Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3)

by Heather Heffner

  Minho grabs my hips, and he shoves up roughly from behind. I smirk, seize his hands, and then run them up and down my calves. He gasps, excited, before tightening his arms around me. I inhale his wintergreen cologne approvingly. As the beat grows faster, I lean back and lazily flick my tongue up Minho’s neck and ear. The crowd roars its appreciation. My left eye rolls up, blinded by the hot glare of lights above me.

  Minho spins me around, and he touches his forehead to mine. His brown eyes reflect no inner Were, no beast snarling to get out. Just the warm trust of a lamb’s gaze. He shudders as I pull him closer, and our lips touch.

  It’s snowing. The bubbles tickle my ear gently at first, but then begin to fall in greater, heavier drifts until the entire club is a blur of strobe lights tearing through a blizzard.

  “FOAM PARTY!” Minho’s friends pump their fists in the air. My hair is soaked, and Minho’s shirt clings to his chest. We run our fingers up and down each other’s wet skin wonderingly, desperately. Finally, Minho gives a small groan and surges forward, seizing my lips in a kiss that trails down to explore the shape of my collarbone. I throw back my wet hair and howl my victory to the artificial moon.

  Chapter 3: An Intervention

  ~Demon~

  Feet pad softly against wooden floors. Somewhere, a door slides open and then shut. I open my eyes to the room I share with my sister—the TV is on mute, a Hello Kitty alarm clock ticks in the corner, and Raina’s poster of SS501 singer Kim Hyun Joong graces the left wall. My pile of unfolded laundry lies in the other corner. Minho’s disheveled hair pokes out of the covers next to me.

  I slip from the bed and carefully survey the hall. Raina is asleep on the couch. No sign of Mami.

  “Hey.” My younger sister sits up and stretches, her silky black hair spilling down to her shoulders. “Where were you last night? Woojin came by to see you.”

  I say nothing. Behind me, Minho emerges, red-eyed in the morning sunlight.

  “Hello,” he says to a startled Raina. “You must be Citlalli’s younger sister, yes? I am Minho.”

  “Um…nice to meet you.”

  “I’ll call you later, Minho,” I say quickly.

  Minho looks surprised. “Do you have time for breakfast?”

  “Nope.” I smile and hold out his wrinkled jacket. It smells strongly of beer and cigarettes.

  “It was so much fun, Citlalli. You will ca—”

  Still nodding sweetly, I close the front door in his face. Yawning, I shake my enormous bedhead and amble back toward the darkness of my den.

  Raina’s voice stops me. “Citlalli?” she asks, sounding weird. “Who was that?”

  I think about it. “Minho. Met him last night.”

  “Weren’t you supposed to work until late last night?” When she receives no response, she tries again: “Aren’t you seeing Woojin? The optometrist?”

  I shrug. “Sure.”

  “And…wouldn’t he be hurt if he knew you brought some random guy home at five in the morning?”

  “Don’t know. Don’t need his permission.” My phone beeps, and the thin blanket of bliss covering my mind tears. “FUCK! Who the hell texts someone so early in the motherfuckin’ morning?”

  Raina regards me with somber eyes. “You don’t have to get so worked up over it.”

  I ignore her, scanning the text. Raina doesn’t understand how to balance a social life because she doesn’t have one. “Jesus, Tino. No, I don’t want to ‘hang out.’ Doesn’t he know what ‘let’s just be friends,’ means?”

  “Tino really liked you,” Raina says in a low voice.

  “And I liked his abs. It worked out well for the time it took us to run our course.” I jerk my head toward the sliding door. “You can have your side of the bed now, if you want.”

  “No thanks.” Raina hugs her knees to her chest. “I think…I’ll stay out here.”

  “More of the bed for me. Hasta la vista, bitch. And tell Mami not to bother me until noon.” Flashing a peace sign, I happily return to my slumber.

  ***

  Of course, one simple command is too difficult for her to understand. I hear them whispering furtively in the dark like little mice, and my ear arches curiously toward the door:

  “That’s not her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s something else inside her. She smells like smoke.”

  Silence. A low growl rises in my throat. I recognize my rival’s scent of crushed rose petals.

  “The Alpha has been smoking more these days,” Yu Li says carefully.

