“Get out,” he growls.
Her expression twists at last, turning her into something feral and otherworldly. Demonic. “I’ve traveled far, and I’mstarving,” the mó snarls, “and lest you wish me to eat you, too,halfling,then get out of my way.”
My blades are out, ready to fight, but it’s Yù’chén who moves first. Faster than I can blink, faster than humanly possible, he leaps at the mó.
She’s even quicker. With a shriek of laughter, she dances around him, then she’s close, too close, to my mother. “Oh, this one’s spoilt,” she simpers, then that simper turns to a scream as one of my blades finds her. Yù’chén’s attack has thrown off the magic of the original command she gave me; her compulsion slips from me, and I’m free to move.
I barely scratch her. She’s too quick for me, and as I pull away, positioning myself between her and Ma, a cloud of ichor spills from her side like smoke, hissing against my blade.
With the few mó I have encountered in my life, I have used tricks to fight them. Get them to underestimate me,think me a defenseless mortal, and strike when they’re most vulnerable.
I don’t have that advantage here, which means I have no advantage at all. And this one isn’t new to the mortal realm; she’s experienced. She doesn’t strike me as refined enough to be a Higher One—though I don’t know anything about rankings and status in the realm of mó, nor how they classify themselves.
A burning pain pierces my neck. I cry out as the world tilts and my back slams into the floor with the mó’s weight on me. She is a tangle of hair and purple dress, hands and legs pinning me down—
Then she’s lifted bodily into the air, my blood dripping down her chin, her teeth sharpened to terrifying points, her eyes large and ravenous. Yù’chén’s arms are around her waist; he drags her back toward the door, and I hear him shouting something at me, but there’s a ringing in my ears and sharp pains shooting up my head—
Wards,he’s saying.Put the wards up again.
I push myself onto my elbows, shaking my head to clear it. My mother’s whimpers filter through the white noise, and the awareness that real harm is just several steps away from her and Méi’zi is what spurs me into motion again.
I crawl forward and trace a protective talisman on our floorboards. Spirit energy shimmers to life, pulling from my blood and knitting into a ward against the mó. Yù’chén is wrestling with her at the door; I crawl forward as close as I can to the two of them and trace another talisman.
The mó hisses as the ward flares up and comes into contact with one of her elbows. She staggers back, out the door, where she and Yù’chén slam into the grass beneath our plum blossom tree.
I drag myself to the threshold of my sliding doors. I lift trembling fingers and draw the final talisman. There’s a ripple in the air as the ward springs up, whole and complete, and my house is protected once again.
I turn to Ma. She’s shivering, her eyes staring blankly at the wall again, her body twitching every once in a while. A part of her, I realize, remembers. Even if she is not conscious, her body and—I want to believe,needto believe—part of her soul knows when there is danger.
Swiftly, I close her eyes and lay her back in her blankets, where she continues to tremble. Then I run into Méi’zi’s room and scrawl talismans on every wall. My little sister is still asleep, her breathing steady, though I see her eyes rolling in unquiet dreams.
That’s when I hear Yù’chén cry out.
I turn and sprint toward the front of the house, Fleet and Shadow in my hands. What I see through the door sends a fresh wave of horror through me.
The mó has Yù’chén pinned to the ground. She straddles him, her face bent to his neck in what appears to be an intimate pose—but when he jerks against her, I see dark, glistening liquid drip down her chin and his neck.
She’s drinking his blood.
For a moment I’m frozen, shock coursing through me at the incongruence of this scene. I have always thought of Yù’chén as the demon, the predator, the one who would be drinking the blood of mortals from their bodies…yet to see him in a position I had attributed only to myself, the prey, robs me of my reality and reverses my world.
Halfling. To me, he is predator and power, beauty and infallibility.
To them, he is prey. Weakness and imperfection, an abomination never meant for these realms.
He fights her with every ounce of his strength, but she easily overpowers him. With a sickening smile, she plunges knife-sharp nails into his stomach and then rips her hand from his torso.
Yù’chén makes a sound I never want to hear again. The mó’s smile grows. As she trails her tongue up her forearm and her palm, licking off Yù’chén’s blood.
Then she opens her mouth so that it splits her lovely face in half and plunges too many rows of razor-sharp teeth into his stomach.
Yù’chén screams; the mó laughs, and this is what gives me my opening.
I kick off in a burst of spirit energy that propels me so high, I’m somersaulting directly over her back.
This time, when I bring my arm down, Fleet finds its target. I feel the sickening crunch of bones and sinew and soft tissue, hear the mó gurgle from where she gorges on Yù’chén’s blood and flesh. Smoky ichor leaks from her skin, but I’m not done. I pull out Striker and ram it into her chest.
The creature screams as her core shatters with the force of my blow. Her lovely face is no longer lovely but contorted, her mouth cutting from ear to ear to reveal pointed teeth, reddened with blood, and a tongue forked like a reptile’s. I jerk back to avoid the ichor streaming from her, but I don’t look away as she melts into smoke and shadows. The last to go are those teeth and her red, furious eyes.
