The hound was just around the corner with my babies growling at it. Crimson soldiers started to spread out, creating a gap for our star visitor to stroll through.
I drew my other blade.
That made the leader dickhead laugh again. “You’d draw a weapon on the Butcher Hound?”
The red doggie came through the gap of army peeps, padding slowly towards us, its yellow eyes two jaundiced fires.
“Mercy!” Colin cried. “I can fight. I’m a warrior. I can help you. Please! I can be one of you.”
The guy just laughed.
“We’ll let the hound decide for us, shall we?”
The hilts of my katanas thrummed with power in my palms. The other side of me not about to piss in my non-existent underwear was ready. The hunter side, with that whispering longing for destruction still dancing around the fringes. It wasn’t coming out to party but wanted to keep reminding me it was around.
I’d flipped the hunter switch. Time to kick arse.
“Fine,” I said. “Let it decide.”
The hound roared and charged.
Chapter Twelve
The action to summon the power of the blades. Cross the blades into an X, then swing my arms out to release the stolen power. Easy.
“What are they?” I heard the army man yell just as the energy flung off my katanas, transforming into a white mud monster, red veins pulsing through it.
It charged at the hound, meeting it head-on. The two creatures tumbled together, the mud monster spewing white mud all over its red fur, then bit down on its back with thick jaws.
Colin was shouting something, then I heard running.
“After him!” the head guy boomed.
Two Crimson Army soldiers ran past me, not stopping, but their heads turning to drink in the crazy guy that was me.
Yeah, look on. I’ll give you some fucking crazy. Make a move. Just a make a move.
The hound tore the mud monster apart, covered in the white gunk by the end of it. It growled, lowering its head to glare at me.
Was it afraid?
“Shall we take him out, sir?” a female soldier asked.
The head guy was right behind the hound. I could see the faint trace of his eyes through the visor, sizing me up. Bet he wasn’t used to anyone fighting back like this.
Surprise, motherfucker.
“No. Let him be a fool.”
I smiled at him. It told him ‘we’ll see what happens, yeah?’.
How many mud monsters had I killed? Six? Five to go, then. They were still swimming around in my blades. I could feel them.
The hound hadn’t tangled with the monster long, though, proper making short work of the white creature.
Best not waste the new toys.
“That’s gonna be a bitch to get out,” I said to the hound, gesturing with a katana. “Can that fur be dry cleaned? If not, I’ll gladly help you shave it off with one of these.”
The hound growled again, not moving. “I saw him, Akira. Gabriel. Hiding like a coward with those people who think they can shield themselves from me.”
Shield?
“It will crumble,” the hound continued. “None will hide behind their shields forever. I will take whom I wish, and he or she will throw themselves at the feet of worth, endure the tortures of the Butchers, prove they are worthy to fight in the name of King Daichi.”
Almost sounded like it was selling me a good thing. “What’re you chatting about? The Paradise Games sound like complete bullshit.”
I’m here to take them down.
My trial?
“You would dare question the will of the king?”
“He sounds like a nutter. Something ain’t right here, and I’m gonna root it out.” I got into battle position. “Starting with you.”
Growl, growl, growl. Yeah, whatever. “Come and get me.”
It did, rushing right at me with its teeth bared.
No mud monsters this time. Nothing else but me and this scum bag.
The hound reared inches from me, taking a swipe with its big claws. I ducked, avoiding a few more swipes. The bastard was quick, but so was I even if its claws did ruffle my hair as I rolled forward, coming so close to scalping me.
It was built to withstand. I could see that from this closer angle, the fur resembling the crimson armor of the soldiers, but velvety.
Fine.
I went for it while it stayed on its hind legs, driving a sword upwards. The hound moved out of the way just in time, and I moved out the way of another swipe.
“Keep it coming, prick!” I released a howl of my own, braying to the dead moon above.
Whoa. I never howled.
A backflip, leaping onto a car, laughing like a crazy git. What the hell was this? Another hunter switch gone click somewhere inside me I didn’t know about?
Whatever. I liked it.
“Is that all you got?”
The hound was on all fours, staring at me as I laughed some more from my perch on the car roof. I mean, the car roof meant sod all seeing as how big the woof machine was, but never mind. I liked my perch.
Ten peaks of flesh down its spine again, swelling up quick. Soon those hooked tongues would be out to try and get me again.
“Come on, Fido,” I taunted. “What’s your problem, eh? Checking me out? You keep staring and bringing the heat, bruv. It’s these slippers, right? They’re awesome, I know. But you can’t have ‘em. Your paws are too big. Way too big.”
“You’re a fool to mock me,” the hound warned.
“You know what they say about big paws?”
The hound came at me again. I leaped off the car as it went crunch under the creature’s weight. The hooked tongues burst out of the beast’s back, flexing and ready to snag.
I landed to the Butcher Hound’s left.
“Neither do I.” I drove both blades into its flanks.
No resistance. Smooth penetration.
“No!” someone cried.
The hound howled, and I did too, joining it in a song of beastly delight. Okay, so the delight was all mine, but a duet was a duet.
Its power flooded my blades, a real intense surge that rattled my brain around.
