Four Moons: The Complete Collection: (Books 1 - 4)

by Amos, Richard

  She clapped her hands again in front of Zach’s belly, and it was my time to be dragged forward. I landed a few feet away from my brother, facing him as they both faced me. The mazoku hissed as I moved, dancing around the edge of the black circle.

  “Aki!” G bellowed.

  Mother and son. How did we get here? How was this happening? My brother, my bestie, his mum. This was so fucked, especially as I still didn’t know what the hell she was doing.

  “He will kick things off,” she said to an unknowing Zach. “Your brother. He’s the key to unlocking the door. The pain won’t last long.”

  Mama Rita clapped her hands twice, and my hands went to my swords.

  What. The. Hell.

  Two more claps and they were drawn.

  No…

  “After the pain comes the fun.”

  Two more claps…

  I pulled both blades back, my body forced into the correct battle stance, then drove the steel through my brother’s body, then through hers, pinning them together.

  “No!” I roared. “No! No! No!” But I couldn’t pull them out, forced to watch the blood spill out of the wound of the brother I never knew I had. His mouth dropped open, blood trickling out the sides.

  “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” I cried like the helpless prick I was.

  Mama Rita was laughing. “It really does hurt being on the receiving end of these.”

  Their elven power was being sucked down into my blades, Zach’s wolf half too. I wanted so badly to let go, to help him, to do anything but stand here as his killer.

  “Seven wolves,” Mama Rita said, “to freeze the moon. Elves to grant the kiss.” She clapped her hands, blood leaking out of her gob too. She coughed as she clapped, spraying red over her son.

  My hands obeyed the cube as it flashed, withdrawing the katanas. They trembled as she kept clapping, really going for it in the vibration stakes.

  Shit!

  “The key is full with the kiss!” she cried.

  My swords flung out of my hands, spinning, then hovering in the air above me. Still frozen, there was nothing I could do but watch.

  Zach coughed up blood, the two holes in his stomach in need of medical attention. There was so much blood coming out of him.

  “Go to the moon! Go! Go! Go!” Mama Rita screamed up at the swords, sounding like her throat would explode at the volume of it.

  If only!

  The katanas shot up, pointy end first, straight to the moon. I watched as they grew smaller and smaller until they eventually vanished.

  I tried to push against the hold on me, hoping that Mama Rita’s injury would affect her stupid cube. There was no give at all.

  An almighty boom from above had my attention back on the moon. The bright white circle flickered like I was watching it on a dodgy TV set, then settled back to just being the moon again.

  Mama Rita burst into a cackle, a nasty sound that had me longing for earplugs. “It’s done! It’s done!” More cackling! “Son! Son! It’s done!”

  Then she stopped, kissing Zach on the cheek, holding him tight. He was still conscious despite the blood loss.

  “We need to get him to a hospital,” I said.

  “What for?” she spat. “To make him better, so you can get to know him? I don’t think so. Everyone’s had him long enough. He’s mine again, as he was when he was a baby. I can be his mum now.”

  “He’s dying!”

  “It took me most of his life to get here, to be in control of my destiny, of his. And here we are. The moon is sick, and I have the mazoku at my fingertips.”

  This was getting on my last nerve. “No one has the mazoku at their fingertips. You’ve trapped them, that’s all. They’ll rip you into pieces at any moment. I fucking hope they do!”

  “I bet you do, Akira. But they won’t because you’re wrong.” She started to mumble then, in Japanese, getting progressively louder. Some peeps sent their prayers to the mazoku, wanting the darker side of the life. “I offer our souls, mother and son, to you. Oh, mazoku, creatures of the dark, come to me, come to us, let us bring you out of this prison, this terrible existence inflicted upon you by the High Alpha and his ilk. Let us help to heal you, to restore you, to bring a new dawn.”

  The mazoku hissed and inched away from the circle walls, wary of me, but coming closer to Mama Rita and Zach. Like cats again, curious and far creepier.

