that whipped at my hair and clothes. “But at least they’re full-blooded yokai, and somewhat useful. You’re just a pathetic little half fox, aren’t you?”
I laced back my ears. “Well that’s not very nice,” I said, feeling kitsune-bi spring to my fingertips. “We’ve only just met. Besides, foxes are not vermin—I think you’re mistaking me for a rat or cockroach.” I took a few cautious steps back. “But I seem to have caught you on a bad night, so I’ll be leaving now—”
“Oh, you’re not going anywhere, vermin.”
She swept her arm out, and a blast of wind ripped at my clothes, making me stumble. At the same time, I felt a blinding pain in my leg, the feeling of being cut with a knife, though I saw nothing strike me. It happened so fast, I didn’t even have time to yelp before my leg gave out and I collapsed to the ground.
Gasping, I looked up to see a second weasel appear on the woman’s other shoulder, beady eyes in its black-masked face glaring down at me. The edge of the sickle growing from its foreleg was smeared with blood.
“My name is Mistress Kazekira,” the woman said, as both weasels glared at me from her slender shoulders. “I am one of the kami-touched, what the common folk call a wind witch, and the kamaitachi are my familiars. So don’t think you can just run away, little vermin.” She stroked one kamaitachi’s head, but there was no affection in the gesture, only possession, and the weasel yokai cringed away from her touch. The wind witch didn’t seem to notice or care. “And I see you are as simpleminded as you are common,” she went on, wiping her hands together as if they were dirty. “I didn’t lure you out here to chat. I brought you here to kill you.”
Ice twisted my stomach. “Why?” I struggled to my feet, feeling my leg throb and pulse like it was on fire, and nearly collapsed again. My foxfire had sputtered out; I raised an arm and called it to life again, a blue-white globe flaring in my hand. It wouldn’t hurt them, but maybe they didn’t know that. “I haven’t done anything to you, or your weasels. Why are you doing this?”
The wind witch laughed heartily, her hair writhing madly around her. “Oh, little vermin,” she chuckled, raising her arm. The two kamaitachi crouched on her shoulders, blades gleaming as they targeted me. “If you cannot figure that out, then you really are too stupid to keep living.”
“So loud,” sighed a new, unfamiliar voice behind me. “At least you could have the courtesy to kill her quickly. Some of us are trying to sleep, after all.”
Startled, the wind witch lowered her arm, and I turned toward the voice. A body sat on one of the barrels close to the wall, cloaked in the shadows cast from the roof. Raising its head, it stood and walked into the light.
My heartbeat fluttered, whether in awe or fear, I couldn’t tell. A man stood before me, tall and slender, the moonlight casting a silvery halo around him. His billowing robes were a spotless white, trimmed in red and black, without patterns, markings or a family crest to identify him. His hair was very fine, even longer than the wind witch’s, and a bright, stunning silver, the color of a polished blade. An enormously long, curved sword was strapped to his back, the sheath dwarfing a katana’s by several inches, the hilt doubled in length. Lazy, heavy-lidded eyes, like molten gold, met my gaze, then slid past me to the witch standing overhead.
“You’re making an awful racket,” the stranger said in that low, vaguely wry voice, as if he found this situation amusing. “It’s fortunate humans are all deaf, or they would hear you for miles. Does it really take such elaboration to kill one little half fox in an empty alley?”
“Seigetsu-sama,” whispered the witch. Her face had gone pale, the wind dying to a murmur as she stared at him. “What are you doing here? Do you know this vermin?”
“The half-breed?” The stranger’s lips twisted in a smirk. “No, I was just in the area, and decided to take a nap. By all means, continue.” He waved at me in an offhand manner and started walking away.
My heart sank. I had thought the stranger was going to help me. He looked powerful, with his golden eyes and giant sword; even the wind witch seemed afraid of him. Kazekira