Tokyo Demons Book 1: Chapter 7

Ayase clutched at the inside of the car door. “They just got off the highway,” she called. “Exit 6.”

“Crap, we overshot. Zayd, turn around!”

Ayase barely had time to brace herself. The car flew to the left and took a hard U-turn, throwing Ayase against the car door and smearing her against the glass. Sachi yelped by her side.

“Sorry,” Zayd said quietly from up front. “Next direction, please.”

The car straightened, yanking Ayase from the door so fast that she and Sachi rammed shoulders. He mumbled an apology from under his hand.

“I think…I’m gonna be sick,” Sachi gurgled.

Nick laughed from up front. “You kids should drive in the middle east sometime,” he mocked. “Little old ladies would be spitting while they passed us.”

“Not ladies,” Zayd corrected. “Not in Saudia Arabia.” There was thin regret behind the words.

Ayase tried to focus her insect eyes. “They’re going past office buildings,” she said. “Nothing really stands out…a store with a green sign, a MacDonald’s. More office buildings.”

Sachi swallowed a burp. “Can you…read any signs?” he asked weakly. “Maybe when they stop at a light?”

Ayase furrowed her brow in concentration. It was almost rush hour, which meant the car with Kiyoshi stopped behind a long line of others at every traffic light. The street signs were out of the question. If only there were a landmark…

She suddenly realized the Core officers were talking in the car. She switched her attention enough to listen in.

“…traffic. Are we gonna get there in time?”

“It’s fine. They won’t start at the club until we give them the signal.”

“Kenichi said he wasn’t sure they could hold off much longer. Something about a few big shots showing up unexpectedly…I think Izumi is there.”

“Izumi? Why would he be there at four in the afternoon?”

“Hell if I know. He thinks Sawada and Goro might be there, too.”

“Sawada and Goro? Are they having a fucking administration meeting?!”

Ayase quickly relayed the lines to the car. Nick repeated the names.

“Izumi and Goro,” he muttered. “That sounds like Yoshinaga-kai.”

Zayd let out a breath. “Yakuza,” he added, assumedly for Ayase and Sachi’s benefit.

Ayase heard Sachi suck in a breath. “Does that mean…Kiyoshi’s target is a mobster?” he asked.

“Maybe. Yakuza run guns, so gun deaths in the mob don’t draw much attention.” Nick grunted. “But a sniper bullet still would.”

“Maybe they are fine with that,” Zayd pointed out. “Perhaps they are trying to attract attention.”

“That doesn’t sound like Core.”

“You said kidnapping new members is also unlike them. Maybe they are changing.”

Nick paused. “Like a conspicuous power grab,” he mused.

“I…do not know that term. ‘Power grab.’”

“It’s exactly what it sounds like. Wait, so you know the word conspicuous but can’t figure out power grab?”

“You’re always using terms that are not in the dictionary, Nick. Like ‘half-ass’ and ‘fucked up.’”

Ayase interrupted them to describe a grocery store plastered with signs. The buildings were getting denser, the sidewalks more populated. The area Core drove through seemed familiar to Ayase, but she couldn’t quite place it.

A blurry sea of pinkish-white caught her eye. “I think I see…cherry blossoms,” she said.

“A lot of them?”

“Yeah. It’s like a park, I can see red torii…I think it’s a shrine?”

Nick slammed a hand on the dashboard. “On this side of town, that could be Hanazono! Are they headed for Shinjuku Station?”

Ayase strained her compound eyes. The car passed the shrine, and the buildings started shrinking. “The businesses are really dense here,” she said. “A lot of alleyways. Most of the buildings are only a few stories high, I see a few bars–“

“Golden Gai! Zayd, take that right!”

The car swerved hard, yanking Ayase against her seatbelt. She heard Sachi choke down bile and croak a moan.

Nick drummed the dashboard triumphantly. “We’re onto those assholes now! Take us through Kabukichou–we’ll get to the shrine in a few minutes.”

Ayase swallowed. They weren’t far behind. When the car with Kiyoshi stopped at its destination, they would have time to catch up. And then…

And then what? Would they try to overpower the guards with Kiyoshi? Would they try and sneak their way in, slipping him away if he wasn’t under direct guard? There were three men in the car with Kiyoshi, but there were possibly more in another car. Or more at the location.

Ayase had caught a glance of Sachi earlier, quietly staring at his sheathed knife. The look on his face made something squeeze in her chest.

She didn’t want Sachi to fight. She was scared he would get hurt.

Nick asked Ayase for the next directions. She tried to focus on her bugs and ignore the knots in her stomach.

BOOM

“What the hell?!”

