Screaming Torches
Chapter sixteen
Kenji
Goryū had Akiro pinned.
My dragon-shadow coiled across the top of the plane like a black storm laid flat, and from his open jaw, shadow-fire poured down on the hatch where Akiro stood frozen two steps from the door.
The flames held no heat, but Akiro's body had locked. His muscles seized. His kusarigama hung dead in his grip. The chain pooled at his boots on the metal step.
His five guards stood jammed behind him on the stairs. They saw their commander paralyzed. They saw empty air above him. Their heads snapped left and right looking for the threat, and they found none, and the confusion on their faces was its own weapon.
We sprinted forward. The five of us—me, Hiro, Reo, and the twins—crossed the field in a line with my guards flanking wide on both sides.
My chest burned with Nyomi's rage and grief through the bond, and right there in the middle of a dead sprint and watching Goryū blast Akiro, I understood what she had truly given me tonight.
Control.
Without her blood in that bowl, without her mouth on my palm, without the ritual she had somehow found the strength to complete, Akiro would be inside that plane.
The hatch would be sealed. The engines would carry him and my father into the dark sky, and I would be standing on an island full of corpses watching them disappear.
The war would continue again.
But not tonight. Thank you, Tora.
So close to the stairs now, those thoughts were all I allowed myself. One beat of gratitude for my Tiger. Then I shoved it into the same place where I kept her face and her laugh and the life I wanted, and I aimed myself at the stairs.
Totoro's fuel shifted in the tank against my chest. The hybrid butane and gel mix sloshed heavy. The barrel pointed forward.
“Watch out!” I pulled the trigger guard back and the ignition caught.
Twenty-five feet of flame erupted from Totoro's mouth.
Hiro roared. “Fuck yeah!!!”
The Dragon's breath hit the first cluster of Akiro's soldiers ahead of me and turned them into ragged screaming torches.
Their weapons clattered to the grass. Bright flames ate their jackets, their vests, their pants.
It clung to their skin, dancing and twirling.
Bright at the edges and dark at the core.
Smoke rose.
And they ran in every direction trailing columns of orange, black, and grey. Their shapes still human for three terrible seconds before the fire made them into red-hot horror.
Each one burned differently—some dropping to their knees, many spinning, others still running as though speed could leave it behind until they were limping and melting to the ground. Scorched fabric fell from their crumbling bodies.
Everywhere stank of roasted ham mixed with singed nylon and hot death.
As I pushed the flame forward clearing the path to the stairs, I could taste the ash on my tongue in each breath and the greasy residue of it all and even the heat on my face, hands, and forearms.
Sweat dripped from my forehead.
All of them shed light they hadn't asked to carry, and lit up the fucking battlefield. They were twisted torches of agony. Their screams blended into the roar of the flames that engulfed them. Their bodies writhed in the burning inferno until they were nothing but charred, screeching husks.
And Akiro’s other soldiers—the most cowardly ones—they saw the Dragon’s Breath and ran off into the forest.
And several Silent Ones raced after them.
I swept Totoro left.
Another line of soldiers caught the stream across their chests and collapsed in a writhing pile. The heat distortion made the air above them ripple and the moonlight warped.
I swept right.
Three men dropped their rifles and ran before the flame reached them. A fourth stood his ground and raised his weapon. I held the stream on him until his gun glowed, and he threw it away.
Claws and Fangs saw the flames clearing a corridor and peeled off to the sides. Kaede threw himself right. Kaoru rolled left. Rin, who no longer wore his mask, stepped back four feet and took that moment to yawn.
The field opened.
The burning men created a wide lane of fire-lit grass between us and the plane's stairs.
Bodies rolled on both sides. Smoke rose thick and white where the flames met the wet ground. Intense heat pushed against my mask and dried the sweat across my forehead in two seconds.
I kept the flame forward and advanced.
Hiro matched me stride for stride on my right. His Hannya mask caught the firelight and the horns threw long shadows behind him. He took out his blade with his left hand and his right hand pulled out his gun.
There was no lollipop in his mouth.
Hiro was ready to kill.
Behind us, the Scales surged through the gap I had burned and slammed into Akiro's remaining soldiers on both flanks.
The Silent Ones moved through the smoke in their red hoods, and they were faster than the fire.
A Scale drove his rifle butt into an enemy's spine, and before the man hit the grass, a Silent One landed on his shoulders from above and opened his throat with a short blade. Neither the Scale nor the Silent One looked at each other. They moved on in opposite directions.
The path was clear.
Hiro's head snapped left. He stared through the smoke and the chaos for two full seconds, and then his body loosened in a way I had seen only once before—the moment right before relief collapsed him.
"I see Satoshi!" His voice boomed behind the Hannya. "And Toma! There's Daisuke!"
A breath tore out of him. "Oh shit! They're alive!"
"Good." I kept my eyes on the stairs. "Focus on Akiro."
An enemy broke from the smoke on my left and raised his gun at my head. Hiro shot him between the eyes without turning his body.
The man dropped.
“I’m always focused.” Hiro kept walking.
I grinned.
Forty feet.
Thirty.
Twenty.
Goryū held Akiro's body in that invisible vise and the fire still poured from his shadow jaws and Akiro still stood frozen on the stairs with his kusarigama dead in his grip.
Then Goryū's voice entered my head. He has our father’s blood. He is fighting me.
I began to feel it through the bond—a tremor in the hold, a vibration, a crack forming in a dam.
I cannot hold him much longer.
Try.
He is strong.
I’m almost there.
Ten feet from the stairs.
