Oh boy. Everyone done hyucked up now :D
Seriously: expect plenty of mayhem in this chapter and the next. Also keep the tissues close? Shit is finally hitting the fan.
As always, I welcome all feedback and critiques! Hope you guys enjoy!
The Fuzhou Gardens are deserted.
The silhouettes of Chinese-style pavilions are carved into the starless sky. The early blood moon burns at the eastern altar, circled by a fine band of luminescence. Its intense brightness shoots scarlet veins across the lakeside, ghosting over the treetops and sinking into the marble statues, turning them pinkish like blood churned through snow.
Saya's footsteps cut through the imperfect silence. She moves in a determined path down the cobblestones. Her eyes are on the marquee at the far-corner. The obake flower section. The moonlight falls through the fabric, delineating the tent's exoskeleton. It reminds Saya of something composed of pure bone.
A monster risen from the dead.
Carefully, Saya lifts the tent flap. The scent of moist earth and decaying flowers seeps out. The interior is dark save for a bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. It throws pools of shadow everywhere, a riot of contrasts like an over-exposed photograph.
A tall figure stands in the center.
"You received my message?"
Saya's heart skips, like a clock refusing to keep time. But her voice is quiet as a tick, and as steady. "…Yes."
Tórir half-turns. The cold yellow light from the bulb sharpens his cheekbones. His mouth holds a shape of humor.
"Alone?" he asks. "Nothing to spoil our tête-à-tête?"
Saya doesn't answer. From the sheath strapped to her spine, she withdraws her katana. A dim patina flashes across the surface. She extends the blade straight-on, a fencer's sixte.
"Swordplay?" Tórir quirks a brow. "Atyay isthay ourhay?"
"Shut up."
She edges into the marquee. Tórir's mismatched gaze stays on hers, darkly smoking. It reminds Saya of a firepit that can never be extinguished. It should sicken her, all that insatiable burning need. Instead, it slithers inside her, like incense, like a serpent. Makes her feel things she refuses to feel.
"Going to kill me?" Tórir whispers.
"Killing is the least of it."
During her journey here, Saya had, for long vacant moments, felt nothing. Now an intense hatred gathers, an icy black shell blocking her off from everything but Tórir. She remembers the blood and destruction in Karachi. She remembers the night of her miscarriage, the agony inside her womb a contraction, a carnage. She still dreams of her daughters. Drowsing in bed in the early mornings, she can sometimes imagine holding them, nursing them.
Now they are gone. And for what? This coward, and his blood-grievance against the Queens. It has festered for eons, carrying over to their kin, revenge enacted as a slow-seeping poison.
Nathan is right. He is a viper. He's been circling her for months, his coils constricting tighter and tighter, trapping her in his hold.
She refuses to yield.
"All this time," she whispers, "You've been lying to me."
Tórir's jaw twitches, but he says nothing.
"That day at the cemetery. It was you who attacked me. The night in Karachi. That was you too." Grief distorts her voice. "You killed my daughters."
Tórir doesn't look at her, but stares out across the bricolage of flowers. His eyes settle on a nearby exhibit. It is creepily Gothic: a frilled tongue of Teppōyuri, wine-dark, licking across the air. From the center, an appendage juts out. Black and sharp, its surface lewdly glistening. It gives off a peculiar scent. Sweet, yet with a vile undernote like rotted offal.
"Do you know what that is?" he asks.
Saya stares at him, hostile and confused.
"Dracunculus vulgaris. Also called the Snake Lily. In full blossom, its scent attracts pollinating night-insects." He points to the dark spike. "The spadix has a hidden chamber. Full of poison. Ugly as it is, the lily understands the art of subterfuge."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"According to folklore, its venom wards off snakes. Wash your hands with its juices, and you can even slay dragons." He smirks, but can't sustain it. "The plant is highly reclusive. It spreads only by self-seeding. And it cannot tolerate direct sunlight; it thrives in the shadows." His eyes flicker, almost sadly, to hers. "I have always been drawn to shadowy things. Habu vipers. Cinnabar moths. Poisonous flora. In a way, I've felt a kinship with them."
Unexpectedly, his eyes blaze. "Then again, why should I not? I've had to hide what I was my entire life. Fathered by a traitor. Mothered by a whore. Scrounging for scraps while your family—the Queens responsible for my fall—languished in fortresses. They played their war games. They sang their incantations. They reduced my entire family—mother, father, brother—to pawns for their amusement. While they wore furs and finery, I walked with sores on my feet. While they basked before a blazing fire, I shivered winter after winter under a fleabitten blanket." He bares his teeth. "I vowed to myself: if I was given the iconoclast's scythe, I would tear the Queens' world apart. I would send them scurrying from their lofty towers and into the gutters. I would lock them away, watch them grow as haggard and desperate as I had been—and I would know that justice was done."
"Justice?" Saya's throat is scorched with rage. "Is that what you call it? Massacring thousands? Raping my mother? Killing my children?"
"Restoring balance." He sneers it as a mockery more than a rebuke. "The one duty charged to the Queens. Rulers of Wyrd. And what did they do? Flung my family to a lower plane, while they occupied the higher. Permeated my boyhood with fear, and misery, and bloodshed. All for what? Because they were the stronger? Because they were chosen?"
