Disharmony (36 page)

He let go of her arm and swivelled completely, swaying on his feet, gazing back at the wardrobe from which he’d come. The wardrobe Zac and Luke stood pressed against, holding back the rest of the hell-people.

And, with a deafening, demented shriek, Scarface
suddenly bolted towards the wardrobe, sword raised.

‘No!’ Samantha screamed, as Scarface struck.

Luke did not hear Samantha scream.

In fact, he heard nothing at all. The world became completely silent and everything slowed to a syrupy crawl as he watched the tattooed arm swinging its sword down towards Zac. Only these two players were in pinpoint-focus on the board as the rest of the room faded to sepia. His brain computed the microseconds it would take him to pull Zac from the path of the sword, even as it continued its lethal trajectory directly into his friend’s chest.

Zac crumpled to the floor and Luke knew that there was nothing he could do. He jumped anyway, leaping up onto the madman standing over Zac, roping his arms around his neck, heaving with everything he had to pull him down.

The swordsman teetered, Luke wrenched desperately, and they fell.

Luke felt the sword piercing his heart, just as Samantha’s agonised face appeared above him. Her hand grasped his. A dark, wrenching pain ripped through him and he gasped. An aching anguish (could this be sorrow?) filled him at the thought that he was about to die and he’d never get to know her. But in that moment he was also inexpressibly grateful. Grateful that even though this would be the last time he would experience it, somehow his sister had again helped him to feel.

And finally he got it – finally he understood what everyone meant when they kept asking him,
What do you think it would feel like if someone did that to you?
He finally knew how
someone else felt, and he was glad that the other person was Zac, his first real friend.

As his life pumped from the wound in his chest, Luke managed to drag himself a few centimetres closer to Zac.

He reached a hand out to touch his dying friend’s shoe, smiled up at Samantha, and then closed his eyes.

From the age of seven, Kirra Kiyota had been able to out-fight any grown woman.

And at that age, no male under the age of sixteen could beat her in hand-to-hand combat.

She’d begun her martial arts training while still in nappies, chosen and schooled by Heaven’s Thief himself. She’d been told, even then, that when he’d had his dream about her destiny, her family had had no choice but to hand her over to the Yakuza.

She had no memory of her parents and wanted none. Heaven’s Thief had been her father, the Chairman her benevolent uncle.

When, at twelve, she’d knocked senseless their best adult male fighter, the Chairman had offered her the right to take the defeated man’s life. Still shamefully soft, she’d declined, so the Chairman had bought her a Lamborghini as a prize for her win, and forced her to sleep for a mid-winter’s month on the stones in the courtyard for refusing the kill.

All of this knowledge flashed through Kirra’s mind when she was high-kicked onto her arse by a woman. She could
have sat there for another twenty-four hours trying to figure out how that could be possible, but her body was already kicking, blocking and striking, even as she hit the ground and bounced back to her feet.

Her opponent kept up, then ramped it up, and Kirra suddenly wanted to laugh, to rejoice in what she realised was going to be a rare – and maybe never again experienced – battle.

‘Who trained you?’ she managed through gritted teeth.

‘Kimi,’ said the woman, escaping Kirra’s hold and striking her to the kidneys. ‘She who is without equal.’

‘Liar!’ hissed Kirra, ignoring the pain. ‘Kimi Kana has been buried for a thousand years.’ And
I
am her equal.

She twisted out of a hold and into a back-arch, smacking into her enemy’s jaw with each foot as she flipped back up onto her feet.

As they battled, she tried to ascertain the whereabouts of the rest of her crew. She knew that Dagger’s Breath would appropriate the targets, but she could not see Golden Tiger or Tanabe Yukio.

Suddenly she sensed that something was very wrong. From the corner of her eye, she saw her number one – her beloved – Dagger’s Breath – staggering in through the doorway of this cursed room past her towards the wardrobe. Dagger’s Breath would not stagger, would not stumble, she thought, still blocking blows instinctively, unless he was mortally wounded, or maybe bewitched.