  “Join us,” she said. “Join us to you.”

  I turned to look at G. He was still there, ready to pounce, as helpless as I was.

  “Join us! Join us! Join us!” Mama Rita bellowed, then coughed up big gloopy bits of blood all over her son. He did the same, crimson spilling down his front.

  Fucking hell!

  In the click of a finger, the mazoku pounced. Their shadowy claws dug into the flesh of Mama Rita and Zach, darkness flooding into their mouths, forcing its way into their eyes and wounds. Zach’s was a silent cry as claws raked him, but Mama Rita howled and laughed at the same time.

  Every single mazoku in the circle was on them, being…absorbed.

  Mama Rita’s hold on me was fading fast, my limbs coming back to me. But I couldn’t take my eyes off the next stage of this freak show. Mother and son were melting together, their bodies rippling, fusing. Mama Rita’s arms sank into Zach’s belly, swelling and transforming his torso into a bloated shape that tore open his tee. His arms elongated, becoming larger than his body, his fingers twisting into spiraled points, his nails as black as the mazoku.

  I was almost in full control of my body again.

  As the top halves of their bodies melded and stretched, Zach’s head moved to one side, allowing room for his mother’s to slide in next to him. More rippling flesh and they both grew taller, stretching to seven feet tall, their eyes black fires in their skulls. All of their hair had fallen out, leaving behind gleaming baldness. Even their elven marks had gone, swallowed into oblivion.

  The thing they’d become still had on Zach’s jeans, Mama Rita’s black robes nothing but shreds on the trash pile.

  They were joined, like she’d asked, black veins starting to reveal themselves, traveling up the skin of this thing. The veins moved with things inside them—the mazoku. Mama Rita defo had the mazoku at her fingertips, and she’d managed to get them to pull off this messed up mutation between her and Zach to be some uber freak, while the mazoku roamed around inside.

  Oh, fuck.

  “Now, then,” Mama Rita’s head said, the black stone still in her forehead. Her voice was distorted, and with each word, a black condensation wafted out of her mouth. “Look at us, Akira. Look into the face of a god.”

  “Faces,” I said. “There’s two of you.”

  Zach had that same horrified look as before and just stared at me.

  Poor bastard! This was…yeah. I didn’t have time to think about it too deep now. Surviving and running came first, freaking out later.

  The necklace broke, and the cube shattered into a million pieces. I immediately grabbed for my smaller blades at my ankles, seeing as my katanas had apparently gone to the moon.

  Gabriel was at my side, ready to kill. “Take a head each?” he whispered.

  Right. Making moves. Where to first? Go for the heads? The guts? The legs. Cut the femoral artery? Did this thing even have one?

  Yeah, maybe taking a head each would work best.

  “And now the key will die! Used up! Like he already is.”

  The key. I was this key she was banging on about.

  “Time to die!” she screamed.

  But the creature waivered, hissed, taking a step away from me.

  “We’ll kill him!” Mama Rita’s head bellowed.

  Looked like she was now a bit of a puppet herself. Her head shot back and forth, following an invisible tennis ball. “No! We can! We’re strong enough now! What if…please!” She screamed. “It doesn’t matter! He’s only one! We can’t let him live! He meddles! He hunts. He…no! Please! I’ll…obey. I’ll obey!” Her focus
came back to me. “I’ll get you, Akira. Don’t worry about that! You’re nothing now!”

  The creature turned and charged up the pile. Together, me and G went after it. At the summit, it leaped up and over the wall, right out into the open air. I delivered a high kick to the wall, shattering the glass. It tumbled down the tower after the thing. Aim of the game was to let the glass slice it up on the way down, leaving it easy pickings on the ground. Job done.

  Yeah, right. As I peered over the side, there was no sign of the creature.

  “Fuck!” I spun and ran back down the pile with G hot on my heels.

  “Aki!”

  “Come on! It might be down there.” I sent my babies on ahead as I shot down the stairwell.

