“You don’t know the first thing about him, you wretched demon!” he cried, trembling with rage. “Don’t drag your filth over his memories!”
“Masachika! It’s okay.” Sanemi put a hand on his shoulder, and its gentle warmth sapped the fire out of Masachika.
“Sanemi …”
“What’s with that look?” Sanemi gave him a crooked grin. “I swear, you come from a different world. I can’t count how many times people have jabbered on with their pet theories about me like they had some amazing insight. That includes my own dad. You can’t take it seriously.” His voice softened. “I’ve never thought I was pitiful.”
Masachika nodded wordlessly. Somehow, his friend’s unruffled reaction made the demon’s cruelty even worse. His jaw clenched.
“Anyway.” Sanemi turned the tip of his Nichirin Sword on the now one-armed demon. “Sorry to disappoint you, but you had me wrong from the start. I don’t need an angel of mercy, and I can see the stinking demon you really are.”
“I suppose this means you won’t play nicely.” Ubume smiled. “It really is too bad. I think we’d make a lovely mother and son.”
“Shut up,” Masachika spat.
“It’s over,” Sanemi told her. “With your illusions gone, I can hack you to bits.”
“Perhaps you can,” Ubume said. With a graceful motion, she scooped her arm off the floor. She pressed it lightly to the stump. In the blink of an eye, flesh surged from the seam and fused the limb back in place. The speed of her regeneration made Masachika shudder. This was faster than any demon he’d encountered before.
“But what does that matter?” she mused. “I can always put myself back together. I’m a demon. What about you mortals?”
“We’ll just have to slice you up faster than you can heal,” Sanemi said with a cold smile. He leapt.
First form, second form, third form, fourth form, fifth form … He danced around the room, firing off one technique after another. Ubume deflected some, reeled back from others. Masachika raised his own sword to aid his friend.
“Masachika!” Sanemi shouted. He signaled with his eyes.
“Huh?” Masachika turned in the direction Sanemi indicated and saw the children lying feebly on the tatami mats. Grasping his friend’s meaning, he grabbed them and moved them away from the fight. He propped them against a wall. Whatever happened, he would keep them safe.
The boy was about twelve years old, the girl perhaps not yet ten. It made Masachika’s heart ache to see how frail they were.
“We’re going to save you,” he reassured them. “Hang in there.”
The boy looked at him with sunken eyes. “M...mister...”
Despite himself, Masachika jumped. The boy had seemed too far gone to speak.
“You’ll...help … us?”
“I will,” he promised.
“Thanks …” Tears slid from the corners of the boy’s eyes.
It hurt to see how thin the boy was, how his cheeks had faded to ash. The girl next to him stared blankly at nothing, as if the spirit had been leeched from her body. Masachika gritted his teeth so hard he heard them begin to crack. How could even a demon do this to little kids? An almost crazed fury rose in his heart.
“You two stay here,” he said. “Don’t move.” He gripped the hilt of his Nichirin Sword.
Masachika was enraged.
Between attacks, Sanemi glanced with concern at his friend fighting beside him. The Masachika he knew was cheerful and simple as a summer breeze. Extreme emotions seemed beyond him. This was the first time Sanemi had seen naked anger on his face. The demon had set Masachika off in exactly the wrong way.
At the same time, it didn’t seem that Masachika was letting anger cloud his judgement or blind him to his surroundings. Sanemi worried that Masachika would let his feelings take over and waste his strength. But the movements of his blade were, if anything, sharper than ever. He picked up on Sanemi’s most subtle movements to anticipate which technique his friend would use next and respond in kind. Their movements flowed in sync like a steady, implacable wind.
I guess even at our worst, we’re still brothers. The corners of Sanemi’s lips turned up the slightest bit.
“Sanemi!” Masachika cried. “The head! Drive at her head!”
“I’ll take it clean off her shoulders,” Sanemi promised. “Monster!”
“Gracious!” Visibly struggling to dodge their coordinat-ed attack, Ubume grimaced in irritation. “You really are stubborn children.” She danced close to Sanemi. Her leg shot out.
Sanemi leapt back to evade the attack, but her kick grazed his Adam’s apple. He flinched just before the next blow caught him in the solar plexus. For an instant, the wind was knocked out of him, and he went flying. He slammed into the tatami floor and gulped for air.
