The fact the SCU hadn’t fired said a thousand words. It wasn’t gonna be that easy.
There she was, my former bestie, jacked-up with mazoku. There were black veins spread across her pale head. Her frame no longer frail. She’d got ripped mega fast—from sickly to beastly. Her eyes were crimson, her dark hair longer and billowing, kind of like a shadow itself. She was in combat trousers (black), and a black raincoat with a white kitten embroidered into the chest. She still liked her kitten motifs, then? Proper jarring now.
“Well, well, well,” she said, shadows spilling out of her gob.
Fanning around her were like twenty mazoku, wispy dark wankers hungry for violence. Standing next to her was none other than her fucking lapdog—Violet. The witch was carrying a beige sack, a red stain on the bottom, blood dripping through the canvas.
Grim. I’m sure I’d get to see the prize within soon.
I went to squeeze through the wall of bodies, cutting me off.
“Stay back, sir,” a woman said to me.
“Let me through.”
“I can’t—”
“Now,” G growled.
I got through, G with me, Zach and Ryoka too.
“You’re looking…gruesome,” I said.
She smirked. “As rude as ever.”
“That’s me.”
Her eyes rolled to my left. To Zach. “My son, the traitor.”
“You’d know all about that,” I countered.
Back to me. “The last time I saw you something had snapped inside you, hadn’t it? You had a crazy look about you—more than usual.”
Man, the lava was roiling inside me. “Didn’t come here to chat.”
“No, you came to end all the fun.” Really big smirk now. “What fun it’s been. The destruction of The Spire is the cherry on top. A sour one, but still great. I just wish it had been by my hand.” She clicked her huge fingers, and Violet undid the string of the bag.
The witch removed a severed held, held it high and proud. A fresh head—the head of Devon.
“The Chief is dead!” Violet cried.
Iron raindrops singed Devon’s skin, steaming rivulets tracing down the cheeks.
Cool. That saved me a job.
“I couldn’t stand it,” Mama Rita said, “the smugness of him, the way he’d stolen my destiny to kill Hitoshi Murakami from me.”
Wow, that was defo a sour cherry for her.
Dad wasn’t dead. He had to be alive...
She wasn’t smirking anymore. Instead, she had the pissed off look going on and was pointing at me. “I’ll settle for you, for all of you. For the world.”
I drew my katanas, the death power buzzing along with the mazoku, the elven energy I’d taken from that Liam guy, and the anti-magic.
Hell, yeah! I had some hardcore toys to throw at her. Not the death thing. Nope. Been there, almost done that. Not for her. The moon’s special gift.
Ugh. Why did she have to get her stupid arse in my way again? Why couldn’t she just curl up and die somewhere? Or come tango afterward? We could have a showdown in the sunshine, and I could mock her for the fact it was sunny.
Ah, well. Shit ain’t ever that fun.
“Get down!” a voice cried.
Before I knew it, I was flat on the pavement with G covering me as gunfire roared overhead.
Tenshi!
Anti-magic bullets thundered in the air. Killing mazoku would make more sprout up! The SCU knew that and prepared to trap them. This must’ve been a sudden no-more-listening-to-this-shit move to shut down these two crazies. If they were gonna go out that way, it was cool with me. Mama Rita and Violet dead was the endgame I’d happily embrace no matter the method.
The gunfire ended.
I lifted my head.
Smoke curled around Mama Rita and the witch—both of them fully intact.
Oh, crap.
Mama Rita laughed. “Did you really think it would be that easy?”
Ha! She was so right.
Violet tossed the head aside as I leaped to my feet. She grabbed Mama Rita’s hand. Instantly, green magic flared in their joined hands, and the mazoku started to swirl, forming as shadowy vortex around them.
Balls!
The SCU set off their mazoku traps, the white energy bursting into the sky and coming down like snow. Every demon those flakes touched got wrapped up in white rope. The flake would snap into a new shape and lock itself around the shadowy creep, dragging in thrashing to the ground.
But more mazoku came from the clouds, rushing down to take the place of a captured comrade.
Okay. Time to fight fire with fire.
I crossed the katanas over me, pulling up my own stolen mazoku power. I sent out a swirl of white demons fissured with red to the cyclone of shadows.
The two versions of mazoku clashed, the white joining the dark, spinning and spinning, blending together in one swirl until my mazoku of light were completely absorbed into the vortex.
Had it gotten bigger?
“Shit!”
Green sparks flashed in the funnel, witch magic cooking something up.
I released the elven energy. All it did was sputter outward in a spray of white, then fall to the ground uselessly like it did the last time.
Right.
The anti-magic would do it—the stuff I’d taken from the shelter. I let it all loose, a wave of white ripples tearing through the air. On impact, it flung some of the mazoku out of the vortex, sent then spinning away. But that was it. One blast. The funnel of shadows trucking on.
Whatever. There was only one move to make now. The cutting move. I went to charge forward, immediately stopped by a burst of green sparks that went off like a firework.
Mama Rita rode out of the vortex on a green and black ball of energy, shooting upwards, a murky trail of light behind her. Violet was cradled in her arms.
