Chapter 2.6

Reiko didn’t need to check Lisa’s body for vitals. The spell binding Reiko’s body disappeared the moment the witch was hurled to the side. Her juniors shook off the freeze in her peripherals.

Captain Nakamura didn’t have time to think, didn’t have time to process why the Egregore did not move to protect their own. Pure instinct and adrenaline kicked in.

“Kobayashi, Fujimoto, Kazama,” Reiko yelled. “After it!”

Miyuki activated the glyphs beneath her shoes and launched herself across the lawn. The phantasm halted just outside the gates and caught her fist with one of its own. The impact snapped the receiving arm in two, and Miyuki grabbed its mask with her second hand and drove the thing into the asphalt.

The phantasm hit the ground with a concussive boom. The street sank into a concave crater. But what was the point of jamming a headless face into the pavement? Its second and third arm snagged Miyuki by her dress and tossed her against the brick walls.

“Chains, bind,” Fujiko incanted.

Shackles born from gravel latched themselves to the phantasm’s arms and legs. The more it strained, the more the debris tightened.

Then came the crack of gunfire. Mamoru leapt from the roof, his eyes aiming down the sights of an antiquated wooden rifle.

Another crack. Two bullets, spiraling with imaginarium, caught the phantasm square in the chest. A guttural groan escaped its mask, and it slumped forward.

But when Reiko caught up, the thing cried a deafening screech. The vibrations shook off its asphalt fetters and the bullets embedded in its chest disintegrated. It turned on its heel, preparing an escape.

“Not this time,” Reiko grabbed the phantasm by its cloak. “Incantation!”

The tattered cloak burst into flames. Petals blossomed within, each triggering smaller detonations along the phantasm’s back. Its despondent moans heightened into screams, and a familiar voice reached Reiko’s ears.

“Are you going to hurt me again, Reiko?”

Reiko had expected this tactic and responded by channeling more imaginarium into the phantasm’s clothes. She tightened her grip, and the dazzling aura of her flames burned a vicious white.

What Reiko didn’t expect was the fist that smashed her face and forcibly relinquished her grip on the cloak. With that second of relief, the creature dashed into the city with flames still gnawing at its clothes.

“It’s running south along West 5th,” Reiko said. “Fujimoto, Kazama, jump to the Tozai Line. Kobayashi, follow Namboko south. Stop it if it tries to head east.”

Reiko sprinted after the burning shadow on foot. Behind her, Mamoru and Fujiko whispered incantations and their bodies vanished in threads of light.

“Shinomiya,” Reiko yelled into her radio. “Kazuo, come in! Kazuo, damn it!”

“Reiko,” Kazuo’s voice shook. “I just got a bunch of chatter on my other comms. What’s going on?”

“That thing was at the tea party!”

“Thing?”

“The Taboo the Commission mages were supposed to catch the night we got the Brideskiller. It just killed Lisa Everest.”

“Killed an Egregore?” Kazuo sounded incredulous. “But that doesn’t make any–”

“Captain Nakamura!” Miyuki interjected. “It just tried an escape at North 2nd. Moving now to North 1st.”

“Keep the Commission off our backs, Kazuo,” Reiko snarled. “This thing’s ours.”

“You know I can’t–” Kazuo sighed. “I’ll talk to Arataki.”

“Fujimoto and I are in position,” Fujiko cut in.

“It’s fast!” Miyuki cried. “It’s crossing Odori Avenue now.”

“Fujimoto, Kazama, you’re up. Kobayashi, you’re on my left.”

Reiko latched the radio to her waist.

“Blink,” she incanted.

Like Fujiko and Mamoru, Reiko disappeared. In that split second, her body traversed the local imaginarium and reanimated a breath behind the fleeing phantasm. The other three members of Section Eight pincered it from the east and west.

The creature’s arms slingshotted at its pursuers. Reiko snapped her fingers to incinerate the arm aimed at her. Miyuki splintered the left arm, while Fujiko froze and shattered the third limb along with a round from Mamoru’s carbine.

Its extra weight discarded, the phantasm dropped to a crouch. Pale concentric rings hummed beneath its feet. It kicked off the ground and exploded past Fujiko and Mamoru, gliding centimeters above the pavement.

“Shit!” Mamoru cursed. “Sor–”

“Nevermind that. Keep going!” Reiko barked. “We’re doing it again! Kobayashi, take point. Fujimoto, give her supporting fire. Kazama, take 1st North.”

Miyuki activated a second battery of sigils beneath her soles and shot after their target while Fujiko vanished into the nearest side street. Reiko blinked along the southern rooftops, her eyes focused on the trails of tattered cloth along the asphalt.