“Sanemi!!” Masachika cried as he lashed out at Ubume with his sword. “Wind Breathing: Third Form! Clear Storm Wind Tree!”
Ubume couldn’t escape his blade. She took the hit but kicked out at Masachika’s head. He dodged just in time, but the skin on his temple split and oozed blood. He staggered back, concussed. The demon stabbed a hand at his undefended torso. He avoided a direct strike, but her claws grazed his side and dug into his flesh. He screamed and twisted in pain.
Ubume licked every drop of Masachika’s blood from her hand, clearly relishing it. “I’ve eaten so many tasty children,” she purred. “Some of them even had rare blood. Each meal makes me stronger.”
Groaning, Masachika collapsed to his knees on the tatami. He tried to use breath control to stop himself from bleeding out.
Ubume reached for his neck.
“Masachika!!” Sanemi leapt in with sword swinging. “Wind Breathing: Fourth—”
In the midst of his attack, the wound in his throat opened up again. Fresh blood gushed forth. He doubled over in a coughing fit. He’d been injured worse than he’d thought. Gobbets of blood splashed on the tatami mats, dyeing them red.
Ubume stopped. She quivered from head to toe. “What is this?” she murmured. Her gaze wandered, searching, and came to rest on the blood spattered around Sanemi. Her eyes widened greedily.
“Why, you have rare blood, child.” A flush rose to her pale cheeks, and her eyes grew dreamy. “Quite rare, at that. Worth the blood of a hundred ordinary mortals... No, more! Much more!”
Buoyed by sudden passion, Ubume glided to Sanemi. She seemed entirely transformed. She no longer had eyes for the enraged Masachika.
“Ah, Sanemi.” As she lapped at his blood, the kindly smile spread across her red lips and flushed cheeks. “We truly are meant to be. Sweet child, I love you. I adore you. Sanemi, I’ll never hurt you again. Come, be with—”
Suddenly, sheclutched her head and shuddered, nearly crumpling to the ground.
“What...? Why...? I can’t...”
Ha! Sanemi wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. Can’t handle my flavor of blood, can you?
From experience, he’d learned that the stronger the demon, the more powerful the effect of his marechi. It ought to be very potent to a demon of Lower Rank One.
“Blood...so strong...but how...?” Ubume panted, still cradling her head in her hands.
Sanemi couldn’t let this chance slip away. He gritted his teeth against the pain of his injuries and hurled himself at the demon. The move landed with full force. Knife-like gusts of wind raced toward the demon with the power of sandstorms.
Screeching, Ubume pitched forward at an extreme angle, narrowly evading the attack.
Masachika had stopped the bleeding on his side, and now he readied his sword again. “This ends here,” he snarled. “Go apologize to Sae and all the other kids you’ve killed!”
Sanemi watched as his friend’s blade carved a flawless arc in the air.
“Wind Breathing: Third Form! Clear Storm Wind—”
At that distance, Masachika was sure to take the demon’s head off. Sanemi readied himself for victory.
Then he heard a blood-curdling scream. “Stop!”
The little girl stood in front of Ubume, holding out trembling arms to protect her from Masachika. She looked up with tears in her eyes.
“Don’t hurt my mommy,” she begged.
“Wha—?” In the space of a heartbeat, Masachika deflected his attack away from the girl. The blades of wind missed her by a hair.
Masachika was knocked off balance. His breathing fell a heartbeat out of sync. The demon took advantage of this brief slip to attack, tossing the girl aside like a doll.
Focused on saving the girl, Masachika had been forced to drop his own defenses. The demon’s arm plunged into his gut. He shuddered and coughed up fresh blood.
“You should have cut the child down,” the demon told him.
Masachika could only grunt. The Nichirin Sword fell from his hand. His body followed, hitting the ground with a sick thud. The demon watched him fall with cold eyes. “Foolish child.”
Sanemi’s sword sliced soundlessly through her neck. Her head tumbled to the tatami floor.
From the depths of Sanemi’s crushed throat came the howl of a wild animal. He was drowning in an anger with no outlet, an emptiness that seemed impossible.
The demon’s head still bore its false smile when, along with its fallen body, it vanished into thin air.
The Kakushi arrived soon after the battle to whisk the children away into their care. They treated Sanemi’s injuries, but Masachika, despite regaining consciousness, was beyond medical help. All they could do was make him as comfortable as possible in the demon’s house.