“Y—”
Smack. “Don’t try and make some comeback. It’s over. G is dead. What else is there to live for now? Break my curse?” She giggled. “I don’t think so. Yes, I am fully aware of your scheme.”
G! No! This wasn’t happening. I’d get up and cut her fucking head off “Get away from me!”
A burning in my chest. Hot where the dreamcatcher sat.
“So many tears,” she said. “So strange how you can’t get up.”
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” What the hell was keeping me down? I screamed with rage, trying to force my limbs to move. “G!”
He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead. No! He wasn’t! He wasn’t! I needed him.
Tenshi, my heart was being ripped apart. This wasn’t real.
“G…” My screams had become weak sobs, my body racked with grief. “G… Please…”
“As a token of goodwill, I’m not going to be the one to take your life,” Mama Rita said, standing up. “I’ll leave that to Violet.”
The gang queen appeared, smirking down at me. “Hello.” She was holding a vial of green liquid.
“All yours,” Mama Rita said. She walked out of my view and said, “Interesting place. Let’s burn the pagoda down. It’s so ugly.”
Violet squatted over me, her skin radiant, everything about her immaculate. I went to kick her, my legs pushed down yet again.
“Someone is watching over us,” Mama Rita said. “The idiot is helpless.”
A hiss from the mazoku—it sounded like delight.
“Here.” Violet uncorked the vial, then forced the liquid down my throat, me helpless to do anything about it.
What the hell was going on? Why couldn’t I fight back? Get revenge for G…
No! He wasn’t dead! He wasn’t fucking dead!
I gagged, vomit rising up. She clamped a hand over my mouth, pressing down. I was forced to swallow my own puke, gagging again, swallowing, then all of it went back down along with the green gunk that tasted like stilton cheese.
G…
G was dead…
No…
G…
The poison got to work, attacking every corner of me. Icy grip on my heart, crushing, piercing, torturing. My lungs were filling up with something deadly, my kidneys on fire.
Violet watched me the whole time as I convulsed as my body shut down. The pain was the worst kind. But not as much as the pain of losing G.
Was he waiting for me on the other side?
G…
It took me a long time to finally die. Violet had made sure I’d feel every second of it for as long as possible.
She’d got her revenge.
Chapter Twenty-Two
No more pain. Dark. My eyes were closed.
“G…” Tears rolling. You could still bawl your eyes out when you’re dead, then? “G… Oh, tenshi. G! Are you there? G!”
“Hello, Akira.”
Not G. The petal woman.
“I’m dead. I’m fucking dead!”
My eyes opened. The darkness was gone. There was no petal woman.
I was standing on a hillside, on the outskirts of a sprawling metropolis, looking down on twinkling city lights. The moon was muted, a weird, faded milky color, tinged with yellow on the edges. Greenish dark clouds drifted across the night sky.
What was this place?
I couldn’t be freaked out. Okay, I was. But I wasn’t dead. I took out the pendant. The red beads were black. Was that death dream caught in the net?
This made no sense.
On cue, the pink petals swirled around me, then became woman-shaped again. “Hello, Akira.”
The tears were still falling. “I’m fucking dead! We’re dead! You—” I broke down into sobs. “G… G…”
“Welcome to your trial, Akira.”
“Trial? My trial was to die? To watch my friend be butchered? Where is he?”
“In the city.”
“Then that’s where I’m going. Right now!”
“You’re not dead. Gabriel is not dead.”
Not what was I expecting her to say. “What?”
“Your death is a dream,” she said. “The dream witch’s gift was to aid you in dreaming death. She has the power to trick death.”
“What? This is…a dream?”
“Your death, yes. For as long as the dreamcatcher traps your dreaming death. You have died, but not died. This is how you will walk this place and face the trial of Mount Tate.”
We weren’t dead… “This ain’t no mountain.” I sniffed. “I don’t get any of this.”
“Your death is not a reality.”
“Until what?”
“If you fail the trial.”
I balled my hands into fists, trying to calm the onslaught of shake and my somersaulting stomach. “So, I might not see four moons, eh?”
“There is no certainty.”
“Only that fourth moon will be silver, right?”
She didn’t answer.
I wanted to rage and curse and tear my fucking hair out. “Something stopped me from fighting back. What was it?”
“Yes. At the feet of the pagoda is where you had to die for the trial to begin under the dead moon in this place of death. It would have come in some form, but thankfully it came through Mama Rita. She and the mazoku, as well as the rest of their followers, believe you are dead now.”
I knew that was the best answer I was gonna get. “Great.” I wiped my eyes. “So, now what? Got the jump on Mama Rita, yeah?”
“Yes, for as long as they believe in your death.”
My head was pounding. “What about my swords?”
“Your weapons refuse her and lay upon your burning body. For it all burns but does not burn. It is not a true death, not the true body of you.”
My body was burning? Our bodies? ‘Cos G would be burning, too. Man, that was some twisted shit.
A weight on my back—my swords. They were back. “You just said they were—” I stopped. She’d only mention the dreaming death part again. I was glad to have them back and tired of this roundabout.
