Sanzo knew that he was being stalked.
It had started some time before dusk. There had not been anything too
obvious, no youki, no sounds or sightings that might have revealed the
stalkers. But he had that niggling disquiet at the back of his mind that
refused to go away – an edgy feel of being watched, of malevolence being
directed at him, intent and persistent.
He knew better than to ignore his feelings. Not as if he had not been
expecting this, after all. Only he wished that it had not come so soon. He was
not quite ready yet.
Sanzo cursed as he peered into the darkening forest, trying to pick out the
dips and holes on the dirt trail, the tangling roots and branches almost hidden
by the falling shadows. This would definitely be a bad time to trip and break
something important.
He hefted his pack more securely, his left shoulder starting to complain
from the unusual strain. Its heaviness, far more than
mere rations could account for, was a reassuring weight on his back. More than food and water had gone into the
pack, in the short time he was able to re-provision himself in the village. He
had packed a little something for insurance, just in case the other side
decided to play dirty and brought some friends along for the fight. Sanzo
would. Sanzo was never one for fair play when cheating would so nicely win him
the battle. After all, he was one and they were many; and he owed them nothing,
least of all a fair fight.
It would seem that his caution had paid off.
Sanzo picked his way slowly through the undergrowth, pretending to be an oblivious fool who did not know that he was being hunted; hoping like hell that he would reach his destination before whoever they were got tired of skulking around and decided to jump him.
He had spied the place on his way up the mountain weeks ago, and
remembered thinking it the perfect place for an ambush. Or to ambush the
ambushers, if the supposed victim knew about the intention before hand – and
was smart enough to do something with that advantage.
Sanzo intended to wring every bit of advantage he could get.
***
The hunt was on.
The wolf pack was up ahead, loping soundlessly among the trees, following the scent of the priest and keeping pace mere meters away from the ignorant target. Human senses were so laughably weak. They had picked up his scent and followed him from afar since hours ago, from the time he first saw that familiar slender form moving down the dirt road from his vantage point above the trail.
He stayed well back, despite his mounting excitement, not wanting the priest to sense him yet. His brothers and sisters were his guide to the priest. For the moment, they were content to do his bidding and curb themselves. But they were getting impatient, with the heat of the chase in their blood and the prey dangled so enticingly near yet untouchable by his order.
He would give them free rein soon, but not yet, not until he had the
human where he wanted him. This had to take place in the open, not in the
anonymous darkness of the forest. He would need the moonlight to show him
everything – he wanted to see the priest’s face as he bathed his remaining hand
in his blood, as he tore his body and showed him his still-beating heart. He
would drink the breath from that thin, fine lips and taste of the warm
sweetness in his mouth, just before he ripped his throat out.
Patience, he counseled himself, then grinned mirthfully.
Maybe he would even keep the head. Just for the sake of fond memory.
***
The half-full moon cast a weak, wavery light on the clearing, deformed
shadows dancing on the scorched ground of the clearing. The bole of the huge
oak that stood in the middle of the devastation shaded nearly half of the open
ground, the coal-dark branches splintered and twisted like skeletal limbs
gouging at the night sky. Five men holding hands would barely be able to circle
the base of it. Some time in the near past, lightning had sundered the tree
nearly in two, the massive trunk split halfway down as if cleaved by a mighty
sword. What the lightning had started, the fire had finished. The
century-year-old tree was just one massive, blackened corpse now. Dead, though
it would take years for the body to acknowledge it and fell apart at last.
Sanzo tried not to dwell much on the significance of his making a stand
here. His fingers ached from gripping his gun too hard, and the fingers of his
other hand were stroking the plait of the rough hemp rope with obsessiveness
born of strung-out nerves. Where he was standing flush against the tree trunk,
the rope ran hidden behind him and snaked up into the split in the middle of
the wood, disappearing among the shadowed branches above. He could only hope
the poor lighting would hide what he had set up. Lacking time for anything
else, it would have to be enough. Sanzo resisted the urge to peer uselessly at
the faintly disturbed ground a few meters in front of him. There was nothing to
see – he had done everything that he could. And if it was not enough, then
there was nothing more he could add at this late hour.
