by Phil Gabriel
Looking from the limp arrows to the samurai’s crotch, Jane/Akiko smiled and said, “Looks like you have erect-arrow dysfunction.” She tossed the arrows to the ground, and they disappeared before touching the soil.
The samurai grunted, and his bow and arrows disappeared. He rushed his opponent, intent on overpowering her using his greater size.
He had underestimated her speed. I barely saw her drop, left hand and left foot planted on the earth, her right leg sweeping out and catching the samurai’s legs. His rush continued, but then he was airborne, unable to change direction or speed.
But the bastard was good. Even encumbered by the armor, he managed to curl and roll, and ended up on his feet again in microseconds.
As I struggled to rise, the two opponents closed to within striking distance. A flurry of kicks and punches followed, the sound of their strikes rolling through the glade like thunder. I saw magic coalesce at the points on her body where the samurai’s blows landed, protecting her. His kicks and punches were powerful but blunted by her magic.
Jane/Akiko’s strikes were faster, much faster, but didn’t seem to have much effect on the samurai.
I finally made it to my feet, then pulled my useless left arm straight and stuffed my left hand into my belt to keep it from interfering and prepared to help.
But how to help? Compared to these two, I was slow and clumsy. Princess was injured and bent. I bitterly regretted the loss of my god-killer round and the .45, but even if I had it still, shooting while they were fighting at that speed would risk hitting Jane/Akiko.
It was then I noticed the pattern of her attack. While enduring numerous blows that she could have evaded, she was hitting the samurai in the same spot on his armor. The spot she had dented with her foot-first entrance. Each blow flashed magical lightning. She was weakening the protections of the armor. The protections that served to block all magical attacks.
With the last flurry of precisely aimed blows, the armor’s runes broke with a snap. Jane/Akiko stepped back, breathing in gasps. I could see their combined auras were dimmed, almost flickering to extinction. Now that the samurai was vulnerable to magical attack, they had no more magic to use.
The samurai had also been working towards a goal. He had directed the fight to place him close to where his sword had landed. He stepped back over his blade and picked it up in a blink.
Against the unarmed samurai, Jane/Akiko had prevailed. Against the samurai armed with his magical sword, she had no chance. I was steps away, but my one-armed charge would only slow him down for an instant.
I prepared to charge, to give my life to allow Jane/Akiko to survive, when I glanced down and saw Princess at my feet. A thought flashed through my brain, a last attempt. I picked up the badly damaged blade: my Princess, my bloodthirsty instrument of war.
I didn’t have the strength or right-handed skill to wield her, but I had the energy to heal her. While Jane/Akiko dodged and jumped, I poured decades of my life’s energy into Princess. I watched as my hand withered, wrinkled, and liver spots appeared. I cried as the life flowed from my body. The tears dried as I saw the glow of Princess’ spirit increase, the bent blade straighten, and the fae runes that adorned her hilt light up like fire.
I was spent, close to death, as I staggered closer to the combatants. “Jane!” I shouted as I released Princess in a weak toss.
The samurai smiled, certain he could intercept Princess with his blade and quickly end this fight. He stepped forward, and his sword flashed out. His grin faltered when Princess twisted in midair and evaded his effort to bat her to the ground. The sound of Princess’ hilt in Jane/Akiko’s palm was louder than a thunderclap.
The samurai stepped back, bringing his blade to a guard position. I could see his estimation of the danger posed by the short sword form of Princess, and the knowledge that he could beat an unschooled opponent with a short sword flashed through his eyes.
Princess morphed in an instant, changing into a two-handed samurai blade. At the same time, Princess sent energy to Jane/Akiko. Jane/Akiko’s aura brightened, her back straightened, and her feet moved into the correct sword-fighter’s stance. As she had once done in my fight against a werewolf alpha, Princess shared her sword-fighting skills with her wielder: skills honed in the bloodthirsty fae realm, skills she had been augmenting by watching sword-fighting movies almost nonstop since entering my life.
Physically and psychically exhausted, I could no longer maintain my hold on time. As time sped up to normal, the two combatants appeared to speed up to a ridiculous level. The flash and crash of enchanted blades sent kaleidoscopic waves through the air.
