by Zoe Marriott
We passed through the gate. The electricity flared up ahead, standing nearly a foot high in some places. There was another crack of thunder. The black smoke was a thick cloud now, boiling in the air above the flicker of the Kitsune’s energy.
“More power!” yelled Araki.
Several Kitsune whipped their tails. Balls of lightning – red, bluish, golden – sailed up over the line to smash into the lightning wall, and were consumed by it. The lightning roared higher.
“Two steps forward!”
It was working. Working! We were only a hundred yards away from the cat’s lair now. We wouldn’t have to go in there alone. I wouldn’t have to make that terrible, desperate choice between my friend’s life and the rest of the world—
I heard glass breaking.
Above the lightning and the black smoke, the tall windows of the power station were bulging out, shattering under the pressure of what pressed against them. A dark mass burst through and spilled down the walls, seething across the concrete towards us. It wasn’t until the first sleek bodies leapt over the lightning wall and hit the Kitsune like a battering ram that I realized what I was looking at.
It was just too crazy.
“Not again!” Jack said, bringing her glaive down.
Cats. Thousands of them. Thousands upon thousands.
The organized lines of the Kitsune army dissolved into chaos as the fox spirits were forced to let go of one another to defend themselves. Swords flashed. Guns barked, muzzle flares reflecting from the dull maroon bricks of the power station. I saw the shapes of larger animals among the sea of cats, snarling and sending bolts of lightning flying, and realized that some of the Kitsune had lost it completely and reassumed fox form. Screams and yelps filled the air.
The cats broke through the last Kitsune line and leapt at me, Jack and Shinobu, clawing and spitting. I abandoned any thoughts of fluffy kittens, drew my sword and fought back. It was that or go down under the weight of them. I saw a Kitsune near by get swallowed up under a pile of least thirty felines and leapt towards him, slashing and stamping, using every bit of my new strength to haul him out. He emerged covered in blood, panting, his eyes wild, and transformed under my hand, turning into a black-and-white, double-tailed fox, the size of a Doberman Pinscher. With a bloodcurdling growl, he turned on the cats, ripping through them with teeth and lightning balls. The scent of charred meat made me gag. I backed away.
The Kitsune’s wall of lightning was dying down, flickering and fading away without the foxes’ joined power to feed it. Black smoke surged through the gaps.
Araki appeared beside me, a modern composite crossbow in one hand. Blood dripped down the side of her face. I didn’t know if it was hers.
“Follow me!” She turned and charged directly at the power station, loading and shooting the crossbow like a machine, streaks of lightning shooting from her tails and clearing a path through the black smoke before us. Shinobu and Jack flanked me as I chased after her. Hiro shot out of nowhere, a gun in each hand, and fell in beside her, adding his lightning to hers and his bullets to her arrows. A second later Hikaru was there too, bringing up the rear, dispatching pursuing cats with his swords.
The six of us hit the wall with a clash. Araki and Hiro leapt towards the nearest door – a large, rusted metal thing that looked like it had been used for heavy goods – and started trying to force it open. Their combined blue-and-gold lightning flashed and crackled around the doorway with the Nekomata’s magical protections. Hikaru planted himself behind us to fend off the tide of cats that was flowing back towards the power station. With showers of rust and a deep, protesting groan, the metal door began to rise up. An inch. Two.
Hiro’s eyes rolled back in their sockets. He collapsed against the wall, black smoke wreathing his ankles. The golden lightning on the door suddenly flickered and died.
Araki yelled his name, but her voice was drowned out by a crash from above. Broken glass pinged off the concrete, and then a new wave of cats fell down on us. I grabbed Jack with my free hand and dragged her into the shelter of the doorway just in time. Shinobu whirled in after us. Araki fell under the onslaught, swearing and fighting, her electricity crackling all around her.
Before I could go to her aid, Hikaru shoved past us, dropped his swords, and slammed both his hands onto the door.
The impact rang through the rusted metal with a hollow boom. Thunder cracked deafeningly. Sizzling, white energy detonated around the entrance, and the door shot up with a protesting shriek, sticking at the level of my hip.
