The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Awakening (22 page)

As Anya fell and the ground and concrete fell behind her, burying her into the ground, MaLeila exchanged a look with Irvin. The raven haired boy nodded, the rain around him suspending in midair before forming a cyclone around him. He threw it at Tsubame and when it was midway to her, MaLeila added an electrical charge to it. A combo attack like that had once killed one of her many enemies that she had faced with Irvin in the past, but Tsubame didn’t even looked alarmed. The woman spared the cyclone a glance, like a mother would glance at her child when he was doing something troublesome. The cyclone kept going, but instead of hitting Tsubame, it circled around her and back towards Irvin at twice the speed.

Irvin barely pulled up a shield in time, but even that didn’t stop the attack from tossing him across the hard concrete ground.

MaLeila summoned her staff to her hands, gearing up for a real attack against the woman when Devdan appeared next to her and shook his head.

“We can’t defeat her with magic.”

Proving his point, the old council man reached out his hand toward the woman, a look on his face that suggested he thought he had allowed this fight to go on too long. He twisted his hand into a fist and jerked. MaLeila wasn’t sure what the attack was supposed to do, but it did nothing to Tsubame. What did happen was that the old council member fell, clutching his chest, Tsubame looking at him as though she was insulted.

“We’ll have to find her hand to hand,” Devdan said, his hands becoming incased in black energy with silver streams in it.

MaLeila nodded, twirling her staff in her hands. Devdan disappeared again and reappeared again in front of Tsubame. MaLeila thought she might have looked mildly surprised to see Devdan coming at her with a physical attack but it was always hard to make out the woman’s expressions, and if she had been surprised, she got over it just as fast as the expression had appeared and pulled out the two fans that she had been so fond of using to fan herself over the last few weeks. She crisscrossed her wrist and caught Devdan’s fists between them and used the leverage to twist his arm and flip him onto his back. Devdan opened up his fist and grabbed her wrist forcing her down with him. Using her free hand, she cut Devdan’s upper arm with her fan causing him to let go of her wrist so she could turn around just in time to block MaLeila staff with her fan.

MaLeila pulled back and twirled the staff in her hand, while Tsubame flipped her fans. Then the two charged at each other.

“This is truly so disappointing,” Tsubame said. “I was hoping you’d take me up on my offer.”

“Thanks,” MaLeila said blocking the woman’s fans as she tried to cut her, “but no thanks.”

Tsubame ducked around MaLeila’s staff when she tried to stab her with her and made her way behind the girl to try to cut her with her fans. MaLeila turned to face the woman and backed out the way of the fans.

“Whatever the council promised you, I can give it to you tenfold with no strings attached.”

“Except I have to join you.”

“Which would benefit me and be another benefit for you. Technically, you’re getting the better deal out of this,” Tsubame said.

“I’ve heard that before.”

“But the question is have I ever lied to you?” the woman asked.

MaLeila didn’t answer, even as a voice in her head whispered
no
. By this time Devdan had joined her and soon after, so had Bastet. It seemed like they were eventually bound to overtake her, but the more and more the woman’s fan struck her staff, blocked Bastet’s energy sword, and absorbed the bolts of magical energy from varying forces of nature they all periodically threw her way only to have them bounce back, the more MaLeila got the feeling the woman was playing with them. She didn’t want to know what would happen when the woman got bored of it.

“I think that’s enough. Time to end this,” Tsubame said and with one sweep of her hand, a harsh gust threw Bastet and Devdan back.

MaLeila was unaffected and while Tsubame dealt with the recoil of the attack, she gathered energy in her hand, golden white with fuchsia tendrils infused and threw it at Tsubaae. It exploded upon making contact with the woman and the dust that kicked up mixed with the rain temporarily disoriented MaLeila. By the time she got her bearings back, all she saw was red and then Tsubame’s fan infused with the woman’s magical energy struck down on her.

MaLeila raised her staff to block the attack, ignoring the feeling that told her it was a mistake. Ankh staff and fan collided with equal force, but it was MaLeila’s staff that vibrated and pulsed in her hands while Tsubame’s fan remained steady.

