Destiny's Child (Kitsune series Book 3) (26 page)

THOOM!  THOOM!

And there was my enemy.  A giant robo-cat—half cat, half human female.  Her limbs were polished steel.  Her skimpy bikini was indeed a flaming red, as were her mittens and stiletto-heeled boots.  Her metal hair was red, as were the huge glowing lenses of her eyes.  Her breasts were high, round globes and were doubtless designed to splay open, revealing weapon-ports.  She had rounded ears on her head, and a lashing red tail with a white tip. 

As I watched, she waved with one hand.  “Nyan!” the Japanese version of a “meow” filled the air, rocking Tukka, spinning him, slamming us both back a moment until his automatic force screen engaged and stabilized us.  Many of my monitors were flashing red and yellow warning messages.

“We can’t take many more of those,” Tukka’s synthetic voice burst from a speaker near my head.  “Fight back!”

“But I think she was only being friendly.”

“Grace, no time for touchy-feely kumbaya moment.  This is war!”

“If I’m piloting this thing, we do it my way,” I said.

“Kat must go down before mother ship gets here.”

“We’ll see.  How do I make this thing move?”

“Grab stick between legs.”

“Now I know a male designed this thing.”

I grabbed the joy-stick and wrenched it sideways.

“Careful, Grace, you break that, I’m in trouble.”

The g-forces slammed me back in my chair.  The images on-screen blurred as we swiveled to face Mecha-Kat.  I shoved the stick forward
.  We stomped closer.  Mecha-Kat held her ground, but her tail lashed ever faster.  I stopped within arm’s reach of her. 

Lights were blazing in all the windows overlooking the city street we occupied.  Car alarms were sounding.  In the distance, I heard police sirens drawing nearer.

I reached out and petted Mecha-Kat’s head.

Mecha-Kat rumbled out a purr.

“Don’t fall for it,” Tukka shouted.  “No kat can be trusted.”

Indeed, it was a trick.  Her painted-on bikini top revealed seams this close up.  Those seams parted.  Each boob hinged open in four equal triangular pieces.  Smaller mounds were just inside, the warheads of missiles.  Fire and smoke belched out around the heads of the boob-rockets.

“That’s crazy!  The blow-back of her own weapons will damage her as much as us,” I yelled.

“This dream, Grace,” Tukka reminded me.  “Not need to make sense.”

Oh, yeah.

“Shields on full!” I cried. 

A blast of light washed the images off the exterior screens.  Other screens were listing damaged systems.  More and more, red flashing lights were everywhere.  We rocked back, falling heavily.  The forward screen showed a view above the street. 

“Just tell me we got some kinda ultimate weapon built into this thing,” I said.

“We have Sword of Annihilating Space,” Tukka said.

“Why the hell didn’t you say so before now?”

“Must always save ultimate sword for final moment.  It not work, we have no power left for anything else.”

The compartment around me shuddered.  The forward view screen showed that Mecha-Kat was sitting on my mecha’s chest, pounding at its face with cute little cat punches.  The steel around me groaned under the ringing blows.

“How do I use this sword thingy?” I asked.

“Can’t,” Tukka said.  “Power too low.”

“Can we get more power?” I asked.

“Secondary emergency system, highly experimental.”

“What do I do?”

A karaoke machine extended from the overhead bulkhead.  A microphone on a telescoping rod shot into my face, pointing like a gun. 

“Song from the heart, Grace.  Power of lusty teen hormones will fuel quantum weapon.”

Oh, wow
.  That was rather far-fetched, but then so was the fact I was inside a mecha fu-dog fighting a giant, robo, mecha cat with red mittens and a willingness to use them.

“Fine, but I’m more of a shower singer than anything else.”

We lurched as another kat punch landed.

“Just … sing!”

My mecha head lurched to the side.  The metal face was crumpling.  Another few blows and the cat-fist would be pounding on
me
.

The opening theme to an anime unscrolled from memory.  I found myself repeating the lyrics, tweaking them a little:

“Between a rock and a harder place,

We face the fury of our times—

Dandelion fluff in the wind—

Don’t let the dream of us end—

(Fighto, fighto, fighto, fu dog-sama)”

“It’s working, Grace.  The tachyon soul-forged sword is forming!”

There it was, on-screen, floating between Mecha-Kat and me—a thing of pearlescent energy, gleaming soft blue and violet, a big broadsword with a cross-shaped hilt.  She reached for the weapon and screamed as lavender-white lightening unspooled from the hilt, melting her mittens to drippy red slag.  I reached out and—through some kinda neuron-link—the mecha fu dog copied my motions.  I closed my hands on empty air, and my mecha seized the sword hilt.  Systems winked back on-line.  Snow-filled screens cleared up.  My mecha rose, rotating until my hind feet were under me, lifting me to hover over the much-shattered street. 

Mecha-Kat had been thrown off, but gathered herself to fight on.  Her blazing stare should have been on me, but she peered up into the sky.

I looked into the overcast evening sky, where a massive shape shoved away clouds washed by city lights.  I saw the underside of a dark disk with trillions of little lights dotting it.  The light pattern kept changing, forming intricate patterns reflecting an alien intelligence. 
The mother ship!

Tukka’s synthetic voice boomed, “Strike, Grace, before city is buttered toast!”

I lifted the sword overhead, pointing it dead center at the vast hovering mass. 
Only chance is to disintegrate the whole thing at once so pieces don’t rain down all over the city, killing millions. 
I screamed a musical note so high it made me cough, and go lower in range. 

