“At the end there was a great flash of light, and you dropped senseless to the ground. Ullikemi, his scent, his presence, disappeared.”
“Dropped senseless?” said Marlin, building up steam, “I told you she needs to be looked at by a—”
A beeping sounded from the kitchen.
“Marlin, come over here and stir the rice,” said Dad in his gruff, sushi boss voice.
Grumbling under her breath, my little sister went, shooting me a glare that promised a tongue lashing later.
“Nothing but pizza boxes and frozen shrimp bags in your garbage,” said Dad from the kitchen. “You need eat more fresh fruits and vegetables.”
The sharp bite of garlic accompanied by the mellow nuttiness of sesame oil wafted over. Dad was making his famous chopped vegetable and ground beef Bi Bim Bap.
My stomach gurgled.
“You released Ullikemi, didn’t you?” said Ken. His thumb was drawing circles on my wrist, in a lazy way meant to distract me from the seriousness of his tone.
“Yes,” I said. “I gave him the power from Thunderbird’s sun-dreaming and he broke out of the Ullikemi shell. Do you think maybe he got away somehow?”
Ken gave me a sad smile. “Whether the Kind that became Ullikemi is free or has perished, it was his choice.”
His choice. Or had Thunderbird’s dreaming been too much, and I caused the death of an ancient spirit?
And what of Thunderbird? Had it, another ancient spirit, perished because I swallowed the last ounce of dreaming, pulling from Thunderbird the sun-energy it needed to live?
Ken’s gentle wording wasn’t what I needed now. If only I could get my useless limbs to respond, I could storm out of the room or hit something, or curl myself into a pathetic ball of helplessness in my futon.
I thought of Dad’s Baku drawing over my futon and suddenly was very glad they’d laid me out on the couch where I wouldn’t have to look at it.
A monster. Like me. I was Baku and I had chosen to dream-eat.
“You didn’t kill them,” said Ken.
I stared at the floor.
“That angry, devastated look you get, it makes me want to shake you, or kiss you, or…” Ken’s voice turned to an incoherent mumble as he pulled me up from the couch. Arms locked around me, crushing me to his chest.
I breathed in Ken—kinako-cinnamon and sweat and musk—and for a moment, escaped aching muscles, splitting headache, and cracked lips.
Cheek pressed to the soft, body-heated cotton of his OHSU sweatshirt, I gasped for breath, air catching on painful, guilty lumps. Ken’s hand, all strong, long fingers kneaded up and down my spine.
“I think my arm can move now,” I said, flexing slowly. Ken gave a little growl of disapproval. I whispered, “You said we shouldn’t be together.”
Ken grasped my shoulders and held me prisoner at arm’s length. “There is strength in you,” he said, loud enough for Dad and Marlin to overhear.
“Not right now.”
Ken gave me a little shake. “This is serious. Pay attention.”
“Okay, I have Baku strength,” I said, “monster-strength.”
“No,” said Ken, his voice rough. “It’s Koi-strength, it’s who you are.”
I shook my head, silently.
“You’re not solely Kind. You’re not solely human. You can’t hide from your strength anymore.”
“So, not one, not the other, I am a hopeless wreck.”
“There is no shame in being mixed,” said Ken with a curious emphasis. As if his words were meant to convince himself. “There are but a handful of Kind as strong as Baku. And you grew up with no one telling you what you are or could not be…”
Ken’s patronizing grip was getting old. I tried to jerk away. Sadly, my muscles were still limp as udon noodles. Aching udon noodles. “God knows what I’ve done to Thunderbird, Kwaskwi probably would kill me on sight.” I gave a little laugh. It sounded a bit hysterical.
Ken put an index finger on my lips. His mouth, lips slightly pink from anger or worry or something opened. Canines, adorably a bit askew, peeked out. My heart began a slow jog, aches forgotten in a rush of endorphins. Were the tips of those canines sharp? If I touched them with my tongue would they prick?
Ken leaned forward and kissed me. I went tumbling back onto the couch. He followed me down, hand cupping my face to help ease me down safely.
Marlin and Dad were standing in my kitchen!
