The Devil's Backbone (A Niki Slobodian Novel: Book Five)

by Murray, J. L.

  “Your monster,” said Gage.

  “I can’t read it.”

  “Of course you can’t read it. It’s a pre-biblical language. Only three people in the world can read it.”

  “I’m assuming you're one of them?” I said, through clenched teeth. The warm effects of the cheap rum were wearing off and I took another drink out of the bottle. “God, this stuff is awful.”

  Gage shrugged. “Do you want to hear this, or insult my booze?”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “I think you’re looking for a Yuki-onna.”

  “A Yuki-what?” I said.

  Gage grabbed another book, rifling through the pages, until he stopped, a satisfied expression on his face. “Here. It’s a Japanese myth.” He held the book out to me.

  “Can you give me the short version?”

  “Snow. Death. Evil.”

  I closed my eyes. “Okay. Maybe a longer short version.” I took another swig of horrible rum.

  “There are a lot of varying stories, so it’s hard to say,” said Gage, setting the book down. “Some say she’s like a vampire and sucks blood. Others say it’s the life force she wants. And then there’s the stories where she just kills for the reason any nasty thing kills.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because she can.” Gage shrugged. “It’s all myth. I had no idea any of this stuff was possible.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Well you know about the bloody footprints. You know she’s killing people, obviously. Other than that, I’m sorry, Niki. I got nothing. It’s all stories. I don’t know how to help you. Maybe I could come with you and Cast on her. Would that help?”

  “I don’t know if you’d survive the journey,” I said. “The only other person I’ve ever taken is Lucifer. And he’s, well, you know.”

  “You any closer to finding him?”

  I looked away. “One crisis at a time.”

  “So how are you going to stop her? The Yuki-onna, I mean. Any ideas?”

  I met his eyes. His brow was furrowed with concern.

  “Don’t worry, Bobby. I’ve taken down gods before. A little monster like this shouldn’t be a problem.” I tried to look unfazed by what he had told me. I wasn’t, though. Something about all this was unsettling. My guts were twisted up thinking about it.

  “Well be careful, sis. There’s also the kid to consider.”

  “The kid?” I said.

  “The boy she took,” said Gage. “You do remember the boy, don’t you?”

  “Matthew,” I breathed. I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten about him already. “Of course. I’ll save the kid. Don’t worry, it’s going to be fine.”

  As I let the dead pull me back into my invisible world of death, Gage called out to me.

  “Don’t forget what it was like,” he said.

  “Forget what?” I called back. I could feel myself fading.

  “Don’t forget what it was like to be human.” And then his eyes were looking through me, and I let myself be pulled across the world. To the dead.

  * * *

  I felt a shiver wrap around my whole body as I emerged into the World. The pull felt violent now and I let it pull me forward. The grass under my feet was frozen and crunched as I walked forward. It was a park of some kind, blindingly bright from snow that was half melted, sun glaring back up at me from below. I looked up and felt the sun hot on my face from a clear blue sky, seeming to finally win over the frigid breeze that had now abated. Blinking away the spots swimming in my vision I looked around. I realized that the tall trees lining the park were palm tree, hanging with icicles, slush falling from the fronds in clumps.

  She had been here, but she was gone now. I caught my breath as I followed the pull. There were so many dead. I was almost afraid to see.

  I walked over a low stone wall and emerged through the trees onto a long white beach, the bathers that crowded the wet sand on towels and folding chairs too still to be alive. Forms walked slowly around the bodies, some crying, some just looking around in shock.

  I approached the nearest body, blinking in the sunshine, thinking there was something wrong with my eyes. But it wasn’t my eyes. The body was tinged in blue, from her painted toes to her bleach-blonde hair. Makeup stood out on her face, which was a chalky pale blue underneath. Her lips were darker blue, and her fingertips and the tips of her toes were almost black. Her spirit lingered nearby, unable to tear her empty eyes away from her own corpse. Silvery tears ran down her face.

