What if he tries to … ?
No, she wouldn’t think like that. If he needed time to process, she would give him time to process. But she could be his safety net, just in case. Waking up her computer, she logged into her Show My Pals account and a map popped up with several thumbnail-sized profile photos attached with arrows to green dots. Her photo overlapped with her mother’s, since their GPS locations were both in their house at the moment. A couple of her other friends, with whom she had swapped location access privileges, showed up at various addresses around town. She located Ryan’s dot a few miles from her house and zoomed in on his location, checking the street names. “Tony’s Pizzeria,” she said. “He likes it there. Comfort food. Probably a good sign.”
Unless that’s his last m …
“Stop it,” she scolded herself.
Then the dot started to move.
After a few minutes, she wondered where he was headed. Past Tony’s was a commercial area that had gone steadily downhill as the mall siphoned business away. A lot of stores had gone out of business. Nearby, an extensive home community project had stalled after the economy tanked and credit dried up. The land had been bulldozed and later fenced in to prevent accidents and lawsuits. “Coming Soon” signs bolted to the fence had become ironic, advertising a date almost a year in the past.
“Why that part of town?”
Her internal worry meter started to tick upward. She picked up her phone and ran the Show My Pals app. She grabbed up her laptop, ran down the stairs and asked to borrow her mother’s Honda Odyssey.
I can’t be his safety net five miles away.
“What the hell, Sam?” Dean said as they walked through the door into Roy Dempsey’s log cabin, with Roy once again at home, judging by the silver Dodge Ram in the driveway “You go on hiatus with Lucifer the second we’re attacked? He almost burns us alive, and takes the woman again.”
“Dean, I—”
Roy sat at one of the kitchen stools, chowing down on what looked like a two-foot-long hoagie, which required a lot of focus when you only had one arm. That Dean’s stomach was growling in protest added to his irritation over the oni fiasco. Roy scratched his grizzled chin and stared at Dean.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Dean grumbled. “I fed your creepy cat.”
“Whatever this is,” Roy said, waving his hand between the brothers, “leave me out of it.”
“Right,” Dean snapped. “Wouldn’t want to spoil your meal.”
“I bought three extra,” Roy said evenly. “In the fridge.”
“You did not,” Dean said, brightening instantly.
He opened the fridge. “You did! I totally misjudged you.”
“You didn’t wreck my house,” Roy said. “Figure I’m ahead of the game.”
Dean took the sandwiches out of the refrigerator. “Know what would make this perfect? Pie.”
Handing one of the wrapped sandwiches to Sam, he said, “I thought you had Lucifer-vision under control.”
“I do,” Sam said, frowning, “usually. This time was worse.”
Dean took a bite of the overstuffed hoagie. “It’s the bad luck mojo!” he said between mouthfuls. “My lighter fails, you visit The Twilight Zone. The guy throws banana peels under our shoes. How do we fight that?”
Sam picked at his sandwich, removed a few items that didn’t meet his seal of approval, then ate with a thoughtful expression on his face. “The lore mentions holly guarding against the oni,” he said. “What if … ?”
Roy gave Sam an odd look.
Dean removed a few bottles of beer from the fridge and passed them around.
“What? You got something?” he asked Sam.
“With all the information on expelling the oni from a town—”
“The soybean confetti?”
“Right. I figured holly guarded against him coming,” Sam said, “and since he’s already here, what’s the point? But what if it guards against the oni’s mojo.”
“And evens the odds,” Dean said, nodding. “Could give us a fighting chance.”
“But he’s still invulnerable.”
“So we can’t gank him.”
“Holly?” Roy asked, so softly Dean almost didn’t catch it.
“What?”
“You need holly for an oni?” Roy said. Both Dean and Sam nodded. “There’s a holly bush out back.”
“You just happen to have holly growing out back?” Dean asked.
“This doesn’t mean I’m involved,” Roy said.
“No,” Sam said. “Of course not.”
