her arm as we moved into the tunnels. “Yumeko?”
“It’s all right, Tatsumi.” She took a deep breath, swiping at her eyes. “Okame is right. Reika-san knew what she was doing. She’d accepted that she could die protecting Kiyomi-sama, and she never faltered.” She blinked, and a tear traced its way down her cheek. “I can’t falter, either. No matter what happens and no matter what it takes, I can’t let Genno summon the Dragon. I won’t let her sacrifice be for nothing.”
As the hitodama led us deeper, the darkness ahead was broken by the orange flicker of torch or candle flame. As we continued, the sobbing, which had been growing steadily louder, both in noise and intensity, now came from a clear direction: straight ahead toward the light.
The passage opened into a vast cavern surrounded by flickering torches, the ceiling soaring so high that the torchlight couldn’t penetrate the darkness overhead. The floor of the cavern was carpeted in flowers, the same black irises Yumeko had found earlier. A terrible, sickly smell wafted from them: blood and rot and dying flowers, even though the plants looked healthy. The air was cold, damp and tasted wrong. Almost like...tears.
Looking up, a chill went through me. I drew my sword, and the purple light of Kamigoroshi joined the hazy luminescence of the hitodama.
Something massive crouched in the shadows of the far wall, an enormous hulking shape that was a good twelve feet tall, even bent over as it was. Its back was to us, huge shoulders shaking with sobs, the low, anguished cries emanating from its hulking form. It wore what might once have been an elegant, many-layered kimono, but that was now torn and filthy, with a wide obi sash tied into a bow at its waist. Long, jet-black hair fell down its back and shoulders, pooling over the floor; unlike the wild, tangled manes of the oni, it was straight and fine and looked almost human, which seemed even more disturbing on the huge creature it was attached to.
“Gone.”
Its voice echoed through the cavern, deep and throaty, and shockingly female. It raised the hairs on the back of my neck, confirming what I already knew. What we had stumbled onto.
A kijo. A female counterpoint to the oni. But, unlike oni, who mainly originated in Jigoku and tormented the souls of the damned, kijo were solely human women whose rage, jealousy, hate or grief was so great it had turned them into demons. Also unlike oni, they could not be summoned by blood magic, did not work with other demons and were beholden to no one. They lived alone, in caves or deep wildernesses, retreating from the world to nurse their suffering or plans of revenge in isolation. Sometimes you could call upon their services, as most kijo could work powerful hexes or curses, but usually they were so consumed by their own torment it was difficult to reason with them.
The massive creature against the wall drew in a raspy, shuddering breath. “Why?” it moaned, followed by a low sob. “Gone. Gone, both of them gone. How could he betray me? I am alone. Always alone.”
As we stepped into the room, the aroma of the flowers filled my senses, cloying and bitter, clogging the back of my throat. I tasted salt and tears, and it was suddenly difficult to breathe, as if I had been sobbing nonstop for hours and could no longer catch my breath. It was an alarming, alien sensation, and I fought the urge to gasp out loud.
But Yumeko drew in a faint, ragged breath, barely a whisper in the vastness of the cave, and the sound of crying ceased.
The kijo turned and faced us across the carpet of flowers. Her face was covered by a white Noh mask sculpted in the throes of terrible grief. The eyes were closed, the mouth open in a sob, and painted tears streaked one side of the porcelain cheek. A pair of black horns curled from her brow above the mask rim, and her nails, painted bright red, were nearly a foot long. She stood there, towering over us, and I saw what she had been hunched over.
Flanked by torches, a small wooden shrine sat against the far wall. Through the open doors,