Into the high class alcohol dispensary I walked. I was seated in a booth by an austere middle aged waitress, and ordered something I’d always wondered if I’d like.
“Yamazaki whiskey. Please,”
With a mute bow, the waitress disappeared, and reappeared shortly after with an expensive looking glass of the fragrant dark hued alcohol. It smelled divine.
It’s cost was Hellish.
I paid, eyeing the sparse tavern, and just as I downed the first sip I felt a presence in the booth behind mine. The scent of brimstone and offensively girly shampoo filled the air.
She didn’t even need to say a damn word.
“Lis,” I spoke.
“Wow Charlie, if you get any better at this I’ll have to start actually making an effort when I sneak up on you,” she said.
She might not have been able to surprise me with an ambush, but when she sat down across from me her clothes certainly made me do a double take.
Did you know that there’s something of a fever for schoolgirl uniforms in Japan? Lis certainly knew. She was dressed in an ashen gray top featuring a business tie lopsidedly lounging down upon the fabric. She wore a too short skirt, pitch black thigh high stockings, and I dared not take a guess as to the color of her underwear.
Knowing her, I’d make a strong argument for pure white bloomers.
“What’s with the concentrated look?” she asked, “If you’re wondering what color my panties are they’re--”
“Straight to Hell,” I managed before she had a chance to complete that sentence.
“For shame. You shouldn’t be thinking such lewd thoughts Charlie. Underwear are a girl’s soul.”
“Is this where you segue into me owing you my soul?” I asked.
“Always were a quick study,” Lis replied with a fond grin.
“I’m helping the Oni. They begged me and I could not refuse.”
Lis actually missed a beat before shrugging it off. “You’ve really dug yourself a proper hole this time. Sure is hot that deep beneath the Earth, huh?”
“Why do you always--”
“Tease you so much?” she finished for me.
I nodded.
“Because Charlie. I like you. Your soul is always shining. Like a weak candle that refuses to go out even though there’s a hailstorm going on around it.”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment at all. There’s someone other than the Oni that is trying to pit the Supernaturals against each other. And the Mundane Humans while we’re at it too.”
“That makes sense. Lots of the naughtiest people make a mint by selling weapons to both sides of a war, you know. Got any suspects?”
“Not yet. There’s that assassin who tried to kill me last night.”
“Good thing that Oni girl saved you. Why can’t that Demon Slayer guy be the one behind all this?”
I shook my head soundly. “He was erratic and unstable. He’s working for someone with brains. I’m sure of it.”
“Hmm, this sure is leaving us high and dry. How will we ever single out the bad guy before your two toys find out you’re on nobody’s side and decide to clean you out?” she asked.
Sharp. Deductive. If there was one thing Lis excelled at it was knowing everything about anything. I smiled as my thoughts coalesced into a proper plan.
“You gave me enough of a hint already when you mentioned both sides of the war. I know just what to do now.”
“And what’s that?”
“First, a question. Just for you.”
Lis gasped like I’d just given her a bouquet of scorched roses. “For me? Oh Charlie, you know how I love answering questions about myself in an earnest and non-convoluted manner.”
I grinned ruefully. There’s a reason I knew next to nothing about Lisistrathiel. In the near decade that I’d known her, she had never given me a single mote of straightforward information about her own being.
Of course, that’s never stopped my curiosity from killing cats.
“How do you know so much about so many different things?” I asked. “Answer honestly.”
Lis smiled. “Because I stole a cookie from the cookie jar. Your turn. What’s the plan?”
Cookie jar. See what I mean when I say indecipherable responses?
“If the Oni think someone is manipulating things for them, then it stands to reason the manipulator would have their finger in the Tengu pie as well.”
“Which means?”
“Which means I need to get Momo to give me an insider’s view of how the Tengu work.”
Chapter 14
Momodara was wearing a fragile smile as we got onto the elevator. She hadn’t wasted a moment when I called her number and asked her for help. She may be haughty, and she might think I’m just a particularly civilized ape, but she was sincere in her helpfulness.
