6. Black Resolve

There was a flurry of dark movement, and Masato was over Sakuya, taking the bullet. The slug hit dead centre, silver fragments dispersing into his body. Tetsuya saw tendrils of shadowy smoke rising straight out of Masato’s skin, a sign that the silver was doing its job, burning him from the inside out. Fuck it. Good enough. Masato staggered, leaning heavily against his bride, and the two shared a brief, pained exchange before Sakuya let go of him and came straight for Tetsuya. Her expression was nothing like it had been mere moments before. Now she looked every bit the killer that he’d taken her for. Good. That would make it easier to do what had to be done.

He opened fire on her even as she turned, forcing her to sidestep awkwardly, ruining her momentum. He pushed his mind and senses back into overdrive, letting seconds spin out into hours. Her movements came into crystal clarity - she was crouched low, darting towards him, her body arched inwards to present a smaller profile.

His finger tensed on the trigger, and the bullet caught her mid-movement. Perfect. Superhuman speed was far less useful if you hadn’t learnt not to move in a straight line. She hadn’t been trained in combat yet, then. Her left shoulder jerked, a plume of black smoke erupting from the wound. She screamed, but did not stumble, closing the distance with him. Tetsuya braced himself for impact, knowing he didn’t have enough time to fire again. He didn’t need to kill her, anyway - it was Masato he was after. That hit to the chest might not be enough, but if he could -

Something crashed into him, slamming him to the ground. A dark form loomed over him, heaving with the effort of keeping him down. Masato. A steady stream of smoke was still seeping out of his chest wound - a hit like that should have taken him out of the fight for good. Somehow, he’d found the strength to charge and tackle him. Tetsuya felt an instant of panic - suddenly the odds were far worse than he’d initially assumed. His barriers held for now, keeping Masato at bay - the most he could do was keep him pinned down. But even that was bad enough. It was a simple formula: you hold him still, and I’ll hit him. Right on cue, she fell on him, striking and biting wildly. He forced himself to remain calm - it wasn't a problem. She couldn't hurt him with his shields up. He had to focus on breaking free. He slammed his fist into Masato’s face once, twice, and felt his hold loosening. Just a little more -

Pain blossomed along his right arm, and he stared in horror at the claw marks she’d left in his flesh, shredding the fabric of his shirt and jacket. Fortunately, the band of metal around his bicep had deflected the brunt of the blow, but she’d drawn blood. Her nostrils twitched and flared, the reaction of a predator scenting its prey. Oh, fuck. She had his bloodscent now. His illusions were suddenly useless. No matter what face he wore outside this room, she’d always be able to identify him. She’d bring the Syndicate down on him and Guild Gramarye by extension. She had to die.

As she reared back to strike again, he dropped the barrier around his left hand and brought his revolver up. It seemed to weigh far more now with the wound to his arm, but he brought it to bear on her and fired, fanning the hammer with his left hand. She darted away, aborting her attack. She trailed smoke where the bullets grazed her, but he couldn’t get a clean shot. Never mind - one thing at a time. He slammed Masato’s face one last time, throwing the man off him, and stumbled to his feet. His hands worked on autopilot, the right ejecting spent shells from their cylinders, the left reloading fresh bullets from -

His fingers brushed blank fabric. Glancing down, he felt the absence of his gunbelts a fraction of a moment before he saw them clutched in Masato’s grasp. Panic nearly seized him there and then - without those bullets, how was he going to fight them? - but he crushed the feeling, instead focusing on the question and its solutions. Before he could make much progress along that line of thought, however, Masato’s bride was on him once more, darting out of the shadows to strike at his exposed arm. There was no way that he could dodge in time, and even if he could, she’d still be in close combat with him, putting him at a great disadvantage. So he made no effort to. Instead, he parried her blow, cracking the barrel of his revolver against her knuckles as she closed in. Of course, there was no way a human could match a vampire’s force or speed - so he cheated, activating the bracers along his arm. It wasn’t so much him swinging his arm as his arm being propelled by several thousand Newtons’ worth of force in the direction of her hand. The revolver impacted against her knuckles, pulverising the fragile bones in her fingers and throwing her attack off course. Under normal circumstances, it would be child’s play for a vampire to reknit those bones in a flash and redouble her efforts, but the screech of pain and panic from her confirmed that these circumstances weren’t normal.

The runes etched into the barrel of his gun were more than mere decorative details - they converted a mundane, if perfectly machined, weapon into an implement through which great magic could be worked. More to the point, however, Tetsuya had also inlaid those runes with silver when he’d crafted his gun. At the time, he’d simply liked the contrast between muted gunmetal grey and the brighter sheen of silver. He hadn’t imagined that he’d ever need to pistolwhip a vampire. But a blow struck by silver was one that a vampire couldn’t easily recover from, and the way she cradled her hand told him that she wasn’t going to be using it any time in the foreseeable future. To be fair, the foreseeable future didn’t go very far beyond the next ten seconds or so.

Which was good, because he’d very definitely dislocated his right shoulder pulling that stunt. He deactivated his pain centres and gripped his right arm with his left hand, popping the joint back into its socket. He let pain filter back in as he rolled his shoulder, but only a little - there was also some tearing along his chest and shoulder, and he didn’t have time to deal with that right now. He suspected that some of the bones in his wrist might have broken, too, but for the moment he could still articulate it, which would have to do.