  “What happened here?” I asked her. She didn’t respond. I stood in front of her, careful not to touch. “Please,” I said, louder. “Tell me what happened.”

  She looked slowly up to meet my eyes. The sorrow seemed to fill her up. She shook her head.

  “I don’t know,” she said, her voice quavering, lip trembling. “I don’t know what happened. Can you put me back? Take it back. Please. You can do that, can’t you?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m sorry.” I reached out and touched her shoulder. She imploded into tiny whirlwinds of dust and then was gone.

  It was the same all across the beach. The snow was gone and the air was moist and smelled of the sea and suntan lotion. Each spirit was in shock. They had all just been killed, just like that, for no discernible reason, in their eyes.

  The pain was easing in my chest after some time. I had taken dozens of spirits, confused and overwhelmed by the tragedy of their own deaths. There were still so many to go. It was exhausting trying to speak to them all, but I had to find out what I was dealing with here. I’d nearly given up hope, when I came across a middle-aged Asian woman, kneeling down by the water. I might have thought she was alive. She was different than the others. She didn’t quail over her body or wander around looking helpless. She just crouched down looking out at the bright turquoise water. I approached her. She looked over at me, unsurprised.

  “They’re all gone,” she said. “But you know that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “My children, my husband.” She closed her eyes. “Even me. All of us.”

  “So why are you still here?” I said.

  “Did any of it matter?” she said, seeming not to hear my question. “We went to church, we were good people. Did any of that matter?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  She looked over at me. “You’re not what I expected. I thought there would be a bright light. Or angels. I don’t know. Something beautiful to make up for the end of things. It is the end, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know that either,” I said.

  “You’re not very helpful.”

  “Did you see?” I said. “When it happened. No one else saw what did…this.” I gestured to the beach packed with blackened and blue bodies.

  She shook her head and didn’t speak for a long time. I thought she hadn’t seen either and was about to touch her, to give her peace, when she spoke again.

  “I heard stories when I was a girl. I was born here, but my family is from Kyoto. My father is going to have to bury me.” She fought to control her emotions, finally speaking again. “They were just stories. I thought they were. My mother always said they were real, but I never—“

  “You saw it,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “I saw it. Her. Whatever she is. But I still can’t believe it.”

  I knew before I asked, but I had to know for sure. “What was it?”

  “Yuki-onna,” she said. “God, she was beautiful. So beautiful. I just stared at her. I couldn’t look away. She was carrying something with her. A cage or something. Like those old-fashioned birdcages in the old movies. It started glowing. So blue it hurt my eyes to look at it. And then it was all around us.”

  “And then?” I said.

  “Nothing,’” she said. “Just death. All of us. Everyone. ” She finally allowed the tears to flow like silver out of her eyes. She wiped them away with the heels of her hands, staring at them. She looked at me. “She was cryin
g too,” she said. “It wasn’t normal. I remember because I was about to ask her if she needed help. I thought she was hurt, but now I realize that wasn’t why she was crying.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Her tears. They were red, like blood. Is it going to hurt? When I go, I mean. It’s okay if it does. I just want to be ready.”

  I smiled sadly. “Like going to sleep.”

  “Will I see them again?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Someday.”

  “I guess that will have to be enough.”

  “I guess it will,” I said as I touched her.

  * * *

  After the beach, the pull in my chest took me into a city. The license plates said Hawaii. If Yuki-onna had gotten from Florida to Hawaii,. I was sure she could go anywhere she wanted. I needed to stop this.

  The air grew more and more frigid as I walked through the city, touching spirits as I went. With the Kyoto woman confirming Bobby's hunch, this wasn't an investigation any more. It was a pursuit. I was following her trail of winter and death. She couldn’t run away from me, and she didn’t seem to be trying.

