Free The Devil's Backbone (A Niki Slobodian Novel: Book Five) by J.L. Murray

your friend will die.”
    He strode up to the frozen dead, raising his knees to climb up, and stood beside her. He bent toward her and whispered in her ear. He whispered for what seemed like a very long time. When he finished, the Yuki-onna looked at me. A dark red tear fell from her eye and rolled down her face. I was shivering violently. I tried to hold onto the flame inside me, the white-hot heat, but it was just as weak and trembling as I was.  
    The Yuki-onna lifted her arm and raised the cage, her heart barely moving, the blue flames surrounding it hardly daring to flicker. With her other hand, she opened a door in the cage and reached in, holding the heart in her hand. She took it out and held it in front of her. The blood was pouring from her eyes. She didn’t look at me. It was as if she’d forgotten I was there.
    “Stop it,” I said. “Leave her alone.”
    Aki smiled. “Don’t you see what she’s done?”
    “She couldn’t help it. Look at her. She’s confused, crazy. Just put her back where she came from. It’s not her fault the door was opened.”
    “Silence,” Aki said, and there was the same hollow resonance to his voice.
    “Did you just tell me to shut up?” I said.
    Aki frowned at me. “Silence, or he’s dead.”
    “Don’t make me choose,” I said. “This isn’t right.”
    “You already chose,” said Aki. “The moment you brought me here, her life was void.”
    He turned and once again whispered in the Yuki-onna’s ear. She raised her hand and put the heart to her lips. The cage tumbled down the frozen mountain with a series of clangs and rolled to a stop at my feet.
    “Oh my god,” I muttered. I made my legs move, but I’d hesitated too long. The Yuki-onna opened her mouth, the heart muffling her sobs as she pushed it in and bit down. I forced myself up the hill, trying not to think about what I was climbing on, using the rock-solid arms and legs as footholds. The Yuki-onna was screaming between bites and Aki was smiling down at me.
    “Stop it, you son of a bitch!” I said, pulling out the gun and pointing it at him. “Stop it or I’ll shoot you again. This is cruel.”
    As if in reply, he spoke to the Yuki-onna. I could just hear his voice. He said, “Finish it.”
    With something in between a groan and a sigh, the Yuki-onna shoved the rest of the heart into her mouth. She started shaking, vibrating, and then she seemed to melt away until she was a form, standing before a wide-eyed Aki, made purely of blood, her hand poised at her mouth. And then she fell, the blood becoming liquid and then solid again as it touched the ice, freezing immediately on top of the pile of frozen bodies, a thin layer of red covering the top of the mountain.
    Aki looked down at me, my mouth hanging open, my eyes wide, my heart in my throat.
    “She couldn’t help it,” I said again, hating how weak my voice was.
    “She was a monster,” he said.
    I straightened, something hot and bitter rising in me.
    “We are all monsters,” I said. He screamed as I emptied my gun into him.
    * * *  
    I reluctantly brought Aki back to Gage’s apartment. Had Gage not been under his knife, I would have left the bastard there to let him figure out a way home on his own. I didn’t know how Aki’s power worked, and if he were to find Gage again on his own, he might kill him out of spite. I’d already pissed him off by putting a whole lot of bullets into his shiny little suit. He didn’t speak until we were safely back at Gage’s place. Just cast me sullen looks.
    “She wasn’t you,” he said finally, his voice tight and controlled.  
    “She could have been,” I said.
    “We all have our duties,” Aki said. “You keep the balance in your way and I’ll keep it in mine.”
    “Maybe balance is overrated.”
    “That may be,” he said, “but she was killing people. And she wasn’t going to stop. Nothing you or I did or said was going to stop her. She talked to you, didn’t