More flames rushed toward Kevin, who dodged accordingly. Searing heat caused his skin to feel singed, but he knew that was just an illusion. This wasn’t normal fire. It was hellfire, flames that were summoned from the underworld. They wouldn’t burn his body if they touched him. They would burn his spirit.
A glance at his surroundings revealed that he was alone. Iris and Lilian were now behind Seth, Kevin having moved away from the pair to keep them from getting hit by a stray attack. They were watching him while they recuperated from their wounds and youki exhaustion.
Knowing that he had to keep the fox-man’s attention on him, Kevin taunted the centuries-old being. “You keep saying you’re going to kill me, but you haven’t had much luck so far. Maybe you should just give up, because it’s clear to me that your aim sucks!”
“Fuck you, human! I’m not gonna put up with insults from an inferior primate!” Seth’s tails stopped hurling hellfire at him and instead speared the ground. “Spirit Art: Puppetry.”
Kevin watched warily as three pentagrams appeared on the ground. Hands emerged from within those pentagrams. Long, slender, delicate. Female hands. They were followed by more hands, then arms, heads, and bodies. Kevin felt something like annoyance mixed with apprehension as three people pulled themselves from the pentagrams, all of them women, and all of them carrying various weapons.
The one nearest him was a blond with long hair, green eyes, and a unitard that fit her lithe figure. She carried a pair of serrated military knives. Several feet behind her, a redhead wielding a staff stood with blank brown eyes. Farthest from Kevin, a woman with hair like ash wielded a pistol of some kind, though he didn’t know what type.
“These three are part of my collection,” Seth said, his bloody lips twisting into an arrogant sneer. “All of them are warriors that I killed at one point and turned into puppets. Let’s see how you handle them.”
Without warning, two of the three women rushed at him while the other one hung back and aimed her firearm. Kevin was caught in a pincer attack that forced him to backpedal. He retreated, moving away from their attack. The two followed him.
The air screamed as a staff flew by his face. He avoided it by tilting his head back, but he couldn’t avoid the aftershock, the force generated by the swing. Rather than allowing himself to stumble back, he went with it. Kevin fell backwards, rolled across the ground, and jumped back onto his feet.
Red hair and brown eyes appeared in front of him, the knife wielder, who attacked him with a series of thrusts and slashes. Kevin’s breathing was ragged as he dodged. Left. Right. Back. Duck. He was a constant figure of never-ending motion. On the woman’s last swing, Kevin leaned his torso as far back as he dared, and then he kicked the woman’s arm to knock the knife out of her hand.
While the woman recovered her knife, Kevin was assaulted by the staff wielder.
Kevin was forced to constantly move in order to keep ahead of her attacks and avoid getting pumped full of holes. He ducked underneath a staff. His hair was buffeted by the displaced air. The scent of oil and blood filling his nose alerted him to someone coming up behind him. He spun around and was just in time to avoid having his chest carved open by a military knife.
Heavy breathing. Gasping rasps. Kevin’s lungs were on fire as he moved, weaving and swerving and dodging. The two came at him as a unit, one defending and the other harassing. They worked well together. He wondered if it was because they had military training, or if they were being controlled by Seth.
Kevin changed directions, moving closer to the staff wielder. After abruptly stopping his momentum, he changed direction and took a single step into her guard, provoking the woman into attacking.
She did. It was a straight jab with her staff. Kevin turned the staff aside with his left hand and stepped into her guard, pounding her stomach with several quick hits that would have knocked the wind out of most people. All that happened to this woman was that she stumbled back. Then she came right back in, forcing him on the defensive.
“You didn’t really think something like that would work, did you?” Seth asked, cackling from where he kneeled. “My puppets aren’t alive. They feel no pain. Those bodies are merely containers used to anchor their souls to the earth, keeping them from crossing the Sanzu River. Your feeble human attacks won’t do anything to them.”
