Which meant that the drums signaled something.

But what?

Surely it couldn’t be worse than a dragon.

Could it?

That was a sobering thought that terrified him. One that made the sweat bead on his forehead. He spurred his horse to run even faster toward the sound, leaving his friends behind to battle the demons and shadows his father had unleashed.

And when Ryuichi topped the hill to investigate the drums, he laid eyes on his worst nightmare.

Here, in the world of the living, stood his father with a wide smile on his face.

No . . .

His father headed toward him. “Miss me?”

A chill went down his spine. “Like a stone in my shoe.” His gaze went past his father . . . to the drummers. Or rather, to where their bodies rested.

What he’d been hearing had nothing to do with those poor men who’d been slaughtered. The drummers had been replaced with tengu.

No wonder the sound had creeped him out.

Their laughter rang out as they stopped drumming and took flight, heading for his friends.

With a calmness he couldn’t even begin to understand, Ryuichi dismounted. He glared at his father as he saw all the wanton destruction around them. The pain that’d been so needlessly dealt to everyone he cared about. “You are a monster.”

His father, still in his dragon form, laughed. “Is that all you have to say? You think I’d do all of this if I felt anything other than absolute joy from it?”

Horrified, Ryuichi gripped his sword. How could they be related?

Ryukage snorted fire from his dragon’s nostrils. “Your friends are burning, Ryuichi. They’re screaming for you. ‘Help us. Help us.’ As if there’s any help for them.”

That burned through him and singed his very soul. How dare his father taunt him. The man who’d uprooted his entire life. Who’d taken his mother from him. The man who was supposed to love and protect him.

His own father.

Inside, he seethed with a raging fire that burned hotter than anything his father could throw at him or at Mahō-jō.

Even his shadow agreed.

All his life, Ryuichi had wanted to know who his parents were. Had been desperate to know they were important. That they had abandoned him for their duty.

He’d wanted to know that they loved him.

But this monster?

It was incapable of love. Clearly, the monster had never cared for his mother or for him.

Ryukage was a specter of a past he didn’t know. A ghost of a life he’d never had.

For so long he’d wanted to see his father. To know him.

Now?

Now, he wished nothing more than to kill him for all his crimes against him, his mother, and his friends. He regretted ever meeting this creature.