My hands fluttered weakly on his chest. Limp noodle muscles couldn’t have had an effect on him, but he broke off, staring down at me with an arrogant, arched eyebrow.
“What are you doing?”
“Giving your family an important message.”
I glared. Then I flushed red. What the hell?
“Your father will never consent to return to Tokyo unless you accompany us. And he would never risk thrusting you under the Council’s headlights without protection.” Ken propped a pillow behind me. “He can’t doubt my protection now.”
Dad cleared his throat. The look he threw Ken over the kitchen counter would have flayed the scales from a salmon.
“I will not return Tokyo,” he said in his accented, uncomfortable English.
I made a clumsy fist and knocked on Ken’s arm. “Hello? Excuse me? You didn’t just admit that kiss was manipulation!”
Marlin gave a choked giggle. “Stupid, much?”
Ken returned Dad’s gaze. “Only the Shishin in San Francisco and the Harpies of New York are organized enough to give you sanctuary.”
“The professor will not be a problem now that Ullikemi’s gone,” said Dad. “I don’t need Qinglong or Aello to take care of my family.” He thrust my dull chopping knife point first through an onion.
“And who will take care of you? Your cover is blown, Herai-san. Even Kwaskwi’s people, unorganized and weak, conspired to ensnare you.”
“Do you trust the Council to make better choices?” said Dad.
“Whoa there,” said Marlin, putting a hand on Dad’s shoulder. “Cover blown? Are you saying the doctors were wrong? Your Alzheimer’s is cured?”
“It wasn’t Alzheimer’s,” I said.
“Baku that dream evil fragments, but don’t eat them, slowly lose their minds,” I said. “Right, Dad?”
There were too many people in my little apartment, too many emotions crammed into too little air. Ken squeezed my hand.
God, I needed coffee. Or the dark bite of Dagoba’s Xocolatl chili pepper dark chocolate bar. Or for Ken to turn off the manly swagger long enough to realize he was killing any chance I’d go anywhere with him ever again.
“Yes,” said Dad. A stark, lonely, unapologetic word. It wasn’t enough. Not for the years Marlin and I had cared for him, not for leaving Mom alone with her cancer, not for leaving us.
The horrible miasma of Hayk’s murderous dreams still felt like a stain in my mind. Thunderbird and Ullikemi’s fates were unclear. Even if they were okay, even if I turned out to be a super-Baku and never had to fear touching people again, I could not simply forgive Dad. He’d chosen the long fog over his family. He’d chosen to make his daughter think she was a fatally messed up slacker.
“You’re really okay now?” said Marlin.
Dad dumped a package of ground meat into the hot oil in his wok; the sizzling steam rose up to muffle his grunted reply. Marlin’s wide-eyed look of hope and grief all tangled together was more than I could bear.
“Koi made a debt-bond to Kwaskwi in Ankeny Square,” said Ken quietly. “He won’t hesitate to use her. If she were conveniently out of town…”
Dad swiveled around, metal spatula raised like he could strike Ken’s words from the air. He sighed, a heavy sound that wrapped around me, sinking me further into the couch cushions like the weight of the world.
“I’ll go,” he said.
“No!” Marlin cried. “You can’t leave. Not now that you’re okay.”
“Marlin,” I said in my sternest big sister voice. She was assaulting Dad w
ith words, as if they could break through his silence. In every line of his stiff shoulders and careful stirring of the meat was evidence of Dad’s unwavering resolve, and her words only abraded the air, rubbing us all raw.
Marlin dropped the shamoji, still sticky with bits of rice, on the floor and ran to kneel at the side of the couch. Her eyes, so like Mom’s, were bright with tears.
“Don’t leave me here alone,” she said. My confident, bossy sister, cracking at the seams. Who was I kidding? Everyone in this room had their insides leaking out. I put a hand on her shoulder and used her as support to haul myself to my feet.
She rose from her crouch to put a supportive arm around my waist and, for a moment, we rested on each other. A sweet, cutting warmth. This is how it could have been between us during Mom’s death, and Dad’s decline.
My dreams of self-sufficiency were royally screwed now. How many classes had I missed? And Ed probably thought I was dead. Or wished me so since I’d answered none of his contract queries.
