Mob Sorcery 5 - Ch19

Note: Ch19-21 are being posted together.

“Out of the way!” a heavily distorted voice shouted inside the café. “We only want Vincent Keys.”

Multiple somethings burst against Kiho’s telekinetic bubble, practically confirming the foxes from earlier had been hitmen.

The restaurant transformed into a cacophony of screams amid the clatter of shoes and the shattering of plates and glasses. Office workers dove beneath tables or rushed to the back while the staff fled through security doors. A towering chef held a door open and ushered people through it, all while shutters slammed down over the open kitchen and barriers sprang up.

Alarms rang out along stores across the street. The explosion of Juliet’s spell set off security on the entire block and the tower above them, triggering shutters to close. But not here. Her magic had obliterated half the frame of the restaurant’s front, including the security shutters.

“I’ll take the inside,” Gaby snapped. “There are more coming.”

She whirled, dropping the golden barrier she’d used to defend them from Juliet. Two more barriers rippled from her fists. One surrounded her body, while another formed a small shield in front of a clenched fist.

A pair of suited foxes stood near the entrance, both with four tails. They launched force blasts at Kiho’s barrier futilely. Gaby leaped over the back of the booth, a lance of light appearing in her spare arm. Her shield expanded in size as she flew and she caught the panicked force blasts of the foxes.

The restaurant’s wall exploded into dust and rubble as her lance crashed into it. The foxes dashed to the side, one glowing with purple light as he sprinted away and the other bleeding profusely from a dozen small wounds.

“Foreign bitch,” the wounded fox snapped, focusing a gloved palm at the side of her head. His four tails shimmered with white light.

Gaby’s body shimmered with light as she spun, fist cocked and ready to obliterate him.

Only for a searing flame laser to punch a gaping hole through the fox’s chest and sever his outstretched arm at the same time. His spell collapsed into prismatic light as his tails went limp.

“Thanks.” Gaby gave Vince a thumbs up.

“Idiot,” Daji hissed at Vince. “Focus on casting your dragon. Let the others fight. They can handle it.”

Looking outside at the growing mess, he had to admit Daji might be right.

Numerous foxes emerged, and these wore white kabuki masks that hid their facial features. A couple were women, and all but one possessed only four tails. All wore Yakuza pins on their lapels. Juliet remained in place atop the park wall, shrouded in magical shadow.

Lightning bolts, ice lances, and fireballs pelted the vampire from below as the Lionettis took cover. Barriers shimmered on the SUVs as snarling whips of magic lashed out at the wolfgirls, only to rake across the vehicles. Juliet occasionally teleported from post to post on the wall to dodge spells, her shroud of darkness shifting with her.

“We need them to retreat,” Vince said, looking at Pola. “They’re sitting ducks out there with the Yakuza foxes coming in.”

“Got it.” The mafia commander nodded, then cupped her free hand over her mouth. A wisp of green magic danced over her lips. “Girls, get the fuck over here!”

The bodyguards barely glanced at Pola before dashing across the street. Magic blasted at them from both Juliet and the foxes, blowing holes in the asphalt. A pair of barriers sprung up along either side to protect them, both solid white.

Kiho held one hand up, and winced as her barriers cracked under the sustained assault. “I’ve gotten rusty if I can’t cast a barrier capable of withstanding these fleas without my focus.”

While trying to focus on casting his dragon, Vince nodded at her. “Thank you for defending us, Kiho. I know you can’t fight, so—”

She gave him a cutting look and he stopped talking.

“I can do as I wish, Vince,” Kiho said. “I’m clanless and lack the political limitations of my husband. It’s one thing to assist you in your work with the mafia, and another altogether to defend my future son-in-law from assassination.” She smiled. “I’ll lend you my blade. Allow me to cover you while you summon your dragon.”

A long spear appeared in her hand, roughly the same length as her with a curved blade two-feet long. A naginata, Vince believed. Countless paper talismans with Japanese scripture had been lacquered onto its wooden hilt and the blade held an eerie blue sheen.

“I’ll leave it to you,” Vince said. “I need around twenty seconds. My barrier can protect me, but just keep them off me.”

“They’re here to kill you. We’ll do more than keep them off you,” Pola snapped. “Come on, Kiho, I wanna see if we can take them all out before Vince gets his dragon up.”

“That’s the spirit,” Kiho said with a half-hearted pump of her free arm.

Pola bounded forward, rapier swirling with glowing light. She raked the air with her free hand and massive wind claws gouged holes in the street. The Yakuza foxes in her path let the magic wash over them. Their telekinetic barriers shimmered under the spell, and one cracked.