  The further I got from the beach, the more like a regular city the landscape became. Old cars filled up the curb, dusted with icy snow. The only thing that told me where we were were the occasional palm trees that lined the streets in the nicer parts of the city.

  I’d been walking for hours, the city still and frozen. The air was bitterly cold around me. I touched spirits as I went, leaving their dust in my wake. I was close, I could feel it. Snow swirled around me, ice cutting into my cheeks and making my eyes water. I could barely feel my fingers. There was a feeling of wrongness to it all. I could feel it hard in my gut, the sense that none of this should be. It was becoming more and more difficult to walk, my joints seeming to be freezing, a sharp pain in my sinuses. I pushed myself on, through a solid sheet of falling snow in front of me. After a time I could make out red footprints on the ground. Careful not to touch them, I followed. Though I could have found her without the footprints. I forced myself through the snow and came out in the eye of what appeared to be a tornado of snow.

  And there she was, right in the middle.

  She stared back at me, her face mournful and so pale it almost blended into the snow. Black hair swirled around her in the freezing wind. Tears of what appeared to be blood filled her eyes, the rivulets dripping down her powder-white face. She held a gilded birdcage in her right hand, which she held out in front of her. I squinted, the cold freezing my eyes in their sockets. There was something moving in the cage. I lifted my foot, trying to move closer, but only managed to take a single step. I couldn’t move.

  She lifted the birdcage up, and I could see something pulsating there. Pumping. Like a…

  “What the hell are you?” I whispered, my lips refusing to move. The living heart in the cage beat faster, glowing blue and exuding a bright, shining fog from inside itself. The fog wrapped around the Yuki-onna’s arm and snaked out toward me. I heard an echo in my head. A small voice, like a child’s, seeming to cry out, though it seemed only a whisper. I focused, trying to listen.

  “They were so sad,” it said. “Everyone is so unhappy. So much ugliness.”

  “So you killed them?” I wasn’t sure if I said it aloud, or only thought it, but the woman in front of me seemed to understand.

  “I let them sleep. They’ll be at rest now. You know all about that, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I said. “You need to stop. You don’t belong here.” The fog was touching me now, seeming to spark with brilliant blue electricity as it wound around my leg. I screamed in my head at the pain.

  “I’m lost,” said the small voice in my head. “Can you help me? I don’t know how I came here.”

  “I can help you,” I thought. “Please just stop this.”

  The voice laughed a bitter laugh. “I can’t stop. This is what I do. I can’t stop just like you can’t. We’re cut from the same cloth. But you’re not the same as the rest of them. Why won’t you sleep?”

  “You can’t kill me,” I said. “But I do have to stop you.”

  “Why?” she said. “Wouldn’t it be easier if I just made them all sleep? Then you would be free. I can see him in your head. You don’t care for any of these sad creatures. I want to help you. The dark man that you seek. You can go find him. Death can’t bring you peace, but he can.”

  “You don’t know me,” I whispered in my head. “These are people. You can’t just kill them.”

  She smiled then, with tiny sharp teeth, red with blood.

  “Yes I can,” she said. She dropped the arm holding the cage and the fog retreated like a videotape set on rewind. It sucked back inside the beating heart, the pumping slowing down. I looked at her chest and realized there was an open hole in her chest, dark and glistening.

  “It’s your heart,” I said.

  She looked at me with blood-filled eyes. The smile faded. Then she made a motion with her free hand, blackened and razor-sharp fingernails raking through the air. The fabric of reality around her seemed to shudder.

  I suddenly recalled my promise to the mother in Florida. “Where is he?” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The boy. Matthew. You took him.”

  “No,” she said. “I have no boy.” Reality gave a lurch. And she was gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I stood, ice dripping from my hair and my face, unable to move. The numbness in my feet was wearing off and a million needles throbbed under the skin. I felt the flare of light that ignited inside whenever I was hurt. The warmth spread, and the feeling of needles touched every inch of skin. I collapsed onto the wet pavement, tears streaming down my face from the pain.

