Raiju: A Kaiju Hunter Novel (The Kaiju Hunter) (24 page)

Clenching the cigarette between my teeth, I extended my hand and concentrated on summoning the cold Kami fire. I was so overwrought, it was no trouble at all. It erupted right on cue, like it was waiting for me. And within the tall column of blue flames, I grasped the hilt of the sword.

“
Cool,” said Snowman.

Somehow it didn’t feel that way. This sword was our last line of defense, and the only way we would ever survive this—the only way the
city
would survive this. I narrowed my eyes at the sound of Qilin screaming in the smoke and hell that pressed in on all sides of us. Soon it would return to finish the job—destroy us, then destroy the rest of the city as Aimi lost all control over it. The reasonable part of my mind told me to grab the bike and ride. But that wasn’t a solution, only a temporary fix; if I ran, Qilin would just continue to pursue me, wrecking everything in its path and killing thousands as it grew bigger and bigger. It might get so big it blanketed the entire face of the planet in a sea of burning black slime.

Kevin the White Knight
, I thought. The clove burned up in my hand. I grasped the sword with two hands and stepped out into the street to meet my enemy head on. Through the swirls of sulfuric smoke I caught glimpses of the modern advertisement surrounding me—the lights and colors, the promise of continued humanity and growing technology—and took my ancient burning sword, the ofuda that could call a god, and raised it high over my head. I glanced over at Snowman, sitting there huddled in the doorway, surrounded by glass and destruction, waiting expectedly for some miracle to save us all.

I had no miracles. The best I could come up with was me.

I took a deep breath and said, my voice groggy and sad with resignation, “Hey, man, enjoy the show.” Already I could feel the power coming to me. Think of the best you’ve ever felt in your life—the first track and field you’d ever won, the first time you landed the leading part in the school play, your first kiss—now take that times a thousand. I felt like I could do anything, that I was indestructible. It was a very seductive feeling. I closed my eyes and let the sword guide me up and down as I carved the sacred kanji into the air before me. I thought,
Raiju…come…come now!
and drove the sword resoundingly into the ground at my feet.

I stepped back and waited.

I felt the familiar vibration, the terrible fecundity of life beneath my feet. My hands began to sweat around the hilt of the burning sword. And with a belching roar of fire and a wave of hellish heat that left me dizzy, Raiju reformed before me, its claws raking the ground with streaks of fire. Before it was even fully formed it tilted it head back and bellowed to the heavens. Then it planted its burning claws on the street and stared down at me with an almost human face and flaming, holy blue eyes that reminded me strangely of the woman in my dreams, the woman in the red silk kimono whose hair was on fire.

She.

It hit me like a gut-punch. She. Raiju was
female
.

Raiju snarled, the sound like a storm in my face, and bared her teeth, each easily the size of the sword wedged in the ground between my feet. I smelled fire and blood on her breath. But the teeth didn’t frighten me, not the way the eyes could, the way they pierced through layers of my flesh, unearthing every desire, every mystery, every secret within me, peeling my soul-skin back to expose myself to the Kami’s second sight.

I looked back at her. I felt tired and old and small and afraid. My darkest secret, I thought, there you have it, my lady: I’m afraid. I’m a sixteen-year-old kid and I’m afraid I’m going to die today. “And if you want to kill me for that,” I whispered, “get on with it already.”

She opened her mouth—it was as large around as a cavern—and an enormous black tongue unfurled, raining saliva down. I saw flames cooking within her mouth. She grunted and the black tongue flicked over me. It was like being covered in a huge, hot wet blanket. The impact drove me to my knees, but I still managed to hang onto the sword. “Just do it!” I screamed, feeling nothing at last.

The tongue retreated inside the fire-lined jaws instead. She snorted sulfur and seemed to smile.
I think not
, she said in her hissing, sensuous voice.
Not yet, handsome.

“
Don’t call me that!” I screamed at her, meaning it. Aimi had called me that, and Raiju had no right to it.

She grinned at me, enjoying my pain.

“
Do as I say.”

She halved her burning eyes at me in challenge as she padded around me, almost soundless on her feet, seething and stinking of anger and sulfur.
Why should I do that?

A flicker of self-doubt licked at the back of my mind. I had control over Raiju, I held her leash. But it wasn’t absolute, and we
both
knew that. Aimi had betrayed her Kami and had lost all control over him. I could easily end up the same way. A big part of me wanted to beg and plead with her, tell her I would do anything she wanted if she just let me live. But another part of me knew that that was the wrong way to handle a god. If she cowed me, she would know I was weak. And then she would be the master.

I was not weak.

“
Because I am the master,” I said, reassuring my grip on the sword, ready to pull it from the ground at a moment’s hesitation and send her back to hell.

Say it.

“
I am the Keeper!” I screamed.

Raiju laughed like she had achieved a victory and sank back into the swirls of hellish smoke to wait.

12

The funny thing about death is, you never see it coming until it’s staring you in the face. Until you’re forced to look it straight in its burning red eyes. You go about your life worrying about your always-late homework, you’re I’ll-never-get-the-nerve-to-ask-
her
-out, you’re I’m-
so
-gonna-fail-class-big-time, thinking it’s the end of the world. At least, that’s how I always approached things.

Until today. Until I found myself standing in the trembling rubble that had once been New York City, the sky inky black and choked with dust and debris, the neon lights of Times Square struggling fitfully to pierce the almost impenetrable darkness, the air full of that rotten-egg stench of open gas mains that I hated so much, and realized I was going to die today.

I watched the kaiju rise before me, through the passage of a torn-open manhole cover. It seemed to go on forever. Black against the black sky. Then it curled over—centipede-like, though it no longer resembled that—and stared at me with brilliant crimson eyes. It looked at me, and it looked
through
me, this thing that wanted to kill me, this thing that wanted me dead.

