by Al K. Line
The stink of putrid flesh so rotten it was like a ghoul's wet dream cloyed the air and made us both gag as the moans of the zombies grew louder. It was weird, but all I could think of was the fact they were moaning in a foreign language—you'd think it would sound the same, but it didn't.
Forced from behind by the pressure of undead flesh, the lead zombies stumbled and smacked into the counter, dead eyes greedy with the anticipation of a fresh meal of some nice foreign brains. A real treat. I slammed my hand onto the counter, fingers stinging against the dirty wood as a ripple of black magic crashed into the living dead, hurling them back against the press of the throng. But the space was so rammed they remained standing. There was nowhere for them to go.
Again I blasted, two-handed this time, pressure increasing and more violent as I forced my will into the magic in a specific way, shards of impotent fury slicing at soft, gangrenous flesh that melted under the onslaught or caused bits to drop to the dirty concrete floor. These were no well-preserved undead full of the special solution that stops them rotting and extends their undead lives. They were well past their best, little more than sloppy flesh held together by the zombie virus, ancient ex-humans way beyond being aware of what they were or had once been.
They were walking hunger, nothing else, and I stared, mesmerized, as faces missing all excess tissue bared rotten and decayed teeth dripping with the sickly venom that would turn you into one of their own if they managed to get a bite or even a dainty nibble.
Not gonna happen.
"Get behind me, Dancer. And cover your eyes." I didn't have to tell him twice and he moved fast, put his arms on my shoulders and peeked cautiously as I took a deep breath then pushed out hard with my hands held together. With a rapid outpouring of energy directed by a tattoo that ran across my lower chest, I blew them the hell out of the store via the front window.
Glass rained down on the street outside, shocking the passersby, the bodies torn to ribbons as they fell to the ground, dissolving into lumps of green and brown goo, impossible to be identified as human. As we leaned forward and watched, the flesh hissed and spat, bubbling and festering before wisps of white energy steamed into the air and all that remained was a stain on the sidewalk. I watched through magic-infused eyes as the tormented souls of those trapped inside such unholy flesh finally left their foul prisons and cried for joy as they faded into the ether and continued into their hopefully peaceful afterlife.
With the bodies down, and the crowds already amassing either side of the trashed exterior beginning to peer in, a man slid the door closed on a large black van and jumped into the front.
"Come on, hurry up." I grabbed Dancer by the upper arm and dragged him out into the sweltering city, humidity high and my own adrenaline levels higher. I was still in the throes of magic, dared not relinquish my hold or I'd be out of action, and we crunched over the glass and made it to the van just as it pulled away. As the zombie transporter eased out into the nightmare traffic, barging smaller vehicles out of the way, I pulled on the handle to the back door and gently opened it.
Inside was nothing but bench seats and chains running along the sides, shackles hanging down where the zombies would have been held. "In you go," I said to Dancer, who turned to me in shock and shook his head.
"No bloody way. Are you nuts?"
"It's a lead, and it's all we have. In." Before he could object further, or the driver got away, I shoved him hard and he flew into the back. I jumped in after him just as the van sped up and made an illegal turn into a bus lane, and the next thing I knew the door slammed shut and we were entombed in the back of a van that had just been sent to unload a horde of zombies on me in the middle of downtown Tokyo.
As far as plans went, I'd had better. And it stank worse than Dancer after a visit to the local cemetery.
Still, we had each other for company.
"I hate Tokyo," moaned Dancer.
"At least the locals are friendly." He just stared at me. "What? They are. Normally."
A Road to Nowhere
"Are you mad? Let me out of here, it reeks of zombies. How can you stand it?" Dancer was panicking. He tried to cover his face but there was nothing he could do to take away the smell. It was overpowering and extreme in a way I'd never encountered before. But then, I'd never been in the back of a van that had held at least a dozen very dead, and very rotten zombies before, so there was that.