Ten minutes he had waited here, another half an hour from the time he
had arrived at the clearing and took to his tasks with frenzied hurry. Each
second, he expected a tendril of that familiar ice-cold youki to brush
past his senses, painfully tuned to abrasive sensitivity. Each second that the
touch did not come cranked up his anxiety another notch and added fuel to his
feverish work. As long as the youkai was not within eye-sight, he still had
time. Unless it was able to see through the eyes of the things that had been
tracking him. In which case he would end up dead and buried in short time,
probably in a most unpleasant manner.
A good thing that monkey-boy was no longer with him. If he was, and he
kept on chattering inanities at him, Sanzo would have cheerfully murdered him
within seconds.
He grimaced and shook his head. Damn it all to hell, why in the world could
he even think of that idiot while he was in a fight for his life? Concentrate,
damn you, concentrate.
There. A glimpse of yellow eyes,
just at the edge of the clearing. Sanzo tensed, all extraneous thoughts driven
out of his mind as he peered hard at the dense gloom. Another flash, further to
the right. Sanzo darted a quick glance across his field of vision, and his
heart sank as he glimpsed more flashes of movement all around. And now, soft
sounds breaking the quiet, like padded footsteps, too light for a human.
One of the darker shadows in front of him detached itself with a fluid
movement and glided out into the clearing.
Sanzo stared at the grey muzzle streaked with white, at the intense,
intelligent amber eyes that gazed at him with disquieting fearlessness.
A wolf. Oh, hell. And a
whole pack of them, if those other movements were any indication.
“Someone must’ve really hated me up there,” Sanzo muttered through
gritted teeth. The palm holding Soureijuu was uncomfortably slippery
with sweat, but he did not have the leisure to wipe it now. His mind raced
frantically as he recalculated his plan. He remembered the torn bodies of the
last victims. His assumption was that the youkai who attacked him had did that,
or maybe he had managed to lure another one or two of his kind from somewhere
to band together with him. He did not think there could be many of them, there
were not that many rogue youkais around in the area. But now this wolf pack… It
could simply be a wild pack that he had the misfortune to stumble across, or it
could be something else. It was rare, but not unheard of, for the occasional
youkai to bond with wild animals and run with them like one of their own. If
this was the case, then his estimate of the number of enemies was off by at
least two times. Wolves seldom hunted in a pack less than three, and even if
they were not quite as dangerous as a youkai would be, they were still lethal
enough to a lone human.
“Well…,” he murmured, a defiant grin twisted his lips like a grimace. “Never
did have the best of luck. Come on, then… Come on, if you think you can take
me.”
The wolf lifted its snout as if understanding him. On an unspoken
signal, several shadows moved simultaneously out of the forest and into the
clearing. Sanzo counted five of them. Five to one. Six, if he counted in the as
yet elusive youkai. Bad odds. He had survived worse before, but he had had the
initiative and the element of surprise then
No matter. His plan would still work. He may just had to deal with a few
more than he had thought necessary.
Sanzo lifted his gun and pointed it at the leader. His aim was steady,
despite his thumping heart. The leader slowly moved forward and the rest of the
pack followed suit, forming a steadily shrinking semi-circle with Sanzo at the
center. His trigger finger itched to shoot one of them in the head – he had the
leader right in his eye-sight. But he did not dare waste precious bullets. Not
when it was not yet necessary to do so.
“Come on…,” he whispered, almost to himself, willing the pack to move
closer. “Come on, bastards, come and get me.”
Closer… closer…, but not enough. And not like this. He needed the mass
of them to concentrate two meters in front of him, but two meters were well
within leaping distance for a wolf.
Right. Change of plan.
Sanzo carefully sidled to his right, keeping his back firmly against the
trunk. His right foot found a broken branch and he kicked them to the wolf
nearest him, which shied away as he hoped. That opened up the distance from him
to the right side of the half-circle.
Each pain-stakingly careful movement seemed to take an eternity. Five
pairs of glowing yellow eyes followed his progress, muzzles with unnervingly
sharp fangs turned as one to follow his body. The pack shifted slowly to follow
him as he crept to the right, gradually but definitely closing the semi-circle
surrounding him. The leader trod on the disturbed ground that Sanzo had packed
in half an hour ago. Sanzo’s heart stuttered in his chest as the male stopped
and lowered his muzzle to sniff at the ground. It gave a sudden sneeze and
shook its head. At that moment Sanzo’s sandaled feet slipped on gravels and the
leader perked up at that small sound, staring back up at Sanzo and appearing to
dismiss whatever it was that had caught its attention.
