Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AKIRA
His eyes fluttered open, his back arching as he gasped a sharp intake of breath.
“G!”
I tumbled off him, spreading myself out alongside him. The elation felt like whiplash.
He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s alive.
He coughed, gasping, turning to the side.
“G.”
“Aki.” He clutched his neck, turning back over.
I stroked the side of his face, watching the flush of life return to his cheeks.
“You’re back.” I whimpered, the waterworks in full flow again.
Fuck me, did I shake. Like I had a fever, but a happy one.
My G is alive.
The tenshi were wrong.
Later. Deal with that later.
He let out a weak breath. “I’m…I’m here.” He winced. “And hurting.”
“Don’t try to move. I’ll get you—”
“You will not defeat me, brother of The Taker!” Bony Hag woman roared outside.
I looked up, seeing she’d grown in size to about ten feet, looming over my brother.
He twirled the katana in his hand, backing away.
“I will claim you, vile creature,” she hissed. “Consume you all. Burn this wretched place to the ground.”
The ground beside her split open, a shadow slithering out. It shifted from a wispy cloud into a skeleton wrapped in the same rags she was, but without any flesh or hair, darkness swirling in its eye sockets.
It brandished a rusty dagger.
A second shadow slipped out of the ground, then a third.
“Incapacitate him,” Bony Hag commanded. “I want to see him bleed.”
The skeletons charged at Zach.
“Fuck.” I got to my feet, pain searing through my ankle up into my thigh. “Sorry, G. I can’t let him fight alone.”
“Do it,” he answered. “Kick her ass.”
Since I was without my katanas, I grabbed a potting trowel from an empty plant pot beside the tree, just inside the hourglass.
“I love you,” I told him, and climbed outside.
Bony noticed straight away, turning her huge body to face me. “The Taker is here.”
I flipped her the bird, emboldened by a fresh surge of adrenaline and relief from G being alive.
Man, I could do with a lie down.
She might be huge, but there were plenty of places to stick this gardening tool.
Like that tasty spot right there.
Indestructible didn’t mean she wouldn’t feel pain.
“Where is your beloved?” she questioned.
I rushed her, diving between her legs. She tried grabbing me as I went into a slide, missing my hair by inches.
What the hell was it with her and pulling on my locks?
Rude!
Rolling into position behind her, I drove the trowel into a groove above her left ankle. A fab little nook giving off Achillies’ heel vibes.
The tool slid in easily, nicking something soft. Before the fucker could react, I slammed it in harder with a whack of the handle, the soft thing going pop.
Pink liquid gushed from the nook, spraying me in the face.
“Gross!” I yelled, spitting out the warm, floral shite that got into my mouth.
Now she reacted. Screaming and lifting her foot.
I got out of the way just before she turned my head to mush.
The slamming of her foot shook the ground. I wobbled slightly while getting vertical, the tremors knocking over a pot of dahlias.
Proper wanker behavior, that. G spent so long on our garden only for her come along and shit on everything.
I darted around her, checking on my brother.
He held his own against her minions, making short work of the bony bastards, turning them into drying blossoms.
Ha! Is that all she had?
Spinning, I faced the hag, looking for another place to stab.
She hissed, limping closer to me. Pink blood continued to leak from her ankle, spreading across the slabs. I knew it wasn’t enough to bring her down, but now she knew how I felt after the number she did on me.
Her laughter sent shockwaves through the air. “This not a success, Taker.”
“Not yet,” I returned.
She grew slightly taller, possibly eleven feet now. “There is no escape from me. Even if the tenshi meddle and gift your brother with that blade, love still waits to be devoured. I have the power here, their plan will fail. Gone are the days of…”
Yeah, yeah. She could ramble on all she liked. I had a plan.
While she waffled, I’d spotted another slot in her neck. Looked like it might cause her a few problems. Maybe throw her off enough for Zach to gut her with his new weapon.
“It is not too late to claim it,” the tenshi voice spoke. “Your blood is meant for it.”
Ignoring it, I calculated the distance, the force I’d need to fling the trowel into that groove.
“…and there will be no mercy.” Bony Hag finished rambling.
Uh-huh. No big shock there, eh?
Okay. While she held this position, I made my move and threw the trowel, ready for the pink blood to flow.
She snatched it from the air, flinging it back at me.
The tool hit me in the thigh, burying itself halfway into my muscle.
“Fucking hell!” I roared, falling onto my arse.
The pain blazed white-hot, my ankle’s nasty ache back to hurting fully so it wasn’t left out of the pain game.
“Not so clever, are you?” Bony Hag said with too much triumph in her tone.
Bollocks. I slid back across the ground until my spine bumped the upper garden’s wall. Hands shaking, I touched the handle.
Nope. Too painful to pull.
With gritted teeth, my brain worked overtime to figure out the next move. If I pulled it, I might bleed out. Tenshi only knew what arteries and stuff it’d hit.
