurou, met by a pitiless scowl and uncertain, doleful eyes. And then he turned, hand pressed to thigh, foot dragging through the muck as he limped into the dark. The sound of his tread echoed off the sweating walls, bounced down into the tunnel depths, in the cavern of her chest and the empty in her heart.
Thump-slush.
Thump-slush.
“Don’t fret now, Hana.” Yoshi took her hand, looked her in the eye. “I take care of us. Always. Blood is blood, remember?”
Lips trembling. Cheeks burning. Throat squeezed tight. But still she managed it. To force them out. The words. The vow. All she had left.
“… Blood is blood.”
36
TAKE
The rain sang a hymn of white noise on the ocean’s skin in the space between one thunderclap and the next. The nomad was pressed low to the ground, blood-drunk and snarling. Buruu hauled himself to his feet, shook himself like a sodden dog, glaring at the younger thunder tiger as hackles rippled down his spine. Yukiko held out a gentle hand, took one step closer to Buruu’s foe. Her voice rang in the Kenning, loud enough for them both to hear.
“It’s all right, don’t be afraid.”
FEAR NOTHING. NO ONE.
The nomad’s thoughts were a shout in her skull, bright as a shot from an iron-thrower, loud enough to be felt as physical pain. She winced, shuddering with effort, pushing her wall between them in the Kenning, as if she were damming a river and allowing only a trickle of him through. His trepidation was obvious; his fear in the face of this strange girl who spoke to his thoughts, whose will beat upon him heavy as the storm itself.
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
CAN TRY.
“I want to talk to you.”
HOW YOU TALK IN MY MIND?
“I am Yōkai-kin.”
The nomad blinked, looked at her with narrowed, amber eyes. The intensity of his thoughts was making her head ache, even behind her mental barricade. She realized her nose was bleeding again.
“You’re a wanderer? You have no pack?”
WILL MAKE MY OWN.
Yukiko glanced up at the female she could still feel wheeling about their heads.
“She doesn’t seem interested, friend.”
FEMALE STRONG. NEEDS STRONGER MATE. ONE WHO HAS WON GLORY. SUCH IS OUR WAY.
“I have a better way.”
BETTER?
“A way to win glory untold.”
* … HOW?*
“Join our pack.”
The nomad looked at Buruu, made a snorting sound that sounded like laughter.