Sanzo gritted his teeth and sneaked a look to his right. The circle was
getting uncomfortably close. He kicked a few more convenient stones and
branches, hoping for more space to the right. The two wolves nearest him paced
tensely back and forth, deigning to jump back only the necessary small leaps to
avoid getting hit, but refusing to move any further. They stared at him with
unblinking, hungry eyes, their heads coming down as low growls began to vibrate
in their throats.
All right. No more delaying.
As the leader crouched and bared its yellowed fangs, Sanzo wound the
strong hemp rope twice around his left fist, then abruptly aimed up and fired.
The bullet hit his traveling pack that he had pulled up and lodged
firmly at the base of the tree’s main branch. A deafening blast showered the
night air with fiery crimson sparks as the pack of mining explosive detonated.
Sanzo flinched despite himself, and the wolf pack jumped as one with startled yips.
The blast almost hid the ominous creaking of a heavy branch surrendering
to gravity. With half of its base blown up, a branch twice again the width of a
man collapsed to the ground, implacably pulling down the rope tied around it.
The loose rope snapped taut with an audible crack, hissing with friction as the
hemp abraded against the makeshift pivot of the split trunk. The loops around
Sanzo’s fist dug into his skin as his arm and body was yanked up with a painful
wrench.
The scene swung dizzily below him as he was pulled up in a twisting
spiral, passing perilously close to the wildly snarling wolves. A good thing
they were themselves disorganized and far too unnerved to be interested in him.
The branch hit the ground with a ponderous crash, scattering the wolves, and
Sanzo was left hanging six meters in the air, swinging slowly back and forth.
He clamped hard on incipient nausea and peered down.
The pack was in shock. The leader was the only one still with fire in
its guts, pacing right below Sanzo and emitting harsh growls as it looked up at
the unreachable prey. Another wolf slunk near the edge of the forest, tail
tucked in between its legs. Both of them were out of range, but the rest… they
were milling confusedly near where Sanzo had been standing before, nervously
eyeing the burning branch and the falling sparks, bodies quivering and tensed
to spring away. One of them was standing right on top of the loose patch of
dirt that the leader had sniffed at. It looked down in puzzlement and started
absently pawing the ground.
Sanzo’s lips stretched in a fierce grin that made him look uncannily
just like the killers below. Then he aimed and shot the wolf’s head. The bullet
punched right through the skull and out the other side, slamming into the dirt.
The ground exploded in one huge blast as all the remaining mines he had
buried detonated as one. Sanzo felt the pressure wave hit him like a giant fist
and he was slammed bodily against the trunk, his grunt of pain lost in the
roar. He clung grimly to his gun, refusing to ditch it and clutch the rope even
when the momentum reversed and he swung crazily like a pendulum. Blood dripped
down his left arm where the rough hemp cut into his palm and his shoulder
muscle screamed from the abuse. Sanzo gritted his teeth and rode the rough ride
blind, hiding his face into the fold of his robe as baking heat rose up in a
wave to envelope him.
When the worst of it had passed, he peered down cautiously. Directly
below him was a wide, shallow crater where the explosives had blown up the
earth. Clumps of smoldering fur and unrecognizable bits lay around the radius
of the crater. Here and there small fires burned fitfully on tough barks of the
oak trunk and the nearest bushes, but none looked strong enough to start anything
serious. No sign anywhere of the cowardly wolf and the grey-muzzled leader was
beginning to slink away dazedly, apparently thrown off by the sudden turn of
events.
Sanzo unlocked his lungs, forcing himself to take in the seared air that
smelled faintly of burning flesh. He could handle one wolf. The muzzle of
Soureijuu lifted from his side and the wolf leader looked up suddenly, golden
eyes meeting Sanzo’s purple gaze as it stared into its death.
A spike of pure cold was his only warning as his senses screamed at him.
His strung-out nerves actually managed to whip back the gun in record time, and
fired off a shot behind him. But he had forgotten the rope and the reaction
swung him wildly, throwing his aim. He got a glimpse of dark body and white claws
streaking through the night at him, and his curse changed into a bitten off cry
as sharp pain sliced into right arm. The blow rocked him back and Sanzo hit the
trunk – saw his attacker hit the ground below and leapt straight up for him. At
the mercy of the treacherous rope, there was no way he could dodge the blow.
Sanzo did the only thing he could. He let go of the rope. Air slashed
where his torso had been a second ago.
