Year of the Dragon (Changeling Sisters Book 3) Read Free

climbing out of the caldera. A head of sticky, matted black hair emerged first, followed by a pale torso. Then the Dark Spirit blurred and reappeared directly in front of them. Slowly, it extended a hand.
    –Come–
    Aaron froze at Donovan’s side. “Xec.”
    “Surely not the first Dark Spirit who offered Queen Maya vampyrehood?” Donovan demanded as the wasting apparition swayed before them.
    –I am It. Xecotcovach, the Face Gouger. Destroyer of the first humans-made-of-wood. I am the Bird who plucked out their eyes and swallowed them. Afterwards, my god had no use for me and cast me to the winds. Now I serve a new master–
    “The Twelve.” Aaron’s grip hadn’t loosened from his broadsword.
    –The humans disturb my masters’ sleep in the underworld with their insatiable ways. The time has come for them to be reduced to dust again. However, they are protected–
    “There is a new Spring Dragon in the East,” Aaron agreed. “Raina Alvarez, daughter of the great Yong Mun Mu. She is the Changeling Soul.”
    –The Alvarez sisters have indeed revealed themselves– Xec said –but they do not know who they are. They do not know what they are. Raina is imugi . She is not a dragon yet. I already have agents in place who will steer her to us. Indeed, she and her dragon siblings will prove most useful–
    The three princes managed to gaze upon the Dark Spirit’s face. The Face Gouger had no eyes of its own, only two botched holes. Its black lips were spread to the nubs of its ears: a dead man’s grin full of awful promise.
    ***
    ~Khyber~
    The dream bridge broke with a violent snap. Intended or not, I didn’t know. But anger pounded in my skull, and I almost tore the door free from my hideaway bedroom. How dare that demon bird befoul sacred Baekdu San .
    The jjimjilbang was silent in the early hours of dawn. No one was awake in the bathhouse, save for a stooped ajumma mopping the halls. She started prattling about how I’d enjoyed my sleep, but I shut her up with one look. I stalked down the stairs to the baths where I could lose myself in the quiet hiss of the spa’s steam.
    I knew what was coming. I, too, had been there the week of the seven-day solar eclipse so long ago. The conquistadors had ceased their bloodshed against the First Peoples for an instant, fearing they had awoken something more horrible than the ugliness in their hearts. They always looked above to “the heavens,” and never to the earth below.
    Its name escaped my lips—a thing half-buried to hide the worst parts I couldn’t bear to remember:
    “Xibalba.”
    The Place of Fear.
    Once I had marveled at my vampyric power, my ability to kill with a touch. Now I knew there were entities out there older and greater than the vampyres. The Twelve Mayan Lords of Death who ruled the underworld of Xibalba were theprimordial. We were their children. My death touch, my undead existence…all of my accursed “gifts” stemmed from them .
    Long ago, the formidable Mayan Death Gods would grow angry every time the mortal world interrupted their slumber. Before they had been locked away by the Mayan Hero Twins, they had plotted to transform all of Eve into a realm of pain, humiliation, and despair to punish the living for waking them so that they, too, would have no rest. It was rumored that the eldest of the Death Lords desired to eat the sun itself, feast on the ensuing wave of global anguish, and then sleep in eternal silence.
    Not a bad dream. It would mean the end of the world, but I had to break this damn life bond somehow. The old Khyber would have been fully behind my brothers’ plan, but now I knew it meant putting Raina in danger. If she truly was Mun Mu’s daughter, then she, a newborn imugi , couldn’t understand yet the duties that came along with being the Spring Dragon: bringing the rains to thaw winter’s chill, watering a thirsty earth during drought, and most importantly, balancing the power of the sacred pearl only a dragon was wise