No wonder the sound had creeped him out.
Their laughter rang out as they stopped drumming and took flight, heading for his friends.
With a calmness he couldn’t even begin to understand, Ryuichi dismounted. He glared at his father as he saw all the wanton destruction around them. The pain that’d been so needlessly dealt to everyone he cared about. “Youarea monster.”
His father, still in his dragon form, laughed. “Is that all you have to say? You think I’d do all of this if I felt anything other than absolute joy from it?”
Horrified, Ryuichi gripped his sword. How could they be related?
Ryukage snorted fire from his dragon’s nostrils. “Your friends are burning, Ryuichi. They’re screaming for you. ‘Help us. Help us.’ As if there’s any help for them.”
That burned through him and singed his very soul. How dare his father taunt him. The man who’d uprooted his entire life. Who’d taken his mother from him. The man who was supposed to love and protect him.
His own father.
Inside, he seethed with a raging fire that burned hotter than anything his father could throw at him or at Maho-jo.
Even his shadow agreed.
All his life, Ryuichi had wanted to know who his parents were. Had been desperate to know they were important. That they had abandoned him for their duty.
He’d wanted to know that they loved him.
But this monster?
It was incapable of love. Clearly, the monster had never cared for his mother or for him.
Ryukage was a specter of a past he didn’t know. A ghost of a life he’d never had.
For so long he’d wanted to see his father. To know him.
Now?
Now, he wished nothing more than to kill him for all his crimes against him, his mother, and his friends. He regretted ever meeting this creature.
Ryukage had allowed evil to contaminate his heart. His soul. As much as Ryuichi had hoped his father retained a shred of humanity, he knew better.
I can’t hold back. The world depended on him.
He readied his battle stance.
This was for Maho-jo. For Hanzo. Takara, Kato, Pim, Koichi, Keiko, the Kai-dan, Masaru, and everyone else who had helped him get this far.
For their sakes, he would not fail.
For his sake, he refused to falter.
His father pulled a blade of fine steel out of his shadow. Neat trick. He’d give him that, but a trick nonetheless. One even Ryuichi could do.
Before he could think another thought, his father rushed him.
Ryuichi’s first instinct was to run.
Don’t you dare!He would never allow himself to be a coward. Not for anything.
But that was easier said than done when a giant dragon was rushing toward him. One with bloodlust in its eyes.
One who appeared to have no paternal instinct at all.
