by Zoe Marriott
“She is coming…” Rachel moaned, not even aware that she spoke. “So close. So close…”
She felt her spine stretch and ripple, bending in half like a snake’s. The words rose to a high-pitched cat scream as the worst pain yet ripped through her body.
“My Mistress!”
CHAPTER 19
DARKNESS HIDDEN
“Three!”
Hikaru darted out from between the cars.
I slapped one palm onto the road and heaved myself up, flying onto the pavement with my dad ahead of me and Shinobu right behind.
There was a shriek of recognition above us. The cry was taken up by a hundred other voices, the shrill, seagull calls making the fine hairs on the back of my neck struggle to rise under their coat of blood. My father glanced back, whipped his head forward again and shouted, “Don’t look!”
My legs shook. Hot wires of pain shot up my thighs and calves as I tried to keep up with my father and Hikaru. The breath tasted bloody on my numb lips, and in my hand, the sword’s energy was scorching the skin, its frustration burning through my tissues like radiation. Me, me, me!
Shut up!
Shinobu was a shadow at my side. He was holding back for my sake; he would’ve passed me in a second otherwise. I dug the balls of my feet into the pavement, vainly trying to squeeze out some extra speed. Above us, like a towering tsunami gathering to destroy all in its path, the dry rattle and chitter of Foul Women’s wings swept down out of the black sky.
Suddenly Hikaru wheeled round, dodged out of my father’s path, and lifted his hands above his head. As his palms clapped together, I saw his tail whip out behind him. A slender branch of lightning formed over his head, hit his joined hands and … bloomed.
Each of his fingers sprouted a tendril, and each tendril sprouted three more. The lightning multiplied silently through the air above Hikaru like an electrical forest growing up out of nowhere in less than the blink of an eye. I ignored my father’s order and looked back, blinking against the silvery after-images the lightning left on my vision.
Hikaru’s single bolt of energy had become an immense net of light hanging beneath the clouds. The unstoppable tsunami of Shikome flew straight into it. Pierced by delicate branches of lightning, the monsters shuddered and convulsed in midair. Their wings still flapped helplessly, like puppets dancing on Hikaru’s string.
Hikaru’s face was dead white, and in the eerie neon flicker of his lightning there was a sheen of sweat standing out on his skin. A pinprick of white light glowed in the pupil of each bright green eye. His teeth clenched in agony. With a snarl, the fox spirit ripped his hands apart.
The web of lightning winked out.
Thunder boomed through the city like an earthquake. The air vibrated – or the ground did – but either way we all staggered. Hikaru fell to his knees as Shinobu and I grabbed at each other for balance. My dad extended his arms like a sailor on the deck of a storm-ridden ship.
Then it stopped.
The stillness was almost frightening. Even the wind had dropped. The katana’s grip trembled in my hand. I thought I could feel its disappointment.
A hundred Shikome lay dead or dying around us, their bodies smoking. On the pavement, on the road, lying on the cars and draped over the rooftops. Their blasted corpses had blanketed the ground around them in drifts of grey feathers, like snow. Shinobu and I exchanged a long, awed look.
When Araki-san said that Hikaru was special, she hadn’t been kidding.
“Are you OK?” I asked him breathlessly. “What – what was that?”
“Ouch,” he groaned, clutching his skull. “Oh great and little gods, this must be what a hangover feels like. It was the heavenly net of a thousand stars. One of my grandmother’s favourites. I … can’t believe it worked. I didn’t know I had that much juice.”
“What would have happened if you did not have the ‘juice’?” Shinobu asked.
“You’d be talking to a pile of ashes.” Hikaru grinned at us weakly through his fingers.
“Hikaru,” I began, and even I could hear that I sounded exactly like my dad.