"I can stand it because there's no other choice. Dancer, when we go back to the UK, and I mean when, not if, then you're going to be an important man, I don't doubt it, and what better way to make your entrance than—"
"What the hell are you talking about?" He was genuinely confused, and for me that was a very good sign. Dancer has never been the type to push himself forward, eye always on the end game of gaining position and power, and to my mind that made him the perfect candidate.
"The Council will want you, maybe to take Rikka's place, or the position he used to hold, at any rate. Certainly to help a new Head now that Grandma is out of the running."
He stared at me blankly, really not getting it.
"Look," I said, exasperated, "they were playing with Rikka, putting Grandma in charge. It was a punishment. I realized, as I've been going over and over this whole sorry mess, that they did it to wind him up, but they would have given him back a Head position eventually. He was too good at it. He didn't see it in his blinkered rage, but they would want him back as Head of the UK Hidden Council. Now it may well be your turn. Or, you will be there beside someone to help and guide them."
"I... I hadn't even considered it." He smiled weakly, actually managing to get it to stick to his face for a second or two.
"Yeah, well, don't go thinking it means you can boss me about."
"Wouldn't dream of it." I could see his mind working, thinking of all the ways he could annoy me and get me to do things because he was in charge.
"I'm warning you. I'm a free agent and work for whom I please. Rikka was never my boss, not really." Dancer raised an eyebrow. "Okay, maybe he was, but I won't make the same mistake again." I settled back against the vibrating wall of the van, wondering if the Council would actually put someone like Dancer in charge.
I suspected they would—he was competent, efficient, had shown he could run things when Rikka had gone missing before, and most of all, he wasn't a politician. Just looked like a mortician with his short back and sides haircut, slick and dark, black suits with narrow tie and the ever-present white shirt. Yeah, we're not exactly what you would expect two powerful men adept with magic to look like, but there you go.
Something felt weird, and as my vision returned to normal I realized what it was. Payback. My stomach cramped, my vision blurred, and sickness came calling. Damn, for a moment I'd forgotten that my mastery over the magical comedown had been wiped out with my abuse of magic. The familiar sensation came over me, strong and unrelenting.
Dancer watched, stoic, as I crumpled to the floor of the van and curled up tight into a ball. I would have screamed if it wouldn't have alerted those in the front to our presence, so I suffered in silence—okay, I moaned a lot and screamed a little, but quietly.
Shards of steel etched grooves in my nervous system as the payback built. I could neither think nor move as I let it do its worst.
A familiar friend. Telling me I could at least still harness the Empty, and this was what it took, what you had to do if you wanted what we had. Dancer watched on, having already dealt with his own comedown, bad but not crippling as he used magic in a different and less intrusive way, even though you'd think raising the dead deserved more of a punishment.
It is what it is, and I welcomed the pain. It grounded me, reminded me I was just a frail human being and that nothing of value comes without a cost. I was willing to pay it and so much more if it meant getting to Kimiko Cocchi. I'd give up almost anything because I'd already lost more than I ever thought I would, or could, and hope to go on.
It was over quickly, nowhere near how
it used to be, so maybe all was not lost. Perhaps I could once more be free from the suffering and all it would take was time and focus. I hoped I would have plenty of both. There was something else going on, though, a weird gnawing at the back of my thoughts, a nagging that I was being a fool. Almost as though a silent voice was laughing at me, at my ineptitude. Was this all in the mind? Was I just thinking I had to suffer because I'd pushed the boundaries of magic too far? Could be. Maybe, for now, I wanted to feel the pain just so I knew I was alive. Was I inflicting punishment on myself because I felt I deserved no better?
Whatever, I'd deal with it when I could. For now, I had to focus on wherever the hell we were going. This was the first real lead since I'd arrived, and I wasn't going to let it slip away. I clambered back onto the bench and Dancer spoke as if it had never happened.