“Go, end this!” Hikaru shouted. “And don’t die!”
I ducked and rolled under the door. Jack and Shinobu followed me.
The door fell closed behind us with an earth-shuddering clang.
We were in the Nekomata’s lair.
And there was no way out.
CHAPTER 22
THE FORTRESS OF THE CAT
I froze where I was, still crouched, katana drawn. My eyes, scorched by the lightning outside, were almost blind. The sudden quiet after the sounds of battle made my ears hum. Behind me, I heard Shinobu ease to his feet. Jack wheezed softly. None of us spoke.
What now?
What now?
Gradually my breathing slowed. My shoulders slumped. I put one hand on my knee and pushed myself up, still holding the blade defensively. Jack blew out a relieved breath. There was a soft, metallic whisper as Shinobu stepped forward, having sheathed his wakizashi. The katana he had borrowed from the Kitsune was in his right hand. The three of us stood abreast.
We looked around.
It was a tall, narrow space, about as long as a football pitch but a quarter as wide. The ceiling was held up by columns of dingy, cracked tiles, white at the top, with a wide strip of darker tiles halfway down, and then painted white concrete below. In the roof, a long strip of broken glass, marked with metal rods, ran the length of the chamber, letting in a blaze of brilliant, white light that seemed far too bright to come from the moon. The light fell in jagged fragments, highlighting a patch of weeds in the cracked cement floor here, a pile of crumpled papers there, but failing to break through the deepest darkness. Wonky metal safety barricades, slumping and bent, sectioned some parts of the space off. An abandoned hard hat gleamed in one corner, vivid yellow, like a baby duck about to be swallowed by the shark shadows around it.
“This isn’t where we came on our school trip. The place is huge. I think the main part is probably ahead,” I whispered.
Shinobu began: “We need to be cautious—”
“We need to find Rachel,” Jack broke in. Her voice was edgy and insistent, as if she thought I might have forgotten why we were here.
Her instincts are good. Guilt stabbed at me. I clamped my teeth together.
“I know,” Shinobu told her. “But like all cats, Nekomata are territorial. Now that it has claimed this place, it will have started to build a nest somewhere. That is where we will find your sister.”
And the Nekomata, I finished silently.
Jack took a step away from me, her glaive at the ready. I reached out to grab the back of her coat.
“No,” I hissed. “We have to stick together. Together we have a chance. Alone, it can pick us off and eat us like chicken nuggets.”
“Look, I might have bleached hair, but I’m not actually a blonde,” Jack said impatiently. “And I’m not, like, three either. You can let go of me. I won’t wander away, for Christ’s sake.”
I released her, flexing my fingers. The katana vibrated gently in my other hand. I lifted the sword, trying to make out the flame-shaped ripples in the silver cutting edge. It was too dim. But I could still feel the energy moving under the surface of the metal. Every moment that I carried the sword, I became more attuned to it. This was not a great time to have doubts, but it was suddenly very clear to me that bringing the katana anywhere near this battle was a huge risk. Voluntarily carrying it right into the Nekomata’s nest was probably insanity.
But without the sw
ord’s power, none of us were getting out of here alive.
“Um, hello?” Jack said. “Are we searching or what?”
I met Shinobu’s eyes over the edge of the blade. I knew that he would walk out of here with me right now if I asked him to – if we could find a way out. But Jack wouldn’t. And neither would Rachel.
I nodded.
He drew his second blade again and moved into the lead. Jack and I fell in behind him, wordlessly recreating the arrow-head formation we had seen the foxes use earlier today. We moved slowly through the space, skirting the light coming in through the ceiling.
Shinobu and I both jerked at a scraping sound to our left. Jack lifted her hand apologetically, gesturing downwards. She had stepped on a crushed drink can. As we watched, she warily used the blade of the glaive to poke through the heap of rubbish near her, then shook her head. Nothing.
I jumped again as something uncoiled in the corner of my eye. My head snapped round. Just an empty patch of concrete. A moment later I caught a fleeting glimpse of darkness unfolding above me, but when my gaze darted up, there wasn’t even a shadow to explain what I’d seen.
