by Kat Cotton
“How many of us have you killed?”
Wow, this conversation wasn’t one I wanted to have.
“I don’t kill demons who don’t harm others. But incubi, you know what they do? They sleep-rape. Sleep-rape is still rape even if it isn’t physical. Nic might be a total jerk, but he doesn’t sleep-rape. He doesn’t even have sex.”
I wiped the smudged polish from my nail. That was better than looking at Kisho with his not understanding basic principles of demon fighting. I guessed arguing with him was better than not talking, but this conversation was pissing me off.
“But if someone paid you, you’d kill him.”
“The mayor offered, remember? He said he’d give me a shit-ton of money, too. But I didn’t kill Nic. Look, I’m not one of those hippy vego demon fighters who give the monsters a pep talk about mending their ways then let them go off to kill and rape again. That’s just damn stupid. You wouldn’t expect a cockroach to mend their ways, or a rat. Demons are exactly like that.”
He screwed up his face in thought.
As much as I adored him, I wouldn’t disguise what I was. If I needed to kill Hana to get the job done, I’d kill her. Kitsune lived for centuries. She’d had a good innings already. Actually, I needed to check it out. If I cut her tail off, would her human body die too, or would the human Hana be free of the kitsune’s possession?
“What are you wearing tonight?” I asked Kisho. Nice change of subject, I thought.
“Jeans, t-shirt, jacket. Nothing fancy.”
Kisho had it easy. He looked good in anything. I only had a few outfits with me, and I still had no idea what to wear.
“Oh, I think you should go back to see Yamaguchi. We need to know what the treasure we’re looking for is. Otherwise, this is just a wild goose chase, a wild fox chase, even. Why was he being so secretive about it, anyway? Is it something illegal? Did she steal his stash of A-grade cocaine or something?”
“I think it’s something more valuable. Some kind of charm or amulet or something like that. Whatever it was, he used it to control her.”
“That’s not very nice. Maybe we shouldn’t give it back to him.”
Although controlling Hana would probably be a good thing, it didn’t sit well with me in general. Taking someone’s control away from them was just wrong.
“Clem, we can’t do that. We made an agreement with him.”
Just before we left the hotel room, Kisho stopped me.
“Do you really think you need to carry a knife? We’re just going out for drinks.”
I rolled my eyes. The knife always went with me. I had a stake in the inside pocket of my jacket, too, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. You couldn’t walk around unarmed. This might just be drinks, but then, it might not.
We meet Hana at the station and walked to the club. She somehow managed it so Kisho walked beside her and I walked behind.
“That’s an interesting outfit. You look so... warm,” was all she said to me.
At least my outfit wasn’t stolen. Hell, I needed the giant puffer jacket and thick tights to survive this cold. Also, the massive scarf around my neck and a beanie on my head. Even then, I shivered.
Hana had on a short shirt and a tiny little crop top. Also, bare legs. Just looking at her made me feel colder.
I didn’t really give a shit what other people wore, but I hated it when they tried to put me down. Being warm meant more to me than fashion.
When we got to the club, it was much smaller than I’d been expecting. Hana introduced us to a few of her friends, but none of them spoke much English, so I got further pushed aside.
A couple of her friends smiled at me and made a few remarks in English, but then Hana launched into a long story in Japanese. The whole time, she kept her hand on Kisho’s arm.
She said something that people thought was particularly amusing. All her friends doubled over with laughter.
“What did she say?” I asked Kisho.
“Oh, she went into this shop and there was... what was it? I can’t quite remember. Some story about...” He frowned. “I’ll tell you when I remember.”
Weird. He’d just been laughing so hard, and now he couldn’t remember a word she’d said? Maybe it hadn’t been so funny. Maybe people just laughed to make her happy. Which sucked, because I’d made all those great egg puns the other day and he’d not laughed a bit.
All this not understanding what people said didn’t help with tracking down the treasure. It didn’t help with my mood, either.
