Dragon (Chaos)

 

Chapter 27

Chaos

Kenji

 

I did not know what was happening inside the clinic, but I didn’t need to. The fire on the east side. The emptiness where my guards should have been. The screaming through the walls. None of it had to be explained to me. My body had already done the logic my mind was still catching up to.

Kiko.

Whatever chaos was happening in there, she had started it.

More screaming hit me as my shoes hit the gravel.

Reo was already gone—left, low, weapon up, clearing the angle on the front doors before Hiro and I had finished disembarking.

Hiro broke right with a blade in his left hand and a sidearm in his right.

My hip was empty, my waistband and ankle too. I'd left the mansion in preparation for a romantic dinner and the Burial Ritual.

I was now walking into chaos with a Dragon's reputation and nothing else.

My men flowed past me in a tight wedge—six of them, all armed, in motion, and fanning into standard breach formation. The lead two stacked on the doors. The next two pulled flanks. The last two stayed next to me.

I gestured for them to go through.

One kicked the doors open hard enough for the hinges to shriek.

Heat hit us immediately.

They rushed in.

Hiro and I entered after.

Smoke crawled along the ceiling in black ribbons.

A body lay twisted near the reception desk.

Another man crawled across the floor leaving a dark red trail behind him.

Then gunfire cracked deeper inside the building.

Three shots in the east.

Close.

“I’ll check that side.” Reo sprinted toward the sound without hesitation. My men followed.

To my right, a man lay face-down with the back of his skull caved in.

Hiro turned him over and we saw his face.

I fisted my hands. “Fuck.”

Hiro carefully placed him back down. “Sora.”

My heart ached, but I would not drown in it.

Sora had been part of my personal security since I’d become the Dragon. He was married and had two daughters. When we had first arrived on the island, he had come to me and respectfully requested to be posted to the clinic detail because his pregnant wife worked the day shift in the lab.

Goddamn it!

Hiro frowned. “I just saw him yesterday and gave him a pack of pink and blue lollipops for the baby.”

I pursed my lips.

The back of Sora’s suit was wet with blood. His holsters were empty. Whoever had killed him had taken his gun first and his life second.

I tensed. “A Scale did this.”

“Who would do that?”

“One of Kiko’s guards.”

“You think she got in their heads?”

“She was one of my best Eyes. Of course she did.” Guilt hit me. I should have planned for that possibility.

Sorry, Tora, I’m getting those babies out and then I’m killing this bitch.

I began to head off.

Hiro grabbed my arm. “Wait.”

He crouched beside Sora one last time and bowed his head. “Your duty ended with honor. Your ancestors will recognize you.”

He touched two fingers to Sora’s forehead before rising again. “And I will make certain the person who sent you to death does not walk long behind you.”

He rose.

We headed off.

The rest of the lobby was a slaughterhouse.

A guard I did not know was slumped against the far wall with a scalpel in his thigh and his hands open in his lap like a man giving up on a card hand he had already lost.

Two of my Scales were down—Hideo, motionless, half his face missing; and Akane with his throat sliced open.

Screams came from the west, even though Reo and my men had rushed to the East.

I looked at Hiro. “That way.”

“Let’s kill them.” Hiro tossed me the gun and kept the knife. “Do we kill Kiko?”

“And hurt the twins? No.”

“Kenji—”

“I know. We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry, brother. Kiko won’t be breathing for too long.”

We went down the hall and stopped at the sight in front of us.

No.

A pregnant lab tech was dead on her side near the records cart.

Her bloodied belly rose under the torn scrub top. A knife had been stuck in the soft round curve.

I shivered.

Nao. Sora’s wife.

Her one good arm was still flung forward across the tile as though she had been crawling toward the reception desk when she had finally stopped crawling. The other arm hung wrong at the shoulder, twisted under her in a way that no living body would have allowed.

A long red snail-trail stretched behind her across the floor.

She had made it almost halfway to the desk.

Almost.

A pressure rose behind my ribs that I did not have time to name.

I turned to Hiro. “Let’s go.”

Hiro didn’t move. He just stood there with his lips parted and his face crumbling.

“Come on.” I grabbed his arm and pulled him forward, but. . .I knew that a small part of my brother still remained right there next to Nao.

We left the lobby and turned the corner.

Three Scales stood at the far end of the hall with guns out and pointed our way.

What the fuck? Are they crazy?

They didn’t shoot just yet, which told me they weren’t that crazy. They knew who the fuck stood in front of them and that Hiro and I were not that easy to kill.

A rolling hospital bed sat halfway down the corridor between us and the wall of armed Scales.

An old man lay on his back across the mattress with an IV line still taped to his arm and a hospital gown half-twisted across his chest. His mouth was open and his eyes too. A red bloom soaked the front of the gown where a single round had punched through him at close range.

