Chapter 17: Burning Revenge
Rin screeched and cried incessantly, no matter the other children's attempts to calm him down after they'd pulled him away from the door.
The image of frozen faces of terror were firmly imprinted on Rin's mind.
Worse still, he knew every single face out there.
Yamato had been down the hall, Mai had been close by too, and little Suzie's horrifying face had practically been in Rin's own.
Rin's dad and brother hadn't tried to hide the truth from him, so Rin already knew that Mami was the reason all of his friends had died in the nightmare city, and that truth had already hurt so much that Rin had been tempted countless times to deny it.
But this…
The revelation that everyone, his friends, not only died but had been turned into the very creatures used to terrify and kill them, was something that was agonising.
That Mami, who cared for all of them, sung to them, loved them, protected them from the 'monsters', had been the one to do this to them.
Deep inside Rin, something fractured from its already fragile state.
"Oh, Rin, did you really try and leave out the door again?" Like before, Mami appeared.
But unlike before, Rin did not attempt to seek comfort from her.
"No! Don't touch me!" Rin reacted violently to Mami's attempts to touch him.
"Rin?" Mami frowned and held a hand to her chest, as if hurt by his actions.
"You killed them! You turned them into the monsters!" Rin accused through tears.
"Rin, please stop-"
"No!" Rin interrupted Mami's attempts at calming him. "I saw them. I saw their faces. You kill us, and then you turn us into those monsters outside!"
The other children looked to one another uncomfortably, trying to comprehend what Rin was saying.
"Rin, your trauma is making you see things." Mami tried to dismiss.
"Don't you dare try and bullshit me!" The children gasped at Rin's language. "I saw their faces, Yamato, Mai and Suzie! They were all out there, inside those creatures. And their faces, oh god, their faces." Rin sobbed heavier.
Daisuke, Emi and Kiki gasped.
Though Yamato and Suzie had come and gone far before them, the three children had been in Mami's 'care' long enough to remember Mai before she had been taken by the creatures like all the others.
And if they were understanding Rin correctly, then Mai, stubborn but caring Mai, had been turned into one of the very monsters that hunted them in the city and now lurked just outside the door. And Mami was the one to do it.
The other children started to cry, both at what Rin was saying and just at the fact he was shouting at Mami.
"Rin, you are upsetting the other children." Mami said firmly, assuring smile gone from her face as she moved towards Rin.
"No! Stay away from me!" Unthinkingly, Rin threw the stone in his hand at Mami in an attempt to get her to stay away.
Mami merely moved her head to the side to avoid it, letting it sail over her hair and land next to Jiro, who picked it up inquisitively.
Looking the stone over, Jiro found the hole in it and realised that Rin had been holding it up to his eye when he started freaking out.
So, in curiosity, Jiro walked over to the door while Mami was busy with Rin and opened it to take a peek at the creatures outside.
At first, the creatures looked just as monstrous as Jiro remembered them being from the city.
But then, Jiro lifted the stone up to his eye.
"Ah!" The young boy cried out when he saw the children trapped inside the creatures and the horrifying expressions their faces held.
Mami turned around and gasped, eyes widening when she saw that Jiro was at the door, quickly snatching him away and slamming the door shut.
"I-I saw them!" Jiro cried. "Th-they're inside them!"
"Is it true, Mami?" Emi gave Mami a look of betrayal. "You've been turning us into those monsters."
"Nnoo…cann bbee!" June was also freaking out, those it was hard for her in her drugged state.
"No, Mami wouldn't do that to us!" Daisuke denied.
"Mami cares for us, she wouldn't…she wouldn't…" Kiki sobbed.
Mami looked around her children panicked, realising that she was no longer in control, that her magic wasn't working to keep them blind anymore.
Spotting the stone that Rin had thrown at her in Jiro's hand, Mami snatched it to get a closer look at it, snarling when she recognised it as a Hag Stone.
The Beldam was quick to crush the stone in her hand, though the damage was already done.
Her gaze then turned sharply to Rin and the necklace he still wore.
"Give that to me!" Mami demanded, reaching for Rin's necklace.