"You were chosen too!" Saya snaps. "You became a Chevalier!"
"Only through my own efforts." His lip curls. "I forged the Vǫlur's decree. I secured my brothers a place at court. It was our chance to invade the Queens' sphere. Young boys longed to be chosen as blodprinsen. For glory. For honor. What they lost was their innocence, that milk-and-butter purity that goes arm-in-arm with privilege. My brothers and I had no such illusions. We already knew what life was. Dirt and disorder, hate and hunger. We vowed to visit the same upon the Queens. All we needed was an opportunity. A misspoken word. A spilled secret. Anything that turned the tides."
"You killed them all." Saya's eyes narrow. "That wasn't enough. You had to come after my family as well."
Tórir shakes his head. "Not your family. You."
Saya's knuckles whiten on her sword-hilt. "As your broodmare."
"As yourself."
"What?"
Tórir's eyes trace the curves of her face. She watches the hot, endless hatred in him distort into softness.
Worse.
Something queasily like love.
"Before I became a blodprinsen, my world was poised on a pinprick. My focus was on food, shelter, safety. An animal under threat from all sides. My brothers were the same. Scared, and starved and impotent. I believed that was the summation of life. A sickness cured only by revenge." He expels a soft sigh. "The Red Queen—Sunako—changed that. She showed me a different life, of power and purpose. She made me thrall to her body, and her blood. But the Blue Queen, your mother, granted me something more precious."
Bile churns through Saya. She dreads what he's going to reveal next.
"Did you—" she swallows. "Did you father me and Diva?"
Tórir's eyes go big with disbelief. Then he begins to laugh. Not diabolical laughter. This is pure hilarity, as if for a gag-gift he hadn't anticipated.
Saya nearly kills him for it. She could do it easily. In cold blood, in hot. He deserves it. All his surface charm is a ploy. Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under't. He doesn't possess an iota of remorse for anything he's done. He will only do worse. Her vision at the yuta's hut has imprinted his atrocities into her brainstem.
Do it.
Do it now.
Then Tórir's laughter hiccups to a stop. He wipes the tears from his eyes.
"I know who fathered you," he says. "It was not I."
"Then who?"
He leans over the multicolored pinwheel of a passionflower. Tenderly, his fingertips trace the petals. Saya feels each touch like a seasickness across her skin. But Tórir doesn't look at her.
"My brother," he says. "Jøkill. A skilled swordsman, with a mind to match. You remind me of him."
Saya's jaw tightens. "I hardly take that as a compliment."
"It was not intended as one." He speaks without bite, both hands cradling the passionflower. "Jøkill was your father. But everything you are is through your own force of will. In that, you are very like the Red Queen. But also like …myself."
Affront spikes into fury. Saya's palm flexes on her sword-hilt. "I'm nothing like you."
"Aren't you?" His two-toned eyes narrow, burning her, freezing her. "I have sipped your blood, remember? I know your sordid little secrets. Revenge is, at its core, solitary. As you have been for too long. You've weaned yourself on it. More than that. You've gorged yourself. It is in your very marrow." Softer, "Just as it is in mine."
His words threaten to strike home. Saya wards them off with a shudder.
"My revenge is done," she says. "Yours has carried across centuries. It wasn't enough for you to kill the Queens. Now you're trying to enslave their children, too!"
Tórir's expression changes, bitterness superseded by hurt.
"Enslave?" he echoes. "Is that what you think?"
Saya says nothing.
Tórir's hands drop from the flower to dangle at his sides. His stare goes right through her, a radioactive heat-melt. Saya hates the overpowering physical pull he still wields. She'd mistaken it as an inherited affinity from the Red Queen.
Now she understands it is worse.
It is an attraction that flows from blood to blood. His to hers. A red knot of recognition that tugs them together, because in their own dreadful way, they are a pair, two monsters carved from revenge. A revenge they've cosseted like treasure, glittering and sharp-edged, a prize they've never wanted to lose, because that means losing a part of themselves, and the game itself.
Except Saya's game is finished. The war is won, or lost, and Diva with it.
She has a life now. A resting-place.
She has her daughters.
That's why you have to kill him.
Do it now.
Then Tórir whispers, "It is true I had plans for you."
Saya drags her attention back to the moment. "What?"
Tórir's expression is caught somewhere between tenderness and loathing. "It is true I wanted to have you. To hurt you. It is true I took your daughters from you. It is true I took the vial of poison, too. Everything I have done since awakening in this world was to gain mastery over you." Frustration shades into fury. "At first, I thought it was for revenge. To make you suffer as I did. I hoped to make you my plaything. As I was once the Red and Blue Queen's. And yet…" He sighs. "And yet each time we have met, something has stayed my hand."
Gooseflesh rises to Saya's skin. His stare invades her, cold and dark as a viper's tongue.
"Cowardice?" she sneers.
