Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Shadow Beast
Kenji
Did she really say that?
I stared at my Tiger.
My mind emptied. Every thought I'd ever had vanished like smoke. My chest locked. My lungs forgot how to work.
My spoon was gone.
I didn't remember dropping it. Didn't remember hearing it hit the table. All I knew was that my hands were empty and my chest was full of something I couldn't name.
She sees. . .my dragon. The one my mother saw?
I wanted to speak. Wanted to say her name. Wanted to ask her a thousand questions. But my mouth wouldn't move. My voice had abandoned me.
And then I wasn't in the war room anymore.
I was seven years old.
My knee was bleeding. I'd fallen in the garden, tripped over a root while chasing a butterfly, and the stone path had torn the skin open. It wasn't a bad cut, but it hurt, and I was crying because I was seven and that's what seven-year-olds did.
My mother knelt in front of me.
Her hands were soft as she cleaned the wound. Her kimono pooled around her on the ground, pale blue silk with white cranes stitched along the hem.
She smelled like jasmine and ink, and her voice was so gentle. "Kenji, you're a dragon. Don't cry."
I sniffled and wiped my nose with the back of my hand. "A dragon?"
"Yes." She pressed a cloth to my knee and held it there. "I see it all around you. Your little dragon rising out of that little body and peeking at me. It tells me you're strong."
She lifted the cloth and kissed my knee. Right over the cut.
I felt the warmth of her lips and the sting of the wound at the same time.
“You see it?”
“Yes, Kenji. It lives in your shadow.”
“My shadow. . .” I looked around the space. At the walls. At the ground. At my own shadow stretched across the tatami in the afternoon light.
But. . .my shadow looked like a boy, not a dragon. “I can’t see it, Mommy.”
“No. You can’t.”
"Why can't I see it?"
My mother smiled. That soft, knowing smile she saved only for me and Hiro. "Because it's within you, my love. It is you. Therefore, you can't see yourself the way others who are special do."
“Special?” I frowned. “Is it a lot of special people that can see my dragon?"
"No." She cupped my face with both hands and her fingers brushed my cheeks, wiping away the tears. "Only the one who truly loves you will see it."
My heart lifted. "So, you truly love me? Because you can see my shadow?"
“Yes, my love.” Her smile deepened. "And mothers will always be able to see their child's shadow beast.”
“Why?”
“Because we are special, and you are a part of me. You grew inside me. And now you carry a piece of my soul." She tapped my chest with one finger. "That's what your shadow beast is made from, Kenji. It is a piece of my soul."
I grinned.
The pain in my knee didn't matter anymore. Nothing mattered except that my mother loved me and could see my dragon and I was strong.
"What does it look like, Mommy? My dragon? Is it big?"
She opened her mouth to answer—
"Enough!" My father's voice cut through the space like a blade.
He stood in the doorway.
Tall.
Cold.
His arms crossed over his chest. His eyes moved from my mother to me to the blood on my knee and back to my mother. "You're filling his head with nonsense again."
My mother's hands fell from my face. She rose slowly and bowed her head. "It's not nonsense."
"It's fairy tales mixed with bullshit." My father stepped forward and his shadow stretched long across the floor.
And although I loved him, I did not see a beast within it.
It was just a man's shadow.
He glared at my mother. "It’s not truth. Just stories your grandmother told you to make you feel special. There are no shadow beasts. There are no hunters. There is only blood, power, and the will to take what you want."
He looked down at me. "Clean yourself up, Kenji. My son doesn’t get to cry over a scraped knee."
He turned and left.
My mother watched him go and she fisted her hands at her sides.
Once he was completely gone, she knelt in front of me again and whispered, "He's wrong. You are a dragon, Kenji. And one day, someone will love you so much that they’ll see it too. Remember that."
“Okay, Mommy.”
I blinked.
The war room came back into focus. The glowing miniature Tokyo. The candles. The ice cream melting in its bowls.
And Nyomi. Watching me with concern. Her beautiful face tilted. Her eyes searching mine.
I found my voice. "You see a dragon behind me?"
"Yes."
"What does it look like?"
She paused. Considered. Her gaze moved to the space over my shoulder, and I watched her eyes track across something I couldn't see. "It's like a shadow, but not a regular shadow. Scarier. Thicker, yet translucent. Wispy. Like black smoke given form."
Oh shit. She really does see it.
She gestured with her hands, tracing a shape in the air. "Sometimes it's small. Hovering close to you. But other times it expands. Gets massive. Overbearing."
