Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3)

by Heather Heffner

  I refused to indulge what he already knew as smoke curled from my fingers.

  “Try killing yourself again,” the vampyre prince told me coolly. “Let’s see which part of you comes back on top.”

  I stared down at my charred fingertips and then smiled. “Fine. Maybe there is a part of me that wants to light the world on fire. But do you know what, vampyre? It hasn’t. It hasn’t killed innocent people or mindlessly served a deranged queen who wanted to kill your own sisters.”

  Khyber’s head reared up like an asp’s, and I knew that I had finally struck a nerve. “Enough,” the Crown Prince snarled.

  “Or what?” I asked sweetly. “You’ll ‘accidentally’ kill me, like you did Tica?”

  “Unlike you, Tica was never as frustrating or as casual about the blessing of life,” Khyber said in an ice-rimmed hiss, taking a step closer. “Unlike you, from a young age Tica realized how little time she had left with her ‘ohana and the islands she loved. She fought for every moment of it. When she realized the cancer had returned, Tica refused to give up. Even if that meant making a deal with a vampyre.”

  I tried to turn away, but Khyber blurred to stand in front of me, forcing me to stare down the truth in his stone-cold eyes. “You wanted to keep digging like a dog after a bone until you found the truth, girl. Hear this: After she fought off the bone cancer the first time, Tica thought she could return to a normal life.

  “However, my brother Crispin, the so-called Vampyre Prince of the Americas, was angry that Hawai’i was slipping away from his control. The Hawaiian pantheon was still a powerful force in the root and memory of their people. Crispin made a deal with two of the Mayan Death Gods themselves, a pair known as the Plague Lords. He asked them to destroy the Hawaiian pantheon forever. This was the first I had heard that the Death Lords of Xibalba had awoken, and that two had somehow escaped into our world. The Death Lords come in in pairs, you see. Amongst The Twelve are two for disease, two for pain, two for destitution, and two for fear. The Plague Lords planned to enter Kuaihelani, the bridgeland of the Hawaiian gods, so they could consume enough power to free the rest of their brethren. They stalked minor Hawaiian gods to corrupt them toward their cause. Tica stood in their way, and so the Plague Lords sickened her again, as is their despicable gift.

  “So I made a deal with Tica. My vampyre venom to fend off her growing cancer, in return for her blood, poisoned by the Plague Lords. I used the blood I drank from her in an attempt to stop a shark demigod who had been corrupted by the Plague Lords’ Pandora’s Box, much like the benevolent haetae you’ve encountered.” Khyber’s fists shuddered at his sides. “This shark demigod is known as Nanaue. As long as he served the Plague Lords, he was a threat to all of the islands.

  “The only one who would speak to me amongst the Hawaiian pantheon was the snow goddess, Poli’ahu. She told me that the only way to defeat Nanaue was to wrestle with him until I absorbed him inside myself. It worked. I fed his captured spirit Tica’s poisoned blood in order to kill him. However, even as tough as she was, Tica began to suffer from the effects of the vampyre venom. She began to isolate herself from family and friends, in a delusion that I was her true love.” For once, Khyber had the decency to look ashamed. “You know the illusions a vampyre’s bite can create.”

  I folded my arms to hide my trembling hands. Raina’s hushed voice brushed my ear, whispering of how one bite from Donovan had lowered her defenses and made her open to his advances.

  “The night of her death,” Khyber continued in a low voice, “Tica’s mother and I were trying to save her life. However, during the ritual, the Plague Lords attacked. They wounded me, and Nanaue was able to escape from my clutches. The corrupted shark god was about to strike down Tica’s mother, but Tica stepped in the way. Her mortal body was struck down.

  “However, her spirit succeeded in wrestling Nanaue into the spirit world of Eve and back to Kuaihelani, where the shark demigod could heal in peace. I do not know if Tica was able to enter Kuaihelani as well, but I do know that she will never again walk in the sunshine world. Over the years of my travels through Eve, I have heard tales of a fierce warrior spirit who guards the way into the land of the Hawaiian gods. It is said that this warrior rides on the back of a shark. I like to think that Tica finally found rest.”

