Page 102 of Mack's Horribly Hellacious Ghost Town
I let out a breath of pure relief. That anxious knot in the pit of my stomach eased up a notch. “So we can kill it.”
“Affirmative. But I know why there’s no scat or bones. It’s not flesh.”
“What the hell is it, then?”
“An energy beast.” Seiji stood, but he turned sideways. I knew precisely what he was doing. He kept an eye on the tunnel while he talked to us. “Rare, to say the least. They are pure energy and normally created from a great force, something involving sacrifice.”
The pieces fell into place. “Like an explosion killing dozens of miners?”
“That would do it.” Seiji glanced down the tunnel, and in the harsh light of my LED flashlight, his expression was grim. “I suspected it could be, just because of what we’d learned of the mine’s history. I can’t say I’m pleased, though.”
Davina came a step closer, peering around him. “How tough is it to kill?”
“Very. If I was alone, I wouldn’t continue. They can teleport through space and walls, since they have no physical form.”
“That does make it a wee bit challenging.” I eyed him, knowing he had something up his sleeve. He always did. “Okay, so what’s the trick?”
Seiji shook his head a little. “You Scots are a different breed. I tell you there’s a monster that’s hard to kill or track and you’re taking it as a fun challenge.”
“Oh, hunting a beastie like this is wicked fun.” I meant every word. I prodded again, “What’s the trick?”
“The trick is twofold. First, give me your weapons. I need to tweak them.”
I handed over both sets of dirks first, as did Davina. She mostly fought with dirks or a bow, really, and she had both on her. She didn’t like using a short sword in narrow spaces like this, and I didn’t blame her.
I had no idea what Seiji was about but somehow wasn’t surprised when he took out a Sharpie from a pocket and started writing on my blades. It was quick, the same kanji on both. Three characters, all simple in design, and then he handed my blades back. I studied them but I knew very little Japanese.
“What’s it say?”
“Koudansetsu, or properly, hikari de tachikiru,” he translated while writing on Davina’s blades. “In essencesever with light. It’s not active just yet. There’s a second step.”
He wrote on her bow, too, with Davina’s blessing. Then he took two fingers and swiped them down the length of the bow,then the blades, and returned to me only to repeat it. Now, the second he put his fingers to metal, I couldseeas he applied his own chaotic energy to the blade.
“I’m calibrating this so the energy signature is one beat off from the energy beast’s.” Seiji explained even as he took the second dirk and coated it with energy, both sides. “If it’s the same frequency, it doesn’t work. So one notch higher or lower is enough to disrupt an energy beast’s form. Disrupt it enough, it dissipates.”
“Dissipates like dies?”
“No. It dissipates like… Hm, can’t think of an analogy.” Seiji paused, frowning at the blades like they held the answer. “It’ll disperse, in essence. Once it disperses, I can truly use my power and cleanse it completely.”
“Oh, like Eli does when she exorcises a ghost?”
“Yes, quite like that.” He extended his hand and I put my claymore into it, pleased he was doing mine, too.
Now I understood why he wouldn’t attack it alone. It had to be hard, trying to fight it down to the point where it went into a sort of stasis, only to turn around and have to hit it again with a powerful attack. Sounded exhausting.
The word exhausting reminded me of Mack overdoing it on our first case together. Suspicions arose and I gave voice to them. “If you’re forced to fight it, then cleanse it, does it affect you?”
Seiji finally looked up at me, eyes peeking up through his thick, messy hair. His wiry frame was guarded, somehow, a wariness to his posture that I hated with every fiber of my being. It spoke of disappointment, of not having the support he needed, of being forced to shoulder it all alone. There was something there, in his dark eyes, a question of his own he chose not to voice.
“Yes. It affects me direly.”
“Will I need to carry you out?”
“Hopefully it won’t be that bad.”
He didn’t say no. Fuck me, Brandon had said something about even a chaos magician needing an anchor, but I hadn’t realized he meant it literally. So the reason why Seiji wouldn’t attack this thing alone was because he was likely to collapse afterward?! Oh, now that wasn’t a nice thought, not at all.
Something firmed up in me, a fixed determination. Like hell he was going hunting without me. From now on, I was going with him.