Dead, because I stood between it and the rest of humanity.

Me. Mr. Nobody.

A big part of me wanted to rage against whatever gods had conspired to bring me to this, to end my life so callously, but I had a feeling it would do no good. I had a feeling I had always been destined to be here today, to die like this.

“
Aimi,” I said to the thing, softly, quietly, wondering if it understood me, or if my words were nothing more than unintelligible gibberish to the creature hovering before me, clomping its jaws with anger and hunger. “I know you’re in there somewhere. If you let this thing happen, you’ll never forgive yourself. Remember the kids at the club?”

The asphalt exploded into shards that rained down dust and debris around me as Qilin’s tentacles ripped through the street. Gradually it reformed itself yet again. It looked more reptilian now, with a long face that ended in a mouth that was split almost from one eye to the other and filled with jagged yellow teeth. It tilted its head back to the smoky sky and screamed, black slime-like tears running off its face in burning rivulets. It seemed to be in a state of constant flux, changing back and forth between humanoid, plant and animal as it filled Times Square, its body a twisting canvas of ever-changing life forms, except for those eyes, those hideous red eyes that always remained the same.

It was still screaming in pain and horror as a nest of twenty-foot-long spiraling horns—black and shining and as sharp as bone—suddenly sprouted from between its eyes. It reared over me, and I felt its freezing-cold shadow descend as it drove its killing horn at me.

I snapped my eyes closed. I raised my hands in self-defense and cried out in the last moments before the kaiju lashed out at me. I couldn’t face my end this way, I just couldn’t, Keeper or not.

But nothing happened. Nothing at all.

I opened my eyes to a wash of red heat. Raiju was standing over me, staring at Qilin with pitiless human eyes, her claws clenched about the horn that would have pierced me right through the center of my body had it been allowed to descend even a foot more. Her eyes narrowed and burned an angry blue like twin butane flames. I felt a sickening wave of fear roil through me as I stared at the black horn suspended mere inches from my head.

I was afraid, yes, afraid Raiju might not save me in the end. But I harbored a greater fear—that she would tear through any enemy to do so, with or without my approval. But in this case, I had given it to her. I gave it to her when I declared myself her master. I had given any enemy—including Aimi—over to her, as she had undoubtedly wanted me to. And by doing so, I had proven myself worthy of her.

I thought again of the dream, of Raiju piercing Aimi through the heart with her claws. The realization made me so sad and sick I wanted to die.

Raiju’s massive jaws dropped open, smoke drifting from between her massive teeth. It took me a moment to realize that it was her smile, a sadistic sight.
Raiju likes you, Master
, she said.
You will go far, Master. You will be mine.
And gripping the horn, she used her enormous strength to flip the monster over in the street.

With a roar Qilin crashed back into the Times Square Building—
through
the building—making the street shake with the impact. Chunks of glass and steel exploded outward, crashing past me like meteors striking the earth. One piece ripped the center part of the street up like old carpet so the running railways beneath were exposed like toy trains.

I felt the earth lurch and gripped the sword for purchase to keep from falling through the hole and into the subway below. A massive shard of a billboard sign slammed into the street in front of me. I stared, sweating, disbelieving my luck. Vibrating with strangely unfelt fear, I steadied myself, then turned my attention on the two monsters grappling in the debris of the Times Square Building. They rolled over, snorting imperiously at one another, and the final battle began.

13

Raiju was a dirty fighter, I’d give her that. She fought the way I fought, putting everything she had into it, exploiting any weakness she could find in her opponent. No honorable combat. No need for it, because this was all about survival. And anyway, I doubted there was any honor among monsters.

Raiju grappled with Qilin as the thing’s many-tentacled arms wrapped themselves securely around Raiju’s neck. Qilin screamed as he encountered her burning mane but made no attempt to release his foe. In response, Raiju grasped the snapping, pod-like head of one of the tentacles trying to strangle her and ripped the jaws apart until they foamed and fell open like the broken petals of a withered flower, then tore it entirely from the stalk. The rest of the tentacle went slack and dropped to the street far below.

Qilin, larger than ever before, twice as large as Raiju, and more distinct in its form—a more upright prehistoric form, with a snapping, gator-like head and those long horns quivering from the center of his misshapen skull—sent out dozens of sludgy black tentacles that whipped wildly around Raiju’s neck in a stranglehold. Raiju thrashed and struggled in Qilin’s grip, but each time she managed to pry off a tentacle, two more appeared to take its place. There was no way she could untangle herself from Qilin’s grip.

Qilin laughed at her struggles, his toothy grin splitting his face nearly in half in a nightmarish way. Then he turned and stared slithering his way out of Midtown and toward the Hudson River where he undoubtedly planned to take refuge in its polluted waters—and where Raiju’s flames would be effectively snuffed out. He dragged Raiju ingloriously behind, raking her through broken streets and half-demolished buildings, the rubble giving off sparks of light and fire, the tentacles tightening into ever-tighter, noose-like knots around her neck with each passing second.

I started to cough. I could feel Raiju’s once enormous strength ebbing away as Qilin began to literally choke the life out of her. The flames along Raiju’s body slowly dimmed, going out one by one. I felt her thrashing, once-powerful body weaken. I coughed again, feeling the terrible constriction at my own throat. I could feel the pressure cutting right into my breathing—I could
feel
what Raiju was feeling as she began to die. I dropped to my knees as the street seesawed dangerously in front of my eyes.

Raiju raised a forepaw in defense, but Qilin only laughed his snide, gurgling laugh, and lashed out with another tentacle, driving it like a spear through Raiju’s palm and into her throat. Raiju gagged, bloody black foam seeping out the corners of her massive jaws.
Master
, she said, her voice growing weak in my head.
Master, help me…