“Death will become real if you fail, Akira. No fate is set in stone. But I believe in you. This place is full of many dangers.”
“What else is new? Where’s G?”
“In the city.”
“Yeah, but where? Why ain’t he here with me?”
“He is your companion, the beta werewolf, a gift by your side.”
“But where the hell is he?”
“Good luck.” The petals started to lose their color, turning brown at the edges.
“What does Mount Tate have to do with any of this?”
“Within for without.”
“What does that mean? Please… I…”
“I believe in you. I cannot stay here. Goodbye, Akira.”
Those petals died, all dried up and brown and crispy. They broke up, losing the shape of the woman, then blew away, turning to dust, then nothing.
Damn.
Okay. I had to get a grip on this, despite my spinning head.
G was in that city. I’d start there. I’d find him and get this shit done—however that was gonna happen.
Four moons I’ll know. So, this was number three? The dead moon?
Under the dead moon in this place of death.
I wasn’t dead, though. That was a good start.
G wasn’t dead—even better start.
“Don’t fall apart, bruv,” I told myself.
Wiping at the tears still rolling down my cheeks, I made my way down the slope toward the city.
Chapter One
Man, the fun never stops.
I hadn’t been in this dead place more than half an hour and I was back to busting heads.
“I ain’t in the mood for this shit!”
I was covered in gunk and stagnant river water. Mud monsters—that’s what I called this particular brand of dead things coming for me. Shaped like humans and made from the sticky river mud, they were
a proper pain in my balls. Plus, creepy as hell.
They rose out of the skanky water to join me on the riverbank, trying to drag me back down into the gloom with them, making stupid fart noises and smelling like the worst kind of rotten eggs.
A rotten egg omelet with added dog shit.
And I stank just as bad as them now.
The rope bridge crossing the river had collapsed on me. I’d gone straight down, landing feet-first on the muddy bank. I mean, yay for not breaking bones or going in the water. But as soon as I’d made the touchdown, these wankers popped up.
Mud monster number five was making its move. I swung a katana at it, but slipped, staggering backwards on the sloppy ground while trying to hold onto my balance. I sort of pinwheeled, but the weight of my blades worked against me, making it a half-hearted move.
“Crap!” I cried, left foot sliding through the mud behind me.
Great. So I might end up doing the splits.
What a balls-up!
If I went on my arse, or into a split, that would be it. The monster had a hard-on for me, and was way too close, inches away from grabbing me. It groaned and pawed at the gap of air between us with those gross, muddy hands.
Becoming a snack wasn’t exactly a goal of mine. And just because I’d survived one death, didn’t mean there wasn’t another right around the corner.
Steady… Yes! I managed to stay vertical, balance restored. Thank the tenshi! A cold, sweaty terror washed over me along with relief.
That’d been way too close.
“Eat this!” I yelled and finally got in a swing of a katana without slipping.
The blade cleaved the monster’s head in half. Its whole body burst like a pimple, exploding black mud all over me. I gagged but held it together.
Bang, splat, gross.
At least I wasn’t being chewed on.
Phew!
My katanas didn’t stay dirty. Clean as the day my uncle Ryoka gave them to me. They just gulped down the energy of these dead things, did their white glowing thing, shimmered red, and that was it. No consequences.
Yet.
It wasn’t like before when I’d had twenty-four hours to clean the stolen energy out of my swords—the OG method with the OG katanas. If I didn’t, they’d make me crazy. But it was different with these blades. No side effects to report. Still, there was something else going on with them, a sense of power I’d never felt before. Kind of felt like danger—me being that danger.
Hmmm.
I had to get out of this dump and find my uncle. He’d gone missing in Tokyo before I’d set off for Mount Tate. We hadn’t been able to find him.
He had to be okay. He was family, my Dad’s brother, family I didn’t know I’d had. I wanted to know more about him, for me to be his nephew and him my uncle.
Another monster groaned, wanting a shot at me.
Were these creatures dead to start with? Like dead now? Always dead? Half-dead? Was I actually killing them? Ugh. I had no idea. This was a dead place under a dead moon. Didn’t know the rules yet, only that I had to get into the city on the other side of the river.
G was in there somewhere.
We’d both been killed by Mama Rita and her cronies—including banshees, a warlock, an elf, and gang queen/witch Violet Cross (my actual murderer). The pair of us had been cut down in some weird place with a pagoda at Mount Tate where I’d been forced to stay down as the slaughter came—an invisible hand literally not letting me get up to defend myself or G.
But we weren’t dead. The dreamcatchers around our necks, given to us by dream witch Zenya, had tricked death, made our being dead nothing but a dream as long as we didn’t take them off.
Just call me manipulated.
Man, that made my head hurt. Dreaming death. What the hell?
I wasn’t gonna make death a reality. I had myself a big old hit list for when I got out of here.
First, though, getting across the river.
“Wanker!” I braked and shoved both katanas into the mud monster’s chest.
Another disgusting explosion followed.
Ugh.
There was more in that water than these monsters. I could tell. The flowing black ink that was the river was proper ominous, hiding all sorts of fun.
I’d been told things weren’t certain, like surviving this whole trial shit, so having a swim in the river a few feet away from me wasn’t at the top of my to-do list.
