Dream Eater

by K. Bird Lincoln

  “Oh my god,” I breathed.

  “You are honored, daughter-of-Herai. Thunderbird comes himself to tend your father,” said Kwaskwi.

  “I didn’t know his Kind still existed,” said Ken in a soft voice. Awestruck.

  Kwaskwi stepped close to Ken, his arms straight at his sides but menace vibrating through his body. “A message for your Council. Thunderbird isn’t the only one of us ‘tainted’ ones who survived the long centuries under human influence in the Americas. Interference from those who value bloodlines and old ways over the sacred diversity of life are unwelcome.”

  Ken bristled, his face shifting into the sharp planes and darkened eyes of the face I’d seen when we’d gone hunting for Dad. His Kitsune face. “Message received,” he said through gritted teeth. Tension arced between them like static electricity.

  Thunderbird shifted on its perch, rustling its great wings with a sound like distant summer clouds clashing.

  Ken and Kwaskwi each took a carefully synchronized step back, muscles bunching in Ken’s shoulders.

  Kwaskwi turned to me with a disarmingly earnest expression. “Come back, soon, little carp. It has been a pleasure meeting you.” He bent to scoop up Dad in his arms, striding over to Thunderbird as if Dad weighed nothing more than a sleeping child.

  The bird jumped to the ground a few paces away, massive and golden against the concrete. With a high, piercing cry, it lowered head and shoulders at Kwaskwi’s feet.

  This was so wrong. Dad should be in an emergency room cubicle, not on the back of a mythological beast. I started forward, my hand outstretched as Kwaskwi placed Dad on the feathered back.

  “Koi.” Ken pulled my arm so that I came to a halt midstride.

  A tickling sensation rippled over my open palm. The bird’s expression pulled at me, calling me closer. I tugged at Ken’s grip. Among white-gold feathers, twin pools of molten yellow shot through with jagged streaks of fiery orange held me fast. Distantly I heard Ken swear in Japanese.

  I wanted, no ached, to touch the soft feathers on the bird’s downy neck. Thunderbird beckoned. What dreams would a being of such mesmerizing power, such beauty, give me? Powerful ones. I licked my lips, giving a last, sharp jerk to escape the prison of Ken’s grip. How dare he keep me from this sweet drowning in brilliant orange and fluid gold topaz?

  In a blur of motion, Ken was suddenly between me and the bird. A sharp crack, and my cheek burned. I blinked away tears of pain. Ken had slapped me!

  “Ouch!” I said, rubbing my cheek.

  Thunderbird opened its beak and screamed. The sound tore through me like razorblades slicing paper. Just over the hill, thunder crashed, the echoes falling away across the soaked city.

  Ken staggered to the side and shook his head like he was clearing water from his ears. Kwaskwi stood with legs braced apart, solid as a tree, showing all his crowded teeth with the widest grin yet. His twinkling eyes trained on me.

  What was that all about? Had the Thunderbird tried to make me touch it? Would a fragment from this godlike Kind have somehow bound me to it? To Kwaskwi?

  “Be careful with her, Bringer,” he said, holding back laughter and adjusting straps over Dad’s back. Thunderbird fidgeted, half opening those massive, elegant wings.

  I flinched back.

  Echoes of Thunderbird’s scream still rang in my head. I rubbed my eyes with my fists, pressing until the painful aftermath faded.

  I opened my eyes to find Kwaskwi gone and a blue jay perched on top of the marble monument. It cocked one eye at me, glaring.

  “Take care of him,” I said firmly. “Or else.”

  A light patter of rain started, gluing my bangs to my forehead while the open sky above us darkened with storm clouds. When had things gotten so crazy that trusting Dad’s care to Kwaskwi and his giant eagle seemed the safest path?

  Thunderbird’s muscles rippled under golden feathers as it leaped into the air with Dad draped still and limp over its back. Another deep rattle of thunder sounded, farther away, and the eerily soft beating of Thunderbird’s wings filled the silence left by its passing.

  Thunderbird circled over us, disturbingly heavy and solid to have overhead. A flash of yellow topaz eyes in my brain, and then it wheeled north, Mount Hood’s perfect triangle peak obscuring the bird’s rapidly disappearing form in white glare.

