Ch.163Act 2: Ch.10 – Long Live the King (15)

Giovanni approached with an obsidian dagger in hand. Aurora raised her shotgun. The father stopped in front of his daughter’s barrel, and the daughter stared at the tip of her father’s blade.

I aimed at Giovanni, but kept my eyes on the servants and Arthur Black the Mayor. The servants stood with their hands modestly folded, while the Mayor watched us with emotionless eyes, as if this place were a bus stop or waiting room.

Giovanni wore a cynical smile. Even in this situation, at his age, he still looked sinister, dangerous, and dark.

“I taught you wrong.”

Aurora said nothing.

“I thought I had told you everything about what the left hand must do, but you still hesitate. Your brother, or Michael, would have done what needed to be done long ago.”

“If the father of the White Hand could see how someone has become another’s dog, even they would do the same.”

Aurora raised her barrel slightly. From chest to neck. The father stared at his daughter. Though they shared no similarities, there was one thing that was the same.

The look in their eyes. The coal-like pupils burning fiercely inside. That heat flower blooming in Aurora’s eyes was her father’s.

“Living means choosing a side. I simply chose mine.”

“What about the people who trusted you and came from Sicily? The families who died without even removing their white gloves? Was it all to glorify your name?”

“That faith was their own choice, so I owe them nothing.”

“You said family comes first.”

“Savio always comes first. That never changes.” Giovanni paused briefly before continuing.

“You. Me. Your mother. Your brother. Savio is more important than even your younger sibling.”

“You’re wrong.”

A spasm crossed Giovanni’s face.

“What did you say?”

“I said you’re wrong. No name is more important than a person. No name can imprison someone. People have names; names don’t bind people. The person standing beside me now taught me that.”

“Have you become so weak? Too burdened to carry the glory and weight? It’s time for you to step down.”

“Call it that if you wish. But even that weakness is my choice.”

“Is that so?”

“I won’t live buried under a name like you did. I’ll create my own name.”

Color returned to Giovanni’s face. It was a similar expression to when he had seen Catherine Scully.

“Then let’s see. I’ll count to three, and when I finish, I’ll stab you. You know my knife skills better than anyone. In return, you can shoot me whenever you want. I need to see if your hesitation is weakness or cowardice. Three.”

Giovanni smiled. He rolled his eyes, glancing at me briefly. Aurora didn’t move.

“Two.”

The old boss tilted his neck slightly. The scar was distinct. The very wound where I had stabbed him. As if deliberately showing it.

– Think about it. Logically, why would someone going to do something bad announce it everywhere? Giovanni has come to request that his children be saved. Though he likely doesn’t know the parties involved.

Scully’s words.

– He was very conscious of you. He was talking to me, but all his attention was focused on you, that’s what I mean.

Crayfield’s words.

– I’m just an ordinary woman.

Aurora’s words.

An ordinary woman.

One who wants to receive love and share love, that kind of ordinary woman.

“One!”

Giovanni shouted the command.

He ducked and charged forward. Pushing Aurora’s shotgun aside, Giovanni rammed with his shoulder. Flames burst from the shotgun, blasting away a servant who had been standing dumbly.

The obsidian dagger fell to the floor. Gripping the knife with my left hand, I ran forward, firing the submachine gun in my right. There was no aiming to speak of, just spraying bullets like a mist, but it didn’t matter. I had plenty of ammunition, the distance was close, and there were many servants.

Mayor Arthur Black looked at me with surprised eyes. His body was exposed, and he belatedly raised the cane in his left hand!

I plunged the knife into the Mayor’s lower abdomen. A mushy resistance traveled up my palm to my elbow. Fighting the urge to drop the knife, I pushed harder.

The Mayor, with the knife in his stomach, stepped backward. Something flowed from his stomach. Blood… no. It was much thicker, more viscous, and pitch black. Like oil.

The servants leaped forward. The Thompson’s stopping power couldn’t hold them all back. I slid across the marble floor and rolled. I narrowly escaped the grasp of one servant.

“Get down!”

Just as I shouted, the ground sank beneath me. The ceiling came closer. It seemed to touch me slightly, then I crashed into the floor.

I barely managed to tense my neck, avoiding landing headfirst. But that was all. Like an elephant stomping on my back, a heavy pain overwhelmed me. The servants grabbed my limbs and pinned me down with their bodies.

Turning my head, I saw Mayor Arthur Black standing upright. The black oil spilled on the floor was being sucked back into his body. As if time were running backward. The knife, which should have been embedded in his stomach, slipped out smoothly and fell to the floor with a clang.

“Mother, Mother. My Mother Hydra. My Mother who left an old soul and a young body. My Mother who remembered the covenant. I willingly offer this young body to you, Mother… who is no longer in this land, but… who left a legacy, foolish Mother…”

Black the Mayor gripped the knife in reverse. I struggled, but couldn’t overcome the servants’ strength. The raised knife came down on my shoulder.

It felt like tearing flesh and smashing a hot kettle into it. Like hot water flowing down my shoulder and left arm. My blood vessels burned fiercely, and I vomited something primal.

“No, no! Let go, let go! No!”

