Samurai (13 page)

Simon turned to Key, and Sachiko looked up at him, “Watch my son,” she said, and without warning, she dived over the ledge, soaring down toward the Dragon.

She had jumped off the building with no protection whatsoever.

Simon gasped. He’d never seen such courage in his life. His heart flew into his throat. He wanted to scream.

She flew down the side of the building, down the grid of lights, diving like an Olympic athlete, hands in a sharp point, and flew downward, downward, and slammed into the Creature.

Windows shattered, and the two tumbled over each other, falling down through darkness and light, somersaulting in the air, together in a snarl of fangs and blades, until at last they hit onto a ledge at the middle of the building.

Aldric gasped, looking for a way down. Suddenly, the Samurai unhooked their cables from the penthouse across the way, and all of them swung back toward the Dragon. They were swooping over the street, as their lines hurtled them toward the Dragon and Sachiko. They swarmed across and down the side of the building like wasps, as Sachiko slashed at the Dragon with her whirring gloves.

Aldric had a moment of hesitation; he seemed to be in awe of their speed. Then the Knight grabbed one of the Samurai’s lines, and began climbing down himself.

Hanging on the same line, Taro looked up at him.
“NO!” he cried. “It can’t handle your weight!”

Too late. The line’s hook started cracking on its mount, and Simon and Key ran to get hold of it, but too late.

“Oh, no!” they shouted at the same time.

Cut loose, Taro and Aldric tumbled down, falling past Sachiko and the embattled Dragon, landing on a balcony just below them.

“What wonders I could do with that face,” Aldric heard the Dragon say, his claw brushing Sachiko’s cheek.

Sachiko leapt backward, tossing herself to a nearby balcony, like a film running in reverse. Simon just stared.

Suddenly—with Sachiko out of the way—the Serpent began taking bullet fire from the Samurai clinging to the side of the building. At the same time, directly below the Dragon, Aldric was firing silver darts from the mini-crossbow guns on his wrists. Bullets and darts were clanging against the building, everyone trying to avoid friendly fire. Taro threw several silver throwing stars that lodged in the Serpent’s hide, but there was still no bringing down the beast.

Fearsomely silent, the Dragon shattered his way into the office building, escaping them. In a heartbeat, all of the Samurai and Sachiko lunged after it. Aldric looked up at Simon, but after checking for the boys’
safety, he, too, barreled in.

Up high on the building, Simon grabbed Key and pulled him along. “Come on.”

“We are not to interfere,” said Key. “We have a duty to stay alive. We’ll be going right into the fight—”

“Into the kill, you mean,” said Simon—optimistically—and he dragged Key toward a service door to pursue the Dragon.

T
HE
J
APANESE
S
ERPENT TUMBLED
through glass into the office building, where a shocked late-night worker stared up at him from a desk covered in coffee cups.

At first, the Dragon looked like a well-dressed young citizen who had somehow fallen out of the sky and through his window. But as the worker watched, the intruder took a quick moment to catch his breath, and suddenly arrows began to appear on his body. The Serpent’s cloaking magic was wearing thin from pain, his true form quickly becoming visible: a full-fledged Dragon, silver and gold, and armored with natural plating, arrows sticking out of its arms, its back, its side.

Just as abruptly, a group of black-clad Samurai
tore through the shattered glass wall, along with a woman armed with a set of mechanical claws that whirred with little spinning daggers, jutting out from all angles.

The office worker nearly fainted as he saw the Serpent back away from the human attackers, and clutch its arms over its chest. It chanted in a half-Japanese nonsensical speech, an insane language, but its words seemed to cause the room to quake.

Shards of glass on the floor rose up and swirled into little tornadoes that began cutting at the human soldiers. But the woman threw out her arm—hissing in speech as fantastically strange as the Serpent’s—and the glass shards twirling viciously around the room came together and formed into the vague shapes of men.

The jagged, glass-shard figures began to take swings at the Dragon, slashing at his armor. The Dragon threw them back with some kind of magic, but two of them flung themselves upon its back, shattering and stabbing tiny shards into its thick hide.

Furious, the Dragon roared, and rushed the innocent office worker, throwing him back toward the glass men. The glass figures collapsed around the worker, giving no serious cuts. But getting the man out of harm’s way slowed the warriors down.

