Frail Human Heart

by Zoe Marriott

  “Oh, God,” Mum said. “Is he…?”

  I followed her gaze and saw the body of a man mostly hidden under the rubble. His head, shoulders and one arm were visible.

  My dad glanced at my mum’s face and said, “I’ll make sure.”

  The king’s lifted hand brought the Kitsune behind us to a halt as my dad jogged off. In the twin glow of moonlight and my sword, it was very obvious to me that the man was long dead and past our help. His eyes were filmed over, unblinking, and his skin was the colour of chalk. But if checking would help Mum sleep better when this was all over, then it was worth a minute’s delay.

  This way! This way!

  Shut up, I told the sword. You’ll get your chance soon enough.

  Dad reached the body, crouched by him and touched his neck. I guessed from his slight grimace that the man’s skin was already cold. Dad shook his head, then stood up again, turning to face us.

  “No pulse,” he called.

  The sword’s vibration changed in my hand. My eyes shot up above Dad instinctively, to the hole in the building. I saw a giant wedge-shaped head − like a snake’s, but covered in pink, soft-looking skin. I saw foot-long fangs, long whiskers like a cat’s and glowing red eyes.

  I screamed, “Get down now!”

  My dad didn’t stop to ask questions or argue. He flung himself flat on the pavement as the snake’s neck suddenly stretched. Its head shot out of the broken wall like a tennis ball leaving a racket – but its fangs snapped shut on empty air instead of my dad’s body. My mum let out a muffled screech, then clamped both hands over her mouth.

  Half a dozen lightning bolts speared the thing’s soft-looking hide as the Kitsune surged forward. My dad had already rolled and leapt to his feet, his katana practically flying into his hand. The snake-thing gave a savage hiss, arching back over the road. Its body – weirdly segmented and saggy looking, almost like a caterpillar, but with no legs – was still uncoiling. Twenty feet, now thirty, and still counting. Clear venom dripped from its fangs, its mouth gaping impossibly wide as the lower jaw dislocated. The lightning hadn’t stopped it, only pissed it off.

  “Aim for the eyes,” the king instructed. She sounded as calm as if she was ordering a second slice of cake at a party. I did a double-take when I realized she had stepped sideways and folded her arms, observing.

  Hikaru and another Kitsune – a dark-skinned, fourtailed man with spiky hair and a pierced nose – flung slender, sharp rods of lightning at the thing’s face just as my dad hurled a ninja throwing star. Hikaru’s shot hit the left eye dead on, and she whooped as the bulbous red orb popped like a balloon. My dad’s blade buried itself in the right one an instant later. The monster let out a disturbingly human yell. A pink, rounded tongue flailed in its gaping mouth. It reared up even higher, the thickest part of its body flumping down into the road in a clatter of falling masonry. My dad and Hikaru jumped back out of the way.

  I couldn’t draw my sword. Not now, not like this. But that didn’t mean I had to be useless. The thing was blinded now, but it could still hear and feel. I picked up a chunk of concrete and flung it at the monster’s head. It bounced off the pink chin with a thunk.

  “Hey, lizard-brains! Bite me!”

  The monster hissed again, spattering the road with more venom. Its head lunged down, bringing the thinner neck section back into reach. Something dark flashed past me and suddenly Rachel – Rachel! – had hold of the snake’s head. She wrapped her arms around it, small hands clamping down on its jaws and forcing them shut.

  “I’ve got it!” She grunted, digging her heels into the ground, as it thrashed. “Oh, God, this is so disgusting. Someone cut its head off!”

  Shinobu darted forward. His swords crossed in a silver zigzag of metal, and a deep gash opened in the monster’s pink hide, exposing the shiny yellow of bone within.

  “Jack!” my dad called. Jack tossed her naginata to him. He caught it one-handed, stepped forward and thrust the blade of the spear into the wound Shinobu had made, neatly severing the spinal cord. Rachel twisted her arms, and the head came off with a papery tearing sound. She tossed it away and wiped her hands on the front of her shirt, making ick ick noises.

  The headless body flopped across the road, shuddering.

