The shrine is supposed to be protected from malevolent yokai, I tell myself. It’s supposed to be safe.
A sound clicks behind me, like a cicada but louder. The noise rattles inside my bones. I whirl. Behind me, a funnel of conjured shadows stretches across the air. A yokai crawls from the weblike strands and steps onto the shrine grounds. The beast has the head and torso of a beautiful woman, her hair styled as intricately as any geisha’s . . . but the rest of her ends in a nightmare. She is half-woman, half-spider. Her eight elegant legs step in concert, and her claws click like knives against the cobblestones. The eight eyes in her face look like gashes, their insides burning bright as the embers of a fire.
It’s . . . it’s a jorōgumo.
I didn’t even think those were real.
Her abdomen bobs behind her, strands of silk descending from her spinnerets. She hisses at me, then strikes.
“No!” I scream, swinging my broom like a baseball bat. The bristles slam into her left cheekbone. Her head snaps to one side. Something cracks in her neck. The jorōgumo staggers back, her growl rumbling like deep, shackled thunder.
Dodging past her, I sprint toward the shrine’s assembly hall. I scramble onto the veranda, slipping on the wood and catching myself against the outer wall. The yokai leaps after me with a shriek, drawing my attention backward. Moonlight glimmers on her abdomen, and on the sickled ends of her feet. She looks like a scream made flesh.
I push off the wall and run. I make it ten steps, maybe more, before a rope of spider silk snares my ankle. It yanks my feet out from under me. I crash down, broom clacking to the wooden floor. As my heart pounds in my throat, I flip onto my back, snatching my broom. The yokai approaches. She keeps my tether taut, wrapping her silk around one hand. The veranda groans under her weight.
She lunges for me.
I lift my broom with a cry, jabbing the handle into her chest to hold her off. Her cheeks split and open like a set of glistening crimson leaves. Hot saliva drips off the needlelike teeth embedded in her flesh, splattering over my chest and face. It smells of bile and coppery blood.
She leans in closer, her weight pressing the broom’s bristles into my gut. I grit my teeth, pain flickering across my vision in bright red bursts.
“What do you want?” I gasp.
She grins at me, but it’s just a sick approximation of a smile. “Isn’t it obvious, little priestess? You have a yokai’s sight—can’t you sense the weakening of the sun? Can’t you feel her getting colder, darker?”
“Yeah,” I say, grimacing at her smell. “And it’s called winter—”
A shadow darts in on my left. Air hisses as a blade winks in the darkness, slicing into the back of the jorōgumo’s neck. Her jaw falls open in shock. Great splatters of blood hit the ground. The jorōgumo becomes boneless, collapsing beside me, the life gone out of her. Her claws slice into the veranda, leaving great red wounds in the wood.
With a shriek, I scramble away on my knees and palms.
“Useless creature.” A shadowy figure spits on the corpse. “I ordered you to leave the girl alone.”
I know that voice. I’ve heard it ringing in the shrine’s halls, even when it wasn’t louder than a whisper. The white peaks of his fox ears almost glow with unearthly light. Black bloodstains spread across his kimono. If Shiro channels sunlight with his laugh, then his elder brother, Ronin, can funnel darkness with a look.
His gaze fills my whole soul with dread.
“W-what’s going on?” I whisper, shocked to see the katana in his hand. The blade glows with a muted gray light, like a lightbulb coated in grime. Kitsune don’t use katana—it’s not possible to cast an onmyōdō spell while holding a sword, and magic is a kitsune’s specialty. I blink fast. “I don’t understand, h-how did you—”
“Ronin!” someone shouts behind us. I turn, surprised to see Shiro standing on the path behind us, his face and chest splattered in blood. The inky fluid drips from the tips of his fingers, which end in long, sturdy claws. Shiro’s voice sounds lower, rougher, as though he’s shifting deeper into his yokai form, leaving his human elements behind: “Let Kira go.”
“I’m not going to hurt her, brother,” Ronin snaps.
“I can’t trust anything you say,” Shiro says. “You’ve betrayed us all.”
Ronin stares Shiro down. “I don’t expect you to understand—”
“Don’t pull the manga villain card on me,” Shiro spits. “You’re getting people killed!”
A sob hitches in my throat, drawing the brothers’ attention.
“Get out of here, Kira,” Shiro says, shifting his gaze back to his brother. “I’ll deal with Ronin.”
He doesn’t need to tell me twice. I turn and run, nearly tripping over my own feet. Strange, dark lumps now line the shrine’s paths, blood spreading like inkblots under their lifeless forms.
You’re getting people killed!
Another sob burns in my throat.
Please be safe, Grandfather, I beg him in my head. I need you to be safe.
I sprint up the path to Grandfather’s house and throw the front door open. “Ami!” I shout. “Ami? Where are you?” I find my sister’s homework forgotten on the kitchen table, and hear sobbing coming from one of the cabinets. Ami whimpers as I open the door, looking up at me, blinking. Snot trails from her nose and crusts around the top of her lip.
“Kira?” she asks in a voice so small, it sounds even younger than her six years. No matter how annoying she may be, she’s still my little sister. Seeing her frightened breaks something inside me. “What’s going on? Are there terrorists attacking the shrine?”
How does a six-year-old know about terrorists? And how am I supposed to answer her question? I can’t tell her monsters are attacking our family’s shrine—for one, Mother would never forgive me. Two, it sounds crazy even to my ears. The shrine is supposed to be warded. Protected. Safe.
“Something like that.” I take a knee beside her. “Grandfather wants us to hide in the motomiya till they stop. We need to go, okay?”
She nods, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. I pull her to her feet. Staying low to avoid being seen from the house’s numerous, darkened windows, I lead my sister out of the kitchen and into the entryway.
Shoes—Grandfather’s and Ami’s—sit neatly against the wall. I glance down, realizing that in my panic, I forgot to remove mine upon entering the house. The offense makes the knot in my gut draw tighter.
“Hurry,” I whisper to my sister. Ami slides her feet into her shoes, fat tears still rolling down her face. “Don’t make a sound once we’re outside, understand?”
“Okay,” she says, sniffling.
“One, two—” I mouth the word three and open the door. I keep hold of my sister’s hand as we step outside. The sky looms so dark it swallows all light, including the stars. I don’t know if the yokai have enchanted the sky somehow, or if the stars have turned their faces away from us.
The grounds lie silent. I guide Ami past the front of Grandfather’s house, keeping to the shadows under the eaves, listening for footsteps. We slide past the topiary bushes without being spotted or followed.
The motomiya stands apart from the rest of the shrine, hidden in a copse of trees. The wooden structure is about thirty feet by fifteen, with a clay tile roof and a checkerboard lattice on the outer wall. A shimenawa rope hangs over the door lintel, denoting the motomiya as a sacred place. With Ami in tow, I slip through the open doorway and then tiptoe across a floor that sings like a nightingale. I give the altar inside little more than a cursory glance.