“The fucking hell,” MaLeila muttered as her staff pulse again, then twice more before disintegrating in her hands.

The woman’s fan started to come down the rest of the way just as there was a loud banging noise that MaLeila instantly recognized as a gun. Devdan’s gun to be specific. Tsubame snatched her hand away and jumped back as the bullet hit the ground between her and MaLeila.

In the next second, MaLeila looked away from Tsubame to Devdan, his gun pointed at Tsubame, finger ready to pull the trigger again. The loud popping noise sounded again, but instead of Tsubame crumbling to the ground, it was Devdan who suddenly fell.

“Shit,” MaLeila said, scrambling to her feet and making a run for Devdan who was on his knees, clutching his right shoulder with his left hand while his right still clung to his gun.

“Devdan,” MaLeila said over the storm, grabbing onto his left hand to try to pull it from his shoulder.

Devdan stubbornly refused and said, “It’s okay. It was only a warning shot. Didn’t even break my skin,” while glaring over MaLeila’s shoulder in Tsubame’s direction. MaLeila followed his gaze. Devdan was a quick draw when it came to his gun. So quick that he could pull it out and shoot even after someone had charged up an attack and was ready to throw it at him. So naturally MaLeila had to see who had who had managed to appear, take out a gun, and shoot Devdan while he had his finger on the trigger.

“Marcel,” she gasped. Not just Marcel, but Nika too. Truthfully, she shouldn’t have been surprised but it was one thing for him to say he knew Tsubame and another for him to be standing next to her, a gun cocked in his hand with which he had defended the woman with.

“I had it under control,” Tsubame said, gaze on MaLeila and Devdan.

“Sure.”

“I would have blocked the bullet.”

“He’s a quick shot.”

“Not as fast as you,” Tsubame said calmly.

“He knows her,” Bastet said, limping over to MaLeila and Devdan.

“Yeah,” MaLeila muttered.

“Why do you act so shocked?” Nika asked dryly. “You knew this last night.”

Bastet’s head reared back and she looked down at MaLeila.

“What does she mean you knew last night?” Bastet asked.

MaLeila didn’t answer, eyes cast toward the ground.

“MaLeila,” Bastet yelled.

“I was going to tell you,” MaLeila muttered.

“Fucking hell?” Bastet snapped. “What do you mean you were? You knew last night. You’ve had forever to come mention it to us. Why didn’t you?”

Because truthfully MaLeila hadn’t planned to. Truthfully, she had planned to let Tsubame have her way with the Magic Council, do whatever she wanted since the woman’s vendetta wasn’t against her.

“She wasn’t going to. That’s why,” Devdan said, a mirthless chuckle escaping him.

“Oh fucking yay! I never thought fucking dick would be the thing that stopped you from using common sense,” Bastet said looking at the still cloudy sky though the rain had since stopped.

Anger bubbled up in MaLeila at Bastet’s accusation and before she could convince herself otherwise she said, “It wasn’t fucking dick, even though admittedly that was nice. It was the fact that here we are fighting Tsubame, worrying about what she plans, what she’s up to, when she’s the one that’s been fighting my enemy this whole damn time. It was the magic families that sent dangerous magical creatures and sorcerers to kill me when I wouldn’t yield Claude’s legacy. It was the council who turned a blind eye to it because they hated I wouldn’t bow to them. So why the hell should we stop her? Give me one good reason why I should want to.”

“She let Marcel shoot Devdan. Shouldn’t that be enough?” Bastet asked.

“He was protecting his friend just like you all would protect me. What do you expect?”

“Yeah. Except suddenly I’m not sure if you’ve been my friend or my enemy lately.”

“Feels real fucked up. Doesn’t it?” MaLeila asked, part of her feeling sadistic glee that now they got a taste of how she had felt when she found out about the binding even as another part of her felt incredibly guilty. The sadistic part overpowered it though. For the first time since she met them, even after Devdan tried to kill her when they first met, MaLeila wanted nothing more than to be as far away from both her guardians as possible, to forge her own way without them in her life.

