Nezha handed Rin his torch with one arm and patted the girl on the head with the other. “Will you let me help you out of this thing?”
She nodded hesitantly and rose to her feet. Nezha grasped her waist, lifted her out of the broken wagon, and set her gently on the ground.
“There. You’re all right. Can you walk?”
She nodded again and reached shakily for his hand. Nezha grasped it firmly, wrapped his slender fingers around her tiny hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not going anywhere. Do you have a name?”
“Khudali,” she whispered.
“Khudali. You’re safe now,” Nezha promised. “You’re with us. And we’re monster killers. But we need your help. Can you be brave for me?”
Khudali swallowed and nodded.
“Good girl. Now can you tell me what happened? Anything you remember.”
Khudali took a deep breath and began to speak in a halting, trembling voice. “I was with my parents and my sister. We were just riding the wagon back home. The Militia told us not to be out too late so we wanted to get back in time, and then . . .” Khudali began to sob again.
“It’s okay,” Nezha said quickly. “We know the beast came. I just need you to give me any details you can. Anything that comes to mind.”
Khudali nodded. “Everyone was screaming, but none of the soldiers did anything. And when it came near us, the Federation just watched. I hid inside the wagon. I didn’t see its face.”
“Did you see where it went?” Rin asked sharply.
Khudali flinched and shrank back behind Nezha.
“You’re scaring her,” Nezha said in a low voice, gesturing again for Rin to stand back. He turned back to Khudali. “Can you show me what direction it ran in?” he asked softly. “Where did it go?”
“I . . . I can’t tell you how to get there. But I can take you,” she said. “I remember what I saw.”
She led them a few steps toward a corner of the alley, then paused.
“That’s where it ate my brother,” she said. “But then it disappeared.”
“Hold on,” said Nezha. “You said you came here with your sister.”
Khudali looked up at Nezha, again with those wide, imploring eyes.
“I suppose I did,” she said.
Then she smiled.
In one instant she was a tiny girl; the next, a long-limbed beast. Except for its face, it was entirely covered in coarse pitch-black fur. Its loping arms could have reached the ground, like Suni’s, a monkey’s arms. Its head was very small, still the head of Khudali, which made it all the more grotesque. It reached for Nezha with thick fingers and lifted him into the air by his collar.
Rin drew her sword and hacked at its legs, its arms, its torso. But the chimei’s bristly fur was like a coat of iron needles, repelling her sword better than any shield could.
“Its face,” she yelled. “Aim for the face!”
But Nezha wasn’t moving. His hands dangled uselessly at his sides. He gazed into the chimei’s tiny face, Khudali’s face, entranced.
“What are you doing?” Rin screamed.
Slowly, the chimei turned its head to look down at her. It found her eyes.
Rin reeled and stumbled backward, choking.
When she gazed into those eyes, its entrancing eyes, the chimei’s monstrous body melted away in her vision. She couldn’t see the black hair, the beast’s body, the rough torso matted with blood. Only the face.
It wasn’t the face of a beast. It was the face of something beautiful. It was blurry for a moment, like it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be, and then it turned into a face she hadn’t seen in years.
Soft, mud-colored cheeks. Rumpled black hair. One baby tooth slightly larger than the rest, one baby tooth missing.
“Kesegi?” Rin uttered.
She dropped her torch. Kesegi smiled uncertainly.
“Do you recognize me?” he asked in his sweet little voice. “After all this time?”
Her heart broke. “Of course I recognize you.”
Kesegi looked at her hopefully. Then he opened his mouth and screeched, and the screech wasn’t anything human. The chimei rushed at her—Rin flung her hands up before her face—but something stopped it.
Nezha had broken free of its grasp; now he held on to its back, where he couldn’t see its face. Nezha stabbed inward, but his knife clattered uselessly against the chimei’s collarbone. He tried again, aiming for its face. Kesegi’s face.
“No!” Rin screamed. “Kesegi, no—”
Nezha missed—his blade ricocheted off iron fur. He raised his weapon for a second blow, but Rin dashed forward and shoved her sword between Nezha’s blade and the chimei.
She had to protect Kesegi, couldn’t let Nezha kill him, not Kesegi . . . he was just a kid, so helpless, so little . . .
It had been three years since she’d left him. She had abandoned him with a pair of opium smugglers, while she left for Sinegard without sending so much as a letter for three years, three impossibly long years.
It seemed like so long ago. An entire lifetime.
So why was Kesegi still so small?
She reeled, mind fuzzy. Answering the question was like trying to see through a dense mist. She knew there was some reason why this didn’t make sense, but she couldn’t quite piece together what it was . . . only that there was something wrong with this Kesegi in front of her.
It wasn’t her Kesegi.
It wasn’t Kesegi at all.
She struggled to come to her senses, blinking rapidly like she was trying to clear away a fog. It’s the chimei, you idiot, she told herself. It’s playing off your emotions. This is what it does. This is how it kills.
And now that she remembered, she saw there was something wrong with Kesegi’s face . . . his eyes were not soft and brown, but bright red, two glaring lanterns that demanded her gaze . . .
Howling, the chimei finally succeeded in flinging Nezha off its back. Nezha jerked through the air and crashed against the alley wall. His head thudded against the stone. He slid to the ground and did not stir.
The chimei bolted into the shadows and disappeared.
Rin ran toward Nezha’s prone form.
“Shit, shit . . .” She pressed her hand to the back of his head. It came away sticky. She probed around, feeling for the contours of the cut, and was relieved to find it was fairly shallow—even light head wounds bled heavily. Nezha might be fine.
But where had the chimei gone . . . ?
She heard a rustling noise above her. She turned, too slowly.
The chimei jumped straight down to land on her back, seizing her shoulders with a horrifically strong grip. She wriggled ferociously, stabbing backward with her sword. But she attacked in vain; the chimei’s fur was still an impenetrable shield, against which her blade could only scrape uselessly.
With one massive hand the chimei seized the blade and broke it. It made a disdainful noise and flung the pieces into the darkness. Then it encircled Rin’s neck with its arms, clinging to her back like a child—a giant, monstrous child. Its arms pressed against her windpipe. Rin’s eyes bulged. She couldn’t breathe. She fell to her knees and clambered desperately over the dirt toward the dropped torch.
She felt the chimei’s breath hot on her neck. It scratched at her face, pulled at her lips and nostrils the way a child might.
“Play with me,” it insisted in Kesegi’s voice. “Why won’t you play with me?”
Can’t breathe . . .
Rin’s fingers found the torch. She seized it and jabbed it blindly upward.
The burning end smashed into the chimei’s exposed face with a loud sizzle. The beast screeched and flung itself off Rin. It writhed in the dirt, limbs twitching at bizarre angles as it keened loudly in pain.
Rin screamed, too—her hair had caught fire. She pulled up her hood and rubbed the cloth over her head to smother the flames.
“Sister, please,” the chimei gasped. In its agony it somehow managed to sound even more like Kesegi.
She crawled doggedly toward it, pointedly looking away from its eyes. She clutched the torch tightly in her right hand. She had to burn it again. Burning it seemed to be the only way to hurt it.
“Rin.”
This time it spoke in Altan’s voice.