A white octopus landed on the sand—a big octopus.
It lashed out at the witches with its tentacles, snaring them, killing their progress.
“Bring them here!” I yelled.
The octopus obeyed, flinging the witches across the sand. They landed at my feet, trying to back away.
I stabbed them both, stealing their power.
Running around the lake beast, I set the stored-up witch magic free, directly at the royal box, along with the other wolf.
The box and the stands below it collapsed under the force of the explosion. White fire fringed with red spread outward, engulfing people running away, licking at the sky, spreading to the neighboring stands. The white wolf was in flames, charging through the stands, killing soldiers, spreading the fire wherever he went.
Somewhere inside me, a kernel of guilt waved a flag. What about the innocents in the crowd?
Collateral damage like Gerald and Mrs. Wallace. So, fuck you!
A crawling sensation on the back of my neck. I turned to the stands behind me, not exploding or drowning in white fire.
There he was—the king. Not in the box at all, staring at me. Safe. Not exploded, waving at me. Actually fucking waving at me!
“Come fight me!” I roared. “Coward!”
I swear I saw him laughing before he disappeared and strolled out of sight.
A howl to shake the arena.
G.
I watched him tear open the white hand, then dive into the belly of the octopus, ripping it apart from the inside out.
Oh, shit.
Witches and warlocks, wolfmen and wolfwomen flooded the arena, forming a ring around me and G. Me and my best buddy, the guy I… I…
Me and him together on the sand, the show going on until the bitter end.
A bitter end to end all bitter ends.
The king had infected him with magic, used his power against him to use against me. So much for him being my companion. How was I supposed to beat him without taking away the thing that made G him? Because without my katanas, there’d be no way of beating him. No amount of rage and adrenaline would do that.
Shit.
This was hopeless. The lava was cooling to sorrow.
“G…”
The king had won, used my weaknesses against me. And he was gone and out of danger and I’d failed. He’d been right. He had watched me fall.
He is your companion, the beta werewolf, a gift by your side.
Some gift. Being around me had screwed him over. What for?
He is your companion, the beta werewolf, a gift by your side
Gift…
A shiver went through me as G howled.
Gift…
A shiver of realization.
No. I broke into a run, brain doing loops at the swirling thoughts.
G’s was the beta werewolf. A gift by my side. What would be a way of saving him? Take away the king’s magic and the werewolf power—the beta werewolf power. Like everything my blades had swallowed, it’d be a gift. And what a gift. The beta wolf energy? Not just any beta energy, but the energy of the High Alpha’s beta. Holy shit! It’d be—
“No…” I breathed, zigzagging away from G, turning hard on my heels to dart out of his way.
Man, he was fast.
Not the beta wolf. How could I take that away from him?
All it would take was one small pierce of his flesh. Job done.
I couldn’t—
G slammed into me. My back slammed into the sand, the grains failing as a buffer for my spine. I yelped as his weight crushed me, as his claws went to my throat.
I still had my katanas in my hands, arms at my sides. The instinctual reaction was mega quick, a sideways stab to his bulging thigh, the only available spot. My strike was weak as his claws started breaking through my skin.
I screamed in pain, bracing myself for my throat being ripped out. “G!”
He howled, releasing me, rolling off to the side. My blades were glowing with the stolen power, buzzing like they never had before. It took my breath away, had me choking on air. I got up, unsteady. The power swam with the king’s magic, but was much brighter, wild with bite and primal fire, making the hound’s energy seem like a puppy’s. Only the High Alpha’s energy would top it.
Whoa. It was hard to keep holding the swords. This was some intense shit.
So was the guilt stabbing me with its own katanas.
G stopped thrashing. Rapid, shallow breaths coming as his muscles shrank back to their normal size. His green eyes were just green, the gold flecks of a werewolf gone.
I’d done no damage to his thigh, just a nick, but enough to... Make him human.
Tears rolled down my face. “I’m sorry. G. I’m so sorry.”
