With the side of his head throbbing, Mark dragged himself upward, then pulled Abby to her feet. He’d wanted to run as Elektra had faced off with the guy who’d found them, but his daughter was having none of it. She didn’t understand that his first priority was her rather than Elektra. She probably never would, and so he had resorted to the physical and just dragged her as fast as he could. “Abby?”
She gripped his hand. “I’m all right,” she said, and brushed at her jeans.
“Come on,” he said. “Elektra got him—let’s get as much distance between them and us as we can—”
A bone-chilling growl froze them where they stood.
Mark’s mouth opened and he tried to back up, tried to get his daughter away from the snarling tiger that was literally inches away from her face. The creature was real… but not—it was a strange, glowing blue, but he had no doubt it was just as dangerous as the normal striped species. Where had this beast come from? One step, then another, and something else rumbled from behind them; when Mark clutched at Abby and turned, they were directly in the path of a growling wolf.
The colors on the animals heightened suddenly, burning until they were iridescent and painfully bright. Desperate, Mark’s hand found a thick branch; he hefted it threateningly, but the wolf still crept forward, its teeth drawn back over blood-red gums. Finally, Mark swung the branch. The wolf’s response was to lunge forward and snap its teeth closed hard enough to cleave all the way through the wood.
Fear for his daughter almost choked Mark. He leapt sideways, going for Abby, when something long and dark shot over his head—one of Kirigi’s assassins. Before he could get to Abby, the flat of the man’s blade sent him sprawling and the killer had Abby by the throat.
“Elektra!”
The assassin tightened his hold and choked off anything else Abby was going to call out, then grinned evilly at both of them.
With the beasts on one side, and this man holding Abby on the other—
They were trapped.
15
NOW THAT STONE WAS DEAD, ELEKTRA SPRINTED in the direction of Abby’s voice. They had to be right up here—
“Assassin!”
She skidded to a stop at the sound of Kinkou’s voice, then saw that he had Abby pinned in front of him. Before she could process everything that was going on, something passed between Mark and Abby, a look, a thought, something. Whatever it was, it calmed them both instantly, right in front of Elektra’s eyes; Mark stopped his trembling and went utterly calm, seemed almost resigned. Elektra wouldn’t understand why until later, but Mark glanced at his daughter and nodded.
“Finally,” Abby said. She sounded strangely joyful.
Elektra saw Abby’s hand drop away from where she had been trying to pry Kinkou’s forearm away from her throat. It was such a small thing and it seemed to happen so slowly—nearly in slow motion—that Elektra almost didn’t notice it: Abby’s bracelet slipped off her wrist and fell into her hand, then the girl extended it like a chain. Elektra had known the bracelet was composed of warrior beads, so subconsciously she’d also always known it was long; it simply hadn’t registered until now.
Until Abby whirled it once, switched it to her other hand, then snapped it up and out—
—and wrapped it around Kinkou’s neck.
A single, well-timed and balanced yank whipped the killer over her right shoulder and landed him flat on his back on the ground for the first time in his life.
With the wind knocked out of him, Kinkou barely got the words out for his cohort. “Kirigi! The assassin—”
Elektra registered the arrival of Kirigi and Typhoid Mary, but she was still shocked at this radical change in Abby. She gaped at the girl as, in another fluid and practiced move, Abby pulled off her necklace. Then she dropped into a fighting stance with both necklace and bracelet whirling in her hands like deadly twin kusari-fundos—ninja fighting chains. Before Elektra could fully digest what was happening, Abby swung around and sent the end of one of the chains directly into the eye of the crouching, slavering wolf that was almost upon her.
The beast howled and dissolved, leaving nothing but blue haze as somewhere in the forest they heard a muffled cry of pain from Tattoo. With his creature injured, was he bleeding, the ink oozing from his skin like black blood? He must be, because now the rest of his animals were snapping out of existence, leaving nothing but a smoking blue glow as they returned to their master.