It was just after lunch by the time I’d reached the corporate headquarters of Ten-Ko. Momo and a dozen bowing servants met me at the front door with an honest to God red carpet rolled out. We said our hellos, got into the main elevator, and then Momo pried open a panel in the elevator to reveal a hidden pad. Red digitalized words flashed scarlet.
Please insert password.
“My birthday backwards,” she said, her sad smile intensifying.
It must have been her father’s idea. What a sentimentalist.
A strange thu-thunk noise came from above as Momo entered the password. A whir of grinding wires reached my ears before the elevator began descending.
“To think, there might be a mole inside of Ten-Ko,” Momo mumbled.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” I half lied. “How else could they have caught your father unprepared?”
If Momo were a flower she would have wilted. I stifled a sigh and placed a hand on her shoulder. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise.”
The Tengu gave me a small nod, and leaned onto me. Even grown women need comfort sometimes.
“Did you do as I asked?” I asked.
Another nod. “Not a soul knows except me, you, and the uppermost echelon.”
“Define uppermost echelon.”
“The board of directors, the V.P. and my retainers,” Momo said. “That’s all.”
I could work with that. “Good. Now, what did you say Ten-Ko does again?”
“Nothing unusual. Airplane engineering, helicopter manufacturing for our contract with the U.S. army. Oh,” she added almost as an afterthought, “we also dabble a bit in advanced military robotics too.”
Before I had a chance to question her, the dark steel elevator tube gave way to sterile blue light as an immense subterranean industrial complex spanned out before me. I could see hundreds of men and women, Tengu and Mundane alike, working side by side on anything from plane wings to what looked like gigantic motors, jet engines, and more.
Quite a far cry from Anzuki’s tea ceremony.
“Advanced robotics?” I dared to ask.
Momo grinned from ear to ear as the elevator reached the bottom. The doors opened and waiting to meet us was a small crowd of suits.
“Kuroshi!” Momo called out, waving at a young man in a very elegant suit. It was only after I took a second glance that I realized Momo was actually talking to the laptop the guy was holding.
The screen showed a graying man with flat features and a tight professional smile. It took me a moment before I recognized him. The vice president. He was speaking on the television about Nodara’s death.
That meant he was in the know.
“Inspector,” crackled the laptop’s speakers. “Welcome to our humble facility. I would humbly beg forgiveness for being unable to attend in person but these troubling events have caught me abroad. My name is Kuroshi Ro. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
“Charles Locke. The pleasure is all mine.”
Kuroshi gave Momo a sidelong glance, saw her nod, before speaking anew. “Perhaps with your expert aid we will be able to overcome the dark clouds that gather over the Teng
u of Mt. Fuji. Have you discovered anything regarding the Oni’s motivations?”
“Not so far. They seem to be driven by the ambition of their Kunshu-- a tyrant of theirs.”
Kuroshi shrugged. “The Oni lack sufficient intelligence to come up with complex plans. It doesn’t really matter what their reasoning is. Their evil must be stopped without question.”
“You’re not a Tengu, are you?” I asked.
Kuroshi’s eyebrows rose, and he offered me a smile. Momo answered for him.
“Kuroshi comes from a really long line of Shinto priests. His family’s been in service to the Grand Tengus of Fuji for generations. Not just serve. Help too.”
“And these others?” I asked.
“Takahashi, Reiji, and Kiyoshi, introduce yourselves.”
“A pleasure,” the first man, Takahashi, said in accented English. “I am in charge of the overseas properties of Ten-Ko. I hope we get along well.”
“I’m head of engineering,” said Reiji’s translator. The top engineer was short and scrawny; his translator looked like a Sumo wrestler. “Nice to meet you.”
“And I am in charge of the special interest robotics. It’s mostly theory and science fiction right now,” added the third one, Kiyoshi.
I smiled. It was nice to have the top suspects make a neat little row to shake hands with.
“Robotics keeps getting tossed around. What exactly do you mean by robotics?”
Kiyoshi let out a diabolical chuckle. A quick glance towards Momo, a nod, and he ushered the whole pack of us towards the most robust section of the facility.
“The late president always had the future in mind, and foresaw the Oni invasion almost a month ago. He’d poured a small fortune to accelerate a program we had been working on with intent to sell to military contractors.”