Then Dagger’s Breath raised his sword.

Her opponent froze at the precise moment Kirra did.

They both spun on the spot and screamed, ‘No!’

Too close! The thought flashed through Kirra’s mind.
You are too close to the target, Dagger’s Breath! We have orders to bring him in alive! She readied herself to spring over to the wardrobe. But a heartbeat after the first child fell, the male target launched himself at Dragon’s Breath, and they both crashed to the floor.

Two seconds later, Kirra Kiyota was fairly certain she would not live to see another day. But if she managed to, she was prepared, right then and there, to bet her ancestors’ souls that she would never forget this one. Because when the male target fell, reality fractured.

As Kirra stared, some Thing ripped a hole right through the middle of realness and bludgeoned its way into the bedroom. Kirra fell to her knees as the shrieking she-daemon raised itself up to ceiling height. But even as it towered terrifyingly over them all, red eyes blazing behind whipping Medusa locks, Kirra found herself thinking: Why would a powerful devil wear a frilly red skirt and black-and-white tights? She would
never
be seen like that.

And then, four things happened.

One, the woman she had been battling gaped in horror at the terrifying creature and shouted at the top of her lungs, ‘Morgan Moreau!’

Next, the seven-foot nightmare flicked a massive hand towards the two boys sprawled in front of the wardrobe, bleeding-out on the carpet (beyond help, in Kirra’s considerable experience), and an iridescent blue light shot from her fingers, cloaking them entirely.

Thirdly, and most disturbingly to Kirra, the Thing reached up to her giant face and ripped a piece of silver jewellery from her nose, hurtling it down onto the carpet where it immediately began to double, quadruple, mushroom
monstrously, clanking and grinding from the size of a coin to that of a toy truck, then a dog, and finally to a horrible, terrible, snarling metal dragon-thing that couldn’t, and shouldn’t, be described.

The fourth thing that happened would require many years for Kirra to mentally and emotionally process.

It involved the metal-dog-dragon thing.

It involved her only-love, Dagger’s Breath.

And it involved a lot of blood.

Kirra had seen some things in her twenty-one years. She’d heard many other things over breakfast that had made grown men cry or vomit. But she had never seen anything like this.

She knew that this seven-foot chick and her mutant dragon were not of this world.

She also knew that when a battle was done, it was done, and that leaving right now was not shameful, merely prudent.

But her heart bled for what her beloved had just suffered. So she took a moment, just a fraction of a moment, to weld forever the pain of his death to the karate-liar in khaki, to the cursed gypsy and her brother, and to the bitch-daemon with no dress sense. She vowed that she would see them all again, if not in hell, then before. And she ran to the window.

Ripping the white wooden blinds from the frame as though pulling a tissue from a box, Kirra Kiyota took one last look around that damned supernatural room and at what remained of her beloved, and then, using an elbow sheathed in Kevlar catsuit, she smashed the glass and cartwheeled out, dropping silently down into the wet Sydney night.

As she ran for the shadows, Kirra wondered if there was anywhere in the world she was safe to go.

She had no crew.

She’d failed another mission.

Would the Chairman comfort or kill her?

As she dodged vehicles to find the darkest corners of the city, an image flashed up before her: Dagger’s Breath with his throat in the jaws of that metal thing.

She banished the image and replaced it with another: a twenty-first birthday cake, candles blazing. She heard the rumble of a train and headed for it, keeping the imaginary candles burning bright.

When she’d tucked herself into a corner seat in the bottom carriage of a train heading to Sydney’s Central Station, two dark-haired youths looking for trouble spotted her and made their way over.

She raised her eyebrows, doing her best to tone down her rage. They hesitated and she lifted her lip in a snarl. They moved away quickly.

‘Yeah,
get!
’ she yelled after them, almost disappointed.

She closed her eyes, watched the pretty candles, and blew them out.

Then Kirra Kiyota made her twenty-first birthday wish.