Aldric had joined them from behind, slipping on
the glass as he entered through the cracked exterior wall, the way they’d all gotten in. Now he saw his target escaping.

The Serpent rampaged through empty offices, knocking through cheap cubicle walls in the blue dimness of fluorescent lights, as Aldric and the Samurai pursued it, firing whenever they could get a shot.

Taking the lead, Aldric sent a bolt directly into an unprotected spot on its wounded back, and the Dragon wailed, racing on its thin Serpentine legs—one real, one made of metal—clattering over glass and plastic as it threw down anything in its path.

The wound immediately began leaking fireblood in a dazzling spray of light, streaming from the back of the Creature.

The flying blood burned Aldric as he ran through it, chasing the beast charging through the offices.

It howled in fury and blew off the elevator doors up ahead, and as Aldric got there, he could see the elevator was gone—the Dragon was climbing up an empty dark shaft, firelight from his wound sprinkling down in a cascade.

Sachiko and the other Samurai clattered up around Aldric.

“This was not the plan,” Taro said breathlessly.

“Never make plans,” said Aldric, hoisting himself into the elevator shaft. “Waste of time.”

He began climbing after the beast in the dying light created by its dim, flickering wound.

Then, up above the Dragon, he saw a set of elevator doors forced open with a dagger, and staring down at him were his own son and Kyoshi.

“SIMON!”
roared Aldric.

“I knew it—I heard it in here,” said Simon triumphantly, but instantly his glee turned to horror. The beast was rising fast, climbing, all jaws and claws and flaming blood.

“GET OUT!”
Taro cried to Simon, as the Samurai poured into the shaft.

From above, Simon had an instant to see the look of fear on Sachiko’s face as she realized the danger to her son. He threw Key back away from the elevator shaft just as the Dragon clambered up behind him, onto a floor of office cubicles. The Thing swiped at Key’s leg. Simon’s heart was rioting. He and Key ran for it, but the Dragon leapt upon them both, throwing them down together, its arms blocking them in.

Its huge metallic head came down upon them, yellow eyes wild with triumph, jaws bared to show silver-gold fangs. Glaring, the creature muttered in Japanese.

Simon was frozen, watching the jaws of the Dragon moving in hateful rhythm.

Key understood the Dragon was cursing them in
Japanese for causing him to lose his temper, for forcing him to fall out of order with the harmony of the universe. The Thing was angry for being angry.

Down in the elevator shaft, Aldric led the others up in a furious climb up the cables. Suddenly everything lurched strangely, and a black mass began falling toward them.

The elevator was working.

It was coming down upon them. Fast. Very fast. The car was nearly upon them—Aldric put on a burst of speed, and he and Taro tumbled to safety. They landed on the same floor as the Dragon.

Aldric looked back, fearing Sachiko and the others behind him would be hit and carried down by the elevator car, but there was no more time to think. The Dragon turned its head and smiled—pinning Simon and Key to the floor.

“Don’t move,” said Aldric, in shock.

“We can’t…” Simon moaned.

“Back,”
the Dragon spat. “And he may live. My quarrel is with the one who took my leg…” The beast moved his eyes toward Taro.

“Aldric, don’t,” Taro warned.

“You took my leg,” the beast hissed back. “I’ll take your
son.”

Simon couldn’t reach the Dragon’s chest, couldn’t use the deathspell.

The Creature sliced the air with his silver-gold tail, hissing in Serpentspeak.

Taro spoke to it in Japanese, trying to provoke a move, but the Serpent didn’t take the bait. It held Simon and Key to the ground as the Dragonhunters slowly approached.

A puddle of fireblood had leaked on the floor, burning Key’s knee as it dripped.

“It wants us to lay down our arms,” said Taro, translating the Dragonspeak.

“Madness,” said Aldric.

“He means it,” said Taro, throwing down his sword. “It does not make idle threats, not this one…”

“I’ll not give up my sword,” said Aldric, eyes hardened.

“No choice,” said Taro.

“Not for you, maybe,” said Aldric, and his eyes locked on Simon’s. Aldric could see Simon still held the dagger he’d used on the elevator doors.

As the Dragon snarled, Simon seized the moment and shoved the silver dagger into the Creature’s side. The Dragon howled, rearing back for an instant, and Aldric was suddenly there, attacking with sword, again and again.

