by E. A. Copen
He made three quick, perfect cuts through the air. I was no swordsman, but I couldn’t find any flaw. It was mesmerizing to watch.
After the third cut, he paused, the sword extended in front of him. “Muramasa’s blade cut leaves. It cut logs. It sliced every fish in two. But what no one else saw was that the blade also cut Muramasa.” Haru sheathed the sword and revealed bloody palms, handing the first sword off to the Tengu.
He retrieved the other sword and drew it, examining the blade. “As Muramasa drank in the applause, Masamune took his turn. He gave no demonstration of his skill, for he felt he had no need. The sword would speak for him. While he held it in the waterfall, it cut only leaves. Fish swam by, spared by the blade. Sticks and logs flowed around it.
“When Muramasa saw, he laughed and pointed out the poor craftsmanship of Masamune’s blade. But a mountain monk who happened to be passing by had seen the competition. He stepped forward and quieted the student. ‘Your blade was a fine blade,’ he said to Muramasa. ‘But it is an evil blade. It cuts without discrimination or care. It would cut the butterfly just as soon as it would take the head of your enemy. But it is Muramasa’s blade that is superior for it will never be used to cut down an innocent.”
The Tengu clapped. Haru smiled and bowed.
I shrugged and joined in the clapping. What the hell?
“That’s nice,” Khaleda said, arms crossed, “but you left out the part about how both swords have a magic power.”
“That is true,” agreed the Tengu next to me. “The swords have a power. Muramasa’s blade is murderous, fierce and unstoppable. Once drawn, its bloodlust must be sated. Wielding it long enough will corrupt the mind with the same bloodlust. Masamune’s sword, however, is just. It will kill only the wicked. Both must be fed souls.”
“In the last bout, I used Masamune,” Haru explained. “You asked me not to kill, so I didn’t go with the intent to kill. Muramasa, however, will kill without question. It can destroy Morningstar, but it is just as likely to kill me or any of you in the process. I don’t know how it will react to taking in an Archon.”
“So, get clear before you stab it,” I said nodding. “Got it.”
“Good.” He put Masamune away and seemed relieved. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He wiped it away with a sigh. “Then there is just one more question to be answered. Who will I use as bait on my team?”
“I volunteer,” said a feminine voice.
Haru turned and found Min waiting behind him. When did she come in? He seemed as surprised as the rest of us. “Min-san, what are you doing here?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “It’s my team. If you’re going to risk us, I should know about it. And I should be the one you use as bait.”
“What? No! Absolutely not! I won’t risk you.”
I cleared my throat. “Risking the strategist might not be the smartest move, but I don’t think she’d buy it if you used one of these two.” I jabbed a thumb toward the nearest Tengu. “They go everywhere in pairs. She won’t challenge you directly because you’re a Horseman and she’s a coward. Taking Samurai Guy out of the team won’t be any make-or-break move. Kumiho-sama is the best bet.”
“I agree,” said Khaleda.
Min raised her hand. “As do I. Majority rules, Haru.”
“May I speak to you in private, Min-san?”
She nodded, and they headed into the boardroom to argue.
Khaleda sighed and rested her elbows on her knees. “They are totally banging, aren’t they?”
“Why do you care?” I asked her.
“I don’t.” Khaleda stood. “But I do have to get back or Father’s going to start looking for me. I don’t want him to find me here, so I’d better go.”
Both Tengu stood and did the bowing thing, prompting Khaleda to pause since she clearly didn’t know how to respond to it. Thank God I wasn’t the only one who thought all the bowing was awkward and unnecessary.
Khaleda stopped with one hand holding open the door to turn back. “Don’t forget, the match, Lazarus.”
“I won’t. And Khaleda? Thanks.”
She didn’t acknowledge my gratitude and made sure to slam the door on her way out.
“Well,” exclaimed the Tengu with the fan. I’d long ago given up on trying to keep their names straight. “I fancy a game. What about you, Karasu?”