  We all, even the Kitsune, stood still for a moment, just staring in mixed fascination and horror. Then Mum broke away, sprinted to my dad and gave him a smacking kiss on the lips. “You scared the life out of me!” She swiped one of his long knives. “I’ve changed my mind. I think I’ll hang onto one of these, just in case.”

  “What was that?” Jack asked.

  The king and Hikaru exchanged a look. “I’m not entirely sure,” Her Majesty admitted. “Possibly a form of nozuchi, although I had not known they could grow so large.”

  “Izanami’s pulling out all the stops for us,” Hikaru said.

  Jack waved her hands in the air. “Ooh, yippee.”

  “But!” The king turned back to the army. “It was also a lesson! Remember this: lightning cannot always be used as a method of brute force. Have your weapons and your brains at the ready, my people!”

  The Kitsune shifted a bit sheepishly. The sword’s desire pulled on me again, impatient. Without waiting any longer I moved forward, vaulting over the still twitching remains of the snake. The others poured after me.

  “What time is it?” I asked as we continued down the road.

  “Twenty to twelve,” Jack answered. Her eyes were on the sky. The full moon shone just as brightly as ever, but all around it, thick clouds were beginning to gather. They were an intense, unnatural purple. Every now and again they pulsed with what looked like lightning – except that there was no answering rumble of thunder. And there was no wind to move them, either.

  “She’s getting closer,” I said. Twenty minutes.

  Twice more, strange creatures attacked our ranks. A tarry black liquid oozed up through the pavement almost under Araki’s feet and tried to drag her and a couple of other Kitsune under the ground with it. They killed it with lightning. Then a bear-like monster with bamboo growing out of its back tried to take a chunk out of the last rank. They brought it down with bullets and a machete.

  I broke into a jog again, and this time I couldn’t make myself stop.

  We began to see people. First, people’s bodies. Even Mum didn’t try to make us check on the desiccated husk lying in the mouth of an alleyway, although she made a sad noise at the sight of its long, shining blonde hair. But then living people began to show up as well. Scuttling away from us into spaces between buildings, fleeing in small groups. Some walked past us as if we weren’t there, mumbling to themselves. With wide eyes and torn clothing covered in blood or other disgusting substances, they looked like refugees from some unspeakable war.

  Which was exactly what they were.

  I heard sirens in the distance, and screams. A couple of times police cars zipped in front of us at an intersection, and once an ambulance nearly mowed a couple of unwary Kitsune down. The roaring in the distance was getting closer, and louder, and eventually I realized what it was. After visiting the dream realm so recently I should have guessed it earlier.

  Water. Churning, raging water.

  The sword was leading us to the river – and the river sounded angry.

  Above us, that great, bright moon seemed bigger than ever, its light taking on a strange, rusty tinge as the clouds got thicker and thicker around it. The sword was shuddering in my grip now.

  This way! This way!

  “Eight minutes to twelve,” Rachel said. “Are we close?”

  Rather than answer, I veered off the road and through a set of metal traffic bollards onto a paved pedestrianized area that was sandwiched between a modern glass building and a place built of ugly meat-coloured bricks. It was only when I glanced back to make sure the others were following that I saw the graceful dome of St Paul’s Cathedral behind us. It took me a second to recognize it. At night, the building was normally lit up with blue
or white spotlights, shining bright. It still was, in a way. Only now the lights were the wrong colour. They were red. Blood red. As the Kitsune streamed past me, I whipped around to look at the moon. Veins of dark crimson were worming onto the pale disc’s edges, like threads of blood drifting in water.

  THIS WAY!

  I dashed through the ranks of Kitsune, streaked past my family, past Hikaru and the king. The sword thrummed in my grip and my feet hardly seemed to touch the ground as I shot out in front. “We don’t have much time!”

  Shinobu caught up with me almost at once, his face pale and set. The others took a few seconds longer to get it, but a moment later the army broke into a thundering gallop. The king and Hikaru were still right at the front, Jack and Rachel a little further back. Behind them my dad kept pace with my mum. That was all the attention I could spare. I turned my face in the right direction and sprinted.