I hobbled backward as fast as possible. My only contribution to the fight would now be as a hostage to the samurai.
It ended quickly, the flickering of the warriors freeze-framing in an instant: the samurai on his back on the ground and Jane/Akiko above him.
A sword flashed past my head and embedded itself to the hilt in a nearby boulder. The samurai’s sword. Inches to the right and I would have been decapitated.
I played the sequence back in my mind. The samurai had seen that he couldn’t beat this opponent—an amalgam of human, spirit, and magic—and thrown his sword at me. He had tried to kill me so that the wards would drop and he could escape the onsen. Although it had been too swift for human eyes, I was certain that Princess had tapped that blade mid-flight to alter its course.
Defiant to the end, the samurai snarled at Jane/Akiko. His growl halted abruptly as Princess penetrated his armor through the weakened section and skewered his ghostly heart. Centuries of hate, bile, and magical energy flowed from the samurai’s form into Princess. With a last whisper of hate, the ghost samurai of the Hakone onsen faded to nothing. He left behind the sword and his broken armor.
I collapsed to the ground, overcome with relief and exhaustion. I looked over at the tableau before me: Princess planted in the empty armor, glowing with energy, and Jane/Akiko bent over gasping for breath, bleeding from a dozen wounds.
The door I had created, a portal to the afterlife, drifted closer. To me, it looked like the ill-fitting door that had stood in my family’s shack in Tennessee. In the winter nights, we had stuffed rags in the gaps to keep out the cold. In the summer nights, we stuffed rags in the gaps to keep the bugs and snakes out. On gentle summer days, the rays of welcoming sunshine beamed through the gaps, enticing us to exit and exult in the warm sun.
The portal was my door into summer.
As if in a dream, I could hear the next life; dear friends and family were calling. I was ready to choose to go through the door.
It would have been so easy to let go; prophecies be damned.
But, in the real world, I saw the limp form of Kitty-Sue twitch. She was alive! And still cursed to follow me into death. I heard my mother’s welcome fade away, becoming the song of the birds flitting through the trees.
I took a breath, then another one, then yet another. I looked up at the sky and saw the form of Jane/Akiko above me holding Princess. She knelt down beside me and placed Princess in my hand.
“Scott, my love,” she said, “I can’t let you die. Use the energy of Princess to heal.”
I couldn’t tell which voice she used, Jane’s or Akiko’s. In the end, it didn’t matter. Hell, maybe they both felt the same.
Epilogue
We were lounging in the volcanically warmed waters of the no-longer-haunted onsen, my onsen. The pool was a marvel of nature. One end was fed by a stream of snowmelt water from the top of the mountain. The other end had a second stream that came from a volcanic vent. The admixture of the two streams created a sharp temperature gradient in the twenty-foot-long pool. One end was chilly, and the other end was near boiling. By moving down the length of the pool, one could choose the best temperature for relaxation.
Kitty-Sue and Akiko, both used to much higher temperatures than me, were at the hottest section. Lady Jane and I were near the middle. Princess was propped up on a nearby rock, next to my iPhon
e playing soft background jazz.
Kitty-Sue shifted suddenly, her Pam form displacing much more water than her normal shape. The wave of extremely hot water washed over Lady Jane, Akiko, and me.
“Oh my,” said Lady Jane, “I’ve never seen such a remarkable transformation.” She was staring at the extremely curvy form that Kitty-Sue now wore. I had to admit, she was a beautiful woman: blond hair, blue eyes, more-than-generous breasts, and a smile that warmed my heart. Her breasts, supported by the water, were peeking over the waterline, showing the heart-shaped scar she wore no matter which shape she used. The transformation was remarkable; even the collar had changed into a string of pearls. This was something I had never considered possible.
I was looking forward to the night of Pam-sized sex she had promised.
“No shit,” said Kitty-Sue. “And your transformation from a little old lady, with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel, into this magnificent warrior woman? That’s one for the fucking record books!”
Oh yeah, Kitty-Sue was a lot more vulgar when in her “Pam” form. She said it had to do with the nature of shape-shifting.
