City of Demons, page 18
part #2 of The Unseen Series
Sure enough, the arm began to rise with the whine of rusty hydraulics. He glanced over the side of the platform to check on the demons. They licked their black lips and climbed the extending arm.
Raising the platform was a temporary solution at best, and he knew it. His best bet, he decided, would be to make it to the unfinished building less than fifty feet away. Extended as far as it would go, the arm should have been long enough.
It had to be.
With the basket halfway to the building's half-built third floor, the first set of blackened fingers appeared at the edge. Danny froze. As the half-covered face of the demon-ninja rose into view, a realization dawned on him.
"This is all Karen's fault."
The demon hissed and jumped on him.
***
Karen kept herself between Miku and the crowd of demons set on taking the girl back for their master. She got into a groove, her body distorting as she sped up. Her movements became fluid and blurry-fast.
But suddenly, halfway through a downward slash, the Killing Stone resisted her. Karen heard what sounded like a scream in the back of her skull, and a second later the stone pulled inward, like a turtle retreating inside its shell. It became useless. A lump of coal in her hands.
An Onibi took advantage of her distraction and lunged, slicing her left arm with its blade.
Miku screamed. Karen kicked the demon back before she felt the cut. With a shout she dropped the stone, the sound of her pain sending a ripple through the demons. They ignored the seemingly useless stone to gather themselves, refocusing their energies on taking out the troublesome woman backing away from their advances.
Karen locked eyes with the demon who hurt her. "Your sword has my blood on it," she said. The enemy cackled, understanding her meaning despite the language barrier. "Now it belongs to me."
"Seeth yehk thun doon," it replied. The demon advanced on her, not knowing it was already dead.
***
The lift's arm was almost fully extended, swinging wildly above the ground. In the corrugated metal basket at the end of its reach, Danny struggled with the demon attempting to wring the life from his neck with burnt hands. The switches dug into the small of Danny's back, and with each move they changed the direction of the arm- up, forward, sideways. The basket rocked under their feet, threatening to dump them out with one wrong move.
Danny freed his neck from the creature's scratchy grip. He took a deep breath before realizing the demon's face was transfixed with something over his shoulder.
"What?" He turned in time to see the second floor of the unfinished building coming at them. It was moving too fast to do anything except curse and squint.
The basket impacted with the opening, crashing through thin, metal framework and temporary scaffolding. It wrenched loose from the hydraulic arm, turning sideways and collapsing.
Danny was thrown off his feet. He fell backward, tumbling free of the ruined basket, bouncing first off a metal beam, then down again. In slow-motion he saw the partially built floor come up at him. The thick, metal rods jutting from poured concrete that would stab him and pierce his heart and sever his spine all at once. Tumbling still, spinning in the air, he made impact. Danny faced up into ten stories of construction, the framework of his grave, and all went dark. He could rest now. It was over.
Then he opened his eyes.
A metal rod stuck up between his side and his right arm, curiously free of blood. Another to the left of his stomach. A third between his knees. Each was less than two inches from skewering him. Each apparently not going to kill him.
Danny laughed at the sight of the three-foot rod sticking up between his legs. "Holy sh-"
The demon landed, impaled by every steel rod that had missed Danny. Dark blood abruptly sprayed Danny's face. With a pained shriek the demon danced and convulsed at the end of the skewers, slipping toward Danny as more blood rained down, sharp teeth gnashing down and down toward his face. Danny was pinned in place with nowhere to go, hard ground beneath his back and metal rods his prison.
The demon finished its sick slide, its mouth an inch from Danny's blood-splattered face. With one, final exhale, it died. Its teeth went still, the flames behind its eyes faded to black.
Danny blinked twice, white eyes shining through a mask of blood. "Ew," he said.
With another blink he looked past the dead demon, to a silhouette above. A second demon-ninja stood in the empty window frame above, ready to finish the job the first demon had started. It licked the blade of its sword, the sizzle of heat in the air and a murder-mad smile on its face.
