Authors: Zoe Marriott
The Nekomata drifted backwards, surprise and the beginnings of pain distorting its face. Then it cried out.
Blood spurted everywhere, spraying the pitted walkway. Nine tentacles dropped away and landed with a drumroll of meaty thuds.
I had disarmed it.
The Nekomata fell, thrashing and screaming.
The heavy mass of its mantle twisted in on itself, struggling to regenerate from such a massive amount of damage inflicted in such a short space of time. The wounds, which had been cauterized by the katana’s supernatural fire, smoked and bubbled like slugs sprinkled with salt.
Slowly I straightened up, bringing the blade forward. The monster whined, its shadowy flesh slithering away from the pale flames. I took a step towards it.
“No! Wait!” it cried.
Another step forward as I located the centre of the mantle – and the demon’s heart – in my mind’s eye. I lifted the katana.
A thin tentacle ripped itself free of the Nekomata’s creeping blackness and wrapped around my forearm. It wrenched me from my feet, shook me like a ragdoll, and flung me away with all the strength the monster had left.
I went flying, hurtling towards the wall. In one second I would be a smear on the brickwork.
Not a chance
.
I snapped my arms out to slow my flight and, with an effort that made every muscle scream, forced my body to twist, and flipped head over heels in midair.
My feet hit the wall with an impact that made the bricks buckle.
I pushed off.
The katana’s pearly flames streamed around me, propelling me down towards the walkway like a shooting star. My body burned with the furious cold of its energy. I no longer knew if I wielded the blade or it wielded me. We were one form, one will, one desire with a single cutting edge.
We were death. Vengeance. Power.
We were the night itself.
An uncanny, high-pitched cackle, like a hyena’s laugh, burst from my throat as I plunged into the centre of the Nekomata’s mantle.
My blade penetrated the demon’s heart with a wet pop and punched straight through the metal platform beneath. The Nekomata convulsed, contracted; its shriek of pain filled the chamber.
I knelt on the beast’s congealing body, feeling its death throes tremble through the hilt of the sword into my arm.
“She is coming,” it gurgled. The needlelike fangs were bathed in blood again. Its own blood this time. “My Mistress. She will take – the sword. Kill you. Kill everyone.”
I eased to my feet, planting one foot on the walkway and the other firmly on the Nekomata’s chest, and pulled my sword free. It screamed again. I watched dispassionately, unable to summon up the slightest tinge of pity or remorse, as the mantle knotted up on itself, its glossy surface turning dull and hard, like rock. Its shape was changing, becoming smaller, more catlike.
“She will – kill you – all,” it hissed.
I reached down and grabbed a handful of the lank, black fur on its head, putting myself nose to nose with the monster. I waited for its eyes to focus on me. “Not if I kill her first.”
With one stroke, I cut off its head.
Under my foot, the demon’s body solidified, cracked and crumbled into a thick heap of something like ashes. My arm sagged a little as the head I held hardened to stone. I stared into the dead eyes of the monster. Then I dropped the head and let it roll away.
The katana’s flames flared up with new brilliance, rolling down the hilt of the sword to engulf my arm. They tickled faintly as they sank under my skin.
I have decided I like you. We’re a good team, you and I
, it sang in my mind.
Let’s make a little deal. You give me what I want, and I will give you power. Limitless power. The kind of strength that mortals have dreamed of since the dawn of time. I will tell you all of my true names. All you have to do is help me.
“What do you want?” I asked dully.
What all sentient beings want, my beautiful, simple child
, it breathed softly.
Freedom…
I nodded. Then I rammed the blade, fire and all, straight into the saya. The flames snuffed out as if I’d dumped water over them. “Piss off.”
The moon burst through the clouds in long fingers of silver. I staggered and crumpled bonelessly onto the blood-splattered metal, clinging to the safety rail as the walkway seemed to quake beneath me. Sharp bubbles of rust nipped at my skin, reminding me that I was, most unfortunately, still alive.
A few minutes later, I heard movement below, and then voices.
“Mio?” Rachel called unsteadily. “Mio, are you – are you all right?”
“Stay still, Rachel. Mimi! Do you need me to climb up to you? Mimi?” That was Jack.
