Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
What the fuck did he put on those braids tonight?
Finally, the Scales had hit the front of Akiro's ranks like a wave. The red, black, and gray of the Scales swallowed the enemy line whole—one moment there was open grass between the two forces, the next there wasn't.
And then bodies folded into each other at the point of impact, masks and faces blurring together until it was impossible to tell where our people ended and Akiro's began.
It was like watching a fucked up painting come to life, with each stroke of violence creating a new masterpiece. There was this sick beauty in the clash of colors and chaos, in the symphony of screams, gunshots, and steel hitting steel.
In the death of it all, hitting both sides.
Ghosts rose into the night air.
Dozens of ghosts. They climbed out of their falling bodies on the field as rippling smoke in human shape. Wispy. Pale. Carrying the wounds that had ended their life.
A Scale lifted out of his own body with his throat opened wide. The wound stayed with him as he rose. The wet red of it had become a thin silver line of mist that hung at his neck like a torn necklace.
One of Akiro's men climbed out of his corpse with the left side of his face gone. His ghost looked around for the missing half. His right eye blinked.
A man rose without a chest. The hole in him was wide enough that the moonlight passed straight through where his heart had been, and on the other side of the hole I could see the field continuing through his body.
Another rose with a hand missing.
Another with both legs gone, his ghost climbing upward in a slow seated posture as if his body had forgotten he no longer had anything to sit on.
A Scale ghost with bullet holes across his vest drifted up with the holes still steaming. Six of them. He looked down at himself, counted them slowly with his eyes, and then turned his face toward the moon.
The new ghosts continued to rise.
So many.
The air above the field filled with wispy figures floating.
Then the right side of the field erupted.
Someone must have stepped on a mine.
The explosion lifted a column of dirt, grass, and red mist twenty feet into the air. The shockwave hit my chest a half-second later, and the earth under my boots punched once, hard.
Bodies tumbled.
Masks flew.
A man came down out of the cloud with his arm pointing in the wrong direction.
A second explosion went off on the left.
Dirt rained sideways across the field. Smoke billowed thick and gray and ate the moonlight in a wide circle. Through the haze I caught the brief silhouettes of men diving for cover or being thrown by the blast.
Fuck.
Reo cursed beside me. "Two mines down. Eight to go."
A third explosion blew open the grass on the far right.
A fourth went off near the west of the field.
The ghosts must be real.
Yet, the living fought on, and the grass beneath them became trampled open and the dark green soon shimmered wet with red and the scents of sweat, death, and blood rode the wind.
I could now taste the war in the back of my throat.
Then, another person stepped on a mine and the blast threw bodies into the air, and the ghosts of the men inside those bodies rose too—the dead and the debris parting in arcs in the dark sky.
No. Those were Scales that died.
My chest tightened.
I searched around for the Fangs and Claws and caught a flash of pink hair through the smoke.
Okay. Kaoru is still alive. Thank you.
Then, I captured a gleam of white and swinging hooked braids taking men out through the dust.
Rin.
But Toma. I could not see Toma. The all-red assassin had been on the right side of the field where the first explosion went off.
A shudder of fear ran through me.
Where is he? Come on.
I had lost Daisuke too and had no way to find him in this smoke.
Please be okay. If you two turn into ghosts. . .then. . .that might be the end of me. . .
Kaede was near the plane’s stairs, battling with Mr. White. The staircase had just warped from the blast.
Yoichi was a streak of gold in the center, tearing men apart with his bare hands. Blood coated his fingers and arms. His silver fang charm glowed bright in the moonlight, something I’d never seen happen to him before.
Where is Satoshi?
For some odd reason, thinking of him made me wonder about the gifts that he’d gotten Nyomi’s grandmother.
I should have asked what he got? Just. . .in case. . .
I shook my head.
No. Don’t think that way. He’ll live and then I’ll find out.
The most fucked up thing about war was death, and the fact that war always left scars that outlasted the battles.