Warnings: Blood, Weiß, and Violence
Chapter 8.
Suddenly I was looking at Kannon's back in front of me, and I heard the meaty sound of the projectile striking flesh. Kannon clawed at his throat, something long and skinny protruding from it. I aimed at Crossbow as he/she turned to dash for the entrance of the alleyway, fleeing. Crossbow didn't get far.
Crossbow ran right into a new figure silhouetted in the entrance to the alleyway that suddenly appeared. It was missing was the long cape and little pointy earhorns, so it couldn't be Batman.
Power leaked into the alleyway, making me gasp. Centuries worth of power. Not quite the level of the master of Tokyo, but it was running a close second. Pale-sleeved arms slapped the weapon out of the assassin's hands, grabbing Crossbow up off the ground by the front of the shirt. An ally? Where had this new vampire come from?
Kannon pulled the projectile from his throat, coughing and gagging on blood as more ran down his chin from his mouth and seeped down the front of his neck. He tried to speak and only gurgled, making him cough more, dropping to his knees to spit blood on the street.
Asher turned his head from his victim, who was now nearly unconscious, still struggling in denial. Another person entered the entrance to the alleyway, and the short, wide build looked awful familiar. I finally saw the shape of perfectly coiffed hair on the first and realized who they were. The bodyguard and the geisha. What were they doing here? Out for a moonlit stroll? Oh, look honey, assassins.
Then the master himself stepped into view, walking forward past his bodyguards, stepping out of the shadow cast by the building to the right. I smelt a set up. These three show up, at the end of an attack, as the heroes. Right. It was so corny; I couldn't believe he thought I'd believe it.
"Blake-san," Sanesuke said smoothly. "Are you injured?"
I pointed the Browning at him. "Did you send them after me?"
He tried to look disappointed in me. "I did not, Blake-san. We heard your gunshots."
"How did you know they were mine?"
He tilted his head ever so slightly. "I see you are holding a gun."
Smartass.
Asher released his limp prisoner and let the man slump bonelessly to the ground beside the katana. I heard the loud, tearing sound of ripping cloth, and a high-pitched cry of fear, like that of a girl or a child. Looking past Sanesuke, I saw the geisha had turned her prisoner around, so they both faced us. She wasn't much taller than her prisoner, so I could only see the pale oval of her face and her hair over the captive's shoulder. She held the assassin with a kimonoed arm around the torso, trapping the arms. She had ripped her captive's shirt from the shoulder, pulling it away from the neck and down, revealing a thin pale shoulder and part of a flat chest. Child then. Something finally clicked in my head. Redhead, the soft friendly voice of a child. The scent of flowers. I don't like him. He smells of blood.
Sanesuke swiveled his head like an owl's to look at Asher approaching from his right. I saw his eyes narrow.
"I have not offered you violence, Blake-san," he said evenly, keeping his eyes on Asher. "But if you wish it, so be it."
"If you attack the human servant of the Master of St. Louis, even the Council will not ignore it. It is forbidden," Asher said just as evenly. I kind of doubted that. We had killed a member of the Council. And left a seat empty. Jean Claude had declined to take that seat as he should have. I doubted the Council would be upset at all. But I wasn't about to say that out loud.
Sanesuke's eyes narrowed. I sure hoped he wasn't going to challenge that. If he attacked me, I could kill him. And the Council could do nothing about it according to their own rules. I doubted Sanesuke was that stupid. He might try to push me into attacking him so vice versa applied. I really hoped Sanesuke wasn't that stupid.
"I did not send these after you, Blake-san." He looked back to me finally. Something in his words told me he was telling the truth. Shit. It was so easy to believe it was him. If not the Master of Tokyo, then who else?
I lowered the Browning. Let him attack me and see how far he got. He gave me one nod of his head at my action. The situation calmed immediately. I like it that way, calm.
"I take this attack on my guest as a personal insult." He looked past me, making me glance over my shoulder. Jason had his assassin hanging over his shoulder backwards; long limbs dangling awkwardly like a marionette with its strings cut.
Zane had crawled over to the man I had shot, lifting him up against his chest, a dark-haired head rolling limply. Nathaniel had been trying to creep forward to get to Cherry, who was still kneeling by my leg, but he seemed afraid to approach with Sanesuke so close.
"A personal insult," I repeated. The child whimpered, drawing my eyes to see the geisha was pulling his face to the side with a pale-skinned hand over the lower half of his face. She bared a pale expanse of the boy's neck, sliding her cheek down along the back of his hair.
"Stop her."