“Here comes more fun!” Mama Rita screamed, her laughter cracking like thunder up there.
The anti-magic fired from the SCU wasn’t working on her.
“This ain’t good,” I pointed out the obvious.
She was gone, vanishing beyond the iron rain clouds.
The mazoku not captured broke apart and flew away.
This sucked!
The ground shook, cracking beneath my feet. Holy shit! I staggered backward, G steadying me and yanking me out of the way as the crack widened.
Mama Rita was laughing her head off somewhere in the sky, or over there, or that way. Where was she?
A boom in the distance, a burst of white light. The sound of glass breaking and crashing. My focus snapped around to Canary Wharf.
“Oh fuck!”
The barrier was coming down.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Something really, really big burst out of Canary Wharf, took to the sky like a monstrous black cloud. Within seconds, eight strands appeared at the top of it, eight at the bottom. The tips of the tops shifted into eight red snakeheads with black horns and orange flames as eyes, red tails curling up at the things behind.
“Orochi!” my uncle yelled.
“What!”
“Yamata na Orochi.”
“Wait! That’s just a myth!”
Ha! Funny how that works. The world was full of crazy stuff, but there’s still myths and legends floating around.
Yamata na Orochi is supposed to be an eight-headed serpent with eight tails. Some stories say dragon, some say other serpentine things. It was supposed to be a scary campfire/bedtime story that wasn’t really scary at all.
Until now.
This swollen creature now had a beating red orb in the center of it. Joining the heads and tails, eight legs sprouted out of the body. Spindly, pointed things hit the ground with such an impact the earth shook again.
A cloud with spider legs and snakeheads. Awesome.
Mazoku buzzed around it like flies getting a hard-on for a dung pile.
The depiction of Orochi was always colorful, pretty even, to sell the story in the
mythology books you found the pictures in. Not this messed up shite!
“Not Orochi. That’s something else,” Ryoka said. “An abomination. Mazoku-made.”
“Big time,” I muttered.
Were there more things coming, or was there just the one big fucker?
One was enough.
Laughter, mega evil laughter. A ninth neck curled up from the body, longer than the others. It took a good few seconds before the tip transformed into the head of Mama Rita in widescreen, HD—an image no one asked for. She was cackling away.
In the belly of the beast was a green glow, the red that’d been there gone. The red heads and tails turned green, and the thing grew in size as things sprang up into the cloud, mazoku buzzing around it.
Sprang up? More things teaming up with it? We’ll all go together when we go?
Shudder.
There were screams of terror in the distance.
I wiped rainwater from my forehead, ready for action. Scanning my immediate area, there weren’t any mazoku in sight. Nothing blocking my way to make a run for the point of the curse.
Too easy.
“Akira!” Mama Rita’s head roared. “Do you like my new look?”
My mouth wasn’t big enough for her to hear me answer, so I flipped her the bird.
She saw that. “As elegant as you ever were.”
Man, she was annoying.
The creature wasn’t moving.
“Only thing I can think of is to run like hell,” I told G. “But something tells me that’ll be a bad idea.”
He was eyeing up the surroundings too, gun drawn. He didn’t answer.
Yep, he thought it was a bad idea too. “Okay, not run. Use Cindy.”
“What is she doing?” he finally said.
Mama Rita was just standing there, looking in our direction. “Waiting for us to make a move?”
The way to the building I needed to get to was left at the T-junction up ahead, then a right, then one more left. If I took Cindy, I’d be there so fast.
“Question is,” I said, “how quick will that thing move?”
We couldn’t stay here to find out.
“We go for it,” G offered. “I can’t see any mazoku here. They’ll avoid you anyway.”
A rumble and the spidery, serpentine nightmare released something into the air. Round, a big ball of smoke that rushed over to this street.
“Take—”
G’s call to take cover was cut off when the ball smacked into the spot Mama Rita and Violet had previously tainted with their presence. It bounced, rolled slightly, then came to a stop.
Mama Rita was cackling away as usual.
The thing was less smoky, more furry, and little cracks were starting to split the charcoal surface.
Oh, balls. That, ladies and gentlemen, was an egg.
I hated being right.
It burst open, and I braced myself for a spider attack. Should have held onto my light mazoku, might have come in handy for this.
Not spiders. Mazoku. Holy shit!
They launched out of the egg and into the people behind me. These weren’t regular grade demons or the juiced-up ones that lived in Mama Rita. No, these had eight arms. That was way too many talons to gut with.
G thrust his torch thingy into the air, a mazoku swooping so close to him that I even felt the hot wind of its hiss.
The Mama Rita creature released more and more eggs, loads of them hitting the street. Traps and guns fired, men and women howled—the ones too slow to not have their insides ripped out.
And the fun didn’t stop there. Those eggs were being sent further out into the city, seriously launched through the air.
London was gonna be overwhelmed in minutes.
Get ready for the apocalypse!
I had to go for it. This was my chance, even with this bloody chaos raging around me.
This was me, all on me, my quest, the biggest mission of my life. I’d be quicker on my own.
Don’t hate me, G.
Don’t hate me, Zach.
Don’t hate me, Ryoka.
