“I said let go of me!” she roared.
Her free hand grasped Yofun’s hilt, drawing the blade with the crisp ring of metal against metal, bringing it down on the brother’s arm with all her strength. Folded steel sheared through cloth, muscle, bone, the brother flinching away with a shriek. Yukiko pivoted, kicked the monk behind her square in the privates, bringing a knee up into his face as he curled over in agony. The three others stepped forward, cutting her off from the stairs and her escape, hands outstretched. She snatched Bishamon’s scroll off the shelf, backed away from the monks. Away from Buruu. The thunder tiger roared again, pounding the walls.
YUKIKO, COME TO ME!
Head ringing with Buruu’s plea, Yukiko glanced at Yofun’s blade, noticed it was unstained. Thunder in her veins, the Kenning splitting her skull. Stuffing the ghastly scroll into her obi, she tried again to sense the brothers, seize the life within them as she’d done with Yoritomo, grind it beneath her heel. But there was nothing to grip, no heat or life to hold. Almost as if …
As if …
Brother Shun looked up at her with empty eyes, a ghastly smile splitting his lips. Reaching down to his severed arm, he plucked it from the floor, thrust it back onto the glistening stump (no blood, none at all) and as Yukiko watched in utter horror, flexed his fingers as if to ease some minor cramp. The brother whose privates she’d brutalized picked himself up off the stone, straightened the pulp she’d made of his nose, tilted his head until his vertebrae popped.
“Secrets in abundance,” Shun whispered. “As I said.”
They lunged, all five, a rolling, snarling bramble of gibber-grasping hands and milk-white eyes. The constant lessons she’d endured under her father and Kasumi and Sensei Ryusaki, the years of wooden sword drills came back to her in a flood, her body falling into the familiar stance, side-on, knees bent. She moved like liquid, like an angry tide, seething forward and rushing back, Yofun held gently in a double-handed grip, its hilt like a lover’s hand in her own. She divested one brother of his outstretched fingers, another of his leg below the knee, a third of his windpipe and jugular, the blade slicing clean through his throat. Through it all, she was backing down the row, feet skipping across the floor, wisps of hair in her eyes, hoping to double back through the shelves and make a desperate dash for the stairs.
No blood flowed from the wounds she inflicted, only mild grunts of surprise accompanied her sword’s travels, followed by the wet plopping of whatever extremity she’d removed hitting the stone. She noticed the leg she hacked away was skinless above the ankle. Slicing another monk across his chest, she saw no skin through the rend in his robe—merely gray pectoral muscle and a grin-white rib cage.
Thunder rolled above and she screamed to Buruu, loud as she could, heedless of the blood spilling down her nose. At the sight of the ruby fluid smeared across her lips, Shun and his brethren seemed to lose all semblance of sanity, eyes so wide she could see the whites all around, teeth bared and gleaming. Too many to fight under the best of circumstances, and her circumstances were a god’s throw from that. And so, sheathing the five feet of useless katana at her back, Yukiko did exactly what her father had told her to do in the face of overwhelming odds.
She turned and bolted.
Using the alcoves as handholds. Hauling herself up onto one of the shelves, kicking in a brother’s face as he seized her ankles. Hopping onto the ledge, she tore Yofun from its scabbard again, taking careful aim at the monk scrambling up after her. With a fierce cry, she sliced clean through his neck, blade cleaving bone as if it were butter. The brother crashed to the floor, head rolling away across the stone. Thunder roared overhead, shaking the walls. And with vomit pressing at trembling lips, Yukiko saw the headless corpse rolling about on the ground, hands groping toward its disembodied head. Lighting strobed, rendering the scene in a lurid, grisly glow. Clawing fingers. Eyes still blinking. Mouth still moving.
Maker’s breath …
Yukiko turned, leaped over the gap between one shelf and another, back toward the entrance, fighting for balance as the structure shifted underneath her. Shun and another of his brethren had scrambled up behind her, two more cresting the shelves ahead and cutting off her escape route to the stairs. She noticed more figures now, fading out of the gloom, clad in those same bruise-blue robes. Female forms standing in the corners with impassive faces, holding armfuls of their own entrails, lit by strobing lightning strikes. Others hauling themselves up onto different shelves, closing in all about her. Dozens. Upon dozens. Upon dozens.