“Eighteen years ago,” Roy said after a sip of beer, “before Sally died and…”—he raised his half-arm—“I thought we might have an oni here in town.”
“What?” Sam asked incredulously.
“You’re telling us this now?”
“Look, I had no idea what you were hunting and I liked it that way,” Roy said. “We had a bad flu epidemic, train derailment, factory explosion, some other weird stuff, all in a few days. I researched the lore, but then things went back to normal. Still, I bought an American holly shrub from a local nursery and planted it out back. Boy scout mode back then.”
“Always be prepared,” Dean said, nodding. “That saves us some time.”
Bobby came through the front door, if anything, looking worse than he had after bouncing off the windshield that afternoon. Wincing, he eased his way into the kitchen. Dean handed him the third hoagie from out of the fridge.
“Appreciate it, Roy.”
“Singer, you look like ten pounds of crap in a five-pound bag.”
“Feel like a rodeo clown with a hangover.”
Sam brought Bobby up to speed on the holly and Roy’s account of possible oni activity eighteen years before.
“Might be the same one,” Bobby said. “But why come back?”
“Just tell me how to gank it,” Dean said, looking back and forth. “Anybody?”
Bobby sighed. “Wish I had my books. Let me see the laptop. Maybe I’ll spot something we overlooked.”
“What happened, Singer?” Roy asked. “You can’t walk without wincing. Better sit this out. Or are you nuts?”
“Certifiable,” Bobby said with a wry chuckle. “But the job ain’t done.”
Roy heaved a sigh. “I must be as crazy as you, Bobby.”
“So it’s Bobby, now?”
“Oh, shut up before I lose my nerve,” Roy said. “Don’t know if this helps, but the oni comes outta Japanese lore, and the various branches of that monster family tree don’t get along. The obake are Japanese shape-shifters, take animal forms, sometimes even protect humans. They and the oni don’t trust each other.”
“He’s afraid of animals?” Dean asked incredulously.
“If he thinks that animal might be a threat,” Bobby said, nodding, “an obake.”
“Could McClary bring in some K-9 units?” Sam asked.
“They might scare him away, but they won’t kill him,” Dean said.
“If he leaves my town,” Roy said, “that’s good enough for me.”
What about the next town? Dean thought grimly. We gotta end this once and for all.
* * *
Ryan arrived first at Hawthorne’s, the locally owned department store that had become yet another casualty of the economy. The derelict building had been on the market for a while with no buyers on the horizon. Graffiti marred the plywood covering all the windows. Inside, the place was an empty shell. Whatever hadn’t sold during the bankruptcy sales had been auctioned off afterward.
Ryan had no idea why he had been summoned to this location. He became increasingly mystified minutes later when Dalton Rourke walked up to him. But when Jesse Trumball drove up in a red Dodge Durango and climbed out to stand beside them, the reason became clear. Ryan noticed the bumps on their heads—even though they had made minimal efforts to hide them with a knit hat and a hoodie, respectively—the red hair coming in at the roots, the darkened nails. As they stood side by side, th
eir near-uniform height, several inches over six feet, was the final piece of the puzzle.
“Brothers,” Ryan said softly.
“What?” Dalton asked.
“You’re my brothers.”
“He is correct,” a deep voice said.
A tall man in a dark suit was leaning against one of the landscaping trees decorating the perimeter of the building. Ryan hadn’t noticed him until that moment, but when he stepped forward, out of the shadows, Ryan saw the horns sprouting from his head.
Those are growing in us! he realized.
“My three sons,” their father said, “by three different mothers. I am Tora.”
Ryan stepped forward, fists clenched. “You—You raped my mother!”
“That is a human concern,” Tora said. “The time has come for you to rise above your humanity. The process has already begun—I’m sure you have each noticed your physical changes. You must, however, voluntarily complete the final rite of passage to become oni.”
“What if we don’t want to become oni?” Dalton asked.