Kinkou had pulled himself up and he came forward again, but Elektra shoved him backward before he could strike. He did an admirably agile backflip away and landed on his feet right in front of Mark, and the only thing that kept Mark from being gutted was that he had already turned and was moving toward his daughter. Kinkou’s sword left a six-inch slash across the back of Mark’s shoulder; it hurt, but it wasn’t deep enough to incapacitate him. Kinkou raised his blade again, then found himself in the middle of Abby’s beads as she sped forward to protect her father. They spun and twisted and stung Kinkou in a hundred places before he could take a breath, but he went after her anyway—after all, they were mostly just wooden beads with a few copper ones tossed in for decoration, not the metal chains of a true fighting weapon. Then Elektra was there, and Abby’s father, and all three of them were all tangled up.
Kirigi and Typhoid circled the struggling foursome, watching as Abby demonstrated the martial arts skills she had previously kept such a secret from Elektra. She was quite impressive for a youngster, and Kirigi couldn’t help smiling as he enjoyed the entertainment. “She is a little treasure, isn’t she?” he asked, glancing over at Typhoid.
But Typhoid only shrugged and turned up her nose, perhaps out of jealousy. Kirigi smiled wider. “You wanted to kill the assassin,” he said quietly. “Do it now.”
Finally, something that pleased Typhoid Mary. She slid toward the fighters, moving carefully closer as Kirigi unsheathed his sword and joined her. They crouched at the edge of the fight with Kirigi waiting to join in, then Typhoid unobtrusively slid around to the rear of the nearest hedge. She scurried up a tree trunk until she was directly overhead. Kinkou leaped at Abby as Tattoo staggered into the edge of the clearing where they’d all faced off, but Abby’s beads, a double length this time, easily pulled Kinkou off his feet; before she could relax her wrist and withdraw the bracelet in one hand, a spider, the last and least of Tattoo’s little flesh companions, skittered up her arm.
Abby shrieked and jerked away as she slapped at it, trying to get it off her. She wasn’t sure where it had gone, and she twisted one way, then another, momentarily distracted from the more imminent danger of Kinkou. When he caught her attention again, she completely missed the spider as it morphed colors and sunk into the fabric of her jacket sleeve—Kinkou was nearly upon her and she didn’t have enough room to retaliate with either of her personal versions of the kusaris.
But no matter the turn of events, Elektra wasn’t about to let anything happened to Abby—she’d been through far too much to quit now. She grabbed Kinkou’s wrist before he could hit Abby, then sidestepped the palm strike he aimed at her cheekbone, coming in under his arm and ramming her shoulder up, hard, into his armpit. A little guidance downward on the back of his neck with her right forearm threw him off balance; she jammed her right knee up and into his groin, and that sent the killer face-forward into the dirt.
Mark saw the already wounded Tattoo go to his knees as Elektra reversed and caught him on the side of the head with a crescent kick, but there was no time to take Abby and run; amazingly, Kinkou came right back up, this time directing his full animosity toward Abby. Mark managed to lurch into his path and threw what he thought was a perfect punch; Kinkou easily dodged it. In fact, he tilted backward, flipping onto his head and gifting Mark with a nasty kick right in the face as he did it.
Mark dropped, gasping, but this was his daughter he was trying to protect. Abby was everything to him, and he, too, was up again, willing to die to keep her safe if he had to. He pulled himself to his knee
s, then was dismayed to see—knowing all the while that he had neither the speed nor the skill to get out of the way— Kinkou come at him with a perfect spinning kick. As Tattoo struggled upright yet again and Elektra stepped between him and Abby a few feet away, Mark could only lie on the ground and twist in pain.