Ayase’s human eyes popped open. Zayd, suddenly faced with halted traffic, screeched the car to a stop.

Ayase was pulled forward, then thrown back so hard that her head slapped against the back of her seat. Sachi curled in half and dry-heaved into his cupped hands.

Nick pointed out Zayd’s window. “Over there!” he exclaimed. “Do you see that?!”

A rapidly darkening cloud of smoke wafted out from a nearby building. A fire? Ayase wondered. The building’s brightly lit sign hadn’t been turned on yet. It looked like some sort of nightclub.

The cars in the road were at a standstill; Ayase could see everyone peering through the windows. It was the noise that had stopped them. Loud and low, it had cut through Kabukichou to echo over the streets.

Like a bomb exploding.

From somewhere near the nightclub, a woman screamed. Then a series of loud, rapid pops cut through the air.

“Shit!” Nick ducked as he crammed Zayd’s head below the steering wheel. “Everybody down!”

Ayase and Sachi flattened themselves against the car seat. Ayase struggled out of her seatbelt and slid her knees to the floor as the sound of screams and breaking glass leaked in from outside.

“What’s that noise?” Sachi asked.

“Gunfire.” Nick cursed in English. “The Core guys mentioned a club, didn’t they? Connected to the Yakuza?”

Another loud BOOM ripped through the air, rocking the car slightly. The screaming from outside multiplied tenfold as car doors slammed and bodies brushed by Zayd’s car.

Nick peeked out the window. “Everyone’s abandoning their cars,” he hissed. “Ayase, what’s happening with Kiyoshi?”

Ayase squeezed shut her eyes. To her surprise, the Core car had stopped. The guards were pulling Kiyoshi out and she quickly zipped behind him.

The men stood outside a building that was two or three stories high, a giant FOR LEASE sign plastered across the storefront window. One guard used a flat metal poker to jimmy open the lock. He gestured quickly and the other guards rushed Kiyoshi inside. Ayase was so busy trying to read a sign that the door shut before she could follow.

“Dammit!” Ayase ground her teeth. “I still have a bug on Kiyoshi, but the other one got locked out. They’re in some abandoned building.”

“Do you still have the bug on the car? Send that one up high to get an aerial view.”

She hadn’t thought of that. Ayase’s locked-out bug buzzed around the building as the car insect flew as high as possible without losing her vision.

Ayase described whatever she could see. The bustling station nearby was definitely Shinjuku. She read off signs, building numbers, and any landmarks near the abandoned building.

“That can’t be far from here.” Nick carefully opened his door a crack. He craned his head outside to look down the street as Zyad rose to look through the car’s back window.

Zayd let out a breath. “People were afraid of the explosions,” he murmured. “They were probably bombs.”

“Or grenades,” Nick added as he pulled back into the car. “We were gridlocked bad enough before. With all the abandoned cars clogging up the road, we’ll never drive out of here.”

“Can I use the sidewalk?”

“You can’t pop the curb if you can’t get to the curb. We’ve got a clogged lane on either side of us.”

A cold sweat beaded on Ayase’s temples. When Nick leaned past the front seat to look at her and Sachi, her stomach clenched.

“We need to go forward on foot.” He clenched his jaw. “All of us.”

Sachi opened his mouth, then quickly shut it. He exchanged glances with Ayase.

“You…think we can run to wherever Kiyoshi is?”

“We’ve gotta try. The closer we get Ayase, the better she’ll recognize whatever she saw through the bugs.” He shook his head. “I know I promised you two you could stay in the car.”

“If they’re firing guns,” Zayd murmured, “there will be stray bullets.”

Nick pulled back into his seat. “We’ll wait for a break before we make a run for it.”

Ayase swallowed. From her crouched position on the floor, she and Sachi were largely blocked from view, huddled beside each other in temporary, isolated safety. The thought of leaving that car, and running past a firefight to try and chase down Kiyoshi’s captors in person…

She was scared. And from the look in Sachi’s eyes, he was just as scared as she was. She wanted to say something–anything–but thick saliva clogged her throat. She choked it down.

Sachi’s lips formed a tight line. He mouthed something to her, silent so the men in front couldn’t hear.

“I’ll watch over you.”

A sharp pain twinged in Ayase’s heart. She felt something sting in the corner of her eyes.

He couldn’t protect her. They both knew that.

But you wish you could.

It was the sort of kindness she was used to hearing from him–the constant, natural selflessness that rolled off his tongue like air. But hearing it from him now, his dark eyes quietly terrified behind his glasses…it moved Ayase. It struck her more deeply than she thought he could reach.

She held out a trembling hand. He clasped it. He pulled her closer and for a brief, desperate moment, she leaned her forehead against his.

