by Ken Rivers
Nine.
But would I be able to stand and fight afterward?
Eight.
Would I stay conscious?
Seven.
If I saw Yari, would she be happy?
Six.
Would I be too happy and lose my shit?
Five.
My aim was dead-on. I would end it in one hit.
Four.
Stop that fucker dead in his tracks.
Three.
Undo the mistakes of another dickhead Father.
Two.
One hand a hard-clenched fist and my blade in the other.
One.
Finally make love to—he sees me?
I hit him like an arrow shot from the heavens by the gods themselves. His flock scattered, blown in all directions like so much debris cast from the epicenter of any world-killing bomb’s impact.
For a moment, time stood still with my fist flush against his forearm and feet still in the air. Just beyond his blackened and twisted arm were eyes set ablaze. The heat generated from the pressure wave exposed his bare chest as his clothes turned to embers and curled away from him.
The moment began to flow forward. My knife hand thrust under at his torso, then stopped. It stuck into the same protection I had, but I felt the indestructible coronal blast armor give. Fire with fire. If it gave a little more, it might break.
His free hand latched onto my wrist, but I wouldn’t be stopped. The last bits of momentum from the fall pushed me deeper into his defenses. Both of my hands burned blast furnace orange and white. Just a little more, and I would have the edge through him and be done with it all.
My momentum stalled and I felt a pull toward the ground. I looked at the blade as if it would help push it the last inch to break his shielding. My feet hit the ground and he slowly pulled the blade away.
“Impressive, human. Even by Levani standards. But, what’s your next move?” The gnarled fingers on his open hand began to close. My legs buckled under the pressure he brought upon me. I was still standing, but I was locked in place, just like last time.
He flowed around me like the air energy that protected both of us. Each hit he landed shook me to my core, but he kept going. Left. Right. Left. Right. On and on. I felt my stamina beginning to wane, seconds from total vulnerability.
“I wondered how far you could go without our blood pumping through your veins. I have to thank you again, you’ve given me the chance to test a theory I’ve been pondering for quite some time.” His fists beat one after the other. “Which will pierce the skin of the Kaiju’s shield first, the Father’s pure hand, or the black hand?”
My legs flew out from under me and he hammer-fisted me into the dirt. Again, left. Right. Left. Right. I sank deeper into the ground with every blow.
“Tawa! STOP!” I heard the scream through the concussive fog that was wrapping around my mind. He disappeared in a stream of sound and light.
She came into view, but I struggled to keep the shield around me. I couldn’t stand or protect her. It took all I had to not black out.
A hand came in under my arm. She helped pull me out of my dirt coffin. “He told me you had taken your cure and left with the others. Why are you here, Mark?”
“Long story short,” I was fighting the black soup that was creeping in from the edges of my vision, “that fucker is a liar and threw me down a pit to die. I met a super-nice old lady who said she was the Kaiju Queen and she helped me do this shield thing and called you the new Mother. She also called me the new Father.”
“Is that even possible?”
“I didn’t believe it until this,” I pointed at my head and body. “Then there’s that,” we both looked at the Kaiju listing through the sky, mists leaking out of the small hole I’d made.
“If you fuck him, you become his new Mother and he will use you to finish that thing’s gestation. But it won’t be a Kaiju, it will be some fire-blessed super monster or something.” My head sank forward but I fought it off. “Everything is fucked if he gets his way. You gotta help me, here. I can’t do this on my own. I need—”
She pulled me up and laid a kiss on me that jump-started a reserve of hot energy I didn’t think I had. “I’m with you to the end, Mark.”
“I love you,” the words shot out of my mouth. I didn’t want them lost. I needed her to know.
The sky grew dark again and I knew what was coming. I could feel his presence, even from far off.
“Is our burgeoning romance over so soon, dear sister?” Tawa mocked from atop the Kaiju bearing down on us.