  Tingles ran down my spine, like they had in the cab coming here and I heard a ragged sigh behind me. I turned to find Ken on his knees on the soaked concrete, his head buried in his hands.

  “Can’t stand being laughed at by the blue jay?” I said.

  Ken turned his face up into the streaming rain. Anger darkening his eyes to thin slits, his jaw set in a grim line.

  His nostrils flared and suddenly the scent of cardamom was acrid and sharp in my nose, across my tongue, gagging my throat. I coughed, trying to expel the palpable weight of the presence behind that smell.

  Ullikemi. Here. All around us, coating my body, the trees, and the hill; a noxious layer with a tinge of…triumph.

  Desperation spurred me. I raced up the steps to the first landing as if I could call Kwaskwi and Thunderbird back from the empty, pitiless sky.

  We’d led Hayk right to Kwaskwi and Thunderbird. Stupid, stupid, stupid girl.

  “Dad,” I said. Not safer with the giant eagle after all.

  “If I’d known Thunderbird still dwelt with Kwaskwi, I would never have…Thunderbird is an ancient spirit of the Kind. Now it begins,” continued Ken, getting to his feet slowly, hunched over like an old man with rain ache in the deepest marrow of his bones. “Bringing shadow to Multonomah lands. Another precious light at risk. We are so few, so few. I was supposed to help Herai-san make things better. And now Ullikemi’s found his thunder god.”

  Chapter Eight

  My phone beeped again as our new taxi pulled into the mega-parking lot at the top of PCC Sylvania’s hill. I flipped it open, my heart pounding so hard in my chest I wished I could reach inside my own ribcage and beat it into submission the same way Ken had squeezed the bench’s armrest into splinters back at Hoyt Arboretum.

  Face etched in livid lines, Ken had taken out a heaping load of hurt on the bench, then stood there, bleeding fists closing and releasing on empty air.

  I’d wanted to punch something, too. Or beg forgiveness on my knees. At least curl into a ball under Mom’s quilt and forget my part in leading Ullikemi straight to Thunderbird.

  And Dad.

  Marlin was right. Ken was right, telling me not to bury my head in the sand. I’d dug my own hole, and here I was at the bottom of it, alone with no one to turn to now that creepy Hayk had kidnapped my sister.

  No one but Ken. Instead of breaking an innocent bench, I’d called the taxi.

  Ken sat next to me now with that awful, careful stillness he’d lapsed into when the taxi pulled up. I stared at the blinking battery icon on my phone’s screen. Low battery. Not another text from Hayk as I feared. I sighed and resisted the urge to throw the stupid phone out the window.

  Ullikemi’s unfocused hunger had coalesced into a purpose that burned through the rain like scented smoke, and the taxi driver coughed when the heavy, hunger-silted air seeped into the car through our opened door. I was sympathetic, the cardamom taste in my mouth made me want to hawk and spit.

  The PCC brick and concrete buildings huddled together at the bottom of the hill, barely visible through the blurring rain.

  “Koi,” Ken said, voice harsh.

  I put up a hand. Anything he said now would tip me over the crevice of wallowing guilt. Before she was hospitalized, Mom said on bad days she pretended everything was going to be okay and somehow, the world was fooled just enough for things to work out that day. Hopefully there was enough of that Pierce strength of will in me to fool the world just for this hour. For Marlin’s sake. Please let her be okay. She has to be okay.

  I pushed past Ken in the narrow space between cars. He followed close behind.

  “Listen,” he said, lo
uder.

  The maze of cars was making me crazy. I headed for the slippery sidewalk. All of a sudden Ken’s impassable frame blocked the path.

  “I hate it when you do that!”

  “Let me check Hayk’s office,” he said. Rain slicked his hair into a curled mess, emphasizing the sharp, pale lines of his face. All grim determination.

  I shook my head. “My sister. My father. I go. It isn’t you Hayk wants.”

  “It’s you and Thunderbird he wants now.” Ken shifted to block me again when I tried to slip past him. “Are you listening?” He’d switched to Japanese, using very rough, male-speak.

  I moved into him, my head tilted up. The fear simmering in me churned to a boil. “You told me Hayk wants a sacrifice, mortal blood, right? You’re not mortal.”