"That would be simpler." A smile twitches to life on his lips, then dies. "I told you before. The Blue Queen granted me something infinitely more precious than vengeance. I had daughters by her, before you were ever born. Two morsels of sweetness. Their names really were Sváva and Suffía. The day I held them was the day my vendetta collapsed at my feet. All that mattered was keeping them safe." His palms flex, as if he can still imagine cradling them. "I did not lie when I told you they were gone. Taken too soon. My one chance of peace—gone with them. In their absence, all that remained was my hatred. Of the Queens. Of humanity. Of myself. All the failures that led to their loss."
His expression, twisted with grief, is nearly enough to stir Saya's sympathy. Then she thinks of her own daughters, dead before she could hold them. Dead because of him. The reminder erases any emotion.
Now.
Lightning-fast, she lunges. The force knocks Tórir over. Her sword cuts a brilliant arc toward his neck. But he catches her wrist at the last moment. The ear-splitting crack of bone echoes through the tent.
She cries out.
"I hate interruptions," Tórir says.
She lashes out with her left hand, her right imprisoned in his grip. But he anticipates the move and catches her fist. His kneecap—in a brutal concussive strike—rams against her ribs. A flash of white-hot pain explodes through Saya. She tries to twist free. He follows it up with a walloping headbutt. The wham resounds through Saya's skull, her teeth snapping to cut her own tongue. Her sword clatters away.
In the next blink Tórir rolls, reversing them so he is on top of her, pinning her arms. Saya's world reels. Her broken wrist throbs in time with her pulse.
Looming over her, Tórir is a replication of her ugliest nightmares. Except his eyes smolder not with bloodlust but bewilderment.
"There again," he murmurs. "My hand stayed."
Blood dribbles from Saya's mouth. "Wh-what?"
"You still do not understand." He exhales. "I do not want to kill you. I want you to come with me of your own free will."
"Come… with you?"
"I want the empire I could not build. The daughters I could not have." He leans closer, red hair falling like blood-quills down his face. "I want them with you."
Saya's broken wrist knits itself together in needles of agony. Her words are more breath than voice. "You're… insane…"
"Am I?" His mouth is a sardonic twist. "Perhaps so. Love-starvation is a kind of insanity, isn't it? I should know. I was the child of a whore. They're love-starved as a rule. They fuck, and fuck, and fuck. They devour every vice, wring heat from every depraved act. Yet not a drop of love comes from it. The emptiness becomes its own madness. They must have something of their own. A lover. A child. A place." He chuckles. "I was all that for the Red Queen. She loved to show me her power. Over my body, my life. She took me like she was starved for me. But then, I was starved too."
Saya stares at him. A hundred words tremble on her tongue. She swallows them down like blood.
"You know what that is like," he says. "Your vengeance was meant to sate the emptiness in you. it never could. Your sister was the same. Hinging her entire existence on her children, until the need devoured her whole." His face spasms. The seams of his cool mask are coming apart. "I am no better. I kept thinking your downfall would ease my malady. I see now it won't. Nothing will." Quieter, "It is not just me. You feel it too."
Saya grits her teeth. "I don't know… what you're talking about."
He is a monster. Not the kind who hides beneath children's beds, but who walks like an ordinary man. Who disguises his cruelty with charisma, a breadcrumb trail to lure his targets to their doom. Saya recognizes his brand of predation, because she's lived her life struggling against it. Like knows like; diamond cuts diamond.
He is all her darkest impulses made flesh.
"I told you," Tórir whispers. "I am done biding my time. I want what only you can offer me."
"I can't offer you anything! You're so caught up in your hate that it's all you know! An empire won't fix that! Daughters won't! Whatever you want, I can't give it to you!"
Tórir's eyes go half-lidded, a dark hypnotism of honesty.
"Then let me give you what you want," he says. "A place. A purpose. Two trueborn daughters, instead of some spineless dog's leftovers. We could raise them together. Teach them to be pure, and so teach ourselves. Relearn to love ourselves, through their eyes." His voice drops to a sinuous whisper. "There is a koan the monks recite. What was your real face before you were born? I would like to know mine, before I succumbed to the mania of vengeance. I know you would, too."
"I told you. My vengeance is done."
"Is it?" His hands tighten on her wrists. "Yet here you are. Ready to wage another war. Ready for a taste of the purpose that only revenge can offer. Haji won't give you any of that. You know it in your bones. I took your blood, remember? I know the secrets that stand like walls between you."
"I—"
Saya's whole body flares with conflicting impulses to fight, to flee. She won't admit he is right. He might have been, once. But his timeline is of another Saya. One who knew nothing about herself, or Haji.
They'd both been lonely for so long, clinging to the war instead of to each other. The only language they could speak was suffering. They believed love was the same. Something to be hidden away. Puzzled at like a koan. A love that would've become a quandary—if their friendship hadn't disclosed the truth, as small as a stone, fitting into the heart of themselves with the rightness of completion.
The truth that love isn't meant to crash-and-burn. It is meant to fly without fear.
Kill him.
It is Sunako's plea, and her mother's.
Now, Saya.
Do it.
Tórir regards her with rich complacence, "I do not see you hastening to contradict me."
"No." Saya's eyes glow as if dynamited. "I'll settle for killing you."
With unexpected force, she breaks free from Tórir's grip, her left fist slamming straight into his cheekbone. He jerks off; she leaps to her feet, snatching up her sword. The blade cuts in a quicksilver streak toward his throat.
