by Al K. Line
Kimiko burst apart as though her body had combusted from the inside, a million wisps of red death that sank into the gaps between this world and the true Hidden world.
A dancing display of blood magic that spun around my body like a swarm of angry bees, solidity replaced with an ephemeral quality that trailed ribbons of pure magic as her constituent parts spun faster and faster, all suddenly combining into a buzzing streamer of smoky hell that threatened to wrap me in a cocoon of hate and suffocate the magic right out of me, like a Python squeezing the life from its prey.
A song came to my lips, unbidden, but summing up perfectly how I felt. "I ain't going out like that," I sang tunelessly as I batted ineffectively at the tightening display of impossible acrobatics—she'd definitely been practicing what she'd been studying in her books.
I could see them through the red haze, stacked neatly inside her metal home. The whole room lined with dangerous tomes that could send you mad if you even read the spines out loud, let alone opened the books that were semi-sentient and often far from friendly.
It was an odd time to admire interior decorating, but there was no doubt she had taste. The room was relaxing, had a woman's gentle touch. Full of expensive rugs, nice seating, even several modern, designer lamps, all with a hint of Japanese minimalism. And now that I thought about it, each of her properties also had a little of the Finnish style to them. Blond woods, simplistic, yet highly skilled carpentry at the fore, and everything clicked.
This was why she could talk without a hint of an accent and it was hard to place her when she spoke unless you were looking at her. She was ancient, had lived away from Japan for a long time, and was as worldly wise as Dancer.
Dancer! I'd forgotten about him. I glanced his way, through the buzz of cloying magic, and saw him stir. Maybe because of our conversation, or the magic that howled around the room, great gusts of power that threatened to overwhelm me at any moment.
I felt strangely calm in the eye of such a storm, as if everything came down to this and I somehow knew I would come out victorious. Why I had such confidence when the life and magic was right this moment being strangled out of me by a powerful sorceress intent on my destruction because I'd killed her son was anyone's guess, but there you have it.
Maybe it was the giant's immortal magic inside of me? Although I got the distinct feeling I possessed no such skill—if this carried on much longer I would, without doubt, be as dead as a Dodo at a hellhounds' all you can eat buffet.
Time for action.
"He loved you," I said, knowing that right this minute magic was the last thing that would work.
I felt the pure energy that was Kimiko and her sorcery falter, the spinning slow, and I continued. "He told me once, the only time he ever spoke of his family. Said he loved his mother, missed her very much."
Kimiko stood in front of me, kimono flapping as though in a strong breeze, hair wild, black and dangerous as her soulless eyes that drank in light like a Gremlin downs cocktails.
"He spoke of me?"
"I guess," I said, shrugging. "He never said it was you, of course."
Kimiko smiled, maybe there was something soft inside of her after all. Then her features turned to stone and she blasted me hard as she kicked out gracefully, sending a volley of oval magic at my body like she was going for a conversion. "Liar," she screamed.
"It was worth a shot," I said, already out of breath, panting as I dodged just in time. "You corrupted your own son, turned him into a cold, calculating monster, just like you." I spun on a rather worn heel and clapped loudly, feeling the power climb out of me like a break in a gas pipe, ready to explode. It arced dangerously, but Kimiko sneered and lazily lifted a hand, deflecting it away, back to the Empty.
"It's the only way. He had a long life, got what he wanted, with a little help from me. Such a good boy, and you ruined our plans. Still, I have other children, many more, and one day it will all be mine. You can't stop me, nobody can."
"We'll see about that." I knew it was now or never, and all I needed was a few moments to compose myself. Not caring how it looked, I ran for all I was worth around the side of the metal box, skidding on the polished floor now covered in dust and debris.
At the far end I stopped, breathing ragged, forcing myself to get air into my lungs for what I was about to do.
They don't call me Black Spark for nothing, and I was ready to show her exactly what that meant.
Hide your eyes, it gets intense.
What's My Name?
