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)
I am getting tired.
The right engine compensated. The plane rocked sideways on its wheels but held. The propellers on the working side spun harder.
Goryū had been weakening men since the first mines were placed. He had frozen Akiro twice. He had scouted the plane's interior. He had poured fire on an engine.
I was learning that every use would cost him energy, and I could feel the exhaustion now—a thinning in the bond, a dimming of the gold behind his eyes, a heaviness in my own legs that belonged to him.
Rest, Goryū.
Yes, brother.
I blinked, and for some reason my heart ached.
My dragon-shadow broke apart above the tree line. The black smoke dissolved into the night. The gold-fire eyes dimmed and vanished. The dark sky closed behind him as if he had never existed.
And then, the left engine caught again. The propeller resumed its full speed. The plane straightened on its wheels.
Both engines synchronized. The twin roar locked into a single deep hum that vibrated across the field and through my sternum.
It was the treacherous sound of a plane about to move.
No.
Akiro yelled at his men. “Stop them from getting into the plane! Hurry!”
Then, Akiro looked down at me. “Until next time, Kenji!”
The fucking bastard turned and ran inside.
No. Fuck that! There can’t be a next time! Everything must end tonight! My Tiger bled!!
Even more soldiers poured from the hatch to block us. Fresh men, armed, body-armored, screaming orders. They were going to push us off the stairs, retract the ramp, seal the hatch, and take off.
If we lost this staircase, we lost Akiro and the Fox. And there was no bringing them back. Every helicopter had been grounded. Every antiaircraft gun was destroyed. If this plane left the island, the war continued for more days, weeks, maybe even fucking months, and our dead had died for nothing.
I turned to Hiro and the others. "They're going to pull the stairs and seal the door! We cannot let them push us off! If we lose this staircase, we lose the war!”
Then I heard it.
A bolt popped free from the staircase housing.
The metal groaned beneath our feet.
I roared, “FIGHT!!”
Chapter seventeen
Battle Royale
Kenji
The bolt hit the grass below us with a ping that I heard over the engines.
A second bolt sheared free. The staircase dropped two inches on the left side and every man on it grabbed for the railing.
I holstered one gun and seized the rail. "Up! Now! Everyone!"
Reo drew his blades and threw himself up the stairs ahead of us. The Tsuchigumo mask cut through the cluster of soldiers at the top like a black knife through paper. His first strike opened a man’s neck from ear to ear.
Blood sprayed.
His second took an arm. His third drove a blade through a vest and the chest behind it.
The twins flanked Reo. One went left and the other went right, but their matching kitsune masks made them a single creature with four arms and two blades. They killed in tandem.
One opened Akiro’s guard. The other drove the strike home. Their masks gleamed black with golden teeth bared in identical grins.
Hiro and I pushed up behind them. My silver guns barked in both hands, shooting any target not too close to Reo and the twins. Each shot found center mass. Each man fell backward into the men behind him.
Then flames came.
Men kept pouring.
The engine kept rolling.
I roared, “We will not let them leave this fucking island tonight!”
Hiro fought beside me with his blade in one hand and his pistol in the other. He shot a man in the throat and slashed another across the chest in the same motion, and the Hannya mask never turned. His eyes stayed forward. His body moved like a deadly machine.
More men came from behind us on the ground. They hit our rear. My guards behind me turned to face them.
And then the Claws appeared through the smoke—Toma, Daisuke, Kaede—and crashed into the soldiers at the base of the stairs. The Fangs were there too—Kaoru, Satoshi, Yoichi, and Rin. Blood covered all of their masks.
The staircase became a vertical kill corridor.
Enemies above.
Us between.
Enemies below.
The metal steps slicked with blood and fuel. Shell casings bounced down the stairs in a brass cascade.
Men fell off the railing in both directions.
Then the plane shuddered.
Goddamn it!
The wheels lifted a foot from the grass, taking the staircase with it.
Shit!
The staircase lurched beneath my boots. The angle shifted—two degrees, three, five—and the railing vibrated so hard the bolts screamed.
OH FUCK!
The plane rolled forward and then desperately lifted three feet off the ground.
“Hurry!” Every step I took moved the metal under me.
The entire ramp swung sideways with the plane's slow rotation and the bodies of the men Reo and the twins had killed slid down the steps and fell off the edge into open air.
The plane was now five feet in the air, and so were we.