Of Blood and Ashes Read online

  Of Blood and Ashes

  Kyoko M.

  Of Blood and Ashes

  What would you do if you had to hunt a giant killer dragon in the haunted woods of The Suicide Forest?

  Dr. Rhett "Jack" Jackson and Dr. Kamala Anjali have been tasked with helping the Japanese government take down Baba Yaga, a dragon the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, after it sends part of the city up in flames. Things worsen when they lose track of dragon in none other than Aokigahara, the Suicide Forest--a section of woods in Japan that is rumored to be one of the most haunted places on earth. They've also got the yakuza who cloned the dragon hellbent on getting her back, and they don't care who they kill in order to re-capture the dragon.

  Jack and Kamala are joined by CIA field agent William Fry and dragon-hunting expert Juniper Snow as they infiltrate the forest to hunt the dragon before she can hurt anyone else. Between the ruthless yakuza hot on their trail and the growing mistrust in their small hunting party, it will take a miracle for Jack and Kamala to make it out alive...

  Of Cinder and Bone series

  Of Cinder and Bone

  Of Blood and Ashes

  Of Dawn and Embers

  Of Blood and Ashes © copyright 2018 Kyoko M Smashwords edition

  Proofread by Roxana Coumans

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Other Works by Kyoko M

  The Black Parade

  The Deadly Seven: Stories from The Black Parade series

  She Who Fights Monsters

  Back to Black

  The Holy Dark

  When we went hunting the Dragon

  In the days when we were young,

  We tossed the bright world over our shoulder

  As bugle and baldrick slung;

  Never was world so wild and fair

  As what went by on the wind,

  Never such fields of paradise

  As the fields we left behind:

  For this is the best of a rest for men

  That men should rise and ride

  Making a flying fairyland

  Of market and country-side,

  Wings on the cottage, wings on the wood,

  Wings upon pot and pan,

  For the hunting of the Dragon

  That is the life of a man.

  For men grow weary of fairyland

  When the Dragon is a dream,

  And tire of the talking bird in the tree,

  The singing fish in the stream;

  And the wandering stars grow stale, grow stale,

  And the wonder is stiff with scorn;

  For this is the honour of fairyland

  And the following of the horn;

  Beauty on beauty called us back

  When we could rise and ride,

  And a woman looked out of every window

  As wonderful as a bride:

  And the tavern-sign as a tabard blazed,

  And the children cheered and ran,

  For the love of the hate of the Dragon

  That is the pride of a man…

  -“The Hunting of the Dragon” by G. K. Chesterton

  CHAPTER ONE

  AND BABY MAKES THREE

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Those were the last two words Dr. Rhett “Jack” Jackson heard before everything went black.

  He woke up on the floor. Something soft and cool lay across his forehead, pushing his wily brown hair back from his brow. The television droned on in the background and faint whitish-blue light spilled over the den of his small one-bedroom apartment, illuminating the beautiful southern Indian-Pakistani woman settled next to him on her knees. His gaze slowly focused on her round face, dark-honey eyes, and midnight hair framing her cheeks. The light caught on the tiny gold stud in her nose as well as in her ears, contrasting with her sienna skin in the dark.

  Dr. Kamala Anjali held up one hand and gently asked, “How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Two.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jack.”

  “What is your profession?”

  “Post-doc at MIT and recipient of a fellowship grant for the resurrection and preservation of dragons.”

  She sighed in relief. “Good boy. No concussion.”

  “Did you say what I think you said?”

  Kamala swallowed hard. “Yes.”

  Slowly, Jack shifted his big feet off the textbooks they’d been stacked upon and took the cool washcloth off his forehead, staring open-mouthed at his girlfriend. “You’re really pregnant?”

  She nodded. He licked his lips. “H-How?”

  Kamala arched an eyebrow. “Well, Jack, when a man and a woman love each other…”

  “No, no, we, uh, we used protection. A lot of it. I thought it was 99.9% effective.”

  “The odds were indeed against us and we were careful, but there’s always that .1% chance and I suppose that’s what happened.”

  The room started to tilt in front of his vision. “But…but…the condoms…”

  Kamala grabbed his hands. “Jack, you’re going to give yourself a panic attack again. Breathe. Just breathe.”

  “Again? Wait, why am I on the floor?” He paused. “Jesus Christ, I fainted?”

  “I wouldn’t call it fainting. A head rush in combination with the beer and the stress—”

  He buried his face in his hands. “This is not happening.”

  “I wish that were true, but it’s not. I was thorough. I took ten different pregnancy tests. Eight of them were positive. Two were inconclusive. Numbers don’t lie.”

  He dropped his hands then, his voice hoarse as he stared at her helplessly. “Kam…what the hell are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said very quietly, and he could finally see the tears in her eyes. All at once, the weight of it hit him and he realized he hadn’t even considered how terrified she had to be feeling. She’d learned the truth not long before he did.

