Tokyo Demons Book 2: Chapter 7, Part 2

After a full ten minutes with no response, Ayase clapped her phone shut. She leaned against the wall of the hallway and closed her eyes.

Her fragmented view was mostly fixated on Kadoyuki, who obediently replied to Sachi’s questions. He still lay with his back to Sachi, the covers pulled up to his chin, Sachi’s hand resting firmly on his shoulder. Even through her blurry vision, she could see Kadoyuki curled weakly from that slight touch.

She forced her eyes back to the church. Her one bug still rested in the empty girls’ room, where the door remained shut. She faintly heard movement and voices; a moment later, the door opened with a chak.

Jo waved her over. She buzzed through the air to land on his shoulder.

“Should I tell Emi-san to pack anything specific for you?” he asked. “Or just clothes? The Riot Girls should have tampons and stuff.”

Ayase paused at that, then buzzed under his left ear. He abandoned the girls’ room.

Ayase saw and heard the rush now–Aisha ran past Jo, there was clattering in the kitchen, Kiyoshi lugged one of the bigger pieces of medical equipment out the back door. Jo made a beeline for the sleeping room, where Adam rummaged through the closet.

“Hey,” Jo called. “Shouri?”

Adam gestured for the back parking lot. “In car already,” he replied in English. “With Mitsuko. Sick, sleeping.”

But before Jo could join him, Daniel suddenly called to him from behind. Jo turned as the older man grabbed his arm.

“You really can’t…tell us yet?” Daniel asked weakly. “Why we’re leaving or where we’re going?”

Jo let out a breath. “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “I know this is your home and all.”

“It’s not that.” Daniel hesitated for a moment, his blue eyes flicking away. “I trust you, of course, and you and your friends are capable of making your own decisions by now…but this is drastic.” He looked back, his face grim. “I assume you learned something terrible.”

Jo sighed. “You were the one who said knowledge is power,” he muttered.

Daniel opened his mouth to respond, then shut it again. He rubbed Jo’s back in odd affection.

“I’m glad you’re not in jail, Jo-kun.”

To Ayase’s surprise, Jo flushed a little. “I never wanna talk about that again,” he said sharply. “Okay?”

“Ah. Of course.

Jo brushed past Daniel and grabbed an empty suitcase from a pile of them on the floor. He joined Adam at the closet of the sleeping room.

Ayase opened her eyes.

She spent a long moment in silence in that hallway, the quiet chatter of the hospital laid over fuzzy noises through distant antennae. Her eyes absently followed the tiled mosaics on the floor as her mind drifted back to one terrible day.

“Help me!”

She still remembered the look in Kadoyuki’s eyes as he collapsed to the bathroom floor. The heat of his breath on her exposed stomach as he clutched her shirt with shaking fists.

Touya had come for him that day. And she’d stood on a toilet in an empty stall, listening to Touya drag him out of there and toward some fate she couldn’t understand. She’d been no more than his classmate at that point–a familiar face whose name he probably only knew through roll call. But he’d fallen to his knees before her, desperate and clinging like a drowning man.

That hadn’t been a lie, had it?

“Everyone here is kind to me. You didn’t trust me when I used Wipe’s power, but you didn’t hurt me. You didn’t tie me down or stuff my mouth or cut into me.”

Ayase shivered. She peeled herself from the wall.

Sachi was still questioning Kadoyuki by the time she re-entered the room. Sachi looked up; she gestured for him to stay where he was.

“Kadoyuki,” she called as she closed the door. “Don’t turn around.”

Kadoyuki twitched in bed, but didn’t turn from the wall. Ayase joined Sachi at the bedside and stared at Kadoyuki’s back for a long moment.

“What happened that day in the hospital bathroom? When you reached out to me?”

Kadoyuki went rigid. Sachi’s eyes widened at the boy under his touch.

“You said Touya took you to the hospital because you were sick. Was that a lie?”

Kadoyuki gasped out a shaky breath. He covered his mouth.

“I…I wasn’t sick,” he whimpered.

Ayase exchanged glances with Sachi. He nodded, clearly unnerved.

“Kadoyuki…tell us what happened.”

Kadoyuki buried his face in his pillow. “No,” he moaned. “Please.”

“Kado…”

“Please, please.” He gripped the fabric with shaking fingers. “Anything but that. I’ll tell you anything else, but…please, I can’t.”

Ayase licked dry lips. “He said…a doctor wanted to see you.”

