Raiju: A Kaiju Hunter Novel (The Kaiju Hunter) (9 page)

I scrambled out of the way, amazed at how analytical I could be, considering it was easily the size of a house, and as black as pitch and shining with wet, razor-sharp scales. Its humped back was covered in those snakelike appendages with the Venus flytrap heads, making it look like something out of old H. P. Lovecraft’s worst nightmare. It stank of sewage and death, and the smell of it made me want to gag.

I didn’t. I was too fascinated by the sight of the thing’s grotesque, barely-formed head, the reddish, heavily-lidded, almost humanesque eyes glaring at me with a cunning and evil intelligence. I stood there, outside the club, listening to a series of popping explosions as the beast tore up various gas mains in its wriggling effort to emerge.

It finally settled atop the street like a mountain of burning black slime, making that sound again, like it was laughing at me, laughing at the sheer puniness of mankind. I should have been afraid of it. Instead, I swung the burning sword around two-handedly, ready to take another piece out of it. Under the circumstances, there wasn’t much else I could do.

It eyed me cautiously.

“
Afraid?” I said, then kicked myself mentally when it dawned on me that agitating a monster was a lot different than doing it to a bully. Bullies didn’t normally try to eat you.

It hissed at me and leaped into the sky. For a moment the lights of the city were eclipsed as it passed overhead. Then it crashed down atop the roof of the club across the street. The structure exploded under the monster’s weight like it was made of Tinker Toys. I staggered back as dust and debris spilled all the way into the street and surrounded me. I could hardly believe it had moved so fast…or that the whole building lay crushed beneath it in seconds, with everyone still inside.

The street looked like a demolition zone, surreal, like the end of the world in some post-apocalyptic movie. The only thing missing were the zombies. The creature made that hissing/cackling noise like it was pleased with itself and its work.

I stared at the overturned cars, the broken bodies, the bloodied glass scattered everywhere. The wind sighed, blowing the yellowish debris around as if we stood on a devastated planet, the victim of a cataclysmic nuclear war. A poster blew against me, then blew away. I coughed as the dust began to clear. I finally saw a girl lying in the rubble at my feet, her fancy club wear ripped to bloody tatters on her still body. Ignoring the monster, I knelt down, pushing aside the debris atop her and checked for a pulse, but she was as lifeless as a mannequin.

I wiped the soot off her face. She was my age. Pretty. She was one of the girls who had been giggling about me in the halls of my high school.

My mind went calm, my horror far away. But my anger burned. It burned like the sword I still gripped in my hands.

I stood up. I swung the sword high overhead, not because I thought I could actually destroy the monster with my puny little weapon, but because I was following a predetermined pattern, carving a complex symbol into the aim before me, even though I had no idea what I was doing. But my hands knew, even if my brain was too numb to understand what was happening.

Two signs. Characters.
Kanji.
They seemed to take on a glow in the very air before me. I knew what they meant. I knew what they said. I knew from the dream. I had seen the same characters carved into the book.

What am I doing? I wondered. But, somehow, I knew. I raised the burning sword in a salute to the night sky painted with a billion ancient stars, and I thought, for no apparent reason at all,
Come
. Then I swung it around so the blade was pointed toward the ground and drove it into the asphalt between my feet with all of my strength. Logic stated that the blade should have broken on contact, but this was obviously no ordinary sword. The sword and the ground were now fused, as if they had always been one. I held the hilt, feeling the vibration of the impact all the way up to my aching shoulders.

Come
, I thought, as the wind picked up around me, spilling my hair all over my face. The night was full of the stink of blood and fire. “
Come!”
I screamed. “
Come now
!”

The asphalt under my feet split as a fork of lightning struck the sword, making me blink and shudder. I felt a wave of heat so intense it made my skin tighten and crawl; the spit in my mouth dried up and my hands felt like they were burning. With a cry I released the hilt of the sword and stumbled back.

A column of flame burst from the crack I had made in the street, growing larger by the moment, until it was a full-fledge bonfire so tall it could lick at a ten-story building. I fell back in the gutter, shielding my face from the intense, scalding heat, and watched the air shimmer around me like it was coming off a desert deadpan. Something within the flames roared. It sounded like a train when you’re so close to the tracks you can feel the noise vibrating in your bones. Above, the stars seemed to go out and blood red veins of forked lightning snaked outward across a pitch-black sky, followed by an answering roar of thunder. A storm without rain, I thought. It felt like I had been transported to some remote bowel of hell.

Maybe I’m dreaming all this, I thought. Or maybe I was crazy. There was no other reasonable explanation.

I had thought nothing stranger could happen this night, but it turned out the thing that sounded like a derailed train was taking form in the flames. I hissed between my teeth at the deathless brilliance of it. I decided that the old artists who painted wall scrolls and shoji screens that adorned so many traditional Japanese homes really had no idea what they were doing when they depicted the holy Kami—the gods of ancient Japan. They had never seen one with their own eyes, that was for sure. They based their artwork on something earthly, tangible, something that could be understood with human eyes and grasped by a human brain. A dragon or tiger or crane, that type of thing. This went beyond all that.

This was made of nightmare fabric. As it came into clear focus, I saw scales and fur and feathers all at once, at every point of its body, something like a lion but also like an armored dragon, with a face both bestial and strangely human, and a massive head crowned with a myriad of curling horns that extended all the way down its back and the long line of its serpentine tail. All of it was on fire, crackling with the power of a sun gone supernova. It set its giant, iron-clawed feet on the ground before me and flicked its tail, a wall of sulfuric heat so intense it was like standing before a blast furnace. The eyes, I thought, raising my arms to shield my face from the intense, baking heat. The eyes are human…the eyes are
blue
.