"No!" Rin denied, trying to get away.
Despite Rin's struggle, Mami eventually succeeded in taking the pendant from him.
"You brought them here!" Mami accused the boy, recognising the pendant for what it was.
Like with the stone, Mami crushed it in her hand.
"No!" Rin cried out at the loss of the pendant his brother had given him.
Mami dropped the pendant to the floor and went to step on it, only for a black blur to snatch it from under her.
Everyone caught a quick glimpse of a black cat, holding the damaged pendant in its mouth, before it disappeared under a bookcase.
"Vermin." Mami hissed, knowing that the Cat was already gone.
Casting away her broken façade, Mami shifted into a demonic form and grabbed for her children.
Unlike the last time, where her demonic form had been accepted just as much as her human disguise, all the children now cried and panicked at the sight of her true form.
"It doesn't matter." Mami muttered loudly to herself as she took the children into the other room. "They'll be too late to stop me. You'll never be able to leave me again!"
Rin took in the room, at the symbols on the floor and the unlit candles, and realised it was for a ritual.
A ritual that, if Mami's words were anything to go by, would ensure that they could never escape her again, just like all the other children trapped in their monstrous forms.
Eyes widening in fear, Rin quickly began to struggle.
The corridor was long and dark, seemingly endless.
Yukio led the group, his pendant floating out in front of them, leading the way to Rin.
Thankfully, none of the group of three had been hurt in their fall, only slightly winded. And it was decided to find their way to the children, rather than attempt to meet back up with the other Exorcists.
The three of them were all silent, still shocked by the revelation of what the creatures that attacked them really were.
"Jones-san." Yukio said quietly. "Will Rin...will he…those creatures."
Yukio bit his lip in an effort to stop his tears, once again reminding the adults of just how young he was.
"I don't know." Coraline answered honestly, not sugar-coating it. "Rin lasted seven years, much longer than any child targeted by a Beldam ever, for whatever reason. So, it's possible that he'll be spared while the other children won't be if we don't reach them in time, but we can't know for sure."
Yukio frowned heavily.
He then gasped as his pendant suddenly dropped, just dangling on its string instead of pulling towards its counterpart.
"No! No!" Yukio pleaded, trying to get the pendant to work again.
"Does that mean…?" Coraline trailed off as Shiro nodded.
If the pendant had stopped working, then the counterpart was out of range or more likely destroyed.
Shiro placed a calming hand on Yukio's shoulder.
"We should be close to Rin anyway, we'll still save him." He assured his son.
"You'll need to hurry."
Everyone jumped at the new voice.
Looking down, Shiro and Yukio were surprised to find Coraline's cat, though Coraline just raised an eyebrow.
"So, you can speak again?" She stated.
"Your statement suggests that I lost the ability to speak." The Cat said nonchalantly in a deep voice, grooming his whiskers. "Perhaps I just didn't feel the need to speak again until now."
"Right." Coraline said, not believing him.
The last time she'd heard the Cat speak was in the pocket dimension that housed the Other Mother, where he'd been perfectly chatty.
So, a far more likely explanation than the Cat's self-important words was that Mami had twisted Hawthorn House enough that it allowed the Cat to communicate like he did in the Other World, though Coraline had yet to figure out why exactly the Other World, and now Mami's lair, gave the Cat the ability to speak.
Yukio gasped as he spotted a broken pendant in front of the Cat, the same one he'd given Rin.
"You-!"
Anticipating Yukio's outburst, Coraline grabbed the teen before he could attack the Cat.
"I saved it from being fully destroyed?" The Cat acted as if that was what Yukio was going to say. "Yes."
"Mami?" Coraline asked.
The Cat nodded.
"Right after destroying that stone you gave the boy, she didn't like what it showed him." He said.
Coraline pursed her lips slightly.
While the Hag Stone she'd given Rin wasn't any more powerful than the other Hag Stones she had, it had been the one to help protect her when she'd been targeted by the Other Mother and was therefore something of value to her. She'd meant to pass on that value in gifting it to Rin, but now it was gone.
"He saw the children?" Shiro asked to clarify.
