Tokyo Demons: Book 3, Chapter 6, Part 2

That flashing dot, like a far-off beacon, blurred in Ayase’s exhausted vision. It was like a pulse of adrenaline that punched through her fatigue.

Two blocks.

Touya was two blocks away.

“Sh-should we do something?” Kiyoshi asked, his voice fuzzy in Ayase’s ears. “If that’s as far as Touya got, he must be a freaking mess!”

“Unless he was…on his way back here for something,” Sachi breathed.

“Oh, crap. Do you think he looked into the future and saw us come here?!”

“No,” Shouri answered firmly. “If Zayd didn’t call us until after he saw Touya leave, that triggered a new future for this place and Touya shouldn’t have been able to see it. Right, Sachi?”

Sachi didn’t answer. As Ayase blinked her burning eyes, she watched Sachi, slowly, turn around to face her.

He looked like a deer in headlights.

And then she boiled.

Even if Touya started running, he was only two blocks away. He couldn’t outrun them if he was detoxing. He couldn’t outrun a bunch of healthy, angry, vengeful teenagers…

And he definitely couldn’t outrun insects.

She barely even realized her pinky was dissolving into bugs until Jo grabbed her arm. He shook his head furiously.

“No.”

“Wait!” Shouri exclaimed. “Even if we stick to the plan and don’t attack Touya, at least Ayase can put an insect on him!”

“No,” Jo insisted, his fingers digging into Ayase’s arm. “He’ll see you coming.”

“Not if she hides the bugs! She’s done this a million times, Jo!”

“But it stopped working with Touya. He kept finding her.”

“And you think whoever’s stalking Touya now would do better than Ayase?” Shouri threw up her hands. “I wasn’t planning to pick a side, but you kids are running on third-hand information, and you’ve got the most powerful spy in the Church two blocks away from that psycho. This may be your only chance to see things with your own two eyes.”

Jo twitched at her last sentence, but his grip stayed hard. His forehead tightened.

“But that’s never the whole truth,” he said weakly.

The tight, pulsing veins behind Ayase’s eyes throbbed. Her body wanted to explode. Snatches of her murderous fantasies streaked across her mind.

Trembling, she pulled her arm from Jo’s grip.

“Sachi,” she croaked.

Sachi was already burying his face against a clenched fist, his glasses knocked up by his knuckles. He took shallow, rapid breaths.

“Touya usually finds your bugs,” he murmured. “And most of his plans are locked up tight in his head. I don’t know if…you would learn much by…” One finger, slowly, rose up to touch his face.

He dragged that finger over his cheek.

Adam suddenly called out for Sachi. Through her red-filmed gaze, Ayase saw the man raise his eyebrows and gesture to the two taxis stalled beside him.

Sachi’s head swung back to Ayase, his finger digging into his cheek.

“It’ll be okay,” Sachi breathed, his finger trailing up and down his skin. “Everything will be okay…”

Under the crashing thud of her heartbeat in her ears, as her veins hardened into chitin through her body, Ayase clenched her dissolving fist.

And reformed it back into flesh.

I’m more than this, she thought, the words echoing in her head like a mantra. I’m more than a monster.

She swallowed acid. “Get in the cabs,” she ordered. “We’re staying far away from Touya.”

The relieved rush of Jo’s breath was close enough to tickle her ear. Shouri flashed Ayase a skeptical grimace, but flipped up her hands in a no-weapon’s stance.

“You kids get to make the call,” the woman conceded. “That’s the entire point.”

Suddenly sucked back down into her exhaustion–and without the boost of adrenaline–Ayase wobbled on her new legs again. Jo gripped her elbow and helped her stumble to the cabs.

Sachi was already in a back seat when they got there, his haunted eyes watching them from the dim interior of the taxi. He gestured for them to sit.

“It’ll be okay,” he whispered again. “I just…know it, somehow.”

Ayase’s heart tightened. By her ear, Jo let out a fractured breath.

She nudged Jo ahead of her. “Y-you go first,” she murmured. “Sit next to him.”

Jo dug his heels into the sidewalk in surprise. “What?”

“I don’t want him to touch me right now,” she said under her breath. “And know what I’m feeling.”

“N-neither do I!” Jo whispered back. “I’ll only make this…worse.”

“I’ll make it worse. Go.”

Jo bristled. “You go!”

“You.”

“You!”

“Holy crap,” Kiyoshi exclaimed, sliding into the cab next to Sachi. “What are you guys arguing about? Get in the car!” He grabbed Jo’s arm and practically dragged him into the back seat.

Ayase took the front seat, slamming the door shut behind her. She curled up against the faux leather and let the exhaustion that consumed her finally weigh down her eyelids.

She fell into the black.

 

Ayase awoke with a jolt, her body lurching against the seatbelt.

The cab had stopped. Muffled horns honked from all directions, bleeding through the car and punctuated by the surprised grunt of the driver beside her. Disoriented, Ayase clutched the door and blinked.

