Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Hiro headed down. “Yoichi!”
“Focus!!” Yoichi planted one foot on the railing and launched himself off the staircase into the open sky.
GODDAMN IT!!!!!
The wind took Yoichi!
And then—a flash of gold shot up.
Bright.
Blinding.
I screamed. "Yoichi!"
“No!” Hiro trembled. “No more ghosts. N-no more.”
The gold vanished into the canopy. The trees swallowed it the way they had swallowed Rin's white body seconds before. The dark closed behind both of them as if neither had ever existed.
Gone.
Both of them.
Hiro grabbed my arm. "Kenji!"
I stared at the sky below us where two of my men had just disappeared. My chest cracked open. Rin's three red flowers on his back. Yoichi's gold flash. The staircase shaking under my boots. The wind pulling at my face.
Reo's voice cut through. "Move, Kenji! Now!"
Hiro turned me around. “Brother, let’s finish this!”
I swallowed. “Y-yes.”
“They didn’t die for nothing!” Hiro’s hands shook on my arms. “They didn’t!”
“They didn’t!” I shook my head.
“Listen!” Hiro blinked. “There’s no time to. . .mourn.”
Reo added, “We’ll do it later!”
“Let’s go.” I got out of Hiro’s hold and headed up.
The twins dove through the hatch firing. Bullets sparked off the metal frame. Reo threw himself through behind them and his gun flashed once inside the plane and men screamed.
Once Hiro and I got up fast, I saw that it was dark inside. Still, I grabbed the hatch frame with one hand, aimed my silver gun into the interior with the other, and fired four shots into the muzzle flashes.
A man dropped.
Another stumbled.
I threw myself through the hatch, hit the metal floor, and rolled to the wall. Hiro came in behind me, blades drawn, and buried one in the nearest man's throat before his feet had settled.
Where are you, father? You fucking coward! Because of you so many good people have died!!
Wind howled through the open door behind us. The staircase tore free from the plane with a sound like a building collapsing—metal screaming, bolts shearing, the entire ramp peeling away into the night and crashing through the canopy below.
A tree branch sheared across the open hatch and splinters exploded inward.
The plane climbed harder.
The floor tilted.
The trees below grew smaller.
We were inside.
The hatch gaped open behind us.
Wind and moonlight poured through.
The plane shook as it clawed above the tree line.
Five of us remained—Reo, the twins, Hiro, and me. With my guns aimed forward, I squinted to get a better view of the dim cabin in front of us.
Ahead, deeper in the cabin bay, Akiro and his remaining men waited in the dim red emergency lighting and surrounded him.
And right behind them, the Fox crouched in the shadow with two guns in his shaking hands.
There you go.
Chapter eighteen
The Inside of a Wound
Hiro
The red emergency lights turned the cargo bay into the inside of a fresh wound. Blood-colored light washed over corrugated metal walls. Cargo straps swayed from the ceiling like hanging veins. Long rows of steel crates stretched toward the cockpit, bolted to the floor as if even they feared being thrown into the sky.
Holding the kusarigama in his hand, Akiro stood at the center of it all. His remaining guards fanned around him in a tightening ring. They were the last wall of flesh between us, and they didn’t have guns in their hands.
And behind them. . .pressed into the shadows at the rear, our father crouched low. A gun trembled in each hand.
The Fox. . .for the first time in my life. . .looked like prey.
Tonight, we’ll finally kill you.
The plane climbed.
The floor tilted under my boots.
Wind screamed through the torn-open hatch behind us and dragged at my clothes, and on both sides of the cabin the engine housings rattled in their mounts. Those thin walls vibrated with every rotation of the props.
That stopped me cold.
Now I understood why Akiro’s remaining guards no longer had their guns out.
With these heights, air pressure, and impact of any gun, the walls would be paper. One bad angle, one round through the wrong panel, and we punctured a fuel line or shredded an engine, and then all of us rode this thing into the trees together.
Reo must have instantly come to the same thought.
"Watch your bullets!" Reo yelled over the wind. "We hit an engine, we all die up here!"
Kenji's masked head turned a fraction toward me. He understood at once. He flipped his silver guns in his grip. His thumb found the switch to shut them off, and then he holstered them. "We need this plane in the air until we land it.”
Aki nodded. "Blades.”
“Hands,” Yuki added.
“No bullet spray." I put my gun up.
Reo answered without looking back. "Understood."
The twins answered together. "Understood."
Then Akiro’s guards came for us.
The twins met them first, moving as one animal, the way they always did, two bodies running a single mind.
One went high.
One went low.
The matching kitsune masks gleamed wet red in the emergency light. The lead guard raised the blade in his hand and one twin slid under it and opened the man's thigh while the other twin rose behind him and drove a blade up beneath his jaw.