"How could he have done that to you, Spark? To all of us? He betrayed us. I thought he was a good guy in his own way and he turns out to be the worst of all the Hidden I've ever encountered."
"I wish I had the answers, trust me. More than anything I wanted for it to not be true, for there to be another explanation. But he did it, he helped have my parents killed then he set me up when he thought I might be a problem. He dealt with a vampire to get them out of the picture, locked up a bloody faery fifty years ago just in case he needed to use her to eradicate me in the future. All those years and he knew he was just waiting until I was a threat in his eyes. Ugh, makes me sick."
"Me too. I loved him, you know."
"So did I. And the worst thing of all, he loved us, too."
"How could he?" asked Dancer angrily, voice growing too loud.
"Ssh, they'll hear. It sounds different outside, listen," I whispered.
We listened and it did sound different. Traffic was remote, the road was bumpy, and we could hear muffled voices the other side of the divide. We were arriving at whatever our destination was.
As the van slowed then stopped, and we heard the cab doors open then bang shut, we glanced at each other and nodded.
Time to kick some ass.
A Depressing Beginning
I nodded to Dancer. He gulped, pulled at his collar, then nodded back. This really wasn't his thing. He preferred working with the dead as they were less likely to try to remove your head or make holes in you so your insides fell out.
As the door began to open, I kicked it hard with the heel of my winklepicker and Dancer shouldered it as it bounced back, a second satisfying scream of surprise after the sound of steel hitting flesh coming from outside telling us we'd hit someone—twice, and with extreme unfriendliness. Wasting no time, Dancer jumped down, a little uncertainty in his actions, which he paid for. Caught unawares, I saw a fist from the left smash into his cheek and he spun out of view with an "Oomf." A smack like that would definitely leave a nasty bruise.
Catapulting out, I kicked the guy on the floor in the side of the head and he slammed back onto the ground, unconscious. Dancer had a hand to his face as the other goon swung at him. He ducked and the fist sailed past, and before the goon could turn to see what was happening behind him, Dancer did the sensible thing and kicked him in the knackers.
As the squat, way-too-muscular dude doubled over in pain, choking with tears streaming down his shocked face, Dancer kneed him in the face and a loud crunch told us his nose was broken—the blood and screaming was also a giveaway. With a flourish I didn't know he had in him, Dancer sneered then jabbed out hard and extremely fast at the already ruined nose and the man's head shot back, sending him crashing to the ground on top of his accomplice.
It was all over in less than five seconds.
"You okay?" I asked as he rubbed at his cheek.
"S'pose, but it'll ruin my looks."
"Don't worry, you were ugly to start with." What? Look, it's best to be honest about these things. If he'd just try a different hairstyle at least, it might help a little.
Dancer scowled at me—it's the only look he's good at—then turned to see where we actually were. "Oh boy."
I lifted my gaze from the goons who were still out cold, and understood why he was rather stunned.
The only way to describe it is to imagine that you were in a warehouse, and that the warehouse was made of crumbly bricks with metal pillars and roof trusses and that somebody had been given an infinite amount of money and told, "Right, make it as ugly and spooky and freaky as hell, then add some more of all that in, just in case. Oh, and don't forget the zombies. Or the stink, there's got to be a proper stink. Amaze me."
The massive hanger was a mess of rusted steel, brown stains dripping down to the floor, pooling around the feet of the festering undead. Flies swarmed angrily, making it hard to see too far as the black clouds grew increasingly manic and loud at the disturbance. Holes in the roof offered the only glimpse of a brighter world, everything else was death and decay.
Row after row of zombies were chained from poles running across a suspended ceiling, shackled to the floor so they could only move a few feet in any one direction. They moaned and strained at their bonds as the scent of fresh blood and the sight of us took hold. I thought back to how we treated our own undead in Wales, and there was no comparison—they lived in a bloody converted spa resort.