The Cat nodded, ears downward.
Shiro curled his fist, knowing that Rin would have even more trauma, on top of what he already had, with learning what happened to all his past friends.
"Can you lead us the rest of the way to the children?" Coraline asked the Cat.
"I can." The Cat nodded, not sounding particularly incentivised. "They'll be more of the Beldam's victims in the way though."
"We'll just have to push past." Shiro said.
He did not like the idea of attacking the creatures, but they were already dead while the other children, including Rin, could still be saved. So, he'd have to ignore what the creatures really were.
Without another word, the Cat turned and ran down the corridor, the Exorcists quickly following.
The creatures didn't take long to appear, so the Exorcists steeled themselves and kept running, taking down any creature in their way as they continued to follow the Cat until they reached a door.
The Exorcists charged through the door, slamming it shut behind them as the creatures began to bang on it behind them.
"They're not going to stay out for long." Coraline noted, looking around the room.
"Here."
The group looked over to the Cat, who was standing at an open door.
Walking over to the open door, they found a giant room full of what looked like messy spiderwebs.
Coraline shivered as she was reminded of her final confrontation with the Other Mother.
"Be on guard, she's in here." The Cat warned.
"Hello?"
Shiro and Yukio perked up at the sound of a familiar voice.
"Rin?" Yukio looked around for his brother.
"Onii-chan!"
Looking up through the layers of webbing, the Exorcists spotted shapes wrapped up in webbing. The children.
From his own wrappings, Rin looked down at the group, a hopeful smile on his sickly face.
Rin seemed to be the only child aware of them, as all the other children were unconscious and deathly still.
"Don't worry, we'll get you down." Coraline told Rin.
Through her Hag Stone, Coraline watched as pulses of energy came from Rin's wrappings and travelled down the web, the same happening to the other trapped children.
"She's draining them of their life energy as quickly as she can." Coraline informed Shiro and Yukio.
"Then let's find a way up to them and cut them down." Shiro said.
Walking deeper into the web, they found what could be called the centre, where Mami would be, though she was completely absent, much to Coraline's suspicion.
"Everyone move!" Coraline yelled, diving to the side.
Shiro and Yukio didn't question it, diving to the side themselves in time to avoid a surprise attack from a demonic Mami.
Mami was quick to follow up her attack, going after Shiro, who was struggling much more against the Beldam now she was pulling energy from all her children.
Coraline looked at Mami and then frowned up at the children.
"We won't have long until the children are completely drained." Coraline said, deciding to go for the children instead of attacking Mami.
Yukio drew his guns and started shooting at Mami, ready to take down the demon even though his bullets had done nothing last time.
"No, Yukio!" Shiro grunted as he clashed with Mami. "Go free the children."
"But father." Yukio complained. "You can't fight it alone."
"Do as I say!" Shiro ordered. "The children are more important."
Frowning, Yukio reluctantly did as told.
Looking back at Shiro fighting alone, Coraline mentally cycled through all the familiars she could summon to help him but realised that all the webs and closed in space prevented any of her familiars from being useful.
Though, that didn't mean she was out of options.
"Hey." She said to get the attention of the Cat. "You willing to do it?"
The Cat stared up at Coraline with an unreadable expression then looked at the Beldam.
"I suppose I can. But only because I don't feel like being flung at a Beldam again, especially when they have no buttons for me to scratch off." The Cat said uncaringly.
"You're still holding onto that?" Coraline said with mirth as she reached for the necklace she wore and took it off.
"I shall never forget." The Cat said seriously.
Coraline laughed as she wrapped the cord of her summoning symbol necklace around her hand, with the symbol itself resting in the palm of her hand.
Holding out her wrapped hand in front of her, Coraline clenched it into a tight fist, wincing slightly as the sharp edges of the metal summoning symbol cut into her flesh. Opening her hand again, the symbol was now covered in her blood.
"Ancient gods of the forgotten past, a plead with you to come forth and allow for the true form to be reclaimed once more." Coraline incanted.
Rather than a new Familiar appearing, smoke leaked out from Coraline's summoning symbol, snaking towards the Cat and enveloping him.
