My gods, she’s beautiful.
Buruu roared, but the female seemed already aware of his presence, spiraling up through a thicket of glass. He followed like an iron filing drawn to starmetal, mind alight with her scent, so overpowering Yukiko broke off the tenuous link between them, thrust herself out into cold air and clean rain, her insides shivering with the strength of his desire.
They twisted through the stone forest, diving and rolling across fangs of gleaming obsidian. She was smaller, faster, and Buruu struggled to keep pace or follow her through the impossible gaps between broken black towers. She led them west, west toward the muted sunset, and Yukiko reached between the rain with the smallest sliver of herself, narrowing her eyes with the effort, almost blinded by the female’s spark.
Hello?
A flash of aggression. Confusion.
Can you hear me?
—WHO?—
Her voice was loud as a thunderclap, honey-warm, edged with a softness like wreaths of blue-black smoke from her father’s pipe.
—WHAT ARE YOU?—
I’m the yōkai-kin on the back of the sex-crazed thunder tiger behind you.
The female banked right, swooping up between two fangs of stone. She shot a quick glance over her shoulder, and Yukiko felt curiosity swell inside her. Beneath it, contempt. Anger. Something approaching hatred.
—YOU RIDE THE KINSLAYER?—
Kinslayer?
—FALSE WINGS?—
Yukiko shrieked and pressed herself to Buruu’s neck as he banked 90 degrees, streaking between two obsidian knuckles. She felt the stone pass inches from her spine, gravity clutching her, praying the knotted obi around Buruu’s neck would hold. She was seconds from slipping off his back when he righted himself, swooped beneath a crooked overhang.
The female was a flash of white through the rain ahead.
Listen, I know it’s probably expected of you to make him work for his supper, but if you could skip the foreplay and let him catch you, I’d really appreciate it. We’ve been flying for four days and he’s about to have a heart attack.
—DID NOT COME HERE TO FIND MALE, MONKEY-CHILD. LEAST OF ALL HIM.— What’s so bad about him?
—FOOL. KNOW NOTHING. GO HOME.—
Izanagi’s balls, that’s what I’m trying to do!
—TRY HARDER.—
They raced amongst the islands, still weaving west. Yukiko could have sworn the female was toying with Buruu, slowing her pace, letting him creep closer before putting on a burst of speed or maneuvering where he couldn’t follow. She could sense grim amusement flickering across the female’s mind, screeching as they fell behind yet again, but Yukiko worried about Buruu’s metal wings—if Kin’s workmanship would hold up under this kind of punishment.
Across miles of red ocean and black glass. Glittering spray and snarling waves. Nature unleashed in all its callous beauty. And there, with Buruu’s heart straining to its limits, as Raijin thundered his drums, she saw it—an enormous lopsided structure of metal and stone, rising from the ocean on iron legs, crowned with spires of winding copper. Its roof was covered by an impossible machine, all glass tubes and snarled pipes and thick cable, shuddering and pulsing with a glow that wore the color of new lightning. A smaller machine resembling a giant dragonfly with three sets of propeller wings was chained on the ceiling. And running about it, swathed in slick yellow oilcloths, Yukiko saw the tiny figures of men.
Of men.
They were calling. Pointing at her.
What in the name of the gods?
She heard a sudden roar—nothing like stormsong—the shadow of broad wings falling over them both. Tearing her mind from the female’s, Yukiko caught the barest glimpse of burning heat in the Kenning before they were hit; a terrifying impact rattling the teeth in her skull. She felt a flash of pain from Buruu, screamed as she was flung from his neck, clawing the air as she plummeted down through the rain. The water rushed up to meet her, a long-neglected lover with open, bloody arms. She hit the surface like a comet, breath driven from her lungs as a deathly chill reached toward the marrow in her bones.
Akihito had taught her to swim when she was a child; she and her brother Satoru paddling in the stream running by their little bamboo house. But the water there was smooth as crow’s eyes, not cresting in waves as tall as a chapterhouse. Foaming white hammers crashed upon her head, clothes dragging her down, katana on her back heavy as lead. The current drove her toward the crooked building’s iron legs, but it was all she could do to stay afloat, let alone choose a direction. Finally she couldn’t even manage that. The water closed over her head, a suffocating, frozen blanket, driving her below, her last sight the silhouettes of two arashitora clashing in the lightning-bright skies above.
Buruu! Help me!
The current dragged her through an underwater forest as her lungs began to burn; towers of cruel reef snarled with rubbery kelp.