"Git! Get out of here! Go find the little Japanese girl." He shooed the demon, waving his half-pinned arms.
The creature bent for the jump, seeing an easy kill laid out before it. Abruptly the smile disappeared from its crispy face, replaced by a long, blank stare. "What are you doing?" Danny asked, even more creeped out by its new face than the old one.
Slowly it turned its head. In the back, something small and shiny stuck out- a shuriken, the throwing stars used by the demons, buried halfway in the would-be attacker's skull. A stream of pressurized blood squirted in heartbeats.
The demon tipped forward on its feet and fell limp, down, down onto the same metal rods, pushing the body of the first further down the skewers until it laid right on top of Danny. The first demon’s dead mouth smooshed into his turned face, more blood running down the two bodies and onto him.
Danny sighed and said, "Really?"
***
Karen watched the open window where the second demon had fallen, her hand outstretched from throwing the shuriken that killed it. Underneath her, the body of the demon that cut her arm laid with its throat open. She took the sword from its limp hand, as promised, and wiped her blood from its blade.
Only a few stragglers were left, and of those even fewer were unhurt. Karen checked on Miku. The girl was safe, but she was staring off into the distance, across the street to a metal foundry. She followed the girl's gaze to a frail figure waving from the open door.
"Mother," Miku gasped.
She broke into a run, heading for the foundry. "Miku! Stop!" Karen yelled. Before she could follow the girl, the remaining demons formed a wall to stop her. By the way they fell into place, she knew this had been their plan all along.
With the fallen demon's sword she struck at the wall of opponents, starting with the one at the center, a guttural scream in her throat as she slashed again and again. She cut them down one after the other, her spine a swivel, fear finding its way into the fiery eyes of the demons as she pushed it further in with the blade.
When the last of the wall fell, the creature's black belly spilling hot organs onto the cold ground, she ran after Miku, but the girl had already disappeared inside the foundry.
Karen could only hope it wasn't too late for her.
***
The air was dusty, and tinged with undefined smells; burnt iron and chemical washes long settled into the concrete floor. Miku stood beneath old pipes and suspended walkways. She was dwarfed by massive containers on each side of her, vats that once held molten metals, now echoes of a forgotten industry. Empty organs in a metal corpse.
Her mother was nowhere in sight, but Miku could hear the woman’s soft cries somewhere ahead. She followed the sound, her light footsteps rounding the corner of another metal beast. The machine had dials and needle gauges that read from white to yellow to red. Miku herself was squarely in the yellow- she hoped to stay out of the red.
She hurried around the corner to find the large one, the one that always came for her, holding her mother in his thick hands.
He grinned at Miku, ready to snap her mother's thin neck with the slightest move of his wrist.
The woman whimpered when she saw her daughter. "Miku, Miku, I'm sorry," she cried. "Run, my love, I shouldn't have-" The large one squeezed her voice off, like flipping a switch. She panicked for air. He only stopped squeezing when a hand gingerly patted his arm from behind.
A smaller figure stepped out from behind the large one. "Hello, Miku," Yori said. "You've made your step-father very unhappy."
***
With the fallen demon's sword in hand, Karen kicked the foundry door open. She found a surprise waiting for her: a dozen more enemies in the half-light of the abandoned structure, all brandishing dirty blades and blackened teeth.
"If you want to know how this turns out for you," she said, walking toward them, "ask your friends outside."
Without warning she slashed into the crowd, fighting like hell to chase after Miku. She took out two and mortally wounded a third before she was knocked on her back into a pile of industrial refuse. Her elbow smacked a chunk of concrete. The demon sword slipped from her grip, sliding under a broken machine and out of reach.
The crowd rushed in to finish the fight. Karen fished through the rubble and pulled out a hunk of concrete. She threw it at the closest demon, aiming for the center of its face, but the demon ducked and the concrete missed its mark, flying over its shoulder to bounce and crumble across the room. Her hand went back to the pile. This time it drew out something better. Something metal and heavy.