“Now!”

The door behind her flew open. Ayase released Sachi and slid out of the car, the warmth of Sachi’s touch fading from her skin.

Zayd guided her between the abandoned cars, keeping them ducked low as Nick called orders with Sachi up ahead. The gunfire started and stopped at seemingly random intervals, although at their peak Ayase had to plaster herself against the road as tiny pops shattered glass and lodged into cars. She covered her ears and squeezed shut her eyes.

“…”

Someone was talking to Kiyoshi. Her heart thundering, she took a few seconds reprieve from the road.

“…couldn’t wait anymore, so we need to take her out as soon as possible. Honda, set up your gun.”

Ayase’s insect was hidden under Kiyoshi’s collar, so she couldn’t see anything. She felt him stiffen under her spindly legs.

“From up here?” Kiyoshi asked quickly. “But…aren’t we exposed on a roof? I’m not supposed to shoot without cover.”

Roof?

The bug she’d sent around the building shifted courses mid-air and rushed upward. She bobbed over the building, taking in the fuzzy figures gathered on the flat rooftop.

Ayase’s eyes popped open. “They’re on the roof!” she hissed to Zayd. “Kiyoshi’s putting together his gun!”

Zayd was already a few cars ahead, gesturing for her to follow. She pushed herself up from the road and half-crawled, half-ran to his side. He called out to Nick to wait before leaning toward her.

“How much time is left?” he asked gravely.

Ayase covered her ears to block out the yells and crashing from the burning club. If Kiyoshi had been trying to stall, it hadn’t worked. He was setting up his rifle while the guards ordered him to hurry. One of them clutched a handgun.

“He can put that thing together in a few minutes,” she said. “And one of them…a guard drew a gun.”

A loud fire alarm suddenly bled through her hands. She flicked her gaze through the cars to see the club fully engulfed in dark smoke; men and women ran from the blaze, a few shooting firearms as they ran to safety. One man pitched over as he fled, a dark red stain spreading on his back.

“We have to go,” Zayd insisted. Ayase hesitated, then abandoned Kiyoshi to push forward.

It took several minutes for them to weave through the cars and escape into an alley. The burning club and its ear-splitting alarm were only a few buildings away, but the alley cut the sound enough that Ayase could block it out. She stopped shy of catching up to the others to cover her ears and shut her eyes.

Kiyoshi was kneeling by the edge of the roof, his long gun nestled in his arms as he peered through the scope. He suddenly snapped his head up at the guards.

“Y-you want me to shoot Detective Nakajima?!”

Ice seared through Ayase’s veins.

One of the guards snarled at Kiyoshi, demanding how he knew who she was. When another guard leveled the handgun on Kiyoshi, he spluttered something about her visiting his middle school.

Ayase reached out in blind dread. Her hands slapped against the alley wall as she called for help.

“It’s Nakajima!” she cried, panic building up in her chest. “They want him to shoot Nakajima!”

Familiar hands grabbed her own. She faintly heard Sachi calling to her over the rush of blood in her ears.

She was suddenly thrust toward a warm body. Her eyes popped open in surprise as Sachi folded her arms around Nick’s neck, low enough to her height because the man was kneeling. Sachi flew behind Ayase and lifted her at the waist, sliding her onto Nick’s broad back.

“Hold on,” Sachi ordered. “He’ll carry you. Stay with Kiyoshi!”

Ayase tightened her arms around Nick’s neck. He hefted her up, taking one breath before running down the alley. She shut her eyes.

Kiyoshi was pleading with the guards now–he didn’t have a good enough shot, there were other people in the café and he risked hitting someone else. The guards were getting angry. One of them grabbed Kiyoshi by the hair and threw him to the floor of the roof, which sent his rifle clattering by his side. The guard with the gun growled at him to set up for the shoot.

Ayase’s heart thudded in her chest. They weren’t going to make it. She opened her eyes to see Nick darting through a back alley parking lot, Sachi close behind. Zayd was on his cell phone, calling out that Nakajima’s phone was going straight to voicemail.

“She said it was out of power!” Sachi shouted. “Is there any other way to reach her?!”

“Not unless she wears her police scanner on her day off. Zayd, call her partner!”

Ayase frantically looked above her, hoping to recognize the building tops from her aerial insect’s position. Nothing was distinct enough. She gritted her teeth as Nick flew around a building corner.

And rammed into someone. Ayase cried out as she was jostled loose; she fell back onto Sachi and the two of them spilled to the concrete. Nick stumbled back a few steps and cursed.

