A Spirit's Kindred Read online

  A Spirit's Kindred

  Katherine Kim

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Katherine Kim

  To Richard, who has never stopped encouraging me to try the impossible

  Keep up with new releases, giveaways, and other antics by joining my email community. You’ll get some free stories, advance chapters from upcoming books, and all sorts of things! You can check it out here.

  1

  Kai looked around the makeshift camp and pasted a smile on his face. He still couldn’t feel his back. Mentally, he knew that there were stitches marching in three neat rows now— stretching from his left shoulder to the middle of his waist— and Doc was still taping bandages over them, but he couldn’t feel any of it. It didn’t much matter, really. The battle was mostly over, and he trusted the fighters left down there to finish the work, not that he could work up the relief that he knew he should feel about the threat finally being over. Maybe he should be more concerned that even his emotional reactions were as numb as his body, but that would have been far too much effort.

  Doc asked him something and he must have answered because she nodded. He glanced up at her frown and blinked but couldn’t find the energy to ask her what was wrong. He just forced his face to smile and turned his attention back to the fire, carefully hidden from any late hikers or possible police. He knew that it was warm here. It must be, this close to the fire. And someone was draping a blanket over his shoulders while Doc pressed a steaming mug into his frozen fingers but the cold went so deep that he couldn’t actually feel any of it. The only warmth that he felt— though it was more like knife-points of heat rather than something comforting— were where Doc’s fingers brushed his own. He felt it again when someone laughed and the cheerful sound raked across his brain like claws.

  “…that the toxin from its claws went deep into his system before you got him out.” Doc’s voice finally broke into his consciousness.

  “If I hadn’t looked up just then, I wouldn’t have seen the blow land, and you know Kai. He wouldn’t have stopped fighting to take care of himself,” Allana answered. She was the one who had dragged him out of the cave and probably saved his life, such as it was. Kai realized that he was shivering faintly under the blanket and wondered why his body was even making the effort. Although, even giving up seemed like too much work.

  “We need to make sure he stays warm. I have some potions here that will help counteract the poison, but it’s going to be best if we can keep him surrounded by friends and family. Emotional warmth is as important as physical. The real danger in a wight’s poison isn’t that it attacks a body, it attacks the soul.” Doc’s voice was worried, and Allana nodded with concern in her own face. Kai wasn’t sure why they were wasting their energy on him like this.

  Kai frowned now as well. His hands were tingling now with sharp points of pain, like they’d been asleep for too long and feeling was returning. He looked at the cup in his hands, the steam coming off it bright with the grassy sunshine smell of calendula. Someone else laughed merrily nearby and another stab of tingles crept up his arm. The pain of the wounds in his back finally started to creep into his awareness as well. He almost wished he could stay numb, though. This was the most relaxed he’d felt in weeks. Years, really, if he wanted to be honest with himself. Ever since he’d taken up the mantle of protector and manager of their apartment of spirits, he’d been on edge. Too young, too inexperienced, not anywhere near good enough to replace Obaachan, who had passed the responsibilities down to him along with the apartment complex itself in her will.

  God, he missed her. She always knew what to say to make him feel better. She’d been so good at this task, full of the quick cleverness kitsune were known for, and the warmth of a deep love of her family. It was that love that had kept her going for so long after her human husband died. With her gone, it all fell to Kai and his brother Sebastian, but Kai knew full well the real burden sat on his own shoulders, and sometimes he thought it would crush him.

  Like right now, for example. It seemed reasonable to expect that an apartment complex full of spirits would be able to fend off a few threats easily enough. Plenty of the residents were powerful enough on their own to take out a wight— they had cyclopes, and griffons, and other strong fighters. They had Kai himself— even though he refused to tap into the well of magic from his Native American father, he was, after all, still the son of a god. Heck, the Village even had a god living there: Mr. Young was still in the cavern, doing Kai’s job and cleaning up the last of the monsters.

  Still, there were children in the Village apartments. Elderly. Human wives and husbands and there were spirits who were either less powerful or pacifist by nature. They needed protecting. He was supposed to watch over them as half owner and general manager of the apartment complex, and he’d been doing a piss-poor job of it so far. He’d missed the signs that they had gained some sort of enemy willing to send an army of wights after them. He’d failed to find the cave the wights were trapped in during the day. He wasn’t wise like his grandmother, or quick like his mother, or clever like his father.

  Kai shivered, his anger at himself waking up his nerves and making the cold shoot out from his wound to wrap around his chest and squeeze. He was failing his people. It was his job to protect these people, a task that had been damn near written into his very bones, and he wasn’t even capable of it! He was risking lives with his inability to see trouble coming, risking the very existence of everyone’s home. If he had any decency at all he would stand up and walk out of the camp right now, leave everyone far behind him and free them to choose a new leader.

