Before Beasts, There Was Fire--Book 2

Assassin's Blade

He knew that whisper of a whistle anywhere. He heard it in his dreams every night. It was the reason he never drank, why he hated noisy places and crowds, why he had to keep his senses alert at all times. Even as he stood there, feet apart, and launcher aimed straight up, he couldn't help but feel pained by Dranzer's weight in comparison to the assassin blade's. The memory of holding one of those obsidian bey was like a feather compared to the bulky tournament gear his phoenix now wore.

Ayah's hands twisted up against his back.

"Very top," she breathed against his ear.

He didn't have to try hard to remember what was beyond the darkness at the top of the staircases. It had been one of his favorite finds, as it led to the catwalks above the entire stadium, where the various lights that shown down on the show could be handled directly. It gave complete and full access to everyone in the stadium and seats at any time.

Ice spiked through his gut. The others. Had he wasted time interrogating Ayah?

The bang of his feet against the steps ricocheted in the tall tunnel like thunder. Light stabbed across the high darkness, momentarily showing a shadow of a figure as they passed through and on to the catwalks.

He wouldn't make it. He'd have to try.

"Dranzer!" He tore out the rip cord.

His beyblade landed on the metal railing with a burst of sparks. Dranzer shot up and off the end of the railing, a sparking, whizzing circle in the last light of the closing door.

Then, stomach in his throat, an old coldness falling over the heat of his blood. As he ran up he reached out for Dranzer and took hold of the burning consciousness.

Dranzer won't fail me, he told himself.

And he trusted Dranzer to the catwalks without his eyes to guide her.

In the very last crack of light, a blaze of orange and red flooded the white.

The darkness closed in once more. The noise of the crowd on the other side of the walls picked up, alarmed.

He kept on running.

He knew the number of breaths it had taken to get the top when his hand finally took hold of the door--

And he stepped out into a scene from hell.

Fire licked about his spinning blade in an orange-hot globe that retreated from the spinning black hole. Behind the assassin's blade was a masked individual wearing the same skin tight shirt and loose fitting black pants as Kai. Their eyes were but small mirrors of reflected fire. Screams had erupted from below as boxy theater lights fell and shattered. The super heated air crackled and snapped and sucked the breath from Kai's chest. He hadn't expected...he hadn't meant to summon so much fire...he had only wanted Dranzer to stop the assassin, cut them off, shatter the sliver thin black blade.

He could sense that the black figure on the other side of the fire was smiling.

"You've lost your touch," they said. "You must be terrified."

Kai flinched back to reality and snapped his teeth in a snarl. "Attack!"

The navy blade, ultra brightened by flame, shot forward with all the grace of a cyclone. More lights crackled down into the stadium below, their wires and ties melted.

The assassin's blade dodged Dranzer with ease, beating aside the flames with the simple force of the wind the blades collected, then dropped off the cat walk. The assassin blader flung themselves over the railing—down to the hundred foot drop below.

Despite himself, he panicked. In response, the brilliant white hot shape of his phoenix burst forth from his blade, cawing out as blade and bitbeast went over the edge with the assassin.

But the black assassin didn't fall. He caught hold of the underneath of the catwalk and shimmied along the bottom like a spider. The black blade whirled along the railing like the stripes of a candycane, kept along by sheer momentum.

Kai cursed. "Dranzer! Fly!"

The dropping beyblade whistled with the intensity of its renewed spin. It managed to angle itself just right to catch itself on a dangling cable, loosened by the loss of its light. The orb of flames and bird burst back over the catwalk in a shower of red feathers that landed about Kai as sparks and sheer heat. His skin tightened, itched, melted, burned. He could smell burning hair.

He had only just taken the first few running steps after the assassin when a second black blade whistled through the flames and cut across the side of his front leg. He didn't feel the pain, but his leg gave out beneath him all the same. He'd remember how bright red his blood had looked dripping through the grates to the stadium below.

Dranzer let loose a ferocious cry.

He forced his lungs to suck in the too hot air to yell his final command.

"Break them!"

And he offered his will wholeheartedly to his bitbeast.

Empowered, freed, the orb of the flames exploded. The stadium's lighting gear fell in earnest, the metal of the catwalk screeched as it warped, and forced him to close his eyes in fear his eyeballs might melt out.

But not before he saw the navy blue blade jump the last distance between it and the first assassin's blade like a bullet. The heavier, tournament grade blade shattered the delicate top.

With a roar Kai forced himself up to swing Dranzer back around to the second blade fleeing behind him, still flicking a trail of his blood along its way. The scent of burnt blood rolled up like rusted metal and grease. In a bolt of fire, Dranzer was there, smashing apart the second blade in a shower of glittering obsidian.

Gasping, Kai collapsed once more. The fire dropped along with him, shut out as quickly as a dropped curtain. His blade wobbled atop the precarious grooves of the grated catwalk, struggling to not get caught in a hole now that its speed was no longer fed by Kai's will.

Metal groaned. Kai gritted his teeth. He wasn't done. He had to catch them, had to—he took hold of the railing without thinking and let go with a shout as the heated metal seared his hand.

"Rusty. Superfluous. But you managed to break us, so I guess I can give you a warning." Black shoes, little more than socks of rubber and cloth, appeared in his watering, splotched vision. Past them, all he could make out of the stadium below was the red and blue blur of the beydish. "Even without that stunt you pulled two nights ago, he would have found you. You have his girl. If you don't cooperate with him, BladeBreakers will start dying. When we come, don't make us have to kill one to get you to listen."

Kai lashed out his unburned fist, but the black legs lithely dodged him. Damn it. He had gotten rusty.

"We'll...we'll back off for now," said the other, with more nervousness than seemed right. Even with his blade crushed, Kai was at his mercy.

The two black figures vanished. He hardly heard the tapping of their fleeing feet against the cracking of the metal catwalk as it cooled and glass lenses on lights popped. He finally started to register the pain of his burnt skin along with the growing screaming of his right leg. His blade clicked as it finally fell into a hole of the grating and crackled to a stop.