The Kingmakers(98)

“Promise me!”

Mamoru took the back of her head, feeling her silken hair. “Tomiko, please calm down. You are overwrought. It’s all the travel and new surroundings.”

In the night air came the sound of gunshots.

Mamoru immediately reached for his pistol. Soldiers posted by the archway jumped in alarm, gripping their rifles, hands reaching for cartridge pouches on their belts. Shouts and screams began in the distance.

Mamoru pushed Tomiko toward a door and grabbed up his katana. “Run. Get Kiyo inside.”

“What is it?”

“Run, I said!”

Tomiko started for the door when several figures dropped into the courtyard and fell on top of her. She screamed and the baby shrieked.

Mamoru was turning to her when sharp hands seized him and thrust him to the ground. Claws. Teeth. Humanlike shapes surged around him. The feral creatures were like men, but naked and hairy. They circled him on all fours.

He began to rise, hearing his wife’s gurgling cries amidst the hissing and growling. He saw one of the vampires tear his infant daughter from Tomiko’s desperate grip. With a scream of fury, from one knee, Mamoru brought his katana around in an arc, feeling it bite the chest of one creature. He drew it back, stepped, spun, and thrust into another vampire. Twist. Pull. Spin and cut through a throat. In an instant, three vampires lay bleeding around him.

His wife struggled against one of the things as it brought its jaws down on her throat. To his stunned surprise, the creature screamed and reared back, Tomiko’s own amulet tangled in its yellow teeth amid a wash of blood and smoke. With a clear path to his wife, the prefect started to bound onto the veranda. Then a hand seized his ankle and yanked him back onto his stomach in the dirt. The creatures that should have been dead all rose around him.

Mamoru rolled quickly onto his back, trying to keep the sword up as protection. The monster holding him gibbered and spit, and leapt up onto his abdomen, ignoring the blade slicing cleanly along its rib cage. A gnarled hand with long yellow claws streaked down at him, digging into his chest. The vampire screeched and fell back off him. It rolled in the dirt, clutching its smoking hand, before scurrying away. Its two companions followed like pack animals, and all three streaked across the courtyard and vanished into the darkness.

Mamoru felt warm blood spreading across his shredded tunic. Still, he struggled desperately to his knees and crawled up onto the veranda, shouting his wife’s name. Another vampire hunched over Tomiko looked at him, seemed almost to smile with bloody teeth even though its eyes were nothing more than a savage beast. It didn’t flex and leap upward, but in a surreal scene, it just lifted slowly off the ground, still in a crouching position. Its brethren with the talisman in its blackened teeth writhed on the ground and finally lay still.

Mamoru dragged himself to the figure of his crumpled wife. Her coat and robe were shredded and the flesh nearly flayed from her bare chest. The wound at her throat was raw and horrific. He pulled her up from a pool of sticky blood and clutched her tight against his grief. Her round perfect face was stained bright red.

“Kiyo,” she gurgled, trying to reach.

Mamoru saw the shape of his poor little daughter lying not far away, completely still. He could tell there was nothing to be done for her, and his heart shattered. He pressed Tomiko’s face to his chest, silently clinging to his anguish.

“Kiyo,” she repeated, struggling weakly.

“Kiyo is fine,” Mamoru said, shielding his wife from the horror burning his own eyes. The sight of his daughter lying unprotected left him feeling as if his bones were frozen and broken. But he deserved the torture; he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the little figure. “Don’t fight, Tomiko. I will get a doctor for you.”

“Kiyo is safe?”

“She is here next to us.”

Tomiko sank against him with relief. “Do you still have the talisman I gave you?”

“Yes.” His voice cracked with anguish. He touched the stone resting against his bloody chest and realized with a shock that it had repelled the creature. But his wife had not been so lucky. His tears dropped onto her face, creating spatters in the blood.

“I’m so tired,” she whispered.

All he wanted to shout was No, no, no! Stay awake! Don’t leave me alone! But instead he said quietly, “Rest then.”

“Yes, I will. Kiss Kiyo for me. I’m too tired.”

“I will see you both in the morning.”

A small red hand tried to grip his arm. “Be a great man.”

“If you say it, I will.” He couldn’t finish the sentence because his breath was gone.

Tomiko died there along with his daughter, leaving Mamoru with his unrelenting grief.