Mamoru joined her on the roofs on the other side of the street, his eyes locked inside iron sights. With every ear splitting crack, Mamoru fired holes in its cloak and mask, but the phantasm’s flight speed remained uninterrupted.

“Kazama, it’s still headed down the West 7th District,” Miyuki reported. “Now West 8th. West 9th.”

“I haven’t missed a shot. This thing doesn’t slow down,” Mamoru murmured.

“That thing just killed an Egregore,” Reiko reminded.

“Reiko!” Kazuo’s voice echoed through static sputters on Reiko’s private channel. “Reiko, where are you?”

“We’re in pursuit, Kazuo.”

“No! You have to get out of there! Abort. Get everyone out!”

“Not happening, Kazuo, you know what this thing just did. We can’t let it hurt anyone else.”

“No, you don’t understand–”

“You can scold me later. Fujimoto, keep firing,” Reiko squelched the line. “Kazama, where are you?”

“West 25th and 1st North.”

“Kobayashi, can you steer it there?”

“Negative,” Miyuki gasped. “I can’t work my heels anymore, I’m sorry.”

Reiko looked across the street.

“Fujimoto?” she asked. “Got any bigger guns?”

“Not without risking collateral–”

“Samukawa Group can bill us later,” Reiko cut him off. “Just steer it towards Kazama.”

“You’re going to regret saying that, captain.”

Mamoru dissolved the rifle in his hand and leapt to the center of the road.

“Here we go then,” he took a deep breath. “Incantation.”

“Little David.”

The asphalt and the adjacent street curb fractured beneath the weight of a hundred tons of metal. Lifted onto a reinforced cradle was a twenty foot steel barrel resting at a forty-five degree angle, capped by a muzzle wide enough to swallow a small car and a weapons chamber that could fit half of Reiko’s apartment.

“Keep your head down, Miyuki.”

Mamoru gripped a nearby handrail.

Unlike the original mortar that inspired it, Mamoru’s Little David did not launch a 36-caliber round into the middle of Sapporo, but its recoil proved just as explosive. The steel cradle hurdled backward, shearing a trench through the asphalt.

A stream of imaginarium shot from the barrel and stretched down the street like headlights in a continuous time-lapse. The force set off alarms and ruptured glass.

Several blocks down, Miyuki leapt into an alley to avoid the blast while the phantasm looked behind and spotted the radiance rising above it like a tsunami. It swerved at the next available intersection as the imaginarium flashed past.

“It’s headed north!” Miyuki shouted.

“Everybody, converge,” Reiko ordered.

Reiko and Mamoru blinked along the roofs until they reached Fujiko, who stood atop a silver brown torii gate planted in the center of the street, her left eye open and flooded with imaginarium.

The phantasm spotted her as it crossed the next street. It tried to change course, launching itself, in spite of its thin legs, towards the nearest roof.

“Fall,” Fujiko incanted.

The phantasm’s body jerked in midair and hurtled to the ground. It thrashed, its center of mass distorted by a rippling radial blur where Fujiko had amplified the gravity beneath it.

Miyuki followed and planted her knee on the creature’s back. As its three limbs began to resurface, she wrangled them with one arm, then chanted, “Incantation, Containment, Fibonacci Sequence.”

A sapphire circlet encased the right arm, followed by another that trapped the left. Two armlets clamped down the final half-grown appendage, followed by three interlinking cuffs that strapped the phantasm’s legs and neck to an anchor point levitating above its concave body.

“Captain,” Miyuki yelled as Reiko approached. “I can tell this won’t hold it for long. I need your help–”

Miyuki jolted backwards as she sensed an unfamiliar discharge of imaginarium. A large sphere that brimmed with electricity surrounded the phantasm still trapped by her own spell.

A familiar flash of white light flooded the street, so much so that even the torii gate cast an eerie weathered sheen.

At the end of the street and behind, perched on the roofs and watching from every crevice and alley, the elusive mages of the National Public Safety Commission reemerged like forgotten shadows.

A familiar, but equally unwelcome, old man reentered the encirclement.

“Hello again,” said Director Tanaka Arataki. He gazed at the caged phantasm and smiled. “Good work. Take it away. Take them away too.”

“What?” Reiko gasped.

The containment sphere holding the phantasm disappeared behind the Commission’s mages, who approached Section Eight with glimmering handcuffs.

“You have your orders. I have my orders,” Arataki said. “You’re all under arrest.”

“What’s going on?” Reiko demanded. “Under arrest? For what?”

“For a serious crime, Captain Nakamura. You’re charged with the conspiracy and murder of an Egregore.”

Night of the Witches - END