8. The Soul Bond
Chapter eight
The Soul Bond
Kenji
"Hiro?!" Furious, I scanned the darkness.
He had leapt off the cart and vanished into the black after a sound I never heard, and now I had no eyes on my brother and no eyes on my Tiger and a war pressing down on every breath I dragged in. "Hiro!!!"
Yoichi sped the cart down the gravel path. "Hiro is fine."
"How would you know?"
My brother had vaulted off the side a mile back, chasing my Tiger's scream that only he could hear, and now the seat beside me sat empty.
I gripped the silver guard of my guns and dragged my thumbs across them, back and forth. "How long before we are there?"
"Minutes."
“Hurry the fuck up.”
The night blurred past on either side.
The cart’s headlights cut a thin yellow road through the trees, and beyond their reach the island was nothing but shapes—black trunks, blacker gaps, the silver edge of the moon shining over leaves.
Salt and gun oil rode the wind into my face.
Yoichi's voice remained too goddamn calm. "Your brother and Tiger are now with your mother's people. They are safe—"
"And how do you know this?"
"I can feel it in my bones."
"Your fucking bones?" I turned on him. "And what do you know about my mother's people?"
"A lot."
"How and why?"
"I think you would agree that we don't have much time for stories and answers. War is coming—"
"Yet death will come to you and everyone else if Hiro and Nyomi aren't okay."
"They're safe. They're with your mother's people—"
I stared at the side of his calm face, and the past rose up around me like smoke.
When I buried my mother and brother, the very next day Yoichi appeared at my gate. He carried the artifacts of her bloodline in two cloth bundles, one in each hand, and he laid them in my arms like a man returning something stolen.
Then he refused to leave.
Hiro threatened him.
Yoichi remained.
Hiro tried to kill him, more than once, and missed every time.
Reo plotted against Yoichi for weeks, and when the plots failed, Reo sat him in a chair and questioned him for ten straight hours.
Yoichi stared at the wall, outlasted every word of it, and never confirmed anything. He never denied anything either. He simply stayed at my side for years.
After he pulled me out of death twice, I made him a Fang and stopped asking the question I had never gotten an answer to.
Reo had a theory. He always did. He swore Yoichi was one of my mother's people, planted in my life by the bloodline I was never allowed to fully meet.
I had let it go.
Tonight, I would not. "How are you connected to my mother’s people?"
For a long moment, only the engine answered.
Then, Yoichi spoke. “Even you would agree that now is not the time with war on the way—”
“Are you or not?”
“Of course I am connected.”
“Are you my blood?”
“Yes.” And the way he said it, it seemed like that confession caused him a painful unease.
“How are you related to me?”
"Even if I told you, you wouldn't believe me."
"Try me." I sneered.
"You wouldn't know my parents." He took a bend without slowing. The cart leaned hard with the turn, and the tires bit gravel. "But we are directly related."
“How?”
“That’s all I can say.”
“That’s not good enough—”
“Your only concern tonight is to get control of your dragon-shadow.”
I tensed.
He knows. . .
“Once you get control of the dragon-shadow, the war will lean in your favor.” Yoichi pushed the cart faster, and the engine climbed, and the trees rushed by closer now, branches whipping at the edges of the light.
I shivered. “How will I get control?”
“The Soul Bond.”
“What the fuck is that?”
“A lot, Kenji. So much that when you get there. . .simply do what you’re told.”
I sneered. “Nyomi and Hiro better be safe.”
“They are.” Yoichi turned the wheel hard.
The cart swung off the gravel and onto a narrow dirt path that cut straight into the forest, and the trees swallowed us.
The canopy closed overhead and blotted out the moon.
The cart’s headlights shrank to two thin beams swallowed almost as fast as they reached.
Branches clawed at the cart's frame on both sides, scraping the metal, raining leaves down over us, and the dark pressed in so close I could have reached out and put my hand through it.
Next, the cart lurched to a stop.
Yoichi turned off the engine and jumped out. "We have to go on foot from here."
My guns were out before my boots hit the dirt. "This is only fucking woods. Where are Nyomi and my brother?"
"Kenji, trust me." Yoichi got ahead of me. "There is no threat to your brother or your Tiger—"
"I'll fucking decide that." I rushed after him through the dark.
"These are your people. Our people. Their only life purpose is to protect you."
So deep in the forest, low branches raked my arms. Huge roots grabbed at my boots.
If they touched her. . .
I let the rage finish the thought.
I had buried my mother. I had buried Jobon. The ground of this world had already swallowed too much of what belonged to me, and tonight I would not let it have Nyomi.
If my mother's people had laid a single hand on Nyomi, I would empty both guns into every person in this forest.
