It growled softly, a sound that slowly escalated into that train-wreck noise I had heard earlier, a noise that ripped up and down my spine. As it tipped its horned head to the heavens and let loose with the full strength of its scorching voice, I dropped to my knees in front of the sword still wedged in the ground, my hands over my ears, trembling body and soul, completely overwrought by the sight of it.
Master, a sexless voice said clearly into my ear, though no one stood there. You called. I came. What do you desire?
My head felt like it had nails being pounded into it with every syllable. “Who…who the fuck are you?” I screamed.
It eyed me keenly, like a great cat, then let loose another roar so loud it sandpapered my face and left my ears ringing long afterward. To me, the roar sounded like a name. Like Raiju.
Again came the voice in my head, belching and angry: I lose patience, little boy. What do you desire? Why do you summon the greatest of the Kami?
I nearly crumbled at the sound of it. I turned to the first monster that I had nearly forgotten existed. It was undulating in the street, eyeing the larger newcomer with a rolling fright. I thought of the dead girl in the debris. I thought, obliquely, Kill this creature who has killed these children. Destroy it utterly.
Raiju laughed, the sound purring through my brain. I like you, Master, it said. We shall be friends. Then it turned and leaped with feline grace at the first monster.
The frog-thing attempted to retreat, but Raiju’s sword-sized claws flashed out as it plowed remorselessly into it. The impact drove both beasts back into a line of brownstone projects, crushing them like they were made of plastic. I shuddered at the sight of Raiju savagely ripping long, flaming wounds in the monster’s black hide. Then the two kaiju started rolling over and over in the debris, kicking up sparks from the buildings and ripping loose bits of unnatural flesh from each other as they went at it literally tooth and nail.
Blood and debris rained down around me, smelling of ozone and red death. The sounds the beasts made were like machines on full power, clanking and grinding together.
What have I done? I thought. What have I done?
And how do I undo it?
Raiju reared up and managed to flip the smaller monster onto its back, its tender underbelly exposed to the flashing black claws. But the first monster was more resourceful than it looked. It opened its massive, froglike mouth, and its tongue—long, slick-black and barbed like a deadly weapon—darted out and smashed into Raiju’s flaming shoulder. The tongue stuck solidly in the gold-plated flesh like a projectile weapon.
Raiju reared back, bits of flame raining down over the street like weird, otherworldly snow, but the barbs held. The black beast let out its chuckling chalkboard laugh as a number of snake-like appendages whipped out and encircled Raiju’s neck and legs, biting fiercely down. Now, with its opponent well in hand, it reached up and scratched at the massive, lion-like face with its flippery claws. Raiju roared in anguish, baring dagger-like teeth to the heavens while fire from its shorn mane drifted down to alight the remnants of the projects. It swung its claws at the barbed tongue stuck in its shoulder, the black flesh ripping like hemp with a snapping noise. Finally, it swiped at the other appendages, each of them bursting like rotted vines and falling to the street below, where they cooled into lines of black ash.
Defeated, bleeding and wounded, the first monster somersaulted over its opponent, righting itself on the flaming tarmac before retreating a step.
Raiju rubbed at its face with its forepaw in a gesture almost human, then shook itself and stood up again, towering at least forty stories over the sticklike remnants of the rowhouses and establishments it was crushing into debris. It let out an earth-rattling roar I was certain could be heard as far south as the Long Island Sound.
I was sweating from pain and electric with fear, but I was too numbed by the sight of the battle before me to even react.
Raiju lunged forward, clacking its massive, catlike jaws at its opponent in warning. The black, froglike beast hissed tonguelessly and retreated another step, its fishlike tail flapping angrily against the flattened remnants of the buildings, suddenly unsure of the situation. Despite the first monster’s massive scaly bulk, Raiju was at least twice its size. I doubted it could endure another go-round at this point and not be ripped to shreds.
I smiled despite myself and the horror of the situation. No mercy, I thought to Raiju. Take it apart!