  “It’s not from cigarettes,” Raina insists. “Also, her right eye looks as dead as her left. Her voice is cold and guttural. And…this is the third guy in two weeks that she’s brought home.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s not her.” Raina begins to sound defensive. “That’s not my sister.”

  Clothing rustles. Finally Yu Li’s voice, barely above a murmur: “Then, do you think it good idea to bring him here?”

  All of their whispers are for nothing. The front door slams, and my older brother shouts: “WHERE IS SHE?”

  “Miguel!” I hear someone stumbling over blankets. “Be quiet! You’ll wake her!”

  “Um, Miss Sleeping Beauty better wake the fuck up after the disappearing act she pulled last night!” Miguel bellows. “I heard all about how she ditched her shift midway through! Straight from Spiro’s mouth! If she doesn’t get to Mami before Suck-Up Spiro does, then that nasty little prick will have Mami fire her ass!”

  “She ran out on her shift?” Raina’s voice hardens. “There. Do you need any more proof that whoever is in there, it isn’t Citlalli?”

  “But why do you think he can help?” Yu Li asks. “You know things between him and the Alpha are…tense…right now. Remember what he did to the pack.”

  “He’s her creator. He did this to her. He must know how to fix it.”

  Silence. Then, what sounds like a dish smashing.

  “RAFAEL DOMINGUEZ is her frickin’ creator?” Miguel’s voice cracks on a new high note. Somewhere above, the neighbor’s dog starts barking.

  “Yes,” a new voice says from the doorway. “I am.”

  My body stiffens in pleasurable shock. His spiced woodsy scent overrides all of the others’. It does much to calm me. I leap to the floor soundlessly and cautiously inch the sliding door open.

  “Rafael?”

  He’s leaner than when I last saw him, but he still towers over Miguel. When he turns, I can see he hasn’t shaved for a while. Dark scruff runs along his jawline, and his jagged brown hair guards molten eyes.

  I used to think he’d be my mate. Before he betrayed me.

  “Citlalli,” he says my name roughly, like it’s hard for him to hear it aloud. His ex-girlfriend Yu Li stands nearby, arms folded.

  My sister stands. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Just this once.” He still doesn’t move from the hallway.

  Miguel shrugs. “She just looks hung-over to me.”

  Raina isn’t convinced. “Citlalli, why did you run out on work last night? You could lose your job!”

  I laugh, cutting them all with its bitter edge. “Oh, no! Lose a job where I have to bend over backwards to kiss tourist ass? That is not a proper job for an Alpha.”

  “Whoa. Citlalli.” Miguel looks uneasily at the others. “We talked about this, remember? Yes, Spiro’s a nasty spider who climbed out of the shower drain, but we’ll find some dirt on him. Or we’ll frame him for making a pass at some employees; hey, there’s lots that could be arranged.”

  “Miguel,” Yu Li says sternly.

  “I hate that you can understand English so well.”

  “Or we could just kill him.” I look up from admiring my finely-sharpened nails to find a sea of ghost-white faces staring back.

  Rafael steps to the front. “Fight Her, Citlalli. Push Her out of the driver’s seat.”

  “‘Her?’” Raina is alarmed.

  “Citlalli is a Triad. H
er soul has broken into three natures. She named the other two once: the first is her Were, whom she calls Wolf, and the second is…Demon.”

  “The Fire Wolf shape she takes.” Yu Li understands at once. “Born from the flames of a kumiho. That will be a powerful spirit indeed.”

  I shrug. “There is a reason I’m on top. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go hunt breakfast.”

  Rafael steps in front of me. “You’re not leaving, demon.”

  My skin begins to crackle like burning paper. I itch to burst free, to claw up that handsome face until it doesn’t hurt to look at it, but the Omega holds me back by a tail.

  “Traitor!” I hurl at him, since words are my only weapons. “Cruel, selfish traitor! Haven’t you done enough to me? Let me hunt in peace.”

  “I’ve done nothing to you.” Rafael seizes my shoulders. He’s so close that I can see his Were pacing back and forth agitatedly behind his eyes. “It’s Citlalli I’ve hurt, and it’s Citlalli I want, so please, please come back. Don’t let Her take you from us!”