  Khyber’s gaze settled on the burnt-out characters of the cavernous Pandora’s Box. “So. Now you know, Citlalli. I am guilty of Tica’s death, but not in the way Rafael thinks. Tica was a fighter. She died to save her homeland from the Dark Spirits. And she was no one’s victim.”

  I’d already heard the admiration in Rafael’s voice when he spoke of his brainiac sister, who had dreamed of becoming a marine biologist to study the ocean’s creatures she loved so much. To hear Vampyre Prince Khyber speak of her with respect was as humbling as it was troubling.

  “Khyber,” I whispered, “you have to tell Rafael! You can’t let him remember his sister this way! She didn’t fall for a vampyre’s tricks! Tica knew about the struggle in Eve before any of us did.”

  Khyber scowled and stared at the pool’s brackish waters. “I cannot.”

  “But why? This is why he hates you! Khyber, after all that Tica did for you, the least you owe her brother is some measure of peace!”

  “Because, dog,” Khyber snapped, suddenly cold and aloof once more, “I went to Hawai’i to die. The death of all vampyres is what will save this world, not assuaging the anxieties of one boy. Poli’ahu told me that because of my hand in Tica’s death, Rafael will bear a hatred great enough to end my life”—he paused, something like pain rippling across his face—“the moment I have something—or someone—to live for.”

  My heart surged unexpectedly against my ribcage, and I ducked my head. “Raina?” I asked softly.

  Khyber folded his hands behind his back, and his midnight feathers relaxed once more. “It is true; I was drawn to Raina after you beseeched me to protect her. I believed she possessed the power to hasten my death. To stand so close to the power of the Changeling Soul, to be on the brink of caressing it, tasting it—” He shot a glance at my blanched face and then shook his head, scowling. “Fuck it. Here I am, speaking truth to you because I do not want you to see me as a monster. And yet, I have only made myself into a bigger one.”

  I raised my head. “You care about what a wolf thinks?”

  After a brief pause, Khyber allowed himself to look at me. His gray-blue eyes had come alive with vivid color the way pebbles did when struck by the sea.

  “I care about what you think.”

  The sudden toll of a gong caused both of us to jump. Khyber stiffened, his nostrils flaring toward the tunnel from which we’d come. “Nightfall. They are changing the guard.”

  I leaped to my feet, my heart pounding wildly in my chest as I surveyed our hiding options. The cavern was barren except for the far side of the lake, where a patch of stalagmites sprouted.

  Khyber whirled back to me. His lack of usual cool made me know exactly how much trouble we were in. “They will scent you, Citlalli.”

  The lake was looking like the best option. Unfortunately, when it came to swimming, I tended to splash around a lot to keep my head above water. Raina was the one who could hold her breath.

  We scrambled to the back side of the cavern to squat amongst the stalagmites. A low wind moaned from the tunnel. Wolf began to growl as It scented something large and undead approaching.

  “I can hide you.” Khyber hesitated and then unfurled his wings. Immediately, we were masked beneath a cloak of darkness.

  “They will still smell me, Khyber,” I whispered. “They’ll hear my heart.”

  “Not if I stop it.” This close, I could smell Khyber’s faint pine scent and feel his cool breath wither my skin, giving me the feeling of sinking into a bucket of ice cubes. The vampyre prince held up a hand, and I saw the way his fingers blackened the way mine could—except his promised the touch of death.

  “Citlalli, do you trust me?” he asked softly.r />
  Wolf snarled and backed away, Its claws squealing against the ice spreading down my temples. Demon hissed in displeasure as the Crow Prince’s eyes blackened. Moments before, this ruthless beast had revealed that he would deceive and destroy anyone who stood in the way of ending himself: Tica. Rafael. Raina. A small price to pay for the greater good.

  Wasn’t I the only one left who was tying him to his wretched undead life?

  So I asked, “Why are your eyes the color of sea and stone?”

  And he said: “Because they are not mine. I was born blind. But Maya made me, and she was contemptuous of my blindness. So she ripped out my eyes and gave me these magical ones that channel my death touch.”

  That unearthly gaze, heartless like a crow’s, tilted up at me and dimmed with sorrow.

  Wolf sniffed, mollified. I gave a shaky nod and tried not to tremble as blackness climbed out of Khyber’s eyes like inky tears. I pulled down the collar of my shirt and watched with horrid fascination as the cursed prince’s endarkened palm stretched forth and touched my heart.

