Tokyo Demons Book 2: Chapter 8, Part 1
Ayase knew they’d entered the highway, but within moments Touya was slowing down again. She strained her insect eyes for an exit sign. She didn’t even see the blurry outline of one.
He slowed the car in the emergency lane. As the vehicle rolled to a stop, the winds no longer dragged at Ayase, but the rain hit her directly. She scrambled to flap her heavy wings free, to crawl out of the water pooling behind the license plate. She fought to breathe.
Touya put the car in park but left it running, sending dread to well up in her. She heard the click of his seatbelt from inside. The creaking of upholstery as he moved.
“I’ll be back,” Touya murmured. She heard the car door open and slam shut.
…?
Kadoyuki shifted under her. “He’s looking for bugs,” he breathed. “Watanabe-san, hide!”
Ayase’s human heart thundered as she slipped in watery panic. She saw the dark shadow of Touya outside, his outline blurred in the mist of rain. A gloved hand shot out.
He closed a fist over the bug clinging to the car antenna. The wet leather of his grip dragged her for a paralyzing second before it pinned her back against the flat surface of the trunk.
His palm collapsed down suddenly, and she blinked out in a flash of pain.
No!
“Ayase’s here?!”
Ayase’s heart ached when she heard Sachi’s voice. She caught a watery glimpse of Touya moving to the front of the car, mercifully putting some space between him and the three outdoor bugs she had left.
She shifted back inside and scrambled up Kadoyuki’s hoodie. She poked her head out from his collar, terrified of making herself more visible but desperate to face Sachi directly.
The look of pained relief on his face squeezed something inside her. A thousand thoughts crowded her mind–words she couldn’t say.
“She…wants you to stay strong,” Kadoyuki whispered for her. “She said she’ll protect you from…”
Kadoyuki trailed off, his words vanishing into a puff of breath. He leaned back against the car seat as his brow scrunched up.
“No,” he said weakly. “She won’t.”
Sachi blinked. “Kado–”
“Touya knows what she is now. She can’t hide from him.”
Ayase caught movement outside. Touya passed by the license plate, his gloved fingers running along the seam of the trunk above her. She watched the moving shadow of his hand precariously close overhead.
Kadoyuki! she silently shouted. I can still do this!
Kadoyuki hiccupped. He rolled his head to Sachi as tears built up in his eyes.
“You don’t deserve this, Sachi,” he whimpered. “Don’t let this nightmare change you. Please.”
Outside, Touya vanished from overhead. But from under the car, where one lone bug had clung to a cool groove, she saw him fill her vision as he squatted beside the tire. He ducked his head to look under the car.
She froze. When he reached for her, she tried to zip away.
snap
And she was gone.
Two left.
Kadoyuki!
Kadoyuki took a shuddering breath. “Watanabe-san,” he whispered. “I think God sent you to me. But you’ve already saved me, so please…” He blinked his wet eyes. “Save the others.”
Ayase felt a terrible foreboding as Sachi shook his head. “Kado,” he said quickly. “We’re in this together, okay? Don’t talk like that!”
Ayase couldn’t see Touya anymore from her hiding places. She just heard the hiss of the rain, the crunch of pavement under his wet shoes. A bare, veiny hand with black fingernails suddenly slid along the underside of the bumper. It ran into her abruptly, pinching her wings against the surface, stopping, rolling carefully over her struggling body.
snap
Ayase huddled her final outdoor bug behind the license plate, terrified and drowning.
Kadoyuki slowly rolled over in the seat, his handcuffed hands shifting behind him. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against Sachi’s shoulder.
Sachi opened his mouth, but no sound came out. Ayase saw him staring from overhead, his eyes flicking from her to the huddled head against him.
Kadoyuki moaned and rubbed his wet eyes on Sachi’s jacket.
“Sometimes I think I’m just dreaming you, Sachi. That you came out of my fevered mind when I thought all psychics were miserable and wanted to hurt me.” He trembled, his body shaking under Ayase’s clinging legs. “You’ve never left. Not when things were good, not when they were bad…never. Like a product of my imagination lingering in the back of my mind. Like an angel over my shoulder.”