  My air cuts off as the Omega lunges. I can feel her fingers choking me. Yet she can’t send me anywhere. I have grown oh-so strong. So we clash, each with a stranglehold on the other. The power in our grips stretches taut, much too taut, until…something snaps.

  Chapter 4: The Water Dragon

  ~Raina~

  I watched my sister turn into a black wolf in broad daylight.

  The animal writhed on the floor, caught in the grips of a seizure. Her thrashing legs kicked a lamp off the low table. It shattered, and that was when the wolf began to scream. It was a horrible sound. I’d never heard an animal make a noise like that. It sounded human.

  The black wolf suddenly jumped to her feet, her guard hairs raised. Then she ricocheted her way down the hall and out the open door, shaking her head furiously—as if to expel a demon.

  “Son of a bitch!” Miguel waved his hands at Yu Li and Rafael. “Well? What are you two doing? Go catch that wolf!”

  Yu Li was too stunned to move. “She turned—in daytime.”

  “No shit! Now I’ll have to worry about her going crazy during my power naps, too!” Miguel jammed a finger at Rafael. “This is your mess. Go fix her!”

  Rafael and Yu Li appraised each other warily. I held my breath. Citlalli had been very close-mouthed about what had happened after she took control of the pack, but I’d heard about the split…

  Yu Li finally huffed and lowered her head. Rafael nodded once. Their eyes shrank into determined slits, and off they loped, their shadows taking on the shapes of wolves on the hunt.

  Miguel stalked circles around the apartment, cursing and going through two cigarettes. “I did this to her,” I heard him mutter. “She suffered the demon fox fire while trying to save me.” His hand shook as he extracted another Marlboro.

  “What the hell are we supposed to do?” he demanded of me.

  Once, that tone would have made me cringe in fear. Now, I only glanced toward the window, where I could feel the humidity building outside. The spring flowers cried for rain and the skies answered them, building into a storm both beautiful and deadly. It was monsoon season. When the skies opened, rain poured and water dragons danced.

  “You know what I am?”

  My mind shifted back to that infamous night of New Year’s Eve. Atop a desolate spirit peak in Seorak San, Citlalli, the Were Alliance, and I had been buffed from the blizzard above and Queen Maya’s vampyres below. No one could tell the wind apart from the screams.

  The great cockatrice Sanghee inclined her head, mane rippling about her pearlescent scales in the fierce gale. “Yes. Just as you know what you are. You are Rain.”

  I could swim and hold my breath for longs periods of time. I could summon clouds from every part of the sky. And that had been in my human form. Now I could shift into something far more gloriously terrifying:

  I was a water dragon.

  I slowly approached the kitchen table, where an open letter waited. It had lain there for weeks now, everyone carefully passing plates of kimchi and tamales over it as if it were a poisonous spider they didn’t dare touch. The header read Yong Enterprises in bold, black Hangeul characters, and looping through them was the sigil of a red dragon.

  My older sister Daniella would have respected my privacy, but she and her boyfriend Hosuk were on an extended stay in New Mexico to look after Papi. That left me to fend off Mami, Miguel, and Citlalli, all of whom had decided to read the letter before me.

  Mami in particular demanded how I would respond every waking moment, but I couldn’t wrap my head around the letter’s contents. It read like an invitation: Join us to learn about your duties as the new Spring Dragon. A directive: Arrange a time to see us or we will come get you. And a rather long rulebook for a seventeen-year-old girl who had just found out she was a shapeshifting reptile: Do not shift without one of us present.

  Yes. “Us.” I had another family. A family who looked like me. A family who could understand my fears of Eve. A family who hadn’t broken apart after the marital infidelity—I hoped. I had three half-siblings: an older pair of college-aged fraternal twins and a younger sixteen-year-old sister. I had a face for my real father: Yong Mun Mu, CEO of “Dragon” Enterprises and Guardian of the East Sea.

  He sounded like a guy I shouldn’t cross. Too bad my sister had set a bad example for me in that department when she’d moved heaven and earth to rescue me from the Vampyre Queen.

  I grabbed Citlalli’s purse and rested a hand on Miguel’s arm. “Have some tea.”

  “Wait—where are you going?” he spluttered as I opened the window, allowing the first wave of drizzle to wash over my face. “You can’t turn in daylight!”