  We flooded into a tunnel. The road markings blurred into one continuous yellow line under flickering sodium lights; the sound of footsteps melded into a rumble like an approaching train. I shot out into the night and saw where we were. The sword dragged me onwards, even as behind me I heard exclamations of surprise and dismay at the sight ahead.

  The great glittering black expanse of the Thames spread out before us, reflecting a nightmare in progress. Half the lights of the city were dark. Clouds of pale smoke drifted against the night sky, lit with the dancing light of fires – dozens of fires − burning on the other side of the river. One of them was The Shard. The iconic building was an eye-watering streak of white heat in the darkness − a flaming torch that turned the water below it to dazzling gold. The crushed and mangled remains of a ferry, a river-tour boat, drifted past, surrounded by debris. It looked as if a giant had tried to twist it into a pretzel and then dropped it in disgust when he couldn’t get the metal to cooperate.

  Almost directly ahead of us lay the slender, unmistakable curve of the Millennium Bridge.

  Beneath the bridge, the river had become a whirlpool, stretching nearly as far as the banks on either side, with the bridge spanning its diameter. The liquid gleamed a rich, vivid crimson. I wasn’t sure if it was even real Thames water any more, or if the power of Izanami’s rage and madness had turned it into what it looked like: blood.

  The entire structure of the bridge was caged with lightning – great pulsing veins of red lightning that speared up from the churning water below and peaked in a sharp arch, piercing the clouds above. Only the ends of the bridge, where it met the footpath on either side, were open. The red lightning licked at them, too, crawling over the empty space and then flickering away as if impatient to fill the gap.

  That whirlpool was where the mouth of Yomi would open. There might as well have been a neon sign above it. But why there? Why choose there, in the river, under the bridge, of all places?

  Then, in a sudden leap of intuition, I understood.

  When midnight came, the lightning cage around the mouth of Yomi and the bridge would close. Whoever – whatever – stood on the bridge would be caught there within the lightning, unable to escape until Izanami chose to let them go.

  Izanami had set a trap for Izanagi.

  A trap for me.

  The moon was almost entirely red now. The sword’s pull had kept me moving, but shock had slowed my steps to a hesitant shuffle. I opened my mouth to ask the time again – and was drowned out by a scream.

  A see-through blob the colour of vomit was crawling up onto the path behind me, oblivious to the bolts of lightning that the Kitsune flung at it. It had a horny black turtle shell on its back and black horns like a cow’s. One of the fox spirits blasted it with a shotgun, but the bullets bounced off the shell with no effect. “Fire!” someone shouted. “Set it on fire!”

  Further back, a winged monstrosity – half bat, half lizard – swooped on the massed Kitsune. It scooped one up in a five-clawed foot. The Kitsune shocked it with a burst of lightning and it dropped her with a squawk.

  We were under attack, but I had to keep going. I turned away and pelted towards the bridge.

  “Form lines!” Her Majesty yelled. “Protect the sword-bearer! Protect the humans!”

  Fox spirits surged around me, creating a living barrier, two people wide, between me and the water. An honour guard. I dashed past them, eyes fixed on the bridge and the swarming red veins that had almost covered the moon. I had minutes, maybe seconds to get there. Shinobu ran beside me, eyes burning black in his face, his hand a knot around the fold of his coat where the wakizashi was hidden.

  The bridge was only half a dozen steps away.

  A huge sickly yellow tentacle, bristling with needles like a cactus, shot up out of the water. It swiped the Kitsune out of its way as if they were paper dolls, and then came at me.

  Hikaru rugby tackled me, shoving me down. I hit the ground and rolled – and the tentacle seized Hikaru, scooping her off her feet. She let out a pained cry as she tumbled through the air towards the seething river. There was a splash. Then she was gone.

  Jack screamed. “No!”

  Shinobu grabbed my arm and dragged me up off the wet pavement. I scrambled to my feet and risked one last look back. This was it. This was all I would get. An eyeblink image of darkness and terror, my parents’ shocked faces, Jack screaming, Rachel stricken, the king reeling back from another monster as it lunged out of the water at her, and the gap where Hikaru should have been.

  This was goodbye.

  I turned away and flung myself onto the bridge with Shinobu. Our feet hit the walkway at the same moment, and we passed under the arch of flickering red lightning together.