It growled softly, a sound that slowly escalated into that train-wreck noise I had heard earlier, a noise that ripped up and down my spine. As it tipped its horned head to the heavens and let loose with the full strength of its scorching voice, I dropped to my knees in front of the sword still wedged in the ground, my hands over my ears, trembling body and soul, completely overwrought by the sight of it.

Master
, a sexless voice said clearly into my ear, though no one stood there.
You called. I came.
What do you desire?

My head felt like it had nails being pounded into it with every syllable. “Who…who the fuck are you?” I screamed.

It eyed me keenly, like a great cat, then let loose another roar so loud it sandpapered my face and left my ears ringing long afterward. To me, the roar sounded like a name. Like
Raiju
.

Again came the voice in my head, belching and angry:
I lose patience, little boy. What do you desire? Why do you summon the greatest of the Kami?

I nearly crumbled at the sound of it. I turned to the first monster that I had nearly forgotten existed. It was undulating in the street, eyeing the larger newcomer with a rolling fright. I thought of the dead girl in the debris. I thought, obliquely,
Kill this creature who has killed these children. Destroy it utterly.

Raiju laughed, the sound purring through my brain.
I like you, Master
, it said.
We shall be friends.
Then it turned and leaped with feline grace at the first monster.

The frog-thing attempted to retreat, but Raiju’s sword-sized claws flashed out as it plowed remorselessly into it. The impact drove both beasts back into a line of brownstone projects, crushing them like they were made of plastic. I shuddered at the sight of Raiju savagely ripping long, flaming wounds in the monster’s black hide. Then the two kaiju started rolling over and over in the debris, kicking up sparks from the buildings and ripping loose bits of unnatural flesh from each other as they went at it literally tooth and nail.

Blood and debris rained down around me, smelling of ozone and red death. The sounds the beasts made were like machines on full power, clanking and grinding together.

What have I done? I thought.
What have I done?

And
how
do I undo it?

Raiju reared up and managed to flip the smaller monster onto its back, its tender underbelly exposed to the flashing black claws. But the first monster was more resourceful than it looked. It opened its massive, froglike mouth, and its tongue—long, slick-black and barbed like a deadly weapon—darted out and smashed into Raiju’s flaming shoulder. The tongue stuck solidly in the gold-plated flesh like a projectile weapon.

Raiju reared back, bits of flame raining down over the street like weird, otherworldly snow, but the barbs held. The black beast let out its chuckling chalkboard laugh as a number of snake-like appendages whipped out and encircled Raiju’s neck and legs, biting fiercely down. Now, with its opponent well in hand, it reached up and scratched at the massive, lion-like face with its flippery claws. Raiju roared in anguish, baring dagger-like teeth to the heavens while fire from its shorn mane drifted down to alight the remnants of the projects. It swung its claws at the barbed tongue stuck in its shoulder, the black flesh ripping like hemp with a snapping noise. Finally, it swiped at the other appendages, each of them bursting like rotted vines and falling to the street below, where they cooled into lines of black ash.

Defeated, bleeding and wounded, the first monster somersaulted over its opponent, righting itself on the flaming tarmac before retreating a step.

Raiju rubbed at its face with its forepaw in a gesture almost human, then shook itself and stood up again, towering at least forty stories over the sticklike remnants of the rowhouses and establishments it was crushing into debris. It let out an earth-rattling roar I was certain could be heard as far south as the Long Island Sound.

I was sweating from pain and electric with fear, but I was too numbed by the sight of the battle before me to even react.

Raiju lunged forward, clacking its massive, catlike jaws at its opponent in warning. The black, froglike beast hissed tonguelessly and retreated another step, its fishlike tail flapping angrily against the flattened remnants of the buildings, suddenly unsure of the situation. Despite the first monster’s massive scaly bulk, Raiju was at least twice its size. I doubted it could endure another go-round at this point and not be ripped to shreds.

I smiled despite myself and the horror of the situation.
No mercy
, I thought to Raiju.
Take it apart!

The great silky
ears on the catlike head twitched as if it was listening to my thoughts. The flaming hair on the back of Raiju’s neck stood on end like quills, as dangerous looking as the crown of horns on its head that corkscrewed in every direction. It roared at its opponent, the sound so ear-splittingly loud that every window within a thousand yards exploded like a bomb going off.

Raiju leaped, coming down on the retreating monster’s muscular fish tail flexing wildly from side to side. Raiju ripped into it, tearing long flaming gouges through scales and skin and flesh. The first monster screamed in pain and tried to leap away, but Raiju had it now and it would not release its prey, raking its claws through the flesh so fiercely that scales flew hundreds of feet into the air to land like burning dervishes all over the street.

The beast let out a rattling death cry as Raiju worked at reducing it to soft black sludge one swipe of a claw at a time. Soon all that remained was a quivering black soup undulating in the middle of the street. The black slime that had once been a kaiju flowed away from Raiju, darting for every grate, open manhole and crack in the street. I jumped back as the slime washed by, singeing the toes of my boots as it retreated into the sewer grate in the curb in front of me. The septic smell of it was enough to make me want to gag in the street.

I thought it would all end there. But bereft of its adversary, Raiju turned its flaming blue eyes on me, belching out rotten-egg-stinking smoke from its flaring nostrils. There was nothing of life or light in those brilliant blue eyes. It looked at me. It listened to me. But it did not love me. It did not even
like
me. I was less than an insect to it. A bacterium. It had lived a million lifetimes before me and it would live a million more after I was gone. It was a god, after all. It glared at me, challenging me with these thoughts.