Seizing on that fox’s weakness, Pola shot across the asphalt like lightning. Light rippled off her entire form as she used multiple magic tools at once to boost her physical abilities. Her rapier thrust forward, aimed directly at the weakened fox.

Only for another fox to rush her from the side. His fists glowing purple, he slammed his palm into Pola’s side. Her barrier held strong against him. But her momentum had been cut short, and she tumbled into a roll. Her spell flickered uncertainly along her rapier.

With a snarl, she flicked her sword at the two foxes, who were only feet apart. A vortex of wind blades shot forth, barely visible in the noonday sun. It scythed through air, asphalt, and person alike. Leaves, dirt, and other debris whirled about in a makeshift tornado while the foxes’ barriers strained under the attack.

“You’re open!” Juliet shouted.

Shadowy wolf heads charged at Pola through the air, right through her vortex spell. Juliet’s magic split apart Pola’s spell upon contact and the foxes scattered.

Pola stared the dark wolves in the face, cocking her fist back to use her wind claw tool.

“Shit,” Vince said, preparing to ditch his dragon. Would Pola be able to hold Juliet off?

A distorted line of air blasted through Juliet’s spell, and the wolf heads evaporated into darkness. Kiho stood a dozen feet away with her naginata raised.

“Pola, focus on the foxes,” she said. “I’ll keep the vampire occupied.”

“Occupied?” Juliet’s face transformed into pure rage. “Who the fuck are you, bitch? I’m Juliet Forest of the Retributive Night, and you’re in my way.”

“Warriors have nothing to say to those who only play at battle,” Kiho said.

The elder fox’s face was a mask of focus, and utterly unlike the playful and loving mother Vince had seen over the past month.

She reminded him of Teru. Only with less murderous intent toward him.

Scorching flames roared across the length of the street, cutting off Vince’s view of Pola and Kiho. Gritting his teeth, Vince continued to count down. He was halfway to his dragon already while the foxes panicked.

“Forget the samurai,” the five-tail fox ordered, his voice as distorted as the Yakuza Vince had killed earlier. “Kill the sorcerer. The wolf princess is a bonus.”

“Fuck!” one of the bodyguards snapped. “Sottocapo!”

Vince’s muscles tensed and he nearly broke his concentration by shouting. Gaby caught his reaction.

“Leave it to me.” The unicorn bent forward, her powerful leg muscles coiling like springs and cracking the concrete sidewalk. “Keep him safe, girls.”

She transformed into a streak of light, jetting toward the foxes on the opposite side to Kiho. Instantly, the five-tail’s head snapped to the side and his tails blurred. A four-tail directly in Gaby’s path was knocked aside by an invisible hand.

Gaby’s fist slammed into the white barrier of the five-tail, and he didn’t even flinch. Only to nearly regret it when a spiderweb formed across the shield of light.

“I love arrogant dipshits like you,” Gaby growled, cocking back another fist.

Purple magic flared around the fox’s tail, and he flew backward in a spin. Gaby’s fists rose to protect her face. The impacts of the five-tail’s kicks produced booms that echoed off the buildings, but only Gaby’s handheld shield shattered.

She simply summoned another one and flexed her biceps. “That all you got? I thought you guys were all famous warriors or some shit?” Her grin stretched from ear to ear while every fox near her shook with rage.

The flames cleared around Kiho and Pola, revealing a half-orb of distorted air extended from the blade of Kiho’s naginata. Pola fought one of the Yakuza in close quarters, slowly giving ground as his empowered fists slammed into her barrier. Cracks began to form with each blow.

“Come on, sottocapo,” one of the bodyguards muttered, busy projecting a barrier using a ritual circle with two other wolfgirls.

Vince wasn’t sure how useful the barrier would be. Juliet appeared distracted by Kiho and if the vampire could blast apart the building exterior, he doubted a makeshift barrier by the bodyguards could withstand her rage.

Every second ticked by, and he maintained his focus. He needed to trust his girlfriends. They knew how to fight and could hold their own. If Nina thought Pola could threaten her, then she sure as hell could go toe to toe with a four-tail or two.

The wounded four-tail near Pola rose, blood streaming from dozens of cuts across his body. All four of his tails shimmered with telekinetic magic as he held a strange pose with his arms.

“Pola!” he called out, preparing to summon his dragon.

Prismatic flames roiled off his body, producing coiling embers several feet long. He held his cane out, teeth gritted, while pushing every ounce of magic through his limbs.

Another second…

“Move!” the wounded Yakuza bellowed. His arms glowed with ivory light.

