Year of the Tiger (Changeling Sisters) Read Online Free

were too slippery. I tumbled down the slope, landing heavily on a pile of rocks. Red pain blossomed in my stomach. No, not my pain. Another’s. I tried to keep all of the blood in, even cupped it with my hands, but it leaked out anyway: my son’s life, seeping away through my fingers. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted.
    I couldn’t move. A soundless scream gathered in my throat, even though there would be no one around to hear it. I thought I saw the ghost of a sleeping infant, a blissful smile on his face, drift away in a cradle of clouds.
    I tarried on the mountain top too long, alone in the rain and my tears. Finally, I heard heavy, dragging footsteps behind me.
    It didn’t sound like the nimble gait of the white tiger. I hid.
    It was a Dark Spirit, attracted by the scent of blood. It beckoned for me to have a drink with it.
    “How dare you?” I shrieked. “Don’t touch his blood!”
    It backed away from me. The rain battered its pale, sunken chest. Its black hair fanned around its naked shoulders, and when it looked at me, I couldn’t stop staring at its black lips and the holes where its eyes should be, half in fascination, half in horror.
    “You’re hideous.”
    –I am immortal–
    “No. An immortal would never look like this—a monstrous demon.”
    –I will be beautiful. I will wait–
    “Wait for what?”
    –For you to die. Then I will drink your blood and be beautiful again– The hollow eyes stared at a spot over my head. I suddenly didn’t want it to look at me. It was very important that it never looked directly at me. But then it did.
    –Tell me. Why doesn’t your friend, the white tiger, tell you how to save yourself?–
    “I must reconcile with myself.”
    The thing’s black lips stretched in silent laugher. It laughed so hard that its skin split apart at the seams.
    –The last steps the dying take. She is showing you how to die–
    “No. She wouldn’t do that. Unless”—my heart thudded—“there was no other way.”
    –There is another way. Become immortal. That is the reason you came here, am I right–
    I looked up quickly. The Dark Spirit was laughing again. Without ever making a sound.
     
    A curtain of rain hid them from view.
    I buried my face in Khyber’s arms.
    “What are the Dark Spirits?”
    “Spirits of sin and ruin. While the white tiger lived, they were kept at bay.”
    “Now?”
    Khyber didn’t answer for a second.
    “Now they own this world.”
     
    There was a way. I slipped and slid my way through the rocks. Water dribbled from the cliff’s crinkly cheeks above, running cold down my forehead. Through the shifting mists, I saw the tail of the white tiger below. She’d curled up for a nap while waiting, in a dry patch of cave.
    As soon as she smelled the smoke, she bolted upright. I watched the intelligence in her eyes fade and be replaced by something animalistic and feral. She’d failed to become human, unlike her friend, the Bear. She still feared fire.
    But there was nowhere for her to go. The wormwood of the Dark Spirits burned when I told it to burn, spread when I told it to spread, and steered her into the very back of the cave so I wouldn’t have to see the look in her eyes.
    A while later, when the last of the smoke hissed into the skies, I told the wood to stop. I could see her now: mighty head drooped, white paws stiff and curled into her chest. I entered the cave and beheaded and donned the skull of the white tiger.
    The soul fled like They’d told me it would, but I trapped it with a leash of red ribbon. I watched the white tiger cub buck and mewl, but I felt no pity for it. There had been a way to save my son, and the white tiger had kept it from me.
    “You should have left me to die on the beach,” I told the cub. It looked at me with wide blue eyes. And then it bit me.
    “How dare you!” I hissed. Something collapsed inside me, and my whole world slid toward a drain. Just as it reached that bottomless drop, everything righted,