She kicked to her feet and wrapped the end of the chain around her right hand, giving it a few spins to get a feel for it. A shard of metal on its end gave solid weight to its swing.
One of the demons snarled and made its move- she pulled it off its feet with a whip of the chain, then without pause threw the chain into another's face, the shard breaking its cloth-covered nose. As the demon stumbled and fell over the prone body of the first, the crowd realized they were no longer the attackers in the fight; they were the prey.
With another spin of the chain, Karen advanced on her next target.
***
Yori wiped the dirt from his hands with a smooth, red handkerchief. "You are a strong child, this I can respect. To be a vessel for such power, such energy, must take courage. I don't expect you to grasp the importance of what I'm doing for the good of our people." He stuffed the handkerchief back into his coat pocket. "What I do expect is for you to stop this insolence at once."
"Let my mother go."
"Why would I do that? I would no sooner abandon a car by the side of the road. She belongs to me. She is my property. What you fail to see, Miku, is that you belong to me as well." He folded his hands together. "Now, it is time to stop fooling around. It is time to come home."
Past him, through a broken window, a helicopter powered up. The blades spun slowly, picking up speed as the whine of the engine grew louder and louder.
***
Karen heard the helicopter starting up, but her hands were too full to do anything about it. She was down to six demons, and they'd begun to grow desperate, their fighting chaotic and unpredictable.
One of them broke into a crazed run toward her. She sidestepped, wrapped the chain around its neck and flipped it onto its back, finishing it with a kick to the eyes. Then she turned and threw the chain into a second demon's face. It moved out of the way, dodging the hit, but she caught the far end of the chain with her other hand, then wrapped it around the demon’s arm and took it down.
Immediately a third enemy was on her. It lunged at her center with its sword. She dodged. Holding one end in each hand, she dropped the chain on its arm, wrapped the arm and brought it up against the demon's neck, choking it with its own incapacitated limb.
A scream sounded out, echoing through the rafters. The voice was young and afraid, a sound that sent a chill through Karen. It was far too much like an old memory, the sound of a girl long ago who'd nearly lost her life at Karen's hands.
Karen snapped the demon's neck. She dropped the dead weight and ran toward Miku's screams.
***
"I said let her go," Miku shouted. She kept her distance, staying out of reach of Yori and Ibaraki.
"Who do you think you are, talking to me like that?" Yori had Miku's mother by the face. He gave it a squeeze, showing the girl he was in control. "Do you think because I need you, you can act however you want? I have the power here. You're lucky I have not thrown this woman out on the street. The only good she has ever served was giving birth to you, to the vessel. Something she has regretted ever since." He smiled at Miku's reaction. "Do you think I'm lying? She told me so herself. Isn't that right, my dear?"
"No, it’s not true," the woman cried.
"Come now, this is no time to lie to the girl. She has enough on her mind."
"Miku, run, don't worry about me," she begged. "He's trying to trick you, he-"
Ibaraki squeezed her throat again, choking off her words. She clawed at his fingers but they wouldn't budge. Losing his patience, Yori told Ibaraki to keep squeezing.
To Miku he said, "Would you like to see if I am lying now?"
***
As Karen neared the corner, twenty feet from Miku, two shadows dropped from the suspended walkway overhead. A pair of Onibi on the attack. In her anger she’d lost count of her opponents, and just as she would in their position, they used her oversight to their advantage. The tactic was enough to prove they were smarter than their fallen allies.
They got the drop on her, but she avoided the sting of their hits with a duck-and-roll backward into fighting stance, the chain wrapped around her fist. "Let me pass," she said, "and I'll let you live."
The demons exchanged a look. Then attacked.
Together they drew their swords and struck. She avoided the blades and kicked the left demon's knee out, popping the bone, into a choke-punch on the right demon, then a chest-kick to the left that broke a rib. She dug her fingers into the right demon's neck, got a good hold of its throat and ripped it out in one, hard pull.