Kadoyuki hiccupped into his pillow, his body trembling under Sachi’s touch. Ayase could see him recoiling under the contact, but Sachi kept his grip firm.

“Her name is Dr. Fujito,” he whined at last. “She w-works there. At S Hospital.”

Ayase curled and unfurled her toes in her shoes. “Did Touya take you to her?” she asked carefully.

“Y…yes.”

“What did she look like?”

Kadoyuki clutched the pillow. “In her thirties, I think,” he breathed. “Long hair, not dyed, pinned up. Soothing voice, but she was…angry to see me.”

“Do you know why she was angry?”

“Because she d-didn’t want Touya to ever meet up with her in public. She…” Kadoyuki choked down a sob, his voice muffled in the pillow. “She’s a member of Core. I think she administers the Pitch.”

Ayase blinked.

She suddenly flashed back to Kiyoshi’s captivity, when he’d been strapped to that gurney. The woman who’d given him his first injection–could that have been the same doctor? Ayase’s insect vision had been fuzzy, but her memory didn’t conflict with Kadoyuki’s description.

“Core has a doctor working in a public hospital?” Sachi clarified.

“Yes. I think…maybe they have some control there, or at least a few contacts. Touya’s mentioned S Hospital more than once.” He paused for a long moment. “He wanted…me…to listen to her thoughts. He said he’d ask her some leading questions, and he wanted me to hear what she was thinking.”

Ayase was about to ask, but Kadoyuki groaned and curled against the bed. “I already told you–Touya’s dying from the Pitch. He needs a cure. But until then…as long as Core controls the Pitch, he’ll be a slave to them. He was looking for any lead where he could find access to Pitch.” He swallowed. “T-Touya is obsessed with control. Obsessed. His power lets him see the fate of the entire world, but not his own. So he tries to…control the pieces of the universe into a single path that he can walk along and rule. I don’t know if it’s his power, or his past, or a result of Core enslaving him…but he can’t, won’t be controlled by anything. If there’s something he can’t control, he wants to destroy it.”

Sachi let out a breath. “Detective Nakajima was convinced he was working for another faction,” he murmured.

“No. Touya’s manipulated every side in this war to ensure that the fight will go long enough to cripple and destroy Core. But the only side he’s ever fought for is his own.” Kadoyuki’s voice cracked into a higher pitch. “A-and the only other person he’s recruited to his side…”

“Is you?” Ayase furrowed her brow. “Really?”

Kadoyuki sobbed. “I-I’m the only person he trusts,” he replied weakly.

Ayase’s heart started to pound. “Because he thought he could control you,” she offered.

“He did control me! He is controlling me!”

“Kado–”

“No, you don’t understand!” Kadoyuki buried his head under the pillow. “He ruined my life, and he forced me to lie to you, but I still can’t get away from him! The minute I step out of this place, he’ll find me and he’ll…!”

Sachi’s mouth tightened. “We’ll protect you,” he said evenly.

“You can’t protect me from him! Why can’t you understand that?! He can see my future, your future, the future of anyone he can manipulate into his perfect little line! And he…” He shook his head against the bed, smearing his face in the sheets.

“He hates psychics! Like Detective Ochi, who can trace him, and Wipe, who can warp his mind…and me, who can hear every thought running through his head. He knows psychics are the only ones who can interfere with his power, so he avoids them like the plague. But I…” He sobbed. “I was thirteen when I met him. He was the fifth advisor I was paired with when the school was desperate to find out what was wrong with me. And I could tell that he was psychic from his thoughts, so…I told him about my power, because I thought he could protect me from my family. That someone would finally understand me without thinking I was crazy.”

Kadoyuki choked. “So he took me under his wing. He thought we had so much in common–we had terrible powers and abusive families, and we couldn’t trust the world, so we had to trust each other. He told me everything about his life, and how he would help me if I could help him. And I…sympathized with him. He was the first person I could help, and the first person who could help me.”

Sachi twitched slightly at that. He chewed on his lower lip.

“Did you know I was psychic?” he whispered. “And that I wanted to help you?”

Kadoyuki stayed buried under that pillow for a long moment. After a painful stretch of silence, he released a weak whimper.

“I never dreamed that one day he would pit me against you. So when I had to make my choice…

“I…I knew how you felt about me, Sachi. And I didn’t want to break your heart.”