Akiro's right hand twitched. His fingers curled around the kusarigama's handle. His shoulder rolled one inch forward. His jaw clenched so hard I saw the muscles bunch even from the base of the steps.
He was breaking free through sheer will, and I saw the exact second it happened. His whole body jolted forward like a man shocked by cold water, and his eyes went wide, and the kusarigama rose.
While the twins, Reo, and Hiro handled all of Akiro’s men trying to stop us, I got to the bottom of the stairs and began to climb.
Akiro spun the chain.
The heavy ball at the end whistled through the air in a tight arc above his head. The sickle blade shimmered. He had ten feet of reach with that weapon and the skill to use every inch.
I aimed Totoro at him and squeezed.
The flame roared up the stairs.
Akiro sidestepped.
The fire passed his left shoulder and scorched the hatch frame behind him.
The metal glowed orange.
Akiro swung the chain low.
The heavy ball hit the side of Totoro's barrel with a crack that ran up both my arms.
Fuck.
The barrel dented. The flame coughed once and steadied.
I adjusted and fired again.
Akiro dropped to one knee on the stairs and the fire sailed over his head. He whipped the chain up from the crouch and the links wrapped around Totoro's barrel three times before I could pull back.
The metal cinched tight.
The sickle blade caught the edge of the fuel housing.
Akiro yanked.
Totoro lurched in my grip. The fuel tank groaned. I braced my feet on the bottom step and pulled back, and for one full second we were locked in a tug-of-war with my flame torch between us.
Akiro twisted and whipped the kusarigama away, ending the tug-of-war. Then he swung it from the side and hit the fuel housing with a hollow metal punch that vibrated through my ribs.
No.
The tank dented inward. A thin line of gel fuel leaked from the seam and ran down the barrel.
"There goes the breath of the Dragon!" A deranged smile spread across Akiro’s face. "Now watch the whole beast begin to suffocate."
The flame sputtered.
Goddamn it.
“Welcome, brother! I like your cute little mask.” Akiro hit Totoro again. Same spot. The valve cracked. Fuel poured free, thick and gel-like, sliding across the metal and dripping to the stairs.
Totoro died in my hands. The flame went out. The barrel went dark. The last wisp of heat rose from the nozzle and disappeared.
“You should have told me that this would be a masquerade ball!” Akiro laughed. “I thought this was war!”
I released Totoro and let the dead torch clang to the stairs. Now I would have to battle with my guns and hands. “Come here, Akiro! I want to show you my mask’s detail!”
“I would.” Akiro swung the ball back to him and kept it ready to attack. “But. . .it appears my ride is ready to leave.”
“But let’s have one last dance!”
“Sorry, brother. I only dance with women.” Akiro winked. “I’ll leave the weird stuff to you and Hiro.”
Behind Akiro, the plane's engines screamed louder. The propellers roared. The body of the aircraft shuddered as the power climbed. They were preparing for takeoff.
Goryū. I pulled both silver guns from my holsters and flipped the switches to both—bullets and fire. Nyomi's blood was still on the barrels dried dark against the silver, and that upped my energy. This plane cannot rise.
I will try to harm it.
More men spilled out of the plane, raced around Akiro, and began to come down the stairs.
Goryū rose from the hull in a column of churning black smoke. His wings spread wide, and the moonlight disappeared behind them. He climbed thirty feet above the plane and then dove, driving himself down across the left engine nacelle with shadow-fire pouring from every inch of his body.
The engine coughed. The propeller on that side stuttered, caught, stuttered again. A thin trail of dark smoke leaked from the housing.
But that was it.
Everything kept on going.
Come on, Goryū.
He circled and hit the engine again. More shadow-fire. More smoke from the housing. The propeller jerked and slowed.
I am getting tired.
The right engine compensated. The plane rocked sideways on its wheels but held. The propellers on the working side spun harder.
Goryū had been weakening men since the first mines were placed. He had frozen Akiro twice. He had scouted the plane's interior. He had poured fire on an engine.
I was learning that every use would cost him energy, and I could feel the exhaustion now—a thinning in the bond, a dimming of the gold behind his eyes, a heaviness in my own legs that belonged to him.
Rest, Goryū.
Yes, brother.
I blinked, and for some reason my heart ached.
My dragon-shadow broke apart above the tree line. The black smoke dissolved into the night. The gold-fire eyes dimmed and vanished. The dark sky closed behind him as if he had never existed.
And then, the left engine caught again. The propeller resumed its full speed. The plane straightened on its wheels.
Both engines synchronized. The twin roar locked into a single deep hum that vibrated across the field and through my sternum.
It was the treacherous sound of a plane about to move.
No.
Akiro yelled at his men. “Stop them from getting into the plane! Hurry!”
Then, Akiro looked down at me. “Until next time, Kenji!”
The fucking bastard turned and ran inside.
No. Fuck that! There can’t be a next time! Everything must end tonight! My Tiger bled!!
Even more soldiers poured from the hatch to block us. Fresh men, armed, body-armored, screaming orders. They were going to push us off the stairs, retract the ramp, seal the hatch, and take off.
If we lost this staircase, we lost Akiro and the Fox. And there was no bringing them back. Every helicopter had been grounded. Every antiaircraft gun was destroyed. If this plane left the island, the war continued for more days, weeks, maybe even fucking months, and our dead had died for nothing.
I turned to Hiro and the others. "They're going to pull the stairs and seal the door! We cannot let them push us off! If we lose this staircase, we lose the war!”
Then I heard it.
A bolt popped free from the staircase housing.
The metal groaned beneath our feet.
I roared, “FIGHT!!”