Sachi swallowed. “Kado…”
“Real people leave,” Kadoyuki insisted. “Why did you follow me this far? What did I ever give you?!”
Sachi tensed nervously, a flush crawling over his face. He chewed on his lower lip.
“I just…wanted you to be happy, Kado. And I failed.”
Darkness slid over Ayase–a black glove wedging behind the license plate. But Touya couldn’t reach all the way, so she ducked down, into the pooling water, to keep away from his fingers. She held her breath as water flooded over the top of her head.
I won’t leave you.
Kadoyuki curled against Sachi’s chest, which drew a weak noise from Sachi’s mouth. Sachi twisted his shoulder to pull Kadoyuki closer, his arms still restrained in the handcuffs.
“You never got a chance to be happy, Kado.”
She could barely see through the watery darkness. The shadows of Touya’s gloved fingers swelled overhead. The tips of black leather penetrated the pool protecting her.
He slowly pushed down, down, crushing her into the waterlogged metal beneath her. Down, down, her chitinous body trembling as thin cracks snapped pain and terror through her consciousness.
crunch
Ayase gasped somewhere, the suffocation releasing her like an opening fist. The drowning was gone, snapped away with the insect’s life.
Her blurry vision narrowed into one view: Kadoyuki huddled against Sachi, tears running down his face.
Ayase’s panic twisted again, entwined with guilt and misery and fear. She clung to the fabric of Kadoyuki’s hoodie for dear life. She tasted salt water in her human mouth.
We’ll find you, she thought. We’ll find both of you. Just wait for us! And until then…!
Kadoyuki’s eyes finally opened. He stared down at her.
She saw that hardness in his burning gaze. That focus. His tears dripped from a new, sharpened darkness.
“Until then.” He tilted his head up at Sachi. Sachi recoiled slightly from Kadoyuki’s touch, surprise written across his face.
“Don’t be afraid, Sachi. I won’t let Touya hurt you. I won’t let him touch you.”
“Kado…”
“I’ll take care of you,” Kadoyuki murmured, his voice a low rasp. “And I’ll take care of him.”
His body rammed up against the side of the car. She heard him breathe Touya’s name as fabric shifted and bunched around her, as rain hissed outside and dribbled down his chest from his collar. Dampness leaked through the thick material from all sides as Ayase scrambled for his hip.
“Senpai,” Kadoyuki begged. “I have to tell you something. Please.”
A black-veined hand slid up under the fabric, barely missing Ayase. She ran down in a panic, slipping on the wet trail he’d left on Kadoyuki’s skin.
“Senpai, please. Look me in the eyes and–mmph.”
“Not now,” Touya said darkly. “I’m concentrating.”
Ayase’s pounding heart sank. She skittered toward the waistband of Kadoyuki’s jeans.
He can’t hypnotize Touya if he can’t talk.
The last, lingering thread of her hope snapped when that wet hand rolled over her. Touya gripped her wing in his pinching fingers and dragged her out of Kadoyuki’s clothing.
The gray sky opened in her vision; she buzzed uselessly as she was lifted through the pelting rain. She passed the hazy image of a soaking Kadoyuki pinned against the car, Touya’s gloved hand still clapped firmly over his mouth.
Touya held her up to his own face, his eyes hard behind his sopping bangs. His lips tightened into a grimace.
“You think you’re so clever,” he hissed. “And you think you’re so noble, trying to keep him from me. But Kado-kun was mine long before he met any of you. He’s all I have.” He leaned closer to her, breathing flecks of water onto her body. “Let him go.”
Ayase twisted in his grip, anger searing through her. She screamed her frustration, her distant human lungs surging air up her human throat.
“FUCK YOU!”
Touya suddenly thrust her toward the car, letting her dangle in the open doorframe. Sachi looked up at her from the dark interior.
Sachi swallowed, blood flooding his face. “I love you,” he whispered.
Touya crushed her out of existence.
…
…!
Ayase suffocated in the new darkness. Something tore the breath out of her, sucking the oxygen out of her lungs to leave raw, ragged abrasions along the inside of her throat.