She’d never tell a soul what she wished for.

Because then it wouldn’t come true.

‘Luke! Get everyone into the cupboard. Now!’ screamed Seraphina.

Luke wasn’t sure how he was supposed to do that when he was dead.

Except he wasn’t.

Even though his shirt was saturated in blood, he felt pretty great, actually. He sat up.

Zac didn’t look so good, but he was breathing. And Seraphina looked to be pretty busy.

‘The Witch healed you,’ yelled Seraphina.

Georgia – a witch?

Now that was definitely
not
Georgia.

Luke gazed in awe at the Goth girl he’d eaten dinner with the last two nights. Except then she hadn’t been seven foot tall, and she hadn’t been jetting red lasers from her fingers.

‘Georgia is Morgan Moreau,’ coughed Zac, pale and panting, pushing himself up on one elbow. ‘We have to get out of here. Sera won’t be able to hold her off forever.’

‘My mother?’ said Luke, his senses threatening to pack up and leave again.

He watched Seraphina face the monster, green light streaming from her fingers and rippling through the air like flame before meeting Georgia’s blood-red lasers in a deluge of sparks and lightning-like flares.

Samantha seemed to be frozen to the spot, staring with fixed concentration at the fireworks.

‘Samantha, I’m fine,’ Seraphina yelled. Luke didn’t think fine was quite the right word. ‘Please, Sam, you don’t have to help me. Save your energy. Help the boys. Luke – get into that cupboard
now
!’

Samantha was
helping
Seraphina? How? Luke stood, swaying a little on his feet. He knew that he had died – he’d felt the sword puncture his lungs, pierce his heart. And the pain. He had never felt anything like it. He had no idea how these things could be happening, but right now he was thankful for the total numbness that overtook him whenever things were out of control. He squinted in the glare of the flame-battle. Yep, this would definitely meet that category.

The giant-Georgia countered a laser of light hurled by Seraphina; the energies met in an explosion of brilliance.

The mutant metal dragon thing sat on its hideous haunches, watching the lightshow. From its malformed mouth hung a clump of blood-matted hair left over from the mess of the swordsman on the ground. After one glance downwards, Luke kept his eyes above floor-level. That dude didn’t have a scar any more. He didn’t have a face, either. He wondered why Georgia-Morgan didn’t sick her freak mutt onto Seraphina to end the battle once and for all.

Right then Zac tugged desperately at his arm and Luke turned towards the wardrobe. He’d rather be in there than out here if the doggie-dragon did decide it was up for seconds.

‘Locked,’ said Zac weakly, trying to stay upright. ‘You have to use your tools. You’re the only one who can do it. It all makes sense now.’

‘Oh yeah. It all makes perfect sense, Nguyen,’ Luke said. ‘This is all
completely
understandable.’

Luke picked the lock in three seconds flat, grabbed Samantha’s hand, and stepped through the door.

Are you there?

Oh my God. None of us can believe this has happened! And that Morgan Moreau is alive and kicking. I’m still in shock.

The battle’s over. My source says Morgan vanished when the kids portalled out of there. And Seraphina’s okay.

Morgan set that whole meeting up – we know that for certain. She wanted to bring the kids together. I mean, it’s not as though my source could have that part wrong. Although I’m betting Kirra’s appearance was a bit of a nasty surprise. And Seraphina probably wasn’t part of the plan either.

What is Moreau up to?

At least we know now that she doesn’t want the twins dead. She could have compelled her dragon-daemon to take them all out. But she protected them, healed Luke, and it looks as though Zac might have been lucky enough to catch some of that magic too.

Whatever you do, though, don’t go thinking that Morgan’s found religion or something. She brought those kids into being for a purpose, and I promise you that it’s not to play
happy families one day.

Something big is coming. And Morgan’s had centuries to plan for it.

Hell, there are so many spybots in here; this place is crawling with them. I’ve gotta go down low. If I can’t reach you again for a while, keep your ears open, for Gaia’s sake.

Out.