My warrior spirit poured into the sword.  Raw, cosmic fury made wings of lavender light extend sideways from the blade.  Then a spike of light shot up.  It hit a protective barrier defending the mother ship.  The barrier flamed pink-white, then went down, blasted apart.  And my beam hit a second barrier.  Weaker, it went down in a moment.  And my beam hit a third defensive barrier.

Talk about redundancy.

But this barrier lasted only a second and there were no more.  My beam bored into hull plates, turning them white-hot in an expanding pool.  The whole ship shuddered like a kitten in the slavering maw of a bull dog. 

The note I was screaming—second C in treble clef—had gone ragged and was failing.

“Just a little more, Grace.”

Somehow, I held on.  Sheer intestinal fortitude, I suppose. 

And the mother ship became an incandescent disk, flashing cherry red, then white, and then it was gone, a spray of white sparks whirling off in a vortex toward space.  I’d done it. 
Tokyo was saved.  I was a hero.

Woohoo!

So why were Japanese military planes zooming straight at me, unloading their missiles as if I weren’t in the heart of the city? 

TWENTY-SIX

“With eyes that see too clearly,

And a bottle of absinthe,

I dream of blood and thorns,

And other merriments.”

                                                       —Green Desire

                                 
            Elektra Blue

Choking, I bolted upright in bed.  My throat felt raw, as if I was breathing crushed ice.  Unseen fingers gripped my throat.  My antennae writhed, and I could swear I tasted mint raspberry—the flavor of ghost.  Cold fury invaded me, numbing my chest, as the ghost’s other hand dug for my heart, trying to still its rapid-fire beat.  I felt cool air on my back and realized that someone—probably Fran—had cut slits in my shirt so my moth wings could poke out.  My tee no longer restrained them.  They fluttered in furious distress. 

I tried to call out knowing Fran or Maddy would be close by.  I couldn’t force out the thinnest whisper. 
Fine then
.

I yanked on the weave of space, pulling a tingling wave across my body.  My body was suddenly lit with a haze of orange aura.  My stomach trembled as gravity bled away and the bedroom shifted into gray tones. 
Crossing over
, I could now see my enemy. 
Elita
.  I’d felt her clawing fingers on my throat before, when she was newly dead.  That I had simply ignored.  She was stronger now, her rage had fermented.  She had one hand, an iron band on my throat, while the other was sunk into my chest, squeezing my heart. 

Her long, straight, raven tresses glowed with a violet haze, each strand lifting to give her a medusa look.  Expensive silver earrings jiggled on her ears as she grimaced in pleasure.  She wore carefully
torn black jeans and a tan and black, long-sleeve top, all of it skin-tight—a fashion victim of
Goths Я Us
.  Even her lipstick was black, contrasting her smoky violet eyeliner and aura.  The look on her face was one of pathologically focused hatred.  Were she to take me out, she’d have no purpose, only endless emptiness to haunt her existence. 

Better I spare her that.

Shaun once taught me that sometimes the best way to end an attack wasn’t to stop it directly, but to launch a devastating counter-attack, making the assailant break off.  Elita was dead, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t hurt her.  I remembered the remnant serial-killer from my date with Wocky.  Michiko had taken him out—permanently—with an energy drain, sucking him dry of energy until nothing was left. 

I was kitsune.  I was supposed to be able to do the same thing. 

My vision graying out, my lungs burning for air, I drew one hand back against my ribs, making a spear-head out of it.  I thrust my hand into her chest and closed my fingers, wrenching in a way that usually shifted me from one realm to another, but I went nowhere.

Elita arced backward, her hands slipping off me, out
of me, as she screamed shrilly.  My hand was still buried in her chest.  Violet jags of energy wreathed my wrist, slithering down my forearm. 

“No, no, no, no!” she screamed.  “Please, don’t—”

She was translucent now, a ghost of a ghost, and still fading.  Her long hair was fluttering in a phantom wind I couldn’t feel.  The violet glow of her eyes was turning charcoal gray.  Her hair followed, crumbling from the tips, a decay that swept toward her head.  Her hands clawed at my arm where it entered her, but her strength was gone. 

Her power scintillated inside me, a slick vibrancy across my soul, a jazzy tang I could taste on my tongue.

You’ve had this coming a long time, bitch
. 

She shuddered and sobbed, looking at me piteously, tears welling in her eyes, sliding down her face.  “Please,” she whispered.  “I’m sorry.”

Sorry you got caught.  I am done with people coming after me, thinking I’m weak as a chew toy
. 

But years of being a good girl couldn’t be thrown off that easily.  “Aaaargh!”  I whipped my hand out of her, watching the pale violet glow around my fingers fade back to orange haze.  “Fine.  Get the hell outta here, and never come near me ever again.”  I widened my eyes, and tried to smile the way I’d seen Fenn do many times.  “Or I’ll drink you to nothing.”

The ghost scrambled back as if I were some black-winged demon freshly sprouted in front of her.  She fell off the bed, but didn’t fall to the carpet, hovering in space, bobbing a little.  She faded out and took her coldness with her, letting me know she was truly gone.

“What’s going on over there?” Fran called out.  “You having a nightmare?”

I coughed and cleared my voice, getting it working once more.  “Yeah, but she’s gone now.”  I rolled off the bed, stretched, and headed over to the living room island where Fran was watching the big screen—a cooking show—and doing her homework, writing a paper on vampire mesmerism and how to combat it. 

Her phone chimed and she pulled it out of her pants pocket.  “Yeah, Fran here.”  She listened intently, and nodded a few times. “Okay, we’ll see you in the garage.”

“That’s Maddy?” I asked.

“Yeah, she’s heard from her mom.  We’re supposed to all get together at the Roadhouse Theater on the edge of town.”