The Serpent threw him off, but Simon rolled free. Key remained in place, however, and the Dragon dived for him. Simon had nothing to fight with, but
Taro stepped over him, sweeping up his Samurai sword with incredible quickness, and stabbing the Serpent again.

The Dragon hurtled Taro backward against a wall, and now stood blocking the path to the two boys.

Key pulled at Simon’s jacket, and the two rushed away. The Dragon spun, and ran at them, its head bowed, its crown of spikes lowered. But Key threw his body at Simon, pushing him out of its way, running clear at the last moment. The Dragon ran into the glass wall and shattered it, then fell, arcing downward in the sky, slowing himself the last thirty feet, landing directly upon a speeding car.

Clinging to the roof of the car, the Dragon was driven off into the night.

Aldric ran to the open wall and watched as the Serpent was carried away, silver-gold tail slashing. The driver must’ve been terrified, gunning the engine, because the car was quickly gone from sight.

The battle would end here.

“I can’t get to him now.” Sachiko sighed, arriving to see the Dragon escape.

“It’s not for you to do.” Aldric looked at her in disbelief, and then back to the Samurai. “You let your women fight?”

“Why wouldn’t we?” Mamoru replied incredulously.

Everyone waited for Aldric to answer, but he didn’t. Simon thought him jealous; he’d always called Alaythia too vital for combat.

“Am I in trouble?” asked Key, getting up from the wreckage of the office.

No one answered. Instead, everyone looked at Simon.

T
ARO STOOD OVER
S
IMON
. The Samurai had part of Simon’s broken arrow pointing out of his arm. “I have something that belongs to you,” Taro said through gritted teeth.

Simon felt terrible. Words completely failed him.

Sachiko went to him, and pulled loose the arrow’s barb, as Taro yelled out in pain. Almost instantly, however, a tiny blast of light from Sachiko’s hand stemmed the blood, and the wound began healing under her touch. Simon got the feeling from Taro’s look that it still hurt, nonetheless.

“You were to stay put,” Sachiko said to Key, her worry evident.

Taro looked at Simon. “And you were to watch him.”

“There’s no time for blame,” said Aldric, though he shot Simon a hard look. “We have to be after it.”

“We will be after it,” Taro answered, still smoldering at Simon. “But there’s plenty of time for blame.”

“Come now, he can’t have gone far—” Aldric said.

Taro resisted. “The Dragon is gone. We must go to its den. We’ll figure out where it would run.”

“What are you talking about?” said Aldric. “We can still catch the Creature! He fell out of the sky. There are people who saw
something
, they can tell us where he went—”

“Stop. We will make our own decision.”

“Could be good to go now, could be waste of time,” Kisho considered.

“Bloody brilliant,” said Aldric. “With this kind of decision-making, we’ll be as old as Toyo before we get the beast!”

Toyo stared at him indignantly.

“Stop this,” said Sachiko. “We’re losing time.”

Taro took a deep breath. “We should go back to the hospital and see the den now; find out what we can about the Creature. Then we will go after it. Agreed?”

The Japanese all nodded together, and then marched past Aldric and Simon.

“You’re going to leave it out there wild?” Aldric protested.

“The police will be coming,” said Sachiko, not stopping. “If we want to see the den, we must be quick.”

Simon and Aldric went with the others, having no desire to burn any more bridges by going off on their own. The Dragon would wait.

On the street, small groups of people started to gather. Windows were shattered, alarms were ringing. Cops would be here any minute.

Among those gathered in the street was a very old gentleman with a goatee, dressed in black and white with a dirty trenchcoat. He was shivering as if it were twenty below zero. Ice was dripping from his flesh, melting, trailing down the inside of his coat and pooling at his feet. Dead flies floated there, specks of black in the glistening puddle.

He’d watched the Hunters all night. He wasn’t through yet.

He knew he was too weak now to kill them all at once; he would have to watch them, and wait for a new opportunity.

While people stared up at the cracked windows, the Hunters moved unnoticed into the hospital, up an elevator, and slipped to the penthouse as many of the hospital staff evacuated down stairways.

Simon held his breath as a security guard hurrying to the top floor stopped to question them, but
Aldric knocked him out and dragged him to a maintenance closet.