“Speak for yourself,” Jesse said belligerently.
“You have no choice,” Tora said. “If you fail to complete the rite, you will die stillborn, half human, half oni. It is an agonizing end.” He paused to let that sink in. “Instead, I offer you power above human sheep, to achieve your rightful destiny.”
“We’d be as powerful as you?” Ryan asked. Then he could channel the rage inside him and focus on killing the man— this oni—who had killed his mother, even if her death was the reason Ryan existed.
“One day, yes,” Tora assured him. “But our time is short and first I would introduce you to the woman who will become my mate and your oni mother, who will replace the frail human mothers you never knew. Tomorrow we will be complete, a family. But tonight, my sons, you will become oni!”
Like hell, Ryan thought bitterly.
As the oni led them through a door he had jimmied open, Ryan noticed Dalton and Jesse nodding, smiling at each other.
Oh, God, he thought, appalled, they actually want this!
* * *
Parked across the street from Hawthorne’s in her mother’s Odyssey, Sumiko had been about to climb out of the minivan after Ryan stopped in front of the department store when Dalton Rourke joined him, followed by Jesse Trumball in what must have been a stolen SUV. Instead, she snapped a few photos with her smartphone, but couldn’t get a clear shot of the man who spoke to them.
On seeing Ryan, Dalton and Jesse together, her first thought was, Those three have nothing in common.
The only time Sumiko had seen them relatively close together was during the bomb threat evacuation at school. Other than that, as far as she knew, they were complete strangers. But seeing them standing next to each other, she realized that not only were they the same age, they were also about the same height and build. A suspicion began to form.
She opened her laptop, scrolled through pictures in her blog and checked photos from scanned yearbooks. Certain physical features were very similar. They had the same brow, nose and chin. Ryan dyed his hair blue, but it was naturally red. Jesse’s too, judging by old photos of him before he shaved his head. Switching on her portable Wi-Fi hotspot, Sumiko looked at social media profiles, ran searches on their names and found out they were born within the same week. She knew Ryan’s mother and Dalton’s mother had both died in childbirth.
That’s a weird coincidence, she thought. What about Jesse?
She called her friend Brennan Kennedy, who worked part-time at the Laurel Hill Library, and asked her to look up old newspaper records of their birth week. Twenty minutes later, Brennan called back and confirmed what Sumiko suspected—Jesse’s mother had also died in childbirth. Sumiko had entertained the idea that they were triplets born of one mother then separated at birth, but there had been three mothers.
So, what if they were secretly related as half-brothers? That means one man is their father. That man they just met outside Hawthorne’s?
She brought up her blog dashboard and typed a headline: “What do these three have in common?” She positioned three photos of Ryan, Jesse and Dalton, side by side, which displayed their physical similarities.
If that man is Ryan’s father, he’s a criminal.
A criminal meeting his sons in an abandoned building. Sumiko had a bad feeling Ryan was involved in something dangerous. She wondered if it was somehow related to the fatal accidents happening all over town. How could she protect Ryan without betraying him?
She posted the blog entry.
Then she remembered the investigator who had contacted her through her blog and hadn’t scoffed at her supernatural theories about the weirdness in town. He might listen without suggesting an extended stay in the loony bin. He might even be taken seriously if he reported it to the cops. She had started to type an email to him when she noticed movement across the street.
Jesse Trumball, hunched over in a gray hoodie with his hands stuffed in the pockets, walked briskly to the red Durango. Before he climbed in, he looked back and forth across the parking lot, causing Sumiko to duck down out of sight.
Though it was dusk and the light was fading, shadows losing their definition against the encroaching darkness, she could have sworn she saw blood smeared on his chin.
Is this some kind of fight club?
Jesse drove the Durango in a loop and parked beside the door. Sumiko watched as the tall man climbed into the passenger seat, Dalton opened the rear door behind him, and Ryan, his head bowed, walked around the back of the SUV and climbed into the seat behind Jesse. A moment later, the red SUV darted out of the lot and drove away from the depressed commercial district.