The Browning had a new target. Sanesuke looked lazily at where my gun pointed. He looked back at me.
"They will be punished," he said simply.
"Not by you." I bit my lip. "They're human, and they will be judged by humans."
I never handed humans over to the monsters. It was one of my rules. I've had others hand me over on a silver platter and I hadn't liked it one bit. Maybe that's where I got the itchy trigger finger.
Sanesuke looked surprised. "Blake-san. They attempted to take your life. In a most dishonorable way."
"Screw that." I watched the geisha's lips near the boy's neck and I pulled back the hammer with my thumb. "Stop her. Now. Or I'll blow her head off."
Her dark eyes lifted to look at me then, but she didn't move her lips from the edge of the boy's neck. I watched those small, red lips thin into a blood-colored smile. If she tried to sink fang, screw the rules.
Asher was watching me carefully, ready to act. I heard cloth rip again and I nearly pulled the trigger early. A quick glance to my left showed me Zane had ripped open the shirt of the man I had shot, and I saw his pale head lower to lick at the blood seeping from the dime-sized hole in the man's upper left chest. To my horror, the man moaned. He was still alive. Shit.
"Zane!" I yelled. He lifted bloody lips up to look at me, slowly licking them clean. There was that gleam in his eyes. Shape shifters are just no good around blood. They just sort of loose it. Revert back to their animalistic instincts. If it's injured and captured, eat it. Geisha, Zane, geisha, Zane. Which one would I shoot first?
Zane lowered his head again, only interested in the blood, and I bit my lip. I knew Sanesuke was watching me struggle with my people. If they didn't obey me, I was weak. I had to make a decision fast. I pointed the gun back at the geisha, who hadn't moved, and reached for the knife on my right arm, bared by having taken the jacket off. The knives had as high a silver content as I could manage, and something Zane wouldn't forget for a while.
"Sanesuke," I breathed as the child whimpered in terror. The man I had shot moaned again, and I glanced back to see Zane back to busily working the wound. I could hear the soft, wet, sucking noises and felt sick to my stomach.
The knife buried itself in the arm Zane used to hold the man still, across the lower chest, with a flick of my wrist. Zane recoiled with a hiss, the man falling limply into his lap as Zane clutched at the arm that had my knife half buried in it. He glared at me with eyes having gone golden, the beast inside him sliding behind those eyes. His pupils were slits, and though it was dark, I could see his eyes clearly, as if they were casting a light of their own. I felt the munin rise up in aggression that Zane might dare defy me. I wanted to go over and tear his throat out for disobedience. Then lick up the blood...like the blood slowly seeping from multiple healing cuts all over his body from the wires.
I shoved that part of the munin away. The munin was a power that the shape shifters had. It sometimes made other shape shifters think I had a beast of my own. This particular munin came from Richard's pack. I carried Raina, the old lupa, for example, with me. The lupa is the Alpha female, lover of the Ulfric, or Alpha male. When Richard had killed Marcus, the old Ulfric, I had killed Raina. Being Richard's main squeeze at the time, I became the only human lupa I'd ever heard of. Many shape shifters resented that fact. I couldn't consider myself his lupa any longer, really. I wasn't Richard's lover. Not anymore.
With the rise of the munin, I could smell the blood in the air sharply, a tantalizing scent. I smelt my own blood, congealing on my arm in scarlet lines. I could smell the scent of flowers coming off the assassins. Remnants of the flower shop they worked in. They weren't aware they carried that scent in their hair, in their clothes, on their skin.
I could smell the shape shifter with Sanesuke. Could smell his sweat. And I knew what he was. Weretiger. One of the Tora. I could smell the sick desire rolling off the geisha, and startlingly, from Sanesuke. He wanted something from me. And he wanted it bad. I didn't think it was me, but rather something I had, or could provide for him.
The munin had been called, though not on purpose, and I could feel it rising up, building. Why was it still with me, even in Japan? Everyone was staring at me, probably feeling the munin as well. I turned my gaze back on Sanesuke. His eyes were wider, desire brighter.
"Tell her to let him go. Jason, go get the kid," I said slowly, evenly, as the munin crawled and writhed under my flesh, begging release. Sanesuke took a step back from me. I felt Jason more than heard him move forward, having laid his burden down on the ground. I wanted to reach out to Jason as he passed, run my hands through his hair and down his body. I wanted—I shoved Raina away forcefully. I normally wouldn't have been able to shove her away. Even as it was, I had only quieted her. She would arise again at some other inopportune time until she was satisfied. My fear for the child over rode whatever foreign desires crept in.