“You can shout at him later,” my father said. He caught Hikaru’s hand and pulled the Kitsune to his feet. “Let’s get moving again before—”
As he spoke, a chill breeze sprang up around us. It fluttered around our feet, growing as it rushed between our bodies, moaning angrily. My head snapped back. The clouds over our heads were boiling again, slowly bulging open to reveal a darkness that I knew all too well.
“It’s not over,” I cried. The wind shredded the words. “Come on!”
We fled towards the cafe on the corner of the street, skidding around the hospital signs and onto the narrow pedestrian way. Tall buildings rose on each side of us. On the left side parked cars lined the road. Ahead of us was open space – a line of bollards, ambulances and doctors’ cars – and the entrance to the hospital building.
The first Shikome dived into the street directly on top of me. I ducked down to one knee, slashing the katana above my head. The blade sparked with white flames, slicing through the monster’s hind leg like a paper knife through an envelope. The birdlike creature shot up with a squawk. Its massive paw dangled on a thread of skin.
Another monster took its place, swooping at Hikaru.
“Down!” my father shouted.
Another firebomb – his last – left his hand and smashed into the Foul Woman’s wing. Hikaru ducked under the monster’s legs as it whirled in the air. It crashed into the tarmac, shrieking, wings thrashing wildly. My father leapt back – but he didn’t move quite fast enough.
The tip of a wing brushed his face.
He frowned, confusion in his eyes as his left hand lifted to his face. Then he collapsed on the tarmac like a marionette with cut strings.
“Dad!”
I ran to his side and knelt in the road beside him. He was already fitting. The purple marks darkened on his face as I watched, turning almost black. His eyes were half-closed, their whites gleaming at me through the gap under his eyelashes. His mouth yawned open in a soundless scream. I could hear a voice echoing in the distance, crying the same word over and over and over. The word was “No”. The voice was mine.
We were almost there.
The green blade flashes down in the red light—
A Shikome stooped over me. I threw myself forward, shielding my father from its attack. Shinobu flashed past; his blades crossed in the air, and the creature reared back, its huge front paws scrabbling at its abdomen where Shinobu had almost disembowelled it. It smashed into the wall, bounced off, and somersaulted over the rooftop out of sight.
Dad’s back was arching up off the pavement, his head thudding against the ground. The seizure was bad, really bad, worse than Jack’s. He was reacting to the taint the same way I had, like both of us were more allergic to the monsters than regular people.
“Help!” I screamed, struggling to hold him.
Shinobu thrust his blades back into their sayas, bent down, and scooped my father up in his arms. I ran after him and Hikaru ran after me as Shinobu carried Dad to a line of parked cars and laid him down on the thin strip of pavement next to the wall of the cafe. I ripped my stained sweatshirt over my head and wadded it up to cushion the back of Dad’s skull as Shinobu held down his flailing hands. I was crying. Harsh, painful sobs that barely let me breathe. I couldn’t stop, couldn’t push it back.
Why isn’t he coming out of it? Come on, please, please come out of it. This can’t be happening!
Hikaru had squashed himself into the gap between the two parked cars next to us. He was staring at my father in horror. “Is he – will he—?”
A Foul Woman skidded over the car roofs, claws raking the metal with a long screeeeeee. I flung my body over my dad again as the other two ducked.
“Hikaru, do you have any juice left?” Shinobu demanded.
The fear on Hikaru’s face hardened into determination. “I have enough.”
“Try to
hold them off,” Shinobu said.
Hikaru nodded sharply. He turned away, getting up onto his knees and lifting his hands again. A fine whip of lightning crackled through the air and slapped the Shikome above us out of the sky.
I stared down at my father. He had gone still, his head falling to the side, mouth slack.
“Dad, come on! Wake up.”
I picked up one of his hands and pressed it to my cheek, squeezing my eyes shut. I barely knew him. I had lived with him all my life, and I’d just begun to figure out who he was. And he didn’t really know me either. He had no idea, under all my snark and defensiveness and anger, how much I loved him. I’d never told him.
Why hadn’t I told him?