  “Aki!”

  Outside, rain was starting to fall in heavy sheets. I ran around the building to the spot where the creature should be. All I found was the glass I’d knocked down scattered all over the barren ground.

  “Shit! Shit!”

  Everything hit me at once, and I fell to my knees in filth as the rain beat down on my head. “He’s my brother, G! My brother!” I slammed on the wet ground, my fists scraping on rock. “And she took my swords, used me to…to. Fuck!” I still didn’t get it! I’d done something to the moon, and bad shit was coming.

  As if to deliver the omen properly, thunder cracked in the sky.

  “Fuck!” I yelled again!

  G tried to help me up, but I pushed him off. “Don’t touch me!”

  “Aki…”

  “The world is going to hell, and I don’t know what to do! I don’t know what to fucking do!”

  After the violent burst of lightning, the boom of thunder sounded like the end of the universe, the rain wet fists as it hammered down.

  Even with the control of my body back, I was as helpless as I’d been as the puppet to Mama Rita.

  My brother…

  My bestie…

  My swords…

  Helpless.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Two days later, with the night still stuck, I was sitting in The Spire with my dad, his guards, and scholars, Gabriel by his side. I was on the end of a crescent formation around a circle table beside one of those scholars in her red robes with the Japanese script of Murakami embroidered on the front. Opposite, in a smaller half-circle, was The Chief, Xavier, Phi, and two elven women who boasted more muscle than anyone else in this room.

  This was the first time I’d ever seen The Chief. She ruled the elves quietly in those small lands of theirs, preferring not to come over to this side of the universe. She was so casual in torn white jeans and a baggy red tie-dye T-shirt. Her hair was a pink buzzcut, and she had the biggest lime green hoop earrings I’d ever seen.

  You could cut the tension in the air with a butter knife. Elves in The Spire was unheard of, and the press were gathered outside the fences, waiting greedily for info and pictures. Quite the stir and all that shit.

  “So, here we are,” The Chief finished.

  Using ancient elven power that was all sorts of nasty, Mama Rita had performed herself a deadly ritual. By killing seven wolves, she’d summoned the possibility of causing some grief—which had resulted in the night, and moon, getting stuck. She’d used me to take the elven essence from her and Zach, then sent my swords up to the moon. That was seriously bad. The moon was now cursed. What that meant, no one knew. Also, with the melding of Mama Rita and Zach with the mazoku, meant some of the shadowy fuckers were free of their binds.

  So not good!

  “My son has informed us that whatever this creature has done, she specified it was aimed toward the destruction of my kind,” my father said. “Can you shed any light on this?”

  I hadn’t said a word to him. Not yet. He’d been Mama Rita’s lover, fathered Zach, and then acted like the arsehole he was. Couldn’t say I blamed Mama Rita for hating him after trying to kill her and their baby. How was I supposed to talk to him about this? No one else knew about me and Zach, other than him and G.

  For now.

  “I can’t,” The Chief replied. “I think Mama Rita wants to keep it as a surprise.”

  Great. “What about the mazoku stuff?” I added.

  The Chief cast her silver eyes on me. “Again, there is nothing else we can glean from her actions. She had everyone fooled. That black stone you speak of played a key role, but I can’t say what.”

  Poor Phi. She looked exhausted, so broken. She’d not said a word to me since we’d been here.

  “What I will say,” my father said, “is that this meeting is a positive step. We can now work together to defeat this common enemy.”

  The Chief took a moment to answer. “An alliance?”

  “Yes.”

  “Attempting such a thing would make matters worse between our people.”

  “Then, we silence any dissenters.”

  The Chief shook her head. “No. I will not stoke the fires. The doom is on your head, it seems. A curse for wolves.”

  “This affects all of us. If the wolves fall, then—” He stopped, nodding as if he saw it all now. “Then, you may rise to the power your kind have longed to take from us.” I hated how calm he delivered that.