Tórir parries with his forearm. The clang is not unlike steel striking off stone. Beneath his sleeve, his skin has calcified, a shimmer of scales across the surface.
Skala hud, Nathan called it. Scaled skin. Like a viper's.
Tórir's face is the same, eyes slitted, intensely unreadable.
"How now, my headstrong?" he murmurs. "Where have you been gadding?"
"With your old enemies."
"The Queens in Niflheim." He tilts his head. "What have they shared with you?"
In answer, Saya presses her sword-tip between Tórir's scales. The skin slits open, glistening red as roe. Tórir flinches, then smiles. As quickly as the wound appears, it seals shut, the scales tougher than before.
"I could battle you all night without sustaining a mark," he says. "Your blood cannot kill me."
"The poison can," Saya says.
"That is why I ordered it retrieved."
"Not all of it." Her eyes narrow. "There's enough left to finish you off."
Far from blanching, Tórir smiles wider. "Shall we make a game of it?"
Saya stares at him.
"You try to kill me," he says. "Before my men do worse to your nieces."
"What?"
His words float through her, disembodied, disorienting. Then she understands. His message. The poison's theft. The attack on Ezra. Everything intended to catch her family off-guard. Keep them distracted, while Tórir lured her here, and IMB-UAWA made their move elsewhere. A trap she fell for, with galling ease.
Saya's pulse gallops, adrenaline overridden by horror. Tórir drinks it in with triumph.
Then he lunges, a venomous spool of muscle knocking her down.
Omoro is closed.
Through the half-cracked window, the night is humid with the scent of flowering diegos and chirruping cicadas. Dee is at the counter, brewing coffee. Behind her, Kai whips up a late-night champuru, chopping up strips of tuna in practiced motions while noodles boil at the stove.
The twins are sprawled on the old sofa in the livingroom. It is the same spot where they used to watch Saturday morning cartoons as kids. Yumi has her hair messily pinned up, ankles crossed as she chomps on a bowlful of cashews. Beside her, Yuri is nearly pyramidical with her big belly. The hormones keep giving her heat-flushes; she fans herself with a magazine, forehead glossy with sweat.
Kai pities her. She isn't a dynamo of vervy energy like Yumi. But she rarely sits still, unless absorbed by a book. Now she's like a fat pupa waiting to streamline back into butterfly-proportions.
The Chevaliers tend diligently to her Royal Rolyness. V offers her sips of limewater, while Sachi sits on the floor, rubbing her swollen feet.
"God." Yuri sighs. "When will they come out?"
"Any day now," Yumi says, crunching on cashews. "That's what Julia-san said."
"I wish they'd hurry!"
"Me too. I wanna see their gross little faces."
"Don't call them gross!"
"They always are! Until the magic tit-fairy makes them all chonky."
"Reminds me of a koan," V says. "What was your real face before you were born?"
Everyone stares at him.
"V," Kai mutters. "That you even know any koans is a disturbance to the cosmos itself."
V looks miffed. "What? I can't read?"
"We all have, umm, unplumbed depths," Sachi says. "V just makes do with a trivia app."
"Thanks a lot, asshole!"
"I'm hoping to teach the kids lots of age-inappropriate trivia," Yumi says, gleefully eyeing Yuri's belly. "Between kickboxing lessons and OD'ing them on candies."
"At this point, I don't even mind," Yuri sighs. "Anything to see my toenails again."
"Your toenails are fine." Sachi pats her foot. "Still, umm, minty green."
At the counter, Dee quirks a brow. "You've been doing her nails, Sachi?"
"She cannot reach them herself."
"Huh." Dee's brow climbs higher. "You do pedicures, too?"
"Sometimes."
"Dang. That's... Something."
"Quit needling him!" Yuri says. "Sachi is secure in his masculinity!"
"I wasn't needling." Dee sips her coffee innocently. "I was just thinkin' your old man never paints my nails."
Kai doesn't glance up from his meal prep. "You don't own any nail polish, Dee."
"Would you paint 'em if I did?"
"Not unless it's a kooky foot-fetish."
Four voices jangle in near-unison—"Ewww!" "Bruh!" "Jeez, that's gross!" "Kai has, umm, foot fetishes?"
Dee smiles sidelong, and sips her coffee. Kai smiles back, wielding the sizzling wok with practiced smoothness.
Tonight's menu is pure monotony: the dashes of snark merely spice it up. Everyone is already on edge. At the hospital, Ezra's surgery is in progress. Julia, David and Adam are there—with a small entourage of Red Shield agents. The rest of the teams are stationed near Omoro, and at the villa, where Saya is.
Earlier, she'd sent Haji over to check on everybody. She had a bad head, as the Chevalier diplomatically put it, and wanted downtime. Kai takes it to mean she's in one of her moods. He'd sent her a couple of texts, but gotten no answer. The Chevalier, meanwhile, has taken a sentinel's aerie outside, keeping watch for potential blind-spots.
