Chapter Fourteen
When the door opened again, Ginji looked across to see who was coming in, hoping it might be Teshimine. He had wrenched at the bonds that held him in place, tried to call on his birthright of power, but nothing worked. It was a kind of deafness and blindness, like being under anaesthetic and touching the numbed spot on his own skin; there should have been the sensation of lightning, and there was nothing. Nothing.
A procession came through the door, led by a child. With a shock he recognised her as the little blonde girl that he'd met once before, in the Venus de Milo affair. She wasn't carrying a doll this time, but moved with a preternatural calmness that somehow made her unnatural and eerie. She was a little blonde ghost from some Victorian horror story, Alice in Wonderland after the Apocalypse.
There was a drum beating in the background, throbbing in time with his pulse. Someone was chanting in a language he didn't recognise. He thought it might have been French.
Behind her followed Masaki. He looked just as Ginji remembered him. It hurt physically to see him here, like this, and to know what he had done. Ginji called out to him, but he made no answer.
Teshimine was there, as well, and Kagami, and the oldest Miroku, and Hevn with them -- Hevn? -- and other people, oddly blank and faceless, carrying Himiko and Ren. Ren was unconscious. Himiko was conscious and struggling, he could see that much, but there was some sort of gag and helmet strapped over her head, presumably to stop her using her Scents, and . . .
. . . and there was Ban, chained and gagged, ferocious, conscious, and the sheer joy of knowing he was there made Ginji relax. If Ban-chan was there, then everything was going to be all right. The GetBackers were together.
"Arrange them," Masaki said, not looking at Ginji.
The blank-faced carriers chained Ren to the wall first, opposite Ginji. She hung there limply, head bowed. They placed Himiko on the ground midway between the two, at the foot of an altar -- but there hadn't been an altar there a moment ago, this must be Babylon City virtuality, and Ginji would not think about who the altar was for, he would not -- and tied her there, and then they brought Ban over to the altar, and he was fighting for every step of the way, throwing himself backwards and forwards, trying to break free. The room was silent except for the hissing of breathing and the distant throb of the drum.
In the end the blank-faced men forced him down onto the altar, and chained him at the feet and wrists. They stepped back then and walked away, as though completely unconcerned by the matter.
Ginji had decided that random shouting and kicking wasn't going to get him anywhere. He cleared his throat.
Masaki looked across at him. "Yes, Ginji?" he said, and his voice was just as it had always been in the old days, when he had been one of the Four Kings and the Volts had been the Volts and nobody had ever thought about the future.
"What's going on?" Ginji asked. "What are you doing?"
"Ah." Masaki folded his arms. "How much do you know about voodoo, Ginji-kun?"
Ginji bristled. "Nothing. Ban-chan is the one who knows about that sort of thing. What does it have to do with all this?"
Masaki swept his arm out in a gesture. The rest of the room was silent, poised and still like a staged tableau. "Imagine that there are powers outside normal perception, Ginji. Forces. Entities. Mugenjou was built as a lightning rod to call them down. Brains Trust was an organisation dedicated to capturing and controlling them. The trappings of voodoo are merely detritus, built up through superstition and history. But the actual powers behind it are real. We tried to call them once before through the traditional methods, but that didn't work. The entity who was summoned chose to leave us in peace, with an understanding that we would not try to interfere with him." He tilted his head. "You met him, Ginji-kun. He called himself Akabane Kuroudo, but that was only the body's name. The spirit was Carrefour, the Guardian of the Crossroads, the traveller by night, and Carrefour is no man's friend."
"What happened to him?" Ginji asked.
Masaki shrugged. "The loa is banished. The body is dead."
"Akabane's dead?"
"Weren't you listening? There was no Akabane. It was a game for him. He's gone. It's over." Masaki took a quick step, his first sign of nervousness. "We started again. We decided that we needed an entity that we could shape; raw power that we could give form to. We cloned bodies to hold it, the Voodoo Children. We created the Marassa to be our agents." He nodded towards Hevn and Kagami, who had moved to step together and embrace.
Ginji could only think, Oh, Hevn, and then, I thought you were our friend.
Her eyes glittered as she looked at him, avid and hungry.
"We experimented with other methods. We funded Lucifer's work. He failed, but the data was useful. We bred for a child who could draw enough raw power to open the gateways without the need for worshippers and ceremony." Masaki pointed a hand at Ginji. "You were entering into that power when Midou Ban stole you. He put off your destiny by a few years. It all comes paid now."
"Who are you?" Ginji asked. "I thought I knew you, Masaki."
Masaki raised his fingers to touch his face. "The flesh is renewed. We developed ways of cloning new bodies, of rejuvenating ourselves, long ago . . ." He nodded towards the little girl with the doll. "You should ask her, Ginji-kun. She knows far more about it than I do. But for what it's worth, I am much older than you think I am, and I have been planning this for a long time. We shall call down power. We shall filter it through a constructed mind and then install it in a constructed body, and it shall be our servant. And what we have done once, we shall do again."