No stupid risks unless I was pushed into them. Plus, this stink was really starting to get to me.
Did they have showers in this dead place?
With monster number six dead, or whatever, I spat out a mouthful of mud, gagged, and trudged back up the sloping riverbank while I had a window of escape.
The slope wasn’t a hardcore incline or anything, and I didn’t slip. Go, me!
A row of buildings lined the river on the other side, stretching east and west. They looked like the back of houses, all different heights, soft light glowing from some of the windows. No backdoors, though. You wouldn’t want one with that river as your back garden.
There had to be another bridge. I’d even take a fallen tree to balance across. I wasn’t fussy.
This was a dead city, yeah, but those lights meant people, or things, lived in there, right? Which meant they’d need a bridge to come this side. Not that there was much over here. Wastelands as far as the eye could see, rolling fields of darkness with the odd skeleton dotting the landscape just for fun. There was even a human skull next to my foot.
Maybe some people liked taking their evening walk through creepy wastelands.
I’d call those people freaks.
Okay. East or west?
Would it matter?
“Eenie, meeni, miny, mo…”
West it was. Couldn’t see much in the distance. I looked into the night sky. Nothing changed up there. The dark, greenish clouds moved in the same direction, and the milky moon, like a cataract fringed with a sickly yellow, was a constant reminder of where I was.
A dead place. For the trial of Mount Tate.
This wasn’t no mountain, though. What the hell? And I didn’t have a petal woman to grill ‘cos she’d told me she couldn’t talk to me anymore in this place. She’d withered and dried up into dead petals and blown away.
Within for without, she’d said.
Was this the within?
“Come on,” I told myself.
If only I had Cindy, my beloved motorbike. Man, did I miss her. She’d been stolen and I hadn’t had the chance to go get her back yet.
My poor girl.
I was doing well to not fall apart. I’d stopped crying. Man, the tears hadn’t let up for twenty minutes after the petal woman had told me all about the dreaming death. It was the trauma of seeing G get stabbed and—
I shuddered. I had to find him, to see him for myself, to know he was okay.
The pressure was on me. If I messed this up, the werewolves were screwed. The silver moon would kill them and G. This dead moon was number three of the four moons I’d been told I’d know. First came the stuck moon, then the red moon that brought the chaos of werewolves going loco and slaughtering thousands across the globe in one night, and now this.
Eight days until the silver moon. End of the wolves if I didn’t break the curse Mama Rita had put on the moon.
Yeah, no pressure.
Thank the tenshi Dad was already building some iron shelters back in the…living place.
I carried on following the yellowbr—
Stop it!
I kept following the dry dirt path along the river, eyes constantly on the wet mud and water on my right for another super surprise. It was pretty balmy here. I took off the coat I still had on from my mountain hike before I’d ‘died.’ It was so caked in crap I was tempted to dump it somewhere. If I did that, snow would come down, or a monsoon would roll in.
Wasn’t into tempting fate right now.
I noticed the ruby ring on my finger was broken—t
he actual ruby gone. It’d been a gift from my former bestie, Mama Rita. The stone, enchanted by elven magic, had helped hide traces of me when I was on hunting jobs, as well as concealing the swords strapped on my back. Not anymore.
“See ya.” I pulled it off, tossing it away, another part of our friendship dead.
Mama Rita had once been my dad’s lover. She’d got pregnant, they’d broken up. She didn’t take it too well. I mean, he did want her dead because she was crazy. She’d also claimed he’d wanted their kid dead—my half-brother, Zach. Not true, according to dear old papa. He would never kill his kids, he’d said, but he wasn’t above treating me like shite.
Zach. My poor bro. He was part of Mama Rita’s body. Deadweight, it seemed, because all he ever seemed to do was look like he was crapping his pants every single minute over the horror show he was stuck in.
I had to save him. Right now, though, it was all about G.
Two brothers…
“Yeah, yeah,” I told my brain. Riku was brother number two—making us three. Born shortly before I’d left for Japan to my dad and his wife Sarah.
My step-mum…
Movement to my right. A lower-level window in one of the houses slid open, a man leaning out, sparking up a cigarette.
“Hey,” he called over.
I paused. “Alright?”
“Not bad.” He puffed on his ciggie. “River stinks worse today.” He was British—from up north.
“Does it always stink?”
“Yep, but some days are worse than others.”
Didn’t stop him cracking that window open for a smoke.
“Newby?” he asked.
I went for honesty. “Yeah.”
“Can tell by the state of you.”
“Had a bit of an issue back there.”
“I can see that. Things in the river can be pretty nasty.”
I nodded. “Bridge collapsed. Is there another way across?”
“Keep going. You’ll find one.”
“Thanks, bruv.”
He laughed. “Haven’t been called bruv in a while. Take care. Don’t go back in the river.”
“Yeah, cheers.”
I carried on, leaving him to his smoke.
Man, did I miss the sunshine. What I wouldn’t give for a day on the beach with a beer, listening to the sea. This beach would be people-free. Just me and G.
Four Moons: The Complete Collection: (Books 1 - 4) Page 41