The tower of Shou used to be a hotel, where people could afford sleeping above the water. It was now a shrine to lovely rot silk curtains in their rags on their poles, velvet papers in long and dragging strips, the neon tubes whistling their death anthems in pink and green. Old perfume and fresh blood were blended in the smell like the notes of a complex wine.
Malik strolled into the lobby on his own.
The convoy was huddled three towers behind his back, on a rooftop. Aya lay unconscious, with still throbbing sickly green veins. Nari mulled her with diligently inexhaustible hands. Old Jina was watching the line, Tid came shining. And Jun
Jun had endeavored to pursue. Capturing the coat of Malik with small hands and eyes wet, but stubborn. One palm on his shoulder Malik stayed him, kind but no more.
Fight: you hear anything come, you run.
What shall I do To hear your death?
Malik didn't answer. He only stepped into the tower, and the darkness devoured him up.
The arena up the top was circular, surrounded by broken up floor to ceiling windows that gave views of the black water. But the actual characteristic was the floor a disc of reinforced glass scarred and broken, so that the drowned streets could be seen below. Forms played at the bottom. Always watching.
Lady Shou was in the waiting.
Since the platform battle she had changed to something more familiar. She wore a silk robe, the color of blood spurted dry, and twisted open to her stomach by no thing except the slow swell and fall of her breath. Below it only skin was scarred, gleaming, plotted with thoughtful strokes which were faintly glowing at the fringes. Her breasts were full and heavy, and the brass-rings glittered in both the nipples. The landing strip on her thighs was crimson, and meant to attract.
She sat down on a cushion-heap of pillows stolen by a hundred of her departed lovers, and sipped out of a silver flask. The neon divided like a promise on the gold cap on her canine.
I had guessed that, she said rather idly, warmly. The obstinate are ever so.
She didn't fight fair. She fought beautiful.
Velvet Step, Broken Tile skated on the glass floor like a skater on an ice-sheet that was in existence only to her. Malik swung a straight palm to terminate in a hurry and she was behind him, her palm fanning through his lacery-torn coat upon his spine.
Courtesan had hooked his arm, and could not retreat. Not too hard, not to break, but to govern, and her body was against his back. He could touch all the warmth of her flesh, all the sharpness of her piercings, the warm plumpness of her breasts against his shoulders. Her breath was warm upon his neck, and the harsh odour of whatever was in that flask.
You are so strangled," she whispered, lips against his ear. Relax, Mary, let me help you.
Malik didn't panic. Panic was death. It was panic that she wanted.
The Saint had bored bone Memory Counter, drilled into his bone, over painful years and practice. His body did the learning of rhythms that other men did names. When she reeled him once more a pattern was taking shape, a vulnerability which she had believed in him discovered was being moved with instead of resisting.
He turned about upon her line of defence, and switched Span-Breaker Palm against her side.
She turned her back like smoke. But his palm slid over her side only a caress of touch and she gasped.
Not pain. Pleasure.
The robe slipped down again, and revealed the entire shape of one of her breasts, the black nipple at her brass ring. Her eyes twitted, fox gold and pecked. "Oh," she breathed. You know how to touch a woman, you see I was all upset that you had forgotten.
Knives Audience crowded in.
Phantom attacks attacked in every direction Shou had a killing intention took shape, and she was so numerous that her presence seemed it was filled with multiple enemies that were not visible. In each of the shadows there was a blade. Each flash of neon a blow. This was to paralyze, to cause the opponent to shoot at nothing when he/she would be too late to shoot at the real thing.
Empty Road Presence replied Malik.
His very intention of killing himself was the rollings-thunder of the great burden of all men he had buried, of all children he had failed, of all sunrises he had lived through when other men were more worthy. The phantom knives were dulled. The room ceased to have a crowding effect, and began to have a gravey-like effect.
The space between them was an antagonistic location of their auras. Instead, the glass ceiling traced a line that bifurcated, lightning-fast.
Shou pulled up.
Balcony Kiss Knee rose up, pushing with his knee against his liver, to bend him, to render him susceptible, to get him on his knees, where she desired him. But his hand desperately grabbed her thigh. Her flesh was so hot and moist with sweat and the underlying muscle was trembling with restraint.
She moaned.
Her leg round his hip, she drew herself nearer and pressed the warmth of her inwardness against him through the thin saving of his trousers. Her arms were around his shoulders like dancing, not killing. The brass in her nipples stabbed his chest with his ripped coat.
This is the fight, Bridge Hound, and a slow, deliberate roll of her hips over his, she whispered. She felt him respond the body's betrayal, the animal truth beneath the discipline. Her smile widened. Not fists. This. It is what your body wants.
It touched her, brushing him with lips. Why does your mind oppose it?
Malik headbutted her.
Hard. The cartilage crack was very audible in the silent room. Hot, red blood sprayed out of her nose, and painted out her lips and chin with crimson. It had not been a pain that pushed her back, but a surprise.
Then she laughed.
Blood leuked down her chin, over her breast, and it stained the silk robe. Her gold tooth was shining in the red. At last, she said, with a thick thick voice. And bored with the foreplay I was.
The seduction stopped. The violence began.
Red Balcony Thread her sash, which was a prize of her first kill shook out, like a living object. It clasp his wrist, pulled him off balance and before he could manage it, he was falling into her area rather than it. His chest was hit by Lantern Smile Palm, his breath stolen, which shocked his lungs to be unable to breathe. Drowned Chime Spin pushed out his counter where his palm had gone through air, where her head ought to have been, and her arm had grasped his ribs.
She was faster now. Meaner. The whimsicality had burnt away, leaving in its place that which was pure and sharp and completely without mercy.
Before he even had a chance to recover she had him on the glass floor and with her weight lying on his chest. The Red Balcony Thread bound round his throat hardly tight enough to choke, but to make him remember who was on the boss. His blood was warm and metallic and dripped off her face.
The sky was bruising to storm above them, through the shattered glass ceiling.
Still alive, Bridge Hound, I going to keep you alive. Tilting her head, her bleeding lips rubbed against his ear. She sang like a lover, internal and horrible. But first, Jaro wants your scars...
She rotated on his chest sending out a slow, possessive roll out of her hips.
I will have you screaming after me. All do at one time or another.
Thunder on the black water.
or perhaps it was otherwise.
Something worse.