Ricardo didn’t let those emotions show. She only told Sham about them privately, with a hint of pride.
Central Park
“Not good… This is not good…”
Shaft—one of the Shams—had heard Ricardo’s bragging, and he was turning pale at the idea that the situation was about to get worse.
O-on top of all this, Christopher is on his way over? And he’s already wound up?
He ground his teeth. He was staring at something.
A chaotic battle.
The situation was so confused that there were no other words to describe it.
✦ ✦ ✦
It had started a few minutes earlier.
The bear’s appearance had put Salomé in a good mood, but as he’d switched off the sound system, he’d been puzzled by the people who’d arrived with it.
The first ones to get a handle on the situation had been Graham, who was brandishing his wrench on the roof of the car—and Sickle and a few other members of Larva who’d fought him in Chicago.
“Wha…?! What’s that guy doing here?!” Sickle asked.
Frank squeaked in fear, and a shudder ran through his big frame, while Chi looked sour.
Meanwhile, Graham looked around, confused. Then he screamed and pointed his enormous wrench at a whiskered man. “Aaah!”
Sensing that a fight was brewing, the man had put some distance between himself and Sickle’s group. In other words, it was the Poet.
“It’s him! The god of word-souls! What are you doing here?!”
“……”
The Poet hadn’t expected to be singled out first, and below his hat, his eyes widened.
Salomé frowned at him. “…Are these friends of yours, Poet?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Meanwhile, Ladd had stepped out of the car and was rolling his shoulders to loosen them up. “You know that fella with the beard?” he asked Graham.
“What joy… Let me tell you a joyful story! Ladd, you are looking upon a god! The god of words, who governs their souls! Once you hear his voice, a breeze blows through the landscape of your mind, the wide world bursts into song, the wind rages, the songbirds dance, volcanoes erupt, taxes go up, and my heart is down for the count!”
✦ ✦ ✦
As if in response, the Poet was explaining Graham to Salomé. “He is power. He is chaos. He is order. He is Good. If Fate truly is a wheel, then human ties are the door of an abandoned house surrounded by the ruts it has left behind! At times they lead to purgatory; at others, they beckon souls to an endless wasteland… Flee! Fly! The wheel turns, on and on! Alas, the closed ruts can never escape Fate… Thus life is carried to death and converted to life…”
“…Sickle, tell me what he said.”
At Salomé’s request, Sickle clicked his tongue irritably. “He says we’ve met this freak before. He’s dangerous, so run for it.”
“Run? Ha-ha-ha. Poet, Poet. Has your brain finally gone as funny as your tongue? ‘Run’? With all these Larva members here with us?” Salomé shook his head, as if the idea were ridiculous.
However, Sickle’s next words made his expression freeze.
“I’ll keep him busy. While I do, the rest of you run. Give up on catching the bear for now.”
She took a step forward, and the members of Larva exchanged looks.
“Wait, wait, wait, Sickle. Are you mocking the results of my research? They include you, Sickle. Your fighting skills alone are far beyond that of any ordinary person. At the right distance, I believe you could take down three shotgun-wielding mafiosi without sustaining any damage.”
“I see. That makes explaining simple, then. That guy’s a hell of a lot more dangerous than three shotguns.” As she spoke, Sickle was looking at her ankle, her face twisted with the memory of past humiliation. “He dislocated my leg joints with that wrench. In the middle of combat. He was fighting Frank, Chi, and Leeza at the same time, and he still…!”
✦ ✦ ✦
Ladd was listening to their conversation, obviously entertained. He turned to Graham. “Oho, I see. Yeah, the guy with the beard seems like your type. I want to introduce him to that moron Smith; I bet that’d be fun. I can’t wait to see how that conversation pans out.”
“The god of word-souls and Mr. Smith?! Terrifying… Let me tell you a terrifying story. If we combine the lunatic landscape of Smith’s mind with the god of word-souls, what will become of the world? Will all the damage stay inside Smith? No, it will not! I bet a bunch of insane word-souls will turn into bullets and shoot out at the rest of us! Stars that churn like a sandstorm! Wind that blazes like lava! Endless, impossibly bright darkness! This is bad, Ladd—if we let those two meet, they’ll destroy the world!”
✦ ✦ ✦
“What’s with that guy?! He just looks like a drunk to me!”
“He’s stone-cold sober. He doesn’t drink or do any kind of drugs—his brain is always busted like that. That’s what’s so scary about him. Even if we all jump him at once, we gotta be smart about it, or he’ll make us regret starting a fight.”
Sickle’s words perplexed her companions.
“That’s ridiculous. It’s not as if he’s the redheaded hitman!” Salomé shouted, remembering the incident with Felix—Claire Stanfield—just the other day.
Sickle wasn’t acquainted with Claire, so the remark went right over her head, but—
✦ ✦ ✦
“…Huh?”
That response came from someone Salomé hadn’t expected.
“Hey, you over there. Fella. Did you just say ‘redheaded hitman’?”
“Who’s that man? Oh, he was on the watch list, wasn’t he…?” Taking documents out of his coat and flipping through them with a practiced hand, Salomé began to read what was written there. “Is he this ‘Ladd Russo’? And the one with the wrench is Graham Specter…” He sounded dubious.
Then he noticed something.
The Runorata Family’s twin guards had gotten off their motorbikes and were approaching the enormous bear.
“I see. They’d found it already, had they? Still, it was we who managed to lure it here. I believe we may consider our experiment a success.” As Salomé murmured, his interest in Ladd Russo had nearly evaporated—but then Salomé realized that Ladd seemed to have physically evaporated.
“Hmm…?”
The next instant, something hit Salomé from below. Out of a blind spot, the heel of a palm had struck his throat. Salomé grunted as the assailant clutched his neck and hoisted him high into the air with only one arm.
“Don’t you ignore me. I’ll get lonely, see?” The voice had a vicious edge to it.
Until a second ago, Ladd had been five yards away. In the moment Salomé had taken his eyes off him, he’d closed the distance and hit him with a surprise attack.
“Why you—! Let go of Salomé!”
The members of Larva had relaxed upon seeing the Runorata guards, believing reinforcements had arrived. They hadn’t been prepared for the sudden change in the situation, but now they rushed Ladd.
Before they got there, though, a silver disc blocked their way.
Or rather, Graham Specter was spinning his wrench so fast it looked like a solid disc, and he was using it as a shield to keep them at bay.
“Let me tell you a sad, sad story…”
Swinging around a shield that could easily become a lethal weapon, Graham nearly howled with excitement. “My brother Ladd is giving a lecture! A lesson in life and death… That’s his theory of education. He ain’t no teacher, but he teaches people anyway. I could never do that… Which means, well, you know, and so on, and so forth! So stay out of his way, wouldja?”
As Graham ended his terrifically self-absorbed speech, a member of Larva lunged at him—