The demon choked on its own blood and stumbled away to die. As Karen dropped its throat to the dusty ground, the last demon slashed her leg with its hand spikes. She screamed in pain as the blood drew.
***
With no air left, Miku's mother passed out. Ibaraki caught her limp body in his tree trunk arms. He snorted, finding the weakness of human bodies amusing, and threw her over his shoulder like a bag of loose bones.
Miku had seen all she could take. She screamed again, but this time her voice was a chorus spanning three octaves. Her face drained of life until the skin was linen white, and a wind kicked up, hot air blowing dust from the machinery. The breeze was permeated by the stench of volcanic ash.
Yori wore a smile on his pocked face. He knew the signs well, the mark of a coming storm- he had waited years for its arrival.
The air around Miku glowed, first pink, then cobalt blue. In snaking trails, tendrils of super-heated air formed around her body, nine in all.
With another push she screamed again, veins bulging under the surface, her voice registering in every octave. The stress proved to be too much for her mind: like her mother before her she fainted, her small body crumpling to the floor.
"Quickly," Yori ordered. Ibaraki scooped up the girl and threw her over his other shoulder. They exited out the back, leaving behind the sounds of nearby combat.
As they loaded the girl and her mother onto the helicopter, the young pilot looked over at Ibaraki's hulking body, then to Yori. "I don't know if we can take off with all this weight," he objected.
Yori frowned. "You're the only replaceable part of this equation, boy, you'd best figure out a solution."
The pilot smiled sarcastically. "Oh, yeah? Can you fly this bird yourself?"
"In fact," Yori said, "I can."
He gave his companion a nod. Ibaraki reached out and, with one hand, crushed the pilot's screaming face.
***
Karen went blow-for-blow with the last Onibi, squaring off between two rusted vats. She heard the sounds of the helicopter preparing to take off outside, but every time she tried to leave, to chase after Miku, the demon attacked anew, drawing her back into the fight.
"You're a strong opponent," she offered, "but it’s time to stand down."
"Kai foon sin fan," it hissed.
"Have it your way." She stood up straight and beckoned her opponent forward. It took the bait and came at her full-force.
She blocked. It struck again. She blocked again. Before the demon knew what hit it, Karen got it in a choke hold. She wrapped the chain around its neck and threw the other end over a metal brace on the side of the vat above. With a hard wrench she yanked the demon off its feet and tied the end of the chain into itself. The demon jumped and jerked at the end of the chain as she picked up its fallen sword and limp-ran away, toward the sound of a helicopter taking off. She didn't bother watching the demon die.
Karen ran out the building's back door and into the down-current of the helicopter's wind. She jumped over a dead body in an expanding pool of its own blood and watched with dread as the helicopter rose out of reach and turned.
In the cockpit, Yori smiled down at her triumphantly. He gave her an off-hand salute as if to say the better man had won.
Karen drew back, flipped the demon's sword around and launched it at the helicopter, directly at Yori's face. The man yanked the yolk at the last second, causing the rocketing blade to pierce the cockpit's underbelly instead.
Inside the cockpit, the sword penetrated through the fuselage and up to its hilt. The tip of the demon's blade stopped two inches shy of stabbing Yori in the belly.
He glanced at Ibaraki, seated in the back with two unconscious passengers. "Women are such emotional creatures," he said. Then he pulled the yolk and turned, steering the helicopter away from the filthy place and back toward the helipad atop Yori Tower, until Karen Kimura became nothing but a speck.
***
Danny felt like the world's worst shish kebab, marinated in blood and served raw. He tried again to lift the two bodies on top of him, at least enough to slip out the side, but with each attempt his arms grew weaker. The metal screws trapping him in didn't help the situation.
"Come on," he said, giving it everything he had. The bodies began to move. To lift up. He almost had enough room to slide free.
His wrist gave. The corpses slid back the inch he’d managed to lift them and then some, pushing down even heavier on him.