Blood flooded to Sachi’s face. He pulled his hand off Kadoyuki’s shoulder, his mouth falling open.

“Uh…I…”

Kadoyuki suddenly pushed from the bed, shakily drawing himself up on his good knee. He turned to Sachi with tears in his eyes.

“I wanted to spare you from this,” he sobbed. “But I still ended up hurting you. I wish I’d taken the hand you always offered me.” He rubbed his wet eyes. “You were my only real friend. And you’re…you’re still here, trying to protect me when I betrayed you.”

Sachi stared at Kadoyuki, his eyes wide behind his glasses. Slowly, he reached out again.

Kadoyuki cringed away from his hand.

Sachi dropped his hand at the same moment Kadoyuki started spluttering.

“I-I’m sorry! I just…”

Sachi’s face closed off as his eyes dropped to the floor. Kadoyuki gripped his mouth and slowly turned back to the wall.

“I’m sorry, Sachi.”

Ayase wanted to say something, but felt like she shouldn’t, for some reason. With Kadoyuki’s hypnotic gaze back to the wall, she felt her wound-up muscles loosen.

Calling from far away caught her attention. It sounded like Jo.

Ayase mumbled an apology and shut her eyes. Back in the church, Jo’s body jostled under her insect.

***

“Zayd?” Jo called again, frustration building in his gut. “Did you hear me?”

The man finally called back from down the hallway. “I need one minute in the women’s room,” Zayd promised. “And I will come.”

Jo faintly heard the sound of a door shutting. He cursed and dragged his loaded bags into the hallway.

What the hell does he need in the girl’s room? he thought. Aisha already grabbed everything from there.

Kiyoshi ran around the corner. “Jo!” he called. “Is that the last of the clothes?”

“I think so. How much room is in the van?”

“Not a lot.”

Jo helped load the bags into Kiyoshi’s arms. “I think Zayd’s grabbing something. I’ll do one last sweep for anything important.”

Kiyoshi nodded and ran for the back exit. Jo stretched his arms and turned to the bathroom.

Pills. He remembered those medications he’d found behind the mirror. He stepped into the linoleum floor and flicked on the bathroom light, adding some badly needed visibility to the darkening hall.

A wave of something washed over him.

Jo sagged on his feet. He gasped and gripped the sink as fatigue sucked on every muscle in his body.

“The…hell?” he croaked as he blinked exhaustion from his eyes. In a panic, he turned on the cold water and splashed himself in the face.

The exhaustion ebbed enough for him to regain his footing. The bug buzzed on his shoulder.

“Did you feel that?” he breathed. That hadn’t felt…internal.

It had felt like Zayd.

Jo stumbled into the hall. The door to the girl’s room was still closed, so he shouted as he ran up. Zayd didn’t reply. Jo grabbed the doorknob.

It was locked. Jo jostled the knob desperately.

“Zayd!” he called. “Are you okay?!”

No reply. Fear rose in his gut as he pounded his fists against the door. “Zayd!”

Jo heard the faint sounds of movement from inside–like something being dragged across the floor. The hairs rose on the back of his neck.

“ADAM!” Jo yelled as he kicked at the door.

A few seconds later, Adam flew around the corner, gripping his head. He groggily mumbled something in English Jo couldn’t understand.

Did it hit him, too?!

Jo had bent the knob askew with his foot. Adam grabbed Jo by the back of the shirt and pulled him from his task.

With a swift spin, Adam kicked the door in. Jo shoved open the creaking wood and ran inside.

Just as Zayd’s legs and sneakers disappeared out the window.

“H-hey!”

The plank that had once boarded up the window lay in a broken mess on the floor. Jo jumped over it as he and Adam ran to the window.

But Zayd hadn’t crawled out. He’d been dragged out. In the darkness outside, he saw two people in hoods–a slight man and a stumbling, slight woman–heave Zayd’s limp body into a waiting car. The man ran to the driver’s seat.

Jo’s blood turned to ice. Adam leapt out the window, but the car was already squealing off down the alley. The license plate had been speckled with enough mud that Jo couldn’t make out the numbers in the darkness.

The car disappeared around a corner, leaving Adam hissing something under his breath.

Shit!

Shit!

Jo had barely seen the woman’s face–but it was enough to guess she was one of the bodyguards. The male driver could’ve been the other one. Jo pulled back into the room, his mind racing.

Had the bodyguards turned on them? Had someone bought them off?! Jo remembered what Wipe had said about Touya’s wealth.

