Read The Devil's Backbone (A Niki Slobodian Novel: Book Five) for Free Online Page B

she hadn’t seen either and was about to touch her, to give her peace, when she spoke again.
    “I heard stories when I was a girl. I was born here, but my family is from Kyoto. My father is going to have to bury me.” She fought to control her emotions, finally speaking again. “They were just stories. I thought they were. My mother always said they were real, but I never—“
    “You saw it,” I said.
    “Yes,” she said. “I saw it. Her. Whatever she is. But I still can’t believe it.”
    I knew before I asked, but I had to know for sure. “What was it?”
    “Yuki-onna,” she said. “God, she was beautiful. So beautiful. I just stared at her. I couldn’t look away. She was carrying something with her. A cage or something. Like those old-fashioned birdcages in the old movies. It started glowing. So blue it hurt my eyes to look at it. And then it was all around us.”
    “And then?” I said.
    “Nothing,’” she said. “Just death. All of us. Everyone. ” She finally allowed the tears to flow like silver out of her eyes. She wiped them away with the heels of her hands, staring at them. She looked at me. “She was crying too,” she said. “It wasn’t normal. I remember because I was about to ask her if she needed help. I thought she was hurt, but now I realize that wasn’t why she was crying.”
    “What do you mean?” I said.
    “Her tears. They were red, like blood. Is it going to hurt? When I go, I mean. It’s okay if it does. I just want to be ready.”
    I smiled sadly. “Like going to sleep.”
    “Will I see them again?”
    “Maybe,” I said. “Someday.”
    “I guess that will have to be enough.”  
    “I guess it will,” I said as I touched her.  
    * * *  
    After the beach, the pull in my chest took me into a city. The license plates said Hawaii. If Yuki-onna had gotten from Florida to Hawaii,. I was sure she could go anywhere she wanted. I needed to stop this.
    The air grew more and more frigid as I walked through the city, touching spirits as I went. With the Kyoto woman confirming Bobby's hunch, this wasn't an investigation any more. It was a pursuit. I was following her trail of winter and death. She couldn’t run away from me, and she didn’t seem to be trying.  
    The further I got from the beach, the more like a regular city the landscape became. Old cars filled up the curb, dusted with icy snow. The only thing that told me where we were were the occasional palm trees that lined the streets in the nicer parts of the city.  
    I’d been walking for hours, the city still and frozen. The air was bitterly cold around me. I touched spirits as I went, leaving their dust in my wake. I was close, I could feel it. Snow swirled around me, ice cutting into my cheeks and making my eyes water. I could barely feel my fingers. There was a feeling of wrongness to it all. I could feel it hard in my gut, the sense that none of this should be. It was becoming more and more difficult to walk, my joints seeming to be freezing, a sharp pain in my sinuses. I pushed myself on, through a solid sheet of falling snow in front of me. After a time I could make out red footprints on the ground. Careful not to touch them, I followed. Though I could have found her without the footprints. I forced myself through the snow and came out in the eye of what appeared to be a tornado of snow.
    And there she was, right in the middle.
    She stared back at me, her face mournful and so pale it almost blended into the snow. Black hair swirled around her in the freezing wind. Tears of what appeared to be blood filled her eyes, the rivulets dripping down her powder-white face. She held a gilded birdcage in her right hand, which she held out in front of her. I squinted, the cold freezing my eyes in their sockets. There was something moving in the cage. I lifted my foot, trying to move closer, but only managed to take a single step. I couldn’t move.  
    She lifted the birdcage up, and I could see something pulsating there.