I widened my eyes.
She shook her head. "It's hard to explain. It's dark, but not like darkness. More like... depth. Like looking into something old and powerful."
My chest tightened.
"And its eyes." She met my gaze. "It has eyes. They watch me. Sometimes they seem protective. Sometimes, curious. I’ve thought I was seeing things, but. . .in the same breath I just accepted it too. I guess that’s the South in me.
Superstitions, ghosts, hoodoo. All of those things were just as normal in my childhood as sweet potato pie and big dinners after church. "
My blood roared in my ears.
She sees it. Truly sees it.
The realization crashed through me like a wave breaking against rock. My hands trembled. My heart slammed against my ribs. I felt like the floor had dropped out from under me and I was falling, but the fall felt like flying too.
I didn’t know which truth to get high off first—the fact that this pointed to her being my true soul mate or that my mother’s stories held solid proof.
Tora. . .
All I knew was that I couldn't breathe.
Couldn't think.
Could only stare at this woman who had given me a gift no one else ever had.
She must have misread my silence because her face shifted and then uncertainty crept into her eyes. "I know you don't believe me."
She let out a nervous laugh. Looked away. "Maybe I'm crazy. I've been seeing it for a while now, and I thought maybe it was stress or lack of sleep or—"
“No.” I grabbed her hand.
Firm.
Tight.
Unrelenting.
My voice came out shaky. "I believe you."
Her eyes snapped back to mine. "You do?"
"Yes."
"So. . .you remember what your mother told you?"
I blinked. “What did you say?”
"I saw the paintings when I was on the hunt for your spies. . .your mother’s paintings on the walls. All the different animal-shaped shadows behind people.”
Something caught in my chest. "Yes."
"And then Hiro told me that your mother used to tell you both stories about that."
A smile tugged at my lips. "I'm surprised he remembers. We were so young."
"He remembers. He said she told the stories with so much love."
She did. She always did.
Nyomi leaned closer. "What else do you know about it? This has never happened to me before. I almost don't want to believe it, even though—" She pointed to the space beside me. "He's right there. Staring at me."
I turned my head and looked at the empty air over my shoulder.
Nothing.
"To me, he's just right there," Nyomi continued. "His eyes are wide open. Kind of surprised. Like maybe he didn't know I could see him either. I thought he did."
Even my dragon-shadow was caught off guard?
I turned back to Nyomi and studied her face. This woman who could see part of me that I had never seen myself. Part of me that had been with me since birth, watching through eyes I didn't know existed.
Goddamn it. What the fuck do I do with this?
Nyomi's eyes moved back to the space over my shoulder. "It's. . .leaning closer. Like it's studying me. I think it's curious."
"Curious?"
"About me. About how I can see it." She tilted her head, and I watched her eyes track movement I couldn't perceive. "It's beautiful, Kenji. In a terrifying way. Like looking at a storm or a fire. Something you know could destroy you, but you can't look away."
My chest ached.
“But I still have so many questions.”
“Me too.”
She chuckled. “You’re the one that has the answers.”
“I don’t know about that, Tora. The last time my mother talked about it. . .I was young. After a while. . .she stopped bringing it up. My father didn’t like it, and when others would hear. . .they would whisper about how she was going insane.”
“That’s messed up.”
“It was. I wish I could have protected her from things like that but. . .” I shook my head.
"You were young and figuring out your place in this world too. . .”
“Maybe.” Still, guilt rose within me.
Mom could really see a shadow beast, and now my Tiger sees it.
Nyomi’s eyes burned with curiosity. "What did your mother tell you about this?"
I took a breath, let it out slow, and reached for the sake bottle. My nerves frazzled a little.
I poured us both fresh cups, handed her one, and took a long sip of my own.
Then I set the cup down and leaned forward. “So. . .what I remember is the history of her family.”
“Okay.” Nyomi didn’t even sip from her cup. “Could you tell me about it?”
"Long before my family were yakuza," I began, tracing a shape on the table with my finger. A long, curved line that turned into a blade. "Before we were even samurai, we were something else."
Nyomi leaned in. “Okay.”
"My mother's clan—they were called Shinigami Hunters." I drew another line with my fingertip and crossed the first.
“What are Shinigami hunters?”
I spread my hands flat on the table. "In the old stories, there were spirits that walked between worlds. Some of them were protectors. Guardians of balance. But others. . .others were demons. Oni. Creatures that fed on fear, pain, and death."
Her eyes went wide.