He fell the six meters to the ground and hit the crater rolling. Got
knocked about as the crater tipped him down the incline to slam up painfully
against the far side. Sanzo’s vision blackened alarmingly and his
half-breathless curse sounded shaky even to himself. I am sick of getting my
breath knocked out of me. He forced himself to scramble half-blind up the
crater edge and stood up.
The youkai was watching him from across the crater.
Shoureijuu was up and ready before Sanzo even consciously thought about
it. He blinked back involuntary tears as tendrils of acrid smoke wisping up from
the ground got into his eyes. Bits of still-burning bushes and a few tongues of
flame licking up the oak bark provided nominal illumination – a wavering,
sullen red glow that conceal as much as expose.
This was the first time Sanzo saw his opponent’s face. All in all, he
was rather surprised at how human the youkai looked. Everything about the other
so far had been savagely beast-like, he had vaguely expected to see a physical
shape that matched the actions. But the one before him could have passed easily
for a human if not for the green cat-like slit of his eyes. The face was
sharp-boned with narrow chin, not altogether unpleasant to look at. Broad
shoulders and torso, dressed in supple brown leathers and fur-lined short
jacket and boots. Wisps of brown hair escaped from furred hat pulled low,
covering the tips of his ears. He looked like any hunter or trapper who had
just stepped out of the forest, except for the right sleeve hanging
disconcertingly empty and pinned back to his wide belt.
Sanzo took a breath. Two. Sneered. “So, here you are again. Would you
like me to blow away the rest of your limbs?”
The youkai gazed at him impassively. Then he slowly grinned, revealing
two rows of razor-sharp, filed teeth. Just like that, the mild veneer of humanity
was shed like a too-thin skin and the predator, the man-killer, gazed out from
the façade. Sanzo’s breath hissed between gritted teeth. Despite knowing
better, the effect was still like a punch to the gut – not unlike seeing a
placid dog suddenly turned rabid under your hands. When the youkai spoke, it
was that same low, half-growled whisper that fairly rippled with menace.
“Confident little monk, aren’t you?” The youkai inclined his head
pointedly at Sanzo. “The way you’re standing, I would think that some of that
confidence is nothing but… aah, ‘hot air coming out of your ass’?” The youkai’s
grin widened. It was like watching a shark smile.
Sanzo felt himself flush at having his own words so many weeks ago
thrown back at him. The youkai was right, he was still feeling the effect of
that fall. He sternly reminded his legs to behave and locked less than steady
knees together. Right now, he gave himself fifty-fifty chance of nailing the
bastard and that was not encouraging odds. So keep him talking.
“Why kill humans? You know that we would hunt you down.”
The youkai cocked his head at that. “Why… no particular reason. Because
I wanted to.”
“What was that supposed to mean?” Sanzo snapped. The youkai looked at him thoughtfully. Gods. It was eerie as hell how the thing looked so normal, like anyone you could have passed on the street and not looked twice at.
“Ever tasted human flesh, little monk?”
On second thought, maybe not. “Sick bastard…,” he hissed.
Another death-head grin. “Thought not. Can’t tell you what you’re
missing out, boy. All that tender meat… especially the women’s.” The sense of
amusement grew as Sanzo struggled to keep his face impassive, to not let the
thing goaded him into stupid fury. “But the men put up better fight. Much more
fun to hunt down, to play with. Like you.”
Shoureijuu jumped in his hands, the bang sounding muted in his abused
ears. But the youkai was gone. Sanzo threw himself into a side roll, coming
into a crouch and searching frantically for the youkai.
“You killed my wolf brothers.”
Sanzo started. The
voice faded in and out, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere at once.
“Nice trick,” he whispered to himself. He could not hit what he could not see,
and the voice trick made it impossible to aim based on hearing only. The youki
was no help at all, dispersed around the area the way it had been during their
first encounter.
“You took away my hand.”
But if the youkai was
talking, then he was not attacking. And if he was not attacking, he was giving
Sanzo valuable time. There was another trick up his sleeve that he doubted the
youkai knew. He certainly used it seldom enough, preferring to rely on
Shoureijuu’s quick result rather than relying on a weapon that would leave him
vulnerable for the precious seconds he needed to trigger it. But one thing in
its favor – this weapon did not need aiming. And the bastard would
certainly not be prepared for the Maten-kyomon.
“How do you think I should punish
you, boy?”