“That’s some juice you’ve got there.”
Its mass of crimson energy was swallowed into the steel of my blades. An intense three pulses of white light followed, then an explosion of red. Done.
The hound’s body shriveled into a husk, losing its red hue, becoming a twisted and brittle dead thing, even shrinking to half its size with crispy, useless tendrils poking out of its spine.
Awesome.
I thrust my swords into the air, howling at the moon again. What was with this embracing the wolfy side?
Solider eyes on me. Colin was back, caught at some point during the action, held by two burly bastards. His jaw was on the floor. I wondered if they’d take a request to each hold an arm really tight, then pull and pull and pull until he split down the middle, revealing the black innards I was proper sure he’d have. His heart would be coal, at least.
“Kill him!” the head soldier yelled.
So that’s how it was gonna be?
Guns cocked. Bullets fired, and my hands got to work. Mega quick, the katanas guided me, showed me how this shit worked. In a blur of speed, the bullets clanged into the steel, sucked in, absorbed all the way down to the hilts.
Faster than a speeding bullet now? Who the fuck was I becoming?
When the soldiers stopped shooting at me, I crossed the swords into an X again.
Silence. Colin was gone. Second dead yet? I wasn’t that lucky.
“Your hound is dead,” I ended the silence.
With his gun still pointed at me, the head guy said, “Who are you?”
“Let’s wait and see.”
I unleashed the swallowed bullets back at them, a swarm of speeding white and red.
They all dropped, no fight back. Too slow to move.
I waited as smoke curled from their bodies, as
silence fell on the street again. There were people in their windows, staring at me.
Was this the trial? To liberate the dead city? To right a wrong that was here? That was the theory at the top of the pile. ‘Cos there were so many wrongs here. This wasn’t a proper place for the dead. Maybe for some of the dead, the bad wankers, yeah. But not everyone.
The mayor and mayoress, the king. I had to pay them all a visit, get to the core of this bullshit. Undo it.
If that was my trial.
For now, I was pretty sure it was.
First on the to-do list was G. I sheathed my swords, scooped the bike back up and peddled around the dead bodies of the Crimson Army soldiers.
As I went, gathering speed with my babies running by my sides, I stood up, turned my face to the moon, and howled.
* * *
I followed the direction Bob and Rose led me on, getting wobblier and wobblier as I went. A combination of peddling, the hardcore speedy hands that’d beat the bullets, and then using the stolen energy in general. It’d all caught up to me.
Consequences. What a ball ache!
I’d killed the Butcher Hound. It was in my blades. Mine, stirring. I could feel every buzz it made, every pulse along with those mud monsters.
Mine.
The hound was mine.
Sweat ran down my face, dripping off the edge of my nose in annoying droplets. My back was soaked, the T-shirt clinging to my skin. I pushed my sopping hair out of my face, all the while with a big grin stretching my mouth.
I’d killed it. I’d beaten the thing that terrified the streets of the dead city, sucked down its essence into being my new toy. And I’d taken down those soldiers. Ha! Dicks. Came at me thinking they were all hard and shit, and they all fell down. Bang! Bang! Bang! Teach ‘em for shooting me.
Shame Colin hadn’t been there to take one to the bonce too.
I’d get him. Oh, yeah. I’d get that prick. Hard. Real hard.
He was dead.
Wow. Cool.
Not dead enough, though.
Didn’t really surprise me that he’d been killed after how he’d been left not being a wolf, having to face the baku as a human.
“I hope it hurt when they killed you,” I said.
It would’ve. Oh, man it so would’ve.
Made my grin spread even wider.
Colin was unhinged, thinking I’d want him after everything he’d done to me. Want him? I wanted him like I wanted to drink a glass of rusty nails with a cat piss mixer.
Dead. The star killer was dead.
In the hands of the Butchers now?
Fingers crossed.
“Fire and blood and torture for Colin,” I said aloud. “Yeah, loads and loads of it.”
If I ended up at that mansion, and saw his face again, I’d defo ask the Butchers if I could be put onto the torture staff.
Nothing would be sweeter.
Yeah, there would. Finding G would be much sweeter.
Wobbly or not, I peddled even harder.
Chapter Thirteen
Gabriel
The Butcher Mansion.
Life is nothing but a series of challenges, and so, it seemed, was the afterlife.
The home of the mayor and mayoress was the home of the third piece of the bone key.
Shortly after Jessie had told me that slice of information, Gerald had returned with coffee and eggs, and so I’d left it, for now, resigning myself to wait for the hound hours to be over.
All I’d done during the countdown to freedom was watch the clock above the café counter. A painful experience, but now the minute hand was inches away from striking midday.
There were no exceptions to the hound rule, apparently. It could get you in the last five seconds. The time had to be exact.
Thirty seconds…
Twenty…
Ten…
Five…
We were free.
Gerald was washing up, whistling away in the kitchen.
“His favorite time,” Jessie said. She went to the door, unlocked it, flipped the sign to open.
Ding-a-ling! The bell above the door rang less than a minute later. A teenage boy entered.
“Hi,” he said to me, “haven’t seen you before.”
