Tokyo Demons Book 3: Chapter 5, Part 1

The apartment building was new, but extremely modest. It was so small, so nondescript, so goddamn unthreatening that Jo was furious the second he stepped out of his cab. Of course Touya had been holed up here, in a quiet part of the city. There was no dungeon, no elaborate lair–just a quaint apartment building with the construction sign still up, and an advertisement from the realtors gleefully promoting their underground parking.

They never would’ve found it in a million years.

He did notice something on the realtor’s sign: the building was set to open in June. If Touya had the penthouse, that meant he’d moved in before any other inhabitants.

The rest of the building is empty…?

“Do you want me to wait?” the cab driver asked as Jo squinted.

Nakajima’s car was parked in a strange place–half behind the building, too far away for Jo to make out any details. But he didn’t see anyone near it, which probably meant they were inside.

“Sir?” the cab driver asked again, but Jo barely heard him over the blood rushing in his ears.

He was five minutes behind them–maybe six, considering the time it’d taken to hail a taxi. He’d considered staying with the cab driver, texting Zayd, or just hunching behind something and watching from afar…but now that he was here, staring up at that silent building, he started to rethink all of that. Following them to wait outside was missing the entire point, wasn’t it? As was texting Zayd for permission to join them, if he already knew Jo was coming.

“Sir?”

Jo’s palms began to sweat. Touya was gone. Right? And if he wasn’t, or he’d left some booby trap in this building, Nakajima and the others would hit it first. Maybe they needed Jo, even. As backup.

Kado was in there. Sachi had left him on some bathroom floor…

“Sir–”

“You can go,” Jo grunted at the driver, the fear melting in his gut. He threw the door shut behind him.

“Watch us with your own two eyes, Jo.”

He ran for the building, a new compulsion pumping his legs. The front door was propped open with a brick–Sachi? Zayd?–and led to a furnished, uninhabited lobby with the cold perfection of a showroom floor. Jo saw the lights on and the phones hooked up, but no other signs of life.

There was a single elevator, its doors open in a hollow welcome. Beyond the lit symbol for “lobby” in the row of numbers above the door, Jo saw the markings for six floors…and the penthouse above it all.

Jo took a deep breath and ran into the ominous elevator. He slammed the button for “penthouse,” but it wouldn’t light up. There was a keyhole beside it, along with a small buzzer and speaker.

He dug his lock picks out of his pocket with trembling fingers. Disturbed by the idea that Nakajima had probably done this herself, he slid in his pick and torsion wrench and manipulated the lock into a turn.

The elevator door closed, then rose with a shudder.

The trip was only seconds long. He brandished his one source of protection–a knife from Mitsuko–and prayed that this hadn’t been the stupidest move of his life.

ding

Jo crouched, and the doors opened.

To reveal Nakajima right outside the elevator with her gun drawn.

Jo stiffened. For the second their eyes met, she seemed as surprised as he was.

“What…?”

Jo slowly lowered the knife. “Is Kado–”

She grabbed a fistful of his shirt and threw him against the back of the elevator. Jo swung at her, but she caught his wrist and twisted his arm, the sudden pain shooting up through his shoulder and arching his back. The knife dropped from his other hand.

“You stupid, self-important child,” she hissed. “Get the hell out of here.”

He tried to gasp out an insult, but she tightened her twisted grip on his arm, straining against his bone and tendons like a vise moving to snap. His cry devolved into a snarl, the anger still pushing through the pain.

“I-is Kado dead?!” he demanded.

“Get out. Or I’ll break your arm.”

She twisted farther, sending shooting agony up his limb to resonate down his spine. Tears of pain beaded in Jo’s eyes; he blinked them away.

“Not…until…I see!” he roared. “He’s my friend, goddammit!”

Aisha’s voice suddenly rang out from behind Nakajima. “Stop,” she ordered in Japanese. “Yes. Dead.”

Nakajima’s rock-hard grip suddenly released him; the air caught in Jo’s lungs. He fell against the back of the elevator, cradling his limp arm, and stared up at her in shock.

Nakajima looked away. “Still certain you want to see?” she asked flatly.

