“The leader was a warlock of considerable power. At one point he said to Yuka, ‘If we find it, you’ll no longer have to worry about anyone coming after you ever again.’ I can think of no other scroll with that kind of power.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
“Let us save that for another time.”
“We have plenty of time right now.” This dodging of the question was getting mighty old.
Cat stretched, lifted his hind leg, and began licking his nether region.
“If they’re aware of the Scroll and its power,” Django said, “they must have a purpose in mind for it.” The possibilities snapped into focus, and the implications formed a sick knot in his belly. “They’re looking to start a war. Why else are they looking for that kind of power?”
“But who are they going to start it with?”
“Whoever stands in their way. The other yakuza clans will have no choice but to take sides. The Black Lotus has many enemies but a few allies, too. There are a few mahō users sanctioned by the Council rumored to be working with various clans—like the Sumiyoshi-kai, they’re one of the biggest—but they keep their mahō on the down-low. If there are fireballs and yokai in the streets...The Council is the only thing holding back the Black Lotus Clan, so they’ll be a target, too.”
“And your friend Yuka is helping them. I doubt that will endear her to the Council, should they discover this.”
Django sank into a kitchen chair and rested his head in his hands. He had to find her before the Council did.
“SO WHY DO YOU WANT my help now?” Xing asked over the phone. “You were so opposed to the idea last night.”
“Uh, because I’ve had some things to think about since then.” He was on a train headed back to Ginza to look for Yuka, all but alone in the subway car thanks to the lateness of the hour. Sleeping had wasted too much time, however much it had been necessary.
Xing said, “She kicked your ass, didn’t she.”
“No, but...well, yeah, she did. I got careless, got a little drunk, and she got the drop on me.”
Cat lay on the seat next to him, napping. Django couldn’t help but wonder for the hundredth time what Cat’s stake was in all this.
“She let you live,” Xing said. “You’re a lucky guy.”
“Yeah, about that. Look, you were right. I shouldn’t have gone in there alone. The place stank of Black Lotus. Tonight I could really use some backup.”
“So you want to go in there full-on assault style?”
“The Black Lotus are up to something, and they’re using Yuka to do it.”
“You sound like you know her...” The incredulity in her voice was not good-natured. “So that’s why you didn’t want me along last night!”
He sighed. “Yes, we...we had a thing. A long time ago.”
“Oooo, sounds serious,” she said, playfully on the surface but concealing a sharp edge.
“You’re having too much fun with this.”
“No, seriously, tell me all about your sordid past. Frolicking with yakuza whores—”
“She’s not!”
“And how do you know?”
The truth was that he didn’t know. But he couldn’t bear to think of Yuka that way.
The lights of the subway tunnels flashed past the window.
After several moments of silence, Xing said, “Look, I get it. You want me to take her out just in case you can’t.”
“No, that’s not it!”
“Then what? Them’s the rules, bucko! If we don’t go in there and kill her, the Council comes after us.”
“They’ve made that abundantly clear.”
“If I go in there with you and we fail to kill her, that means I’m a traitor, too!” Her voice rose from amused incredulity to anger. “Are you seriously asking me to betray everything the Council stands for?”
“I’ll make sure you’re kept out of it. I’ll take the fall.”
“That’s magnanimous of you, but I doubt the Council will agree. You’re not a terribly good liar.”
“Look, Xing, we’ve known each other a while. Do you have any friends?”
The question seemed to take her aback. “Of course I do.”
“Human or mahō user?”
She hesitated. “Well, I don’t have any human friends, not anymore. This life makes it hard to maintain them, you know?” Her tone indicated this was not something she thought about, nor was she comfortable doing so.
It mirrored his own experience. He felt so different from normal humans now, having almost nothing in common with them, as if they were lower lifeforms, which no doubt came across as a kind of arrogance that discouraged friendship. He lived almost entirely within supernatural realms now. His was not the world of offices and jobs and children. His normal life had ended one horrible day when he was sixteen.
“Are we friends?” he asked her. It was such a strange question. Too direct. Straight into the heart of things, which was not the Japanese or Chinese way. “I could use a friend’s help, and I’ve got nobody else.”
“Do you want to meet for a drink first?” she asked, her voice softening. “We should talk this over in person.”
“I’d like to, but I’m on a deadline.” Had Xing just asked him on a date? A warmth in her tone, something inviting that he’d never noticed before, made him think she had. “And a drink is how she got the drop on me.”
“You do realize the Council could be listening to this conversation, right?”
He stiffened. That was a chilling thought. “What makes you think so?”
“Sometimes I think they can listen to us through our Brands, spy on us whenever they want to. It’s like I can feel a presence just outside my skull, listening. It’s not like they actually teach us how to use this shit.” Then she seemed to shrug. “But that’s part of the game. It’s kind of like all the hackers and marketers listening to everything we say and do through our mobile phones.”
“What? Really?”
“Never mind. Anyway, the Council is in charge. They get to make the rules, and I get the glamorous life of a Hunter-Seeker.”
“Yeah, swimming in glamor, that’s us.”
“I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” she said, “Not even you.”