He looked to be around the same age as Jessie—a brown-skinned teen with messy black hair and a gold ring in his left ear.
He paused, tilting his head. “Werewolf.”
Another one. “Sensor,” I replied.
He smiled and nodded. “Also, go by the name of Mitesh.” He extended a hand. “Nice to meet you.”
I shook his proffered hand. “Likewise. I’m Gabriel.”
Jessie came over. “Mitesh here was part of the same group me and Dad went into for the sensor experiment.”
“I was homeless on the streets of Mumbai, needing a break. So I joined the program.” He shrugged. “At least I have a home now.” Mitesh pointed behind him. “Across the road. It’s nice. Live alone. Get so much painting done.”
“What do you paint?” I asked.
“Abstract stuff.”
“I love it,” Jessie cut in, fluttering her eyelashes at him.
Mitesh blushed, looking down at his feet. “Thanks.”
Then Jessie blushed, her eyes also pointed downwards shyly.
How cute. “I’d like to see them some time.”
Mitesh looked up. “Cool. I’ll be happy to show you.”
Jessie beckoned both us closer, looking around sheepishly. “Before anyone comes in, I got to tell you, Tesh, that Gabriel here is going to help us with the mission.”
Mitesh’s brown eyes twinkled as he grinned. “A werewolf on our side?”
“I know, right?”
He slapped me on the back. “Welcome to the crew.”
The doorbell jangled again, an old woman shuffling inside on her cane.
I froze. “Oh, no. It can’t be.”
“What’s wrong?” Jessie asked.
The old woman looked up at me and smiled. “Now there’s a sight for sore eyes.”
Mrs. Wallace.
She was dead.
Chapter Fourteen
Stupid legs had forced me to pull over on the side of the road beside a bridge. They weren’t happy and needed five minutes. ‘Cos they had more authority than me, I let them have their break.
At least I wasn’t feeling so wobbly anymore—apart from the knackered legs. My energy levels were going back up, despite the leg issue.
Still sitting in the saddle, feet planted on the ground, I took in the square I’d ended up in, resting against the wall of a bridge that went over the same manky river that seemed to plague this city.
No amount of pretty river walls and flowers could make up for the stink and the oozing black flow.
There were cafés and shops in the silent square, with some benches and a small clock tower about the size of two of me. It was a minute away from twelve.
G was safe from the hound, whatever the time was. And he wasn’t far away now. What? Like a five-minute journey, I was guessing.
Man, had this been one long fucking trip. Even on a bike. Thank the tenshi I hadn’t been subjected to strolling over here. It’d taken so long as it was. Didn’t help that the Crimson Army were hunting me. I mean, obviously, but it forced me to get my stealth on, hiding out in alleyways and even under a bridge (no river) with a woman called Babs.
I liked Babs. She was a homeless woman from Germany, pale and caked in grime with gray hair wilder than untamed ivy, and no teeth. Bless her. I’d asked her if I could get her any help, knowing I had no clue how to. She’d refused anyway, instead, talking to me about her life before everything went wrong.
“I’d been a nurse,” she’d said in German. I didn’t speak her language, but it didn’t matter. I understood it because language didn’t seem to hold the same weight it did back over in the living world.
It was weird. I knew she was speaking German—heard all the German words, but at the same time they wer
e completely understandable. No problem.
“Spent my life looking after people, and not just at the hospital. At home, when my husband had MS and when my twin girls both had that accident at the train station.” Her watery green eyes moistened. “But I never moaned, I never would have thought to do so. I loved my family so much, and I wanted to be there every step of their journey.”
“That’s awful.”
We kept our voices low under the bridge as the patrols went by, their heavy footsteps disturbing dust that sprinkled down on us.
“I’ve never been able to find them here,” she’d added.
“Never?”
She shook her head, looking up as the voices above grew louder.
Under the bridge was a dry riverbed full of junk in a neighborhood of mega despair. Babs was on her own, no one else in sight because of the hound. Behind her rusted oil barrel, she sometimes used as a fire was a small alcove. She’d taken my hand in hers (dry and covered with fingerless gloves) and led me to it. The bike had been laid on the ground, covered over by a blanket she had. For extra camouflage, she’d tossed some empty cans and rubbish over it.
We’d crawled inside the space, Babs sliding a rock in place to seal us. It was a rectangular slab, covered in graffiti on both sides, and she’d reassured me the soldiers wouldn’t think twice about it.
Footsteps had followed a minute or so later.
“You’re not joking, are you?” a woman had asked.
“Not at all,” some guy replied. “Killed the hound and took down all of A-Squad by firing back. With swords!”
“How is that even possible?”
“Beats me. Sounds like a real freak, and freaks need to be cut out of our city.”
“I agree. But how does that even happen? Swords as guns?”
“They weren’t normal swords, apparently.”
“And killing the hound? That’s shocking.”
“That’s why we can’t clock off until we find the scum. Remember not to kill him.”
“Shoot to injure, I know.”
“Or stab.”
“Whatever it is, let’s hope this is over soon,” the woman groaned. “I’ve already done a fourteen-hour shift.”
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