“Indeed. I believe we left our board in the hallway. Let’s go have at it.”
They shuffled toward the exit.
“I wish you good fortune, Death,” the second Tengu called back.
I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted after them, “Call me Laz.”
It wasn’t long before Haru emerged looking more worn than ever. He was favoring his injured side enough that there was no way to hide it. The guy shouldn’t have been stepping into an arena to fight at all, let alone to pit his skill against Morningstar. I had all the confidence in the world that Haru could win if he stayed standing. Looking like that, I didn’t know if he’d be able.
“Man,” I said as he wandered over, “when was the last time you slept?”
“No sleep,” he said. “When I do, all I see are demons. My beloved mountain in flames.”
I stood. “Visions?”
He stopped and gave me a quizzical look. “You’re not having them? I thought…”
“Thought what?”
“Everyone with even a touch of magic or connected to the magical world seems to be having them. But not you. Yet you know about them.” He went to his samurai friend’s door and knocked. “Curious, isn’t it? Why haven’t you been affected, I wonder? It must mean something.”
I shrugged. “Don’t know what to tell you.”
It did bother me, though. Pony’s visions had been on the upswing as well over the last few months. He refused to talk about them, same as always, but I knew he was having them. Often, I would get up to fix Remy her bottle in the middle of the night and find him snoozing in his armchair in front of an infomercial. Until Persephone told me about the visions affecting everyone, I had no idea they were so widespread. The more I head about the phenomenon, the more it worried me. Maybe I wasn’t having any visions because I’d be dead before it all went down.
I pushed the thought away. Thinking about my own death wouldn’t do me any good. I had to focus on the plan, on what needed to be done now to secure tomorrow. It was all I had.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Samurai Guy’s name turned out to be Delun, and he wasn’t actually a samurai, he just liked the aesthetic. At least, that’s what I gathered from Haru’s explanation while we waited. Delun spoke Mandarin fluently, broken Japanese, and about six words in Korean, all of them impolite according to Haru. He knew one word in English and chose to use his middle finger as a substitute most of the time. Since I only spoke English, a little French, and a tiny amount of Latin, we communicated primarily through Haru.
Delun seemed to understand the plan in general, but not why we were making him walk around with Haru while I hid in the apartments, waiting for Pestilence to show up. Basically, we had to make it seem like Min had been left in the apartments all alone, which meant they needed to be seen together. It didn’t take any translating for me to figure out pretty quickly that Delun and Haru didn’t get along.
Once they were gone, I waited in one of the bedrooms with the door cracked while Min sat in the main room, her back to the door. From my position, she appeared to be meditating. Nine bright red tails capped in white swished along the floor behind her. It had to be hell on the back, carrying around that many tails.
Since I had nothing better to do while I waited, I spent the entire time thinking up puns about tails.
I didn’t have long to wait. Pestilence showed up less than five minutes after Haru and Delun went out for their walk. She must’ve been waiting close by for her chance.
Pestilence crept into the room, her staff in hand. She made no sound as she moved, despite crossing the room with relative quickness. Her bleach blo
nde hair curled around her jaw, hiding most of her face, but there was no mistaking that it was her.
I waited until she was almost on Min to push open the door. It opened soundlessly.
Pestilence drew her hand back.
“That’s far enough!” I shouted.
She turned and unleashed a black ball of magic in my direction with a snarled word. I dropped and rolled, coming up to block her exit. The magic slammed into the wall and exploded into a cloud of mosquito corpses that stuck to the wall. Gross, but now I knew she had a ranged attack. I hadn’t counted on that.
Two can play at that game. I slammed my hand to the floor and split it in two. The crack wasn’t wide enough to swallow her, but it was enough to throw her off balance. She stumbled back and right into Min’s range. Min turned and sliced at Pestilence’s ankles with a knife. Shit, I didn’t know she’d be armed. No, wait. There were no knives, just the knife-like claws Min suddenly had. She sliced into the back of Pestilence’s ankles, severing the Achilles tendon on each leg.
