CHAPTER 1
Towering trees bowed beneath the weight of snow on their branches, and high above, stars glittered in the dark sky. Emi ran, shadows dancing across her path and snow flying behind her feet. Icy air numbed her throat with each gasping breath.
She’d had this dream before.
Ahead of her, a white fox bounded through the snow. She knew she wouldn’t catch him, but she had to try. His bushy tail flicked as he flashed in and out of sight through the trees, and when he reappeared, he had changed. Now the size of a lean and leggy white wolf, he dashed onward with three fox tails dancing in his wake.
Her sleeping consciousness recoiled against what would come next, yet in the dream she could do nothing more than chase him. He vanished around a thick stand of spruce and she sprinted after him.
Heat blasted her like an open volcano, pushing her back. In the clearing ahead, a creature of myth and nightmare awaited her. The massive white specter of fur and flame towered over her, eyes glowing like magma and nine tails of fire writhing behind it. White-hot flames flickered beneath its huge paws as it stalked forward, turning the snow all around it into steaming water.
In its path, the wolfish fox cowered, three tails quivering.
The kyubi no kitsune loosed a deep growl that vibrated with feral rage and made every hair on her body stand on end, yet she still rushed toward it, one hand outstretched as she cried out a name. The crimson markings on its face flashed brightly and it lunged for the three-tailed fox, turning the whole world into blue-white fire.
Emi’s eyes popped open, a silent gasp catching in her throat. Her muscles twitched with adrenaline.
“There is nothing.”
Yumei’s soft voice made her start. Squinting in the dim light of the candles scattered around the circular room, she turned her head, but otherwise remained unmoving where she lay on the padding of blankets. Across the room, Yumei—also known as the Tengu, Lord of Crows, and harbinger of war—sat with one elbow on the low table in front of him and his chin in his hand. A yokai sitting like an irritated teenager was a strange sight all on its own, but knowing Yumei was at least a thousand years old made it even more disconcerting. His smooth, ageless face didn’t show his years.
He tapped a taloned fingertip on the table to draw the attention of his tablemate. Even from across the room, Shiro’s ruby eyes gleamed in the candlelight as he focused on Yumei. His vulpine ears rotated, identical to those of the fox from her dream. Kitsune were one of countless types of yokai—earth spirits who populated the human world and their own spirit realm, Tsuchi.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked, his voice as quiet as Yumei’s but not nearly as soft. Hostility hardened his normally purring tones. “I don’t have any answers for you.”
“If you cannot remember anything, then our search is over.”
“Even if I could remember, I might not know anything relevant.”
“You must. Why else would an Amatsukami have bothered to so thoroughly destroy you?”
For a brief moment, the markings on Shiro’s forehead and across each cheekbone glowed crimson with his power and temper. Two weeks ago, he’d had almost no power to speak of, but Emi had changed that. Red onenju prayer beads formed two glossy loops around his forearm, and within the beads was a curse that bound his power and memories away from him—a curse she had failed to remove as she’d promised.
Yumei’s silver eyes blazed in response, but when he spoke, he sounded merely impatient. “Did the removal of the second binding not release any memories at all?”
“My mind is not a book to be opened and rifled through,” Shiro said flatly. “It is a landscape shrouded in a fog I cannot penetrate. No sooner does a memory appear than I lose it again.”
Hardly daring to breathe lest they realize she was awake, Emi watched the two yokai. Sometimes Shiro did that: changed his speech patterns from the casual language of someone her age to a strange, ancient cadence that sounded like something from another century. She wasn’t sure he realized he did it.
Her dream pushed into her thoughts, bringing with it the image of the great kyubi no kitsune. In her repeating dream, she would run toward the monstrous yokai and call out a name, but she could never remember the name upon waking. What she couldn’t forget was the beast’s terrible rage as it attacked the three-tailed fox. In the legends of kitsune, they gained another tail with each hundred years they lived until reaching their ultimate form: the nine-tailed fox, a yokai so powerful it rivaled dragons.
“Don’t count on me to remember anything useful,” Shiro said, switching back to his usual, casual tones, though frustration still tinged his words. “Not until the beads are off entirely.”