Well, that sucked. While Kevin would have loved to deny what the man said, he couldn’t because his attacks clearly hadn’t hurt this woman at all. She merely shook it off and attacked with renewed vigor alongside the knife wielder who had finally reclaimed her second blade and rejoined the battle.
Deciding to try something else, Kevin began maneuvering the two girls around some more. He forced them to follow him, setting them up just as he wanted. He made sure to always position himself in such a way that neither could attack him at the same time, lest they end up attacking each other or be hit by the markswoman.
The two weapon users split off from each other and came at him from opposite directions. Kevin ducked. The staff soared over his head and almost hit the knife wielder. If it wasn’t for the woman’s insanely fast reflexes, she would’ve had her head bashed in.
He stood up. Two knives nearly skewered him when their wielder launched herself at him and thrust her blades forward. Kevin was already moving. He grabbed the staff, which was returning to its owner’s side after her swing, and yanked the woman into the knives’ path.
Clang clang!
The knives were deflected, but it was a near thing. The staff wielder somehow managed to twirl her staff around despite the awkward position. This knocked the knives off course, but it also presented Kevin an opportunity to attack—or so he thought.
Out of the corner of his peripheral vision, he noticed the gunslinger take aim and put her finger on the trigger. Bang! Bang! Bang! Kevin dropped to the ground, rolling. His shoulders were jolted as he scrambled to his feet and tried to regain his bearings.
The gunslinger had no intention of giving him time to recover, however, and neither did the other two. The knife wielder was already coming in hot.
Timing it just right, Kevin dodged the two knives that tried slicing him up, grabbed the woman’s left hand, and placed her between himself and the gunslinger just as several rounds were fired. Thunderclap after thunderclap echoed. Light flashed from a barrel. The knife wielder was perforated as bullets penetrated her flesh, though no blood spurted out of her body. When the gun clicked empty, he kicked the woman forward and moved away as she crumpled to the ground.
That’s one down.
Spinning, Kevin was immediately forced to bend backwards as a staff threatened to bash his skull in. He came back up and lashed out with a fist that knocked the woman’s head back. He latched onto the staff and pulled her to him, sliding around her body, placing her between himself and the gunslinger.
He ran forward. He could feel the woman he was using as a shield jerk as she was pumped full of lead. He felt bad for using her, but he told himself that she was just a doll, that she was a puppet, not a living person. When he reached the long-range fighter, he shoved the staff wielder into her, knocking them both to the ground.
“Kevin! Watch out!” Lilian shouted.
The warning came too late. Fire seared his back as something warm and wet caked his clothes to his skin. Turning his head, he saw the knife wielder up and ready for more. The knife in her left hand was covered in blood.
He stumbled forward, but he didn’t fall. The knife wielder was coming in hot. Kevin forced his body to move past the pain. He spun around and faced his opponent, backpedaling and weaving through a combination of thrusts and lunges.
All the while, Seth laughed like a madman. “You can’t stop my puppets, fool! You can’t kill what’s already dead! They’re invincible!”
Invincible, huh? Did that mean that nothing he did could kill them? Were they really invincible, or were they just impervious to physical damage? Dang it. This would have been so much easier if he knew the capabili
ties of his enemy’s technique.
The two that he had knocked to the ground stood back up, the staff wielder rushing to join the knife user, while the gunslinger hung back and took aim. Kevin was given no quarter. He moved back constantly, using all of his skills to keep from being forced into a two-on-one battle with the close-range weapon users. It was a lot harder than it looked.
Seth’s constant ravings didn’t help any.
***
On the sidelines of the three-on-one battle, Lilian and Iris watched in frustration. Neither were in any shape to move. Just sitting up required more effort than it was worth. To top it off, they were nearly out of youki and couldn’t even perform the most basic of techniques. They were, for all intents and purposes, as helpless as a human baby.
“I hate this,” Lilian said through gritted teeth. “I feel so useless. Kevin is fighting to protect us, but I’m stuck here waiting until I can gain enough youki to recover.”