Pestilence screamed. Her legs buckled from under her and she fell face first to the floor.
Min surged to her feet, snarling and ready for the kill.
“No, don’t kill her!” I held out a hand and stepped forward just as Haru and Delun rushed in, weapons drawn. “We need her.”
“You idiot.” Pestilence sneered and pulled herself toward me. “I was helping you, you half-wit!”
“Save it, sister. We know you’re working for Morningstar.”
Haru barked an order at Delun who put his bow down in the corner. Min dropped on top of Pestilence, her knee in Felicia’s back. She jerked Pestilence’s arms behind her back and secured them with Delun’s help.
“For Morningstar?” she laughed. “Oh, that’s cute. You think that’s all there is to this, don’t you? Just Morningstar’s mad grab for power. People chase power for a reason, idiot.”
Delun hauled her up while Haru retrieved a rolling chair from the conference room.
While they secured her, I decided to try and keep her talking while she was still in a talkative mood. “And for what reason is Morningstar solidifying his power base? I mean, if this had worked out for him—which I promise you it won’t—he’d have not one Horseman in his pocket, but three.”
“Four,” Pestilence spat and nodded to Haru. “He’ll be dead before this is all over.”
Haru and I exchanged a glance. Haru’s forehead wrinkled. “How exactly do you mean to kill me while tied to a chair?”
She grinned. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
Haru backhanded her and stood over her, flexing his hand while she spat blood. “I’d be talking if I were you.”
On the other side of the room, Delun wrapped an arm around Min and tried to lead her away. Min resisted.
“Go with him, Min.” Haru’s voice had a hard edge and drew his sword. “You don’t need to see this.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “Haru, you don’t need to do this.”
He shoved me back. “Yes, I do. She has information.”
“She’s out of the way. Let’s just stick to the plan.”
Pestilence let out a shrill laugh. Blood dripped from her swollen lip. “Go ahead. Beat me. It doesn’t matter. You’ll still die. You’ll all be dead. Every last one of you!” She reared back and laughed hysterically. Pestilence had lost it.
Haru grabbed her by the shirt and drew back a fist. “Tell me what’s really going on!”
I grabbed Haru and pulled him away before he could hit her, so he took a swing at me instead. It hit my jaw with all the force of a dump truck. My vision spun. Another blow hit just below my ear on the other side of my head before I had time to process the first, and suddenly I was kissing the floor. The whole world tilted, blurred, and then went dark.
***
As much as I got knocked out, I was lucky I had a hard head. It hadn’t always been that way. While I was in prison, I had to do something to keep myself busy when I ran out of books. I turned to boxing. I wasn’t the greatest at hitting, and I wasn’t the fastest, but I could take a punch better than any other boxing inmate I met. Even the warden got in on betting on how many punches it would take to knock me down.
Apparently, when you’re punched in the face by War, it takes two.
I came around to Delun slapping my cheek and chattering in Mandarin. Before I was completely awake, he grabbed my cheeks and squeezed.
I swatted him away. The world slowly came back into focus. I sat on the floor with my back to the wall, facing the bloody and beaten body of Pestilence. She was alive; I could hear her raspy, wet breaths through the broken nose and dislocated jaw Haru had given her. Pestilence blinked, her eyes swollen and unfocused. Hopefully, he’d gotten something out of her before he scrambled her brain.
Haru sat in the center of his circle, forearms resting on his knees. His hands were coated in blood. Underneath, his knuckles were probably bruised. He looked just as despondent as Pestilence. What the hell had gotten into him?
I pushed Delun aside and got up on shaky legs. My head was pounding and focusing on any one thought for more than a second seemed impossible. Great. “Thanks for the concussion, asshole.”
I expected a quip but got nothing. He was really fucked up.
“What the hell is wrong with you, Haru?” I slurred and staggered toward him.
“This is what I saw,” Haru said, his voice dry. “It’s happening.”
Walking was too difficult so I decided to fall on my ass next to him. “Pull yourself together and make some sense, will you?”
