Jay Kristoff - Kinslayer

She pulled back, felt more of them—other fading sparks crawling into storm drains and writhing in the gutters. Rolling over and clawing at the sky, twisting into little balls of mangy fur and slowly turning cold.

Something was wrong.

She could almost taste it now; a faint undercurrent of pain, little flares struggling away from their fellows and curling up on themselves, snuffed out like candles in a monsoon wind.

Bad meat.

“Yoshi…” She looked up from the floor and into his eyes.

“What?” He surfaced from his reverie, rose from his crouch. “Did Daken see Jurou?”

“Yoshi, I think someone’s poisoning our rats…”

The door slammed inward with a sharp crack, just as the window shattered. Four figures rushed in from the hallway, another tumbling through the broken pane, landing in a crouch amidst a shower of falling glass. Hana rolled aside as the lead door-crasher swung a tetsubo at her head, smashing onto the cushion where she’d knelt a moment before. The second man through the door raised a plain but functional-looking sword and took aim for Hana’s throat.

Yoshi leveled his iron-thrower at the figure crouched amongst the broken glass. The man stood with a scowl. Hana caught a glimpse of small, piggy eyes, swollen, cauliflower ears.

“Gambler,” Yoshi hissed.

The pig-man lashed out with his war club, caught the iron-thrower across its nose and sent it spinning into the wall. A bright flash of light, a hollow boom as the shot in the chamber discharged, crossing the room to introduce itself to the door crasher’s right eye. The man spun on the spot and collapsed onto the thug behind him, painting the man’s face with a gout of warm, fresh red. Yoshi landed a kick on the pig-man’s thigh, tendons popping as the kneecap gave way.

Hana snatched up the fallen man’s club as she scrambled onto her feet, taking in the assailants with a desperate glance. Just another alley fight, just another scrap over a crust of bread or a place to sleep, the kind of brawl she’d lived with since she could walk. She shrank back, a short feint, then dropped to her knees and drove her war club’s haft into one assailant’s groin. The man squealed like a stuck corpse-rat, and Hana’s double-handed haymaker broke his jaw, teeth spilling across the piles of iron coins.

The pig-man lunged forward as his knee gave way, slamming his war club into Yoshi’s ribs. Studded iron cracking bone, breath spraying from the boy’s lungs. The pair fell into a tangle, flailing like children, all bloody knuckles and elbows. Yoshi gasped for breath, eyes full of tears. The pig-man locked his wrist and flipped him onto his belly, leaning into his shoulders with all his weight. The boy cried out, free hand scrabbling for the smoking iron-thrower laying just too far out of reach.

The blood-soaked gangster and his unstained comrade kicked aside their friend’s corpse and brought their weapons to bear on Hana—another iron-shod tetsubo and a pair of punching daggers. She smashed one knife aside with her club before a blow sent her flying through the rice-paper wall. Her weapon spun from her grasp as she crashed to the floor, coming to rest in a tangle of bedclothes. She heard cruel laughter as a knee was planted between her shoulder blades, felt heavy weight on her back, a stunning blow to the blind side of her face, her good eye pressed into the pillow.

“Is this your bedroom, little girl?” Someone grabbed her arm, twisted it behind her back. “Nice sheets.”

“The bitch broke my wrist!” The call came from the main room, hoarse with pain.

“Then come break hers.”

“Don’t you touch her!” Yoshi roared, struggling against the pig-man’s wristlock, spit flying between clenched teeth. “Stay away from her or I’ll kill you!”

The pig-man leaned close. Saké and sweat, damp breath on Yoshi’s ear.

“Told you I’d see you soon, friend.”

Hana cried out as her arm was twisted up higher behind her back. The blood-soaked man was fumbling with her hakama, trying to tear them off. She heard footsteps, heavy breathing of the second man entering the bedroom.

“Help me get her clothes off,” the bloody man hissed.

“The Gentleman wants them alive.”

“She’ll be alive.” A sharp smile; all teeth, no eyes. “She’ll just have trouble sitting for a while.”

“Who the hells are you people?” Hana cried.

She received another punch to the face in reply, stars bursting and spinning in her vision.

“Hold her down!”

“You want me to hold her down with a broken wrist?”

“Hurry up in there!” the pig-man roared.

“Get away from her!” Yoshi gasped, stretched toward the iron-thrower. “You bastards, I’ll kill you all!”

“Going to make you listen, friend,” the pig-man purred. “Make you watch everything we do to her. Cut off your eyelids so you can’t look away. It’s going to make what we did to your sweetheart look like a holy day…”

Hana’s screams were muffled in her pillow.

“No!” Yoshi roared.

“Listen, boy,” the pig-man hissed. “Listen to her sing—”

A shape dropped in through the broken window, a blur of smoke-gray and scars and piss-yellow glittering like broken glass. It landed on the pig-man’s shoulder, dug in with claws like katana. The man howled and reared back, flailing at the dervish of razors and dirty teeth. A paw brushed the surface of his eye, quicker than poison, so fast he didn’t even feel the blow until something warm and gelatinous spilled down his cheek. He screamed then; a trembling, furious wail, clutching the bloody socket as he rolled away, tore the shape off his shoulder in a shower of blood and hurled it across the room.

It thudded into the wall, tumbled down and landed perfectly on its feet.

“Mreowwwwwl,” it said.

Pig-man lurched to his feet, blood spilling between his fingers, snarling with pain.

“My fucking eye —”

The shot popped his skull like a balloon full of red water, rocked what was left of his head back on his shoulders as it rang deafening in the room. Yoshi was already on his way to the bedroom as the man’s body hit the floor, shattered skull cracking against polished boards, feet kicking as if he were swimming across the wood. A thin finger of smoke drifted from the hole in the back of his head.

Yoshi shot the broken-wrist man in the face as he rushed from the bedroom, iron-thrower bucking in his hand. The man crumpled like wax tossed into a fire. Stepping into the bedroom, Yoshi leveled the smoking weapon at the last intruder’s head. The man stood and backed away, tried to simultaneously cover his face and put his hands into the air. Knees pressed together, hunched over, pleading eyes shining through splayed fingers.

“Don’t,” he begged. “Don’t…”

Hana rose from the ruins of the bed, cheek purpling, hair tangled about her eye, leather patch askew on her face. Half breathing, half sobbing, she limped to her brother’s side, holding her wrist, already bruised. Reaching out, she gently covered the barrel, pressed Yoshi’s aim to the floor. He frowned at her as she took the ’thrower from his hands.

“Oh, thank you, girl,” the man said. “Amaterasu bless you—”

Hana turned and fired into the man’s crotch.

He dropped like a stone, screaming, clutching the bloody hole between his legs. Falling forward onto his face, he curled into a ball and screamed again; a high-pitched, vibrato wail that tore his throat raw. Hana kicked him onto his back, planted her foot on his chest and aimed the iron-thrower at his forehead. Daken prowled into the room, coiled around her leg. Her voice was a low-pitched growl.

“Who are you?”

“Gendo,” the man gasped. “Gendo!”