The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(66)

“I can smell your hunger, too,” Iso Onna said, tracing a finger across the surface of the water.

“I don’t eat.”

“Not for food,” she said. “You’ve come here because you think Izanami will feed you. That’s why they all come here, and all of them are fools.”

“Shut up,” I said. “I know you hypnotize people. You’re just talking me in circles because you don’t want me to kill you.”

Iso Onna sighed—a long, sad sound that spoke of the exhaustion of living for thousands of years.

“You would stab a starving creature with her back turned to you?” she said. “How heroic.”

“You’ve murdered thousands of people.”

“I was hungry!” Iso Onna said, slamming her fists down into the rock and fracturing it into a dozen smaller pieces that somehow still clung together. She panted, as if the outburst had drained all of her energy. “I know what you are,” she whispered. “I can smell it on you the way one can smell a rotting corpse in summer heat. You know that you would just as soon drag a man out to sea and drown him if you were hungry enough.”

I shook my head, hand rigid on the chain of my clock. I knew that I selfishly endangered my brother and snapped at strangers and was too blunt to humans on their deathbeds, but that was different than being a Yokai, wasn’t it? Why did both Yuki Onna and Iso Onna think they could see through me so easily? What right did they have to judge my heart, or my mind, or even my blood?

“Ren!”

I turned around. Neven and Hiro stood at the top of the incline, peering down at us. Neven’s jaw dropped and he started scrambling down the rocks.

“Neven, it’s under control,” I said.

But Iso Onna sat up straight, so sharply that I lurched backward out of instinct, still tethered to my clock’s chain. She rose to her feet and slowly turned around.

I didn’t know what kind of monster I’d expected, but it wasn’t anything like this. Her eyes had the entire ocean inside of them, every shade of blue-green and shimmering fish and bright coral and white sand. The skin under her cheekbones glimmered with hundreds of iridescent scales that resembled fine jewels. Her wet hair hung in ripples around her face, decorated with tiny starfish. She looked more like an enchanting princess of the sea than a bloodthirsty vampire.

She wore no clothing and moved with elegance despite her frailty, every step flowing as if she walked underwater.

Neven and Hiro stood dumbfounded, eyes full of stars and unmoving on the rocks. I wanted to mock them, but even I found it hard to think clearly through the dreamlike ambiance that had settled over the shore. Neven stepped away from Hiro and began to cross the shore, stumbling forward in a magnetized sleepwalk.

“Neven, stay back,” I said. But he didn’t break from Iso Onna’s trance, hurrying closer, eyes only on her.

“What have you done to him?” I said to the Yokai. Under her trance, I had to fight to form each word, my lips numb and heavy. “You said you wouldn’t eat—”

I froze.

She’d said she didn’t want my Shinigami blood, but she’d probably never tasted a Reaper before.

“Neven, your clock!” I screamed.

He jumped as if shocked awake, blinking at me in confusion but reaching for his clock instinctively.

Then Iso Onna’s jaw came unhinged with a loud crack, and a violent shriek shattered the sky.

Her voice lanced through my ear canal and straight into my brain, scraping down the walls of my skull. Blood spilled hot out of my ears and down my neck. I clamped my hands over my ears, but nothing could stop the sound from knifing straight through my brain, forcing me to my knees. I screamed Neven’s name as Iso Onna stepped closer, though I couldn’t even hear my own voice.

Neven had fallen to the ground, his hands clapped over his own bleeding ears. Iso Onna’s hair began to lengthen, locks of it twisting through the air like swaying cobras. From nearly ten meters away, it wrapped around Neven’s wrists, pulling his hands from his ears. He thrashed against her hold, but more locks twisted around his neck, squeezing until his face turned white and his eyes flashed through a panicked kaleidoscope of colors.

I tried to crawl forward, but removing even one hand from my ear multiplied the pain by a thousand, nearly shattering me with its intensity. I could only watch with wet eyes as Iso Onna dragged Neven like a toy across the rocks, and the two of them disappeared into the sea.

I didn’t realize I’d still been screaming for Neven until Iso Onna’s voice abruptly stopped, my own cries cutting through the ringing in my ears. When I tried to jump to my feet, my chain pulled me back down to the wet rocks. I yanked it with all my strength, but with a horrifying clinking sound, the chain snapped and my clock clattered farther down between the rocks.

“No no no, come back!” I cried, jamming my hand between the rocks and trying to feel for my clock, but my hand was too big and my clock had fallen too far down.

I stared at my trembling hands and dug my teeth into my lip and held back a scream because I had no idea what to do. My clock had always bought me the time to think and be rational, but I didn’t have any more time when a sea vampire was dragging Neven deeper and deeper underwater. I had to go down after him.

Hiro reached me just as I kicked my shoes off and pulled the knives from my sleeves, tucking them into my waistband.