Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
AKIRA
Islammed my bionic fist into the gelatinous orange creature hopping on its scrawny pink chicken legs. The metal knuckles bounced off the rubbery surface, sending me careening backward onto the sofa.
Hmmm. Not as squishy as it looked.
“Fool!” it cried, with no sign of a mouth or any other orifice on its body. “The Taker is no match for me!”
The what now?
I hauled myself over the back of the sofa and launched myself toward my bedroom to the left of the kitchen. Legs pumping, anger sparking to life.
This fucker clearly wasn’t gonna be scared off easily.
We’ll see.
“Run! Run! Run!” the creature bellowed after me.
Diving into a slide, I dove my flesh arm under the bed, slipping into focused mode. As a former hunter for hire, I knew my way around violence.
Why me? a tiny voice whined. Why can’t I just kick back and ignore this shit?
“Taker!” the blobby chicken freak cried. “Your end is nigh! I will clear your filth! Clear your filth for glory!”
Uh-huh.
My fingers found the hilt of one of my katanas. Once upon a time, I could stick out my hand and call for them. Not anymore.
A damn shame.
I dragged the weapon out, springing to my feet as the thing bounded into the room.
“Taker!”
Sticky ooze ran down the blob, dripping onto the newly laid duck-egg blue carpet. It looked like it would stain, and possibly burn a hole in it.
“Do you know how much that cost?” I complained, swinging my blade in warning.
Forged by Uncle Ryoka, the katanas struck fear in the hearts of all dickheads.
“Filth will leave! Filth will leave!” the mazoku spawn chirped, hopping from foot to foot.
What was this monstrosity based on? The mazoku loved basing their spawn around creatures from Japanese mythology.
Twisted versions, nasty versions. Couldn’t say I recognized this motherfucker, despite reading up on a lot of this stuff—some creatures were purely a myth, some were not.
Basically, the lines were blurry, and reality was one big soup of craziness.
My babies appeared before me, growling with their hackles raised. They smelled the taint of the mazoku, feeding it back to me like the elite furry helpers they were.
Thanks, babies, I thought at them.
The creature continued bouncing between its chicken feet, not making a move. “Come to clean! Come to clean!”
“You taking the piss?” I fired back. “Clean? With the mess you’re making on my carpet?”
“Come to clean! Come to clean!”
“Yeah? And I’m here to stab.” I went to rush the fucker, but it changed. Just like that, in a blink of the eyes, a sudden shift from blobby horror to…to…
“Mama Rita?” I rasped.
Surprise hit me in the guts. I flinched, lowering the blade. Mega thrown off, the pain storming back into my skull.
My ex-bestie, long dead. She’d been one nasty piece of shit even when pretending to be my ride-or-die. An elf, a total nightmare, and the one who hacked off my right arm with a piece of glass before G shot her in the head.
Because of her, I’d have this blue bionic arm for the rest of my life. And I was cool with that now, learning to embrace it, to love it.
But seeing her face again just…dammit. It shat on everything.
“Fuck,” I wheezed, the sword suddenly feeling too heavy, the past dragging rusty claws across my sanity.
“You all right, sweets?” she said, cocking her head.
Her voice. Her damn voice. It churned my stomach, a sound so rotten I’d cut my ears off to never hear it again.
I dropped the katana, my hands shaking.
“It’s not… It’s not possible.” I swallowed a ball of terror. “This is a trick.”
She looked as I remembered her before the truth came out about her affair with my father, and her being Zach’s mum.
She was a big woman with curly raven hair speckled with gray framing an olive complexion.
She still wore her big yellow glasses attached to a chain, her silver elf eyes sparkling behind the lenses.
This ain’t happening.
By the tenshi, every detail was correct. Her elf goddess birthmark sat below her left eye—the moon and star inside a sun that all elves had on random parts of their faces.
She even wore one of her famous jumpers, yellow with two puppies asleep by a fire, paired with baggy purple trousers and some ugly green sandals.
“Miss me?” she asked.
This ain’t real.
“I… I…” I couldn’t speak. She seemed so real just by standing there.
“Speechless, sweets?” She chuckled. “I know. It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it? I’ve missed you.” Her nostrils flared. “We enjoyed some good times, didn’t we?”
Words solidified on my tongue.
Snap out of this! It ain’t real!
“Want to bake me a cake?” She chuckled again, something taking shape in her right hand. “I love your cakes, cakes, cakes, cakes, cakes.” Thick globules of drool slithered down her chin. “Give me cakes. Give me cakes.” She sucked the drool in as a huge chunk of glass solidified in her hand.
I backed away, bumping into the table on my side of the bed. “I… I…”
Pick up the damn katana!
Mama Rita held up the glass. “But first, I take the other arm.” She bared her teeth for a moment, two of them falling out.
My stomach roiled, my brain screaming at me to do something other than wait to be attacked. But my synapses were lost in wet mud. Unable to fire, confused, scared, fucked up. All the old traumas came rushing back, memories of what she did to me, of what I went through. What I lost.
My left arm ached in memory of the pain from her…hacking.
First, she’d kill me, then she’d take G. That should spur me into action, but nope. It only made me sit down shakily on the table, knocking the lamp and my baking book to the floor.
“Fuck…” I rasped, gripping the pine edge with both hands.
Too much happiness. Too much peace. This is what I got, right? There had to be a yanking of the rug moment. People like me didn’t get to have peace. After all, I’d killed for money, I’d done my fair share of fucked up shit. Why should I get to be happy and married?
I’m gonna lose him…
I’m gonna lose everything.