“What’s going on?” Jo demanded from the back.

The cabbie shook his head, rolling down his window. He slowly edged the car forward until a police officer outside–directing traffic–yelled down at their cab.

“We’re rerouting this street!” the cop declared. “There’s an active situation with armed suspects!”

Ayase choked. Before she could scramble toward the window, Kiyoshi leaned forward from the back seat.

“What kind of armed suspects?!”

“Keep moving!” the cop ordered, and the cab driver obeyed. Kiyoshi cursed as the car turned onto a side street.

Unsurprisingly, the narrow side street was packed with bumper-to-bumper cars; the sidewalks were thick with people wandering in a panic. As the cab came to another abrupt stop, Ayase twisted in her seat to see Jo typing into his phone.

“Do you guys see the taxi with Adam-san and Shouri-san?” Sachi asked quickly. “They were ahead of us…”

“They’ve gotta be in this mess somewhere,” Jo muttered. “I’ll find them.”

Kiyoshi jammed a hand into his pocket and pulled out a wad of yen. He leaned into the front seat again and crammed the money into a cup holder.

“Let’s go,” he ordered, reaching over Sachi to pull the door handle.

The driver blurted his surprise. “Didn’t you kids hear the cops? It’s dangerous out–”

But Sachi was already shoving open his door, so Ayase did the same. She spilled onto the street, her legs rubber beneath her, and awkwardly crawled toward the sidewalk with one arm.

When a car tried to sneak into the non-lane where she was, Jo stumbled in front of it, causing the vehicle to squeal to a short stop before it could run her over. He kicked the car’s front bumper as Sachi helped her to her feet.

“Shouri’s a street over,” Jo yelled over the honking, waving his phone. “She said they’re still in their cab, but they’ll get out and walk here.”

“Should we find out what’s going on?!” Kiyoshi shouted back.

Without answering, Sachi pointed up; Ayase followed his extended finger. A giant TV posted on the building behind them was set to subtitled news, now flashing with film footage labeled LIVE.

A city street had been ravaged by some sort of battle–the shaky live camera trailed over broken windows, splashes of blood, and even unmoving bodies. The camera frame eventually settled on an abandoned CD store, its broken front door left wide open.

Shoot-out between unknown parties, Ayase read on the screen. Possibly connected to organized crime, scene still active. Heavy damage to local businesses, civilians encouraged to stay away–

A shadowy figure leapt up in that empty CD store, jolting into the camera frame. Before the camera could turn away, the man raised a gun and shot somewhere offscreen; in real life, Ayase heard the loud POW of gunfire from mere blocks away. Half a second later, a cascade of return gunfire ripped through the air.

People around them started to cry out in alarm.

“Shit,” Jo hissed. “Did anyone see if–”

“Gunman had track marks,” Kiyoshi cut in, dropping his eyes from the now-jostling TV footage. “One of his sleeves was ripped up.”

“So it’s Core.” Sachi winced and covered an ear against more gunfire and screams. “Who’s Core having a shoot-out with, if the police are coming to break it up? Who even has that many guns?!”

Jo grimaced and started typing into his phone. “The Mob,” he snapped.

Ayase gripped her head. She flashed back to that day in Kabukichou, when Kiyoshi’s rescue had been interrupted by Core attacking a Yakuza nightclub. She remembered standing in a silent prison, surrounded by unknown evil, a tattooed man bowing through his bars at Nick’s mysterious girlfriend.

What had Hatsumi said in her text message?

I think the streets are about to get ugly.

“The Yakuza might be hitting back,” Jo confirmed aloud. “Now that Core’s weak. This one’s really not our fight.”

“And…Core guys might just surrender to any cops who try to stop it,” Kiyoshi added. “To get the cure for Pitch in jail.”

Ayase swallowed down the rising surge of adrenaline. “We’ll wait for Shouri-san and Adam-san,” she said firmly. “We need to get back and find the woman who lived in that apartment as soon as possible.”

Jo nodded and looked up from his phone. “They’ll be here in a minute,” he said, glancing around. “Shouri said she’s just–” He suddenly stopped, his eyes locked somewhere.

And went pale.

“Jo?” Ayase tried to follow his line of sight by craning her head. But then, to her surprise, he gripped her shoulders and jerked her back to face him.

“A-Adam!” he choked, the words strangled from his throat. “I think I just saw him!”

Ayase furrowed her brow. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine!” Jo spluttered. “I just…mistook him for a gangster because he’s so big! It spooked me.”

Foreboding twisted Ayase’s gut. But before she could speak, Jo practically shoved her into Sachi’s arms and took a step back.

“He turned around and left, so I’d better go get him. Stay here and I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Jo, we were supposed to wait here–”

“I think they missed us!” he called as he ran across the street. “But stay there in case they didn’t!”

“Jo!” Ayase yelled after him.

He disappeared into an alley.

Proceed to Chapter 6, Part 2, page 3–>