Thomas Randall - The Waking

It yowled that terrible, spine-raking noise again and tossed Ume onto the shore. The girl lay there, unmoving, and Kara hated herself in that moment. They were too late. Sakura had slowed them just enough that it had cost Ume her life. The ketsuki had drowned her. Kara wondered if Ume had done the same to Akane.

And then it hit her.

The rebuilt shrine. The candles at the ancient prayer site.

“Jesus, Sakura, you did this!” Kara said. “We took its power away, and you gave it back, on purpose!”

Sakura ignored her, not even turning now. She kept walking toward the ketsuki, hands out as though the thing might embrace her. But Kara didn’t need a reply; she knew it was true. You can rest now, Sakura had said. She thought she was doing this for her sister.

“No more,” Miho said, running for the rearranged shrine. “It has to stop now.”

Kara bolted after her, knowing what she meant to do.

The ketsuki cocked its head, long ears perked up, and it hissed at them. In that moment, jaws wide, lips curled back from its gleaming red teeth, Kara thought it looked nothing like a cat, except for the green, feline eyes.

“It’s okay, sister,” Sakura said softly, in a small, little-girl voice. “She was the worst one, and she’s gone now.”

Kara and Miho tore into the shrine, first with their hands and then kicking and shouting and dragging their shoes through the wreckage of it. Miho cried out prayers to God and her ancestors and Kara could hear in her voice that she was weeping with fear and panic.

The ketsuki lunged across the ground, dropping onto all fours and springing toward them. Sakura shouted at it, tried to grab for its tail, but missed and was left staring at her empty hand.

“No, Akane, stop!” Sakura shouted. But she didn’t move, only stood there, such a strange figure in the moonlight, almost like a ghost herself.

It would have barreled into Kara, ripped her open like it had Mr. Matsui, but Hachiro took three sure, firm steps to intercept it, cocked his arms, and swung the bat with such force that he let out a yell. Kara could hear the aluminum whistling through the humid air.

The ketsuki tried to dodge, but not quickly enough. Hachiro struck it in the side of the head with a terrible crack and the dream-walker, the vampire, lost its footing. Its momentum drove it forward, tumbling into a mass of limbs and flashing claws.

Miho screamed, paused, and then kept kicking at the ruins of Akane’s shrine. If the ketsuki wanted to stop them, their instincts must have been correct. Kara felt something soft underfoot and looked down. There was the Hello Kitty she’d seen before. She picked it up and tugged at it, fingers searching for the seams.

Sakura still shouted for her sister. But if the beast had anything of Akane within it, she ignored Sakura’s pleas.

The ketsuki rose, shook its head, and hissed at Hachiro, stalking toward him.

Kara tore the head off the Hello Kitty beanie.

The ketsuki flinched, staggered, and turned to glare at her.

Kara blinked. The whole world seemed to tilt beneath her and she found herself looking not at the feline vampire but at a slender girl with long, silken hair and no face. Soft laughter came from the faceless girl.

Hachiro swung the bat.

When it struck, Kara blinked again, and the illusion had gone. The bat cracked into the thing’s shoulder and it staggered backward again.

The night wavered. The air shifted.

The ketsuki yowled again, but now a different sound came from its throat, a hiss like the breath of hell that made Kara remember all of the hurtful words she’d ever overheard, made her feel the pain and humiliation accumulated in a lifetime, and made her relive the crippling heartsickness that had destroyed her on the day her mother died and on so many days thereafter.

That, too, passed, and then her skin prickled with revulsion and fear and she could barely breathe. Tears slipped down her cheeks and a sliver of vision passed through her mind, an image of her imminent death, the ketsuki on top of her, fetid breath in her nostrils, its tongue darting into the cavity where her heart had been before it had torn open her chest and gnawed her bones.

She saw it so clearly.

Knew she’d join her mother in the grave.

And Kara screamed.

A shadow moved behind the ketsuki, in and around and enveloping it, much larger than the vampire-thing, the essence of its bloodlust and insidious heart.

The demon. Kara felt the truth of it, knew what she saw. Kyuketsuki.

“I see you,” Kara whispered to the night.

Down by the water, someone began to scream. At first she thought it was Sakura, but a quick glance revealed Ume, rising unsteadily to her feet. A choking cough interrupted her scream and she began to shake, walked two steps and collapsed. But she still lived.

The ketsuki turned toward her now, confused and torn by too many distractions. But vengeance had molded it from rage and pain and vengeance commanded it. It took a step toward Ume.

Sakura stood in the way, studying it, searching its cat eyes.

“Akane?” she asked, pleading and pitiful, hopeful and heartbroken.

Hachiro, breathing quick, terrified breaths, steadied himself and went after the dream-killer again. The ketsuki did not like to be hurt. It had learned. As he swung the bat, it shifted so that it seemed almost to flow around the bat, and then it leaped at him.

With a cry of fear, Hachiro swung again, but too late. The ketsuki lashed out, talons raking his chest. If Hachiro hadn’t pitched himself backward, attempting to escape the attack, the ketsuki’s claws would have flayed him open to the bone.

Swiftly, it stalked after him, picked him up, and flung him toward the trees. Branches snapped and leaves shook as Hachiro fell among them.

A dozen sleek, stealthy cats darted from the woods, scattered by the intrusion. They kept a distance from the ketsuki, prowling at the edges of the unfolding scene like vultures waiting for a meal.

Miho and Kara moved as quickly as they could, scattering bits of the shrine far from the spot where Akane had died. Kara picked up a small poster of some J-pop band and began to shred it in her hands, then scattered the pieces on the light breeze, making sure they were strewn across the grass away from the memorial. Once again the shrine was ruined, but they continued to drag their feet through the debris, kicking and spreading the pieces.

The ketsuki seemed smaller as it turned to them. In the woods, Hachiro did not stir, and so step-by-step, almost wary, it started toward Miho and Kara. It picked up speed, beginning to lope.

“Miho!” Kara shouted.

Both girls screamed. But Kara knew who it came for. She had been here to see it born. Her dreams had been poisoned by it, tainted by its hideous intentions.

When it lunged, she tried to move, to hide behind a tree, but was too late. It snatched her, claws puncturing her clothes and flesh, drawing blood and screams. Terror ripped through her like nothing a nightmare could inspire. Every breath came out a scream and she wailed, blind with fear, and beat at its arms as it lifted her toward its face. Those slit cat eyes gleamed with pure hatred and anguish, and it opened its jaws wide, breath stinking of rot and death.

Kara heard the laughter of faceless girls.

The ketsuki let out that bestial, primal cry of pain and rage it had yowled before, and there among the trees it drove her to the ground so hard that her screams went silent. The breath went out of her. Sakura had summoned it unknowingly, and the ketsuki had made Kara its witness. Now she couldn’t even speak. She tried to breathe, tried to scream, and as it pressed its weight on her chest she knew she was going to die.

The baseball bat smashed into its feline snout. Someone screamed. The ketsuki whipped its head around to see its attacker when the bat struck again, crashing down on its neck.