It would have been comforting to think I was imagining stuff, but I’d learned by now that when I saw something, no matter how freaky, it was a bad idea to ignore it. I had the impression that the shapes of the tiled columns, the height of the ceiling, the cracks in the cement floor, were warping around us, ever so slightly. The Nekomata’s magic, or the magic of its Mistress, was rippling through this place like radiation, affecting everything it touched. I could feel it slithering around me. I shuddered.
The katana’s blade caught a ray of light and flashed. The slithering sensation faded a little. I squeezed the silk-wrapped hilt in thanks.
“You all right?” Jack asked.
I nodded. “You?”
She shrugged. The movement was jerky. Her mood worried me, but there was nothing I could do to help her. The only thing that would fix Jack was getting Rachel back safe and sound. If we didn’t manage that, she would never be right again.
Don’t make me choose. Oh God, don’t make me choose…
The chamber was big, but it was echoingly empty. It didn’t take long to search it, and even before we had checked the last pile of rubbish, I knew that the Nekomata was not here. The space was too open and accessible, too close to the edge of the compound. The Nekomata would have picked a better place for its nest. Somewhere it could easily trap and dispatch intruders.
We had to go deeper into its lair.
There was a tall, arched opening in the wall between two of the pillars. Shinobu eased through it first. He hesitated, a tiny puff of air leaving his lips. As soon as I crossed the threshold, I understood why. A soft, ghostly sensation – like hair or feathers, or some other thing I didn’t want to think about – trailed across my skin. The sense of unseen things moving all around me intensified.
I tried to ignore the disturbing feeling and assess the space we were in. This chamber was at least three times as large as the last one, but it was built on the same lines – long and narrow. If it had ever had a roof, there was no trace of it now. Holes gaped in the brickwork beside the glassless windows. Battersea’s four famous white towers loomed, one at each corner, above walls that climbed at least a hundred feet above us into a mishmash of scaffolding, catwalks and metal caging. Beyond the nearest tower, the moon blazed in a black, starless sky.
It wasn’t the same moon I had seen as I’d approached this place. Or the same sky. The light was too bright and the blackness too black. In one of those strange jumps of intuition, I knew: this was the sky of Yomi.
Despite the brilliance of the moonlight, stark, impenetrable shadows lurked everywhere, beneath the metal platforms and on the huge heaps of rubbish – discarded papers, rags, plastic bags and dry leaves – that stood nearly as high as my head.
I became aware of my breath, and Jack’s and Shinobu’s, clouding in the air before us. It hadn’t been that cold a second before. Maybe the lack of ceiling had something to do with the sudden dip in temperature.
Or maybe not.
“It’s here,” I whispered.
A low, shuddering moan of wind moved through the chamber. Crumpled papers and leaves rattled on the concrete floor as a cloud drifted across the moon, plunging us into sudden, total darkness.
We waited, stock-still but shivering, in the black. The wind moaned again. Rubbish stirred as if it was alive, and I had the helpless feeling that reality was rearranging itself around us while we stood frozen at the epicentre. My skin prickled with goose flesh.
A ray of moonlight broke through the cloud, falling on something tossed carelessly into the heap of debris beneath a metal platform near by. Something that hadn’t been there a moment before.
A human body.
“Rachel!”
Jack’s scream shattered the unnatural silence. I heard her feet scrape on the cement as she ran forward.
The cloud shredded fully away from the moon, revealing the dark shape of the Nekomata clinging to the underside of the platform above Rachel.
My voice and Shinobu’s blurred into one shout of fear as we charged after Jack. She reached the platform a couple of steps ahead of us and skidded underneath, throwing her body protectively over Rachel’s. The Nekomata’s face, split in two by a row of needlelike fangs, dropped down into her view.
Jack bared her own teeth.
“Get away from my sister!”
The glaive flashed, and the Nekomata yelped – I thought more in surprise than pain – as a trickle of black liquid dripped down its cheek.