They’d be super-mad, but it boiled down to one simple fact—this last act was mine to face. The mazoku traps were firing, working. I wouldn’t say my peeps would be safe here, but it’d be better than having them make the last run with me.
Leaving G behind sucked. Leaving them all behind sucked. Hardcore. But I wasn’t letting the ‘What Ifs?’ have their moment. Fuck ‘em. We’d see each other again. Defo. Yep.
Mama Rita would come after me. I mean, her attention was on me all the time, head bobbing on the red neck.
Let her come.
Without any more faffing, I leapt onto my bike, fired her up and tore off down the street, weaving through the eggs and making a sharp left turn, then a right, gunning the throttle.
G’s distressed cries of my name really broke my heart.
Damn.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gabriel
I watched him speed off as I called his name, horrific ice in my veins.
Aki had a job to do, but he wasn’t alone, and I wouldn’t let him be.
What was going through his head? A sense of duty that made him think he had to be the lone soldier?
The creature that was Mama Rita roared and began to move, a chorus of roars spilling from the jaws of her eight serpent neighbors. With each step she took with her spidery legs, the ground shook and cracked. Behind her, the old glass tower of Canary Wharf tumbled in a waterfall of glass and dust, smoke mushrooming into the sky.
Buildings crumbled as she made her way over, the buildings here on this street rumbling, bricks breaking free under the intense shaking.
She’d flatten the city!
“Akira!” she bellowed, laughing too.
Swinging my warding torch again, I yanked open the door of the nearest SCU van.
“Wait!” Ryoka yelled, his back turned to a mazoku closing in on him.
Zach leaped into its path, warding it off, losing his footing and tumbling to the ground.
Tenshi!
I went to help him up, another two demons coming for us. Zach was okay, had a slight bloody scratch to his cheek where a talon had nicked him, but nothing to worry about.
As three, we held up our wands, and the mazoku recoiled.
This was complete madness.
“Get in!” I barked.
The two men hopped in quickly beside me as I fired up the van—keys still in the ignition. I revved and took off in the direction Aki went in.
Mazoku hissed above us, giving chase. I changed gear, pushing the van as hard as it would go, turning into the next street on a hairpin.
“Look out!” Ryoka yelled as a mazoku launched at the van.
Zach and Ryoka’s wands held up to the windscreen were enough to scare it off, but its talons fractured the glass. One more hit and that would be that.
The van roof shuddered, the back window exploding open. Mazoku rushed inside, shrieking and hissing, the two men doing their best to defend our vehicle.
But there were too many. They were pouring into the street as ink flooding water, spreading over the road, over the windshield, smashing my window. Glass bit into my cheek. The passenger window burst open.
I roared with all my might and fury, pressing my foot down on the accelerator as darkness totally swallowed the van. We were smothered, and the warding torches were no longer enough. If I slowed down, we were dead. If I didn’t, we were dead.
An almighty choir of hissing and the roof was torn off.
The van smashed into something solid, a building to my right, metal screaming. Talons slashed at my face, and then the vehicle flipped over, spinning through the air and crashing to the ground in an immense boom on the passenger side. I crashed into my two companions, me the top of a tangled, painful pile of bodies. Every bone inside me rattled, my brain a ball in a cup.
I was still awake as the van slid, as claws gouged into my chest.
There was no way out.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I swerved into the manky old carpark outside the dirty glass building. It was just as I’d remembered it—dilapidated and creepy. This time it was shaking as that bitch stomped her way towards me.
There were SCU agents here, a ring of white surrounding the building. An anti-magical net keeping the mazoku away. They floated, tried it, but couldn’t get close enough.
“Mr. Murakami!” a woman called, and I ran over. “You made it,” she added from beneath a blue helmet.
“I’m going in.”
I didn’t wait, and she didn’t say anything else. I tore up the asphalt.
Come on, legs!
I dashed into the open doorway, pelting up the stairs as fast as I could. I tripped under the shaking, catching myself with my hands on the grimy stairs, grazing my palms. Lucky, it wasn’t my face.
“Akira!”
Green sparks rushed at me.
“Whoa!” I ducked, the crackling energy almost singeing my hair.
Purple next. I grabbed the banister of the stairs, leaped over and narrowly missed getting a dose of warlock energy to the face.
A witch and a warlock at the top of the stairs, with four big men behind them. Real bruisers, probably one of Violet’s crew. They looked the sort who came pounding on your door, and head, for rent you couldn’t pay.
Fuck! Sneaky bastards had slithered their way in.
Time to clear up.
Mama Rita cackled some more. Sounded like she’d stopped walking, but also like she was right outside. Guns fired, anti-magic flashed. I could see it through the dirty glass.
Ah, nuts! She’d slaughter them!
The magic users were recharging, so the men moved forward, axes and clubs in hand. No guns. They knew better when it came to facing me nowadays. What a shame.
I parried an ax swing from the first brute—they were all big and tanned and blended into one another—and swept his legs out from under him. He went down proper hard, as big bastards do, and got a katana through his heart.
Four Moons: The Complete Collection: (Books 1 - 4) Page 82