  There was a thunderclap and a fizzle of white light, and shining darkness unfurled at the other end of the bridge. Izanagi stepped out of it. His dark kimono glowed with golden embroidery, and his unbound hair lashed around his head. He stalked forward onto the bridge, energy crackling in his hands, eyes blank globes of searing white.

  Izanami’s voice – that eerie singsong voice, somehow a woman’s and a child’s at the same time – echoed up from under our feet, booming as if she was speaking into an Olympic sound system. “My beloved! The hour is come. Soon we shall be together again!”

  “Give up, you crazed whore!” he snarled. “You cannot get out. I will not let you out. Not ever!”

  Through a gap in the lightning above, I saw the last of the moon’s pale light disappear, eaten by blood. A deep, mournful sound, like some colossal temple bell, rang out over the water. Marking the hour. Midnight.

  Time’s up.

  The red cage of electricity pulsed with new brilliance. In an instant, the openings at both ends snapped shut, sealing the bridge off from the outside world.

  Trapping Shinobu and me on a bridge above the mouth of hell, with two mad gods.

  Jack lost sight of Mio and Shinobu as they sprinted ahead of her, lost sight of the creepy red electric veins caging the bridge, the Eye of Sauron thing the moon was doing. All she could see was Hikaru’s face, contorted in agony as she plunged into the water.

  She shoved past the Kitsune that blocked her path to the river. “Hikaru!”

  She can’t be gone. She can’t be gone just like that.

  “Hikaru! Please answer me!”

  Sobs choked her as her gaze searched the water, desperate for a sign of the stupid, brave fox spirit. The tentacle thing had disappeared without a trace. Did it have her? Was it holding her under water, slowly drowning her?

  I have to go in.

  Jack crouched, put her naginata down on the pavement, and began to shrug off her heavy armoured coat.

  “What are you doing?” Rachel demanded. Jack flinched. She’d all but forgotten her sister was there. “You can’t go into the river! It’s full of monsters. You wouldn’t get two strokes without being eaten alive.”

  “She’s out there! Someone has to help her,” Jack said, struggling with the straps on her tactical vest.

  “Then let me go, idiot!” Rachel sat down as if to take off he
r boots.

  Something broke the surface. A sizeable chunk of yellow, prickle-covered tentacle floated past.

  “Ladies,” said a weak voice from below them. “No need … to fight. Plenty of me … to go … around.”

  Jack flung herself flat, thrust her arms over the side of the path and seized the pale hands that were scrabbling at the concrete blocks. With Rachel’s help, she hauled a sopping-wet Hikaru out of the river, over the side of the bank, and onto the pavement.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack, Furball!” Jack yelled.

  There was no answer. Hikaru lay stiffly, shuddering in Jack’s arms. Jack stared at her friend with dawning horror. Dark blood oozed from a dozen puncture wounds where the tentacle’s needles had gone through her leather clothes. Her breathing was harsh and laboured.

  “Hikaru?”

  “Hurts…” the fox spirit choked out. She turned her face away from Jack – and went suddenly and terrifyingly limp.

  “Poison?” Rachel asked urgently. “Those prickle things—”

  “I don’t know. Get – get the king, get Araki, or Hiro – anyone. She needs magic, a healing spell. Something. She needs help!”

  Rachel scrambled to her feet and grabbed the nearest Kitsune. “Look after them! I’m going for the king!”

  The Kitsune, a stocky girl with long blonde braids, stared at the king’s granddaughter bleeding on the pavement and nodded wordlessly. She drew a machete from her belt and took up a guard position over Jack and Hikaru. Rachel disappeared into the seething mass of Kitsune fighters.

  “Don’t die, Hikaru,” Jack whispered.

  This is what Mio meant. You’re never ready. You’re never ready for loving someone – or losing them.

  Why did I have to be such an effing coward?

  Leaning down a little awkwardly, she kissed the corner of Hikaru’s lips – and the sudden realization that this might be the last time she’d ever kiss Hikaru made a ragged sob tear out of her throat. “I like you, too. Please don’t die. Please, please, please.”