“Fuck OFF!” Yari screamed and let loose the force that lived inside her. Sound and light lashed out at Tawa. He angled the beast to block her attack. More holes blew open and riddled the side of the beast. The mists pouring out of it began to form an ominous cloud overhead.
He spiraled tighter into the turn and the beast whipped its tail down and smashed us both into the ground. Yari’s scream faded and I was consumed by unconsciousness.
I awoke bound in chains and surrounded by Jian-Di elites. Tawa had Yari slung over one of his shoulders as he walked up the back of the Kaiju.
“He’s awake, Father,” one of the guards yelled after him.
Tawa walked on, not looking back. “Drain him of his blood and cast him into the mists while we still have the chance.”
“Lady Yen has gone, Father. We have no one else! We require your guidance now more than ever!” another yelled.
He stopped and addressed his people. “I had high hopes for a smooth resolution to our struggle. My hand has been forced but I do not regret this. Just as the last Mother, this new one has been compromised. She betrays the new order of nature. I shall do what needs to be done. Keep close to the human border and wait. Be careful. You will know the sign when you see it. Never forget, I love you all. Till we meet again.”
Tawa placed Yari on the Kaiju’s craggy black spine. He then pulled upon a great obsidian chain that was anchored deep into the monster’s back. His black hand wrapped around it with great care and he stood sideways to keep his other arm from coming into contact with it.
As he lifted into the sky, the Jian-Di dragged me away.
19
Yari was gone, and this time she was in open danger. Tawa had clearly dropped that mask when he smashed both of us into the ground like red-hot rivets. My attack, although I thought it was pretty fucking epic, failed to do much other than piss him off. But, I managed to save the girls and two furry, endangered mini-kaiju from the marauding sky leviathan. Only one checked box out of three wasn’t going to win this game.
I avoided passing out and kicked and punched here and there while being dragged to God knows where. It wasn’t a very large show of force since my arms were wet noodles and my legs were stacks of warm jelly.
While dragging me over tree roots and grass and gravel, the five transporting me spoke briefly with two others. They bound me hand and foot to a pole like a boar being brought to some savage’s village for a feast, then swept me up without a grunt. We continued on our way.
Only two guards were left to watch over me. Both were dressed in heavy black cloth, like Lana. The only thing on them that shone were their belts and their dark red leather gloves meshed in steel. The one on the rear part of the pole had my ten-inch Surudo blade slipped between his belt and waist.
Levani long legs and light frames were perfect for extended speedy travel on foot. Two hundred strong, they stretched on either side. Not a large force by any comparison but then again, they could turn invisible and were good in a fight. If I said to anybody I knew, two hundred ninja are coming, it would make the toughest of them clench up water tight.
I closed my eyes, thought about the last few hours, and waited for my powers to return. Which made me wonder, if the Levani were so perfect in their strategic planning ability and saw all the outcomes of engagement, then why in the hell did they leave only two guards with me?
The panic to escape the crumbling Jian-Di hide
out must have hidden my attack on the girls’ guard detail. I wasn’t one to look a gift monster in the mouth. Lucky me.
We covered more distance than I thought possible in half a day, arriving in a small village far from the floating island’s edge. The chief of the village came out to meet the Jian-Di. My Levani was total shit, and reading their body language was like trying to tell the changing mood of a marble statue.
At least there was one universal, mothers hugging their children and going back inside their houses. No hiding that behind social niceties. The Jian-Di weren’t welcome, but they weren’t turned away, either.
Every house emptied and headed for the main hall in the village center. The leaders of the village stayed with the commanders of the Jian-Di. They would likely welcome their pseudo-guests with a toast over food provided from the village reserves. If nothing else, the Levani were consistent with their rules and manners.
I was much like my captors, welcome but unwelcome.