She heard the distant howl of a scream. It flooded her ears, her nose. Blood throbbed behind her eyeballs as air fled her shriveling body.
“…yase! Ayase!”
Someone gripped her wrists.
She suddenly gasped air back into her lungs, rushing cold relief through her veins as the manic scream cut off. But when she tried to breathe out, that tearing force ripped more than she could spare, and the scream filled her world again as she twisted her hands in her assailant’s grip.
“Ayase!”
The hands released her, cupped her face. Thumbs pushed back her eyelids.
Her narrow vision was suddenly clear, direct and simplified without the aid of thousands of lenses. Human vision. She blinked her fleshy eyelids.
A pale, sweating Jo stared into her face. “Stop screaming!” he begged.
Ayase choked, the howl in her ears trailing off into a strangled gasp. She sagged forward on her knees, sucking breaths into her wracking frame.
…
Human. She was human.
She was human.
Her back burned like fire. She curled against the floor, feeling dusty metal scrape against her palms.
“No!” she cried, her voice reduced to a choked gurgle. She tasted blood in her mouth. “No…!”
Jo’s hand fell on her head. She shook off his touch, curling into a tight ball.
“No!” she wailed, her breath breaking into sobs.
***
Jo fell back on his knees, leaving her to cry against the floor. He rubbed sweat from his eyes and winced at the ringing in his ears.
Ayase’s sobs echoed against the walls of the abandoned freight elevator. He’d only managed to drag the door down halfway, leaving their bottom halves exposed to the parking garage, but it didn’t matter. The world would’ve heard her through 10 centimeters of steel.
He waited for the inevitable barrage of hospital workers…but for better or worse, nobody came. Jo hoped that meant they were preoccupied with Mitsuko.
Jo let out a long breath and twisted to sit beside Ayase. He rested his back against the wall.
He rolled his eyes up to stare at the metal ceiling.
Ayase’s sobs eventually broke down into quieter whimpers. He rested a hand on her head, and this time, she didn’t shake him off. He tilted his gaze down to her trembling body, wrapped in crooked clothes.
What the fuck can I say? he wondered miserably.
So he didn’t say anything. He just stroked her scalp, slowly, letting the greasy strands of her hair run through his fingers.
He didn’t know how long he did that. He wanted a cigarette, but there was something hypnotic about the movement, and he couldn’t bear to stop. Her breathing evened out as his thumb dipped down to brush across her temple.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He un-flipped it with his free hand, murmured his location before Zayd could ask. Sneakers pounded pavement from somewhere outside.
Jo recoiled slightly as the door screeched and rumbled up. A wet Kiyoshi panted in the doorway, framed by the slowly brightening sky outside the parking garage behind him.
Rainwater dripped from him to splash tiny patterns across the floor. His dark eyes fell on Ayase; the skin creased in his brow.
“Did she lose them?” Kiyoshi whispered.
Jo finally lifted his hand. He rubbed his burning eyes.
“She’s only human.”
Kiyoshi grunted his sympathy and squatted beside them. He seemed to notice she was asleep.
“Careful,” Jo warned. “The skin of her back’s all fucked up.”
Kiyoshi murmured an affirmative and carefully unrolled her. He draped her chest against his, tucked her knees to the side, and locked his hands under her thighs. He effortlessly stood, bracing her against him.
Jo climbed to his feet. “She couldn’t see where Touya was going in the rain. I doubt we could’ve tracked him down through the bugs, anyway.”
Kiyoshi wilted. “Daniel-san said Touya’s probably gonna ditch that police car. She didn’t get any kind of a lead?”
“She didn’t.” Jo tightened his jaw. He slid his hand into his pocket.
His fingers closed on thick, expensive leather. The new weight in his pocket mirrored the burning coal in the pit of his stomach–the tight, coiled heat searing in his chest. It made him sick. It made him ready.
He pulled out his prize and flipped it up so Kiyoshi could see.
“We’re not done with Touya,” Jo said darkly. “I got that asshole’s wallet.”
To be concluded in Chapter 8, Part 2.
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