Kinkou was delighted—at last he could be done with this gaijin and be about the more important business of finishing off the assassin. He would kill Mark Miller as Kirigi had finished off Elektra’s agent: execution style, quick and bloody. To be sure he would have enough power in his blow, Kinkou lifted his knife as high over his head as he could—
Somewhere inside Mark was a little more strength, a little more willpower. He pulled on everything he had, and before Kinkou could swing downward, he propelled himself forward and rolled, taking the killer down like a human bowling ball. Kinkou tilted to one side and the surprise was enough to make him drop the knife he’d been about to plunge into Mark’s chest. Kinkou’s body went backward and, incredibly, finally stopped when it was just barely still above the ground—he looked as if he was floating only a few inches above it. He sent Mark a triumphant smile, but it blinked away as he saw Mark had picked up his knife.
Too late he realized that showing off had placed him in the worst position possible; when he tried to come back up, Mark jammed Kinkou’s blade downward as hard as he could, slicing through flesh and bone and pinning Kinkou to the ground. He had time only to bellow in fear and pain; then his eyes went wide and blank and the familiar ugly green light began to spill from his body. Spent now, Mark crawled away just in time to avoid the rancid white flames that exploded from the dead man’s flesh and burned him away to nothing.
Elektra was relieved—and a little amazed—to see Mark best Kinkou, but that’s what could happen when a fighter underestimated his opponent. She and Abby were turning to face the coming Kirigi and she could also finally ask Abby the question that had burned into her mind the instant she’d seen the teenager twirling her bracelet and necklace so efficiently. “Who are you?”
Abby didn’t answer. From her position a few feet away, she suddenly jerked her arm at something behind Elektra. “Elektra, look OUT!”
Elektra whirled—
And went right into the arms of Typhoid Mary.
The evil woman had swung down from the branch directly above Elektra and propelled herself body to body, right into her. Elektra went down with Typhoid on top of her, and before she could react, Typhoid planted her mouth on Elektra’s and kissed her. Elektra went woozy instantly, trying ineffectively to push Typhoid away. It didn’t even take Typhoid any effort to simply hold on.
Typhoid pushed up and onto her hands as she looked derisively at Elektra as her head lolled. “This is the legend? The one they talk about in whispers?” She sneered. “I am not impressed.” Before Abby could think of what to do, Typhoid pulled Elektra’s face forward and kissed her again, pumping unseen poison deep in her victim’s body. Elektra twitched in her arms as the leaves beneath Typhoid’s palms turned black and crumbled.
Abby gasped and Typhoid lifted her head, focusing on the girl. Ah—her real target! This one was done for anyway, so she abandoned Elektra and reached for Abby, stretching out her arms as her fingernails went black with anticipation—
But no. Kirigi’s hand fell heavily on her shoulder, stopping her.
Abby, however, was far from finished. She jumped forward, placing herself in the space between Elektra and the other two, chains spinning smartly in the air.
But to face Kirigi, she was going to have to do better than that.
She whipped one of the jewelry chains toward his face, and he simply sidestepped the beads as if they weren’t there, then reached a hand forward and grabbed the weapon, halting its progress without so much as a whimper. He gave her a dark smile and suddenly snapped it back at her; the copper and wood beads curled around Abby’s neck and tightened, and then she was turning and being reeled toward him like a helpless fish on a line. “The war is over,” he said gleefully, and reached for her.
A stick, old and well-worn, whistled through the air in front of them and neatly parted the length of chain between Kirigi and Abby’s neck.
“The war’s just begun,” Stick said calmly as he stepped in front of Abby.
“Blind man!” Kirigi exclaimed as Abby stumbled backward and yanked the beads away. He looked disgusted.
Typhoid hissed in frustration, but seemed disinclined to attack. Satisfied that she wasn’t a threat, Stick calmly turned to face the sound of Kirigi’s voice. Abby started forward, but her father grabbed her and held her back, staring at the whitehaired man, the one they’d seen in the bar and whom Elektra had called Stick. Worse was Kirigi; with his sword unsheathed, he loomed over Elektra’s spasming body. He seemed to terrify everyone who came in contact with him.