"You can't just do that!" Ginji pleaded. He would have said more, he would have done more, but the lightning of his power was untouchable.
"No. We can't just do that. Some components are necessary, even for what we have devised, and one of them is the blood of a sacrifice." He glanced at the writhing Ban. "And the person who has caused us so much trouble will be an admirable cabrit sans cornes, a hornless goat to die on the altar."
"No," Ginji whispered, and thunder sounded somewhere overhead.
Masaki drew a wide-bladed machete from the depths of his coat. "One for power," he said, pointing the blade at Ginji. "One for a mind." He pointed it at Ren. "One for the body." The blade moved to point at Himiko, who was struggling with her gag, eyes wide with a furious knowledge that scared Ginji even more. "And one for a sacrifice." He pointed the blade at Ban, then reversed it across his forearm and offered the hilt to Hevn.
She took the blade and stepped forward, and began to speak.
---
Kazuki surveyed their advantages. Being thoroughly restrained was certainly not an advantage. Their current physical state was adequate; Hevn simply didn't have the physical strength or training to have done him any serious damage, and whatever gas had been used to subdue them had passed now, leaving the two of them awake and suffering from headaches.
Knowing what might be going on elsewhere would only have been an advantage if they could have done something about it.
"Juubei?" he called softly. "How are you feeling?"
Juubei raised his head. "I . . . cannot break free," he reluctantly admitted. Blood streaked his forearms from where the cuffs had cut into his wrists. "I am sorry, Kazuki-sama."
Kazuki shook his head. "Not your fault. They knew what to expect from us. Hevn could have told them." The words were bitter. He still had difficulty believing that the woman whom he had known, whom he had even vaguely liked, should have been nothing but a pretty mask. It would have been pleasant to believe that she was somehow controlled or used, but there had been the ring of truth in her voice when she had spoken to them, the note of genuine hatred.
He wondered what Makubex would do, if he could do anything at all. They already knew that Babylon City could hack Makubex's computers and files; any autonomy that Makubex had possessed had been illusory at best. Would Brains Trust just make their rule public? Or would they simply act as they wished and ignore Makubes as long as he didn't get in their way?
There had to be a way out of this. He would not submit. He would --
The doorknob clicked, once, and then there was a concussion that echoed through the cell as the lock was literally blown out of the door. It hit the wall on the other side of the cell, next to Juubei, and fell to the floor with a clank.
The door swung open, the new ragged hole in it still smoking, and Toshiki walked through, shaking his right hand as though it pained him. He was battered, bruised, and smeared with mud, but there was a fire burning in his eyes that Kazuki remembered from the old days.
He's ready to dance. And so am I.
"I apologise for the delay, Kazuki-sama," Toshiki said quietly. A set of keys dangled in his right hand. He unlocked Kazuki's cuffs, then moved over to release Juubei as Kazuki rubbed his wrists.
"What happened?" Juubei asked, voice low.
Toshiki shook his head briefly. "Nothing significant. I was a prisoner. Ren released me. We were attacked by Masaki --"
Kazuki hissed in surprise, drawing a quick breath between his teeth. "Him too."
"Mm? Who else?" Toshiki queried.
"Hevn." Kazuki unwound the sash from his waist, Toshiki's sash that he had carried all this time. "She was never one of us. She only wanted our trust." He walked over to Toshiki. "And this is yours."
Toshiki's eyes softened, and he took the sash in both hands, running the silk between his fingers for a moment before binding it around his waist. "Thank you, Kazuki-sama." He hesitated, then continued. "Masaki left me for dead and took Ren with him. I regained consciousness about half an hour ago, and overhead a conversation between Kagami Kyouji and a man I did not recognise. They had Kudou Himiko with them, but she was unconscious. They said something about a ceremony that was about to happen, but also that you were prisoners here. I could not --" He broke off.
Kazuki laid a hand on Toshiki's shoulder. "We understand. Now, come. We have a ceremony to stop."
"Indeed," Juubei rumbled. "Time to speak now or forever hold our peace."
Both Toshiki and Kazuki stared at him. Kazuki eventually said, "Was that a joke?"
"Of course not, Kazuki-sama," Juubei said blandly.
Kazuki gestured for Toshiki to lead the way. They left the cell at a run.
---
"Cote solei' leve? Li leve dans l'est! Cotee solei' couche? Li couche lans Guinee! Grands, ouvri'chemin pour moins . . ."
Himiko knew the words that Hevn was speaking, recognised them from her own studies. Where does the sun rise? It rises in the east! Where does the sun set? It sets towards Guinea! Great ones, open the way for us . . . She was not stupid. When people had called her Voodoo Child, she had tried to find out what the words might mean.
And now here she was, helpless, mute, and about to lose her soul.
There had to be a way out of this. She clung to the thought like a talisman. There had to be something she could do. She might hate Ban, but he never gave in. She might frequently be furious with Ginji, but he would not admit defeat. She could do no less.
Doctor Jackal's blood was still on her skin. He had not been a friend or a lover; he had been something different, and yet that had still been something important, and his blood wanted vengeance.