I should feel more upset but strangely, a crushing sense of failure was nowhere to be found. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be an accountant. But what, then, should I be? I had the chance to decide for myself. Going to see the Council in Japan wouldn’t be a trip to Tokyo Disneyland, but if I didn’t go, would I ever understand the Baku stuff?
“Dad and I have to go,” I said.
Marlin hugged me tight, a little sob escaping her attempt to muffle her face on my shoulder.
“It will be okay,” I murmured.
“I’ll make sure of that,” said Ken.
Marlin broke away to turn the full force of her glare on him. “If anything, anything at all happens to my sister or father, I will track you down, wherever you hide, and cut off little bits of you until you’re nothing but a pile of ragged flesh.”
Whoa. Apparently untapped ruthlessness ran in our family.
Ken gave a formal nod/half-bow, all seriousness.
My left knee twanged, and I slumped to one side. Ken stood up quickly, a hand on my elbow supporting my other side.
“I need the powder room,” I said.
Ken and Marlin helped me hobble to the bathroom. When Ken made as if to help me past the bathroom door, I gave a little embarrassed hiccough, and pushed him away.
The scarred, pressboard door shut on twin expressions of concern from Ken and Marlin.
Safe and blessedly alone in my bathroom, I turned on the faucet full-strength, a waterfall to drown out sound and thought. Resting my forehead on clammy palms, I sat, just breathing.
I laughed, a broken sound I was thankful the water mostly covered. My insides felt as full to bursting as my little apartment. Ken’s fragment, that wild rushing through a green forest, had saved me at Ankeny Square when Thunderbird’s dreaming was frying my insides. He had saved me. More than once. And actually, I’d saved him. Broken him from Hayk’s freezing spell. The exhilarating heat of his skin on mine.
Kinako ghosted over my tongue. I swallowed back tears.
I bit the inside of my cheek, hard, to stop the tears welling in my eyes. No crying. There would be no crying over a boy. I wanted him. Wanted him to want me, but to want me for myself—not because I was conveniently here, or because I was Baku and he needed Dad back in Japan, or because what had happened in the past few days threw us together in a way that made it easy to fall into intimacy.
What did I know, really? Maybe he kissed all the half-Kind girls mixed up with water-dragons and giant eagles?
Besides, he was all angsty emo-boy over his position with the Council as the Bringer, or whatever. It wasn’t easy to love someone who thought they were tainted. A relationship with Ken was a trap. A trap full of double-edged razor blades.
Wait, had I used the word love?
Aw damn, I was a total fool. Ken had gone from stalker to somebody I thought about like…like Valrhona extra dark or a Stumptown Miel latte. Something sweet and dark I craved to make the world more bearable.
Terrifying.
A knock sounded on the door.
I turned off the faucet and rose. Before the toilet had even finished flushing I heard the knob rattle.
I’d forgotten to lock it.
The door swung open, revealing Ken in full, Kitsune-feral mode filling up the doorway with his broad shoulders and bristling, maleness.
“Don’t think you can hide,” he growled. I flinched back, and he stalked forward, backing me against the cool porcelain of the sink.
One-handed he shut the door behind him, and I heard the snick of the lock.
“You’re doing this in the bathroom?” I said.
“Yes.”
“What happened to sending my father a message?”
“He doesn’t need this message.”
I closed my eyes to escape those slitted eyes, slices of darkness.
“You are hiding in here, talking yourself into some kind of escape. You won’t get rid of me that easily,” he said.
Eyes still closed, I felt my way up his chest with fingers gone nerveless and cold, pushing with the tips just to feel that I was resisting. “You going to lecture me on avoiding-people strategies, Death-bringer?”
Under my fingers, Ken stiffened.
“Play fair,” he growled, this time his breath hot on the hollow beneath my right ear.
“Because you’ve been open and honest and never once used kissing or that damned kinako smell to distract me?”
He huffed exasperation, and jerked my hands away to press his full length against me, an overwhelming sensation of heat and strength and that particular vibrating energy cycling back and forth with each uneven breath.
“You need Japan as much as Akihito, and you need me.”