Aurora came running, firing her shotgun repeatedly. But the servants weren’t easy to deal with. Those with bodies blown away grabbed her legs with their arms, those with arms blown away clung with their hands.

“Enough.”

Giovanni struck with his cane. He removed the horrible things binding his daughter. He took the shotgun from her and fired wildly in our direction.

Black the Mayor pulled the knife from my shoulder and threw it at Giovanni. The old mafioso’s body rippled greatly. Aurora caught her collapsing father. With one nod from the Mayor, the knife slipped out smoothly and flew back to his hand.

Screams. Groans. Shrieks. Aurora laid her father down and picked up the gun. When it wouldn’t fire, apparently out of ammunition, she swung it like a club. But a shotgun is vulnerable for such purposes.

Arthur Black gripped the knife straight. It would pierce my heart faster than Aurora could reach me. The pit of my stomach ached terribly, and my shoulder still burned, but I could make one last gamble.

I relaxed my body. The knife came down. With a large recoil, I barely avoided it. Or so I thought. Until I saw the dagger that had penetrated about halfway through my clothes.

“Aaaaaaah!”

Aurora’s wail.

I grew distant. My body convulsed. Something inside pounded me. As if it could no longer endure, as if asking to be let out… a throbbing sound. A faint scream, a wailing sound… the friction of tires on the road. Engine noise. Loud engine noise…

“What’s that? Check it out!”

At the Mayor’s command, a servant in a maid’s uniform flung open the lobby door. The creaking, banging sound grew louder. Something was clearly coming. But Black seemed to pay no attention to it anymore.

The Mayor pushed the knife in. A heavy pain struck my lungs. Heavy. Heavy?

“What? Why won’t it go in?”

Black the Mayor felt over my clothes. Something hard was felt. Chekhov. That light yet sturdy gun. It had blocked the blade. The Mayor gave a hollow laugh.

“You had another gun. But this time you won’t escape.”

The Mayor raised the knife tip. He aimed precisely below my chin. The area between my Adam’s apple and chin tingled.

“It will be over soon, lowly one.”

Vrooooom!

This noise was impossible to ignore. Even Black the Mayor raised himself up. But I had seen and heard it. The bright white headlight piercing through the sea of fog. The familiar yet somehow nostalgic sound of an Indian motorcycle engine.

“Stop…!”

The Mayor shouted, but it was too late. The motorcycle, growling up the stairs, smashed through the lobby door and charged in. The heavy piece of metal ground up the distorted-faced servants in its path.

The black nun’s habit fluttered like the shadow of death. A silver flash gleamed in the hall. Flames rose from the guns held in both hands. Abassina put the gun barrel to the head of each servant, one by one.

With each flutter of her garment as she turned, the servants’ heads exploded. Fragments flew like dandelion seeds.

Click. Click. Abassina didn’t discard her guns. She gripped them upside down and struck the servants with the handles. With each swing of her hand, one of them burst out as if struck by a hammer.

“You…”

Abassina stopped. With her silver hair flying, she was shedding tears of blood. Arthur Black aimed his cane at her, but Abassina only trembled. It was fury.

“You…!”

The last blood clan leader grabbed the Mayor’s face with her right hand. A strange howl erupted. The dagger repeatedly stabbed Abassina’s body, but she didn’t move an inch.

“How dare you! Touch! Whose body!”

The building whimpered at Abassina’s shout. A pair of wings sprouted, tearing through her nun’s habit. Pure white wings stained with blood. Black the Mayor grabbed both of Abassina’s hands, but he couldn’t shake her off. He couldn’t escape.

Something black flowed from Black’s body. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship, the foul blood that had been watching for an opportunity flowed out in escape.

Abassina swung her left hand widely. She forcibly pulled back those things trying to escape. In mid-air, they rotated in the shape of a sphere. From the face gripped in her right hand, black blood gushed like pus being squeezed from a boil, and was absorbed into the sphere in her left hand.

“How dare someone like you touch whose body!”

A blinding light. A madman’s light so bright that merely looking at it numbed the mind, burst forth.

Arthur Black screamed. But even his scream couldn’t escape and was trapped in the sphere of blood pus. Black’s body, held in the left hand, gradually crumpled. Like a deflated balloon, like the entrails of a freshly slaughtered beast shriveling, fire rose from the blood pus in her left hand. It burned as it spun round and round.

Crack.

Black’s body shattered. The blood pus in her left hand blazed up and turned to ashes. The bleeding angel trembled as she stroked my forehead.

“It’s okay… it’s okay… I’m sorry. I’m sorry… I should have come sooner… it’s okay… it’s okay…”

Blood tears flowing down her chin touched my wound. I flinched at the stinging sensation, but gradually breathing became easier. I took Abassina’s hand to indicate I was fine. Even though I wiped away her blood tears with my hand, she didn’t smile.

“Aurora…?”

Abassina blinked. I looked at Aurora. Sitting on the floor, holding her father in her arms. Like a Pietà. She closed her father’s eyes. Though her left glove was soaked with blood, Aurora merely adjusted it.

The left hand of Savio and heir to the family rose from her place.