When things are tough, when there's no other choice, and when I absolutely cannot think of anything else to do, and if I have enough magic, and a thousand other ifs and reasons why I mostly cannot ever do what gives me my Hidden name, then I can put on quite a show from this frail, little more than skin, bone, and wild as anything magic-infused body.
It is also riskier than dating a lion shifter and taking her to a bunny rabbit show and saying, "Ooh, look, they're all loose," and expecting there to be no repercussions.
I sank inside of myself, let my mind wander along my limbs in a circuitous route, down my torso, tracing the ink as it made progress. Swirling and twisting this way and that, gathering momentum and energy as I went, as if I was a rolling stone picking up everything in my path. Dancing through chakras, tumbling head-over-heels as I sailed on past my groin and into each leg, energy building all the while, until I was at my feet, consciousness expanded throughout my entire body.
Black Spark was alive.
Vicious and intent only on destruction, already crackling as my eyes shot tiny darts of death that fizzled and spat like my skin in the embers, pain engulfing me as I let the true depths of magic, now intensified and fortified with my immortal gift, grow wilder until I was so full of this distinct type of magic I was surprised I could still function on a normal level.
"No hiding, little boy. Playtime's over." Kimiko was back to being serene. Clothes perfect, hair looking as if she'd just had it done at some expensive boutique, and if I didn't know better I'd swear she'd applied fresh lipstick. Hell, maybe she had.
Not long now, I just had to keep her talking for a few seconds more while the true extent of my new power grew as fierce as my desire, my need, for vengeance. "Why me? Why did you let him have a child to use like a plaything?"
"He wanted you, he needed you. What mother could say no to such a request from her offspring?"
"He needed me, yes, so he could dominate and intimidate, that's all."
"And what is wrong with wanting to get ahead in life? He asked and I gave him the world."
"You gave him nothing. Do you know he didn't lift a finger to stop me when I confronted him?"
Kimiko halted dead in her tracks. "What do you mean?"
"I mean, as I lifted my knife and stabbed him in his neck he didn't even blink, let alone try to resist. I think he didn't want to live with what he'd done once I knew. That, or he understood he'd be caught anyway, found out and shamed. He let me do it. Either gave up, gave in, or felt remorse. He was a coward, couldn't stand to live with the consequences. You raised a coward!" I knew I'd pushed her buttons, I also knew it was a bad idea. She wasn't confused and hesitant because of my words, she was angrier than ever and more intent on my destruction.
Nice going, Faz, you muppet.
A wicked smile crawled across Kimiko's face like the moon coming out from behind the clouds. Cold, bright, without emotion. Uh-oh, not good.
"I have the perfect punishment for naughty boys like you."
"What, want me to bend over so you can smack my bottom? Kinky old lady, aren't you?"
"Please, spare me the juvenile antics. No, you shall be vampire."
My guts squirmed and icy numbness crept up my spine and shocked my brain as though I'd been stabbed with a shard of glass. No, anything but that. I would not, could not, cope with such a life. I would choose death every time. Even if it meant an eternity with Kate I would not be that man.
I'd had the offer before, refused it. I wasn't about to cha
nge my mind now and be bound to my maker for endless thousands of years. As her words raked at my most intimate of fears, I let the demon loose from inside of me. Now was the perfect time. I would not be vampire.
"Never."
"You will be mine. I will make you do my bidding and you shall rule by my side. My son saw so much potential in you, Black Spark, it is time for you to unleash it."
"I'll show you what I've got to unleash." Like a ticking time bomb, I erupted into black sparks of potent magic the likes of which I had never managed before. Each tiny shard of death was as fast as light, as sharp as Intus' scythe, and contained all my contempt, all the sickness I had ever felt. All the pain, anguish, terror, and humiliation this Hidden world has made me endure.
Magic as black as Kimiko's eyes sprang from every part of my ink like another me as it traced my body with its wondrous patterns containing stolen and innate magic from the Empty and immortals. True magic now, magic that was the essence of the man, leaving him a husk of a thing, devoid of all focus or intent, all will to fight on. It was dispelled and it was aimed right at the source of my battle for life.