“Then our only option is to wait for the kamigakari to recover enough strength to remove them.”
“That can’t be our only option. We don’t even know if she can fully remove them. She’s not actually an Amatsukami.”
Emi flinched and slid the blanket up over her nose, leaving only her eyes exposed so she could continue watching them.
“Inari has been missing for a century,” Yumei said. “Susano began a gradual withdrawal from this world decades ago and disappeared five years past. Sarutahiko and Uzume were last seen on the winter solstice the year before last and not since.”
Their faces were hard, almost despondent, as they discussed the missing Kunitsukami, the four leaders of the yokai: Inari of the Fire, Susano of the Storm, Sarutahiko of the Mountain, and his wife, Uzume of the Wood. Yumei and Shiro had been searching for them since before she met them. She’d been tasked with the same impossible mission, except now they knew the Kunitsukami weren’t missing, but imprisoned by Izanami, the Amatsukami of the Earth.
Yumei growled, the sound shivering down her spine. “I do not know where else to search. Knowing they are prisoners only widens the possibilities.”
“How do you imprison a Kunitsukami?” Shiro muttered. “It shouldn’t be possible.”
“Clearly Izanami has devised ways, unless Amaterasu lied.”
“She didn’t lie,” Emi said without thinking.
They turned. She sat up, tugging her simple white kimono straight. Shiro watched her with a wicked little smile and she fought not to blush. She was several layers short of a respectable outfit, but this was all she had. Her clothes had been ruined and Yumei had nothing else to give her. When she’d complained, he’d asked in acid tones if she thought he was in the habit of collecting women’s garments. She’d decided not to pursue the topic.
Self-consciously adjusting the obi sash around her waist, she clambered up and crossed the room. Only after she’d dropped down on a cushion between them did the surreality of the moment strike her—her, a mortal girl, sitting with two dangerous yokai. How casually she’d joined them, as though she somehow belonged in their company.
Focusing, she turned to Yumei.
“Amaterasu didn’t lie,” she repeated. “She was possessing me. She was inside my head. I don’t think there was any way she could have lied to me. I could feel her urgency and her anger. She was so angry with Izanami.”
“If she cares so much about the Kunitsukami,” Shiro asked, “why didn’t she tell you where to look?”
“I told you already,” Emi said, trying to keep her exasperation in check. They’d had this conversation already, but both yokai were overly inclined to mistrust Amaterasu, the Amatsukami of the Wind. “She tried to tell me, but I—either I forgot or I didn’t hear her. I was … it was difficult to concentrate by that point.”
She shuddered at the memory—the burning agony of Amaterasu’s power, her overwhelmingly vast spirit consuming Emi’s mortal mind like flames devouring paper. As the kamigakari, that was the fate that awaited Emi on the winter solstice—obliteration by Amaterasu’s power as she took up residence in her new host body. Emi was trying not to think about it.
The heavenly Amatsukami and the earthly Kunitsukami were two sides of the same divine coin. Like the kami they ruled, the Amatsukami resided in the heavenly realm and used mortal kamigakari like Emi as their vessels when they visited Earth. The Kunitsukami originated from Tsuchi, the spirit realm of yokai, and had no need of host bodies in the human realm. Together, the eight of them created a balance of power and nature that protected all three worlds.
But Izanami had changed that. Somehow, she had imprisoned the four Kunitsukami, thereby unbalancing the crucial harmony of elemental powers. Izanami should have understood that, enemies or not, the worlds needed the Kunitsukami, but for unknown reasons, she had set out to destroy them.
Amaterasu, at least, had recognized Izanami’s betrayal and was doing what she could to stop whatever catastrophic plan Izanami intended to enact on the winter solstice. Unfortunately, Amaterasu’s only ally on Earth was Emi. Since Izanami had killed all of Amaterasu’s kamigakari for the past century, she had no doubt also killed any other allies Amaterasu might have called upon.
That’s how Emi had ended up with the task of finding the missing Kunitsukami—a mission so preposterous for a human kamigakari that she could hardly believe it herself.