To Kai, the set-up is disconcertingly similar to the war. As he busies himself with the stir-fry, it all comes back to him: the sunlit Paris streets, the shopping bags crinkled with pink tissue paper, the glossy squares of family photos. Back when Riku was alive, and Saya's innocence wasn't all surface, and Kai could sulk for days without deviation over the dumbest shit.
Before Diva blew through their lives and tore everything apart.
At the couch, Yumi Ooohs at something Yuri says. They burst into laughter.
Kai's bubble of badness pops, and he's moved to dote on the shapes of their heads: old-young and strong-soft in a way that makes him smile.
Sentimentality is replaced by curiosity when V fishes out a napkin to dab the faint sheen of sweat on Yuri's forehead. Is it Kai's imagination, or do V's knuckles skim almost caressingly across her face? He expects Sachi to bristle with low-key territoriality. Except Sachi's attention is hooked on Yumi, his cheekbones uncharacteristically pink as he listens to her recite a tongue-twister about The Mysterious Banana…
Then Yuri squeals. "Ooooh! Kicking!"
Coffee and stir-fry abandoned, Dee and Kai rush to her.
"Hey! Hey!" Yumi wards off their eager hands. "Yuri's tummy isn't a free-for-all!"
"More like a wrestling ring." Dee tentatively touches Yuri's bump. "They're doing suplexes in there!"
"Damn," Kai breathes. "Is it Tyke Ichi or Tyke Nii?"
"I'm not sure," Yuri says. "V's the only one who can tell them apart."
V waggles his fingertips spookily. "Soooonaaaar."
Yumi swats him. "It's your fault she's like this!"
"Hey! You asked me to knock her up!"
"I thought her babies would be Queen-sized! Not mutant twelve-pounders!"
Sachi clears his throat significantly. "Does it feel like the regular kicking?"
"I can't tell." Yuri winces a little. "There's no contractions or anything."
"They say intercourse induces labor." Dee claps her hands. "Hup hup, Sachi."
"Umm? In front of everyone?"
"Unless you can peel her off the couch. She's practically grown roots."
Yuri smiles sweetly. "I can still hurt you, Dee."
"Okay, okay." Kai moves with purposeful strides toward the kitchen. "Fangs in, plates out. The chow's nearly done."
The low-hanging lamps throw cheerful gold tints across the table. The champuru is brought in, with a jug of chilled green tea, and leftover yakitori on skewers. The twins and their Chevaliers gather around, the savor of food bringing its genial glow to their chitchat, a warm layer over the disequilibrium of the night. Kai watches them eat, maintaining his usual breezy banter while also keeping an eye on Dee, who is too wound up about Ezra to eat much, and perches on the stool, handling her omnipresent headset as she corresponds first with Red Shield's units, then checks in with her family.
When Kai gets up and brings her a stick of yakitori, she smiles. "Thanks."
"You good?"
She gives a single nod, then flicks off the earpiece. "Dad says Ezra's surgery's still in progress."
"Want me to drive you to the hospital?"
She shakes her head. "I'd be no good sitting around. I'm better off here."
She reaches for his hand, squeezing to transmit the message: With you.
Kai relaxes into a smile, and squeezes back. For a moment the uneasy echoes of the past fade into the present: redolent with champuru and glittering with flakes of gold.
Above, the floorboards creek. Haji's black-shod feet descend the stairs, followed by the black-shod rest of him. He is buttoning up his coat.
Kai crooks a brow. "Were you flying over Omoro?"
Haji nods. His façade is stoic as usual. But beneath that is a zone of preternatural alertness. His eyes scan the periphery like ultraviolet radars. Not all of it has to do with Yuri's impending childbirth. Over the years, Kai has found the Chevalier apt at scenting trouble with his fine-tuned nose. This seems like one of those times.
Kai wants to ask, but Dee beats him to it. "Is the perimeter secure?"
"Unit 3 is experiencing a signal glitch," Haji says. "You should contact them."
"Haaaaji! Call Saya over!" Yumi cuts in. "Why's she cooped up alone at the villa?"
"I will ask her once I return there."
Kai frowns. "You're gonna head back?"
Haji nods. A single crease appears between his brows. "Saya is not answering my calls."
Kai and Dee exchange looks. Shit. That's a new development. Saya is sporadic about checking her social media. But with Haji, she seems to know when he'll call before he even does so. Kai remembers how, during Haji's tour, she'd toted her phone everywhere, peeling herself away from the group to curl up somewhere and tip-tap-tip-tap secretively on the screen, her lips caught in a not-quite-smile. With Yumi and Yuri, Kai used to dole out lectures on tech addiction. With Saya, he'd just found it refreshing to see her act like an ordinary girl in love.
He gives Haji a look that is half-wary, half-pitying. "You guys didn't have a fight, did you?"
Haji glowers at him.
"Hey. Maybe she was mad and you didn't, uh, read the signs?"
Dee rolls her eyes. "She's a girl. Not a Morse Code chart."
"Excuse me—have you met Saya?"
Haji is in no mood for wisecracks. "I must return to the villa."
He turns to go, but Yumi plucks his sleeve and Yuri pouts. With an inward sigh, the Chevalier kneels to fold his arms around them. His formality folds itself away too, smoothing into a low-key affection. Somehow, the sight of them—Haji embracing the two girls—reminds Kai how rare his visits are these days. Since Saya's Awakening, she's lassoed Haji's attention completely, unbalancing the routines he'd had with Kai and the twins, and the shape of his life itself.