The group around Hana had grown to about twenty people. Mostly human. Well, actually, the bass player from the band was definitely a demon. He reeked of sulfur and had demonic eyes.
The rest of them seemed quite decent. It wasn’t their fault I didn’t speak Japanese. One of the guys pointed to his drink, asking if I wanted one. I nodded. A couple of the others tried to talk to me in broken English. Just regular folk, not evil. I wondered why they hung out with Hana.
A tiny girl in a baggy beige dress left to go to the bathroom.
“Having fun?” Hana said to me. Kisho had gone to the bar, so, for a moment, she had her hands off him.
I nodded and smiled even though this was the least fun possible.
“Maybe you should’ve stayed at home. You don’t really belong here.”
She smiled at me. She kept smiling as she reached over to the beige dress girl’s handbag, hanging off the back of one of the stools. A few of her friends watched, but no one said anything.
She pulled the girl’s wallet out of the bag and flicked through it, then got out a wad of cash.
Still, no one said a thing. Maybe her friend had asked her to do it?
Hana put the money in her pocket, then put the wallet back in the friend’s bag.
“Is that okay?” I asked.
“Is what okay?” Hana replied. She flicked her hair back and grinned even wider, leaning toward me.
“Is it okay that you just stole a big wad of cash out of your friend’s bag?”
“What are you saying?” Hana looked wide-eyed with shock. “I didn’t steal a thing.”
At least five people had watched her do that, but no one said a word. Hana looked around, smiling at them, and a couple of them nodded.
“Why would you say something like that about Hana?” one of the guys asked. “That’s horrible.”
“She blatantly stole that money.”
Beige dress girl came back to the table.
“Minako, Clem accused me of stealing from you,” Hana said to her.
Funny how she spoke in English now.
Minako gasped. “Impossible, right?”
She reached over to her bag and got out her wallet. She got out her money, except there was no money. She mimed counting it as though she was totally unaware that the money wasn’t in her hand. I had no idea what Hana had done. Some kind of glam or thrall, obviously.
“See, Clem, it’s all there,” Hana said, smiling smugly. “I think maybe you were confused.”
“I’m not confused. I know what I saw.”
“I’m sure it’s a mistake,” Kisho said. I hadn’t seen him return to the table. He stood behind Hana and shook his head at me.
I got it. He wanted me to play along. In a strictly business sense, that would be the best move. We needed to gain her trust, not antagonize her. Every nerve in my body screamed at me to fight her, though, expose her for the bitch she really was. She’d done that whole thing on purpose, not just wanting to steal the money but wanting me to see her do it, so I’d look like a bitch in front of everyone.
“It’s fine, right, Clem?” he said.
Her friend’s band started playing before I could answer.
A cacophony of sound filled the room. The band were horrible. Really, really horrible. I’d seen some awful bands in my time, but these guys didn’t just suck, the music cut right through me.
Kisho and Hana seemed to enjoy it. Maybe it was some kind of music that only appealed to paranormal be
ings, like those whistles that only dogs can hear. Hana danced around, rubbing herself against Kisho. He didn’t encourage it, but he didn’t stop her, either. I might be a hunter who used my sexual aura to tempt and kill demons, but even I never acted so blatantly.
It wouldn’t have worried me if she didn’t have that edge of maliciousness to her. She wanted Kisho because she knew I did. I got that. And I wasn’t just jealous. Kisho would be used and abused by a girl like that. Maybe he liked that. Maybe that was what he wanted. But it worried me that he might get really hurt.
As a fox shifter, she’d be bad enough, but she had that other shit going on.
About halfway through the night, I wanted to leave. My head hurt from the terrible music, my feet hurt from standing around, and my feelings hurt from Kisho ignoring me. Hana’s friends kept glaring at me like I was all kinds of evil.
I saw no benefit to being at this club at all.
