Page 16 of Cherry Moon

GABRIEL

It all happened quickly after I called Sarah Murakami.

Agents of the SCU arrived in four blue vans fifteen minutes after I reported the incident.

Men and woman in black body armor, armed to the teeth with weapons and anti-magic devices, swept the cottage grounds. They found nothing but proceeded to make us leave the premises.

Before I knew it, we were bundled into a van and driven to Cardiff airport. From there, we were transferred onto a plane and flown down to London.

The only information the agents would give was that this was by order of the High Alpha for our own protection.

Aki didn’t say a word, clinging to me tightly. He was trembling, and far too pale for my liking.

I comforted him, held him, made sure he knew I was here for him every step of the way. But I struggled to wrestle with this, especially over the loss of his katanas.

It didn’t make any sense.

The first phase of the Cherry Moon was underway, its pale pink light shining brightly against a lilac-washed sky. Cherry blossoms floated through air—below the plane, above it, around it.

“Praise the tenshi,” I whispered.

A giant butterfly fluttered toward the plane, its wings patterned with the shapes of cherry blossoms. It was clearly an effect of the magic in the air, a fact made obvious when I noticed a pair of pink sunglasses where it’s eyes would normally be.

“Hello, butterfly!” I called. “Good to see you! Shall we go for a pint of nectar some time?”

The singing umbrellas would always be the weirdest occurrence during the Cherry Moon for me. This butterfly wasn’t strange enough to take the crown.

It plunged back to the ground, leaving behind a cluster of pink particles.

These magical oddities were never harmful, only quirky.

So, where did the mazoku-made creature’s talk of cherries and blossoms for all play into it?

I sipped on coffee, eyes fixed to the window.

It wasn’t long before the lights of London glittered below.

So much of the capital city had been rebuilt, though it still bore scars in certain areas. The tenshi’s cherry blessing or not, the amount of destruction London endured would take plenty more years to fix.

But the folks in charge of repairs were doing an incredibly good job. The city was back on its feet, tourism booming again. Even the skytube ran properly again, its colorful streams of light crisscrossing above the city as the trains shuffled people around.

I spotted Hyde Park, a dark smudge in the blanket of lights. It was a mazoku prison still, its anti-magic field working hard to keep the trapped scum sealed inside.

My poor Aki.

“Almost there,” I said to him.

It looked like we were heading for London City Airport, and not Murakami Airfield just outside of the city. Meaning the private airfield wasn’t necessarily the best place for us to land.

Unease squirmed in my stomach. It was always the best place to land, so it must have been compromised in some way.

“Can you see it?” Aki asked, lifting his head from my shoulder.

I stroked his dark hair, hand bumping his famous man bun. “See what?”

“The Spire.” He sniffed. “Or whatever it is now.”

The former huge tube of frosted glass that was once the home and symbol of the High Alpha’s power had reduced to rubble in a vicious attack resulting in Hitoshi Murakami’s death.