A germ of pity crawls through Kai. For the first time he allows himself to acknowledge how tough it must be. Having your lady-love around for only three years, then losing her and having to keep living more or less unhappily-ever-after without her, only for her to return and flip your world upside down. How does Haji bear it? The loss, and the endurance of loss, and the erasure of loss?
How will I, when the twins leave too?
Yuri has dodged her hibernation with the pregnancy. Thirty years of borrowed time, to be a mother and a daughter. But Yumi? How much longer does she have? Will Sachi have to knock her up soon to circumvent it? Lately, Kai has intercepted enough smoky glances between the pair to suspect it might be a possibility. But it's not something he can ask.
He shakes the worries loose and smiles when Haji touches Yuri's big belly.
"You are like a soap bubble," the Chevalier murmurs.
Yuri bats her eyelashes. "Rainbow-radiant?"
Yumi snorts, "More like toxic with sulfates."
Matter-of-factly, Yuri elbows her sister in the ribs. Yumi yelps, but doesn't retaliate. Evidently she believes the upcoming childbirth will be punishment enough.
Sighing, Haji straightens. "I meant you look ready to explode."
"I hope so!" Yuri huffs. "It's high time I was reunited with my toenails!"
"You'll have no time to paint 'em," Yumi mutters. "Between the late-night bawling and dirty diapers and fangy breastfeeding…"
Sachi goes queasily grey. "Fangs?"
Kai tries to reassure the poor kid that newborn Queens are as toothless as the rest of 'em.
There is a sharp inhale. Dee lifts a hand to her earpiece. Her face goes bone-white.
"Shit," she breathes.
"What's wrong?" Kai asks. "Is it Ezra?"
She shakes her head. Her eyes slew from Kai to Haji. "Unit 3. They're not having a communication glitch."
"What then?"
"Unit 5 swung by their post." She swallows. "They're all dead."
"What?"
"That's not all. They can't get a read on—"
The lamps flicker, then short out. The pub is plunged into darkness.
Kai squints blindly. "What the fuck—?!"
Dee snaps on the flashlight on her phone. She and Kai are the only ones who need it. The remainder of the pack are Chiropterans, and can see in the dark as clearly as in daylight. Kai's gaze pings from one face to the other. Everyone wears urgent expressions, except Haji, whose features are schooled to stone. But in his palms, the daggers slide into place, perfectly balanced.
Thump.
Something has dropped onto Omoro's rooftop. Kai hears muted scrapes across the clay tiles.
V mutters, "Puedo escucharlos reír."
"Laugh?" Dee translates. "Who?"
"Ssh," Haji says.
He flows soundlessly to the window, spreading two fingers into a gap in the blinds. He stares out, the streetlights making a pale band across his cheekbones. On the street: a couple of cars. No pedestrians. The buildings nearby have lights shining in the windows. The power outage hasn't affected the entire block. Just the pub.
"If there are intruders," Haji says, "they did not arrive by foot."
"Then how?" Kai asks. "You were scanning the neighborhood five minutes ago."
"Five minutes could be all they needed."
"They?"
"IBM-UAWA. Or whoever is acting in their stead."
Dread zitzes through Kai.
Yumi says, "What about Red Shield's guards? Where are they?"
Dee lifts a hand to her earpiece. "I'm getting radio silence. Units 1 through 5 aren't signaling."
"How?" Kai says. "Nothing could take 'em out that fast."
"Unless their attackers were not human," Haji says.
"Huh?"
That's when Kai hears it.
Laughter. Prolonged laughter: effervescent and bone-chilling.
Familiar.
Kai's muscle groups clench with a déjà vu so profound it bleeds into dread. His eyes meet Haji's. The Chevalier radiates all the stillness of a sphynx. His clawed hand, swathed in bandages, doesn't twitch a muscle. In the war, Kai had learnt to anticipate the opposite reaction …whenever she was near. Each time, Haji's body became a weathervane signaling the winds of disaster.
It can't be.
Can it?
The laughter carries on, a musical, maniacal jangle. The walls of the pub soak it up like acid-rain. Not just one laugh. There are dozens of them, overlapping together. Echoing and re-echoing until Kai's skull buzzes with their eeriness.
"What is that?" Yumi hisses, "A choir of witches?"
"I think you mean a gathering," sighs Yuri.
The click of a gun cuts them off.
Kai is loading his M1911 pistol from its hiding place at the mantel. His muscles are strung as taut as his nerves. But his reflexes have gravitated to their natural state: defense and offense. It is like being in old Edo Japan, samurai versus bandits, eyes steady and weapons ready.
No.
It is like being back in the war.
"Yumi. Yuri," he says. "Stay close."
"Kai—what—?"
"Listen to him." Moonlight glosses the contours of Haji's face. But there are shadows behind his shield of calm, the stirrings of something deadly awakening. "Do not let them near you."
"Them?" Yumi says. "Who?"
