I can’t feel him either. No thoughts. Nothing.
“Are you in need?” the pale monk breathed. “Do you hunger? Thirst?”
“I seek answers, Brother Shun, not comforts.”
“We have those in abundance, Kitsune Yukiko.”
“We?” Looking around the ghastly library, raising an eyebrow.
“The Painted Brethren.”
“Is it true you keep the mysteries of the world here? Secrets forgotten?”
Shun gestured to the shelves and their horrid burden. “Never forgotten.”
“Do you know the secrets of the Kenning?”
“Hmn … I believe Brother Bishamon wore some lore about beast-speaking.”
“May I talk to him? Where is he?”
“If memory serves…” the old man tapped his lip, eyes scanning the shelves, “… there. Third row. Second alcove. Though I fear you may find his conversational skills … lacking.”
Yukiko swallowed her disgust, a thick, curdled mouthful, drumming her fingers on Yofun’s hilt. “But I can … read him?”
“Hai.” Triple blink. “But it is traditional for a tithe to be given for access to our athenaeum. A small token of gratitude for the brotherhood’s efforts at preserving lore otherwise lost to the hands of time and the flames of fools.”
“I have no money.”
Shun offered a conciliatory smile. “Then we cannot ask it of you, young miss.”
Yukiko glanced at the clump of oily scrolls the brother had gestured to, saw one with the name BISHAMON carved into its handle. Buruu growled in warning, low and deadly. Lightning licked the windows, and in the shuddering flare, she became aware of other figures in the room. One cloaked in shadows behind Brother Shun, another behind her, two more at the foot of the stairs. All clad in those long bleach-blue robes, frayed hems scraping the floor, hands clasped, heads bowed. Motionless as statues. Silent as ghosts.
She was certain they hadn’t been there a moment ago.
GET OUT OF THERE, YUKIKO.
Sweat in her eyes. No spit in her mouth. The Kenning flaring wide, Buruu’s fear and aggression filling her, pupils dilating, stomach flooded with butterflies. The pain gripped tight, scalding her arteries, the answers she needed just a hand’s breadth away. She reached toward Bishamon’s scroll and Brother Shun moved, quick as lizards’ tongues, as dancing, fighting flies, grasping her wrist with one pale, ink-stained hand. His grip was cold as fresh snow, almost burning on her skin.
“Let go of me,” she gasped.
“The tithe first, young miss.”
She jerked her arm, unable to break his horrid, glacial hold. The burn scar at her shoulder stretched tight as her muscles strained, arm trembling. Two tons of thunder tiger pounded against a foot of solid granite. Buruu’s roar filled the room, rippling on the walls, in her chest, peeling her lips back from her teeth.
“I told you I don’t have any money,” she hissed.
“We have no need of iron.” Cataract eyes roamed her body, something akin to hunger swelling in their depths. “A foot should suffice.”
“What?” Yukiko twisted in his grip. “You want my feet?”
She jerked her arm again, the sleeve of Brother Shun’s robe slipping down, bunching at his elbow. And with a low moan of horror, she saw the entire limb had been peeled like fruit, skin flayed clean off, exposing wet dark muscle and gleaming bone beneath.
“Perhaps fourteen inches…” Shun smiled. “You did destroy our door, after all.”
“I said let go of me!” she roared.
Her free hand grasped Yofun’s hilt, drawing the blade with the crisp ring of metal against metal, bringing it down on the brother’s arm with all her strength. Folded steel sheared through cloth, muscle, bone, the brother flinching away with a shriek. Yukiko pivoted, kicked the monk behind her square in the privates, bringing a knee up into his face as he curled over in agony. The three others stepped forward, cutting her off from the stairs and her escape, hands outstretched. She snatched Bishamon’s scroll off the shelf, backed away from the monks. Away from Buruu. The thunder tiger roared again, pounding the walls.
YUKIKO, COME TO ME!
Head ringing with Buruu’s plea, Yukiko glanced at Yofun’s blade, noticed it was unstained. Thunder in her veins, the Kenning splitting her skull. Stuffing the ghastly scroll into her obi, she tried again to sense the brothers, seize the life within them as she’d done with Yoritomo, grind it beneath her heel. But there was nothing to grip, no heat or life to hold. Almost as if …
As if …
Brother Shun looked up at her with empty eyes, a ghastly smile splitting his lips. Reaching down to his severed arm, he plucked it from the floor, thrust it back onto the glistening stump (no blood, none at all) and as Yukiko watched in utter horror, flexed his fingers as if to ease some minor cramp. The brother whose privates she’d brutalized picked himself up off the stone, straightened the pulp she’d made of his nose, tilted his head until his vertebrae popped.
“Secrets in abundance,” Shun whispered. “As I said.”
They lunged, all five, a rolling, snarling bramble of gibber-grasping hands and milk-white eyes. The constant lessons she’d endured under her father and Kasumi and Sensei Ryusaki, the years of wooden sword drills came back to her in a flood, her body falling into the familiar stance, side-on, knees bent. She moved like liquid, like an angry tide, seething forward and rushing back, Yofun held gently in a double-handed grip, its hilt like a lover’s hand in her own. She divested one brother of his outstretched fingers, another of his leg below the knee, a third of his windpipe and jugular, the blade slicing clean through his throat. Through it all, she was backing down the row, feet skipping across the floor, wisps of hair in her eyes, hoping to double back through the shelves and make a desperate dash for the stairs.
No blood flowed from the wounds she inflicted, only mild grunts of surprise accompanied her sword’s travels, followed by the wet plopping of whatever extremity she’d removed hitting the stone. She noticed the leg she hacked away was skinless above the ankle. Slicing another monk across his chest, she saw no skin through the rend in his robe—merely gray pectoral muscle and a grin-white rib cage.
Thunder rolled above and she screamed to Buruu, loud as she could, heedless of the blood spilling down her nose. At the sight of the ruby fluid smeared across her lips, Shun and his brethren seemed to lose all semblance of sanity, eyes so wide she could see the whites all around, teeth bared and gleaming. Too many to fight under the best of circumstances, and her circumstances were a god’s throw from that. And so, sheathing the five feet of useless katana at her back, Yukiko did exactly what her father had told her to do in the face of overwhelming odds.
She turned and bolted.
Using the alcoves as handholds. Hauling herself up onto one of the shelves, kicking in a brother’s face as he seized her ankles. Hopping onto the ledge, she tore Yofun from its scabbard again, taking careful aim at the monk scrambling up after her. With a fierce cry, she sliced clean through his neck, blade cleaving bone as if it were butter. The brother crashed to the floor, head rolling away across the stone. Thunder roared overhead, shaking the walls. And with vomit pressing at trembling lips, Yukiko saw the headless corpse rolling about on the ground, hands groping toward its disembodied head. Lighting strobed, rendering the scene in a lurid, grisly glow. Clawing fingers. Eyes still blinking. Mouth still moving.
Maker’s breath …
Yukiko turned, leaped over the gap between one shelf and another, back toward the entrance, fighting for balance as the structure shifted underneath her. Shun and another of his brethren had scrambled up behind her, two more cresting the shelves ahead and cutting off her escape route to the stairs. She noticed more figures now, fading out of the gloom, clad in those same bruise-blue robes. Female forms standing in the corners with impassive faces, holding armfuls of their own entrails, lit by strobing lightning strikes. Others hauling themselves up onto different shelves, closing in all about her. Dozens. Upon dozens. Upon dozens.