My well-dressed escort, who had carried me all day, walked into a large granary, laid me against the back wall, and left me tied up there on my side. A smell that reminded me of peaches hung heavy in the air. They laid my blade on a table as if I posed no threat to them. Out they went with little more than a tired glance, and in came one of the small women who had come with Lana to meet Yari at the cottage that first night. Her eyes were still covered by iron that looked hammered in, like a nail sunk too deep into soft wood.
She made her way around great barrels pungent with the smell of red wine and sacks of fresh fruit and legs of salted jerky hanging from the rafters. She never turned her face from me. Grabbing an empty table, she dragged it across the floor and placed it in front of me. Turning to take something from her robes, she never stopped to feel around for what she was doing.
She smiled when she found what she was looking for. Black teeth and black gums and dark red lips and bone white skin. Scary, pale girls who fucked around with magic were almost always virgins for one reason or another. I wondered if a good fuck was all she needed.
She had nice hips, perky little tits, and a cherry ass. Ultimate scenario, lights off, nobody ever knows, and I wouldn’t end up dead from it? I might, but from way behind and with my eyes closed.
Her mouth opened and she let out a long breath, raspy right at the end. “We can sssenssse your…feelingsss, human. We are curiousss asss well.” Her lips and tongue moved so overtly. Like they were compensating for the lack of expression in her eyes, since someone had stuck a metal ingot in her face. “What happensss when you are inssside of usss?”
“Who’s us? There’s only one of you.” I began working at my bound hands, twisting to find a soft spot in the knotting.
Her head rocked back to a dead stop like a piston on display in a classroom and she cackled out a shrieking laugh, then leaned forward. “My sssissster and I are the cousinsss. She wasss trapped in the cave-in, but we will retrieve her sssoon enough. We have been and alwaysss will be Tawa’sss reccceptaclesss. Our livesss are lengthened by hisss gift to usss.”
“Gift?”
“He fillsss usss daily with hisss preciousss ssseed.”
“Ew.” Sightless pocket pussies for Tawa to juice in all day? Something there, with the whole ‘don’t want girls to see me doing them’ thing.
Her upper lip curled back and her jaw jutted out. “Why, ew?”
“Ewwonderful! Such an honor. I’m jealous, really!” It wasn’t like talking to anyone with normal social standards, or even the semi-social standards that I had. My powers were also still a no show, so, “I mean, it’s fine, making love to that guy every day. Sounds great!”
“Love?” She spat a black bulge onto the ground that stuck and jiggled defiantly, resisting gravity’s pull to flatten it into a little pool of witch mung. “No love.” She lifted a finger in the air. “Duty, human.”
“Have you ever wanted love? I hear it’s pretty nice.” Maybe I could bone my way to a ‘get out of jail free’ card and not have to kill anyone, or not be killed. I was doing everyone involved a favor, really.
“Yesss, perhapsss.”
“Sweet! Now, just untie me, or not. If you’re into that kind of thing.” Just keep her talking. My wrist nearly slipped past the other. The ropes were loosening.
“Yesss, sssweet.” She turned from me for the first time and withdrew a green glass jar, with some kind of smoke twisting around inside of it. “Now, letsss find out what happensss when we are inssside of you…”
“Wait, you said, me in you, right? I kind of work the other way around. I mean, sure, maybe I’ll try almost anything once, but that right there looks like you have a lot more planned than just a tongue in the butt.”
“Ah, yesss. We misssssspoke.” She removed the lock from atop the jar and withdrew a black cloud of snakes and worms that searched through the air for something. One by one, the tendrils pointed at me.
“Enough gamesss. You are sssmall and weak by comparissson, but you are ssstill a Father…or would have been. You will join usss and then, when Tawa isss finished ssscorching your blight from the planet, we will take our fill of you. There won’t be much of you left upssstairsss, but don’t worry, we aren’t big on conversssation. We jussst cum for the meat!”
She crossed the floor slowly, feeling her way to me by sliding her feet across loose grain and dry wood floorboards, but keeping her face locked onto the black writhing cloud. She held the bottle in one hand and had grabbed that arm by the elbow for support. I noticed not all the tendrils were pointing at me. A few were now searching her out as well.
