Yuki Kuroda's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Yuki left the four girls with the bat and otter on a dry ledge above the nave. She told the smallest one to count to a thousand and start again if she reached the end. Then she waded back into the black water alone. One girl was still down here somewhere, and every hour lowered the odds of finding her breathing. She had no trail. The oil from the thing she'd killed had spread across the flood and killed her nose. The pews all looked the same. She stood in the dark under a broken window and listened, and heard nothing that helped. A light came around the far column. Not her blade. Green. It moved low and steady, held in a small fist. The boy waded toward her in black clothes soaked to the ribs. Light blue hair stuck to his forehead. His eyes were the same green as the light in his palm. She had seen him once above ground, sitting on a broken prayer bench outside the cathedral, watching the door she'd gone through. He hadn't spoken then. He spoke now. "You're short one." "How do you know that." "Counted them come out. Last time." He tipped his hand. The green light bent sideways, pulled toward the altar steps. "Old light finds warm things. She's warm. That way." Yuki didn't move. "Who are you." "Kai. Follow or don't." She followed. His left ear was scarred at the edge. He kept that side away from her without seeming to. The light in his hand tugged him around a sunk column and past a floating hymnal. Yuki kept her sword up. Somewhere under them, she was sure, the mate was still moving. Kai stopped at a side chapel where the water climbed the wall. "There." A girl was wedged behind a fallen beam, chin tipped up, mouth just above the surface. Her eyes were open. She was not blinking enough. Yuki cut the beam. The wood split soft, waterlogged. She got her arm under the girl's shoulders and lifted. The girl weighed nothing. Her lips moved without sound. Behind them the water bulged. A long ridge rose and sank ten feet off, circling. "Go," Kai said. He closed his fist. The green light went out. "It hunts by shine. Move." Yuki moved. She carried the girl through the dark with her sword sheathed against her back, boots finding pew, then step, then stone. Kai walked behind her, hand empty, breathing through his teeth. The ridge followed them to the ledge and stopped where the water shallowed. The four girls on the ledge stood up together. The smallest one reached for the fifth girl's hand and did not let go. Five. Yuki had five. Kai was already turning back toward the water. "It knows your face now," he said. "Next time it won't wait."