Tears broke free, hot and frustrating. I didn’t want to sob in front of this monster, but there I went, beginning to lose control, sniffling and making a fool of myself.
“Aw, sweets. Poor you. Don’t be scared. You’re the rot to be cleansed. When you’re gone, there will no more worries for you.” Mama Rita took a step forward, her sandal deadly close to the tip of my katana. She noticed, hissing at the blade.
That choked off my sobs.
“Wretched thing!” she spat. “Soon you will fade away, soon the path will be clear.” She closed her eyes, sniffing at the air. “The cherries. Oh, the cherries. Do you smell them? Fruits and blossoms and the pretty moon. Who knew? Who knew? Who knew?”
What the hell did that mean?
Take the katana.
Take her down.
I wiped my eyes, anguish taking a back seat. One stab and her essence would be mine, the rest of her dead.
My weapons were in retirement for the most part, training aside. They didn’t do much of the energy-sucking nowadays. The Christmas Wanyūdō was the last time they had been seriously put to work.
Until now, I guess.
“Fruits and blossoms and the pretty moon for all.” Her eyes shot open, locked onto me, flooded with shadow. “And your arm. Chew the bone, suck the marrow, bathe in the blood.”
With a terrifying howl, she charged, glass held above her head.
Running on my base survival instincts, I hit the floor, landing on my side. I didn’t give her a chance to lay a finger on me, snatching the katana off the carpet.
“The Taker dies!” she screamed.
Yeah, I was The Taker. The name made total sense.
I drove the blade into her stomach, twisting it. “Bye, bitch.”
Her screaming choked off, her eyes wide with shock. The glass slipped from her grasp, landing on my bed.
“Taker…” she whispered, staring down at me.
My blade shimmered with a white glow. Three pulses of the white light followed, a twinkle of gold in the tip. Essence taken, it gleamed in the steel, the teal hilt humming.
Mama Rita collapsed onto her back on the bed, drawing her last breaths and slowly changing back to the blobby chicken.
See? Nothing but a trick from the mazoku.
I flung the essence from my katanas, white energy flying outward, taking the form of a pure white version of the chicken thingy.
That’s how it worked. Take the essence, use it for something less nefarious. But what could I use this thing for? Keep it around to stand guard for other messed up clucky blobs?
I grabbed my second katana, holding them both in an X across my face and watched the door, sending Bob and Rose out to explore.
If anything else was out there, they’d let me know.
I caught my breath, my chest painfully tight.
Taker? Mama Rita? Cleansing the rot or whatever? And the thing about cherries? Shit. This wasn’t good.
My babies returned, having found nothing. They circled me, and I sent them a mega wave of loving energy.
Mama Rita…
The creature’s body exploded into a cloud of Sakura. I yelped in surprise, the flowers withering, turning brown before vanishing. The white version from my weapon followed suit.
What. The. Fuck. This wasn’t how these things worked.
Sakura? What… What…
“I’m gonna faint.”
I didn’t, somehow keeping my swords crossed while my mind lurched like a ship caught in a storm. The rest of me stayed frozen in the silence.
There would be more.
There were always more.
My babies stirred, their ears pricked.
Oh, shit. “What is it?”
Rose shot off first, followed by Bob. My grip tightened on the teal-and-gold hilts. The new colors had been added by Uncle Ryoka when he repaired the hilts, or tsuka as they were known.
Fuckers. These absolute fuckers. Think they could breach my sanctuary, did they? They wouldn’t be leaving. Bollocks to that wobble earlier. Valid, yeah, but not enough to bring me down.
Nothing ever would.
My blades crumbled to metal dust. I dropped both the remaining tsuka with a cry of surprise, the shakes returning tenfold. I stumbled back into the table again, unable to process this nightmare.
My katanas.
My katanas couldn’t be gone.
The tsuka became dust, too. Defo gone.
“Holy shit…”
Happiness flushed through me via my wolves. Familiar, sparkly happiness.
“G?”
My katanas.
The front door crashed open.
My katanas.
“Aki!” he boomed.
I heard footsteps, and felt Bob’s and Rose’s ecstatic affection. I lowered my arms, my flesh fingers aching.
“In…here.”
My katanas.
Every drop of kick-arse energy left my body, the seriousness of the situation crashing down on my head.
My katanas were gone.
That on-the-cusp-of-bad-shit thing was finally here to mess me up.
A target.
I was a target for the mazoku. They’d always seen me as a threat, and now they were here to end me for good.
Silent tears trickled down my cheeks. Not because of those pricks, but because of the man about to join me in here.
It’s all coming apart.
I’m gonna lose him…
I’m gonna lose everything.
“Aki!”
I released a whimper, sorrow a stake in my heart.
G hurried into the bedroom with a gun in his hand. His eyes quickly scanned the room, then he came to me, pulling me into a massive bear hug.
Relief crashed into me, his Christmassy cinnamon-and-orange scent engulfed me. With him being taller than me, at six-four to my five-nine, my face was at the perfect height to rest against his chest.
“I’m here,” he said gently, holding me close.
Sobs tore from me, my hands bunching up his T-shirt. If I could, I’d push myself into him, hiding my scrawny arse inside his bigger, more muscular frame forever.
He kissed the top of my head.
I’d been right to worry about things being tumultuous. This world wasn’t built for happiness, my life nothing more than a holding ground for grief. If I was a target again, then so was he.
I’m gonna lose him…
I’m gonna lose everything.
I screamed into him, legs giving out, unable to withstand the tsunami of grief that slammed into me.
Well, fuck a duck. After all the healing, the emotional work, the moving forward, I still found myself in pain.
I guess time didn’t heal shit.
It only made the wounds wider.