One hand loose! I searched around for any gardening tool or knife, or anything that might have been discarded. Farmers everywhere were pretty easy-going, so why not the Levani? Nothing. Nothing. There! A…slightly ripe piece of fruit? Fuck it. I sat up and side-armed it at the witch.
Like a sprung trap, unable to stop herself, she snatched the peach-smelling fruit out of the air and as she did so the jar erupted over her like an octopus pulling its hard-shelled catch in to be pried open and devoured.
The rot took her quickly. There was no symbiotic relationship possible. No Mother to heal her. No tech to prolong her servile existence. Even before her arms and chest were consumed by black barbs and oiled scales, it began to move. Move like that night, with unnatural strength and ease of quickness. The black consumed her body, saving the head for last. A rush of the blackest black, devoid of light so that it was visible even on her blackened skin, a ring that rushed up toward her head. It deformed into a thing made for destruction. To break walls and take life from homes. All the while it pawed the ground, wood splintering around it. It would be my end.
Almost fully formed, segmented bug legs tipped and tapped along the floorboards trying to find its balance. Splintered wood from the ceiling? I could only see the trail it left in the air. A big blurred sweep of pure speed floated over the head of the Culler. It ended in a Flit beak buried deep into the pale cream skin still unmolested on the side of the Culler’s head.
It dropped to the ground in a quivering mass, screaming for our deaths. It lasted longer than I felt comfortable with. A puff of green light, and Lana stood before me.
“Get up!”
“A little help with these?” I yanked on the rope but the binding at my ankles held firm.
“Just rip out of them! You’re not ready yet?”
“I feel good. I’m close, but I’m not there yet. I don’t know why.”
She turned to face the door. “Now you know how I felt before I met you, close but no happy ending.” She slipped a black talon between my legs and I was free. “They’ll be here soon.”
“Where are B and Pusi?”
“There are a lot of Jian-Di guards around. I was the only one who could get in without being detected. They’re waiting with the rail-bike, which just shut off and hasn’t moved, by the way.”
“Engines are like women, beautiful and finicky.” I natched my blade from the table. “Look, the only weapon
I have is this, and it didn’t do so well against Tawa. Then I got with a hundred tons of gnarled Kaiju tail.”
She was still in full human form when she sucked the air out of the room, “Do you love me?”
“…I couldn’t do what I did to you if I didn’t.” That was the truest answer I had in me.
“Then I’ll show you how to control your power. Right here. Right now. What comes for us will not stop until we are worse than dead.”
“I’m ready for it! Tell me what I have to do!” Finally, some straightforward practical advice with perfect timing.
The door opened slowly. The two guards who’d carried me here unhurriedly stepped inside, still in their heavy black coats, dark red leather and steel-mesh gloves, and shiny belts. The door closed behind them. Their coats slipped off their shoulders and their gloves hit the floor. I saw four arms sheathed in organic black armor and twisted like roots from trees blessed with too much water and tropical temperature. Both guards were bare-chested except for another red belt strapped over their shoulders. Blinking red light pulsed over their hearts.
Click.
One pressed the Life-Tech and the red light faded. The other followed suit and the black rot spiderwebbed across their white skin. Hungry and focused, their change took mere seconds. Their eyes turned bloodshot and bulged, but the beings didn’t paw at the ground. No steaming pile of skin, twisted heads, or unanswerable questions.
“Tawa’s personal Culler Elite. They are not berserkers. They’re hard-boiled killing machines. Just get past them, and we can escape the Jian-Di.” She said it as much for herself as for me.
When it began, there would be no countdown. No turning of the key to crank over the engine.
“Mark,” her soft voice was pregnant with emotion and unfettered by ideas forced upon her by Tawa Yen. She let me see those green eyes, and smiled. “I love you…”
Lana took three steps and they were upon her.
20