As Bastet, Devdan and MaLeila gave each other a three way glare, MaLeila felt something shift. She wasn’t sure what it was, but suddenly she felt less connected to Bastet and Devdan, these two who at one point she’d had every confidence would follow her to hell and back.

Then the dam broke and MaLeila blinked, trying to hold back tears. Finally she gave up and looked at the ground and said, “Shit.”

“MaLeila. I’m sorry.”

Even angry with her, even broken as they suddenly realized they were, Devdan and Bastet came to her defense when Marcel was suddenly kneeling behind her.

“Get away from her,” Devdan said throwing MaLeila aside and grabbing his gun with his left hand.

Bastet grabbed Marcel by the collar of his shirt and threw him back towards Tsubame and Nika, who had approached as well but stopped a further distance away.

“You should listen to the girl. She’s right,” Tsubame said.

“You’ve done enough damage,” Bastet snarled.

“You’ve done this to yourself. It was inevitable. If I hadn’t come into the picture something else would have and you would have had to face how fractured you really were. As it is, I’ve never been a threat to you all. Just as you have never been a threat to me,” Tsubame said.

“Cut the shit and tell us what the fuck you’re getting at,” Devdan said, standing up again.

“I think it’s time you all see the real face of the Immortal Queen Tsubame,” Tsubame said and no sooner than the words left her lips did a cyclone drop out the sky and engulf her, Marcel, and Nika.

In the moment it took MaLeila to blink and shield her eyes because of the wind whipping at her face, the cyclone was gone. Tsubame wasn’t there anymore and neither were Marcel and Nika, at least not the faces she had come to associate with the three for she did indeed know their faces very well. Tsubame’s face in particular. In some science class or another, they discussed how even if people were able to meet themselves, they wouldn’t recognize the person because people only saw their mirror image. But MaLeila begged to differ. She’d taken enough selfies, seen enough pictures of herself to instantly recognize the face standing in front of her as her own… sort of. It was a couple of years older, with sharper features and a more defined jawline because of a lack of baby fat, but it was still her face.

And flanking either side of her doppelganger were the faces of Bastet and Devdan. The other Bastet, Nika, was just as tall as the Bastet standing next to MaLeila in numb shock also, but with long big hair in what looked like a braid out, a style Bastet would never be caught dead in. The other Devdan, Marcel, she couldn’t see any difference, not at first glance.

“What the hell?” Devdan said through clenched teeth, clutching his shoulder again.

That was MaLeila’s sentiment exactly and she started to wonder if it was only a very good glamour, a disguise, until Tsubame summoned a thick leather worn book into her hands. And MaLeila, on instinct, summoned a thick leather book, a little less worn but identical to Tsubame’s into her hands. Claude’s book. The legacy he had left her.

“Oh my God,” Bastet breathed.

“Now do you see?” Tsubame asked. “Now do you see why you should let me help me you?”

“You’re…” MaLeila trailed off, not sure what she wanted to say, not sure if there was anything to say that could express how conflicted she felt about all this. “Fuck.”

MaLeila watched her own face roll her eyes in annoyance.

“I’ve grown tired of waiting on the girl to come around and decide she wants to join me on her own,” Tsubame said.

“So what does that mean for your plan?” Nika asked.

“Nothing.”

“But you just said--.”

Tsubame laughed and said, “I just said I’m tired of waiting on her. So we’re not going to. Marcel, would you help Miss Samara this way?”

In the time it took MaLeila to comprehend what Tsubame said, Marcel was there, in front of them. First he struck Bastet in the face with black energy, causing the woman to fall back and reach for her eyes. Devdan managed to miss the magical attack and rose his gun with his uninjured left arm to shoot, but Marcel was quicker, a shot ringing in the air before MaLeila had even seen the man lift the gun.

It wasn’t a warning shot this time. It hit Devdan somewhere on the right side of his torso. MaLeila wasn’t sure where, just that blood was gushing out him from somewhere, staining the white shirt he still had on from his suit the previous evening. She rushed forward in an attempt to try to slow his fall, because he was too heavy for her to catch him, but her wrist were yanked back behind her before she could take a step.