He looked up at me and smiled. “I love you, Aki.”
Nothing, not even the ferocity of the power in my swords, had stolen my breath like those words I’d just heard him say. Nothing had ever made my stomach flip, my heartbeat race like it was. Nothing had ever made my body flood with warmth and shock at the same time, awaken something in me I didn’t understand.
Had he just said that?
More tears. “G…”
The green and purple lights of magic broke me away from him, poking the lava into action again.
He is your companion, the beta werewolf, a gift by your side.
He was my gift. His power was my gift.
G’s gift wasn’t going to waste.
I released the beta energy. The biggest wolf ever came to life. It grew and grew and grew, an expanse of white light threaded with red. It threw its head back and unleashed an almighty howl, sending hardcore pulses of electricity through me.
“Kill them all,” I said. “Kill them all!”
The beta wolf exploded into many wolves, shooting around the arena, slaughtering the witches, flooding the stands, multiplying more and more until the stands were drowning in a different kind of fire.
“Kill them all!” I screamed, releasing a howl into the sky.
We were connected, me and the power, all of my energy joined it to it, fueling it. I was on the ground, my spine arched with the force of the strength being ripped out of me as the white wolves overwhelmed everything, a million wolf howls in my ears, the arena erupting in a blinding white light.
“Destroy it all!”
Cutting through the wolf chorus was a new scream. Even when he was screaming, the king held onto that soft tone of his.
My responding laughter was proper mad.
“Akira!” he screamed again.
I got to my feet in the blinding light, seeing nothing, but happy as hell. “Not so smug now!” I yelled. “Not so smug now!” More mad laughter from yours truly.
King Daichi’s next scream made the light crack and the world turn upside down.
Now it was my turn to scream and everything spun into chaos.
Chapter Forty-Two
Snow beneath me, a bitter wind licking at my face.
I blinked my eyes open, a red night sky above, the red moon of chaos a full disc blazing bright.
What the hell?
I sat up, rubbing my throbbing head, licking my dry lips. Man, it was so cold.
“Oh, shit.” My new location hit me then.
I was on the side of a mountain, sitting on a snow-dusted ledge. I twisted behind me to look up at the peak still a bit of a way up, then down to the snowfields below.
Familiar snowfields from a different angle.
“Mount Tate,” I said.
A groan to my left.
The king was lying on his front, head twisted round at a weird angle. His arms and legs were all gnarled and twisted, still encased in his turquoise armor. Blood dribbled from his open mouth. He looked pathetic, the light of his hair faded, his once intensely blue eyes now murky.
“Akira…”
I got to my feet, picking up my katanas that’d been sitting beside me, and slowly walked over with unsteady steps. Once closer, I went to sit
on my knees, the short walk doing me in.
“Akira…”
“We’re on the mountain,” I replied. “Mount Tate.”
“Akira…”
In the mountain wall behind him, embedded in the rock, were two figures—one male, one female.
“Anyone you know?” I pointed to them.
“Akira…”
“You fucked up, didn’t ya? Thought you could use G against me, and everyone else. Classic move—take away everything your enemy loves, break them, then kill them when they reach their lowest point.” I tilted my head. “But there you are.”
Within for without…
He is your companion, the beta werewolf, a gift by your side.
“I’ve been taking part in a trial this whole time,” I told him. “I never understood any of it, only that I had to do it. The trial of Mount Tate. One thing I’ve been sure of this whole time is killing you. Call it half-wolfy, half-tenshi intuition.”
“You will not—”
“Beat you? Give it up, bruv.” I pointed my swords at him. “Here we are on Mount Tate, eh? Can’t wait to leave. Freezing my balls off here.”
“Akira…”
“Yeah, yeah. Hey! Guess what, wanker? Well, that armor won’t save you. Didn’t save your soldiers from these beauties, and it won’t spare you from meeting the sharp end of my vengeance. You hurt the ones I love, the ones I care about, you get your arse beat. I mean, you were gonna die anyway, but now it’s gonna be so much sweeter.”