Something on the littered floor caught his eye. Jo scooped it up with shaking hands; it looked like some kind of dart with a chamber for liquid. He shook it, but the dart was empty. Blood stained the tip.

A tranquilizer?

Adam shouted in English as he crawled back in the window, but Jo ignored him. The mechanisms in his brain cranked through a rapid series of possibilities.

Or…or the bodyguards were still doing their job. And protecting their benefactor.

A loud CRACK cut through the church. Somebody screamed.

“Fuck me,” Jo breathed as he dropped the dart to the floor. He raised his fingers to his shoulder, frantically snapping in front of Ayase’s insect before bolting for the door.

“Ayase!” he called as he ran. “Come back to me!”

The insect buzzed in response as he ran through the church. In the worship room–the area once open to the public–Emi and Mitsuko frantically barricaded the front door with any pews that weren’t nailed down. The door and its planks were already cracked through as something rammed from outside.

“We’re under attack!” Mitsuko shouted. “Get everyone out the back and into the van, NOW!”

One of the stained glass windows shattered near Jo; the planks nailed over it broke inside under the force of a crowbar. A woman shoved an arm inside to sweep away the glass, her sleeve catching on the edge of the splintered wood.

Pitch veins.

Before Jo could react, Adam zoomed past him. He grabbed the intruder’s wrist and forearm and twisted the limb with an audible crack.

The intruder screamed and dropped her crowbar. The limp arm disappeared back outside.

Jo grabbed the discarded crowbar. He waved Mitsuko and Emi over as more glass shattered around them. “Forget the door!” he shouted. “It’s coming down!”

“Have we moved everyone out yet?!”

“I don’t know! But we have to fall back!”

As if to prove his point, another intruder pried out a chunk of the splintering front door from outside. Two men with ski masks and crowbars squeezed through the opening.

Mitsuko tackled one, ramming him into an immobile pew to crack his side before they tumbled to the floor. The other grabbed Emi by the hair as she tried to run; she cried out as he threw her into the stone wall. She crumped to the floor.

Adam made a beeline for that guy as Jo ran for the opening. Another woman was trying to squeeze through, so Jo swung the crowbar like a bat and cracked her incoming leg. She collapsed halfway through.

Mitsuko struggled to her feet as she kicked her now-unconscious opponent. Jo grabbed her arm and tried to drag her down the aisle, his eyes flying back to the front door and the new opening being clawed from the outside.

Something whizzed by Jo’s head with a thin fwip. An arrow with a bright yellow tail feather pierced through the new opening and buried into whoever was prying from outside.

Jo ducked automatically, pulling Mitsuko down with him. Two more arrows zipped over them in rapid succession, eliciting new cries from the collapsing front door.

“Nee-san!” Kiyoshi ran down the aisle, pausing only to shove his bow at Jo before bolting for his fallen sister. A new man had crawled through a window, but Kiyoshi shoved him into a row of pews, sending him stumbling back and falling into the wooden hurdles.

Jo tried to tuck the giant bow under his arm. “Someone kidnapped Zayd!” he shouted. “Is everyone else in the van?!”

“What?! Daniel-san said he was leaving to get the briefcase!”

Jo cursed fluidly under his breath and ducked into the hallway with Mitsuko.

“We’ll grab it now,” she said quickly. “Where is it?!”

“We don’t know! Only Zayd and Nakajima know where it is!”

Kiyoshi hefted Emi into his arms as Adam kicked down the last standing opponent. They ran from the room as one of the front doors finally collapsed.

No more than a second after they made the hallway, Mitsuko slammed the door shut behind them. Jo grabbed a chair from the kitchen and rammed it under the knob.

Jo knew it wouldn’t buy them much time, and more Core ops were probably waiting for them out back–he was just thankful Core didn’t seem to have guns this time. Maybe attacking a public church with loud weapons was too risky?

As Jo followed everyone’s race to the back of the church, he fished his mobile out of his pocket and tried to push Nakajima’s speed dial with jostling fingers. But when he reached the back door and felt the cool nighttime breeze on his face, he froze.

The girls’ room.

Zayd had gone in there and closed the door.

Adam shouted and ran across the parking lot, pausing only to spin-kick an operative who tried to pry open the van’s passenger’s door. Another man was hammering at the back, but Mitsuko attacked him with a snarl.