The mass of smoke grew bigger until it abruptly fell to the floor, revealing a man standing in the place of the Cat.
'Man' wasn't exactly the best description for him though, as though he was humanoid, he was clearly not human. His face was too pointed with a cat's nose and line trailing down to a curved mouth, his eyes were too big and practically glowed blue, and his ears were too long and pointed.
"Ah." The Cat's deep voice emerged from the figure as he stretched, satisfaction on his face. "To be in this form once again."
"Cat, Beldam!" Coraline reminded the transformed feline ungently.
"Yes, yes." The Cat waved off. "I need to dig my claws into something anyway."
The Cat inspected his clawed fingers before leaping into the battle against Mami.
With Shiro having some help, Coraline turned back to helping the children, pulling out a knife to start cutting at the webbing to reach one of the children.
"Kid, focus on the dying children first!" Coraline called to Yukio when she noticed him heading towards Rin first. "Rin should be fine for a while, but the others won't be."
Yukio clenched his teeth and looked up at his brother, his instincts screaming at him to go for Rin first, to make sure his brother was fine. But, remembering his promise to Shiro about not letting his emotions control him, Yukio reluctantly changed course to one of the children who was unconscious and very still in their wrappings instead.
"Onii-san!" Rin cried out, realising that his brother wasn't coming to get him anymore, panicking slightly.
"I'll be there soon, alright Rin." Yukio didn't look at Rin, worried that seeing his brother's face would make him abandon the other children. "But your friends need urgent help. So, just hang in a little longer."
"O-okay." Rin hiccupped.
"No! I won't let you take them!" Mami screeched, still occupied with Shiro and the Cat.
With seemingly a wave of her hand, the door to the room burst open and the creatures came storming in, heading for the humans.
"Oh, great." Coraline grumbled. "Let's get these kids down fast."
Thankfully, Coraline wasn't just a Tamer, so she had some weapons and skills to combat the creatures, so she and Yukio were able take turns keeping the creatures occupied while the other worked on cutting down the children. Thankfully, the creatures seemed solely focused on Yukio and Coraline and didn't bother the children they freed on the floor.
As she kept the creatures away, Coraline hummed at the strings she saw coming off the creatures through her Hag Stone.
The strings hadn't been there before, but perhaps the strings had been stretched so thin with the distance from Mami that Coraline hadn't seen them even with her Hag Stone, or Mami was only just now controlling them.
Either way, Coraline knew that those strings had to be cut.
The problem was, her knife just passed through the strings when she attempted to cut them, obviously requiring something more than a basic weapon to sever the link.
Despite the attacking creatures, Coraline and Yukio managed to cut down all but one of the children, Rin, who was looking much paler than before, struggling to keep his eyes open.
"Don't worry, Rin. I'm coming!" Yukio called to his brother, relieved that there were no more children in the way of freeing him.
Both Yukio and Coraline made their way up towards Rin, only to find themselves suddenly knocked back by Mami, who had disengaged from Shiro and the Cat to prevent them from freeing Rin.
"You will not take him away from me!" Mami screeched.
Thankfully, the Cat was there to catch Yukio and Coraline before they hit the ground.
"She's becoming desperate." The Cat remarked, smelling it.
"Wait for an opening." Shiro told the others as he charged back into the fight.
Yukio, Coraline and the Cat waited for an opening to either attack Mami or take Rin, only for the Beldam to throw another wrench into things.
"If I can't have my children, then you will not either." Mami snarled. "Kill them all!"
Coraline and the Cat barely managed to turn in time to start defending the unconscious children from the creatures, who were unable to do anything to defend themselves.
"Kid, a little help here." Coraline grunted, overwhelmed in trying to defend a stationary target with just the Cat.
Reluctantly, Yukio turned from his father and brother to help defend the other children, trusting that his father would be able to do something without them.
"Come on, dad!" Rin cheered weekly for his father, vision blurring from how tired he was becoming.
Seeing an opening, Shiro took it and stabbed Mami right in the chest.
Unfortunately, the attack also allowed Mami the opportunity to stab Shiro in the side with one of her spider legs.
