Zeph Kaizen's Arc

Chapter 10 of 51

Zeph carried Keji off the slope before the light changed. The old man was light in his arms, lighter than he should have been. The tiger walked ahead, breaking a path through the snow. Zeph found a shallow hollow under a stone overhang and laid Keji down there. He packed snow against the old man's ribs where the bleeding was worst. Keji's eyes stayed closed. His breath came in short pulls. Zeph knelt beside him and tried to think. The two hunters who had run would report what they had seen. The Saiyan organization knew now. They knew he had killed their hunters on the shelf. They knew he had drunk something that let him do it. He had spent Keji's last door and he was empty again. His hands still shook from the elixir leaving him. The tiger's head came up. Its ears turned east. Zeph heard it a moment later. One set of boots on stone. Heavy. Slow. Not a hunter's pace. Something bigger than a hunter. He stood and moved out from the overhang so the fight would not fall on Keji. The tiger came with him. Through the trees, one figure walked up the slope. Broad shoulders. A long blade slung across the back. No hood. The Saiyan crest was burned into the leather over his chest. An enforcer. Sent because the hunters had failed. The enforcer stopped twenty paces off. He looked at the tiger. He looked at Zeph. He drew the blade without hurry. "You killed eight," the enforcer said. "That earned you me." Zeph named it inside himself. I will not let him reach Keji. The warmth of refusal came up in his chest. It was steady. It was not the flood from the vial. It was the small candle he had earned. He held onto it. The enforcer moved. He crossed the twenty paces in two steps. Zeph slid sideways on the refusal and the blade cut air where he had been. The tiger went for the man's leg and was kicked away into a tree. It did not get up fast. Zeph struck the enforcer's ribs with an open hand. The blow landed. The enforcer did not fold. He turned and caught Zeph across the jaw with the flat of the blade. Zeph went down in the snow. His mouth filled with blood. The candle guttered. He could not name a second refusal fast enough. The enforcer stepped over him and raised the blade. Zeph rolled. The blade struck stone where his head had been. He came up under the enforcer's guard and drove his shoulder into the man's gut. They fell together down the slope. The tiger reached them at the bottom and closed its jaws on the enforcer's throat. The enforcer stopped moving. Zeph lay in the red snow. He had not transformed. He had only survived. And the organization would send worse now.