  “Shit,” he muttered, and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Kam. I didn’t mean to make it all about me. Learning this on top of a rampaging dragon tearing Tokyo to pieces is a little much for me.”

  She buried her face in the warmth of his neck and clutched the front of his dress shirt. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to spring it on you, but you had to know. I would never keep something like this from you.”

  He rubbed her back in slow circles. “I appreciate you being honest with me. Sorry I fainted.”

  “You didn’t faint. You just had momentary vertigo.”

  Jack let out a weak chuckle. “Thanks. Maybe someday my ego will recover.”

  He glanced over at his cell phone still vibrating on the couch shouting, “Son of a bitch!” in tune to an accompanying harmonica, drums, and tambourine. “Shit’s hit the fan. We’d better get moving before the press tries to corner us.”

  “Right.” She straightened up in his arms, holding still as he wiped the faint tracks of tears from the corners of her eyes. “Where do we start?”

  “We have to try to get ahead of the storm. Dollars to donuts says Matt’s the one who’s been calling, so w
e should head to meet up with him first. He’s probably trying to put together a statement for the news before they start pointing fingers.”

  He cast a concerned sweep over her. “Other than the obvious, are you feeling alright?”

  She nodded. “I haven’t started showing any signs yet. The only reason I knew to take the pregnancy tests was because I just realized I missed my period this month. At least we caught on early.”

  He slid his hands down her arms and linked their fingers. “Well, I think it’s too soon to make any sort of big decisions yet, but…what do you need me to do?”

  “For now, we’ll keep this quiet,” Kamala answered. “One step at a time. Let’s get the other pressing issue in our life under control and then worry about the future.”

  Jack squeezed her hands and offered a watery smile. “Whatever you say, angel.”

  Then he rested his forehead on hers and took a deep breath. “We’ll get through this. I promise.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered back. “That’s all I needed to hear.”

  He kissed her fingers and helped her up. “Throw an overnight bag together. I’ll call Matt.”

  She disappeared into his bedroom while he grabbed the phone, facing the television again. His gut twisted itself into a writhing snake pit as he saw the footage playing again. It showed a dark grey dragon the size of a Tyrannosaurus Rex landing in the middle of the street. Its huge jaws parted, revealing fangs at least five inches long, and then a pillar of fire at least two feet in diameter spouted from the gaping cavern of its mouth. The banner across the bottom of the news channel proclaimed five dead, seventeen injured. The female newscaster was paler than usual as she reported that the Tokyo police were scrambling to section off the area and get the rampaging animal under control.

  Baba Yaga. The world’s deadliest dragon.

  And there was a good chance she was loose because of him.

  ***

  October nighttime in Cambridge, Massachusetts meant chilly temperatures, so Jack and Kamala threw on their overcoats before piling into Kamala’s powder blue Volkswagen Beetle and driving towards the main part of the city. Jack was only newly famous—or infamous, in certain circles—so he still stayed in a modest one-bedroom apartment outside of Cambridge as it was much more affordable than living in the Squares. Whenever possible, he took the train, but with all hell breaking loose on the other side of the planet and their reputation on the line, the pair drove straight to the home of their Principle Investigator, Matt Buchanan. He’d been lucky enough to rent a house where he lived with his wife and daughter rather than having to fight for space in the heavily coveted apartments near Harvard or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  Jack and Kamala pulled into the driveway not long after eight o’clock, as traffic had been outrageous considering every other driver was on their phone watching the footage of the Baba Yaga attack. It had only been two months since the birth of the first dragon to grace the twenty-first century, and nearly every person on the planet found themselves captivated by anything related to the long-extinct species now that they had resurfaced. Jack and Kamala’s dragon, Pete, had been the proverbial Prometheus and genesis of all the successful research related to the mysterious reptiles, and she’d also been the source of the biggest struggle Jack and Kamala had ever known.

  Until now.

  The door opened just as Jack lifted a large hand to knock. Matt Buchanan was average height and build with a mop of curly, dirty-blond hair and brown eyes. His reading glasses were perched on his forehead and he looked like he’d aged about ten years within the last hour.

  “Hey, guys,” he said with a heavy sigh, glancing to and fro behind them at the yard. “Better get in here before someone sees you.”

  They stepped inside and he shut the door and locked it. “Follow me. I’m set up in the den right now.”

  The foyer had hardwood floors that creaked a bit underfoot as they walked through it to the left. A huge navy suede couch was pushed against the far wall, facing the flat-screen mounted on the opposite wall. Matt’s wife, Bianca, sat holding tightly to a throw pillow, transfixed by the news report. She glanced up with a weak smile and greeted the two as they entered, then went back to watching the TV.

  In front of one of the empty cushions was a small fold-up table with Matt’s MacBook perched on top. Matt gestured towards the pair of love seats on either side of the couch and sat, pulling the table towards him.