  Heat evaporated from my body. Wolf and Demon faded away, and my thoughts dwindled. Soon all I was aware of was the ticking of my breaths within the emptiness of my head. Then those, too, receded away.

  Sleep, the Vampyre Prince told me.

  A dream from long ago flickered on the edge of my consciousness. I gazed into a lake and had no reflection. This was the same dream. Except now, I wasn’t there at all.

  Chapter 48: The Rescue

  ~Citlalli~

  I hung suspended in moonless night, bodiless. The tendrils of death paralyzed me so no breath could escape my lungs. My veins were empty riverbeds and my lungs dried up oceans.

  Yet somehow, I sensed movement beyond the veil. My night world froze in fear. Something large and malignant wound its way nearby like a serpent. It paused, and I felt the cold that held my heart prisoner tense.

  Then vibrations rumbled through the earth, and the beast’s attention shifted. It departed. In its absence, a tingling sensation—warmth—began to spread from my chest down to my toes. Death’s chill was thawing. I felt Wolf and Demon again. They buoyed me up, until the volcanic cavern snapped back to life in luscious, vivid color.

  The clammy touch of Khyber’s fingers lingered over my heart like a malevolent rain cloud. Then the vampyre prince withdrew his hand, a visible tremor running down his face as he struggled to recall every last death tendril. They didn’t want to go. I watched their shadowy handprint caress my stitches in fascination. They could make the constant, aching throbs go away.

  “Citlalli…please…”

  I suddenly became aware of Wolf’s warning barks. Hastily, I reclaimed my body, shaking my fingers and toes back to life. Gathering up Demon’s fire, I pushed—and the poisonous black tendrils retreated into Khyber’s fingers.

  The shadows faded from Khyber’s eyes to reveal the familiar blue-gray gaze boring into mine accusingly.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered. “It just felt so…easy.”

  “Citlalli,” Khyber said softly, “the Dark Spirits want you to give up. But you are my sole ally. The only way we can lift the Emerald Veil is together.”

  I nodded and stood shakily as blood rushed to my head. “Let’s do this. Let’s show your brothers that their whole freakin’ army isn’t going to stop us from bringing down this prison.”

  The volcano’s crater was strangely symmetrical. We crept out from one of the highest vents and slipped and slid our way up crumbling shale to the top. Far and wide, the South China Sea spread out like a velvety blue carpet to other islands shrouded by green mist. The sun had just set. One by one, candles winked into existence upon the sea’s backbone. We had entered Eve.

  A gust rustled my hair. It felt eerily enough like fingers combing through my hair. I turned and saw the gaunt face of a spectral islander boy gap at me soundlessly before being swept off the summit.

  Don’t look.

  His hushed warning chilled my heart, and yet I gripped the precipice’s edge and peered over. Ghosts toiled inside the crater, burdened down by heavy chains as they walked in an endless circle. They left no footprints as they spun a tiny, nondescript chest that leaked green mist. I realized that the box was tied shut with thorny ropes that made whatever was inside bleed through the wood. The blood leaked into the magma chamber.

  “An activated Pandora’s Box,” Khyber confirmed for me. “It will hold a powerful malicious spirit. We destroy that, and your friend will be free.” He cast me a sidelong glance with something like pity. “If she even remembers what freedom is anymore.”

  “What’s our first move?” I demanded.

  The crown prince smiled. “Announce our presence.”

  The moon bore down upon me, tainted with poisonous green light. Its rim of black hair waved at me mockingly from beyond the grave. My two feet became four as I snapped to wolf form. Then I howled a low, raspy song of mourning for the corrupted moon.

  The swish of countless beating wings hushed for an instant. Then the weather demons floated across the face of the moon. I beheld their gaunt horse heads, their beating dragonfly wings, and their long, winding bodies that rippled through the air and ended in twelve formidable barbed tails. The weather demons bobbed together in unison and then opened their mouths to inhale.

  Their breath was a putrid, sucking wind that picked up pumice, shale, and ghosts alike. It dragged them into the hungry demons’ mouths where they devoured them with no mercy. Their funnel cloud breath picked me up next, but then I assumed my Fire Wolf form. The weather demons sucked up the ruby flames. Their sightless eyes rolled about in their sockets, and then they combusted. The reoccurring eruptions blew their formation apart.