An arm shatters through the window. A pale arm, smooth-skinned and feminine. It is unscratched by the glittering spray of glass. The moment it bursts inside, it snatches for the closest body.
V.
Instead of dodging, V grabs the arm with both huge fists—and yanks. A woman slithers through the broken window. Not reluctantly, but with the lissome grace of a cat lured to play. Like a cat, she wears nothing but her own nakedness. Like a cat, she lands neatly on her feet.
A pair of blue eyes glow in the shadows. Laughter unfurls through the pub, a lunatic aria.
Then a flash. The woman is gone.
Kai and the others stare. The intruder's movements were too fast for the eye to chart—Chiropteran-speed. But before she had entered and exited Kai's sightline, he saw her face. Saw it, and felt his brain rebel, defaulting on itself and erasing the features to a luminous smudge. He wonders if it is instinct, a protective measure against the bubbling edge of hysteria.
Because what he saw was a girl with a face like Saya's. A girl with shorn hair, and a fine-boned body.
And blue eyes.
Whoosh.
There again. At the opposite side of the room. A silhouette.
Dee swings her flashlight toward it. The bright beam falls on the girl. She is dainty, deceptively lean—all muscle beneath the paleness of bare skin. Her hair is cropped short, like Saya's in highschool. But the similarity ends there. Everything about this girl, from the ripple of unspent motion down her body to the glint of fangs between her smiling mouth, exudes menace.
And those eyes.
They are blue.
Kai's heart jerks behind his ribs. He can't make sense of what he is seeing. Yet he knows the others see it, too. They feel it: a coldness that seeps into the bones, their bodies rioting into gooseflesh.
Her presence is unmistakable. A supersaturated species of hunger, malignant as death.
A Queen on the prowl.
It can't be, Kai thinks. It can't.
"Jesus," Yumi breathes, "Is that—?"
"Diva," Yuri says. "It's—it's our mo—"
Haji flashes forward, flinging his daggers.
One buries itself in the girl's arm. The other sinks, dead-on, between her breasts. She doesn't flinch. Her eyes—Diva's eyes—hold a daydreamy glaze. Not the million-mile type Kai associates with psychosis. This is different. The liquid flatness of something that has never tasted daylight. Her skin is the same, giving off a queerish glow, like a mushroom sprouted in a damp cellar.
Then she smiles, and shimmies her body. Haji's daggers ooze out of her skin and clatter to the floor. Her wounds—dark smears in the torchlight—close as smoothly as melted glass.
Then she charges.
Kai's body moves in reflex. He raises the pistol and fires. Four brutal shots. Sparks leap off the barrel. The pub's silence is torn apart, concussive echoes colliding off the walls.
The bullets shred through Diva's body. But she doesn't even slow.
Dee grabs Kai's collar and jerks him backwards. They roll across the floorboards before Diva can pounce. At the same time, Kai sees Haji pivot, lashing out with a high-flying kick to Diva's skull. There is vicious crack. The blow shatters the orbital bone, her eyeball popping from its socket, a ghastly red-sheened orb dangling like a radish. Diva crashes into the kitchen counter. A shriek like an air-raid siren fills the space.
Not a shriek.
A laugh.
The sound feeds on itself—bubbling and burgeoning. It wafts through the pub like a miasma. From the shattered window, three more shapes slither inside. Naked as jaybirds, with eyes the same electrified blue. The moonlight is bright enough to make out the exact definitions of their faces.
Diva's face.
Diva's face on each and every one of them.
"Shit!"
Dee grips her flashlight in her right hand, and whips her Magnum out with her left. She fires off a volley of shots. Once, twice, thrice. Five times in total.
Kai doesn't understand why she's emptying her ammo. It takes more than bullets to flatline a Chiropteran. Smoke mushrooms from the Magnum's barrel. But her rounds don't hit the three newcomers' torsos. Each one buries itself—cherries dinging in a slot-machine—into their eye-sockets. Blood spews. The three Divas jerk backward as the bullets jolt through their skulls. They don't yelp or utter a word. Instead, laughter bubbles up in their chests—those same hysterical, overflowing giggles that used to crowd Kai's nightmares in the early years after the war.
A nightmare risen back from the dead.
Kai's frantic eyes meet Haji's.
"What the hell are they?" he says. "Queens?"
Haji shakes his head. "Their scent is different from Diva's."
"Different?"
"They are not pureblood Queens. They seem …manmade."
This jerks Dee's attention away from the sprawled intruders. "Like what? The Corpse Corps?"
Kai's daze of disorientation sharpens into understanding. "That old dude. Akamine. This is what he meant about a blue-eyed girl setting him free. This is what they're doing at Yabuchi!"
"Making an army of Queens."
He glances up. Yumi and Yuri are staring at the bloodsplattered twist of Diva-bodies. Both of them seem uncharacteristically paralyzed. Their eyes are uncomprehending. Horrorstruck.
Their mother, Kai thinks. This is their first time seeing their mother.
No.
Not their mother. Meat-puppets with their mother's face.
His one-dimensional revulsion darkens into something with a more adult texture. Anger—not at Diva, but at what IBM-UAWA are trying to do. What they're planning to do with Yumi and Yuri, if given the chance.