The great silky ears on the catlike head twitched as if it was listening to my thoughts. The flaming hair on the back of Raiju’s neck stood on end like quills, as dangerous looking as the crown of horns on its head that corkscrewed in every direction. It roared at its opponent, the sound so ear-splittingly loud that every window within a thousand yards exploded like a bomb going off.
Raiju leaped, coming down on the retreating monster’s muscular fish tail flexing wildly from side to side. Raiju ripped into it, tearing long flaming gouges through scales and skin and flesh. The first monster screamed in pain and tried to leap away, but Raiju had it now and it would not release its prey, raking its claws through the flesh so fiercely that scales flew hundreds of feet into the air to land like burning dervishes all over the street.
The beast let out a rattling death cry as Raiju worked at reducing it to soft black sludge one swipe of a claw at a time. Soon all that remained was a quivering black soup undulating in the middle of the street. The black slime that had once been a kaiju flowed away from Raiju, darting for every grate, open manhole and crack in the street. I jumped back as the slime washed by, singeing the toes of my boots as it retreated into the sewer grate in the curb in front of me. The septic smell of it was enough to make me want to gag in the street.
I thought it would all end there. But bereft of its adversary, Raiju turned its flaming blue eyes on me, belching out rotten-egg-stinking smoke from its flaring nostrils. There was nothing of life or light in those brilliant blue eyes. It looked at me. It listened to me. But it did not love me. It did not even like me. I was less than an insect to it. A bacterium. It had lived a million lifetimes before me and it would live a million more after I was gone. It was a god, after all. It glared at me, challenging me with these thoughts.
How do you approach a god, except on your knees? I felt the massive pressure of its contempt and felt my legs weaken and turn to water, spilling me to the ground in front of the sword. The sword! The sword was responsible, somehow. I grabbed the hilt as the massive Kami towered over me, a fiery brilliance with a grin of saber teeth. I never would have guessed that it hated me so much. The blind, bottomless hatred of angels and demons. It snarled at me, telling me I was stupid and useless. Weak. Telling me to give up, to give in.
But I resisted the temptation to beg for my life. I might be ignorant, I might not understand what had just transpired here, but I had never been weak. It was not in my make up. I had been through too much already. Instead, I used the sword to pull myself to my feet so I was standing against it. It was like standing in a gale-force wind, standing against death or the end of the world, and it was the hardest thing I had ever had to do. But if I was going to die tonight, I promised myself, it would be as a man on my feet, not a child on my knees.
“I’m not afraid of you,” I hissed through my teeth.
You will be, it said, its lightning-blue eyes ripping through me like blades with a single look.
“Oh go to hell,” I screamed and yanked the sword from the ground like a modern-day King Arthur pulling Excalibur from the rock. It came out easily, no resistance at all.
The Kami halved its burning eyes at me. I couldn’t tell if it was pleased with me or infuriated by my act of insolence. With a flick of its tail, its living coat of fire seemed to go supernova, burning up like a candle flame being snuffed between two invisible fingers. Then it was gone, leaving spots of light and darkness burned against my retinas.
The sword burned up the moment it was free of the ground. Me? I fell down in the rubble of the stree
t, trembling with exhaustion, my hair and clothes smoking coolly. I was still lying there, gagging and shaking like an epileptic some fifteen minutes later when the paramedics finally found me.
4
There’s nothing like seeing the inside of the 84th Precinct when you haven’t done anything wrong. You know you’re innocent, yet you still manage to feel nervous. Like they’re going to find some dirt on you that even you didn’t know existed. I was still messed up after the monster tried to eat me. Being taken down to the precinct to give a statement didn’t help much.
A couple of older police officers guided me through a crowded, squalling bullpen to the desk of a young plainclothes detective. I noticed, rather absently, that KTV had finally caught up on the events of the evening, though the footage being shown on the TV in the corner of the squad room was strictly ex post facto at this point. The detective started asking me questions, but it took several tries before I was able to answer with any coherency. I felt numb, detached, and had a vague craving for a smoke. He asked me again and again what happened. Again and again I explained everything while staring wild-eyed at the news broadcast, but after an hour or so I found myself wallowing in mental Jell-O. I realized I was talking about flaming swords and monsters and other such things that I realized would probably contribute greatly to my long-term commitment to a nice, high-end mental institution.