Keep talking. Sanzo edged his way carefully towards the
center of the clearing, letting the youkai think he aimed to put his back to
the huge tree. Even as he moved, he took one deep breath. As he exhaled slowly,
he let all the extraneous thoughts and emotions flowed out of his mind, out of
his being. His lips moved in a silent chant, ancient words that most people
thought held the power of the kyomon. But he knew better. The words were
nothing but a tool, a focus and an outlet for the mind. Where the real power
lay.
“Used to be a hunter, boy. Used to
live in a village, over the mountains. Living with the sheep, just another one
of the flock.”
An image of black,
bottomless pool floated in his mind, perfect concentric ripples undulating
across its surface. He focused on it, smoothing the rippling water with his
mind, sinking deeper into the meditative trance required to touch the power in
the sutra. Monks in his order spent all their lives perfecting their meditative
skills, yet none of them came close to what he could do. It was part of what
made him Genjo Sanzo.
“Until I killed one of them in an
accident. A brawl over nothing. A piece of drunken trash.”
Deeper, deeper. The
mocking voice washed over his consciousness, but it had lost the power to
effect him. The ripples were slowing, the pool’s surface smoothing into an
obsidian mirror, disturbed only by gentle wavelets. Deeper, deeper. Warmth
began to beckon, just out of reach. He imagined the bottom of the pool
beginning to glow with the warmth, light reaching up from unfathomable depth.
“But his death was not a waste. It woke me up. Woke me to what I am.
What I am born to be.”
The light had spread
over half the surface, its warmth bathing him from inside out. The kind of
warmth that he had always associated with his mentor. The warmth felt like
coming home. He stretched towards it. The glow brushed against his mind,
welcoming.
“I killed them all, you know. Down
to the last mewling babe. That was refreshing.”
The mirror wavered.
The light shone out of reach.
“Human limbs were so easy to tear
off. Fragile. So breakable.”
The mirror fractured.
A brush of wind ruffling his hair, warm breath caressing his right ear.
“And after that – I simply could not stop.”
A hammer blow clipped
the side of his head and shattered his focus and balance. Found himself on the
ground, surfacing up (floundering back) to a body that fit like an ill-matched
shell. Merely human, once again.
Sanzo managed to
scramble to his feet, not quite steady, not quite in control of his limbs. The
sense of disorientation was a damning weakness, liable to turn fatal if he
could not come back to himself fast enough. No time to curse the failure. He
would need all his resources to get out of this one.
Damn it, this was
why I don’t like to use the kyomon. Sanzo shook his ringing head and tried to force his eyes to focus on the
youkai, standing in front of him. So arrogant, so sure of his victory.
Trouble was, it was
beginning to look like he might be right.
One on one in a
physical fight, Sanzo was no match for the youkai, and they both knew it. His
human reflexes were simply not fast enough to deal with a youkai’s. The Maten-kyomon
had the power, but it was useless unless he had time to recite it – time his
opponent was not going to give him.
Still, he was damned
if he would go down without a fight.
The youkai met Sanzo’s
icy glare with palpable amusement. When Sanzo’s grip tightened on his gun, the
youkai laughed out loud.
And the space around
Sanzo came alive with barbed limbs, whipping around him and tangling up his
limbs before he could even see them clearly.
He cried out when the
limbs constricted around his chest, his arms and legs, the barbs digging into
his flesh like a hundred jabbing knives. Tried instinctively to tug his limbs
loose and felt tears of pain sprung to his eyes when the barbs tore along his
flesh. A yank and his legs flew out from under him, and he hit the ground hard.
Sanzo blinked the
tears away furiously, staring up at the sky and hearing the frantic pounding of
his heart. His limbs were stretched flat on the ground, spread-eagled. A
shadowy outline moved from above his field of vision, blocking the view. It
shifted closer and something wet dripped on his face.
A break in the clouds
let through faint moonlight. Sanzo blinked and finally saw yellow fangs. Two
rows of razor-sharp incisors and glowing yellow eyes. A rumbling growl
reverberated through the space between them and he shuddered away from the
unnatural monstrosity above him. Flinched as another droplet of warm saliva
fell on his cheek.
“Liked him?”
The youkai’s body was
outlined against the dark, then his legs were crushed against the ground as the
youkai straddled him.
“What the hell is this
thing?” Sanzo forced the words through gritted teeth, fighting against the
revulsion of having his personal space being so completely invaded. Fighting
against the swelling panic of being so completely helpless.