"Kai."
Haji's voice is like being dunked in icewater. Kai blinks. The Divas—the three with cored-out eyes and the one tossed against the kitchen counter, are stirring. Their bodies contort themselves upright, strangely spastic, like stop-motion animation. The shrill scarves of their laughter unfurl through the air, gathering mass, accruing menace.
"We have to move," Dee says. "We need back-up."
"We need Saya," Kai says. "Maybe her blood can take 'em down?"
V takes a deep inhalation. His eyes narrow. "There's more of 'em. Two are still on the roof."
Haji nods. "Take Yumi and Yuri out the back. I will lure them away."
"I'll cover you," says Sachi.
"Sachi!" Yuri protests, with a high-pitched waver of panic.
Sachi skims his knuckles fondly across her cheek. "I'll be back before you know it."
"Painted nails and pedicures all the way." Dee nudges Yuri's shoulder. "C'mon. We need to get you someplace safe."
"The villa?" Yumi suggests.
Dee shakes her head. "We don't know if they've ambushed Otonashi too. The teams at Naminoue Beach aren't responding."
Shit.
Fear spiders through Kai's chest. His pistol is clammy in his palm. He meets Haji's opaque blue stare, watches his pale line of jaw tighten. Then the Chevalier nods.
"Go," he says. "Head to the safe-house in Nagahama."
"What about Saya?" Kai asks.
"We must trust her to watch herself."
"But—"
"Go."
The four Divas are fully healed now. The moonlight refracts off their faces. For the first time, Kai sees the details that make them unlike real Queens. Their eyes burn a peculiar nitrous blue, different from the tungsten brilliance of Diva's or Yuri's eyes. Their jaws unhinge with the abruptness of doors gaping open, lips stretching on each side as their teeth extend to razor sharpness. Their laughter ripples through the gloom: cold, silvery, yet infused with a repetitive pitch, a doll with its string pulled.
Puppets, Kai thinks again.
They're killer meat-puppets.
The closest of the Divas giggles—bubbly and blood-hungry. Then she snaps her jaws and lunges.
Haji's dagger-wielding hands flash like lightning, the blades slashing across Diva's throat. In the same motion, he pivots, knocking another Diva flat as she leaps airborne, claws ready and teeth bared.
"Sachi!" he shouts.
The younger Chevalier nods. "On it!"
With incredible speed, he crashtackles the remaining two Divas. The momentum sends them hurtling out the front doors. Hinges snap, splinters flying. They tumble outside, trading blows, the Divas' laughter distorting into something senseless, savage. From the broken window, two more Divas crawl through, nimble as spiders, limbs unfurling with eerie grace. Their eyes cut across the gloom, fixing on Yumi and Yuri.
They pounce.
"Back off!"
V blocks their path, ramming them linebacker-style with his massive shoulders. They go crashing into the kitchen. Kai winces, staring at the wreckage of his Dad's pub from a long, long way off. He'd just replaced those kitchen tiles.
Then Dee says, "We gotta move!"
Kai rouses himself. "Yeah."
Hefting his gun, he dodges past the Haji and the two Divas. They are engaged in a deadly ballet: bodies pirouetting and blood spritzing. The Chevalier's knife-skills are superlative. But the Divas have the edge of brute force. In the moonlight, Haji's face and torso are slashed, blood cascading down his suit. Outside, Kai can hear Sachi scuffling with the other two Divas. His yells are muffled by their laughter.
A part of Kai wonders if the Chevaliers will be able to fend their enemies off. The other part of him, beyond the realm of fear, can only trust his gut.
Yumi. Yuri.
Their safety is all that matters.
Kai shoulders past the door, letting Dee chivvy Yumi and Yuri outside.
"Vicente!" he shouts. "C'mon!"
The big Chevalier moves after Kai. But one of the little Divas dances toward him on quicksilver feet and loops a brutal hook across his throat. V grunts, staggering back. The Diva follows with a claw swipe, ripping across his chest and shredding muscle and tendon. V growls something incomprehensible and pops her a sharp uppercut that catches her in the chin. It is a crippling blow, but V doesn't protect his rear. The second Diva leaps on him from behind, sinking her fangs into his jugular. V howls.
"Vicente!"
Kai aims with his pistol, firing off two rounds. One slug buries itself in Diva's shoulder. The other clips her ear. She jerks but doesn't budge.
"Kai!" V yells. "Get the girls outta here!"
"V—"
"Get moving!" His smile is painfully pasted-on. "Semper Fi!"
Kai's throat constricts. His pistol feels useless as a toy in his hands. Across the interior, the gore and destruction are elaborate. He can't fully take it in. It is surreal, sickening, like…
Like the war.
What was your real face before you were born?
Kai's panic hits maximum intensity, then redlines into cold purpose. He meets V's eyes, and nods.
Spinning, he takes off after Dee and the twins.
Yumi. Yuri.
I need to keep them safe.
Racing outside, there is no way he can see the silhouettes of creatures perched on a signboard high above. Creatures with glowing blue eyes.
Watching them.
More drama and trauma in the next installment.
Hope y'all enjoyed, and lemme know if something was left unclear!
Review, pretty please! :)