Lady Jane stood, baring her heavily muscled torso, and struck a pose that would have won a bodybuilding championship, then said, “Well, even I have to admit the changes are significant. But it took almost a month! Your transformations take only seconds.”
At a glance from Akiko, Lady Jane quickly added, “And I had the assistance of the greatest ghost magician in the world.”
Turning to face Akiko, Lady Jane curtsied, bringing her chin down to the water level, then standing. I watched the rivulets of water trace patterns over her body, caught myself staring, then looked at Kitty-Sue to see if she had noticed my interest. Didn’t want her to get jealous.
Instead, I saw her with a reflective look in her eyes as she stared at Lady Jane’s body. Her bottom lip was between her teeth, and she took a deep breath. Using her kitsune senses to judge Lady Jane’s interest?
Lady Jane eased over to Kitty-Sue’s position, eyes fixed on the scar. “And this scar?” she asked. “It always stays with you?”
With a glance at me, Kitty-Sue said, “Yes, it’s permanent. I like to think of it as a love bite.” Then she laughed loudly, shaking her breasts vigorously. “Another bite like that would probably kill me.”
“May I touch it?” Lady Jane asked in a soft voice.
Kitty-Sue nodded. Lady Jane used her left hand to cup Kitty-Sue’s breast and lift it, then traced the scar with the forefinger of her right hand. “In Africa,” said Lady Jane, “there were tribes that practiced scarification. It was considered a rite of passage to get the first procedure.”
They were standing close together; Lady Jane continued to trace the design with her forefinger. I tamped down a flash of jealousy, then wondered where that emotion had come from. Kitty-Sue had warned me that her Pam form had different appetites than her default form.
I looked at Akiko and raised an eyebrow. She shrugged and shook her head. She and Lady Jane had shared a body, shared thoughts, shared life, but there were still things she didn’t know about Lady Jane.
I closed my eyes and returned to meditation; I still needed to regain a lot of energy to get back to normal. I felt Akiko also descend into a Zen state to absorb energy. The singing of the birds, chirping of the insects, and the soft conversation, interspersed with the occasional chuckle, between Lady Jane and Kitty-Sue eased stresses I hadn’t known I had.
An hour later, we exited the pool and donned terry cloth robes and sandals. I pulled two picnic baskets full of food provided by the hotel kitchen from my satchel, as well as a ground cloth. In a few minutes, we had our picnic set up, with copious amounts of food and drink. Lady Jane sat opposite me, with Kitty-Sue on her right and Akiko on her left.
“Kitty-Sue,” I asked, “what would you like to drink?”
My hand was already on her preferred soft drink, but she surprised me by saying, “One of those cans of Yebisu beer for me, Scott.”
Different form, different appetites. Lady Jane took a chilled white wine, Akiko ghosted an iced coffee drink to her plane, and I popped a bottle of red wine.
We each recounted our stories. First, Akiko and Lady Jane recounted how they had striven to accelerate the rejuvenation process, as well as the physical enhancements for Lady Jane. They had been assisted by Tani Tiger-Lily, who had shown them more efficient ways to gather Bangkok magic. Then, once they were able to travel, the desperate race to return to the onsen before the deadline. It looked like I owed the Thai dryad a debt.
Then Kitty-Sue told our part of the story. She was a much better storyteller than me, providing background and details that I would never have noticed. Of course, in her version, the kitsune was much more heroic than the magicians. I wondered if this was the version she had told to her aunt.
I was on my third glass of wine when she finished, having eaten and drunk my way through two plates of fried chicken, plus some side dishes.
There was a long pause as we digested the food and the stories. Then, speaking simultaneously, Lady Jane and Akiko asked Kitty-Sue, “Can we see it?”
It? What it? I thought. The samurai armor? That had been neutralized and placed in a display cabinet in the hotel’s lobby. What were they talking about?
Kitty-Sue looked at me for a long moment, dropped her eyes to the ground, then said, “Sorry, boss.” She then reached into her bag and pulled out a rolled-up piece of vellum.