“…it happened because of the sword…the sword summoned Raiju…”
The young detective looked worried, as if he was afraid I was going to break down into hysterics.
I cupped my hands over my face, feeling like my head was going to explode. I rocked back and forth in my seat. “Mr. Serizawa knew. He knew that Raiju was waking. Somehow. He knew I would summon it with the sword!”
“The…sword?” said the detective. He’d stopped writing my wild shit down a long time ago and just sat there, staring at me with pity-filled eyes.
“The one I made when my hands caught on fire.” Way to go, Kev.
I was feeling panicky again and I wished I would just shut the hell up. I put my head between my knees and concentrated on just breathing and not passing out as the room swam around me like a giant aquarium. The detective must have seen something in my face because a few seconds later he was on one knee, holding a wastepaper basket under my chin while I horked violently into it. He squeezed my shoulder, said something about that being enough for now, and I never felt more affection for a stranger than when the officer gave me a paper napkin to wipe my mouth with.
He left me to talk to some other eyewitnesses. I stared at the TV as the chattering sounds of the bullpen closed in around me. I had summoned Raiju with the sword, and Raiju had fought the other monster, but none of this was my doing. It wasn’t like I had gone out there into the world in search of the magic sword of Castle Greyskull, for fuck’s sake.
They’d gotten all they would out of me. I wasn’t going to tell them anything. Not until I found out what the hell was going on.
According to the TV, the governor had declared a state of emergency for the City of New York so the National Guard could move in. The part of downtown Brooklyn where the monsters had fought had been declared a disaster zone, damage in the billions. Projects were reduced to smoldering holes in the ground. The club was completely demolished. It was like 9/11 taken to the max.
I wanted my dad. I wanted to get the hell out of here. But when I started looking frantically around for an escape, I spotted a group of men in dark suits and coats and plastic-looking hair pushing through the squad room self-importantly. They tripped my trouble radar big time. Definitely not police or plainclothes detectives—you can tell the difference. These guys wore all black and favored designer shades that can’t be bought on a cop’s salary. I would have guessed FBI or CIA, except they were all Japanese.
I felt a small surge of hope when I recognized the older man in the lead. If I wasn’t mistaken, it was steely-haired Dr. Mura of the infamous MuraTech—Aimi’s dad. He had made the news often enough that anyone who was a science or Greenpeace geek would recognize him. Maybe Aimi was here to take me home, I thought. But I felt my little hope wither away as soon as Dr. Mura stopped at my chair, his coat on his shoulders Mafioso-style. He didn’t look like he was here to take me home. He looked like he was here on business.
You should know something. That old joke about all Asians looking alike is totally false. Dr. Mura looks nothing like my dad, even though they’re both Japanese and about the same age. Unlike Dad, Dr. Mura is small and fragile-looking, with grey, sunless skin, and myopic eyes behind heavy glasses. My dad is fat and muscular, and he has the kind of open, boyish face that you trust in a heartbeat. You just know he’s looking out for your best interest. Dr. Mura, on the other hand, looks skittish, like the little nervous guy in the zombie movie that messes everything up in the end. Standing there beside his tall, muscular men in their dark, undertaker-inspired charcoal suits, a deep crease pulsing between his eyes, he looked less like one of the country’s top scientists and more like a put-upon Yakuza kingpin.
I looked up at all the Japanese men standing over me, wondering why Dr. Mura and his goons wanted to talk to me, what MuraTech could possibly want with me. I scrunched back in my seat when a half dozen Dagger shades turned their attention on me. They smiled like mannequins, eyes black and empty like windows to machines. Then they opened fire and the questioning began all over again.