  Ken flinched. A strange expression flickered across his face.

  “He’s. Got. My. Sister.” I pounded a fist on his chest. Hot fear roiled out through my hand and passed into him.

  “I’m more like you than you think.” Ken lightly gripped my wrist, uncurling my fingers one-by-one to press my palm flat on the damp cotton of his shirt. His heart racing, his whole body thrumming.

  Not safe, came a distant warning. Pull away. No more close contact. No more of his seductive, mist-filled dreams. Ken’s physical hold on me was solid, as if he could force the rising panic to subside with warm hands and a solid chest.

  His eyes went feral, the iris bleeding out into the white. Dark eyes. Animal eyes.

  “Let me go,” I said, wanting a commanding voice and getting plaintive plea instead.

  “You barging into Hayk’s office will just make it worse.” His voice was a growl.

  Anger was getting me nowhere. I forced my shoulders down.

  “Marlin’s all I have left,” I said, letting fatigue and sorrow seep into my voice. My forehead tilted forward to rest next to my imprisoned hand. “If something happens to her because of me…” I let the words muffle themselves into Ken’s sweatshirt. He relaxed his grip for just an instant, intending to gather me close with both hands.

  I twisted under his arm, and took off, slipping and stumbling down the hill on the rain-slick sidewalk.

  I made it to the bottom of the hill where a sprinkling of other students in raincoats and sodden hoodies milled the paths between concrete buildings before Ken caught up to me, pacing by my side just as I reached the stairs at Hayk’s building.

  “That wasn’t playing fair,” he said.

  “You used your strength to hold me,” I said. I brushed past him, taking the stairs two at a time. Ken waited at the bottom. It seriously pissed me off how fast that man could move.

  “I made promises,” he said this time. “To the Council, to your father, to myself.”

  One hand on the door handle, I stopped to glare at him. “Forgive me for not giving a damn about your promises.”

  Ken followed me into the corridor. I had to stop again, one hand on the grimy plastered wall to keep myself from falling over. Cardamom. Hunger. The pressing and voluminous presence of Ullikemi all around.

  “Do you even know what you’re going to do if he’s there?”

  “I have a plan,” I said.

  Ken coughed and shook himself like a dog emerging from water. “Why didn’t you enlighten me about your plan back in the taxi?”

  “I just made it up now.” I paused, needing a moment to catch my breath. “I’m trading myself for Marlin.”

  “Not acceptable.”

  “This is not your fight!”

  A muscle throbbed in Ken’s temple. He pulled back. “Not my fight,” he repeated. He slipped his phone out of his pocket.

  “Glad that’s clear, then,” I said, though my stomach sank down to the stale, gray carpet. Excellent plan, alienate the one super-creature on your side.

  “Hayk’s agenda is more than just helping Ullikemi get to Thunderbird. He must want something for himself, too,” Ken said. His fingers danced on the surface of the phone. I looked away, a tight feeling in my chest.

  His last words followed me down the hall. “Don’t sacrifice yourself to a murderer.”

  Hayk’s office door swung open a few feet away, a golden square of light on the hall carpet.

  “Damn it, I’m tired of coming here to retrieve my family,” I muttered.

  From inside the office came the rumbling scrape of stone on concrete, and all of a sudden Ullikemi’s pressure gripped my head in a vise. I fell to my knees. Behind me, Ken grunted in pain.

  I clawed myself to a standing position against the wall. It felt ice cold on my fingertips as I swam through the thick miasma of Ullikemi’s presence, inching my way through the door.

  “Welcome to our little study session,” said Hayk. He lounged in the black vinyl swivel chair behind his desk, the self-satisfied curve of his disturbingly fleshy lips showed off movie-star, white teeth. Marlin sat ramrod straight in one of the folding chairs in front of his desk, her glazed eyes unfocused on the orderly piles of papers on Hayk’s desk.

  I sagged against the doorframe. My lungs could barely process the air so close to the Vishap stone.

  “What do you want?” I coughed.

  “Marlin was kindly helping me with research,” said Hayk, indicating a sheaf of papers with a lazy hand.

  I sensed Ken creep to the edge of the doorway, flattening himself against the hall-side wall. The back of my neck prickled with the urge to look, but I quashed it. He must have some reason for not showing himself to Hayk.