They were people. Sure, they were dead, but many were totally conscious of their situation, just, you know, couldn't resist trying to eat your brains. Ours had a special chemical cocktail to stop them rotting, these had no such luxury. Bits of bodies were strewn all over the place in various stages of decomposition, or were being feasted upon by maggots, and even the whole ones looked as bad as those we'd just escaped from.
How could the Japanese Hidden Council allow this to stand? Did they know? Surely not. This was clearly outside the realms of official Council business and to do with Kimiko. The devious devil had set some of her captive zombies on me to get rid of the nuisance. Well, I wasn't about to go out like that.
"What are we gonna do with this lot?" asked Dancer.
"That's a good question. As far as I can see there isn't much we can do. If we let them go then it will be chaos. We have to tell the Council so they can come get them and treat them with respect."
"What the hell have you got me into here, Spark? If I ever am your boss then I'm gonna dock your wages for all this crap."
"Shut up, Dancer. Let me think." So far I'd "interviewed" three people I thought would lead to Kimiko, and all three had committed suicide before I could get answers. I was now out of any kind of leads as this was a foreign country and I had few contacts. Make that none now. All I'd had were names and a few faces from my past—I knew nobody else that I didn't mind involving in this mess.
The best thing was to question the goons and if that didn't work out then speak to the Council. They'd know where I could locate her, or at least where she was most likely to be, I just didn't want to deal with them as they made the UK Heads look soft and accommodating, and we know how that has gone for me lately. Last thing I wanted was to be locked up in a foreign prison; I had business to attend to. And besides, I prefer to work at my own pace and without interference, and you can bet as soon as I got the Council involved my life wouldn't be my own.
They'd probably want reports and for me to go by the book—I didn't even have a book. They were sticklers for the rules and the Law and I knew I was pushing it already and that soon enough they'd hear I was in Tokyo and want an explanation. But this with the zombies, it forced my hand. Something had to be done, so Council it was, just to give the undead some peace.
First, crack some heads and get answers from the goons.
"Let's talk to these two first. What's she playing at? These two aren't even vamps, just regular goons."
Dancer bent to one and lifted a paw of a hand. "Not just goons, Yakuza goons. Look." The guy had his pinkie finger missing and it brought back memories of what I'd done to Dancer when he'd tried it on with me. I smiled and was about to speak when he said, "Don't even go there, Spark. I'm not in the mood."
"Okay, fine. Yep, you're Head material all right. You've got the bossy bit sorted already." Dancer said nothing. I stepped over to the unconscious men and bent to study them.
They were definitely gangsters, meaning Kimiko had either got involved with them or she was running the show. Knowing her, I knew perfectly well what was most likely—she's formidable and everyone in the Hidden human world knows of her.
She'd traveled the world wreaking havoc and generally doing whatever she pleased, ignoring the Councils and going her own way. She was as scornful of the Vampire Council as the Hidden, forging her own path, trusting nobody. An Alone, utterly ruthless, and terrifyingly beautiful. Not to mention a vampire that could glamor you in a heartbeat or merely seduce you because of her beauty, enthrall and add you to her ever-expanding tribe of sycophants spread across the globe.
She was a one woman powerhouse who did what she wanted and to hell with the consequences. A rogue that took orders from no-one, was admired for her ferocity and single-mindedness, and feared and loathed for the same reasons.
I cared nothing for any of it. She owed me and she would pay with her life.
Interrogating the Goons
"Aaaaaaiiiiieeeee."
Screams of terror are pretty much universal. There was a look of horror on the goons' faces as they slowly came around, and the shrieks were understandable no matter the language barrier. There may have been an accent but the fear was the same—it practically dripped off them like the sweat that ran from under their arms.
Stripped to their boxer shorts, chained so the zombies were snapping mere inches from their faces, the smooth skin of the muscular goons was slick with fear—so much for the reputation of the Tokyo gangsters. They begged in a language we didn't understand but it made no difference, their pleas for freedom were understood easily enough.