"Dad!" Rin cried out in worry.
Mami grinned at Shiro despite the pain she was in, reaching behind her to pull Rin out of her web, still trapped in his wrappings.
"You may be able to injure me. But I can just heal, unlike you." The Beldam boasted.
Pulling her leg from Shiro's side, the Paladin started to fall, managing to catch himself on some webbing before falling all the way.
"Dad!" Rin cried out again, this time joined by Yukio.
Mami crawled over to where Shiro hung on the webs, draining energy from Rin to heal her chest wound.
She grinned victoriously as she raised up her spider legs to stab down on Shiro again.
"No!" Rin cried out, struggling in her grip.
At the sight of his dad about to die, as well as being brought to death himself from Mami draining his lifeforce, something inside Rin finally broke free, bursting out of him violently.
"Agh!" Mami howled in pain as blue fire erupted out from Rin, burning her and freeing the boy from his bindings.
On instinct, she dropped Rin to the webs below her, which spread the fire to the webbing that filled the room, setting everything alight.
Miraculously, the creatures stopped attacking, looking around as if suddenly lost. And through her Hag Stone, Coraline was able to see that the threads connecting them to Mami were also burning away in the supernatural fire.
"Satan's flames." The Cat said, quickly clearing the webbing away from them so that they wouldn't be caught in the fire when it spread their way. "But why would he bother with-"
Coraline looked up at Rin, realising the same thing as the Cat, much to Yukio's dismay.
The webs holding Rin and Shiro were quickly eaten away by Rin's flames, breaking and sending the two to the ground, Shiro quickly grabbing his son and holding him to his chest until they game to a sudden and painful stop.
"Dad!"
"Fujimoto-san!"
Yukio ran over to his father and brother while Coraline and the Cat stayed with the children, Coraline looking at her co-worker in worry.
"I…I'm fine." Shiro wheezed out, thoroughly winded from his less than pleasant landing, as well as the smoke caused by the burning webs.
"D-dad! What's going on? Why am I burning?" Rin was freaking out in his father's arms, blue fire still licking his skin.
"It's okay Rin." Shiro comforted as he fought to get to his feet. "You just need to calm down and it'll go away."
"Dad, don't move." Yukio demanded. "You've been stabbed."
"Staying in one place is not an option right now." Shiro denied.
"But wouldn't the fire have-"
Mami lurching out of the burning remains of her webs cut off Yukio's assumption that she was already dead.
The Beldam was heavily burned, down to the bone at the side she'd been holding Rin, and half her limbs weren't working. But the demon continued to make her way towards the family.
"Don't you get it?" Mami hissed with a psychotic grin.
Blindly, Yukio began to pull his father and brother back towards where Coraline and the Cat were watching over the children, the Cat moving forward to position himself in front of them.
"You are my child, Rin." Mami addressed the trembling boy. "Don't you see what you are now, you're a demon too. And I'm the only one who can love you enough to accept you."
"You're crazy!" Rin shook his head, crying as he clung to Shiro's coat.
Mami's grin turned to a scowl.
"Do not talk back to me! I know what is best for my children!"
"Well, I don't believe that your children would agree." The Cat interrupted smugly.
"Especially now that Rin has freed them." Coraline added stonily, gazing at Mami through her Hag Stone.
"What…?" Mami started to look around, finding that they were all surrounded by the creatures she had twisted her former children into.
And all lidless eyes were focused solely on Mami.
Mami gasped as the creatures converged on her with their sharp claws, the Beldam unable to runaway as her burnt flesh was dug into. Her screams of agony quickly followed.
"Don't look, Rin." Shiro ordered as Yukio blocked his younger brother's view of the gruesome display.
Through her Hag Stone, Coraline could see that the faces of the dead children were no longer contorted in terror, but rather in pure rage.
"It's always the same." The Cat remarked as he cleaned himself.
Coraline nodded. "No matter how different Beldams are, their undoing will always be the very children they tormented."
Mami's screams eventually ceased and the building began to shift, the huge room shrinking. With the death of the Beldam, Hawthorn House was returning to normal.