The last sentence he couldn’t be sure he heard, spoken under her breath. “I just need someone to watch my back while I talk to her. I think I can bring her in alive.”
Silence.
The subway pulled into a station. Passengers disembarked. Passengers boarded.
Xing said, “I think she hit you hard with some sort of Water spell. It’s got you all twisted up. But know this, dickhead. I’ll help you, but if you don’t take care of her, I will.”
Chapter Nine
A GANGSTER DOORMAN blocked Django’s entry into Hair of the Dog. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Apparently, he had made an impression last night. “Man, I’m sorry to hear that. I was ready to drop a million yen in this place.”
The doorman laughed with contempt. “Right. And I’m Brad Pitt.”
“You’re more of a Sammo Hung kinda guy, I see,” Django said, referencing the Hong Kong action star who was on the comedic, portly side.
The man’s eyes flared, and he reached for Django, but Django said, “Perhaps you’d like to talk to my friend instead.”
Xing was right there, a bouquet of expensive perfume and lush, feminine allure, stroking the doorman’s cheek with a soft hand. A fog of confusion descended over the doorman’s face. His mouth fell open. Xing slid up next to him, against him, all eyes and smile and soft curves. “Can you help me? I’m lost and so lonely.”
Zero percent of the doorman’s attention remained on Django, so he took the moment to slip past into the hostess bar. This distraction might not last long, though. Xing’s Water mahō was powerful to a normal human but not perpetual. He had to work fast. Cat had already disappeared to keep an eye on any back-alley exits.
Django sat on a barstool and gestured to the
bartender. Across the room, he recognized the girl who’d escorted him into the place the night before. She noticed him as well, and the surprise was plain on her face. He had been flagged with all the staff and hostesses. He had even less time than he thought. They might treat him with a wait-and-see approach, though, always looking to squeeze as much money as possible from someone about to get the boot.
The bartender approached with a wary look. “Good evening, sir. What can I do for you?”
“Is Kimiko available? I found her terribly charming and would like to continue our conversation.” He withdrew an envelope from inside his duster, a thick envelope that certainly looked and sounded like it was full of cash but wasn’t—just a stack of blank paper. The bartender might have checked it, but his attention was snared by the patterns Django’s fingers were drawing on the bar. He’d opened the negative side of the Third Eye. Unlike the positive aspect of the Third Eye, which was associated with truth-seeking, intuition, guidance, and divination, the negative aspect was associated with illusion and deception, the side that formed his Shadow powers. Together, they constituted the yin and yang of the Third Eye. Django caught the subtle shift in the bartender’s body language that said he would not question the contents of the envelope.
“Unfortunately, sir,” the bartender said, “Kimiko-san is unavailable tonight.”
“That is unfortunate,” Django said, changing the pattern his fingers were making while letting them make clear the bartender might get to keep the envelope—for the right information. “I was looking forward to seeing her.”
The bartender raised an eyebrow, studying him, sizing him up while pretending not to. As long as the bartender kept his hands in sight...
Django said, “Any idea when she might turn up?”
“Sorry, no.”
Where was Xing’s magical charm when he needed it? Oh, yeah, occupied outside.
Django slid a business card across the bar and, with a great show of regretfulness, took the envelope and tucked it into his duster pocket. The card was black with white lettering. DJANGO, along with his phone number. It was a gesture far more casual than was typical. In Japanese culture, the exchange of business cards was fairly ritualized. The bartender eyed the card but did not touch it.
Django departed. Outside he found Xing waiting for him, alone, leaning cross-armed against a pillar. He said, “Where’s your admirer?”
“I told him I had a craving for melon chūhai, so he ran to the konbini for me.”
He gestured wrapping something around his little finger. “You enjoy it a little too much.”
She sighed. “It’s true. Men are so easy and transparent.”
“Let’s make some inquiries next door. You keep an eye out. I’ll ask around.”
It was a quiet night in Hair of the Kitty. The dancers moved languidly, as if bored. A few patrons sitting at stage-side tables checked their phones.
Xing took a seat at the bar and struck up a conversation with the bartender. Django sat at a table in the corner, taking stock of the room.
Before long, a waitress approached, wearing the equivalent of a few strips of duct tape. She looked like she should be in high school instead of working here. But in a country where compulsory education ended at ninth grade, a lot of kids from bad situations, or whose parents couldn’t afford to pay for high school, ended up in the “workforce” at fifteen or sixteen. She had not been here the night before, so maybe she was unaware he’d been tossed out on his ear.
“I’m looking for Kimiko,” he said. “Is she working tonight?”
She looked away, “Sorry, sir, I don’t know a Kimiko.”
“Sure you do. Tattoos up both arms. I talked to her here last night. She works next door, too.”
She hesitated.
“Look, I’m not a stalker. I just wanted to thank her. I have this medical condition and passed out last night, kind of a seizure. Hit my head.” He rubbed the back of his head.
Her eyes softened. “Oh, I’m very sorry.”
“It would mean a lot to me.” He laid a ten-thousand-yen note on the table, about a hundred dollars. “Have you seen her today?”
She quietly slipped the note under a strip of “clothing,” then said, “Yeah, she was in the back, talking to Habu.”
