Page 15

15

The thing before me is Méi’zi. It looks like Méi’zi, but it also doesn’t—because my little sister’s flesh is peeling from her face, her eyes are replaced by dark, bleeding hollows, and her lips are gashed. She’s shivering in her favorite nightgown, the plain cloth one I clumsily sewed as a birthday present for her. I recall each stitch of plum blossom, pinks and fuchsias and the green of leaves.

My mind blanks. It’s not her—it can’t be her, my little sister, whom I left safe and sound in our village back home. But as she steps toward me, I see that she’s clutching the blade I gave her, Shield, to her chest.

Her gaping hole of a chest, where her heart and lungs and organs should be.

“Jiě’jie.” Her voice is a rattle that somehow reaches me through the roar of rain. “You…left me….”

I bite down on the scream welling up in my throat as my pendant heats again. I grasp at it as if it is a lifeline. My fingers shake so hard I can barely read its words:

Painted skin.

I’ve read about these creatures. A huà’pí, a painted skin, is a shapeshifting monster that appears in the form of its victim’s nightmares. It takes your deepest, darkest fears and turns them corporeal. Unable to stand sunlight, they lurk in the mountains in the mortal realms, hiding in caverns or the thickest forests.

“Help me, jiě’jie,” the shape of my little sister begs me, wheezing. She staggers forward, and in spite of all logic, I nearly take a step to catch her.

There’s a searing heat against my skin, and I jerk back instinctively.

My jade pendant glows like coal with a command so unlike the gentle, guiding messages it has given me throughout my life:

Destroy it.

The jarring message cuts through the fog of my mind and emotions. I swap Heart for Striker and widen my stance, planting my feet in the mud and grass. The creature stalking toward me in the rain is not my sister. My sister is safe, in Xī’lín, where I have poured my blood and spirit energy into the strongest wards I’m capable of creating to protect her.

I raise Striker as another streak of lightning zigzags across the sky, and that’s when I see her again: the illusion of my father’s murderer that always finds me in my moments of fear. She’s just a blur in the rain, a figment of my imagination, yet as always, my mind fills in the details: the red of her lips, of her eyes, of the garnet at her throat and her long flowing dress and billowing sleeves, the utter perfection of a timeless face worn by a Higher One. Reminding me that, after all this time, I am still not good enough, not strong enough, not powerful enough.

The illusion’s gone in a blink, but the moment of distraction costs me.

The painted skin slams into me. The world tilts off balance as I’m thrown to the ground. This time, when I look up, Méi’zi’s face is full and healed, her brown eyes wide, her pretty cherry lips widen in a horrific, drooling grin as she claws at me.

“Jiě’jie,” she shrieks, and her voice turns guttural, like something else is speaking through her. “Jiě’jie, you left me…so let me eat your flesh!”

This close, I smell the decay of the creature’s breath, the stench oozing from its pores. I’ve read that painted skins are so named because they collect the skins and body parts of their victims and wear them until they rot off.

I lash out with Striker. The creature screams, Méi’zi’s face contorting, as my blade splits its forehead and eyes, where I’ve read such creatures’ cores rest. I grit my teeth against the image of my crescent blade plunged into my own sister’s face, reminding myself that this isn’t Méi’zi but a monster of nightmares.

Still, I hesitate for a heartbeat.

The monster wrenches away from my blade and leaps back, snarling. Its form ripples, dividing into two distinct silhouettes. When I blink again, it’s Mā who’s gazing back at me. She’s lying on the forest floor, and bent over her…bent over her…is…

The Higher One lifts her head, her face as lovely as the day I saw it nine years ago. Unlike in all my visions, I can see her clearly, her teeth bloodstained as she smiles at me.

Terror turns my mind blank. A very distant corner of my mind whispers that this is my own fear turned against me by this monster of nightmares, but I can’t think, and all I know is that it’s happening again, the event of nine years ago that I was powerless to stop, that took my parents from me and tore my life apart.

“àn’yīng!” my mother cries feebly. She reaches a hand toward me. “àn’yīng, help me….”

I’m shaking. My blades feel like foreign objects in my palms. “Mā,” I sob, but I can’t move. My limbs are frozen, my feet rooted to the ground, ice in my veins.

The Higher One lifts my mother’s face to her lips, and that’s what finally breaks me.

I’m screaming as I charge, and as I raise my blades and fall upon the Higher One, she looks up at me in a flash of alarm. I plunge my blade into her face, and this time, I do it with all the pent-up fury of nine years. I feel the crunch of bone and sinew give way to fleshy pulp, hear the creature’s shriek as its form ripples and it shifts again. It’s now my father’s body that the Higher One holds: Bà, bleeding, barely breathing, his eyes faint as he gazes at me and mouths my name, my dagger driven through his throat.

I don’t remember what happens next. There’s screaming in the distance, and then I hear a voice filtering through, calling my name.

