Chapter 42

“Looks like I’ve got good luck today.”

Captain Shimena stared up at the clouds.

“You still read cloud omens, ma’am?”

The member walking beside her asked.

“They’re surprisingly accurate.”

“That’s superstition.”

“Call it what you want; every time I’ve checked, the hit rate has been high.”

“Seeing only what you want to see is exactly what superstition is... and those are storm clouds—ominous ones. It’ll pour any minute.”

“That’s why it’s good luck.”

“Storm clouds? Aren’t they supposed to be a sign of misfortune?”

“Usually, yes—but the Special Task Force just got Mago.”

“Mago? Oh, you mean the new recruit? I heard she made a name for herself in the Capital.”

“When I went to the Training Center to meet her, I got the full story.”

“About what?”

“Her magic. From now on, storm clouds are a good omen.”

* * *

“If you can’t fly, you’re nothing but a bird in a cage.”

Madam Anne murmured quietly.

“The Red-Light District is sealed, Mago. Nothing in, nothing out. Not even a bug.”

“Then you’ll be buried here.”

“Burning bright—youth really is something.”

“Why the rooftop? Once the sun rises, you’ll be the one burning.”

“Never crossed your mind that a bolt of lightning might spear you first? We’re outside, after all.”

“Never did.”

She reversed her grip on the sword, its tip pressed to the rooftop floor.

“No arrows left.”

“Based on what?”

“X-Bow.”

When I named the magi-tool, her face betrayed a flicker of alarm.

“I’ve been researching magi-tools for a while. Yours especially.”

“The more I learn, the stranger you seem...”

“Special, you mean.”

“Ha...!”

Madam Anne answered with a hollow laugh.

“Madam Anne. Your magi-tool changes shape with its owner. Right now it’s a bow, so we call it X-Bow. When it was a spear, it was X-Spear. An axe, X-Axe. ‘X-Axe’—sounds like a toy.”

“How could you possibly know that...”

“If it’s a sword, it’s Excalibur...”

No—skip that.

“Here’s the catch: fire seven shots and it’s useless until the next recharge.”

Madam Anne shut her mouth.

“If you’ve got any left, why not shoot one?”

With deliberate slowness she raised both arms, pretending to draw the bow.

Pantomiming the nock and release.

Her left hand twitched.

But it was only an act.

Nothing happened.

She laughed shortly.

“What are the odds, really? That the clerk I hired by chance turns out to be Imperial Army—and an expert on magi-tools to boot. Easier to believe it was all planned from the start.”

“Could be.”

“How far ahead are you looking? Or how far have you already seen?”

“Madam Anne.”

“Mago... you know about time-manipulating magi-tools too, don’t you?”

“If I answer, you’ll only shorten your own life.”

“So you’d rather the sharp old lady not figure it out?”

Two steps closer.

I closed the distance.

Just as I was about to make my move, she beat me to it.

Wings snapped open.

She rushed in and seized my throat, lifting me slightly.

Then came the impact.

I was slammed onto the rooftop floor.

A vampire’s strength is three or four times a human’s.

That’s the average.

I, however, am human.

Born that way, lived that way.

Yet for some reason I match them—

three, four times human strength.

From the ground I shot both feet out, driving them into Madam Anne’s abdomen as she crouched to keep hold of me.

She staggered backward.

Using the recoil, I sprang up and closed on her again.

The red sword, gripped tight in both hands, swept around.

“What kind of move—”

Before she could finish, the blow landed clean across her cheekbone.

It felt less like flesh and more like hardened stone.

Still, the blade bit deep.

Her head tore free at the neck.

A single strike had sent it flying.

Headless, she staggered back, snatching her own hair in the same motion.

With her own hands she jammed the soaring head back onto her stump.

The severed ends knit themselves together,

as if stitched with invisible thread.

A regeneration so overwhelming

it belonged to a different order from every other vampire.

“Then I’ll keep carving until there’s nothing left—!”

I swung again and again.

Madam Anne caught every slash with her bare body.

Why bother to dodge when she would simply heal?

It was exactly like—

“—cutting water with a sword.”

Madam Anne sneered.

“I drank before I came, you know. One of your fledgling Task-Force chicks.”

“Amon... you mean?”

“No idea what his name was, but that sounds right. A comrade of yours, yes?”

“You drank his blood? You’ll regret it.”

I kicked her left shin.

As her stance wavered, I drove my sword into her ribs.

Bone cracked; she dropped to one knee.

I hammered the joint until she knelt for good.

Once, like driving a nail.

Then again.

Downward blows sent her sliding backward,

all the way to the rooftop railing.

I herded her without pause.

When she tried to block, her wrist folded the wrong way.

The moment the shattered bones re-set, she sprang skyward,

choosing escape on fluttering wings.

“You thought this would never end, didn’t you?” she murmured down at me.

“Shut up and get back here.”

“It’s almost entertaining—like watching a dog chase a chicken.”

“I said come down, chicken. Sunrise will kill you anyway. Didn’t you want to finish this?”

I couldn’t risk throwing my sword; if I lost the cross-blade I lost the advantage.

Instead I planted one foot on the railing and shouted,

“Get down here...!”

She couldn’t use the X-Bow;

that meant she had no way to kill me from the air.

If I closed the distance, as I had moments ago,

she couldn’t beat a swordsman armed with a cross-shaped blade.