The fox dueling Pola dodged her punch, then sidestepped, giving his comrade a clear opening. Kiho stood only a couple dozen feet away. Yet she remained preoccupied with the onslaught of shadow magic producing a hundred small craters in the street.

A grin split Pola’s face.

Her rapier snapped to the far side of the dodging fox. A wind spell flashed from it as she flicked her blade upward to the sky.

The fox slammed into an oscillating wall of air, so dense it distorted Vince’s view of the objects on the other side.

Like a conductor, Pola’s wrist twitched to the left. The wall followed, pushing the fox back in front of her while tearing at his barrier.

All the while, the wounded fox’s telekinetic blast unleashed itself. The Yakuza could do little more than shout in anger as his meister-tier spell fired on the wrong target.

A tunnel of distorted air extended between the wounded Yakuza and beyond Pola. Caught within it was the other fox, now acting as a wall. Pola slammed her palms together and a large triangular barrier formed of lightning magic popped into existence in front of herself.

Then the blast erupted through that tunnel. For a brief moment, Vince struggled to see anything. The air itself blurred as the telekinetic blast shifted everything toward the end of the tunnel.

If that spell could move molecules, it could create nuclear blasts. Then again, the energy required would be absurd. Even Nina couldn’t manage it. But he briefly wondered whether stronger foxes could.

When the tunnel faded away, Pola stood unharmed. The duelist fox had crashed into her barrier. His arm was a mangled mess and his barrier utterly destroyed.

Pola dismissed her summoned barrier, snap-kicked the fox in the head, and then blasted him across the street with a wind blast. The vicious crack of the fox’s neck snapping backward suggested he’d died from the kick, but his ribs audibly shattered from the wind spell.

The other fox caught his comrade’s body and looked down at it in disbelief for a moment, before tossing it aside.

“Bitch, I’ll—” the fox roared.

Whatever he intended to do hardly mattered. A massive flame laser turned him into ash.

Vince strode out of the ruins of the restaurant, his dragon standing atop the wreckage of a pair of cars. The massive Chinese-style behemoth glimmered with flaming scales and lava oozed from its maw. The aftermath of the flame laser still glowed from within it.

Juliet scowled at him as she teleported fifty feet into the air to dodge a telekinetic swing from Kiho that turned half the park wall into rubble. “One job. You stupid foxes had one job, and you fucked it up. Hamelin!”

The tune of a flute echoed across the street. Vince struggled to make it out thanks to its pitch, and several notes were too high for him to hear, producing an eerie effect.

He didn’t need help identifying the effect, however.

Black smoke rose from cracks in the street, forming into floating phantoms with indistinct figures. Dozens appeared at first. Then easily a hundred.

Vince didn’t bat an eye at them. His dragon roared with flames and leaped through the closest batch. Columns of fire exploded beneath other masses of the ghosts, turning them into little more than blast mist. Yet more kept forming from the strange smoke.

Pola’s wind claws tore through a dozen at once, while Gaby blew them apart almost by accident during her furious duel with several Yakuza. The Lionetti bodyguards threw their wizard-tier spells at the phantoms and relied on magic tools. Kiho didn’t even spare the monsters a glance.

The trick was nasty when he first encountered it, but it fundamentally didn’t work against a stronger opponent. What sort of trump card was this?

“Kiho, can you handle the vampire a little longer?” he called out. “I’ll help Gaby and—”

“V, behind you!” Gaby called out.

A strange magical presence, similar to but distinct from the phantoms, rushed at him. He’d ignored it due to how similar it was to the endless undead pouring into the street.

Without even looking, his dragon curled around him and launched fire nets toward it. Its maw unleashed a jet of flames.

A blast of black fire cut right through the fire net and a pale figure wreathed in black light leaped at Vince. It crashed into the dragon, clawing futilely at the mass of pure magic. Raging fire burned away at the thing’s body.

Vince got a good look at the monster.

A fox. The same one he’d killed inside the restaurant, complete with a hole in its chest. Its eyes and other orifices shined with an unholy black light, along with strange pieces of jewelry around its neck and wrists.

Before he could knock it aside and vaporize it with a flame laser, a series of ice lances shattered against his dragon.

Vince looked over to Gaby’s side of the street to see not just the Yakuza foxes and an army of phantoms, but five new figures. Enforcers, all tricked out.

An ice mage with silver teeth grinned at Vince while spinning another ice lance above his head with magic. “Hey, Fiver, do we have to kill him ourselves to get the mil, or do we get it no matter what just by being here?”