Jo forced himself to breathe as he looked into the penthouse past her. There was an empty living room, an abandoned kitchen, and several doors all eerily left open. Aisha stood in front of what looked like a bedroom door, but Jo couldn’t see inside from where he stood.

Aisha nodded solemnly and gestured inside.

Jo stumbled past Nakajima, tripping on the plush carpet. He grabbed the edge of the doorframe as he swung around it, his heart in his throat. He stared past the sparse bedroom and into the open doorway of the attached bathroom.

And saw Kado’s limp body, sprawled away from him, Zayd knelt beside it in prayer.

“…”

Saliva and sound dried up in Jo’s throat. His stomach lurched.

“Touya Kamishita is gone,” Nakajima said as she holstered her gun. “It appears he was robbed of his Pitch, choked the boy to death, and left. Once I sweep this place for clues, I’m calling this in. I need a med crew for a dead body.

“Now go back,” she snapped. “Unless you want to be seen at the scene of a murder. Or you have some sick desire to help the police deliver the corpse to his parents.”

Jo choked down bile. She grabbed his collar and threw him toward the elevator; he stumbled back into the metal box, the world tilting around him.

Nakajima reached inside the elevator and pushed the button for “lobby.” She retracted her arm and looked down at him to the sound of the gentle ding.

“Tell your friends,” she sneered as the doors blocked her out.

***

Ayase’s eyes snapped open.

She panted, the dark ceiling overhead swimming in her vision. She scrabbled around with her good hand, shoving the sheets off her overheated body.

She’d heard something. Voices. Voices? She could make out muffled talking behind the door, but that was nothing new; she’d heard talking wax and wane every moment that she’d been conscious. She swallowed in confusion.

No, it was… One of the voices rose again, and her heart stopped in her chest.

Sachi.

For a moment, she thought she was dreaming. She blinked her blurry eyes, flexed her tingling arm stub, and listened again.

“…”

His voice cracked on a word, and the floodgates burst open in her chest.

“Sachi?!” she tried to scream, but her hoarse voice was barely more than a whisper.

The apartment went silent outside her room. Thudding footsteps ran for her door.

She thrashed in her bed, flopping over onto her stomach. She couldn’t rip out the IV in her good arm, but she grabbed the bedside pole it was attached to, used it as an anchor to drag herself across the bed, and then wrapped herself around it so she could slide heavily to the floor.

The door flew open, flooding the bedroom with light.

Ayase flung her arm stub over her eyes to block the sudden burn. She blinked hard, rapidly, desperate for her pupils to adjust to the tall figure in the doorway.

Sachi’s familiar outline solidified in her blurry vision, his details dark against the light bleeding in from behind him. When her vision finally cleared, she saw the look of shock and horror on his face.

“A-Ayase…”

She gritted her teeth. Her eyes caught on the full-length mirror propped on the wall opposite her.

She only saw the edge of herself, but it was more than enough–her stub of a body on the floor, tethered to an IV bag and pole, sloppily covered in a nightgown that drooped over her form. And after her session with Aisha and Zayd, she was fully bald, gaunt, breastless, and wild-eyed; her bad arm now extended past the elbow into a fleshy stub near the wrist, but that extra stretch of flesh seemed a poor compromise for the many parts she’d sacrificed.

But it wasn’t. When Sachi fell to his knees in front of her, his breath wheezing past his lips, she was content–thankful–that she had two arms to throw around him.

He whimpered into her neck, the tickle of his breath warm and real and here. Sleep dragged at her like a weight, begging her to return, but she refused to fall into the blackness again. She clung to Sachi for dear life, her hand tangling in his sweat-soaked shirt.

“How?!” she gasped through the rasp in her throat. “How are you–”

“I don’t know,” Sachi replied weakly. “Kado…did something to…” He buried his face in the nightgown at her shoulder. “Why couldn’t I be stronger?!” he whispered.

Dread formed a hard lump in the pit of her stomach. She pulled back, pushed his smeared glasses up his face, ran a desperate hand across his cheek as he panted under her touch.

“What did Kadoyuki do?” she breathed.