After a few seconds, Sumiko started the Odyssey, made a U-turn and followed.
Ryan, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?
Thirty
Ryan sat behind Jesse with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, trying to contain the roaring in his skull. It felt like ten thousand bees buzzed under his skin. It was hard to sit still, to try to think, to even remember who he was. For the sake of revenge—to avenge his dead mother—he had allowed himself to taste the oni’s blood. Now it burned inside him, driving away rational thought and replacing it with bloodlust.
When he’d entered Hawthorne’s dark interior with the others, his only goal had been to find a way to kill the stranger who could somehow speak into Ryan’s mind and had compelled him to show up on his doorstep. But he wasn’t a man, it wasn’t human. It was an oni, whatever that meant, some kind of mythical being that was apparently not so mythical after all.
“Cool car, Trumball,” Dalton said. “Stolen?”
“Borrowed,” Jesse said. “My neighbor’s on vacation. I let myself into his house and grabbed the keys. He won’t miss it until Monday.”
Ryan tried to hold onto his identity—his old identity, not the monstrous hybrid he had become—and not think about the promise of violence and the overnight transformation to come. He tried to remember what had happened in Hawthorne’s so he could fight the driving urge to kill …
After the oni led them toward the back of the department store, Ryan saw the disheveled woman tied to one of the support columns on the lower level of the store. The woman looked battered and hopeless, almost unconscious on her feet. Ryan wondered if his mother had gone through a similar ordeal. When Ryan stepped forward, intending to untie the woman, the oni caught his shoulder in one massive hand and squeezed hard. It smiled and said, “She is no concern of yours, young one.”
“But she’s—”
“Though it would grieve me,” Tora said evenly, applying more pressure until Ryan winced, “I would rip your spine from your body.”
Then the oni lined the three of them up in a row and explained the ritual of blood needed to complete their transformation from hybrid to oni. “A taste of my blood will imbue you with strength beyond that of humankind,” the oni said while pacing in front of them, rubbing his bare hands toge
ther while his cane dangled from his belt. “Thus fortified, you will go to a human gathering to proclaim your dominance with a slaughter. You will have weapons to aid you, but at least one killing blow must come from an oni trait you now possess, your nascent fangs or your hardened fingernails. When your skin runs red with the blood of your victims, your body will begin the final stage of transformation. With the dawn, you three will be reborn.”
“And if—if we don’t do this by dawn?” Ryan asked.
“Your body will reject your dual nature. It will literally tear itself apart,” Tora explained. “Your muscles will constrict until your bones snap. One by one your organs will shut down. You will experience excruciating seizures and your brain will hemorrhage. But, with my guidance, I am confident none of you will fail.”
The oni chanted in a guttural language and then, with one inhuman fingernail, sliced open his opposite forearm.
“With a taste of my blood you will experience some of my power and invulnerability,” the oni continued, “enough to sustain you through the violence of the ritual. Succeed, and with the dawn, the power will rise from within you.”
One by one, he smeared his blood across their lips. First Jesse, then Dalton, and finally Ryan tasted oni blood—and it was like a contact high. Ryan felt a surge of power, like he could run through a brick wall and feel no pain.
As disgusted as he had been by the idea of tasting the oni’s blood, Ryan wanted the power it offered. Anything to give him an edge against the inhuman creature that had violated his mother. But at the moment the blood touched his tongue, Ryan had to admit to himself that he craved the power the way a hungry man craves food. His physical transformation had already started and with it his temper had run wild, almost beyond his control, a powder keg ready to explode. Now he wanted to explode.
But I won’t kill, he told himself. I won’t become a monster.
Ryan shook his head and tried to focus on his current surrounding, in the Durango. He couldn’t change what had happened in Hawthorne’s, but he could keep the promise to himself. He had to stay alert for any opportunity to fight back.
Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage Page 25