I took a couple of deep, shuddering breaths.
“Mimi! Say something! Are you OK?”
“I’m fine. Just give me a minute.” My voice came out flat and dead. It was the best I could do.
I forced myself back up onto my feet. The demon’s head was a dull, grey lump against the safety railing. If I wanted to take it down with me – and instinct said that it would be a dick move to leave it rolling around here for anyone to find – then I was going to have to tuck it into the front of my kendogi and tie it in place with the sash. And that meant carrying the katana and climbing one-handed.
Because the world just hasn’t screwed with me enough today
.
Making sure to touch only the saya of the sword, and with the demon’s head crushing my chest painfully, I located a section of intact scaffolding and climbed, very, very slowly, down the wall of the power station. Jack and Rachel watched nervously, shouting out encouragements and advice. They weren’t helping, so I ignored them.
My muscles twitched and spasmed. My joints clicked. My head pounded, and the vertebrae of my back ground against one another with each movement. I felt a hundred years old and I decided that being ancient was not as easy as the Kitsune made it look.
When I reached the ground, a tear-stained Jack and a pale, tottery Rachel were waiting. They enveloped me in hugs, stroking my hair, patting my back, whispering thanks and comforting words.
After I’d waited long enough to let them feel better, I shrugged them off and dropped the demon’s head and the katana into a pile of rubbish. Then I went to Shinobu.
It was just like my dream. The dream that had shown me his face for the first time.
Blood on his chest. Arms lying outstretched, hands palm up, as if he was waiting for someone to take them. But his eyes no longer reflected the sky. His lips no longer framed my name. He was gone.
I didn’t hold on tight enough. I let him go
.
Gently, gently,
gently
, I eased him off the pole that had gone through his body, wanting him away from the ugly pile of metal wreckage. I fumbled as I tried to lift him. He flopped to the ground and I fell with him, unable to let go.
I clutched his face to my shoulder, burying my nose in his soft, smoke- and pine-scented hair. My body locked into silent, shaking sobs. Tears poured down my face. They made tiny, pattering noises as they landed in his hair and on his neck.
Shinobu. Shinobu. My Shinobu
.
The grief was too intense. Too extreme. I knew that. In many ways Shinobu was still a stranger. I had met this man, this boy, less than twenty-four hours ago.
But I had always known him. I had been waiting for him every day of my life. That was why I had dreamed about him before I even realized who he was. Why I had been compelled to take the sword. I had needed to find him and set him free. That was what I had been born to do.
For five hundred years he had been trapped, waiting for me. Now, before he had tasted freedom for a single day, he was dead. He had died saving Rachel, a girl he had never even met. He died because he didn’t want me to have to make that choice, the choice that would have broken my heart.
He died for me.
I would never know how it felt to kiss him. I would never get to work out all the strange, conflicted, frightening things he made me think and imagine and feel. Never hear about his family and help him grieve; never help him build a new life. I had let him slip through my fingers. He was lost in the darkness again. This time for ever.
I didn’t hold on tight enough. I should never have let him go
.
Jack and Rachel sat one on either side of me, shocked and upset. I had to move. They needed me. I couldn’t sit like this all night, mourning for this boy, this beautiful boy I’d barely begun to know. Dawn was coming. People would be coming.
I breathed in Shinobu’s smell, rubbed my wet cheek against his hair.
Just a moment more. One moment more
.
“Mio,” Jack said softly. “Mio, please…”
A tiny, hurt whimper choked from my mouth as I forced myself to loosen my grip on his body. He slumped over my arm. I kept our chests pressed together, hiding the wound that had killed him.
My hand slid round to cup his neck under the heavy fall of his hair. The skin of his nape was soft and vulnerable. My other hand crept up to cover his eyes. I was sure if I tried to close them, they would snap open again on their own. I couldn’t bear to see that.
I pressed my lips gently against Shinobu’s. I was shivering with cold, my mouth wet with tears – but his skin still felt faintly warm. I could imagine, almost, that he was only sleeping. That I could feel breath heaving in his chest. That the thick lashes brushing my palm fluttered.