“Daddy. Please. Please wake up…”
“Mio.”
Shinobu’s voice forced my eyes open, choking off the sobs in my throat.
“We are trapped. There is no hope of reaching shelter now.” His face was set, and his golden skin was pale. The beautiful dark eyes were fathomless with sorrow. “Whatever solution you were going to find, whatever miracle you were waiting for, it is too late. There is no more time and there are no more choices. You have to do it.”
Lightning cracked through the sky again – weaker this time. No matter how brave he was, Hikaru wouldn’t be able to keep his defence up long.
“You know that I can’t.”
“No.” His gaze bored into mine. “You know what to do. You have the sword’s second name. You would not have fought me so hard, been so hurt and angry, if you were not convinced, deep down, that you could make this work.”
The green blade flashes down in the red light—
I won’t let go.
I shook my head frantically. “There has to be another way, something else – I can call the sword’s second name without… I’m strong enough. I can find a way to control it—” I made as if to lift the sword, scrabbling to my knees. Shinobu’s hand found mine on the hilt and held it down.
“It will overcome you. If you try to do this alone, it will take your mind, and its power will go into more destruction, more death. Not healing. You know this.”
“You can’t ask me to sacrifice you!”
“You would sacrifice yourself,” he said. He leaned forward, clutching my hand on the katana’s grip. His hand was too tight, painful. “But it would all be for nothing. It would be wasted. Mio, I know you. I know that if you could take my place, you would give your life in a heartbeat to save Jack, your father, everyone. But that is not your task. You must survive. You are the sword-bearer. You are the key to this battle – the one who will end this war. Let me play my part. Let me save you this time.”
The green blade flashes down in the red light—
In my mind I saw the man from my dream. The man who had come to bring the girl the katana as she waited in vain for Shinobu to return. He bent over Shinobu as Shinobu lay in the red leaves, dying. The man’s long face was gloating and pleased. His eyes shone pure white in his face.
Izanagi.
In his hand he held a sword, the blade curved like a leaf, carved from some mottled green stone. He raised the sword above Shinobu, then plunged it down into Shinobu’s chest.
What are you prepared to sacrifice…?
Of course I knew what to do. I’d known almost before the old man opened his mouth; I had seen it in my dreams and visions so often. Shinobu’s spirit had been bound into the blade when Izanagi murdered him. To return his spirit to its prison, I would have to murder him again in the same way.
But how could I? How could I kill the one I loved the most, even if the world was at stake?
“Shinobu—”
“My love.” His voice was calm again. Something had changed; he had seen the knowledge in my face, and surety replaced anguish in his eyes. “I never had a choice before. But I can choose my fate this time, and that is all I ask. I want to leave you knowing that I have done all I could to keep you and your loved ones safe. I want my passing to be worth something more than a lonely death on a bleak battlefield. If you love me, do not take that choice from me.”
How could anyone refuse the one they loved the most when the world was at stake?
My dad was horribly still now. I looked down at the tiny fine lines around his mouth and eyes, lines of strain and struggle. The icy wind of Yomi wailed around us, ruffling his short black hair, and for the first time I noticed a few silver threads at his temple. There is no universal definition of love…
Shinobu whispered, “You have to let me go.”
I reached across my father’s body and grabbed the back of Shinobu’s neck, burying my fingers in his soft hair. I kissed him.
It was a moment that lasted a thousand moments, a breath that stretched on for a thousand breaths, a heartbeat that stood still in time. I clutched at it, at him, drawing every tiny detail into my heart forever. The slide of his hair against my palm. The taste of his breath. The moth’s-wing flutter of his eyelash against my cheek. The warmth, the glorious living warmth, of his skin touching mine.
Hold on tight.
Don’t let go.
Don’t ever let go.
The katana’s power blazed against my palm, fighting me, blistering me with its fury. No, no, no, no! I ignored it.
Our lips parted.
Our eyes locked.
