AS YOU WISH.
Tall double doors barred entry to the main building, heavy oak shod with iron. She lifted the knocker, rust flaking beneath her grip, pounding it against the wood. Waiting interminable minutes, pounding again, dragging rain-soaked hair from her eyes. She blinked up at empty windows, lightning reflected on cloudy, dust-dark glass.
Nobody home.
STAND ASIDE.
Yukiko backed well away, Buruu lowering his head, talons scarring the flagstones. She could feel it gathering around him—a whisper-rush of static charge, the hair on her arms standing tall, ozone thickening in the air. The thunder tiger spread his wings, pistons on his false-pinions creaking, shuddering, tiny wisps of lightning trickling across his sheared feathertips. The world fell still as he reared up on his hind legs, Yukiko clenching her teeth, covering her ears as Buruu clapped his wings together, giving birth to a deafening peal of Raijin Song.
It was written in the old legends that arashitora were children of the Thunder God, Raijin. That to mark them as his own, their father had gifted their wings some measure of his power. Yukiko had thought the tales a myth until she’d seen it with her own eyes—the night Buruu had almost blasted the Thunder Child from the skies.
A thunderous boom rocked the courtyard; the crack of a thousand bullwhips splitting the air in two, the shivering walls bleeding mortar. Flagstones burst skyward as if black powder were being ignited underground, rainwater vaporizing as the shock wave collided with the ancient wooden doors and sheared them to splinters. Iron buckled, rivets popped, hinges squealed as the doors burst inward. One was blasted clear of its moorings, the other hanging from a single stubborn hinge, swinging like a broken jaw.
Dust in the hallway beyond danced briefly in the calamity, echoes dying with reluctance.
Yukiko brought her hands away from her ears, a smile curling her lips. She put her arms around Buruu’s neck, stood on tiptoes and kissed his cheek. His purr set the broken stones at their feet trembling anew.
You are a little magnificent, you know.
ONLY A LITTLE?
Gasping, hand to her brow as his thoughts bounced like boulders around her skull. Slamming the door on the Kenning again; a recalcitrant child marched off to its bedroom to ponder its wrongdoings. Buruu whined, stepped away, tail tucked. Yukiko could sense he wanted to apologize, but without the bridge of thought between them, he had no way to do so. She wondered what it must feel like for him when she closed off her power completely—to be locked in the cold outside her head, just as alone as she was. Reaching out, she ran her hand down his throat, curling her fingers through whisper-soft feathers, giving him the only comfort she could. As she kissed him again, she saw she’d left a smear of scarlet on his cheek.
Wiping one hand across her nose, she brought it away gleaming and bloody. And with a grim nod to the arashitora, the pair stepped across the shattered threshold and walked inside.
12
ACRES OF SKIN
Skin prickling. Flinching at shadows. Teeth clenched so tight they ached.
A wide hallway stretched out before them into sodden-blanket gloom. Choked daylight streamed through filthy windows, leaking into the corridor as mud-bright stains. The wind was a hungry ghost, chilled fingers scrabbling at the shutters, moaning as it shambled about the halls. The timbers creaked like old men’s bones, walls shifting as if the monastery were some slumbering giant, lost in nightmares and praying for dawn.
Yukiko reached into the satchels over Buruu’s back, fetched a paper lantern and a wallet of matches. The crackling flare illuminated dozens of old tapestries, faded through the passing of years and the sea’s corrosive breath. Bitter cold winds howled through the blasted doors and set the talismans trembling on their hooks.
Buruu was all tingling spine and dilating eyes, wingtips scraping the walls. Brushing the feathers at his throat, her fingertips crackled with static electricity. His talons gouged the stone as they prowled into the dark, ears straining for lifesound. But there were only the tapestries whispering in the gloom, the blustering storm and their own synchronized heartbeats.
They searched every room, found nothing and no one. Dust-cloaked furniture, fabric slowly rotting, lanterns unlit for an age. The sea howling below, rainsong on the tiles above.