Emi shakily stood from Kiyoshi’s arms, so Jo shoved the bow back at him. Then he turned and raced down the hallway.

“Jo?!” Kiyoshi cried.

“Briefcase!” Jo shouted back.

“If Touya has that much Pitch, he may be able to wean himself off. He’ll follow it to the ends of the earth.”

Kado’s heavy voice echoed in Jo’s head. It flipped Jo’s stomach with rage, but Kado’s voice overlapped with ghostly lines from Takeshi, from Zayd, from Nick. That cache of Pitch had saved Shouri’s life. It had given Nick a chance at finding a cure. So much was riding on that goddamn briefcase.

So fucking much.

He burst into the girl’s room, but someone was already climbing in through the open window. Jo shoulder-checked the guy back out and slammed the window shut. He whipped his head around as shouting bled through the glass.

Where would he hide it? Somewhere the girls wouldn’t check?! Jo lifted the only mattress on a bedframe, threw open the closet. The storm window glass cracked behind him as someone hammered it from the alley.

Jo shoved aside the remaining clothes that hung in the closet, but saw nothing behind them. His eye caught on something in the floor.

One of the wooden panels had a clearer seam to it. The edge of a plank poked out very slightly above the even floor.

Jo dropped to his knees and clawed at the seam. The panel shifted in place, but he couldn’t get the edge. He dug his nails under the wood, scraping his cuticles until blood squeezed out from underneath them.

He finally flipped the panel up as glass shattered behind him. Jo reached into the thin, deep hole under the floor and felt leather against his fingers. He grabbed the handle.

Someone snagged the back of the shirt and dragged him out of the closet. Jo scrambled for his crowbar, but his knee knocked into it and sent it scraping out of his swiftly retreating hands.

A muscled arm wrapped around Jo’s neck and pulled. Jo choked as the pressure cut off his windpipe and dragged him, scrambling, to his feet. The back of Jo’s head rammed up against a hard chest as the arm tightened around his throat.

“Got one!” the man shouted. “Should we keep him as a hostage?!”

Jo fought to breathe as he dug his nails into the man’s arm. The man snarled and–

Something hard hit the back of Jo’s head. The world blinked out.

 

And slowly faded back in, the warped, fuzzy noise clearing as his tunnel vision opened out. He gasped in deep gulps of air, his chest expanding painfully against the hard wood of the floor.

He saw two bodies on the floor around him: one writhing, the other unmoving and staked by a rod with yellow tail feathers. Another man climbed into the window, but Kiyoshi stepped not a meter in front of him, drew back his bow, and released an arrow point blank to skewer through his shoulder. The man spilled back into the alley.

Kiyoshi grabbed the back of Jo’s shirt and dragged him into the hallway. “Use your legs!” Kiyoshi ordered.

Jo scrambled to his feet, gasping for his voice and twisting back to the room.

“B-brief–”

“I won’t let you die for it!”

A burst of panic exploded in Jo, and he jerked back hard from Kiyoshi’s grip. But he only stumbled one step toward the girls’ room before Kiyoshi slammed him against the wall of the hallway with his hip, keeping Jo crammed there as he drew back another arrow in the narrow space. He sent the arrow zipping into the far end of the hallway, felling the first Core operative who had broken through from the worship room. The two men behind her tripped on her body.

Kiyoshi hauled Jo to the back door, and Jo suddenly noticed, in horror, that the insect on his shoulder was gone. He turned back toward the hallway.

“AYASE!” he shouted, his voice cracking from his blistered throat. “DON’T LET IT OUT OF YOUR SIGHT!”

And then he was tripping down steps, leaping into the back of the van, and pulling his dangling legs in as the van jerked forward in the parking lot. He heard the dull thud of bodies against the metal sides as they zoomed for the street.

Daniel and Adam scrambled for the wildly swinging back doors; Jo shakily pulled himself into the closest free spot on the van benches. It was between Shouri and Aisha.

Aisha’s face was closed, her dark eyes locked on the floor of the shaking van. Shouri was the color of ash, but she grabbed Jo’s hand and squeezed it.

“You tried,” Shouri croaked, her voice thick with bile.

A crushing, suffocating guilt pressed on Jo’s beleaguered heart. He slammed the back of his head against the side of the van, hot pain stinging at the corners of his eyes.

Daniel and Adam finally closed the doors, shutting off the last glimpse of the church that was shrinking in the distance.

Proceed to Chapter 7, Part 2, page 4–>