  Gray clouds built a concealing shroud for me. “Werewolves and vampyres are attached to the moon,” I said, raising my arms and feeling droplets slide down my fingers. “A water dragon is anchored to the rains.”

  Miguel thought watching Citlalli turn into a wolf was traumatizing. He hadn’t seen anything yet.

  Glittery blue scales broke up along my skin, and my face lengthened until mist poured forth from my snout. I blinked my newfound heat-sensing eyes, which were as purple as amethysts. Air billowed up beneath my intricately patterned wings, and I knew it was time to jump. My stomach curled up as usual when I tumbled into freefall.

  But I always rose.

  Apartment roofs, skylights, lines of laundry waving like white sails—all of it dropped away beneath me. I beat the weird curtain-like skin of my wings, two powerful thrusts up. A glimpse below: the laundry woman, squinting with eyes crinkled by the sun. Then the clouds carried me away.

  I breathed in the thick bank of vapors. As always, I exhaled a rainy mist that weighed the cloud down until its belly sagged. It grew more difficult to push my concealing shroud along. When it finally burst and began to pour, I glided meekly down with it. The cool rain trickled down my scales in countless rivers, wound around my horns, and dripped in my eyes.

  I’d made it far enough. I crouched amongst the flowering dogwoods of Children’s Grand Park, listening to faraway voices gurgle as if underwater. The sudden downpour had caused everyone to run for cover. Citlalli’s purse lay on the ground next to me, sodden. It really was fortunate she had recently upgraded to that new, waterproof smartphone.

  Several hours passed before I caught her scent. I saw a group of small children laughing and pointing at the strange waygook passed-out in the rhododendron bush. I shrunk back into my human body, stealthily borrowed two bathrobes from a tourist stall, and hurried to my sister’s rescue.

  It wasn’t quite on par with breaking me out from the Vampyre Queen’s palace, but I figured saving Citlalli from being banned for public nudity was a good start. I shooed the children away, dressed her, and then stood there looking at my sister. Really seeing her. The prosthetic eye stared back. Her four-fingered hand gripped the robe as if it were a blanket. Even while unconscious, she looked like she was worrying. What she didn’t look like w
as a normal, hopeful eighteen-year-old with a thousand paths open to her. She’d long ago veered off the beaten track and into the wilderness. For me.

  She woke up later in the jjimjilbang I’d checked us into. Children’s screams and running feet pounded on the first floor of the bathhouse, and great belches of steam wafted by the windows. Up here, we had some quiet. There were few people in the sand room. I rubbed gritty rock against my skin and blinked in surprise as a sky-blue scale drifted down to glitter amongst the other stones.

  “I loan you and this one some clothes, Miss Raina.” The jjimjilbang mistress had warmed up to me after I’d completed our transactions entirely in Korean.

  She raised a severe eyebrow at my groggy-headed sister. “Yah. You don’t drink so much. Soju no good for Western girl. You know?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I know.” After the woman left, Citlalli buried her head in the sand. “Worst. Roofie. Ever: a freakin’ demon.”

  “The third piece of your soul. A part of Wolf breaking off into Demon after It jumped in the way to save you from Fred.”

  “And that third part’s way worse than a beast, let me tell you that.” Citlalli bit her lip. “She just goes after what She wants, Raina. She makes up Her mind that She wants to fuck a boy, and then, bam. I’m fucking him. No matter how many people She had to hurt to get there.”

  “Oh my God, Citlalli.” My eyes glittered with tears. “All those boys. You didn’t want to—”

  She looked at me, my bold, sometimes crass older sister, who’d bragged about all of the sex positions she would invent, about all of the hearts she would break. “You know I never wanted them, Raina.”

  Rafael. I wisely didn’t bring him up.

  “Oh, don’t go looking like a puppy’s been put down.” She began scrubbing herself down vigorously with sand. As if she could rub the demon out of her skin. “At least the bitch has good taste. I imagine it would be fun—with someone you actually cared about.” She flicked her thick black curls over her shoulder. “That’s how it’s going to be for you. Right, Raina? All of those evil-ass vampyre princes wanted some action, but they never— After Maya stole your soul, Donovan didn’t—”