  “I’ve been gathering as much Intel as I can since the news channels started running the footage,” he said, typing madly. “I’m only getting pieces here and there, but there’s plenty of social media evidence that the government hasn’t taken offline just yet. From what I can put together, Baba Yaga was in some sort of research facility in downtown Tokyo. Witnesses reported an explosion, and shortly after she appeared on the streets.”

  “Where is she now?” Kamala asked.

  “Hard to say. They’re scrambling. Rumors are that she is just flying around lighting shit on fire and attacking anything she sees, but then others are saying she’s heading out of the city towards the countryside.”

  “The latter makes more sense,” Jack said. “If they’ve never let her outside, she’ll be completely disoriented and lash out at everything because it’s all new to her. Her instincts should tell her to head for higher ground, or for something familiar so she can secure food and shelter.”

  “Right. I imagine her much like a toddler waking up from a coma. She’ll throw a tantrum, then try to work out what happened and her mood will stabilize. The only problem is that with all this chaos and such a large city, she could be practically anywhere at any time.”

  “Matt,” Bianca said, pointing to the screen. “Look. They’ve got the choppers in the air finally.”

  She hit the Mute button to disable it and the sound came rushing back into the room. The female news anchor still looked shell-shocked, but as if she’d finally gotten ahold of herself. “The Tokyo police and animal control have collaborated in a city-wide hunt for the creature, who has now claimed at least eleven lives with more than twice that injured according to a current report. Baba Yaga was last sighted in the Akihabara district, and now that air support has arrived, we are hoping that they’ll be able to subdue the creature before it can cause more damage.”

  The anchorwoman faded out as the live news from a major Tokyo news channel dissolved in and showed the smoldering remains of the cars below, as well as plumes of smoke drifting up from burning buildings. The English translator said that these attacks happened within the last fifteen minutes, which led them to believe the dragon was still within the vicinity. The camera swept along the brightly lit skyline and over the traffic choking the city streets. People scurried away from the direction the helicopter was headed towards, some abandoning their cars, others rushing into nearby businesses to take cover.

  At last, the camera swung up to a six-story building with bright orange and blue neon signs of the Sega logo and long glass windows above it. It focused intently at the roof where there appeared to be a dark shape. The helicopter’s spotlight splashed across glittering smoke-grey scales and then two bright yellow dots glowed like twin cinders in a mound of ashes.

  Baba Yaga uncurled her long, titanic form and roared into the night.

  The roar made the camera’s audio levels shriek from the sheer volume. It sounded like the blast from a thousand trumpets mixed with the bone-shaking growl of a crocodile. The hairs on Jack’s arms stood up beneath his shirt, and even thousands of miles away from the danger, he felt the urge to flee at the terrifying bellow.

  The dragon fixed her citrine eyes on the helicopter and snarled as she crept towards the ledge of the GiGo Sega arcade building. Clear liquid dripped from her open jaws and burst into flames at her massive clawed feet. Greyish-brown webbed skin reflected light as she stretched her mammoth wings and leapt into the air, heading straight towards the camer
a.

  Panicked voices spoke as the helicopter wheeled wildly to the right, seeking to get lost behind another building as the dragon gave chase. A man in SWAT gear shouted at the pilot to hold steady as he aimed a sniper rifle out of the open hatch, sighting down the barrel at the reptile as it glided after them. Baba Yaga belched a mouthful of fire that just barely missed the tail of the helicopter and the sniper gripped the edge of the door, grimacing as it ruined his shot.

  The skyline tilted underneath them as the helicopter climbed higher above the city, hoping to get lost in the cirrus clouds of the night sky. The dragon vanished from sight a moment later and nothing but darkness billowed beneath them as they flew. The translator said they lost visual and would now rely on radar to stay out of the dragon’s reach. The camera man climbed towards the front seat and focused on the electric-green blips on the console, depicting an ominous blob following their position.

  The sniper said he had a shot, and told the pilot not to change their course yet. He pulled the trigger. The camera man wheeled around to try to catch the footage, but was too late; nothing but darkness and clouds blurred past them. The pilot said she was outside of their radar and asked if the sniper could confirm that he’d hit his target. The sniper said he saw the dragon drop out of the air and grabbed his walkie-talkie to speak to his commanding officer.

  A sharp beeping sound filled the cabin of the helicopter and the pilot threw his weight forward onto the joystick. They narrowly missed an enormous plume of fire as Baba Yaga came charging at them from below. It threw the sniper to one side and he lost his balance, clinging to the strap in the cabin as they fell a hundred feet within seconds. The camera man lost control of the set and it smashed against the floor of the cabin, lodged beneath one of the seats.

  It gave everyone watching the chance to see Baba Yaga snatch the sniper out of the helicopter and bite him clean in half.