“Who’s Habu?” A strange name, likely a nickname, as a habu was a venomous snake indigenous to Okinawa.
“I think he’s a bouncer or something, but he comes and goes. I stay away from him.”
“What were they talking about?”
“They were waiting for some other guys to get here. Sounded like they were going somewhere.”
“When was this?”
“A couple of hours ago. Maybe.”
He said, “What’s your name?”
“Kana.” She gave him a hooded smile.
She looked like a sweet kid with an innocent smile. Django sighed at what this life was going to do to her if she didn’t get out. But he couldn’t save her, or any of them. Unless maybe he could bring down the Black Lotus Clan. That idea surged like a forest fire in his mind. For his parents. For his brother. “Did you happen to hear where they might be going?”
“Kabuki-chō maybe. But I didn’t hear very well. It’s not smart around here to have monkey ears.” She gave him a look of nervous entreaty.
He took her hand and squeezed it. “Thank you. You be careful.”
“You be careful.” A little smile, a little coquettish.
THE LATER THE HOUR, the more the streets and back alleys of Kabuki-chō came to life. Kabuki-chō was not a large area, comprising only maybe half to two-thirds of a square kilometer, but finding a single person would still be like finding a needle in a haystack. Unless you had a fully Awakened Third Eye.
Django and Xing sat in the back seat of the taxi in silence. Simmering with emotions he couldn’t identify, not unlike hearing unidentifiable noises beyond an impenetrable wall, he could feel her glances..
On the taxi ride there, he focused on his memories of Yuka, both fresh and old, even the feel of the serpent that her arm had transformed into and the sensation of its venom traveling up his arm. All this together formed a thought-image that could be resonated against the fabric of this dimensional plane.
When they got out of the taxi in roughly the center of Kabuki-chō, he sent a wave of Third Eye mahō essence out into the nearest environs. Wherever it resonated most strongly would be Yuka’s location, not unlike a sonar ping. The trouble was that it required a lot of essence to send out such a large burst, depleting his stores until they replenished naturally or he received an infusion from some other source, such as taking down another mahō user or opening his Brand to the power of the Council, which was never a pleasant thing. It took too much time and concentration for him to do that during a fight.
Xing no doubt felt the passage of his locator burst. “Anything?”
They stood in a canyon of concrete, illuminated at street level by the entrances of bars, karaoke places, love hotels, and massage parlors. Walls were slathered in garish signage written in Roman letters and Japanese. Signs high above advertised more bars stacked seven stories high, with names like Te Amo and Pink Orchid, the kind of places to go if one didn’t wish to be seen. People filled the street, late-night revelers, mostly of the younger set, but a few middle-aged salarymen as well.
He closed his eyes and opened his Third Eye, searching for a resonance.
“There,” he said, pointing down the street. “About six blocks away, on an upper floor.” But strangely, it was not showing movement that suggested flight; it was fading from a single location.
“Then let’s go,” she said, “and don’t spare the civilians.”
Running through the crowds, they left a swath of disgruntlement in their wake. He tried to keep his focus on the spot of fading resonance, but his heart sank, fearing she was no longer there. He didn’t have enough Third Eye juice left for another ping. Growing desperation gave his feet extra speed.
Bu
t his belly turned sour as they rounded a corner to meet a swarm of flashing red lights. The entire block was cordoned off. Police cars everywhere. Firetrucks. Ambulances.
He and Xing shared a worried look.
Rubberneckers lined the police barricades.
The site of the resonance was a building at the center of the flashing maelstrom, specifically the fourth floor. Unlike much of Kabuki-chō, this building looked more like a dingy block of business offices, lacking the gaudy exterior of those around it.
Then he caught the scent of blood wafting on the breeze, and his own went cold. At this distance, that had to be a lot of blood.
To cross the half a block between them and the building, they had to get past the police. He had enough Third Eye mahō left for one, maybe two Shadow Blinks. He could travel that far, but Xing didn’t have an Awakened Third Eye.
Camera flashes caught his eye from the building’s fourth-floor balcony. Police photographers perhaps?
Xing pointed at one of the ambulances. Paramedics were shoving a gurney-borne body covered in a white sheet into the back of an ambulance.
Yuka’s resonance was still fading.
“Dammit, I have to get in there,” he muttered.
“You go in your way, I’ll go mine,” Xing said.
He nodded and hurried toward the nearest dark alley. The moment he stepped into it, he Shadow Blinked, feeling the whoosh of air as he slipped into existence in the shadows of the fifth-floor balcony half a block away, directly above the crime scene. Dizziness and nausea washed over him from the distance he’d traveled. He steadied himself against the wall to let his body align itself with where the universe thought he should be. After a few seconds, the sensation diminished, and he could focus on the task at hand.
Somewhere on the floor below, the resonance was still fading like the after-image of a bright light. But if Yuka had left the scene on foot, the resonance would have given him a sense of her trail. There were only two explanations for this phenomenon: either she had been ported away somehow, or she was dead. His throat tightened and his vision misted at the thought of the latter. The stench of congealing blood filled the air.
Tokyo Blood Magic (Shinjuku Shadows Book 1) Page 8