My heart stopped in my chest when I saw what she had. It was the damned scroll from Prince Sunbeam’s home. My hands raised to cast a relationship-ending spell.
“You stole from a fae prince?” I said. “You know that he will do anything to get that back.”
“Just like that samurai armor,” said Kitty-Sue, “he has no more claim to this than he did to the armor you retrieved. My queen has agreed to a significant concession for the return of this item.”
“A significant concession?” I said. “Weren’t you supposed to get a third tail for returning this?”
Kitty-Sue looked away, unable to meet my eyes. “I found there was something I needed more.”
“More than a third tail that would rank you higher than your sister and extend your life?” I said. “What could be more important than that?”
“I traded this scroll,” she said, shaking the vellum, “for the indulgence of letting a crazy gaijin magician continue to live and work in her country.”
A thousand thoughts flashed through my mind. Anger that Kitty-Sue had taken the item, against my direct orders. Then resignation that this item was vitally important to the kitsune clan. Then the realization of the sacrifice she had made to keep me safe.
I realized my hands were still up, then spread my fingers and lowered them to my lap. It was only then I noted that all three women were seated together, shoulder to shoulder. Akiko lowered her hands from a defensive position, Kitty-Sue’s fingers moved away from “knife throwing” position, and Lady Jane relaxed from her tense posture.
I did the only thing I could. From my seated position, I bowed as low as possible and said, “Kitty-Sue, I appreciate your sacrifice and hope to be worthy of it.”
I topped off my wine and took a long sip. “You realize he will come after us, right?” I said. “He now considers this a matter of honor. With his time-warp abilities, he can strike at any time, either in the next five minutes or the next fifty years.”
“Time warp?” asked Jane. “What’s that?”
“The fae can warp time, speed it up or slow it down,” I said. “It’s the basis of most of their abilities.”
“Can you match him?” asked Jane. “I’ve seen you move really fast.”
“My speed is more of a metabolic trick,” I said. “I can, mm, ‘overclock’ my metabolism to speed up. But it costs me a lot of energy, accelerates the aging process.”
“And the fae,” interjected Akiko, “can slow down time to appear to go faster, right?” I could tell she was alre
ady working on ways to protect against this. “At no metabolic cost.”
“And your fastest speed,” said Kitty-Sue, “is still slower than a kitsune, or a ghost.” She nodded at Akiko. “Or a ghost samurai.”
Kitty-Sue took a drink from her beer, burped, and held up one finger. “Wait,” she said, “he couldn’t do those tricks in his home. What did you say there? Something about how the time-warp doesn’t work around you?”
You’re giving away too many secrets, whispered my conscience. Yeah, but it might save their lives. “Not me,” I said, nodding at my satchel sitting on a nearby rock, “but my satchel. It has a built-in time-space warp. Creating another time-warp near it is almost impossible. Only a fae queen could do that. Prince Sunbeam doesn’t have that kind of power.”
“Can you beat him?” asked Jane.
“Not in a fair fight,” I said. “I have Princess”—at a gesture, she flew to my hand faster than thought— “but he has a blade of equal make. Plus, he has centuries of sword fighting experience.”
“Oh shit,” said Kitty-Sue, crumpling her empty beer can. “Who said anything about fighting fair? We’ll kick his ass.” She reached for another beer.
Crazy kitsune overconfidence. “I don’t know how...” I said.
Popping open another cold beer, Kitty-Sue continued, “Yes, if only we had, you know, a magic sword that could kick the shit out of fae swords.”
At Princess’ warning zing, Kitty-Sue said, “Sorry, Princess.” She was looking over at the granite slab where the samurai’s magic sword had been impaled.
We all got up and walked over to the boulder. Knowing it was futile, I said, “Yeah, it’s a powerful weapon, but I can’t get it out. It resisted all my magic and all of my strength.”
“Maybe,” said Kitty-Sue, “you’re not magical enough, or strong enough.” Stepping up to the sword and grabbing the hilt, she placed one sandal-clad foot on the boulder and heaved with all of her might. The sword didn’t budge.
Breathing heavily, she stepped back, rubbed her hands together, and said, “Maybe it needs a touch of magic.”