In the penthouse, the Samurai speedily cleaned up their equipment from the battle. Bullets and arrows were picked out of the walls. There’d be no trace of them. Weakly, the patients in the penthouse stirred, barely conscious, under spells and drowning in their drugs. But already sirens were blaring in the city, and Sachiko had to lock the penthouse doors from any prying medics who wanted to see what all the clatter had been about. Simon saw her seal the locks shut with a burning touch of her finger.

“It will take a few moments for the other security men to respond,” said Toyo. “They are mostly retired police, elderly, and are concentrated on the first floor. There are two glass elevators connected to this room, but we’ve now destroyed the code system to operate them. I would guess the guards will take a freight elevator, and they must pass through a busy emergency ward to get to that elevator. It will let them off outside that door, around an L-shaped corridor they are unfamiliar with. We’ll have a few minutes.”

Simon couldn’t help but admire the old man’s memory of the blueprints. Key seemed disturbed there wouldn’t be enough time, and began poking around a set of controls that looked like a fire alarm to Simon.

Taro and Mamoru quickly checked the drugged
patients in the Dragon’s den, as the other Dragonhunters looked for clues to where the Serpent had gone. Oddly, though, one of the Samurai kept piling blankets on a weak patient in a very solemn, methodical way, one after the other, too many to be helpful. Simon stared at him for a moment.

“Kisho can be unusual,” Key whispered hurriedly, looking over. “He’s not quite right.”

“What do you mean by that?”

They were in a hurry, but Key seemed to want Simon to know this. “Long ago, a Dragon tried mind-reading him to find our base, tearing into his memories. He didn’t give us away, but he came out of it forgetful, confused.”

But Kisho’s odd sympathy had stirred one of the sick men.

“Weapon…” the patient said in Japanese. “Najikko…has weapon…”

The words rattled Simon as Key translated them.

“What weapon?” Taro started asking. “What does he have?”

Suddenly the room felt desperate, as the sirens outside closed in on the hospital.

The patient reached out a shaking hand, and pointed to an old medical cabinet, huge and imperious, with rusted handles on its aged wood. It was unique in the brushed-steel environment, and
Sachiko was already moving over to it with suspicion, chanting an unlocking spell.

Inside, an ancient scroll lay, unrolled, Dragon symbols glowing red, as if by some mysterious energy.

“The Old Power of the Asian Dragons,” said Sachiko. “The Serpent has found it.”

The Samurai looked up at her from around the room.

“What do you mean?” asked Simon.

“Perhaps the children should not know this,” Taro said.

“Simon is a fighter with the rest of us,” Aldric answered. “I’ll not have secrets from him.”

“It is a legendary weapon of the Black Times,” said Sachiko. “It was said to be the work of two wedlocked Serpents, weaving their powers together.”

“If it ever existed,” said Taro. “That spell is most likely a legend. I think you’re mistaken about what you’ve found there. It’s just a history scroll. I’ve never known the Dragons of Asia to work together any more than the others, now or in the past. They work together about as well as we do.” He smiled faintly.

“But if it
is
true, Taro…” Sachiko whispered, and her eyes went to her son.

“What
is
it?” Aldric asked, testily. They were speaking in English, but so quietly he hardly understood a word.

The sirens were wailing outside the hospital, time was slipping away.

“No one really knows,” said Taro. “Only that it kills many, and that it kills fast. And that the Dragons who used it lost control of it quickly, and died in its fury.”

“Not a mystery anymore. It is a formula for intensifying Dragon flames,” said Sachiko, who had been studying the scroll.

Taro stared at her. “
Intensifying
them?”

“If the Dragon has perfected this spell,” Sachiko continued, “he’s made his fire ten times more powerful. Ten times more unpredictable, no doubt. He may even fear his own creation slipping out of control. This is no ordinary adversary.”

There was a hurried rapping at the door. Security. The police.

“Well, we’ve lost him now,” said Aldric. “Before we track him, we’ll need Alaythia with us—”

“No time,” Taro snapped.

The door began banging loudly. The police were going to break their way in.

“We’ll have to go out that way…” Taro moved toward the balcony.

“Or we could use the elevator,” said Key, and he pointed to the big glass elevators connected to the penthouse from the outside. “I fixed the wires so they
don’t go through the code panel.”

Everyone looked at him. Taro frowned. “You did not get permission.”

“Efficiency is no substitute for obedience,” interjected Mamoru, trying to look stern.

So much for quick thinking,
thought Simon.