“Can we go?” I said to Kisho when the band finished. “I’m not feeling well, and I have no idea how to get back to the hotel.”
“Oh, you want to leave? Suki can show you home. She lives near your hotel.”
Fucking Hana.
I caught Kisho’s gaze. He could just say he wanted to leave too. That wouldn’t be too difficult for him. But he looked away and said nothing. Not a word.
My entire body pounded. My heart withered inside my chest. I’d been squeezed almost to death by a night hag once, but that crushing was nothing on this.
Even if his only reason for staying was to get close to Hana, that didn’t make it hurt any less.
My throat closed up. I wouldn’t be able to talk even if I wanted to.
I had to think about the case. Kisho had said he’d win her trust. Maybe this was how he’d do it, by throwing me under the bus. Maybe she’d open up to him when I wasn’t around.
Or maybe he just wanted to fuck her. He was a guy, after all.
“Come on,” Suki said.
Wow, she did speak English, at least a little. I walked out of the club with every fiber of my being wanting to run back and grab Kisho and wrap him up in some protective covering. I’d leave, though. On the train ride home, I’d see if I could pump Suki for information.
Chapter 17 Clem: Demon
Suki wasn’t exactly talkative. We walked together to the station, and, while I wanted to find out information from her, my mind kept wandering back to Kisho.
“How long have you known Hana?” I asked her.
I tried to keep the tension out of my voice, but I balled my hands up tight in my pockets. I should’ve stayed at the bar. Kisho had no chance with that fox. I didn’t want to think what she’d do to him if I wasn’t there to keep a watchful eye on them.
“Maybe a few weeks,” Suki replied.
“Oh. How did you meet?”
Suki scrunched up her face in thought. I wasn’t sure if that meant she couldn’t quite remember in some freaky thralled kind of way, or if she just didn’t know enough English to express herself.
“At a bar,” she said in the end. “I think.”
I nodded. People were so vague about the things Hana said and did. She put up this façade and tricked people into believing it. But who had she tricked? Maybe I’d been the one she’d thralled. I had charms and amulets to protect me from that kind of thing. They worked on vampires and they worked on demons, but did they work on kitsune? I didn’t know.
“She is so generous. She gave me these lovely earrings.”
She touched her ear lobe. The earrings were cute, but I wondered if Hana had stolen them. Of course, I couldn’t say that to Suki. It’d ruin all her pleasure in the gift.
“Cute. Your English is good,” I said.
She beamed at me. I wasn’t lying, though she did speak in a very slow, precise manner. I didn’t think she had much confidence. At least complimenting her would give her the motivation to keep talking.
“Thank you. How do you like Tokyo?”
“So far, it’s been great. I had one of those tasty fish things. Taiyaki.”
She nodded and smiled. “They are delicious, right. I like them too.”
As we got closer to the station, the streets became rowdier. Drunks meandered down the street. One guy threw up in the gutter. Nice. A group of kids drank beers on the streets. Nothing much to worry about, but I twisted the wolf ring on my finger. There was something not right.
A drunk slammed into me. He wasn’t the danger I sensed. He just wasn’t steady on his feet. I pushed him away.
Music blared out of a building. Another karaoke, by the look of it. Next door, an electronics shop blasted an even louder jingle. How did people not go insane with all that noise?
Then we passed a place that was even noisier with insane lights. A bunch of smokers crowed around an ashtray at the entrance of the building.
“What the hell is that?”
“Pachinko,” Suki said.
“Huh?”
“It’s gambling. Like slot machines.”
I got that. “It’s so noisy.”
She nodded. “Too noisy, too smoky. Too sad.”
Yep, she wasn’t wrong.
As she said that, someone rushed out the door and almost bowled me down. There was a look of feral desperation on his face. A demon, or a gambler? Maybe a gambling demon? Those were the worst. Never go near a demon with a gambling problem.
Then he spun back around and gave me the once-over. I didn’t know what he was looking for, but I had it. He grabbed me and threw me against the wall.