No matter how powerful a yōkai was, without youki to fuel their techniques, they were nothing. Even a Kyūbi was useless without youki. Right now, if Lilian were to fight, she’d only hinder Kevin.
“I might be able to do something.” When Lilian looked over at her, Iris bit her lip and shrugged. “I’ve got enough youki for at least one more technique, but I can only use one, and it will likely only take out one of those puppets.”
Lilian paused for a moment, but she eventually nodded. “I don't think you need much more than one technique. Seth is only a three-tails. He's been putting on a strong front, but he has to be running out of youki by now.”
A three-tailed kitsune only had twice as much youki as a two-tailed kitsune, and Seth had been slinging around more youki-intensive techniques than her and Iris combined.
“If you can take out the knife user, that would be good,” Lilian continued. “She seems to be giving Kevin the most trouble right now… and she’s the one who hurt him.”
“You just want me to get rid of her out of revenge.”
“You got a problem with that?”
“Not in the least.
***
As the fight continued, Kevin eventually deduced that the only way to get rid of these puppets was to take out the one controlling them. That was how stuff like this worked in anime, and he was going to bank on it working in this fight too. It wasn’t like he had any other choice. He was already running low on options.
The problem was coming up with a plan to take Seth out. He couldn’t get close to the man, and trying to approach resulted in him either being cut off by the staff and knife wielder, the gunslinger’s bullets, or Seth’s hellfire. But he couldn’t remain on the defensive either. He could feel his strength leaving him as the fight against Cassy caught up to him.
A step to the left allowed him to avoid the knife wielder’s slash attack. Kevin spun around and struck the woman’s left hand with a quick kick that knocked the knife out of her hand. She came at him again with the knife still clenched in her right hand.
Footsteps behind him made his ears twitch. He allowed the knife wielder to get close before moving at the last second, grabbing her wrist, and redirecting the attack behind him. There was a moment of resistance, but then the knife sunk into someone’s flesh. It was the staff wielder.
If there was one good thing about fighting these three, it was that they were not yōkai. Their bodies, while basically just dead shells containing a soul, were still human, with all the physical limitations that being human entailed. Having been forced to fight against Kiara’s three goons in three-on-one battles several times, Kevin had become well-versed in this type of combat situation.
The key to fighting multiple opponents was to make them trip each other up. By constantly maneuvering around them so they would be in each other’s way, it was possible to not only fight one on one, but to also make sure they attacked each other. It was this sort of intelligent maneuvering that kept him from being killed thus far.
Kevin briefly thought about using the style he’d begun developing, but immediately decided against it. That style had been created to fight creatures beyond his ability to physically compete against, and it still wasn’t complete. Cassy had managed to score several blows before he’d gotten her timing down. It just required too much focus for someone untrained in its use.
Avoiding the incoming staff thrust with a fake-out, Kevin ducked low and allowed the pole to pass over his shoulder. With his right hand pushing the pole up, his left hand closed into a fist and slammed into the woman’s chin with a brutal uppercut. The sound of her teeth clacking together was audible as she fell to the ground. He didn’t have much time to celebrate, because a pair of knives came in from out of nowhere to skewer him, forcing Kevin to backpedal.
He gritted his teeth as his arm was nicked. Blood poured from the wound. He ignored it and wove around her next attack, and then reverse-kicked her in the chest. The woman stumbled back, away from him—
“Void Art: Consuming Flame.”
—and then dark black flames suddenly consumed her body. For the first time since this fight started, the woman screamed in pain. She dropped her knives and fell to the ground, writhing. Her mouth opened, but no scream came out. The void fire filled her lungs and erased everything, even her ability to scream. Before long, the woman was gone. Not even ash remained. The knives were still there.
Seth and Kevin turned to see Iris kneeling on the ground, breathing heavily, her tails lying limply in front of her. It didn’t take a genius to figure out who had killed that woman.
“Damn you!”
Seth’s tails came up to launch a hellfire attack at Iris. With barely any time to think, Kevin reacted on instinct, grabbing one of the knives and throwing it at Seth.