The reverse was also true:

I couldn’t kill her while she flew,

and the frustration felt endless.

“Damn it...”

Unless I broke her wings, the fight would never close.

She could stay airborne until dawn,

then hide through the day,

doggedly fleeing again and again.

“Mago, you’ll just keep craning your neck upward forever...”

As the words left her mouth,

a pitch-black wing was skewered mid-beat.

A sudden projectile from below—

crimson,

or rather dark-red,

the color of blood.

A thin sword, forged from clotted blood, punched clean through her pinion.

“Grrh...!”

While she flailed, off-balance,

countless blades rained upward.

“Amon!”

I knew their owner at once.

Madam Anne beat her wings in panic

and fled,

but a red line traced her route—

a long, jagged icicle,

a twisting path.

The red road unfurled in an instant.

Blood flowed like a wave, latching onto Amon’s ankle and hauling him skyward.

The Blood Path reached Madam Anne

and slammed Amon into her.

“Got you...!”

Amon seized her by the throat.

They plummeted straight to the ground.

Madam Anne slammed into the earth, a cloud of dust blooming like smoke. I leaned over the rooftop railing and stared down. Amon had her pinned.

“How... dare you...” she rasped, eyes savage.

While she spat the words, Amon drew his sword and leveled it at her throat.

“Amon! Hold her there!”

At that instant Madam Anne lifted her face to the sky.

“It smells like rain.”

“Ha! Not blood?”

“No. Rain.”

Black clouds were massing. Inside them, blue current began to coil.

“Mago!”

A thunderous voice boomed.

Rain began to fall from the dark bellies of the clouds—first a teasing drizzle, then a roaring downpour. Wind-driven droplets slashed sideways.

“Ahaha...!”

Madam Anne greeted the storm with manic joy, though she had no reason to rejoice.

“No way...”

She had already fired all seven arrows. The X-Bow recharged only once a month—seven shots per charge. She should have been empty, yet her face wore something no cornered fighter should: a look bordering on rapture.

“She hasn’t recharged for this month yet...”

Every bolt she’d loosed so far had come from last month’s store. If she’d truly spent those seven, then seven fresh ones waited for her now.

“Amon! Back off!”

“First you tell me to hold her, now this—make up your mind!”

Slowly she raised her hand, fingers outstretched like a lightning rod. Amon scrambled backward.

A heartbeat later thunder and flash arrived together. The bolt slid down her arm, recharging her body with stored lightning.

Seven shots total.

Seven chances left.

This was the first.

A blue bow and arrow materialized in either hand; the string was drawn, an arrow nocked. I kept my third lake active, focusing. Each raindrop that struck her sent a ripple I could read with my eyes. I zeroed in on her fingertips—the instant she would release.

“Hit the deck...!”

The moment her fingers moved, Amon flattened himself. A blue streak hissed over the back of his skull.

One spent.

I would be next.

I vaulted off the roof, smashed through a window into the building beside Anakonda. Another bolt followed, ripping through the room.

“Five left.”

Counting, I checked on Madam Anne. Wings unfurled, she shot skyward, darting wildly to shift position. She needed concealment as much as I did.

“She can’t keep flinging lightning like this.”

Farther. More secretly.

With every arrow she fired, Madam Anne widened the gap, using a weapon meant for killing merely to buy distance. There was only one explanation.

“She’s planning to run.”

I dropped through a second-floor window.

“I won’t let you.”

The next arrow came. Thunder split the air. It struck inches from my right foot.

“Four shots left, Madam.”

Madam Anne shifted position before nocking her next arrow—

Farther back than before.

While she moved, I seized Amon.

The instant I burst into the open, she quickened her pace.

Another bolt hissed past my ear.

“Three.”

Her black wings—

A blur, nothing but after-image.

She skimmed past buildings too fast for me to tell which one she’d chosen.

Ripples bloomed almost on top of one another.

“Damn it...”

I’d never faced anyone so fast I couldn’t separate the pulses.

Ripples alone couldn’t pin her.

“Mago, we have to get inside—now!”

“No! She’ll bolt the second we do. I can see her. Trust me—raise the wall!”

“You can see lightning? You’ll die the instant you look!”

“Do it!”

Three arrows left.

All three fired at once.

Right, left, center—

Rapid Fire.

She meant to hide where the shots came from.

Before they struck, Amon lifted a wall of blood.

Triple forks of lightning slammed into it and vanished.

“I put the wall up, Mago, but I still can’t predict where Madam—”

“Exactly. She planned for that.”

Every bolt seared a flash so bright I winced even behind closed lids.

The last trio had been the same.

Clever trick, firing three as one—yet still sequential.

That glare was her weakness.

“But some things you only see when you shut your eyes.”

Lightning traces were plain.

Close your eyes and the after-glow lingers.

Three bolts.

Three after-images.

Three lines.

The earliest faded fastest.

Inside my eyelids, one line outlived the others.

No matter how Anne hid, the dying glare tattled on her.

The last remaining line—

Of the three, the left.

I pointed.

“Amon!”

“What in hell are you staring at...?”

Amon hurled a sword of hardened blood where my finger aimed.

It punched through a window.

A faint thud answered.

Silence—then:

“Block them!”

Her voice rolled from the building.

At the command, vampires started toward me.

“She just won’t stay down... no end in sight,” Amon muttered.

“You can’t see because it’s dark. They say the hour before sunrise is blackest.”