“Haru has been having visions,” said Min. She stood behind Pestilence out of arm’s reach, her fingers intertwined.
Haru shook his head. “Flashes. Senseless images. To call them visions would imply they could be interpreted. Before this moment, I didn’t know what any of it meant.”
I frowned, or tried to. My face didn’t want to respond. All I wanted to do was sleep. “What’s in these visions?”
Haru’s eyes went out of focus and his face changed. I’d seen that look before. My last cellmate before I left prison was a vet who suffered from awful flashbacks. “Garbage on vacant streets. People with masks over their mouths. Bloodstains on a sandy floor. A door. The dead are clawing their way through it. Fires with black smoke. A dead world.”
He snapped out of it suddenly and turned on me, grabbing fistfuls of my shirt. “There’s a bomb.”
“A bomb?”
“A biological weapon, Lazarus. Before I broke her jaw, she said… It’s here. Insurance against betrayal by Morningstar. If she doesn’t deactivate it, it goes off during the final round. We have to find it, disable it, or we’re all going to be infected. And people will flee in a panic back to Earth. They’ll take it there. That’s what it means. This is how Hell comes to Earth.”
I pried his hands off of me and almost fell over without his support. “A bomb,” I repeated. “Shit.”
Pestilence wasn’t in any shape to take it apart, and in her condition, she wouldn’t be telling us where it was either. There were probably spells that could compel her, but I was barely able to stand, let alone use my magic. I looked around the room for ideas and settled on the clock. I must’ve stared at it for a good two minutes before I remembered how to tell time again.
“Holy shit.” I shot to my feet. Bad idea. I plopped down hard and probably bruised my tailbone. It left me bent over and blinking away tears. “The fight! I’m late.”
“Lazarus, you’re in no condition to fight.”
“I still have to try. Delun, help me.”
Haru got up and did it instead. “We have bigger problems, you know. We have to find this bomb.”
We limped toward the door. I was so late I’d probably missed it. Hopefully, Morningstar had Khaleda fill in for me. It would screw up our plans for the final round, but it wasn’t anything we couldn’t work around.
Shit! Damn Haru and his iron fists. “Can your Tengu friends help?”
We stopped and turned back to look at her.
“I thought bombs would be your thing,” I said. “Weapons of war and all.”
“Shouldn’t they be yours? They’ve killed a lot of people.”
I managed to take a step toward her without Haru’s help. Then another. Each step was harder than the last. Good thing it wasn’t a far walk. Before long, I stood in front of her, my Vision activated. Her silver soul spun, wild tendrils bouncing around inside of her like electric currents. “Where’s the bomb?”
She moved her jaw a little. A tooth fell out and it got stuck at an awkward angle.
“How do we stop it?”
Pestilence didn’t even try to answer.
If I wasn’t barely standing, I would’ve given Haru my best glare. He didn’t have to break her jaw. Guess the guy just couldn’t help himself. He had a hell of a temper.
Since she was barely conscious as it was, putting her under seemed like a kindness. Maybe I’d find a way to bring her back. At least she wouldn’t be dead. What else was there to do? There weren’t any good options left.
I sighed. “Bye, Felicia.”
Despite the broken jaw, she still tried to scream when I reached into her chest. Her body jerked as I touched her soul, arms and legs twitching frantically. I closed my eyes and withdrew my hand. Pestilence fell limp against her bindings.
“I’d say I’d send medical help, but you kind of killed the doctor. Guess you’ll just have to live with the consequences until this is all over, bitch.” I turned my back on her and went out the door with Haru.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We must’ve been quite the sight. War and Death, two of the Four Horsemen limping down the hallway, leaning on each other. I couldn’t stand up straight because the walls kept tilting and my depth perception was shot to hell thanks to the concussion, and Haru had strained his stitches. He was lucky he hadn’t opened the wound entirely as fresh as it was. Blood soaked through his white t-shirt, leaving a messy line of crimson on his side like a stripe.