Screw Bony Hag and her reflexes.
The ground quaked, the vicious fucker moving closer. Every shake magnified the pain, a load of it migrating into my skull.
“Enough of this.”
She flung out her skeletal hand in Zach’s direction. Bone shards shot from her fingertips, cleaving through the air.
I glanced back as they hit him in the palm of each hand and lifted him off his feet, then pinned him to the ground, his arms outstretched.
The katana hit the grass with a heavy thud.
“And so we begin again,” Bony Hag declared.
She was on me in seconds, taking me by the flesh arm, pulling me up to her face level.
My shoulder socket throbbed, gravity and my weight battling her. I kicked out, cursing, struggling to the max.
“What if I begin by taking this arm?” she asked, her face flickering between this one and Mama Rita’s. “A full circle moment indeed.”
Her laughter was a wicked wind in my face, stinging my eyes.
“Then I will pluck out your ribs, one by one.”
“Not if…” Man, the pain rioting in my body wouldn’t let up. “Not if I get yours first.”
More laughter. “Mine? Do not be so absurd, Taker. This is—”
“My end?” I scoffed, delivering a cackle of my own. “Do you know how many times I’ve heard this shit?”
That got no answer, her eyes flashing with menace.
“There is still time, Akira,” the voice spoke. “Take the blade. Call to it as you did in days of old.”
Days of old being the critical word here.
“I don’t want it,” I grumbled.
Because what if me taking it killed G anyway? And what about the window now being closed? What was this, extra time?
Guilt gnawed at me. The world needed me to fight for it again, especially with this latest development.
But I wasn’t sacrificing my man.
“Call to it, Akira. Save yourself. Save your loved ones.”
Bony Hag made a sound, a kind of hacking, gross noise. I half-expected her to spit in my face.
“Time to feed,” she declared. “First your arm, then your ribs, and then your love.”
Her other hand curled around my body, giving herself leverage to pull me like chewing gum.
Oh. Shit.
“Call to it, Akira. Call to it while you still can.”
“Promise me he’ll be safe!” I yelled.
No answer.
Then so be it. I’d lose this arm to keep him alive.
Bony Hag pulled and pulled, any moment the sinew would tear, the bones break, all the violent yucky stuff.
I closed my eyes, bracing for the rip.
Thwick!
Crunch!
The fuck?
I opened my eyes.
The katana skewered Bony Hag’s head, going in through one temple, bursting out of the other. A proper clean kebab move.
“Whoa.”
She dropped me like a sack of flour. My arse wasn’t happy, but my arm threw a party. Still intact, not going anywhere.
The bone woman’s jaw hung open, a series of grunts spewing from her throat.
“Surprise,” I tossed out.
Running, trainers pounding on the ground, Zach whizzed past me, launching himself at the mazoku. He scrambled up her with great athletic skill, getting up to his weapon. He grabbed the tsuka, the blade shining red.
Wow. He’d been training these past years to boost his fighting and fitness skills, but blimey. I never knew my brother could move like that.
“No… No…” Bony Hag grunted.
The light in her eyes snuffed out.
“No…”
I couldn’t get up, the trowel having seriously fucked me up. But I gave her both middle fingers.
“How do you like that, you bony bastard?”
Zach pulled the katana free before jumping off her, landing in a crouch. Those new tattoos of his flared, filling me with pride.
Look at him. Just look at him.
“This cannot… This cannot…”
“Be?” I finished for Bony. “Oh, it defo be.”
“I…” She threw her head back, releasing a guttural roar filled with agony.
“I hope you fucking burn!” I roared, triggering a harder pain-fest inside me.
Her body exploded into a cloud of Sakura. They mushroomed into the sky like an atomic cloud, turning brown and crispy as they went before becoming dust and falling back to the earth as nothing more than a weak cloud of nothingness, echoes of her screams tickling my eardrums.
“Good riddance,” I growled through gritted teeth.
The hourglass crumbled away, G finally free from the damn thing.
“You good over there?” I called.
“I’m fine,” he returned, his poor voice croaky.
Zach pulled off his T-shirt, using the katana to cut pieces from it to bandage his bleeding palms.
“Are you okay?” I signed at him, totally in awe.
A different kind of light shone within him. He seemed different, almost taller, more muscular. A proper warrior. Elevated.
He nodded, then gestured to the garden.
There were creatures on the grass. The orange jelly chicken blobs, hopping from foot to foot.
“You killed her! You killed one of The Nine!”
“Gold star observational skills!” I called back to them.
Wankers.
Zach drew his gun from its holster, tossing it to me.
I caught it, more than happy to lend a hand in taking them down.
Adjusting my position slightly, I opened fire and blew off some legs, tore off chunks of jelly while Zach twirled and sliced and diced until my garden was once again free of monsters.
Just like it should be.