when he showed up, he was out of his mind with jealousy. He confronted Sora and her danna and Yasahiro tried to step in to calm the situation down. But Kurai lost all control. We watched him turn into a wolf and I thought I was losing my mind. He ripped through our entire party like we were made of the finest silk. Tore us to pieces. I can still hear the screaming.”
Niamh had seen many horrors in her visions, but she didn’t know if her heart had ached quite as badly as it did for Kiyo right then. He’d lost so much. And endured incredible violence.
“I was the only one who woke up a day or two later after going through a fever unlike anything I’ve experienced. I couldn’t understand what I was seeing when I woke up. What I was feeling. I raced out of the cabin and eventually it came to me that I was an animal. Out in the woods, somehow I changed back into my human form. I was terrified.”
“I can only imagine.”
Kiyo flicked her a wry, unhappy look. “For a while, I really did think I was losing my mind.”
“What happened next?”
“I returned to the cabin and practically threw up my insides at what I found in there. Yasahiro was dead. They were all dead. Worried I’d be blamed, I left. I left Ichika and everything behind to find answers. I eventually tracked down rumors of a wolf pack near the mountains close to Kyoto, and I lived with them for a while. They taught me how to change at will and how to endure a full moon. When I felt emotionally strong enough to return to Tokyo, I hunted down Kurai and killed him for Yasahiro and Sora and every man in that lodge. I killed him for making me into something I loathed. I killed him for Ichika, who’d lost the love of her life and didn’t know why. Perhaps she even blamed me. I’ll never know.
“I left Japan in search of a cure. Around seven years later, I finally realized there wasn’t one, other than death. And I had unfinished business.”
“You returned to Osaka to take your revenge,” Niamh whispered.
He nodded slowly. “I might have hated myself, but I was powerful now. I hunted those men down like they were animals. Fear ripped through Osaka as worries grew of a wild animal on the loose. I had two men left to take care of when the grandmother of one I’d killed found me. She had magic. What we called a miko. A female shaman. They were mostly known for their spirit possession and takusen—they served as mediums to communicate with spirits. But they were so much more than people knew.”
“They were witches.”
“The most gifted of witches. They had psychic gifts. Like the fae.”
“What happened with this witch?”
“She was a vengeful old bitch,” he sneered. “She didn’t care that her grandson had participated in a violent gang rape. All she cared about was her own revenge. She knew what I was, and she had an ability to sense things about people. She sensed my self-loathing and decided to trap me with my werewolf curse for all eternity.”
“She made you immortal.” Niamh’s mind whirled. “But how is that possible?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I didn’t believe her at first. After I’d killed the last two men, I took off and tried to end myself. Many times.” He flicked a look her way. “I even tried to rip out my own heart.”
Niamh gasped at the thought.
He smirked. “Obviously it didn’t work. And miraculously, even though the thought of forever was a torture of its own, I realized that embracing what made me different was the only way I could live as a free man.”
“You’re amazing.”
Kiyo looked at her fully now. “I just told you I killed a bunch of people, and that’s your reaction?”
“You also told me on the plane that revenge didn’t give you what you wanted. But maybe it did give you something. It gave you wisdom. It gave you the ability to pass that on to me and to make me feel less alone about all the bad stuff I’ve done when I’m supposed to be the good guy.”
Though he concentrated on the road now, roads Niamh realized belatedly had changed from city to country, Kiyo spoke to her in a way she knew he wanted her to hear him.
“The Japanese have a saying: Wabisabi. It’s a perspective, really.