The wheels of the bed were unlocked. The whole thing had been rolled into the hallway and abandoned mid-evacuation.

One of the traitorous Scales barked out, “The Dragon’s here!”

Then five more entered from another corner. I thought that would be it, but apparently Kiko had been busy on the island, entering my weaker Scales’ heads.

The count climbed past anything that made sense in a single corridor of a single clinic on a single night.

Ten.

Twelve.

Sixteen traitors.

And I knew that because of that. . .sixteen widows would burn in the morning turning to ash while sixteen pairs of parents melted alongside them.

“We mean no harm.” The Scale with the rifle lowered it a few inches. “We come with respect.”

Another spoke, “Kiko just wants to talk to the Dragon alone. That is it.”

One in the back nodded. “And she believes this DNA will cause the Dragon’s heirs harm.”

A Scale on the right placed his hand on his chest. “We did what we had to in order to serve and protect the Dragon’s heirs.”

I leaned my head to the side.

Hiro whispered, “I’ll get the hospital bed and turn it over to shield us.”

“I’ll cover you.”

We stepped forward and I raised my gun.

The first one raised his rifle and his hand shook. “She only wants to talk to you. No one should die.”

A few of the men behind him stirred.

“Go.” I shot him in the throat before the muzzle came level.

His body folded forward and his rifle hit the floor.

At high speed, Hiro dropped and slid along the tile like a man sliding into home during a World Series game.

“Hiro’s coming!” A Scale raised his gun and pointed at him.

I hurried forward, shot him in the forehead, and got the one next to him in the eye.

Hiro was already at the rolling bed. In the next second, he caught one of the legs.

The whole thing pivoted with him. The wheels jumped. The dead patient slid sideways across the mattress. His IV line tore free.

The man hit the floor.

Hiro flipped the bed onto its side toward the Scales. The metal frame slammed against the tile and the mattress folded against the rails and the whole thing became a wall of steel and foam between him and the corridor full of guns.

I was right behind him.

One of the Scales panicked. “What do we do? She said not to kill the Dragon!”

“But they’re going to kill us!”

Bullets started a half-second later.

They came in a wild scattered burst—not aimed kills, not even good cover fire. Warning rounds. Bullets meant to scare us. They ate the wall behind us. They sparked off the metal frame of the bed. They chipped tile in a long ragged line three feet over our heads.

When we got the bed a few feet closer to them, I rose up over the top of the bed and shot the closest one through his open mouth.

He had been yelling something. I never heard what. The round took the back of his skull out and he went down with the word still half-formed on his tongue.

A round took the top of my ear before I dropped back down.

Fuck!

A bright clean line of heat seared me. Then warmth ran down my jaw. I touched it with the back of my gun hand and my knuckles came away wet and red.

Hiro sneered at me. “Be fucking careful.”

“I was careful!”

“Half an inch lower and the round would have been in your brain!”

“Got it.” I exhaled once through my teeth and rose up again to shoot the next one through the eye.

Another burst of bullets came in.

“Cover me.” Hiro vaulted over the bed, flying in the air and slicing necks, one by fucking one. So fast that I feared I might shoot him as I got the others.

What the fuck?! And you told me to be careful?

Blood sprayed as men fell from his blade or my bullets.

Then, one of their rounds caught Hiro mid-vault.

No!

I saw it the way one saw lightning—after the fact, in a flash, before the thunder. A spray of red snapped across my brother’s left shoulder as he twisted between two men and stabbed one in the heart.

The fabric of Hiro’s shirt opened in a long shallow seam.

He landed on the other side of the newly dead men and kept moving as if the bullet had not happened, but I saw the wet shine of him and the torn cloth, and my chest seized for the half-second it took me to confirm that he was still on his feet.

I reached Hiro as he wiped the blade on the shirt of a man he had killed.

His chest was rising and falling fast. His hair was wet with someone else's blood. There was a smear of red along the side of his jaw that was not his and a long stripe of plaster dust across the shoulder of his shirt from a bullet that had missed him by less than the width of a hand.

He met my eyes.

I met his.

For one breath, neither of us spoke.

We’re good.

Dead bodies were spread out on the floor around us.

Hiro spat on the floor. “I counted twelve.”

“The other four must have run off.”

Sound erupted behind us.

We turned that way.

Reo and my men raced to us, and my Roar didn’t look happy at all. “Why didn’t you wait for us?”

I gestured to where he’d come from. “What was down there?”

“Just fire and people burning to death.” Reo cocked his gun. “Apparently, the action is here.”

“It is.” Hiro winked. “Glad you could keep up.”

Reo sneered at him and scowled at me. “The both of you get behind me.”

I blinked, but did as I was told.

Hiro snickered. “We were just trying to get a warm-up before the battle tomorrow.”

I checked my gun. “Fuck. Empty.”

One of my men handed me one of theirs.

I took the safety off. “Now let’s find Kiko.”