As I drove the blades downward, G’s words echoed in my mind.
He’d told me he loved me.
G loved me.
The katanas pierced the king’s armor, then hit something solid in his guts. It crackled down the blade as blue lighting, dancing over my arm, spreading all over my body. Me and King Dickhead screamed together.
Bing!
Just like that, I was somewhere else.
The king was naked and curled into a ball on the ground by my feet.
I looked down at myself, feeling a bit light in the clothes department. “I’m naked too.” And my skin was practically sparkling, bathed in the white glow of this place.
If I ever redecorated my flat, I’d never be painting it white. All white was banned from now on. Talk about overload.
Nothing ached or throbbed. None of the crunches and punches from the arena fight were echoing in my body anymore. Not even a bruise to remind me of the scrap. No blood. Nothing.
No pain in this whiter than white place.
It was like it was covered in the purest snow ever. At least, it looked like snow, even if it was nice and warm like a summer day under my feet. Couldn’t see a sun or a moon or anything that wasn’t, well, white. The sky was white, the snow was white, the mountains on the horizon were white, the tree next to me that wasn’t there three seconds ago was white—all the same shade but each one standing out against the other.
Yeah, okay.
“Welcome, Akira.” Voices, so many of them swirling, whispering, and I swear there were little golden lights whenever they spoke. Like fireflies blinking in and out of existence.
At least it was a different color.
“Hey.” Those same golden lights danced in front of my face. “Where…whoa.” Every word from my mouth got some sparkly condensation. It was like when Mama Rita spoke, and the shadows spilled out of her gob, but gold and much prettier.
“You are in the realm of the tenshi,” the voices said.
The realm of the tenshi? I felt like I should be on my knees or something, being all in worship and thankful to them for being my glorious friggin’ creators, singing their praises. But I was too wired, too on edge, no matter the calmness of this place.
And pretty mad about, well, all this shit.
King Daichi was silent on the floor. His eyes closed. He was still breathing, but nothing more than that. Fucker wasn’t dead, though.
“I’ll be needing some answers now,” I said.
“We offer our congratulations on your success with the trial. You have undone the king.”
So, yeah, I had been right. Go me… I guess. “Er, thanks.”
“The fallen Crown of Death has broken,” the voices of the tenshi said. “His is a tale of the corruption of power. He was one of the Crowns of Death, Akira, a king we made to take care of one part of the afterlife. But power corrupts. He didn’t want to be, as he put it, a slave of angels, seeing himself above what we tasked him to.
“That’s what he meant by being a slave to a higher power—a slave to angels,” I said.
Like me…
“Yes, Akira. We shaped him, wove him into existence with the other king and the queen you saw imbedded in stone on the mountainside.”
“Those figures in the mountain…”
“Queen Kaho of Mount Haku, and King Rekka of Mount Fuji. Our other creations to keep the balance of the dead, assigned to one of the three holy mountains. For they are the three lands of the dead, long fallen into what you experienced in Daichi’s creation.”
“The dead city,” I said. “And that sunny place.”
“Yes. The rot of his heart spread, consumed the afterlife, transformed it into his own playground—the one you traveled through. He broke the three realms of death, pulling all souls into Mount Tate. His mind twisted with desires he should not have had, longing for his own crown, his own power. Yet he was not made for such a thing—only to rule the dead within Mount Tate, the place for the good souls. Yet his sentient nature contorted into something demonic. Maybe it was a form of curiosity that gave birth to rebellion. It is unclear. He was polluted. So, he attacked us. Much like the mazoku, we suffer at the end of weapons, and Daichi hurt us, cast his fellow Crowns into stone, taking their essence of death and tenshi light into him to feed his strength, drew upon his creative energies to twist and weave his own domain, breaking other realms of death. In this new world he could truly sit upon the throne of his own kingdom. There he could play his games of torture.”