My vision turned black at the edges, the intensity of my focus setting light to his face until he seemed to shine as painfully bright as the sun. Shinobu’s hand tightened even more over mine on the hilt of the katana. Both of us were shuddering with fear and misery.
Together we drew the sword back.
Together we plunged the blade into his heart.
The green blade flashes down in the red light—
The guard thudded home against his breastbone. I heard his agonized gasp of pain and cried out in horror. Despair squeezed my eyes tight shut. I forced them open a second later, but it was too late. The boy I loved was already disappearing, fading away like dark ink swirling in a flood of clean water.
And then, in Shinobu’s place, there was light. It coalesced around the blade, pulsing softly – pulsing in time with my own heartbeat – a blazing starburst of shimmering prismatic colours that the unnatural twilight couldn’t dim. I realized that I was looking at Shinobu’s soul. Who he was, what he was, inside.
It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
As I watched, the light slowly sank into the blade, passing into the flame-shaped ripples that marked the metal and melding with them until all the light was gone.
The hilt of the sword was cool in my hand again. Its furious buzzing had stopped. It lay quiescent, inert. The wind whistled around me mournfully.
I knew then the shape of the darkness hidden inside me. It was the same darkness that had lurked in Ojiichan, and maybe even my father. They had each loved me so much, they had tried to mould me, make me over. Make me better.
Ojiichan wanted the perfect guardian for the sword. A warrior who followed orders unquestioningly. Who loved the blade as much as he did. He had trained me to fulfil this destiny from the moment I could walk and talk.
My father? He wanted a blank slate. A chance to undo the wrongs that had been done to him by his father. He needed me to be some ideal average British teenager, only caring about homework and curfews, with no thought for my heritage or the past.
They had held their love and approval in front of me like a carrot, trying to get me to grow into the shape they desired. They had made me powerless in their struggle with each other, and kept the knowledge that I needed to make my own choices from me. Between them, they had harmed me more than either of them could ever know.
And yet, even knowing how it felt, I had still tried to do the same to Shinobu, the one I loved.
Of course I had. I knew if I let him make his own choice, he would leave me.
Now it had happened, just as I had always feared. Just like I’d always known, down deep, that it would. I hadn’t held on tight enoug
h, and he had slipped through my fingers.
I had let him go.
Hikaru fell between the cars on his hands and knees, gasping. “I’m empty. Sorry. That’s it.” He stopped short and stared. “Where’s—?”
A pair of Shikome shot directly down over the roof of the cafe towards where we sat.
“Protect my dad,” I told Hikaru, ignoring his exclamation of shock as I got to my feet.
I lifted the sword above my head to point at the monsters. And then I said the name Mr Leech had whispered in my ear just before the window slammed down between us.
“Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi.”
The sword burst into flames. Pearly and glittering with barely seen colours, warm as summer rain, they cascaded down over me, cloaking my whole body in a mantle of light. I felt strong, gentle arms wrap around me.
“Shinobu.”
The streetlights around me flared like Roman candles, sparks fountaining everywhere. A lance of white light broke from the point of the katana’s blade and rose up, passing through the attacking Foul Women and turning them to ash in an instant. The light shot further upwards, piercing the black clouds above the rooftops and reaching past them too, past the blue bowl of our atmosphere, into the heavens themselves.
“Watch…” Shinobu’s voice breathed in my ear.
The glorious white flames rippled out around me in concentric circles like waves in a still pond, travelling fast, fast, faster than anything but light itself could move, carrying my mind’s eye with them as they went through the bricks and the concrete and the glass.
Through the whole city.
Through all the people in London who were smeared by a dark sickness – the taint – which dimmed the vital glow of their souls. The flames washed over them, and that darkness dissolved in the brilliance of the light, nothing more than nightmares disappearing with the dawn.
At my feet, my father’s eyes snapped open, the rash rapidly fading from his skin.
In a hospital room near by Jack sucked in a deep breath and shot upright in her bed.
