Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 154368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 617(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 617(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
We hit the orchestra pit.
I landed on a violin. The neck shattered beneath my boots. The strings snapped upward.
Hiro crashed through a music stand beside me, breaking it under his feet.
Reo landed on a cello and put his foot through it.
The twins dropped in together—one's blade caught a stand on the way down and sent sheet music spiraling into the air like paper birds.
The rest of the Claws landed.
A harp lay on its side nearby, strings still humming.
And then I saw him.
Coming down the center aisle.
My brother.
Akiro.
He was moving fast. His men flanked him on both sides. Twenty of them. Maybe more. All armed and with fox brands on their necks.
He looked up at me, and even from this distance, I could see the smile on his face.
The new puppet.
He thought he was going to win.
In his hands, he held a kusarigama. A chain and sickle. The blade gleamed under the theater lights.
Curved and wicked-sharp.
The chain was maybe ten feet long with a weighted ball at the end.
He spun it once.
The weighted ball smashed into the arm of a chair. Velvet ripped. Wood splintered.
"Kenji!" Akiro called out, and his voice was light and playful. "Welcome, Brother. Come give me a hug."
I pulled the trigger.
The bullet tore forward.
The fire followed.
A column of flame roared down the center aisle, racing over velvet and wood. Seats ignited in a line of orange fury. Heat blasted outward.
Gold leaf blistered along the balcony rails.
Smoke climbed toward the chandelier.
Three of Akiro's men were too slow. The fire hit them chest-height, and they went up screaming.
Flailing.
Rolling across the floor.
The audience devolved into feral chaos. A woman in pearls clawed at a man's face to get past him.
The mass surged toward the exits.
Akiro dodged left. He was already moving toward the far wall. Toward the staircase that led up to the performance boxes.
He's running.
"Hiro! Reo! Clear the floor!" I vaulted out of the orchestra pit, shoulders straining as I hauled myself up in one violent motion.
My boots cleared the edge, and I didn’t break stride.
I leaped up and used the tops of the chairs as stepping stones.
My first landing crushed a chair’s velvet flat beneath my sole. The chair rocked dangerously under my weight, wood groaning in protest, but I pushed off before it could tip.
My boots hit one, two, three, four—each top of the chairs launched me forward.
On the fifth step, a man ducked too late. My coat skimmed the top of his head as he dropped into his wife’s lap.
On the sixth, an armrest splintered beneath my heel, snapping backward into the aisle.
The seventh chair buckled the instant I left it and collapsed into the stampede below.
The theater blurred on either side—red velvet, flashing diamonds, flailing hands, rising smoke—everything collapsing into motion while my focus narrowed to a single point ahead.
Akiro.
He slung people out of his way to escape.
“Brother, where are you going?! I want to give you that hug!” Moving too fast to fall, my body leaned forward, momentum carrying me from one impact to the next before gravity could catch up.
Akiro's men tried to intercept. One climbed over a row to block my path. I shot him in the chest without breaking stride. Fire caught his jacket, and he fell backward into the seats, thrashing and setting another in flames.
Another of Akiro’s henchmen rushed for me.
One of the twins—Aki I think—appeared beside me like a ghost. Aki’s blade flashed, and the man's hand separated from his wrist.
He screamed.
Aki kicked him in the chest, and the man went down.
Yuki appeared on my other side. A man lunged at me from below, grabbing for my ankle. Yuki drove his blade down through the man's shoulder and pinned him to the seat.
The twins stayed with me. Step for step. Like shadows I couldn't shake.
I checked around us.
The whole theater was now a battleground.
Hiro had one of Akiro's men by the throat, using him as a shield while firing over the man's shoulder.
Three.
Four.
Five shots.
Each one found a target.
I checked for Reo and found him to my right.
Blood ran down his face from a cut over his eyebrow. He wiped it with his sleeve and cut a path through the center aisle. His blade moved in tight, efficient arcs.
No wasted motion.
Every cut was a kill or a cripple.
A man swung at him with a pipe. Reo stepped inside the swing, drove his blade up through the man's jaw, and pulled it free before the body hit the ground.
Another came at him with a short sword. Their blades met three times—fast, ringing, sharp—and then Reo feinted left and opened the man from hip to ribs.
The man looked down at himself.
Reo didn't wait for him to fall.
Then more of Akiro's men poured in from the wings of the stage.
Fuck! Another wave!
Toma was fighting in the far aisle. He'd taken a cut across his shoulder, but he was still swinging.