Page 86 of Spider Demon's Kiss

Yuki hit and scratched Dante fighting for her life. He barely resisted. Instead, he focused on pinching her mouth open.

“Ahhh!” she screamed.

Dante was relentless. With her lips parted, he pushed his toothbrush into her mouth. She raked her head pleading for him to stop. He wouldn’t. And with fiery determination, he brushed her tongue and teeth.

When he was done, he pulled it out. Loosening his grip on her jaw, Yuki cried. I had never seen her express so much emotion. It broke my heart.

“No, no!” she declared no longer fighting Dante’s grip.

“What’d you do?” I asked Dante.

“Only she knows,” he replied backing off and watching her squirm in anguish.

“Yuki, what did you do?” I yelled at her.

“No, no!” She continued rolling from side to side on the couch.

“I don’t understand, Dante. What’s going on?”

“I knew there was a reason she was here so I went looking for it,” he began as we watched her mourn. “There was something on my toothbrush. It was like a gel and it didn’t have a scent. That’s when I remembered what else happened during our wedding. Yuki gave me a drink.”

I looked at Dante shocked remembering it.

“But I drank it too.”

“No, you drank your own and Yuki controlled who got what.”

“She poisoned you.”

“And made it look like a heart attack.”

As we spoke, Yuki’s body convulsed.

“I think, what she put in my drink, she put on my toothbrush. I don’t think you were the one to kill those people. I think she was. No one shares a toothbrush.”

Yuki, between convulsions, rolled off of the couch and struggled to her knees. I had sympathy for her. I knew I shouldn’t. But she was my sister. She had been the only one I loved. She was the only one who had loved me.

“Is there an antidote?” I asked her.

Her eyes bounced up to me. She was possessed with rage. I was finally seeing the real Yuki. Her polite façade was gone. Only the Snow Woman remained.

This was the vengeful demon she had hidden for so long. I hadn’t known my sister at all. My entire life had been a lie.

Fighting her way to her feet, she stumbled around looking for nothing in particular. If she had something to counteract her poison, she would have taken it. If there was anything that would have helped, she would have asked for it.

Instead, she haunted the space like a broken ghost. Her skin turned pale completing her transformation. She now looked like the Yuki-Anno she had always been.

Snarling and shaking, she slithered to Dante and me and launched herself at us. I didn’t know what she wanted. Perhaps it was nothing. But staring into Dante’s eyes with a look that was colder than hell, she whipped her head back, slid down his body and died at our feet.

She had a heart attack. I could tell from the frozen look on her face. I had seen it many times before. It was the look I had woken up to more times than I wanted to remember.

“She had come to here to kill you,” I said aloud trying to make sense of it all.

“Yeah, she had.”

“She wanted me to come home.”

“You are home,” Dante said wrapping his arms around me pulling me tight.

---