“Do I?” I snarled, all that energy and his nearness raising my hackles unbearably. My fingers flexed like I had claws.
“Yes.”
“I already said I would go with you. What else do you want?”
“More.”
I turned my head to the side, so his mouth landed on the pulse at my neck instead of my lips, his tongue flickering out to caress my skin. Shivers and a different kind of pull, a hungry heaviness, swept through me.
“Tell me your other name,” he whispered into my skin.
“What?”
Ken gave a ragged sigh, taking his hands away to run them through his hair, making them stand up in adorable, wilty spikes. I sagged against the sink, feeling untethered without his body anchoring me.
“You hold all the cards. You dream my dreams, you make me crazy with that determined, little mouth and all that curly hair and that fierce look on your face like you’d skin me alive, and all I have is your unwilling agreement to come with me? I’m not stupid enough to try bringing you before the Council with things so ambiguous. At the first hint of danger you’ll do a runner and poke your head into the nearest sand bank. And I won’t be able to stop you.”
I bit my lower lip, hard, to keep my hands from going for his neck. To squeeze the arrogant life out of him. Slowly.
Do a runner?
Maybe the Koi he met just days ago, but there was no sand in my hair now. I was here, wasn’t I? Who was he to swagger in here with his kinako kisses and some kind of expectation I owed him assurance?
Hmmm, that surge of irritation doesn’t feel quite right. Maybe I’m still hung over from dream-eating?
I knew what he was. He’d told me. A Bringer. Death-dealer to the Kind. A Kitsune who could have taken Dad that first night and run back to Japan without having to deal with Hayk or Ullikemi or me.
But he didn’t. He stayed.
He’d proved he wasn’t a runner. I was unfair to be angry that he wanted the same proof from me.
Could I give it? Quit stalling. I was wrong about being able to decide anything. He was already inside my defenses.
Mist drifting over ancient, gnarled red-barked hinoki cypress trees, trunks straight and tall guarding a clearing where pine needles released clean-bitter scent under each footstep. Ken’s fr
agment, the deepest kernel-self of his dreaming. Though he called himself Death-bringer, he didn’t dream of death like Hayk. His fragment felt as safe as his arm around me on the bus. A shelter, a way to keep the world at bay.
My fears, my history of wacked relationships—flimsy excuses. I couldn’t stay closed off forever. But giving him my middle name would give him some kind of power over me, right? Like my dream power over him.
I guess it is only fair.
If it didn’t work out, I would survive. That’s what people did, wasn’t it? Eat evil, battle dragons, and then come home and make sushi. Only giving up, opting out like Dad had, like I had, was unforgiveable.
“Aweoweo,” I said, wanting to sound confident, but coming off like a five year old girl holding back tears instead.
Ken blinked.
“My other name.”
Ken’s shoulders visibly relaxed, and the snarky grin I associated with his Kitsune-self appeared. He closed in, the heat from his body sinking more deeply into me than a real touch.
Some insistent, vulnerable thing welled up in my chest and traveled to my throat, making it hard to breathe. I shrugged, trying to make light of what I had just given him. “Mom was from Hawaii.”
“Ah, an island girl. That explains the hair,” he said. His eyes darkened, the iris swelling to fill the pupil with black, bottomless shadow.
He raised a hand to tug my ponytail, angling my head back so he could whisper into the defenseless hollow of my exposed throat. “What does ‘aweoweo’ mean?”
I shivered. His mouth on me made my hands curl into fists with the need to feel his body, contoured muscles, skin solid and real—but touching him now would be too much like surrendering.
“Big-eye tuna.”
He snorted, and then returned to tracing a trail up my throat, to other, keenly sensitive places around my ear and then my temple.
After a moment, I tugged at his ear, needing to see his face.
Capturing my gaze, he held still, allowing me to see deep inside him, to where something hungry and needful stared back out at me.
“Koi Aweoweo Pierce,” he said, slowly, savoring the hard consonants and hissing sibilants. “Promise me that—” he started to say, but I darted forward and kissed him open-mouthed, trying to channel everything into the way my lips pressed to his, and the rhythm of our mingled breath.
Dream Eater Page 21
