Jack was a straight line through chaos, a blade aimed at Ellie. Every time he carved a path, though—every time his knives found a seam in the defense—Chiaki's spear was already there, Aiko's heel was there, Jay's claw was there. It didn't matter whether Jack came low or high, fast or impossibly fast: they checked him, turned him, forced him to circle like a wolf outside a fire.
Across the fractured hall, Mamushi's laughter rattled the paper lanterns. Her tail demolished what remained of a low table; snakes poured from the splinters like water. Detective Reid backpedaled, muzzle flashing, each shot exploding a serpent mid-leap. "Left!" Sota barked, and Reid slid sideways just before a viper bigger than a fire hose slammed its fangs where his thigh had been. The floorboards split under the impact, dust geysering.
Sensei moved somewhere between them all, a current you only noticed when you were already caught in it. His cane whisked, the hidden blade whispering clean lines through the air as three identical Doppels closed. One reached, another feinted, a third dropped from the ceiling beam. Sensei pivoted on the ball of his right foot and wrote a short sentence in steel. The falling clone burst into smoke; the feint stumbled into his hooked cane and went down hard; the third, the "reaching" one, discovered the reach had been misjudged by exactly an inch and a half and lost three fingers for the error.
Jay slammed shoulder-first into Jack to keep him off Ellie. Horned forearm met knife edge; sparks skated across demon scale. Chiaki's spear fractured into three links of chain and wrapped Jack's ankle; she yanked, Aiko blinked to his blind side and kicked, and for a heartbeat the notorious killer hit the wrecked floor and slid, knives carving ragged furrows in the wood to slow himself.
"Cute," Jack said, breathless and delighted, as if they were playing a parlor game. He tore the chain with a convulsive wrench and came up in a whirl of blades.
"Not cute," Aiko snapped, already gone in a blink, reappearing above him to heel-drop his shoulder.
"Left in two!" Sota warned, and Reid obeyed without thinking, bullets stitching a line through a surge of snakes that had timed themselves to his last step.
"Shoot my snakes all you want," Mamushi purred, uncoiling to her full towering height. "I can just regenerate new ones. Unlike you, I'll guarantee that you'll run out of bullets very soon."
Damn she's right, Reid thought, lungs burning. I've been shooting for a while. God knows how many rounds I have left. He fired three quick, controlled shots to the mouth of a spitting viper cloud, breaking its shape so it fell short of Sota. "So you must be Mamushi—the Snake Lady," Reid called, buying breath with words, buying rhythm with conversation. "The one causing the case of several men going missing."
"Ding, ding," she said, voice gone sweet with sarcasm. "You guessed correctly."
"So why go after men?" Reid asked, keeping her attention, muzzle steady but heart thrumming. "What's the reason for it?"
"Men are rotten, cheating dirtbags," she answered in a hiss that shivered with remembered cold. "Just like my ex-husband. Back when I was sixteen, I had an arranged marriage with a man named Takeshi. At first I hated being bound to a stranger. But I learned to trust him. Six years passed. He brought me to the bridge where he had sworn love and protection, and told me he was having an affair with a younger woman." Her voice roughened. "That broke my heart. What shattered it was when I asked why. He said, 'Who wants to be around an ugly hag like you?' Then he pushed me off the bridge"—her mouth opened, revealing too many teeth—"with a smile."
Reid held her gaze, profile to Sota so the boy could keep reading the fight. "I'm sorry you had to go through that," he said—and meant it, despite the coils and the fangs and the murder. "But not all men are like that. There are good men. Loyal men. Besides… I can't believe your ex would do something so ugly to someone so—" He almost said beautiful; it was true and also a tactical error. He softened it. "—so undeserving of it."
"Seriously, Detective?" Sota coughed from behind a pillar. "This is not the time to flirt. Especially with a demon whose motto is 'kill all men.'"
"Spare your sympathy," Mamushi snapped, that terrible mouth flattening. "All men are the same. So, they must die."
"Not if I can help it." Reid raised his gun, tracked the coil of her body—
Click. Click.
Empty.
Shit, not right now.
"Dodge left!" Sota shouted, eyes alight with five seconds of difficult salvation.
Reid threw himself left as Mamushi's tail obliterated the column where he'd been. He hit the floor hard, rolled, came up on a knee, gun useless in his hands. Thank God for Sota, he thought, sucking air. Without him I'd be pasted already. But I don't know how much longer I can keep this up.
Across the hall, Chiaki heard the dead clicks even through the howl of combat. She didn't look—she didn't need to. She felt the deficit was like a change in air pressure. Her spear condensed to a baton in her palm; she flipped it, and mid-air it rifled into a matte-black assault rifle. "Reid!" she shouted, hurling it like a javelin. "Heads up!"
Reid looked up into ruin and dust and caught the rifle by the grip. It was heavier than it looked, comforting as a promise.
"Shoot as much as you want," Chiaki said, already turning back to parry Jack's renewed rush.
Reid knew at once what she'd handed him—a thing her will would feed until she dismissed it. He smiled despite the grit between his teeth, formed a proper stance, and sighted down the barrel at the viper storm.
Mamushi hissed.