  “Marlin,” I said, “I think we’re late for that thing we have.”

  A choked, mewling sound escaped my sister’s throat, but she didn’t move.

  “Now, now, Ms. Pierce,” said Hayk. “Your sister has been ever-so-helpful. You can’t take her away when we’re right on the cusp of a really exciting breakthrough.”

  I dragged myself through the doorway. Marlin’s flesh was clammy where I touched her arm. “What have you done to her?”

  Hayk’s smile widened. “You never got back to me with those translations I asked you for. Luckily, when your sister showed up for my apartment redecorating appointment, it turned out she knew as much Herai dialect as you. She was particularly helpful with a phrase I’ve been particularly eager to discover.”

  Hayk stood up suddenly, revealing his hidden right hand. A slender, curved silver dagger flashed in the fluorescent light. He licked his lips, slow and deliberate, and then sliced a shallow cut on his index finger.

  I yanked at Marlin, but she was stiff and unmovable. I yanked again, with all my might and dragged her, chair and all, halfway across the floor. Hayk strode over to the Vishap stone and grasped it with his bleeding hand, adding a bright smear to the faint brown stains marring the top of the stone.

  “You’ll appreciate this one, Ms. Pierce,” said Hayk. He mumbled something very low and quick in a language I did not recognize. Stone scraped on concrete. I tilted Marlin’s chair at an angle and yanked with both hands.

  The Vishap’s carved face darkened, the lines writhing and congealing into thickened strands of metallic-green, like an ancient patina of verdigris on copper. The lines twisted off the stone to hover three feet off the ground. Slowly, a shape outlined itself in midair. Long, crocodile snout, teeth double-rowed and jagged like a shark, and huge eyes that glowed phosphorescent in the smothering smoke. A dragon. Ullikemi.

  I gasped.

  “Don’t be tiresome. You’re no stranger to otherworldly things, baby Baku. We’ll skip the lengthy explanations,” said Hayk in an impatient, professorial tone.

  Where the hell is my cavalry? Why didn’t Ken rush in all Kitsune-feral and help me lift Marlin from the damn chair? Was he afraid of Ullikemi? With all my flagging strength I wrenched her upright, and the chair folded in on itself, sending my sister into a tumbling heap on top of me.

  “Such haste to leave,” said Hayk. “Don’t you want to know what phrase your sister helped me with?”

  I clawed mys
elf out from under Marlin. Her heartbeat spasmed like a hooked trout. What had he done to her?

  Keeping one eye on the pulsing, floating head of Ullikemi, I manhandled Marlin into a standing position. Hayk said something else in the harsh language, and Ullikemi’s jaw cracked open.

  Cold, wet air flowed from the dragon’s mouth, spiraling through the air in a dingy stream. Headed straight toward me.

  “Your sister taught me the Herai dialect for an instance of total surprise that freezes you,” said Hayk. The last phrase was spoken in a stiff, over-dramatic way that would have been ridiculous if a strange, tiered harmony hadn’t surrounded the phrase. The dragon’s essence inflated the phrase with an overwhelming blast of cardamom, giving it power—Ullikemi’s power. My eyes stung with tears.

  Suddenly, the rapid beating of my heart was the only movement I could make.

  That phrase. Just like before when he’d called me out of Kaneko-sensei’s class with something about having a moment in between errands. Hayk’s mouth formed English words, but it was like he droned a chorus of other languages around it like a Tuvan overtone singer. I could pick out the Herai dialect, Spanish, German, along with a host of unidentifiable others. As if every language in the world were combined in the speaking of that single phrase.

  Hayk stepped away from the stone to close the distance between us. Ullikemi’s visage trailed him with eyes that shimmered like flashes of sunlight on fish scales.

  “I could spend all evening picking your sister’s brain for more useful phrases for my research. Alas, my friend has a different goal in mind,” he said and placed a hand on Marlin’s shoulder.

  “You’ll be more polite now, won’t you, Ms. Pierce.” His other hand made a slight jerk, pulling my attention to the slender dagger, now smeared red along the edge. “Or should I name you properly, Herai-san?”

  More of that harsh language from Hayk, and the icy stillness released me. I sagged, barely keeping myself upright.