  Kai snarled, livid that he’d let things get this bad. These people had trusted him, and how did he repay that trust? By allowing these monsters to attack them, to scare them indoors and away from their normal lives. To frighten their children and leave empty playgrounds in their wake. It all fell to his shoulders and he hadn’t been able to bear the burden. He was a failure and had put his friends in danger. And that didn’t even account for the innocent and unsuspecting humans that lived in the neighborhoods nearby! Everyone would be far better off if he left and they could find someone else to watch over them.

  He started to shrug the blanket off and do just that when a hand dropped down onto his shoulder. The hand was so full of the warmth of friendship and family pride and life that it spiked out of the light touch through Kai’s whole body. He gasped from the pain of sensations flooding his body. The contrast to the soul chilling cold that was numbing him made the gentle heat feel like it was searing along his skin and through his nerves, and Kai almost sobbed from the shock of it.

  Minutes passed, and slowly control came back to him. Kai blinked the fog away and pushed away the cold, dark thoughts that had been crowding his mind. The hand on his shoulder squeezed slightly and Kai glanced up at Mr. Young. The man looked down at him, a worried look in his eyes, but the old god smiled when Kai met his gaze.

  “Thank you,” Kai said, swallowing heavily. Mr. Young’s smile grew and he shook his
head slightly. The old man nodded at the mug still gripped in Kai’s hands, though it was cool now, like the night air around them. Kai drank it obediently, and more warmth flowed through him. Doc’s teas were often not merely blended herbs according to taste or medicinal benefits. They were just as likely to be a carefully prepared potion brewed up by the clever witch. Between Mr. Young pulling him back from the edge of despair that Kai was sure would have destroyed him inside of an hour, and the magic and healing from the tea in his hands, it seemed that he could finally now find a way to begin moving forward again. Both his body and his soul needed the medicine.

  Mr. Young patted Kai’s shoulder and nodded his approval again before sitting down beside him. Even through the grime from the cavern they’d all been fighting in, and the exhaustion of the night, the elderly Asian spirit radiated power. Not for the first time, Kai wondered exactly how old he was. Nobody became a god overnight, after all.

  The mood around the camp grew even more festive as the last few fighters staggered out of the cave. None of the wights escaped. They were all gone. Sent to wherever the damned things went when they were defeated. It wasn’t usually so difficult to fight one, but the hundreds that had been in that cave were far stronger than one or two on their own, and the strength of them all at once had nearly overwhelmed the defenders from the village before they’d even gotten inside. The soul-chilling cold that started the battle before someone could even get close to a wight had reached out well past the cavern they hid in, and merely entering the cave had been a fight of its own.

  One wight was enough to chill your spirit. A cavern full of them was enough to shred a person’s soul with blades of ice cold rage and despair. It was only the fact that they’d all gone in together that had kept them sane in the beginning of the battle. Then after a while they’d felt the warmth of hope from the people who started setting up this camp. Doc and Ellie and Sarah who was new to their community but fit in like a missing puzzle piece.

  That thought actually brought a small smile to his face and sped the thawing sensation in his chest. Sarah and his brother Sebastian were well on their way to happy coupledom, and Kai was glad for them. Seb had always loved to hear Sarah’s grandmother tell stories of the young woman she only spoke to on the phone when Sarah could get away from her domineering mother.

  Sarah had finally come to take her place here when her grandmother died. Though Sarah’s mother still posed a small problem, Kai was sure that Sarah was strong enough to make her own choices and stand up for herself and her own choices. He rather suspected that she would choose to stay and explore, not only her heritage as a witch, but her relationship with Sebastian.

  Kai glanced around and realized that neither Sarah nor Seb was in the camp with everyone else. That brought another small grin when he speculated where they could be, and Mr. Young smiled back and bumped his shoulder gently against Kai’s own. How the old man always followed a person’s thoughts Kai would never know, but even though Mr. Young never spoke, conversations with him were always worthwhile. The sense of family and camaraderie that was flowing through the camp was now clear to Kai, who almost thought he could reach out and touch it, drink it down like the finest liquor. Heady and potent, the good cheer was almost enough to make him light-headed, now that he was aware of it.

  Music poured suddenly from his pocket and Kai jumped. He fished his long-forgotten phone from his pocket. Why on earth would Sebastian be calling him while he was off in the woods with Sarah? Dumbass, Kai thought fondly.

  “Hello?” he said, putting it to his ear.

  “Kai?” Sebastian’s voice cracked on the single word, and Kai felt a spike of fear at the sound of his brother’s pain. “We need your help. Sarah and I. Can— can you come get us?”

  Kai was on his feet immediately and was moving across to where he’d seen Sarah standing a little while ago. It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes ago, could it? How long had he been lost in the darkness of his thoughts?

  “What happened?” Kai barked into the phone.