5
Around three in the morning the MuraTech men finally let me go. By then I was beyond tired, almost punch-drunk. The windows of the old cinderblock station were pitch-black with flickering lights glinting in the darkness beyond—fires. Japantown was burning. I heard sirens as firefighters busily doused the buildings and the surrounding streets. Tomorrow there might be more. Tomorrow New York might not exist anymore.
I walked down the long, grubby hall toward the waiting room, past people sitting in cold plastic chairs, crying in groups or alone. I watched babies screaming and old people praying to gods that must have gone blind and deaf to let this happen. I felt numb somewhere in the deeper part of my bones.
I turned my thoughts back to Dr. Mura and his mannequins. Most of the questions had been standard fair, why I was there, what I saw, etc. Nobody asked me about the sword business—I guess they thought I was a crazy boy after what I had witnessed. But something about the MuraTech men were different. They seemed obsessed with every little detail. One even analyzed me by passing a Geiger counter and a wand over my clothes. I wasn’t fooled any. They might have worn dark business suits and glasses, but they all had fancy gadgets and the antiseptic smell of scientists. Their questions were far too detailed for cops or G-men. I’m not as stupid as I look.
“It’s a qilin,” I told them.
They looked at me in confusion. They might have been Japanese by birth, but they obviously had no idea what I was talking about. The genius IQ comes in handy sometimes. “That’s a Japanese chimera, guys. It’s made up of all kinds of things—snake, centipede, frog.” They looked even more confused, but instead of explaining, I decided to annoy them some more. “You know, in Japanese mythology, centipedes look like beautiful women before they try and kill you. It couldn’t even afford the courtesy.”
I was tired and pissed off. So sue me.
The four scientists-in-disguise started grumbling in Japanese, but Dr. Mura killed that with a single look. Gotta love a guy who can give the ol’ hairy eyeball. They still looked confused by my assessment, but seemed satisfied overall by their findings. Nobody laughed at my joke, but they did let me go after that.
“I hope you catch your monster,” I said as I slipped into the remnants of my tattered jacket. I didn’t say anything about MuraTech. I knew they were on the payroll, but some stuff is better off if it stays between you and me. I exited stage left without a goodbye.
Out in the hallway, though, Dr. Mura stopped me with a hand on my arm. “I heard you helped my daughter with some bullies,” he said, mincing his words not bec
ause he didn’t know English, but only because it was obvious he didn’t use it a lot.
I was surprised by his out-of-freakin’-nowhere statement, let me tell you. I shrugged so he didn’t think I was going to be cocky about it. “Yeah, Troy and Zack. They’re a couple of jerks.”
“My daughter can take care of herself,” he growled, surprising me further. “Just leave her alone, Mr. Takahashi.”
Ookay.
I stared at Dr. Mura’s rock-hard face until he suddenly let go of my arm and stepped back so he could assess me like some new form of bacterium in need of eradication. This was going to take some getting used to. Back in my old school I was the safe, geeky guy that fathers actually liked when he came to pick up their daughters, fat and harmless. I wasn’t used to this new suspicious-parent-ready-to-beat-down-on-bad-boy play, you know? I just backed away, then turned around and wasted no time exiting stage left.
My dad was waiting for me in the reception room, looking more shrunken than ever. I almost didn’t recognize him except that he was still wearing his stained cook’s whites—complete with deep-fried calamari smell—and a ratty green Army surplus jacket that I would have recognized anywhere. He had gotten it off a relief truck the night San Francisco was leveled, and he’d never parted with it again. He was leaning forward in a cold plastic chair with his hands pressed together as if he was praying, but I knew better. He was remembering, worrying. Obsessing.
He jumped up when he saw me, then just hung there for a second like a puppet without strings. Like everyone else, he didn’t know why this was happening, what we had all done to deserve this.
Come to think of it, neither did I.
6
On the ride home things got better in the van. And worse.
Raiju: A Kaiju Hunter Novel (The Kaiju Hunter) Page 7