The youkai captured
his chin, long claws hovering distressingly near his eyes, and tilted his head
back.
Sanzo saw a body
bulging in muscles, covered in brown fur with a spattering of grey-white. Four
normal-looking limbs and a bushy tail. Except where the smooth sleek back
should be, long barbed limbs sprouted like spider’s legs, limbs that so
thoroughly ensnared him. Despite the deformation and the almost tripled size,
Sanzo recognized the wolf leader that had been the last of the pack.
“What did you do to
it?” Sanzo whispered, appalled.
“Nothing he would not
eventually come into,” his opponent replied easily. A hand stroked the
distorted muzzle and the creature leant its head into the petting, a sound that
might have signified pleasure rumbling in its throat.
“He had the
shape-changing blood, far back in his ancestry. Dormant, until I lent him a
little help. If he was just a little bit stronger, he might even have the
strength to change into human form. Be one of us. But he didn’t.”
“You changed him into
this monster.”
“Monster?” The youkai
smiled. “I think he’s lovely. Certainly very useful, and very loyal to me.” The
grip around Sanzo’s chin tightened, the claws digging into his check and
drawing beads of blood. “You have no idea how much trouble I went through to
change him, change them all. And you went and kill almost all of them, before
they could even show you what they can do. You cheated.”
“Too bad I missed
one,” Sanzo grounded out. “Next time I’ll do better.” The claws shifted down,
closed around his throat, and squeezed. Sanzo fought to draw breath, but the
claws were like vice clamps. His lungs struggled painfully for a breath that
never came. His vision was starting to gray out before the claws loosened
slightly, allowing him to draw a little bit of air. Too little to be
sufficient, and every single thin thread was a painful exertion.
Warm air brushed over
his face, smelling the faintest bit of carrion. “Smart mouth,” the whispered
words seemed to come from a long tunnel, something secondary to his efforts to
breathe. “I’d like to say that I admire guts in a human, but the truth is, I
prefer eating them.”
Nausea roiled in his
stomach and he must have struggled in reaction, because the claws tightened
around him again and he choked in that stronghold. The youkai leant down on his
grip and for a long moment the only thing in his world was the agonizing burn
in his chest and the crushing pressure against his throat.
When he came back to
awareness, the only thing he could focus on was the sweet air burning down his
throat. His chest heaved against the restraining limb as he gulped greedily at
what was once taken for granted.
“Welcome back.”
Damn.
“I’ve got to learn to
be more careful. Kept forgetting how frail you humans are.” Sanzo felt the
youkai shifting his seat across his limbs. “Wouldn’t do to have you dead too
fast. Where would be the fun in that?” The youkai leant down against him, their
groins brushed together, and that was when Sanzo felt the very unmistakable
evidence of arousal.
Oh, shit. Not this.
“Son of a bitch,” he
grated, panic of a different kind starting to well up. He bucked against the
weight on top of him and struggled blindly against the bindings, even when he
knew that it was useless. All he managed to accomplish was further tearing up
his wounds, hot blood trickling down his flesh to the accompaniment of fresh
burning pain.
The youkai seemed more
amused than anything else. “Don’t worry. Your… virtue, is safe with me. I don’t
enjoy fucking men, even if you are very pretty.” A caress along his cheekbone
that had his skin crawling in horrified revulsion. “But I do enjoy… taking
humans apart. Especially one I’ve stalked and anticipated for so long. You’ve
shown me pain – the kind that robbed a body of thought, the kind that robbed
everything from you and reduced you into just… being. Into your
essence.”
The clawed fingers
held his face tightly, precluding movement. And the mouth lowered to touch his
lips lightly, almost like a benediction.
“I’m going to return
you the favor. And you will give me pleasure.”
Oh, great. The bastard
was not going to fuck him, but he was going to torture him to death and
jack off while doing it.
This is not happening.
No way in hell.
If he were going to
die, then he would bring the bastard with him. The Maten-kyomon did not
need to be recited audibly in order to tap its power. All that was really
needed was the focused concentration – necessary to prime the mind into
touching a power more than mortal in origin.
It would be difficult
to concentrate while the youkai was killing him. It might be impossible, and it
would certainly be too late. But if revenge were all that he could have, then
by hell he would have it.
At least this way the
bastard would not be around to rip up more people. He could not get the one
that killed his master, but he would get this one.
Oshou-sama… I’m sorry. So sorry I’m still not strong enough.