“…àn’yīng! àn’yīng! ”

Pressure on my wrists. Hands at my shoulders. A face swims into my vision, beautiful and made even more so in the rain. Wide, dark eyes, long lashes, full lips.

“àn’yīng,” Yù’chén repeats. He’s holding my shoulders.

I react by instinct, my mind in overdrive, terrified that this is another illusion of nightmares from this hellscape of a forest. My blades flash. Yù’chén shouts, one hand coming up to block, but it’s too late.

Blood sprays my face, flecks of it salting my tongue, hot and tasting of copper. It’s this that jerks me from my state of frenzy.

I blink, and Yù’chén’s kneeling before me, one hand clutching his cheek, face angled away from me. Streaks of crimson run in rivulets down his face where I cut him, mingling with the rain. There’s a foul smell in the air, and it’s coming from beneath me.

When I look down, I’m kneeling over a mound of rotting flesh: purpling, decaying skin; a swollen tongue; maggot-infested eyes; and pieces of exposed, pale skull. It’s the huà’pí, stabbed beyond recognition.

My hands and blades are bloodied, my throat raw. The screaming I heard from earlier came from me.

“àn’yīng,” Yù’chén says again. He’s breathing hard, but when I look into his face, all I can see is blood and the Higher One’s smile as she gorged herself on my father’s flesh.

I lean away from the dead creature and throw up the contents of my stomach. When I’m done, I crouch over the forest floor. Tremors roll through my body.

Soft footfalls as Yù’chén approaches. He bends, lifting my face with one hand, his fingertips stained red. “It’s all right now,” he says. “It’s dead.”

“It wasn’t… her …my father…” I’m incoherent, but I can’t bring myself to speak the words. I clasp my hands to Yù’chén’s, searching his eyes, forcing myself to focus on his face, on anything but the image seared into my mind like a white-hot brand. “It wasn’t…Bà…”

His gaze flickers with an emotion I can’t understand. “No,” he says quietly. “That wasn’t your father.”

“Not…my Mā…Méi’zi…”

“No. That was a huà’pí. It’s dead now, àn’yīng. It’s over.” His thumb strokes my face. “Your family’s safe. You’re safe.”

I stare at him, willing his words to sink in. Then, with shaking hands, I grasp his collar and slowly, slowly lean my forehead on his chest. I feel him stiffen, then feel his arms encircle my back as he draws me against him. His skin is warm in the rain, and against my cheek, I feel the steady thud-thud-thud of his heart, the brush of his breaths against my ear, stirring my hair.

In this moment, I need to be held, even if it is by half a monster.

Gradually, my body stops shaking. My breathing evens out. And my senses return.

I draw back. The rain has soaked through my dress and washed all the blood from my hands and blades. I’m aware of how close Yù’chén and I are, how his touch on my skin trails heat across my lower back. He’s watching me, rain dripping down his hair and lashes and chin. The cut on his cheek is already healing, the bleeding stopped.

I touch a finger to the skin, observing the way it knits itself back together like it was never broken in the first place. “I’m sorry,” I say.

“Sorry you cut me?” he asks. “Or sorry you thought me a monster of nightmares?”

I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for. He’s silent, droplets of rain clinging to his lashes, and I realize he’s actually waiting for an answer. I frown and pull my hand away from his cheek as another thought occurs to me. My voice is still unsteady as I ask instead, “How did you find me?”

He draws a sharp breath, eyes darting between mine. “I…”

“Were you looking for me?”

He swallows and turns his gaze away from me.

“Why?” I press. I’m barely holding myself together, and I need him to say that he’s doing all this for some sort of reason, a trade, a game…anything to tell me that the kindness he is showing me isn’t real.

Yù’chén’s lips part—then his eyes catch on something behind me, something that drains the color from his face. His hands tighten on my waist and he goes still.

I glance back.

At first, I see nothing. But then, through the trees, I make out a pale smudge: a prone, lifeless body, bare legs and pale silks just visible from here.

I’m about to turn for a closer look when Yù’chén’s hand comes to my cheek, turning me sharply back to him. He is pale, and there is a wild, frenetic look to his gaze.

“Another huà’pí,” he says, and his other hand grips my waist so tightly, it hurts. “Go, before it targets you.”

If it isn’t targeting me, that means…“Is it targeting you?” I ask.

He doesn’t reply, only lets me go and stands. His sword flashes silver as he unsheathes it. “Go,” Yù’chén repeats.

I push to my feet, my blades in my hands. I try to get a glimpse of the creature in the trees, of what form Yù’chén’s worst fears might take, but he moves to stand between me and the monster. His mouth is tight, his face shuttered, his knuckles white.

It’s the first time I have seen him look…afraid.

I want to know what in these realms can elicit this kind of a reaction in him. I hesitate, shifting my crescent blades between my fingers.

“Go, before I make you.” His tone takes on a rough edge.

I search his face for a trace of the vulnerability I saw just moments ago. It’s gone.

I turn and run into the night.