  “Long story short, we found out who was controlling the wights, sort of. It was a warlock and he grabbed Sarah to lure me into a trap. We got out of it, but we can’t make it back. He—” Sebastian’s voice broke again and Kai heard Sarah whimper in the background. He had to stop moving for a moment to allow his vision to clear when rage sent dark fog rolling across it. This guy dared to not only attack the people that lived in the Village apartments, but then went after two of the kindest people he knew? Whoever this warlock was, Kai was going to take him apart. Slowly.

  Mr. Young stopped beside him and met his anger filled gaze with one of concern and Kai realized that he was growling. A few deep breaths— in through his nose while he counted to five, then out again slowly through his teeth until his jaw unclenched and his mind cleared of the fury just a bit. He needed to be able to focus. He looked across the small clearing and caught Doc’s eye.

  “Doc! Grab your stuff!” he called out, then returned to the phone. “We’re on our way now. Are you safe now? Is he still there?”

  “We’re okay. He… He left us specifically for you to find. We got away from there, but we couldn’t get very far.” Seb’s voice was quiet and shaky.

  This warlock was absolutely going to pay for whatever it was he did. Kai frowned and concentrated, searching out and sifting through the traces and paths of magic that laced the area like he had learned from his father so long ago. After a few minutes he found the traces of his brother’s magic— familiar and comforting— and started to follow it into the trees, his friends right behind him.

  He was determined to ignore the cold that skittered over his back and the voice that whispered in his mind telling him how useless he would be to anyone, let alone the people he loved. It was contradicting itself, when it whispered that he should destroy whoever threatened his family, shred them into confetti and eat what was left. Kai was beginning to understand that it was the voice of the poison, and he didn’t have time to fight that now as well. Sebastian and Sarah needed him, and he wouldn’t fail them again.

  2

  Kai settled onto the sofa with his beer and sighed, glaring out the window at the last scraps of daylight fading from the sky. His back ached. The almost healed wounds were becoming scars, he knew, but it was the cold that still sometimes silvered through it that worried him. It wasn’t constant anymore like it had been for days after the battle. The poison itself was surely out of his system by now, but he still felt its effects lingering. The cold was just the easiest symptom to deal with, and the most obvious.

  He’d mentioned it to Doc earlier that evening, and she said that she would mix him up a potion or something. Mostly she said to get out into the sunshine more and laugh with friends, since his flesh was almost healed. The antidote for the dangerous poison that affected a victim’s spirit as well as his body was the light and heat of life— the opposite of the essence of a wight.

  Damned wights.

  It had been almost a month since they’d cleared out that wight nest nearby, and pretty much everyone else had recovered weeks ago. Kai, however, had been deep in that hole longer than almost everyone else— the first in and nearly the last one out— and had managed to sustain the worst injury. Mr. Young had come around a day or so after the battle and chastised him for risking his neck the way he had. Kai was pretty sure that if the old man ever actually spoke to communicate, he’d have used phrases like ‘damn fool’ and ‘young idiot’ and ‘your grandmother would be appalled.’ As it was, Mr. Young’s silent method of communicating had gotten the point home more than adequately, but after expressing suitable chagrin Kai just shrugged. There hadn’t been any other choice for him to make. It was his duty to keep his people safe, and the wights were the worst threat they’d faced since his grandmother dealt with the rumors of ‘monster sightings’ some fifty years ago.

  Kai sighed and took another pull at the beer. Maybe there was something distracting on television? Or he could fire up a
video game. He could find some pickup team to play with online, maybe. Still, he didn’t think he would be able to concentrate on a game.

  He just kept turning the whole night of the battle over in his mind. They had been plagued by wights wandering near the apartments for weeks- one or two of them roaming the streets at night, and finally someone had found where the creatures were based. It hadn’t even needed discussing— Kai and the few others that were there when the report came in headed to the cave immediately and others showed up to join the fight as word spread. They’d spent hours destroying an army of the damned things in their effort to protect not just themselves, but the innocent humans that lived in the neighborhood around them and further around in Los Gatos generally.

  Sarah and Sebastian had been attacked at the tail end of the evening. She had been jumped from behind and dragged off to be used as bait, and Seb had fallen right into the warlock’s trap and it had nearly ended him. Kai would never be able to repay Sarah for managing to break the spell and saving his dumbass little brother. She’d probably be terrifying once she had a little more training, he bet. They were all glad that she’d be a good witch like Miss Rosie had been before her, and Kai was even more glad that she and his brother were making each other so happy.

  The ache settled deeper into his back, dull and chilly. Usually thinking about how happy Sebastian was now that he was actually dating Sarah kept the chill away, but tonight it crept in, dragging him down with its heavy cold. He’d failed his friends when he let the wights get so close to them in the first place, and then he’d failed Sarah and Sebastian immediately after when they’d been caught. It was on his shoulders that they’d suffered, and he— Kai shook his head so violently that his whole body shifted. No, he wouldn’t go down that particular rabbit hole again.