He sucked at throwing things. Kevin never managed to hit a target or make a basket before. However, for the first time in his life, his aim was true.
Perhaps the desperation of his situation heightened his skills at throwing objects, but the knife smacked against Seth’s head. It didn’t stab him because he was hit by the handle, but it did knock his concentration off and caused his attack to sputter out.
Without giving it much thought, Kevin used this distraction to rush right at Seth. The two women remaining attempted to impede his path, but they seemed to be moving sluggishly. He guessed that Seth’s control over them had loosened, or maybe something else was happening. Either way, he avoided their attacks, closed the distance between him and his foe, and snapped the kitsune’s head back with a kick.
“Fucking human!” Seth screamed.
Three tails latched onto Kevin and began to squeeze him tightly. One wrapped around his neck, forcing a raspy gurgle out of his throat. They must have been reinforced with youki. Kevin could have sworn he heard his bones creak.
Seth’s bloodshot eyes glared at him as he stood to his feet, heavily favoring his left leg. Blood ran down his now broken nose. “There will be no quick death for you, boy. I’m going to make you suffer!”
Kevin would have screamed as Seth forced youki into his frail human body, but he lacked the breath to shout. He could feel the foreign energy like fire burning his insides. Fire! His insides were on fire! His intestines were melting, his heart was bursting into flames, he felt the underworld calling to him. His soul was being dragged down, where it would burn in the fires of hell.
Pain turned into breathlessness as he was slammed into the ground. He would’ve gasped, but he’d swallowed his tongue. Kevin tasted copper filling his mouth.
Dredging up whatever strength he had left, Kevin grabbed onto the tail that was wrapped around his throat, which seemed to slacken of its own accord. It was probably his imagination, but his left hand felt a little bit stronger.
“W-what the hell is this?!” Seth screamed.
“Beloved!”
“GAH!”
Kevin blinked several times. His vision was blurry, but he eventually made out what was happening.
Lilian had leapt onto Seth’s back and was cl
awing at his eyes. Her tails had likewise wrapped around his arms, keeping them pinned by his sides. Seth thrashed around, stumbling as he tried to throw the girl off. When that didn’t work, one of the tails holding Kevin let go and wrapped around Lilian’s throat, choking her.
With his vision beginning to fade, Kevin searched for a way out of this situation. Spots appeared before his eyes, his breathing was slowing down. He fought through the haze that had been cast over him and looked around. The knife that he had thrown was only a few inches to his left.
Fighting back the darkness crowding around the edge of his vision, Kevin wrapped his hand around the hilt. With one last, desperate push, he shoved the blade into Seth’s chest. The blade slid in smoothly. Blood seeped out of the wound, staining Seth’s shirt.
The three-tail’s eyes went wide as he stared at the handle protruding from his chest in disbelief. Then he looked at Kevin. Their eyes met. Seth took a shuddering breath before his tails went slack and he toppled over. Kevin gasped, coughing and hacking as his lungs regained the oxygen they’d been deprived of.
“Beloved…” Lilian, also croaking, crawled over to him on all fours. “Are you okay?”
“Yes… I think so… what about you?”
“I’m all right.” Upon reaching him, Lilian helped Kevin sit up and pulled him into a hug. She held him tightly, as if afraid that he would disappear the moment she let go. “You saved me. Thank you.”
Kevin returned the hug. He took comfort in Lilian’s presence and her slender arms around his waist. “I think it would be more accurate to say we saved each other. I would’ve been dead if you hadn’t jumped on his back like that.” Lilian didn’t say anything to that. She only hugged him tighter.
“I’m feeling awfully left out right now.”
Their moment was interrupted by Iris dropping like a sack of bricks right next to them. Kevin felt a moment of annoyance, but when he saw how exhausted she looked, the haggard bags under her eyes and the hollowness to her cheekbones, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her off.
A Fox's Mate (American Kitsune Book 6) Page 39