I did not care whose blood ran in their veins.
I did not care that my mother had probably loved and trusted them with her bloodline.
As I walked in the forest, I had already decided that I would kill her people over my Tiger.
As if he knew those thoughts, Yoichi glanced over his shoulder and scowled. A dark sigh left him and then he looked forward and walked on.
Soon, the trees opened, and a clearing spread out under the moon and red figures filled it.
What is this?
Dozens of people.
Hooded.
Cloaked.
Still as gravestones in a cemetery.
I gripped my guns and pointed at them. "Where are my brother and my Tiger?"
The hooded figures inched back.
One of them pulled down their hood, revealing a woman with gray hair. She gave me a sad smile, broke from the crowd, and walked toward me. She did not look at the barrels or slow for them either.
"Dragon." Her voice came old and even. "I am the Death Guardian. Your mother chose me herself, to watch over you whenever she left this earth."
My eyes cut across the hoods, searching for my brother and finding only red. "Where is Hiro?"
"With the Roar, the Claws, and the Fangs."
"How?"
"A few of us carried him there."
The guns stayed up. "Carried him?"
Yoichi stepped between us with his hands open and his palms out. "You can trust them, Kenji."
Trust?
There was none of it left in me tonight.
There was only Nyomi and Hiro.
“Okay.” I switched to fire.
“Let’s try this a different way.” My fingers tightened, and I pulled the trigger.
Flame ripped from both barrels and lit the clearing red. The fire threw the hooded figures into hard black shadow and rolled its heat back across my face. "Where is my Tiger?"
Some murmurings spread across them.
Further back someone cleared their throat.
Then they all went silent, and the red figures parted.
And there she was.
What? No!
Four hooded figures held Nyomi up. Her head hung forward. Sweat beaded her forehead and ran down the side of her throat. A red robe hung loose off one shoulder.
Then, the smell of blood hit me.
I did a long inhale.
The scent of blood was everywhere.
Thick.
Close.
Wrong.
Fast, I turned off the fire, shoved my guns into their holsters, and crossed the clearing. "Tora!"
The Death Guardian spoke. "Kenji, this is not a reunion. We need to do the ritual."
“Tora?” I caught her against my chest.
Two of the figures holding her backed away, while the other two helped Nyomi balance against me.
“K-kenji. . .” She shivered. “We have to start—"
“What happened?”
“I’m okay—”
“You’re not.”
Her weight grew soft and small in my arms. Right now, she was nothing like the woman who walked into my war room long ago and bent that space to her shape. "Kenji. . .I'm okay. We need to do—"
"I'm going to kill everyone here!" I scanned the hoods over her head and tightened my grip on her. "Every last one—"
"No." Her head fell to my shoulder and she shivered again. "They're on our side. We have to finish the ritual—"
"Where are you hurt?" I pulled back to find her face. My gaze ran down her, hunting for the cut, the tear, the wound, the fucking place the blood came from—and caught on the pin on her robe.
I blinked.
Is that Reo's pin?
It sat on the front of her robe like it belonged there.
What the fuck? When did this happen? Did my Roar brand my Tiger?!
The thought came fast, ugly, and territorial, and I almost let it take root—then one of Akiro’s planes screamed low over the trees and the anticraft guns answered it, and I crushed the thought flat.
Goddamn it! Not now.
The enemy had arrived and there was no room in me tonight for anything but keeping her alive and winning this war.
"Tora, where are you hurt?"
"Kenji." She weakly lifted her head up and her lids dragged low. "We don't have time for that."
“We’ll make time. I will tear this island down to the rock!”
“Kenji. . .”
All night, I’d hardened myself for war, and now I’d gone soft with her fragile body in my hold.
What was the purpose of this war if she was not okay?
What meaning did I have?
How could I even focus on victory if she were barely holding on?
Suddenly, a boom rolled across the island from the far shore. Then another. The antiaircraft guns opened up after them, hammering at the sky, and a plane droned off in the distance.
Please. . .let no more of Akiro’s planes arrive.
Then, the night split open into gunfire. Distant first, then closer, then layered over itself until it became one long tearing roar.
Goddamn it.
Tons of engines droned overhead.
They’re here.
Then, a plane tore low across the forest, speeding right over the clearing.
The war had arrived, and still. . .all I could think about was how my Tiger was hurt.
"Put out the torchlights. The Fox's men are here." The Death Guardian's voice carried across the clearing. "Nothing stops this ritual. The Tiger has sacrificed too much for it to be wasted—"
I went still.
"Sacrificed?" The word seized fire in my chest. I looked down at her. "Tora."
“Kenji. . .don’t. . .”