Ayase jerked her head up. A trio of men, dressed in buttoned shirts and slacks and wearing sunglasses, pulled back defensively as a fourth man hit the pavement. He gripped his forehead and growled at Nick.

“Get out of our way if you know what’s good for you,” he snapped.

Nick tensed, like prey in crosshairs. The man got to his feet and was about to pass when one of the others grabbed his arm.

“Wait.” He pointed at Nick. “That’s not–“

Nick’s fist crunched into the man’s mouth, ending the sentence.

The man dropped like a stone as the others shouted and reached into their jackets. Nick slammed his shoulder into whoever was nearest, propelling the man hard enough to fly back into another one and knock him to the ground. The final man sprinted before Nick could grab him. He flipped open a cell phone as he fled.

“It’s Marshall!” Ayase heard him yell into the phone. “I need backup behind the Pachinko parlor–we’re being attacked by Nick Marshall!”

Nick cursed fluidly and grabbed one of the toppled men. He threw the agent into the wall so hard that the man slid to the ground, unmoving. The last conscious attacker stumbled to his feet, brandishing a knife in his shaking hand.

Sachi had already grabbed a chunk of crumbled concrete. He threw it at the agent; it clipped the man hard enough on the arm that he stumbled back. Nick was about to rush him when Sachi ran up from behind and yelled at Nick to get out of the way.

Nick pulled back. Sachi shot his Taser at the agent, sending two wired barbs into the man’s clothing. The man convulsed wildly and fell to the ground. Sachi quickly clicked the Taser off and dropped the handset, as if burned. The agent twitched in shocked silence.

Nick unstrapped a pocket on his belt. “Zayd,” he said evenly as he slid brassy, connected loops over his knuckles. “Take the kids and keep moving.”

Dread clenched Ayase’s heart. “Wh-what about you?” she blurted. “You’re not coming?!”

“If those guys are Core, they’ll drop whatever they’re doing to kill me. My only choice now is to be a distraction.”

“But–”

“Zayd can take care of you. Lead him to Kiyoshi.”

Ayase’s mouth opened, but panic choked the words out of her throat. Nick didn’t so much as look at her before bolting across the lot in the direction of the escaped agent. He disappeared into an alley. A few seconds later, there was an eruption of men shouting.

BLAM BLAM BLAM

Beside her, Sachi jumped. The echo of gunshots rang through the air.

No.

The world fell away from Ayase. Sound faded from her ears, the yells from the alley and the siren from the club becoming nothing more than fuzzy white noise through a thick haze. Time slowed. She stared at the alleyway as her heartbeat thudded in her skull.

No.

They couldn’t lose him.

Ayase didn’t like Nick, but she needed him. They all needed him. They were running blindly into a firefight to save a friend they couldn’t locate, and their only chance, their only possible chance, was Nick’s leadership. He had held their hands through every step of this nine-day ordeal. They were nothing without him.

Somebody, somewhere, grabbed at her arm and pulled at her. Maybe it was Sachi.

She didn’t pull back. She just burst into insects.

Her senses splintered into thousands of muted points. Behind her, a fuzzy Sachi cried out and fell to the ground. A fuzzy Zayd shouted something at her.

But she was already surging forward, every piece of her focused on the entry to the alley. She flooded the alley in seconds, the dull roar of her wings echoing off the brick walls.

Nick was alive. He was crouched behind a dumpster, hiding from the half-dozen men spread through the area. Some clearly had guns and one yelled into a cell phone. Every one of them stopped what they were doing and stared up at her, their mouths open.

She swelled outward, reaching to the buildings on either side of the alley.

Try shooting me, she thought darkly.

A shocked agent dropped his gun.

Ayase descended, a thousand points of attack. A few of the men cried out and ran as she zoomed down with her mouth stingers aimed forward.

She dug into flesh. She drove her stingers into the men over and over as they tried to flee, batting at her in such panic that they barely did more than brush her. Tiny points of pain registered as she stung, released, zipped to new skin, stung again. She aimed for necks and faces, diving under collars to sting backs and shooting up shirts to sting stomachs. The men screamed and slapped, sometimes running into the wall to try and crush her.

Nick ran up behind her. She parted to let him pass, letting pieces of her glance off him like harmless water droplets. He punched the nearest of her victims, sending the man crashing through trash cans. He kicked another agent into a wall. One man who still held his gun managed to fire a shot at Nick; he missed by a wide margin, giving Nick an opening to leap forward. He grabbed the man by the skull and used the force of his momentum to drive the man’s head back into the wall. The agent crumpled to the ground.