“Take the scroll,” ordered Taro, and Sachiko swept it up quickly, as everyone moved away from the doors.

Suddenly, a clatter of claws at the balcony caused Simon to stop in his tracks.

The Dragon of Japan had returned.

Its eyes caught sight of the scroll in Sachiko’s hands.

“Thieving from me? From
me
?” screeched the Dragon, and it slashed a claw at Toyo, who was closest. Simon took note of how fast the old man moved out of the way.

The Dragon let out a growling guttural sound—
krrrrrr
—building up fire in its throat.

“Changed my mind. Efficiency is good,” said Mamoru, and he shoved Key toward the glass elevator.

Aldric pushed Simon to follow them.

The doors slid shut.

The Samurai swung their shields into position, bracing for the Serpentfire blast.

But it did not come. The Dragon regained control, and leapt instead for the glass elevator from the outside. The boys were just launching down the side of the building—alone.

“NO—” cried Aldric, and he dived at the elevator. But the boys fell out of view.

The glass elevator glided down, along the outside edge of the building, giving a view of the traffic many stories below. Inside the glass capsule, Simon and Key cringed, realizing how high up they were.

“Go, go, go,” begged Simon. He saw lights blurring past him as they fell, very fast. But not fast enough. There was a clatter above them. Something was coming.

From up above, Aldric saw the Dragon rushing like a bull for them, galloping down the exterior of the building, an unnatural force of nature, gathering speed in a run.

Meanwhile, inside the hospital, everyone flew into action. “Not another elevator,” Taro groaned, as he and Sachiko ran for the remaining one. Aldric and the Samurai leapt in behind them, the doors shutting all of them into one elevator.

Outside, the Dragon was sprinting after the boys, leaping now, hurtling, crashing onto the lift.

In the packed elevator above the ruckus, Aldric cracked part of the glass, the wind blowing against
him, and watched the boys’ lift sliding fast down the highrise, the Japanese Serpent clinging to its roof.

“We’re not fast enough. How do we get down there?” said Taro.

Sachiko started to leap down, but Aldric pulled her back. “No. Not again. Too much risk,” he told her. “Wait for a clear shot.” The lift was a fast one, it fell quickly after the boys. Aldric could see them getting closer through the glass walls.

In Simon’s elevator, the drop was sheer terror. The Dragon had now clawed downward, clinging to the side of the shooting elevator, its jaws gaping, silver-gold teeth scraping the glass.

Key screamed, and Simon threw the boy behind him for safety. But there were no weapons. There’d be no fight. They’d be torn apart, pure and simple.

He’d left everything in the building above—his sword, shield, and bow. For a second he thought,
Dad’s going to kill me.

Simon looked up. The elevator with all the warriors was trailing him. Aldric had smashed open its glass, and was firing barbs at the Dragon from his wrist-device. None of them hit, but his father was there, his father was coming, his father would help him.

The Dragon snarled, smashing in the glass, its head caving in part of Simon’s elevator, its jaws snapping at them.

His father was useless.

Taro and the Samurai broke open more of the glass around them, and began firing pistols at the Dragon from above. Every shot connected. The Dragon seemed dazed, scarcely able to cling to the falling elevator.

Then—to Simon’s shock—the Dragon let go, and tumbled down, dropping four stories to the ground. The Creature landed on its wicked legs like a cat, and scampered across a night-lit street to a train on a platform.

“He’s going to get away,” said Key, staring down.

“No, he’s not,” said Simon. He was filled with adrenaline and anger. When they hit the ground, Simon pulled Key out of the elevator and sprinted for the train platform. He knew the Hunters would follow him.

Ahead, the Dragon was just slipping inside the doors of a train.

Simon and Key ran aboard, at a car far behind the Dragon’s. Simon could hear Aldric yelling behind him as the doors slid shut.

He and Key took a deep breath, looking at each other in fear, scanning the empty train cars ahead.

Suddenly Aldric was banging for Simon from outside the car, furious, yelling, but the train’s speakers were drowning him out, barking something in
Japanese, and Key was saying, “Sit down!” The train was taking off; the outside doors were locked. Aldric was forced to grab hold from the exterior, as behind him, the Samurai leapt forward, clinging to the rear of the train farther back, unable to get in.

The thing was, it wasn’t an ordinary train. It was a bullet train.

It reached two hundred miles per hour in a matter of minutes.