Shinobu ducked under the platform, blades slicing the air around him like a silver halo. The demon flicked its head away from his weapons, neck elongating until it was as thin and flexible as a swan’s. The movement put it right into the path of my katana. I lunged. The Nekomata flinched at the last second, and what should have been a killing strike only grazed it.
The monster howled. Tentacles shot over the sides of the platform, and the beast heaved itself up and away. Its spreading shadow fled into the complex network of scaffolding and cages on the wall.
“Stay with Rachel!” I shouted at Jack.
I sheathed my sword, grabbed a scaffolding pole and began to climb. My weight made the whole jerry-rigged mess jerk and wobble. Above me, there were rusty metal bars – the rungs of a ladder welded to the wall. I transferred my grip to one and jumped across.
The scaffolding kept shuddering. I looked down before I could think better of it and saw Shinobu coming after me.
“Rachel is alive,” he called up to me. “Unconscious, but alive.”
I let out a shuddering sigh. “Oh, thank you. Thank you.”
I wasn’t sure if I was talking to him, or God, or what. It didn’t matter right then. Rachel was safe and Jack was with her.
I waited as Shinobu leapt onto the ladder beneath me. My last sight of his face showed that it was filled with the same determination I felt. Hikaru had summed it up perfectly. End this. And don’t die.
It was now or never.
The Nekomata, perfectly camouflaged in this landscape of black and silver, had disappeared somewhere above us. All we could do was climb. The tinny sound of our feet on the metal rungs made it hard to listen for sounds that might give the demon’s location away. Where is it?
The ladder passed into a section of criss-crossed metal reinforcements, like cages, that spread out on either side of us, bisecting the wall. Rickety-looking scaffolding was attached in the gaps, as if someone had started, but not bothered to complete, maintenance work. A wide, metal walkway was bolted on above that, obscuring my view of what was beyond.
A black talon the size of a bowie knife lashed at my face.
I didn’t draw the katana. At least, I don’t remember doing it. It was just in my hand, and my hand was moving.
The Nekomata’s claw hit the flat of the sword. I reversed the blade and sliced sideways, biting into flesh. A high squeal of pain echo
ed out of the shadowy scaffolding a few feet away, to the right. It had been waiting for us.
Shinobu surged up behind me, his body caging mine as he caught the rung above my head with his left hand. The borrowed katana was in his right. Two more claws slashed at us. Shinobu deflected one. I let myself drop a rung and thrust my katana out into the space under Shinobu’s arm. The blade sliced the top five inches of the Nekomata’s second claw neatly off.
Something coiled around my ankle over my boot.
Shit.
I grabbed hold of a rung, the hilt of the katana clanging into the side of the ladder.
The tentacle on my leg pulled.
A grunt of pain burst out of my lips as I clung to the rusted metal. The rivets securing the ladder to the wall groaned. My hip, knee and ankle felt as if they were popping out of their joints.
Shinobu swung away from me, then grabbed a scaffolding pole to the left with his free hand, and launched himself over it in a move I’d only seen watching the Olympics. At the height of the swing he let go. He flashed past me, sword extended, and sliced through the tentacle holding my ankle. As I snapped into the wall with the release of tension, he caught a pole to my right. Safe.
Another claw whipped by me, heading for Shinobu’s unprotected neck. It ripped the tie from his braid before I brought my boot back and stomped on it with all my might, crushing it into the wall. Once it was trapped, I slashed it to shreds.
It was too much for the Nekomata. With a furious hiss, it rushed out of the scaffolding and scuttled up the wall, disappearing over the side of the walkway above us.
Shinobu swung himself back one-handed to land on the ladder below me again.
“Thanks!” I puffed between my teeth as I carefully resheathed the katana and started climbing.
I caught a glimpse of his heartbreaking smile “Thank you, Mio-dono.”
I reached the metal platform and climbed through the hatch, with Shinobu half a second behind me. We both drew our swords.
The walkway ran the entire length of the wall. It was about six-feet wide in most places, with a safety rail mostly intact along its edge. We were nearly halfway up the wall here. Through the broken windows and gaps in the brickwork, the city’s lights twinkled. The Nekomata was nowhere to be seen. I craned my neck warily upwards.