Kimiko muttered fast and hard chants but they were no protection. As a veil of security wrapped around her body, wispy green magic that would stop a bullet or a blast of my own dark arts under normal circumstances, her eyes went wide as she was pierced over and over again by slivers of my essence so fine they didn't even make a puncture wound as they entered.
But that's the key to this being that is the true Black Spark. Just like a bullet, the exit wound is larger than the entry, and as the tiny fragments passed through her clothes, her skin, her flesh and bone and out the other side, her body erupted into a spray of gore and blood that decorated the cold steel as if she'd done some full body painting.
Was this the fifth element, water? The water of the body, now released from its bonds? Had I completed the circle, or had it just been in my head all along? I was long past caring, but somehow it felt like the circle was joined, my torturous route to salvation a success. Finally complete.
I could see light shining through her in a thousand places as the magic spun in the air like boomerangs, only half its energy expelled. Back it came, heading for me to return to its slumber, making a shortcut right through Kimiko once more.
Now she erupted from the front a mere half second after the initial attack. Gore, brain, blood, and the saltiness of her eyes spraying all over me. Getting in my mouth, up my nose, in my ears and covering me in her foulness as I became the red man, then death, then blackness as I inhaled deeply and the terror I held within me returned.
The reason they called me what they did, yet nobody knew why apart from those closest to me, was sucked down deep into the core of my being. Firing through my ink, piercing my body and scratching through my nerves until I was nothing but pain of my own making—untold hurt that I unleashed and now had to accept back inside if I was to be a whole man again.
What remained of Kimiko's body slumped to the floor. She'd said no final words, I refused to grant her such an honor. Her head, what I'd taken great pains to focus on, was little more than shards of bone and gray matter. Face gone, eyes hollow chambers of accusation, the rest of her mere tatters of rags covered in all the filth she'd held inside.
I saw her soul screaming as it swept up away from a body no vampire could hope to resurrect, not enough left to regenerate from. She tore around me in a whirl of unrepentant anger, but she was gone, nothing but an imprint of her loathsome existence remaining.
She shot up and through the roof, but I knew she would end up far below in the bowels of a spectacular form of hell reserved for the truly despicable.
My chest was rattling terribly and I bent forward, coughing and retching until horrid lumps of magic poison were purged, taking with it more than a hundred years of frustration and the sense that something was wrong with me. With my life, with who I was and what I was.
The emptiness left. I freed myself of the clutch on my guts and the tension in my body. A tightness that had kept me always on edge and utterly frustrated with my lack of finding a way to close the door on the past and start afresh without such a burden.
Over and over I retched, darkness clawing for escape in the form of thick balls of hurt, mental anguish and physical pain. Then as trails of inferiority, of insecurity and of the need to prove something although I never could quite figure out what.
Then it was just tiny afterthoughts, little bits of the bad inside of me, until finally I stood, empty of it all, sickness actually taken from me this time, rather than given as payback. The magic from the Empty took so much away and gave me so much in return.
For that I would be eternally grateful.
Still the curse of the addict was upon me, and now I owed it even more.
"No," I screamed. "I will not be a prisoner in my own body. Not now, not after so much has happened. I'm free of it all, I'm free of you."
Sinking to my knees, I cried tears of relief, of finally finding peace, and it was as though a door closed gently in my heart, my smiling parents turning and waving goodbye before it shut behind them and they were gone, able to rest at last, just as I now was.
"Well, that was dramatic," said Dancer, still propped up against the far wall.
"Have you been awake for all that?" I asked, not even wanting to think about how exhausted I was, how much my legs ached. My heart was spasming, my entire body felt ready to melt into little but the liquefied essence of an enforcer who had finally broken free and was now less than nothing.
"Seemed almost rude to interrupt, you were doing so well. And it looked a little dangerous, too. You okay?"
