“Lord Izanagi, save us!”
Hissed curses. The sound of iron crashing against iron. And then she heard it. A vibrato scream of fear, of rage. Louder than the thunder, tipped with electricity, grating across the back of her skull.
“Oh no,” she whispered.
She turned to her father, pawing the blood from her eyes.
“Father, the arashitora!”
Masaru’s expression darkened. His eyes showed no trace of dread; simply dismay at the loss of his prize. She could see the hunter in him, pragmatic and cold as steel. He glanced up as the beast screamed again, wiped the soot off his face with the back of his hand. His skin was damp with sweat, and he left one long black smear across his cheek.
“We can’t.” He shook his head, looked back and forth between Yukiko and Kasumi. “There’s no time.”
“Gods, listen to it,” breathed Akihito, crammed against the far wall.
The cry was piercing, dripping with outrage: a trembling note of fear and anger, of disbelief that it could end like this. They heard the scraping of claws on metal, flesh pitting itself against iron in a repeated frenzy of terror. Rage. Red and boiling.
One coupling came loose with the snap of iron jaws, and the life raftswung as if on a hinge, crashing hard against the polished hull. The rain poured through the open door, soaking the miserable knot of humans huddled in the boat, blinding, blistering white as the lightning flashed. Raijin rejoiced at the Child’s destruction, his howl of triumph and the beating of his drums echoing across the clouds.
Yukiko could feel the thunder tiger’s thoughts, its terror. She imagined its final moments: plummeting from the sky like a falling star, feathers and fur charring, praying for the impact that would end its burning agony. She shook her head.
Not like that. He cannot die like that.
Masaru sensed his daughter’s intent, reached out toward her.
“Yukiko, no! You stay here!”
Too late. She leaped from the raft as the final coupling sprang loose, the small ship spinning off into the darkness with a brittle, metallic sound. Her father’s anguished cry drifted off into the throat of the storm as the belly of the life raft lit up in a halo of blue flame, propelling the small craft away into the tempest.
Yukiko stumbled across the pilot’s deck and down the ladder, smoke burning her eyes, the wood beneath her an untamed, living thing. She felt numb, head still swimming from the kiss on the cabin wall. The wind tore at her skin, burning hot from the inferno raging overhead, embers entwined with the falling rain and smoldering on the sleeves and shoulders of her uwagi. The balloon had been reduced to a blackened skeleton, lit from within by the blaze; a corpse lantern on the feast day of the dead. The Child began to roll toward its wounded port side, starboard engine still at full burn, shadows of sharp rock swelling up out of the darkness before them.
Down the ladder, holding on for dear life as the ship clipped a spur of mountain stone, tearing half its belly out with the roar of splintering timber. On the main deck she slipped and stumbled, lunging across to the cage and using its bars to hold herself upright. The arashitora was lost in a frenzy of fear, near mindless as she reached out to it, almost overcome with primal terror of the fire above. It roared, a thundering, metallic screech, pupils glazed with panic.
Be calm. I will free you.
OUT. AWAY. FLY.
The bolts on the door were slippery in her hands, palms sweaty in the shocking heat. She thrust them away from their housings, fear turning her arms to jelly. Blood dripped into her eye, sticky and thick on her lashes. The Child’s roll grew more pronounced, and she struggled to keep her footing as the deck listed, floods of rain spilling over the brink in a doomed, lonely waterfall. The snaggle-toothed face of a mountain appeared out of the darkness directly in front of them, jaws of jagged stone open in welcome.
The final bolt slid free and the door swung wide. The arashitora burst from the cage, talons scrabbling across sodden boards, half-sparks flaring on its ruined wings. As it thundered across the shifting deck, Yukiko reached out, desperate, snagging her fingers into a clump of sodden feathers and swinging herself up onto its shoulders. Wood shredded like rice-paper beneath razored claws, sinew and muscle snapped taut like iron cable as it spread its wings and plunged over the side of the burning sky-ship.
Fly! Fly!