  It was completely silent. At a nearby bus stop, a Hawaiian man lay slumped on the bench, his lips blue and his fingers black. I turned. Bodies dotted the sidewalk. A mother and child had fallen nearby. An old woman’s cart of dripping groceries stood next to her body. I pushed my wet hair away from my face, the panic mixing with the heat of the healing white light inside of me. I swallowed hard. I couldn’t feel the pull of any spirits.

  Where the hell had she gone?

  “You won’t find her. Not today.”

  I whipped around to find a teenage girl blinking up at me. Black eyeliner surrounded her eyes like a raccoon. She wore silver hoops in her ears and tight jeans. I stared at her. How was she here?

  “You’re safe for now, Niki Slobodian,” she said. Her eyes were strange. Like they were too old for her.

  “How do you know me?” I said, my voice strained. “Who are you?”

  “We’ve met before,” she said, smiling a strange smile. “You were upset with me. I think you’ve found I had my reasons.”

  “I don’t know you,” I said, taking a step back. The girl reached out her hand, her bracelets clanking as she grabbed my wrist. I tried to pull away, but in an instant, my ears were full of music. I felt myself floating in light. A voice speaking to me from all around. Just as soon as it started, the vision vanished. I caught my breath. The girl was looking at me as if patiently waiting for me to catch up. She was no longer holding my wrist.

  “You,” I said. “It can’t be You.”

  “Well, that is certainly good news,” she said.

  “You’re the Creator. You shouldn’t be down here.”

  “I’m the Creator,” she agreed, “but I can do as I please.”

  “Can You stop her?” I said.

  “Who?”

  “The Yuki-onna,” I said. “Do you see what she’s done?”

  “Oh,” said the girl who was God. “The monster is the least of what is coming, Niki Slobodian. A trifle.”

  “She’s killing people,” I said. The girl was staring into me, her unblinking eyes unnerving. “Why are You here if You don’t want to help?”

  “The boy. The Grace. Catastrophe of the type this world has not seen.”

  “What are You talking about?” I said. “Matthew?
The Abby boy? Where is he?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Matthew. I fear for what is to come.”

  “You fear?” I said.

  “Even God fears,” she said.

  “What could possibly be coming that even You would fear?” I said.

  “To stop the boy would be to kill him,” she said. “I cannot bear to do that. I’ve killed all that I care to kill. No more. I wish to rest now.”

  “You can’t rest,” I said, my anger touching my words. “You have to stop this. Where is the boy?”

  “They have him. And I am to blame.”

  “Who has him?”

  She reached out a finger and touched my forehead. A vision clouded all thought. A circle of women dressed in black under a red sky. Erebos. They were chanting in a language that I knew was long-dead. Their disheveled hair billowed around them as they held hands. They each stood on a stone carved with symbols and set into the ground, like a gravestone. In the center of the circle was the sleeping form of a teenage boy, hair pasted over his forehead with sweat. He twitched as he slept, jerking with each syllable of the chant.

  The girl took her finger away from my face and the images vanished. It was hard to breathe.

  “I’ve seen them before,” I said, panting from the intensity of the image. “In the sketches in Matthew's room. Who are they?”

  “You know who they are, Niki.”

  “The Grace,” I said.

  “I have done something very brash, I fear. And I cannot take it back. I would break my own laws if I turn back time. Such foolishness can unmake an entire world. You know how true that is.”

  “What did you do?” I said.

  “A punishment,” said the god with the girl’s face. “In Briah. I did not mean for any of this to happen. I didn’t think to look ahead. It was a simple punishment, there was no need to foresee the outcome.” She shook Her head. “There was no need,” she repeated in a voice much too small to be coming from such a creature.

  “A punishment? Like a flood?” I said.

  “Nothing so drastic,” she said. “I took their strength. For going against me. I didn’t look ahead. I have that power, but I didn’t use it, and now I need to flee.”