She heard the chak of the apartment door opening, and she instinctively jerked her head to look outside the bedroom. Jo walked inside, slowly, his head hung and his eyes hidden by the sweep of his bangs.

Figures darted into Ayase’s view through the open doorway–Shouri and Kiyoshi crowded Jo, Adam close behind. But Jo ignored their rush of questions and just looked up, into Ayase’s bedroom. His red-rimmed gaze cut through the apartment and right into her heart.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, as if talking only to her. “We…couldn’t save Kado, after all.”

***

Jo locked himself in the bathroom. Knowing it was selfish, he swore to limit it to ten minutes. He just…needed to be away from everyone else. He couldn’t stand another second of Sachi curled up on a bed, trying and failing to answer questions–and that look on Ayase’s face, breaking through her delirium and warping the gaunt, pale visage that no longer had hair to hide under.

He turned on the sink and splashed cold water in his face.

Ten minutes turned into fifteen, fifteen turned into twenty. He kept rubbing water over his sinuses, scrubbing at nothing, telling himself he had to get out and let someone else have the bathroom.

Visions of Kado’s limp body danced along the inside of his eyelids. He groaned into the water, shivered when it dripped down his chin to splash under his shirt.

knock knock

His guilt finally personified, Jo squeaked off the faucet. “Coming out,” he wheezed, spraying flecks onto a washcloth. Once his face was buried in the towel, though, he didn’t want to leave that, either.

“Jo,” Zayd said quietly through the door.

Jo ached, but he forced himself to hang up the towel. He grudgingly opened the door.

Zayd tilted his head in a gesture. “We must talk.”

Jo sighed. “Can it wait?” he mumbled back. “I need a little…time to decompress.”

“It cannot wait, I’m sorry. Outside? For privacy.”

Jo frowned at him. “I thought we’re not supposed to leave the safe house,” he muttered, aware of the irony after he’d run out to follow Zayd to a murderer’s den.

“Core and Touya are busy with other things, I think.” Zayd gestured again. “Come.”

Jo slowly followed the man out of the apartment, but requested they not take the elevator. The stone stairwell made the scuffle of their shoes echo around them.

Once out in the nighttime air, Jo shivered and pushed his hands into his pockets. His shirt was wetter than he’d realized, and it sucked the heat out of his chest.

Zayd looked around a moment, then gripped Jo’s arm and led him farther down the sidewalk. It wasn’t until they’d crossed the street and cut through a small parking lot that Zayd finally let him go. Jo frowned, glancing at the busy donut shop nearby, its lights and movement twinkling in the darkness.

“Afraid we’re being followed?”

“Perhaps. I’m not certain how the bodyguards watch me, so I want to be careful before I tell you this. It involves them.”

Jo stopped. He furrowed his brow as Zayd leaned closer.

“Please stay calm,” Zayd whispered. “All right?”

Jo’s heart started to pound. “What the hell is this?” he murmured, his stomach tightening into a ball.

“Kadoyuki is not dead.”

Jo froze. His limp hands fell out of his pockets.

“What…?” he breathed.

“You saw Kadoyuki on the floor, not moving and turned away from you. He was not dead.” Zayd looked away. “Aisha and Nakajima lied to you. I’m sorry.”

Jo stared at the man, too dumbfounded to process. His thundering heart picked up speed.

“But…Sachi said Kado wasn’t breathing–”

“That was a false memory. Kadoyuki put it in Sachi and Touya’s minds.” Zayd reached out and gently gripped Jo’s arm. “For Kadoyuki’s plan to succeed, everyone must think that he is dead. Please forgive us for using you to convince the others. Please forgive me now for telling you this, so you can help Kadoyuki continue.”

Jo tried to speak, but the words shriveled into nothing in his throat. He tightened under Zayd’s touch.

“Continue?” Jo finally croaked.

Zayd took a breath. “Kadoyuki can see the future. He absorbed Touya’s power while he was in captivity.” His green eyes gleamed in the night. “And just as Touya used that power to destroy us…Kadoyuki will use it to destroy him.”

To be continued in Chapter 5, Part 2.

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