She was a witch, wasn't she? Witch of Poisons. That was what Lucifer had named her, and he'd been just another puppet on these people's strings. Witches knew all about vengeance. She'd spent three years hunting for Ban for vengeance for her brother. Now she knew who had really been behind it all, and she would have blood for it.
There had to be a way.
Hevn was working through the ceremony in the standard pattern, invoking the loas in a general way, killing a couple of hens -- she could see Ginji wincing from here, how like the idiot to be concerned over two chickens -- and the gunpowder and the chalk and the rum, all of the usual stuff. Then she turned to Masaki, and Masaki stepped to the wall beside Ginji and threw a switch.
Lightning streamed upwards around Ginji's body, tugging his hair upright, casting the spectre of furious Raitei across his face, and slammed down all around the walls of the great room, its brilliance turning the blood on the floor plain black. Ginji was screaming, but it was lost in the rush of electricity, and Hevn tossed her head back in the same moment, caught in a brief ecstacy of power.
The thought came to Himiko like a gift, sudden and complete. I cannot break free myself, but perhaps someone else could, and they are currently swinging the door wide open.
She began to half-whisper, half sing, knowing that her voice would be blocked to other ears by the mask that covered her face and checked the use of her poisons. "Mait' Carrefour -- ouvrir barriere pour moins! Papa Legba -- cote p'tits ou?" Master Carrefour -- open the barrier for us! Father Legba -- where are you? "Mait' Carrefour -- ou ouvre yo! Papa Legba -- ouvri barriere pour li passer! Ouvri! Ouvri! Carrefour!"
The words settled into her bloodstream as she repeated them, and rang in her ears, louder than Hevn's words, and behind her she could feel that shadow which she had grown used to for three years now, that smiler with the knife, and a familiar voice whispered, "I am coming, Lady Poison."
Hurry, she would have asked, but the pulse was shaking her, and there was thunder at the door.
---
Toshiki ran in front of Kazuki and Juubei, leading the way. He should have been preparing himself for battle, but a memory would not leave him. It teased at him until he acknowledged it.
He had been thrown down by Masaki's blow, left to lie in the mud, and he had been on the point of death. He had felt it in his body, tasted his last breath in his mouth, and then --
-- "Hell Knight," Lucifer's voice had said, and he had felt a firm hand grasp his shoulder and drag him up, force him to his knees, make him breathe, and he had looked up to see a remembered face and burning eyes for a moment. "We are not yet done," --
-- and he had woken, coughing up mud and water, pulling himself back into movement and action.
And was it so strange that Lucifer might have remembered him, or he remembered Lucifer, here where they seemed to be on the borders of reality? Lucifer had always been a man who paid his debts.
The wide doors of the room where he had heard the ceremony was to take place stood before them. He nodded to Kazuki, and tilted his head, in a shall I?
Kazuki nodded in response.
Toshiki slammed the doors open with a single blow, and they stared into the lightning-lit room beyond.
---
The sound of the doors crashing open broke through Himiko's half-trance, and she tilted her head to see Kazuki and Toshiki and Juubei come through at a run.
"Defend the centre!" Masaki called, and stepped between them and Hevn, who continued her chanting without a pause.
Amid the crackle of the lightning, Himiko saw Kagami and Miroku Natsuhiko move to intercept the three men, Kagami swinging round in a drift of sparkles and leaving the air dancing in his wake as he smoothly glided towards Toshiki, Miroku Natsuhiko drawing his sword and shattering a spray of Juubei's needles out of the air into shards at his feet, and then side-stepping a web of Kazuki's threads.
For a moment, she struggled on the edge of the precipice, feeling the darkness overshadowing her. They'll be enough. I won't have to do this.
And what if you guess wrong?
I don't want to do this, what if he won't give me my body back, what if --
And with the eyes of a trained fighter, of a professional, she saw that Toshiki was moving a fraction too slowly, already marked by earlier injuries, and that Kazuki and Juubei were not expecting the Miroku's transformations, and that the sad-eyed Teshimine and Masaki were already moving to step in to help.
"Carrefour," she whispered, and shut her eyes, and felt her body wrench so hard that her back came up from the floor as she twisted in pain, and exploded into darkness.
---
Toshiki spat out blood, and fell back two paces towards Kazuki and Juubei. This wasn't going well. The man in the white coat with the sword was very good at what he did. Kazuki needed time and space to maneuver, and they didn't have enough for either. And as for Kagami Kyouji, well -- he was as fast as he'd been earlier that day, and Toshiki wasn't.
Hevn's chanting was getting faster. She was building to a climax of some sort.
Toshiki considered last-ditch options. Kagami wouldn't be expecting him to do something stupid. If he dodged past him and got Midou Ban or Ginji free, Kagami would take him down and he'd be out of the fight, but perhaps one of the GetBackers would be able to do what he couldn't.
Hevn lifted the machete she was holding.
Shadows rushed over Himiko's body like water, and she came up from her bonds in a spray of silver metal, blades glistening around her hands. She laid one palm across the other, and drew out a long, bloody sword.
---
GetBackers Fanfic