Tokyo Demons Book 2: Chapter 7, Part 1

Kadoyuki’s personal phone burst into music.

Ayase stared at the bottle of tea. As the tinny song from his phone danced through the silence, a strange fog filled her mind.

What…

“Oh, God.” Kadoyuki juggled the phone in his lap, his hands trembling. “I-I have to take this.”

Ayase couldn’t think straight. She felt a headache blooming behind her eye sockets.

Kadoyuki gripped her wrist, which drove her head up. His forehead creased, but there was more than fear in his eyes–she saw something sharp again. That…edge. That focus.

“Please,” he begged. “Give me a minute alone.”

Ayase rubbed her throbbing temple. This damn mobile song…from some kid’s anime or something? She’d grown to hate it.

“Is it your mother?” she mumbled.

“Yeah. I have to take this.” His fingers dug into her wrist. “Please.”

Ayase automatically rose from her chair, which slid his thin fingers from her skin. But something still nagged at her. She glanced down at the bottle of tea.

…

She scooped it off the floor, feeling strangely compelled. Clouded pictures tumbled through the levels of her mind.

She marched out of the room without looking back. She heard the clack of Kadoyuki’s phone behind her.

“M-Mother?” he breathed.

She closed the door behind her, muffling the sound in the room. She briefly debated listening at the doorway, but a different desire pulled her into the hallway.

He…he can hear your thoughts through the door, her mind argued.

A flash of fire ignited in her brain.

She gasped against the headache, trying desperately to penetrate the fog in her head. She stared at the bottle of tea in her grip.

This…this was her tea. She’d bought it from the vending machine. She remembered hearing yelling at the church, punching a button, hearing the bottle roll through the machinery…

But when she tried to remember what she’d done with it, her thoughts scattered and her mind clamped down. She’d had it in her hand–the chill of the plastic against her palm. But she hadn’t had it in the bathroom. She hadn’t had it when she’d walked into Kadoyuki’s room.

How the hell had it gotten under Kadoyuki’s bed?

When she tried to remember the steps from the machine to the bathroom, it was all a blur…

She went rigid.

***

“Oda-kun.” Ochi leveled hard eyes on Jo. “You were at Kiseki.”

Jo swallowed. “Uh…yeah.”

“And Touya wasn’t. Despite that clearly being an important area in Core’s plans.” Nakajima crossed her arms. “Tell us, in detail, what happened to you there.”

Jo took a second to gather his thoughts. “I-I already went over this. I was working there, a bunch of Core ops dressed like Seiryuu showed up at the place, they kicked down the door and went for Kenta…” His eyes fell on the key. The words died in his throat.

“Some of them…were in a car.”

“A navy blue Toyota,” Ochi clarified. “License plate 43-69.”

Jo stopped. The second Ochi said the words, Jo heard another voice in his head.

“N-navy blue! Toyota! 43-69!”

Sachi threw out a hand. “The car Adam-san was in, right? He was locked in the trunk, and Kado heard his thoughts from outside.”

“And he told Daniel that he…saw a Core operative checking out Kiseki the week before. He knew the date they were coming, followed him out to his car to get the make and model–”

Nakajima’s scoff cut him off. “Right,” she said dryly. “I bet he never mentioned how he opened that trunk.”

Jo’s eyes fell back to the key. The engraved symbol of Toyota ran in delicate lines across the metal.

“And what happened after that?” she asked thinly. “You regained Shouri’s bodyguard and brought Kadoyuki Yoshimoto back to the church? Let him into your inner circle?”

“Hey!” Sachi snapped, suddenly standing from his chair. “Kado was always welcome in the church! He’s known Daniel-san longer than any of you–I brought him to the church when we were still in middle school!”

“Exactly. And how long has Daniel Ozimek been harboring Nick Marshall? Three years?” She shrugged. “That’s a long time to be keeping secrets around a pre-pubescent mind-reader.”

“What are you trying to say?!” Sachi’s hands clenched into fists. “Even if Kado knew anything about Nick-san before this whole mess with Core, who would he have even told in middle schoo–” Sachi froze.

Acids churned in Jo’s stomach. He slowly slid the key off the table.

“Did…did Kado have this?” he whispered. “That day at Kiseki?”