“I think you must know something important—really important,” she told Shiro. “Amaterasu told me, ‘He must not die or all hope is lost.’ She knows about you, and it sounds like you’re vital somehow in finding the Kunitsukami.”
Shadows passed through his eyes. “I can’t remember anything.”
Exhaling, she pushed her tangled hair off her shoulders. Yumei didn’t own a comb either. Her attempt to explain to him how long hair like hers required regular grooming hadn’t produced any better results than her request for proper clothing.
“We don’t have time to wait until I can remove the onenju,” she told them. “After a hundred years, I don’t think we have much chance of finding Inari in the next few weeks. We should focus on Sarutahiko. As the leader of the Kunitsukami, he could help us find the others.”
“A sound theory,” Shiro said with a hint of sarcasm, “but we still have no way to find Sarutahiko. He’s not in his territory or Uzume’s, and none of his vassals can locate him.”
“What about suspicious … suspicious stuff? Have you asked around about that?”
“Suspicious like what, exactly?”
“Well, they’ve been imprisoned,” she huffed. “Surely there would be some sign of a Kunitsukami kidnapping and imprisonment in the last couple years. Wouldn’t Izanami have had to defeat them to capture them? That would hardly be a quiet affair.”
“I have already questioned all yokai who could have information on unusual activity,” Yumei said. “I do not lie when I say there are no further options to pursue unless you—either of you—can provide new evidence.”
Emi picked at the jagged edge of a fingernail. “Maybe I can try to talk to Amaterasu somehow …”
“So we have nothing,” Yumei said with icy finality, pushing away from the table. He rose and strode toward the open doorway filled with utter, unnatural darkness. His home existed in Tsuchi, and the abyss-like threshold was a gateway between realms. As he vanished into it without so much as a glance back, it rippled eerily with red light.
Her shoulders sagged. “What do we do now?”
Shiro stared at the wall across from him, his expression distant.
“Amaterasu said we have to free them before the solstice,” she pressed, urgency creeping into her tone. “That’s only five weeks away. If we can’t come up with—”
Shiro slammed both hands down on the table.
“I can’t remember,” he snarled. He uncoiled from his spot with liquid grace and strode to the door, each step radiating anger.
She watched him vanish through the threshold, too shocked to move. Shiro was normally so levelheaded. Even deadly battles and life-threatening injuries had failed to shake his steady calm. She’d seen him hurt, hostile, even afraid, but never truly angry—until now. Although his fury toward Koyane, Izanami’s vassal, after the kami had stolen her ki had come close.
She twisted her hands together in her lap. How hard must it be to be lost in a world where you didn’t even know your name? She remembered doubting the legitimacy of the name “Shiro” when he’d first offered it, dubious that a white fox would be named “white.” How could she have guessed he’d given her a fake name because he couldn’t remember his real one?
And now, his memories weren’t just a key to his past, but to saving the Kunitsukami—and in the process, the world. Emi didn’t know what Izanami was planning or why she’d imprisoned the Kunitsukami, but if Amaterasu said it would destroy the world, Emi wasn’t inclined to doubt her.
Shiro didn’t doubt it either, and he had to be putting more pressure on himself to remember than either she or Yumei could. She turned her hands over and pushed her left thumb into the palm of her opposite hand, remembering the electric magic that had seared her palm. Only two days had passed since she’d tried, and failed, to remove the second to last onenju binding, and only four days since Izanami’s attack on the shrine, but time was already so short. Could Emi gain enough power from Amaterasu to fully remove the onenju, not only before the solstice, but also with enough time to locate and free the Kunitsukami?
Rising, she faced the darkness-filled doorway through which both yokai had vanished. They’d been searching for so long already, their hope worn down by failure.
It was time for her to take up the fight for them. She had to find a way, find an answer, before it was too late. It was up to her, and she would not accept failure. She just had to come up with something they hadn’t thought of yet.
If only she had some idea where to start.
--
Dark Tempest
The Red Winter Trilogy / Book Two
Copyright © 2017 by Annette Marie
www.annettemarie.ca
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations for review purposes.
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