Except Stick.
Kirigi scowled and concentrated, trying to use kimagure on his older opponent. For just a flash, he could see… something—himself, charging at Stick, expecting a countermove. But Stick stood still, doing nothing, unnerving in his composure. Kirigi saw himself try again, with the same results.
He gave up and smiled coldly instead. “Hard to read the thoughts from blind eyes.”
But Stick only stared off into nothingness. “Sight is overrated,” he said softly. “Listen.”
On the ground, Elektra’s eyelids fluttered as she struggled to breathe. Her vision was muddled, filled with leaves and tree branches and… white things, scampering through the branches like nimble monkeys. No, not monkeys…
White-clad ninjas.
They swooped out of the trees like snow eagles, pulling Abby away before Kirigi and Typhoid could react. In a heartbeat Kirigi was surrounded, with no hope of winning the battle—Kinkou and Stone were dead; Tattoo was injured; Typhoid would never be a match for more than a few. It was best they retreat.
“Another day, old man,” Kirigi spat, and then he was moving, too fast to follow. With Typhoid Mary and Tattoo right behind, he circled the tree in which Elektra had hidden herself. When he was just out of Stick’s range of retaliation, Kirigi yanked free two of the shuriken Elektra had embedded in the tree and threw them with impossible-to-follow speed and aim. The deadly projectiles skimmed through the air and sliced through trees and leaves with ease, but Stick literally heard the air parting as they traveled. He whirled and brought up his walking stick, feeling it tremble as one of them hit it with vicious strength. He smiled as a spot of blood blossomed on his gray shirt. The other throwing star had found its mark, but the wound was easy to conceal—a tug on his jacket and no one knew the difference. Kirigi had impressive skill and sometimes, when the nights were quiet and long, Stick wondered how things would have turned out if the boy had been his student instead of the Hand’s.
Stick motioned at Mark, and the younger man obediently lifted Elektra in his arms and, with his daughter watching behind them, carried her out of the forest after the blind man.
16
ELEKTRA SAW THE SKY, AND THE TREES, AND THE clouds. There was sun, too, but it kept fading in and out, lost behind huge gray and black thunderheads that swept in from nowhere to blot out the light. Maybe she was dreaming, or—
“Is she going to die?”
—already dead, because she kept seeing Stick’s face superimposed over it all but through a sort of watery vapor. His image wavered in and out of her consciousness like a weak ghost, a specter that couldn’t quite hang on to this reality. Most of the time she had her eyes closed, losing herself in the volcanic heat that surrounded everything that she was and would ever be. It was like lava running through her veins and her head, and oh, she thought she would sell her soul and everything she was for just a cold, cold shower and, maybe, a tall, bottomless glass of ice water.
“I don’t know. A body can’t be brought back twice.”
A body? Whose body? And brought back from where? She had to be alive—she was certain that dead people didn’t hear voices, didn’t have th
oughts, even the disjointed ones floating around in her consciousness. Hadn’t she been dead once? Yes, she had, and she had felt nothing—it was just blackness, an eternal sleep where the foreverness of one’s state of being is all and nothing, incomprehensible, nonsensical. This, then, could not be death—
“If she leaves this time, she won’t be back.”
Was she leaving? She must be, because she was alive, and dead people don’t go anywhere. Where was she going, and who was saying that? Her father? Matt? No, wait—it was Bullseye, that vicious Irishman who had tried to eviscerate her with her own sai—
He smiles blackly at her from only inches away and she can see the indentation of scar tissue on his forehead, that strange self-made target pattern. Already in pain, she has a moment—only that—to think about how she would so like to take a weapon and push it through the center of that scar, then he rams the sai into her stomach and drives it upward, pushing and pushing until it parts blood and organs and tissue and bone and finally breaks through the leather of her top. There is nothing in the world as it happens except for that core of complete and utter torture, and she feels every centimeter of the blade as it goes through—
Elektra Page 15
