The Keeper of Night (The Keeper of Night #1)(68)

Hair, voice, blood. One of those things was Iso Onna’s essence. It didn’t matter which, because I was going to take them all.

I wrapped my hands in the long sleeves of my kimono so my skin wouldn’t touch the Yokai, then I sliced through the major arteries in her thighs and wrists and neck. She wouldn’t bleed until time started again, but I split her skin smooth and easy as butter all the same. Then I pressed my blade to her neck and sawed down and down and the flesh split away, the soft tissues of the trachea yielding to the sharpness of my blade, harder and harder and harder until I was sawing on spine. She would have an awfully hard time screaming with ripped vocal cords gurgling with blood and it had been so easy, why not saw all the way through to the other side? Tear her to pieces, rip her apart, drench the sea with scarlet and make her pay, crack open her rib cage and rip out her soul and slice it to ribbons and feed it to the fish.

That was the price of my brother’s blood.

My knife lodged in her spine and wouldn’t move, wouldn’t come loose, wouldn’t release until I kicked her face back and her spine snapped like a piece of kindling. I’d broken her until there was nothing left to shatter and the knife trembled in my hand and my teeth ached from biting down on the silver clock.

And then there was nothing more to do, but the ocean still boiled around me and my whole body convulsed with shivers and only then, when the Yokai was definitely dead and done for, did a warm wave of satisfaction wash over me, a euphoric tingling that fizzled throughout my body because I had won.

When I reached out for Neven, my hands were once again nothing but bones and bright red veins. Would I shatter him with my touch, my anger, all the horrible parts of me that had brought him here in the first place?

My throat let out a wretched sound, somewhere between a sob for my brother and a scream at the last remnants of rage that still splintered through my bones. I bit down harder on the clock...and it slipped from between my teeth.

Instantly, the whole world swirled with blood.

I couldn’t see outside of the walls of crimson that stung my eyes and filled my mouth, the chunks of black hair, the taste of Death so dizzying that I retched out the water and blood I’d swallowed. Where was Neven? Where was the Yokai? Had I killed her?

Arms wrapped around my waist, and I slashed out with my knife, raking a line across Hiro’s shoulder before I realized who he was. Against his stillness, I could feel the uncontrollable shudders still rocking through my body. He pressed something to my hand, and I could tell from the shape that it was Neven’s clock, but I couldn’t have turned time then even if I’d wanted to.

“Take his arm,” Hiro said. Somehow, in the water, I could still hear Hiro’s voice as if he’d breathed the words into my ear. A rush of water cleared away some of the blood, and I saw Hiro clutching Neven’s arm with the hand that wasn’t wrapped around my waist.

I grabbed Neven’s other arm and kicked toward the surface, looking down for the Yokai, sure that somehow all of it hadn’t been enough to subdue her. But as the blood cleared, I knew we didn’t have to worry about her anymore.

Iso Onna lay facedown on the ocean floor, draped among the rocks and algae. Her raggedly shorn hair fluttered around with the changing currents, her whole body wrapped in a haze of hellish red, still swirling from her limbs. The blood that spun toward us tasted of concentrated Death, like cyanide that singed away the skin of my lips.

Hiro kicked harder, clearly still in control of his limbs in a way that I wasn’t. We broke the surface, Neven’s head hanging limply against his shoulders.

“Take him to land,” I said, struggling to keep my own head above water as I dribbled out blood that might have been my brother’s or the Yokai’s or my own. Hiro held Neven against his side and swam ahead of me to the shore, where he laid Neven down in the sand as I clawed through the violent waves to catch up with them.

Hiro was shaking Neven when I crawled onto the shore next to him, and Neven still hadn’t moved. The wound in his neck no longer poured out blood, but the skin still looked raw and mangled. How much blood could a Reaper lose? I didn’t know where Iso Onna fell on our power hierarchy, but she’d certainly seemed like someone strong enough to kill a Reaper.

“Neven,” I said, my hands on his face. “Neven!”

I lifted one of his eyelids with my thumb, but I couldn’t even see the color of his eyes because they’d rolled back in his head. I closed my eyes and let my forehead fall to his chest and imagined another universe in which my brother had asked to escape London with me and I’d said no because I wasn’t selfish enough to put him in danger. But that was not the choice I’d made, and that was not a reality I’d ever get to see.

All the darkness had evaporated, and I was hollow. An oyster once the shell had been cracked open and all the flesh had been scraped out with a fork. I closed my fist in Neven’s shirt but I couldn’t cry, because there was nothing left inside me, so instead the sadness just lodged in my throat and made it impossible to breathe. Hiro’s hand fell on my back and traced lightly up and down my spine, but his touch felt far away.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Neven’s shirt. “Neven, I’m so sorry.”

But Neven lay stiff and cold and unmoving. I sat up slowly, my head hanging low and fist still clutching my brother’s shirt.

“Ren,” Hiro said, his hand on the small of my back. I looked at him, hoping that he had an answer, some secret Japanese potion or benevolent Yokai who could fix my brother. But all he did was pull me into his arms and hold me. My arms hung limp by my sides and my face rested on his shoulder, but none of it was enough, none of it mattered.