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One arm crippled, two enemies left standing. Crawling, in Masato’s case. Coming to his bride’s defense. She was more guarded now, her broken hand held close to her chest as she clenched her other fist. Another sign of her inexperience - the gesture was an instinct leftover from her time as a human, completely counterproductive when a vampire’s claws were far more dangerous. He couldn’t let them regroup, but at the same time, his options for engaging them were deplorably scarce. What was he going to do, throw his gun at them? He considered - and discarded - the idea. Feasibility aside, he couldn’t afford to leave any evidence that mages had been involved in tonight’s attack. Spent bullets and grenades were one thing - those were untraceable, and in fact Ryou had made them available on the black markets some months ago through various fences, so there was little to no risk of them being linked back to Guild Gramarye. If he left his revolver, hand-crafted, inscribed and enchanted by a Guild Gramarye-trained artificer, lying on the floor here, however, that was a disaster waiting to happen. Could he go invisible and catch them by surprise, maybe get his bullets back? No, it would be too obvious at this distance, and she had his bloodscent anyway, so there was no hiding from her. Getting into a close-quarters scrap was also out of the question - it was still two-on-one, and he couldn’t let her get any more of his blood. He cautiously felt the wound along his right arm - it wasn’t deep, but it was still bleeding. Damn it. Fresh blood, from a living source, would only drive her into a feeding frenzy. He tried to bunch the sleeve of his shirt up over the wound under his jacket, to staunch the blood, though he knew she’d still be able to smell it. As he did, he felt something hard press against his arm, at his belt. Reaching under his jacket, he took hold of it. A grenade. One he’d reserved, just in case. Interesting.

He felt the pieces of the plan fall into place fractionally before he sprang into action, ripping his torn sleeve off from the shoulder down and tossing it at her. The bloodsoaked cloth had the desired effect - she sprang towards it, towards him, driven by the impulse to feed. Masato tried to restrain her, tossing Tetsuya’s gunbelts aside in panic, but in the throes of her bloodlust she towed him behind her as though he weighed no more than a child. As she came within striking range, Tetsuya drew back and raised his arms, as though to fend off her claws. Milliseconds ticked away in the back of his mind.

Ignition.

His shields went up as the grenade exploded behind the two of them. Their screams should not have been audible over the roar of the explosion and his earplugs, but he heard them nonetheless, and smiled. Silver shredded their clothes and seared its way through skin and flesh. The force of the explosion flung them forwards, directly into Tetsuya’s barrier. They slammed against him, unmoving, impassive, as they rebounded and fell to the ground, shaking. His shields gave out, the mana powering them expended in absorbing the entire impact of the blast. No matter. He could finish this here and now.

He bent to pick up a long shard of broken wood, a table leg that had been broken off by the explosion. Running his fingers over the broken edges, he called to mind hours spent in the workshop, carving, polishing, perfecting. With each pass of his fingers, the wood grew harder, sharper, as though it had been sculpted that way. He walked towards them slowly as he did this, not hurrying. They weren’t going anywhere. Reeling from the explosion and the agony of thousands of silver particles boring into them, they could barely spare the breath to moan. Yet, as he drew closer, Sakuya stirred, pulling herself into a kneeling position. She put herself between him and Masato, her arms - or what was left of them - spread out in a futile, but powerful, sign of protection. She mouthed something. Take me. Spare him. Please.

The look in her blood-red eyes hit him as nothing else could have. He knew that plea. He knew what it was like to see someone you loved hurt and broken, and to be powerless to do anything about it. You’d give your own life if it could stop their suffering. His heart wrenched in his chest, but his hands did not falter as he raised the stake. There was empathy, and understanding. And then there was that black resolve within him, one that did not care at all what his heart felt, that gave his downward strike deadly force and unerring accuracy. Take her but spare him? He could meet her halfway. He slammed the stake through her heart and followed through, piercing Masato’s as well, skewering the two of them together. She twitched, her expression moving through variations of hurt, horror, and resignation until she finally came to rest. Beneath her, Masato too fell still. It was done. A debt had been repaid, with the interest accrued over every year of grief and loss Kris had suffered. She didn’t need to know about this - bringing Masato up to her would only stir up unpleasant memories for her - but he could look her in the eye now. He could believe in her justice without his conscience calling him a hypocrite. He felt as though this should have been momentous for him, but he didn’t let himself get caught up in the moment - there were more pressing concerns right now. For instance, backing away as quickly as possible. A vampire’s true death tended to be messy and dramatic, and he didn’t intend to get caught up in it.

Recovering his gunbelts from where Masato had tossed them, he hastily strapped them back on. Time to make an exit. He reached out to the surviving men through his mental link with them, noting that their numbers had dwindled to nearly nothing. They had done well to keep the vampires back for so long, giving him the time to deal with Masato personally. But they had one last task to do - cover his escape. Charge them. Kill as many as you can. Make them fear you! He slammed that message into their minds, pushing it to the forefront of their thoughts, then severed the link.

Death paid for death. However, a clever man knew never to spend his own money when he could spend someone else’s. Tetsuya stepped over the mangled body of a gangster, avoided a horrid pool of blood and ichor - the aftermath of a vampire’s true death - and slipped out the door. So it began. Open conflict between the Syndicate and the yakuza, the first pebble that would start a landslide in Tokyo’s underworld. They’d rip each other apart, and he’d watch, and laugh. There were greater agendas in motion here, like the slow shift of tectonic plates beneath the skin of the world, but for the moment he cared nothing for them. He’d plunged the bastards into chaos to hurt them, pure and simple. Let them taste betrayal. Let them know the fear of losing control over everything you’d ever known, for no reason you could see.

Let them know how Kris had felt.