In a blink of the eye, the creatures disappeared, leaving behind the ghost of the children who looked at the group before also disappear.
"Goodbye." Coraline said to the ghosts.
…
Rin had joined the other children in unconsciousness by the time the other Exorcists joined them in the now significantly smaller room, the energy drain, emotional turmoil and awakening taking its toll on the young boy.
Thankfully, Rin's blue flames had all been extinguished by the time that the other Exorcists had arrived, saving the youngest Okumura from being exposed.
"What happened?" One of the team asked, looking over to the desecrated corpse of Mami.
"The Beldam's dead." Coraline took charge. "I'll give a full report later, but for now we should focus on getting the children and Fujimoto-san medical help immediately. The children have been severely drained of their life energy, and Fujimoto-san received a stab wound to his side and fell from a distance onto his back."
"Okay." The team responded, moving to start transporting the children out of Hawthorn House.
Thankfully, medical teams were waiting for the group as soon as they were outside, taking the children to look over them as well as tend to Shiro's injuries, until they could all get to a hospital.
"No, really, I'm fine. Please concentrate on the children." Shiro denied medical help beyond the dressing of his stab wound, not wanting to lie down and be fussed over until they left for the hospital.
Sighing, Shiro looked around and spotted Coraline leading against a wall nearby, holding her Beldam book as she updated it with her latest information.
Limping over to her, Shiro found that the Cat was also there on the wall next to her, back in his normal Cat form. And likely also back to being unable to speak.
"You really shouldn't be moving around with your injuries." Coraline said, raising an eyebrow.
"It's nothing that I haven't had before." Shiro waved off. "And I'm not doing anything strenuous."
Looking at Coraline, Shiro spoke again.
"Listen, about what happened in the lair, with Rin-"
"I don't know what you're talking about, Fujimoto-san." Coraline acted nonchalant. "As far as I remember, we accidently started a completely normal fire through one of my summons, and that's what freed the dead children to turn on Mami. Rin had nothing to do with it."
Shiro sighed in relief, glad that Coraline wouldn't expose Rin's secret.
"Come on, ambulance is arriving." Coraline said, pointing to the flashing lights.
As Coraline walked past him, Shiro looked over to the Cat, who stared back at him before following after her.
Yukio sighed as he sat in between his brother and father's bed at the hospital.
Usually, Rin would be in a ward with the other children, but after the last time Shiro had popped his stitches to personally check up on Rin, the staff had allowed the family to share a hospital room. Shiro being the Paladin probably also helped since all the doctors in that area of the hospital were Exorcists themselves.
While Yukio didn't approve of his father's actions, as it definitely did not help the old man's stab wound or broken ribs, he was glad that we wouldn't have to switch between rooms to check on his family members anymore.
Though, there wasn't much to check up on with Rin.
Like the other children, Rin was still unconscious despite their rescue now being days ago.
Shiro and Yukio had been assured that the children would wake up and that they just needed to gather up all the energy Mami had stolen from them first. But it didn't stop the family from worrying.
Yukio found that things were…not great.
His father was injured and his brother was unconscious after being kidnapped once again by the crazed demon that kidnapped him the first time, not to mention Rin's Demon Heart being awoken by Mami's actions.
Still, with Mami gone, Yukio found that he did have hope for things getting better in the future.
Author's note: Please comment
And it's over, Mami is no more.
I did plan for Mami to fall by Shiro's hand, but I thought I'd be more poetic for all the children Mami took to finally get their revenge.
With the warped reality, I decided that it would make sense for the Cat to be able to speak again, like he did in the book and movie. Though, he is much less knowing than he was in the book/movie since this is not the Beldam he's familiar with.
The Cat is a Cait Sidhe, but a different version than Kuro because of location.
In Celtic folklore, a Cait Sidhe can be a witch with the power to turn into a cat eight times, with the ninth time turning them into a cat permanently, which I thought would fit Coraline's cat rather nicely with his intelligence.
And I also added some of my own lore by Coraline having the ability to allow the Cat to return to a semi-state which is between his former human form and cat form, so he can fight demons.