Ayase rushed toward the three men who tried to escape. She stung the hand of the man with the cell phone until he dropped it; she separated a dozen insects to swarm the phone so he couldn’t pick it up again. She stung ankles to hinder running. One man dropped to the ground and curled up into a ball, so Ayase blanketed him with a contigent to hold him in place.

Nick followed her to finish the job. “Good girl!” he shouted as he slammed an agent into the concrete.

She heard yelling from somewhere else. She tried to perk all her attennae at once, in case it was with Kiyoshi…but it sounded too close to be with him. Her senses were too fragmented to focus. When the last man in the alley hit the ground, she braced herself, assuming the yells were new enemies that were on their way.

Nobody came. For several long seconds, she stared at the far end of the alley, wondering when the reinforcements would appear. Nick ran in the opposite direction.

“Ayase!” he yelled at her. “What are you doing?! They’re back there!”

Back there? Back…

Where she had come from.

Where she had left Sachi and Zayd.

Fear crackled through her, a wave of panic in thousands of pieces. She zoomed behind Nick, her thoughts too scattered to form a proper prayer.

She suddenly felt a wave of something.

Ayase cringed back, as if struck. Her strength dropped away, leaving her so weak that she could barely flap her wings. She dropped low in the air, fighting the fatigue that dragged on her.

The feeling was terribly familiar. She heard Nick groan. He stumbled forward, eventually reaching the parking lot on his hands and knees. He looked up as she lethargically surged in around him.

Zayd was in the center of the lot. He pushed himself from his position on the ground, throwing aside a small rag as he shakily tried to sit up. Sachi, by his side, was sprawled out and unmoving.

A dozen armed agents lay unconscious around them.

Nick fought to his feet. “Zayd!” he called. “Did you put Sachi under? Is he okay?”

Zayd nodded as his elbows buckled under him. Nick ran over, stumbling.

Ayase couldn’t piece together what had happened. She rushed behind Nick, trying to gather her thoughts. She almost unconsciously reformed into her human body, her senses focusing as thousands of tiny brains merged into one condensed unit. Her bare feet slapped against the rough concrete.

She was naked. She tried to cover herself with her hands as she weakly collapsed to her knees.

The world spun in front of her. She took a few deep breaths, fighting to stay conscious.

A hand suddenly gripped her bare shoulder. “Lift your tongue,” Nick ordered. He pressed a small pill into her mouth and pushed her jaw close. In confusion, Ayase flashed back to Kiyoshi and the drugs he took before Pitch.

Kiyoshi.

Ayase squeezed shut her eyes and pushed all her attention to the roof.

Kiyoshi lay on his stomach, his sniper rifle propped on its stand. He gazed through his scope. Even through her fuzzy compound vision, she could see that he was trembling.

“Do it,” a guard snapped.

No!

Ayase’s heart pounded. The blood suddenly pumped through her veins as her body sloughed off the fatigue like dead skin. She clenched her hands against the concrete.

“Kiyoshi’s taking the shot!” Ayase cried.

She saw him hesitate. The guard with the gun pushed the muzzle of his pistol against Kiyoshi’s head.

“Do it,” he hissed.

Ayase reacted on instinct. She shot the bug under Kiyoshi’s collar to sting the guard’s wrist.

The man cried out and pulled the gun back, trying to shake her stinger out of his flesh. The other guards jumped forward.

“What are you doing?”

“Some fucking bee just stung me!”

Someone grabbed her and yanked her free. She was thrown to the ground and her vision blinked out as she was crushed, twisted against the concrete. A thin wire of pain streaked through her consciousness.

But it was only one bug. She sent the insect hovering above the roof zooming down as a reinforcement. As she rushed toward the enemy, the guard cursed and jammed his gun against Kiyoshi’s head again.

“Shoot Nakajima!” he snarled. “Or I’ll blow your brains out, Honda!”

“Stop.”

The guards froze. They pulled back from Kiyoshi and turned as one unit.

What?

Ayase reeled in mid-air. She flew back, focusing her blurry compound gaze on the roof entrance.

A tall figure stood in the doorway. There was something vaguely familiar about him, but Ayase couldn’t make out enough detail. She strained her insect eyes.

One of the guards gestured angrily at Kiyoshi. “He’s in position,” he explained. “They hit the nightclub too early–Nakajima could get called in at any second. We have to take the shot now!”

“He’s not taking the shot at all. We’re canceling the hit.”

Ayase knew that voice. A chill ran down her human spine as the man stepped from the doorway and into her hazy view.

“What?! On whose order?!”

The tall upperclassman flipped a gloved finger in the air.

The guard went silent.

The upperclassman smiled, his lips a thin line. “On my order,” he said evenly. “This mission is over.”

Proceed to Chapter 7, page 3–>