"You are more than I'd hoped, Blake-san." Sanesuke chuckled. "I can taste you like a shape shifter. I taste the emotions running through you now. It is because he is a child, is it not? That Age of Consent rule the America-jin stick to? You are not in America, Blake-san. Age makes no difference to us."
I stepped toward him, feeling light on my feet like a cat parting the bushes. Mine, mine, mine. The munin shoved my dominance into over drive, and Sanesuke had to acknowledge what was mine. My assassins. I dealt with them. He was stealing my prey, and in the wild, that could have deadly consequences.
Sanesuke stayed where he was, meeting my challenge with an almost bored, but amused look. There was the flicker of movement from his fingers, and I felt a fluttering across my stomach. I glanced for a third of a second, seeing the smooth rent in my tank top across my belly. So Sanesuke did it too. He'd cut my shirt with just his power, and not even touched my skin. Few vampires I knew had the control to cut only cloth and not the skin below. Vampires can't do that to a normal human. In effect, they can only do it to other creatures of power. Like necromancers. They manipulated that creature's aura to inflict damage. I needed to learn that trick. He hadn't actually hurt me, so I couldn't blow his head off yet.
The geisha had stepped back from Jason, dragging the child with her, and she finally laughed. It was rich and flowing, as if fingers caressed my hair. I watched her form start to fade in disbelief. Jason swiped for the child and his hand passed through the two as if they were so much smoke. Sanesuke laughed afterward, stepping back from me slowly.
"You cannot have everything, Blake-san." His voice seemed to echo as he backed away. He backed up to his bodyguard, and passed straight through him, making me gasp.
Then it was just the Tora facing us, arms crossed against his massive chest, blocking the alleyway so you'd have to press against the wall to get out. He made no moves other than to block the way. Like a hockey goalie. But scarier. Jason sized up the Tora, as if considering taking him on.
"Anita?" I heard Cherry's voice trembling and unsure. I turned to look at her, seeing Nathaniel helping her to her feet. Her shoulder was mostly reattached to her body now. She no longer had to hold it on. I heard a low rumble like thunder and saw Jason had approached the larger man. My arms were getting very tired from holding the gun up.
"Jason, don't break the truce," I warned. Jason backed off immediately. The Tora turned and vanished from view. Asher was watching me, ever so carefully. I uncocked the gun and reholstered it.
"Kannon, call an ambulance." I looked to him. There must have been something to my voice or the way I looked at him, but he took off at a run. As if he were afraid of me.
I walked over to the redhead, the Browning loose in my hand. He was still out cold, but his pulse was steady. Cherry had taken my lead and turned into Nurse Cherry, ignoring her own hurt and walking quickly to check on the other. Zane had plucked my knife from his arm, and licked the blood off. He offered it back to me, hilt first.
"Don't make me kick your ass again," I warned him as I took it and sheathed it. He smiled, a slow, feral smile. His eyes had returned to their normal brown. His wounds had mostly healed, leaving him streaked and dotted with his own blood. I knelt down by the man I'd shot.
His eyes were open now, and he was panting, gulping for air. His eyes were wild as his lungs sucked down air noisily. Short, dark hair had caught in the sweat on his brow, spilling over a set of some kind of large goggles, and his face was too familiar. Just hours ago he had blushed, making the lovely arrangement that now sat on the coffee table in my hotel room. I examined just exactly where I'd shot him, about armpit level in the upper left of his chest. Listening to his wheezing getting louder, I knew I'd punctured a lung. Air was filling his chest with every breath he took till it would manage to crush both of his lungs and kill him.
"Cherry!" I called hurriedly. "Get over here!"
Almost before I'd finished speaking, she was by my side, gently pushing me aside to examine him. He was scared now; I could see it in his eyes. He was afraid of us. He was afraid of the fact he couldn't breathe. I could taste his fear like chocolate on my tongue, melting deliciously. I shook my head to get rid of that feeling, but it kept emanating from him, feeding me. No, not feeding me. Feeding the munin.
It wanted to run out and envelope him, to taste his blood, feel his last struggles as he died.
"We've got to release the pressure." Cherry looked at me worriedly. She looked at my arms. I looked down and saw my knives. She immediately pulled out the one that Zane hadn't licked, and used it to cut the rest of his shirt open. He struggled with us, and I grabbed the nearest arm. He wore heavy gloves with blades on the knuckles. I pinned the arm, blade-side down, to the ground with my knee. Asher appeared on the other side of me. He reached out his hand toward the man's head, pushing the goggles off as the man flailed from his touch. I'm sure he would have screamed if he had the air to do it with.