Definitely demon. I could smell it. I could almost taste it, he reeked so strongly of demon.
He’d picked the wrong girl to attack. Even normally, I could’ve have kicked his butt before dusting him. With my mind crazed over that damn kitsune, I hungered for a fight.
His hands gripped my shoulders tight. I swerved out of his grasp.
“Come on, demon boy,” I taunted.
I switched on my sexual aura and flashed him the look that got demons all hotted up. He’d be ashes in just seconds unless I decided to mess him around a little first.
I ran my tongue over my lips and thrust my hips out. Just like Hana was probably doing with Kisho right now. Damn bitch.
I shot lust beams straight to the demon, but there was no response in his eyes. No lust, no passion. Nothing.
I pulled my shoulders back, sticking out my boobs. I needed to clear my mind of Hana and Kisho and tap into my lust instead. I pictured Kisho in that rain shower with his t-shirt stuck to his body. That’d heat things up, surely.
The demon laughed.
Huh?
I dug even deeper.
Kisho in the shower. Kisho with Nic. Them soaping each other’s bodies. Nic all dominant and strong, Kisho down on his knees...
There was no way this could fail. The demon’s blood should rush to his cock and all his demon senses should go fuzzy in an instant.
Instead, he swiped at me with that huge hand.
My sexual thrall failed. How the hell had that happened?
He swiped again.
No time for questioning things. I needed to destroy this bastard.
Even if I couldn’t sex him, I still had my knife. I pulled it out of my waistband. Ha, Kisho had said to leave it at home. But I’d been right. You never know when you’re going to need a weapon.
I swung at him, slicing his arm.
“Ow!”
“Yeah, I’m not joking around,” I said to him.
Dicing him like this filled a deep inner need I had for destruction. He might not be Hana, but he was a bastard, regardless.
I slashed him again so that he lost strength, then I threw a punch at him. There was no need for that punch other than making me feel better. I punched him again. He tried to punch me back, but he was too slow and cumbersome.
I ducked.
Swinging around, I aimed a kick right at the side of his head. That brought him to his knees.
I smashed my fist into his face. He recoile
d, and I hit him again. A few more punches, and he tried to crawl away. He’d not get away from me that easily. I pummeled his face until it was even uglier. My silver rings charred his flesh.
Finally, I thrust my knife into him, turning him to dust.
That had been way too easy to be satisfying.
As I wiped my knife on my skirt, Suki backed away from me.
“It’s okay, he’s gone. Completely dusted.”
Then I realized it wasn’t the demon she was scared of. It was me. Hell, where was the gratitude for saving her life? She’d have been the demon’s next victim once he’d finished me off.
Although he’d not attacked until he’d taken a good look at me. And he’d left her well alone. Maybe it hadn’t been a random attack. Maybe he’d been specifically looking for me. If he had been, that would mean there was only one person behind this.
Hana.
Chapter 18 Nic: V-boys
It was one thing to say I’d help the mayor, a whole other to run a gang out of town. I couldn’t just run around town hoping the Northside Gang would turn up and cause trouble. I needed a concrete lead. It was time to call in some favors—favors I didn’t want to call in because they meant talking to people best forgotten.
I made the phone call even though I hated it.
“Zarah, it’s Nic.”
“Nic? Nic? I’m not sure I know anyone called Nic.”
Even her voice annoyed me. So jaded and blasé, as though she was constantly on the verge of a yawn.
“Cut the crap.”
“You know that smile of yours doesn’t work over the phone. You should’ve done a video call.”
I wished I’d staked Zarah when I’d had the chance. The whole reason I had an all-male pack was Zarah. Before I’d thrown her out, she’d caused resentments that lingered even now. Not that a male pack was any less bitchy, but if they caused trouble, I could punch them in the face for it. As much as I wanted to punch Zarah, she was a chick, and I had ethical concerns about that. Staking was one thing, punching another.