Nakajima flicked a hand. “You children haven’t learned a thing since you teamed up in that damn church. No one works alone. Not even your precious, sobbing wreck, who seems so pathetic, so…isolated and misunderstood because he can get into other people’s minds.” Her voice hardened. “Can that power make a car key materialize in his hand? How did he know Wipe was in Motoi, when no Core operative in his right mind would be thinking about a memory-eraser during an attack?

“No matter how good you think someone’s ability is, it’s never enough to cover every base.” She gestured to Sachi with her head. “Like you, the living lie detector. Your power only works when you manage to touch someone.”

Sachi went white as a ghost.

Nakajima gritted her teeth. “I warned you about being soft. That sniveling brat’s been playing you since the beginning.”

Sachi choked. Jo barely heard it as darkness closed in around him.

Ayase.

Ayase.

He rammed his hand into his pocket and ripped out his mobile phone. He punched the quick dial with shaking fingers.

They’d left her alone with Kado. To protect him.

The fuzzy ring echoed in Jo’s ears.

***

Ayase jumped at the vibration in her pocket. She scrambled to pull out her phone.

Jo’s name lit up the tiny green screen. She quickly flipped it open.

“Jo–”

“Get out of there!” he shouted, his voice thick through the line. “Get away from Kado!”

Ayase’s heartbeat pounded in her skull. She ran to a corner in the hallway, nearly colliding with a nurse. The bottle of tea dropped from her numb hands.

“I…s-something’s wrong,” she blurted, her voice high-pitched in her ears. “I can’t…remember something.”

“Fucking…! Are you close enough that Kado can get in your head?!”

She turned back to Kadoyuki’s room, now at the end of the hall. Her vision blurred on the blank, wooden door.

A closed gateway to the truth.

***

Jo re-gripped the phone in his sweaty palm. “Listen to me,” he ordered. “Kado had a key at Kiseki. He was a goddamn plant to give us Adam.”

Jo heard Sachi release a panicked wheeze. He glanced to see the taller boy propped weakly against the table, a hand clapped over his mouth.

“I…Jo…” Ayase’s voice was faint over the phone. She sounded nothing like she usually did.

He dug his fingers into the mobile.

“Kado probably erased your memory! For all we know, he called an army of Core ops to take you out while you’re alone! Get out of the fucking hospital!”

Ayase breathed over the line, then abruptly faded out. Jo heard the faint taps of shoes running over tile.

Then the clack of an opening door. Kado crying out.

No!

“Ayase!” Jo roared.

***

She cleared her head. She had to. She filled her mind with white light, a blazing shield to blind a quiet boy with burning eyes.

She was through the door and at the bedside in half a breath. Kadoyuki dropped his phone, terror written across his face.

His personal mobile hit his lap, the tiny receiver facing the sky.

“I’m not finished,” a voice snapped. A tiny, angry velvet crushed through the warping of the phone line.

Touya.

Ayase grabbed the phone and snapped it shut. The words Call ended: Mother blinked onto the green screen.

She didn’t think. She couldn’t think. Hot light seared her brain, leaking into her skull and racing down every nerve pathway in her body. She spread her feet as her cells began to fragment.

Kadoyuki curled into a ball, burying his head under his arms.

“Wait!” he cried. “I can still fix this! It’s not too late!”

Jo yelled for her through her mobile, still trapped in her crushing grip. She dropped the phone on the bed, leaving it open for Kadoyuki to hear.

“Kado’s in fucking Core!”

Kadoyuki’s head snapped up. He whipped red-rimmed eyes to her.

She instinctively slapped her hands over his eyes, blocking his hypnotic gaze. He cried out as her hands pushed his head back against the headboard.

He already erased my memory once.

“I’m not in Core,” he begged. “I swear to God in heaven!”

Ayase swallowed bile. “After everything,” she breathed. “After everything we…”

His trembling fingers crawled up her wrists. “It’s j-just Touya! I’m only helping Touya!”

“Helping him do what?!”

His fingers weakly dug into her skin.

“Touya’s dying,” he whispered, his voice cracking on the words. “And if we don’t save his life, he’ll take us all down with him.”

To be continued in Chapter 7, Part 2

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