"Yeah, fine."
I wasn't. But, rather unusually, I was still standing and still conscious.
Not quite knowing what to think or do, I followed Dancer around to the front of the box and after a quick peek inside he heaved against the door, closed it, and spun the massive wheel that locked it tight. As we stood back, strong wards snapped into place, working because of the magic infused into the walls even now Kimiko was gone. Neither of us wanted anything to do with the contents, the Council could have that pleasure if they so wished.
We clambered awkwardly over the rubble, hardly enough energy to lift our limbs, but we made it past the jumble of bodies and the destruction we'd wrought, emerging outside into a crisp, clear, moonlight-rich night.
"You have got to be kidding me," I moaned, as a massive demon, skin pale as the moon, great horns reaching up into the sky, evil grin on its face, came storming up the garden path. I was sure it had a human femur pushed through its fat, pug nose.
"What is with this place?" moaned Dancer. "Don't they know when it's time to give up?"
"Clearly not," I said, sitting down on the bottom step, the only one still intact.
"What the hell are you doing?" Dancer looked from me to the ever closer demon in a panic.
"It's your turn."
Meeting the Yōkai
The yōkai, a demon of endless forms and incarnations that goes back to the beginning of Japan's history, ran straight for us, twenty feet of fat and muscle that was unstoppable and pure Hidden. Dancer flapped about in a panic while I sat there and laughed.
I think that freaked him out more than anything else, the fact I was crying tears of madness and chuckling away like I'd lost the plot entirely.
Not knowing what else to do, and definitely knowing he was about to be stomped, Dancer nonetheless stood in its path, and readied himself to do what he could. But he'd used up all the corpses, wasn't the blasting type, and besides, he was as exhausted and drained of magic as I was. We were both running on empty, as Regular as you could be give or take a hint to keep us just that little bit Hidden, but he faced it down anyway.
It just ran straight on through us, not touching us at all, the merest hint of a breeze all that signified its passing. By the time it got to the fallen doorway it was a ghost, then gone.
"It was just a whisper of what Kimiko
had called," I said. "She'd summoned it to her bidding, but with her gone it's just a memory of a thing, not really here. It's back where it belongs, free of her bond. It was going after her, not us, but she's gone, too. Everything's gone."
"Um, good." Dancer sat beside me and we listened to the cicadas. It was actually quite a pleasant evening.
Airport
I practically crawled from the cab and through the stupid revolving doors at the terminal of the annoyingly busy airport. If it wasn't for Dancer, I would have definitely been on my hands and knees. My arms were hanging limp, so tired and painful they were next to useless. Every part of me hurt. I'd never been beaten like this in my entire life and I've been beaten a lot. More than enough.
If I wasn't so unmemorable, and using the last ounces of magic I could muster, draining dangerously so I found it hard to stay upright even with his help, let alone speak or hand over my ticket, there was no way the staff would have let either of us on the plane. He didn't look much better than me, but then, he always looks like that.
Somehow, we got through not only customs and the endless maze of the duty-free zone where my nostrils were bombarded with a thousand perfumes and the promise of cheap, oversized chocolates in fancy packaging, and made it to the boarding gate.
We must have fallen asleep, or unconscious at any rate, and the next thing I knew I awoke to hear the final call for our flight and the last of the passengers giving their tickets to smiling boarding staff before disappearing into a tunnel.
I tapped Dancer on the shoulder, then shoved him repeatedly until he woke up. Groaning, I pushed with aching hands and got out of my seat. We tried to act like Regulars, and gave the smartly dressed female attendants our best smiles as we handed over the tickets, but I don't think they were impressed as they smiled nervously with concern but let us through. We were already forgotten, and good job, too.
The walk to the plane was pure agony, every step reverberating through my body like a jackhammer, setting my nerves and broken body on fire. I was drenched in sweat by the time we made it, and luckily we were of no concern to the staff as they were keen for takeoff.