  As their starving bodies plummeted toward the crater like meteors, Khyber struck from above. Taking advantage of the weather demons’ bodies turning momentarily corporal, Khyber snapped their necks and split their stomachs open with his death touch. I dashed to help and snapped back to Wolf’s agile black-smoke form. Dodging barbed tails, I lunged for the horse-headed demons’ jugulars. Specters of all shapes and sizes zipped free from the weather demons’ spilled innards.

  Hollow eyes watched the liberated ghosts flee and then fixated back on us. To my growing horror, I realized my earlier estimate about hundreds of weather demons guarding the summit was an unfortunate reality. And now I knew how every tree had been blasted from the volcano’s slopes.

  Panting, Khyber dropped down beside me. “We will not last long. We must destroy the box now.”

  “I’ll burn it,” I snarled, but the vampyre prince placed a warning hand on my ruffled fur.

  “No. It is protected by curses against your kind. The only one who can touch it is another Child of Death.” Khyber’s eyes sank wearily. I realized then the toll his death touch and fighting off a dozen weather demons had taken on him. This was not the powerful, commanding Crown Prince of the Vampyre Court in the prime of his blood-drinking glory nights; this was a tired, wasting corpse who had expended too much energy on reviving his soul.

  An unnatural storm built. The weather demons’ barbed tails winked in and out of sight as they prepared a massive hurricane to blast us from the peak.

  “You need blood, Khyber,” I said softly.

  The Crown Prince’s head whipped about, and his eyes clouded gray with shock. “No.”

  I swallowed hard, the pain from Tica’s tale still stinging us both. “You said the only way we can end the Emerald Veil is together. But you’re fading, Khyber, and you know it. Take my blood.”

  “Do not ask me this,” his ashen lips whispered.

  I took a step closer, my single eye flashing gold. “I’m not asking. This is an order. Do it, Khyber! Or we’re both—”

  He lunged at me before I could finish and sank his fangs into my neck. I trembled under the exquisite pain that stung in agonizing waves for one moment and then soothing numbness the next. Khyber’s eyes had gone black again as he savagely twisted my neck to a be
tter angle so he could drink faster. Strength returned to the fingers seizing my fur.

  Wolf disappeared under the power of the vampyre prince’s bite. I reappeared in human form, shuddering against his thirst. Pain built up to a blinding white spot in my head.

  I realized then just how long Khyber had been longing to do this. How the proximity of fresh blood had almost driven him mad—even if it was the ‘filthy’ blood of a Were. The Crown Prince’s hands trembled as they ran up and down my body, setting my limbs aquiver as they brushed my breasts. Then they sprang up to seize my neck with hungry ferocity. I gasped as his fingers stroked the length of my throat down to the hollow of my collarbone, and my body instinctively arched against his.

  It was only when I slumped to my knees that awareness returned to Khyber’s eyes. His fangs slipped from my neck with a reluctant click. The world wobbled before my eyes.

  I clambered up to see Khyber’s wings snap back to life. A hint of rich blue blossomed down to the veins of his new, glossy feathers. How mesmerizing his power was. My only fear was that I hadn’t given him enough. My purpose was to feed him, to nourish him. Then he could be the prince who would rule us all.

  Ecstasy bubbled up inside as I watched Khyber shoot into the crater, so fast that the enslaved ghosts couldn’t stop him from reaching the treasure they guarded. I gripped the ledge and watched Khyber seize the black thorns encasing the Pandora’s Box. He disintegrated them to ash with his death touch.

  Khyber returned to my side and threw the box down. “Now we destroy this wretched thing,” he murmured, his former sullen tone now a sultry tenor. I smiled benignly at him and cupped my chin in my hands. I hoped my curls hadn’t gone flat from all of the volcanic dust in the air.

  Swiftly, the vampyre prince ripped a feather from him own wing and then began writing the familiar rough characters on the box. The small chest began to tremble, and something attempted to stick a leg free. Khyber smashed the lid down and wrote faster. The Language of Death. Before I had thought it was such a heart-chilling thing to behold, but now I found its scrawl rather beautiful.