  “I have no desire to take power,” The Chief said.

  “I don’t believe you. I should take you into custody on suspicion of aiding this creature.”

  “Touch her,” Xavier said, “and the rest of your wolves will need to start looking for a new alpha.”

  “I’d keep your threats quiet,” Gabriel said with a snarl. He was the beta, finally by his boss’s side rather than hanging around mine.

  The Chief raised her hands, my father doing the same before a storm erupted like the one that’d battered London for the past two days. It’d calmed down now, but there’d been some flooding damage across the city.

  Yeah, if that wasn’t an omen, I didn’t know what was.

  “I have no desire for war,” my father proclaimed. “But I will not tolerate your lack of interest in this.”

  “I am thinking of my people. This is a wolf problem.”

  “You won’t help?” I asked. “Not even to give info?”

  Xavier smiled at me. “Oh, Akira. If you were in charge, things would be different. But your dad broke all the rules between our kind when they took Zach. That’s not right and is a betrayal we can’t forgive. You get that, right?”

  The elves were just as pissing stubborn as the wolves. Fuckheads should be working together. “You can’t do this for me?”

  “That isn’t fair,” The Chief addressed me. “Don’t do that.”

  “Do what? Want to put all this shit to bed?”

  She shook her head. “If things were reversed, the werewolf reaction would be so much different. Imagine if I were to have you arrested.”

  “Akira is my son,” my dad said. “That’s different.”

  “Indeed,” The Chief said. “Always different, isn’t it?” She stood up. “I have made my feelings clear and shared information with you that I could have kept close to my chest. This is where we part ways.”

  “Is this your final decision?” my dad asked.

  “Yes.”

  It was his turn to stand. “Then you leave me with no choice but to put restrictions upon you.”

  Oh, no.

  “You may continue to trade in the tunnels,” he continued, “and folk may visit your caravans, but no elf is now permitted to surface. Every entrance will be guarded in case any elf tries to come into my city. It is now forbidden for you to walk these streets. Call all of your kind below. You have twenty-four hours.”

  Xavier went to say something, but The Chief stopped him. “If that is your wish, High Alpha, then we will obey your rule of law. Consider it done. And if any wolf shall cross into our tunnels, I will take action against them.”

  “Fine. There will be consequences to that action.”

  “Isn’t there always?”

  This wasn’t happening. I got to my feet. “Listen to yourselv
es! This is pathetic. The moon’s been fucked with, and you’re still doing this? This ain’t right. The perfect time to bury the hatchet comes up, and you ignore it. Fuckheads!”

  “Akira!” my father boomed.

  The Chief smiled and kept quiet.

  “You—”

  “Enough, Akira.”

  “But—”

  “Leave. Now. Gabriel? Take him out of here.”

  “I—”

  “I said enough!” Wow. Talk about a room-shaking shout.

  Yeah, well. Let him be the big man. We had some serious unfinished business, and he knew it. I should’ve known this, that he was even more of a scumbag than he already was. And it was all ‘cos of his actions.

  “Come on,” G said, standing beside me. I hadn’t seen him move.

  Without a word, I left, not looking back, but bristling with rage. I needed Cindy to burn out of the city and forget all of them. Fuck the moon. Whatever shit was gonna rain down on the wolves, let them choke on it. Maybe it was time for change.

  “Do you want to go home?” G asked me.

  Gabriel. No matter what, I couldn’t leave him to it. The one wolf I really cared about. He could run with me.

  I went to say it, then spotted Sarah and her swollen belly. She waved as her guards led her across the hallway.

  Shit.

  I waved back.

  Why did she have to be nice and pregnant with yet another sibling of mine?

  The world was totally fucked!

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I’d baked so many brownies my flat was falling down with them.

  It was three days after the meeting at The Spire. I’d managed to avoid the press. They didn’t care about me again. Thank the tenshi. Not one prick outside with a camera. Plenty of other stories for them to pick over, including the order against the elves to stay underground.