Fingers stroked gently across my check, tucking my hair back behind my ear. Warm, long fingers. Too long, far too long, to belong to Rachel or Jack, who would never have touched me that way anyhow.
Shinobu’s lips opened under mine.
“Is this the afterlife?” he whispered.
I let my hand fall from his face and stared down into his deep, smoky eyes.
This isn’t real
.
“No…” I managed to say, my voice breaking. “This isn’t heaven.”
He smiled up at me, a crooked smile of shock and joy and disbelief. There was no filter there, nothing between me and his feelings as he said, “I beg to differ.”
His arms lifted and wrapped around me, clutching me as tightly as I’d held him moments before. He brought our mouths together again. My sobs shook him.
His lips were so warm –
so warm
as they parted mine. His breath set my cold cheek on fire. Trails of sparks flowed gently down my back in the wake of his hands as they moved to clasp my waist.
Sobs turned into gasps. He drank them from my mouth.
“Shinobu.”
“Don’t cry,” he whispered against my lips. “Don’t cry, my love. My Mio. Always mine…”
He’d never called me that before. Oh God, it was real. It was real.
He was alive.
He was mine.
“I don’t understand.”
Rachel’s bewildered voice broke in like a hammer shattering a window pane. I jolted, and Shinobu reluctantly let me ease back as we both remembered that we weren’t alone. Jack, speechless for once, stared at us in wonder and disbelief. Rachel was so pale that the bruise-like shadows under her eyes looked black.
“I don’t understand,” she repeated. “He died. He was dead. It went right through him.”
It went right through him
.
I reached apprehensively for the front of Shinobu’s kendogi. It was soaked with blood with a great ragged hole in the centre, just under his breastbone. But the skin beneath it was smooth and golden, without a scratch.
Something flickered in Shinobu’s eyes and was gone before I could make sense of it. “Well,” he said dryly. “It seems I am not quite human after all.”
Shuffling and stumbling, we made our way out of the central chamber of the old power station and through the tiled outer room. By the time we reached the loading door where we had come in, a soft radiance, completely different from the blazing, unnatural glow of the moon, was beginning to filter in through the skylights. It made the metal barrier look extremely solid.
“Er. Any ideas?” I asked.
I was leaning on Shinobu heavily. At this point he was the fittest of us all. I was too grateful to point out the irony, especially since he was carrying the stone remnant of the Nekomata under his right arm and holding me up with the other. I had the sash back around my waist and the katana shoved firmly into it.
“I suppose I could try to climb up to one of the windows and see what’s going on out there,” Jack volunteered.
“No!” Rachel clutched at her sister’s arm. She hadn’t let go of Jack since we’d started moving.
If the pale light of approaching dawn made the door look solid and intimidating, it made Rachel look practically transparent. I couldn’t even imagine what she must have been through in the time that the monster had her all to itself. She had excellent reasons to want us all to stick together. But Jack was biting her lip, clearly torn.
I was torn too. I wanted out of here. Even more than that, I wanted – needed – to know what had happened to the Kitsune army who had risked their lives to help us.
“I’ll—” Shinobu began.
A deep, rumbling groan of metal cut him off.
The loading door was winching up, dust and dirt spiralling off it and turning to gold as the sunlight spilled into the opening. A slender form ducked under the barrier, a long, white sword in each hand.
Hikaru.
He stared at us all for a second, speechless. Then he grinned.
“Hello, honey,” he sang, putting the swords away. “Did you miss me?”
Jack let out a wobbly laugh. “Not in a million years, hairball.”
“Aw. You’re so mean to me. Did you turn the kitty into roadkill all by yourselves?”
“Mio did,” Jack said. “The rest of us just enjoyed the show.”
Rachel, her wide eyes taking in the white, leather outfit, the swords, guns, and most of all the tail, opened her mouth. But instead of the big-sisterly demand for information that I was expecting, all that came out was a little sigh. She let go of Jack’s arm and dropped like a stone.
Hikaru darted forward and caught her before she hit the ground, swinging her up into his arms. That was the second time a hunky guy had grabbed her in a matter of hours and she hadn’t been able to enjoy it either time. Her life really sucked.