“So I was inside the mountain? Within for without. And that’s why everyone ended up in that dead city when they died? Because he’d messed everything up being a crazy wan—, erm, fool.”
“Yes.”
The white place shifted, shrinking into a narrow space with windows and rattling.
“Train tracks?” I said.
Yep. Train carriage, grimy with green and white walls. The sign for Tunnelrail was above a set of doors. I was underground, tunnel lights whizzing past, the train rocking back and forth, carriage lights flickering. It stank of piss and dust, and there were three people sitting on the battered seats a few feet away from me—two men, one woman.
One of them was King Daichi, dressed in white robes with a gold symbol on the front 死 (death). They all had the same robes on, all had the same long hair made of liquid light, plus the piercing blue eyes. The other guy, King Rekka, had a pale, ashy complexion, where Queen Kaho was dark-skinned.
“What is this?” the queen asked Daichi in Japanese. She jumped to her feet.
“My new playground. Do you like it, Kaho?”
“What have you done? Why are we here?”
Rekka was on his feet too, pacing the car. “How are we here? Have the tenshi moved us?”
King Daichi laughed as wind tore through the carriage, the train tilting as it made its way around a bend. “The tenshi have no power here.”
The king and queen turned on him together, pissed as fuck.
“You will hold your tongue!” Queen Kaho boomed.
King Rekka grabbed Daichi by his neck, lifting him off the seat. “What you have done here? Answer us!”
“I have made something new. Innovative, far more interesting than what has come before.”
Queen Kaho paced the carriage, taking in her surroundings. “This is Mount Tate? This is the realm of the good souls?”
“Yes.”
“You have tainted it.”
“That’s a matter of opinion.” He was completely unbothered
by the other king holding him by the throat. “It is my new experiment, my own kingdom.” Man, he had that ‘I win!’ expression like he’d always thrown at me.
King Rekka shook him violently. “There is no kingdom of your own. That is not your purpose. Your—”
Daichi shoved Rekka backward.
The queen came to Rekka’s side. “You will lay a hand upon your sacred kin?”
“We’re not family, Kaho. You know that. We’re things, creations to serve a purpose. Slaves. I’m bored of being a slave. I decided to take action, spill some tenshi blood.” He stuffed his hands into his robes.
The queen’s eyes widened. “You attacked our blessed creators?”
“Yes.”
“Heathen!” Rekka seethed. He charged at Daichi, full of rage.
But King Dickhead was quicker. He pulled a dagger of blue light from his robes and slashed across Rekka’s throat. Kaho cried out as blood sprayed Daichi. He laughed, letting it cover him, lapping it up from the edges of his lips.
Holy shit!
Kaho charged next with her own dagger. She was quick, slashing at him, even kicking him to the floor. But I’d seen Daichi fight, and he took her down, stabbing her in the heart.
He laughed softly as the blood from the two corpses flowed across the floor, bubbling, then pulling back towards him—into him. He threw his head back, filling up with power, his skin radiating with blue-tinged light.
Then it was done.
“I am the king,” he said and walked through the carriage, stepping right through me.
Weird as hell!
The bodies of the king and queen turned to stone, like how they were in the mountain rock, then faded away as the train rattled on.
The scene broke apart, dumping me back into the white realm.
“Then Daichi could complete his new world, claim dominion over all death.”
I rubbed my eyes. “Why couldn’t you stop him? You’re the tenshi!”
“We are not warriors, Akira. We do nothing but spin our threads of creation, give the life to all but the elves—life that the mazoku seek to overwhelm with their darkness. They have no afterlife of their own.”
“So people don’t go to hang with the mazoku—bad people I mean?”
“No, Akira. Mazoku do not weave the same life as we do, thus have no rule upon it. Only their own creations, such as the new baku.”
Four Moons: The Complete Collection: (Books 1 - 4) Page 60