“How sneaky. Don’t tell me you have a tank that transforms into an airplane somewhere in here,” I joked.
Kiyoshi shook his head with utter seriousness. “Inefficient designs. None of them worked. Easier to just build three planes than one plane that can turn into a boring, inferior tank.”
“See, Charles?” Momo piped up. “I bet you thought we didn’t know the first thing about waging war.”
I was impressed all right. There was an awful lot of dangerous technology that could be misused here if my hunch was right. I had to play it careful or else my little game of shadows and misdirection might come to an abrupt and fatal end.
“Tanks are inferior? To what, exactly?” I asked.
Momo walked up to a nearby panel and pressed a big red button on it. Lights flashed, alarms sounded, and crewmen cleared the floor as an immense steel hatch ground to one side, and from the colossal vault rose something I wasn’t quite ready for.
It was four stories high and half as wide. It had two feet bent back like a chicken’s, and one space opera worth of weaponry strapped onto two small but sturdy arms. Missile pods mounted onto shoulders. Cannons grew from underneath the arms. Gatling guns near the grand cock pit. And a goddamn huge sword strapped to its back.
“Are you kidding me?” I managed.
Kiyoshi and Momo were laughing in concert. The others were clapping.
“Meet the Anti Oni Autonomous Response Unit,” Momo began, eyes swimming with pride. “Big Blue. The biggest, baddest, killer robot in the world.”
I can see exactly why Nine Towers wanted me to stop this squabble from turning into an all out war. That kill-bot looked like it could give Godzilla a run for his money. And with her father dead, I’m sure there was precious little keeping Momo from unleashing it on her foes. Collateral damage be damned.
“ As you can see, we’re ready to bring this little invasion to an end, Mister Locke,” Momo said. “Now, Kuroshi, could you do me a big favor?”
Kuroshi smiled and nodded politely.
“Please get Charles a copy of our security files.”
Kuroshi’s eyes widened. His voice crackled over the laptop speakers. “But milady, is that really wise? Can we trust him so deeply?”
“Charles Locke is here to help. I have files on him, Kuroshi. I’ve researched him down to the tiniest speck.”
How flattering.
“If that is your wish,” Kuroshi added, before the connection cut.
I felt a pang in my heart. Lying to Momo, and taking advantage of her emotional weakness? I knew it was wrong, but what else could I do? I had to get to the bottom of this, and I couldn’t think of any other way to get another step forward. Damned if I do, and damned if I don’t.
“All the lights in the sprawling underground complex suddenly cut out. Darkness reigned supreme before dull red emergency lights, powered by some secondary generator, whirred on. I felt the hairs on the back of my head stand on end.
“Charles?” I heard Momo say. I quickly took up position next to her.
“Right here. We need a sit rep.”
Momo turned to her minions and crowed, “Report!”
“Power outage milady,” spoke a technician, bowing profusely. “It might be an early onset earthquake or--”
“My lady,” Called out a crow Tengu in full Kevlar. “We caught one. We caught an Oni trying to infiltrate us. They’re in interrogation, my lady.”
My heart began to pick up speed. One of Anzuki’s. Perhaps she had me tailed, or had tricked me from the very beginning and set me loose just to follow me home. Just as Kuroshi’s man handed me a flash drive, Momo spoke up.
I didn’t need to see her to know her face was twisted with fury. “Take me to them. I’ll show them what happens to any Yokai scum that tries to sneak in here.”
I pocketed the flash drive, bowed my head at Momo’s specialists, and swiftly turned to catch up with the Tengu princess’s train of attendants. We took the elevator to the second basement, where we entered a small room that looked like a dungeon.
My heart fell and my hands were slick with sweat.
Wrists chained up, hung from the ceiling like a hunk of meat ripe for the carving. It was Anzuki herself.
Chapter 15
Things fall apart. And the best laid plans of mere men rarely shape up to be little more than slapstick for cruel misfortune. I knew this all intimately of course. I just wasn’t used to things going to crap quite so fast.
“Good grief,” Momo began, strutting her way to the chained up Anzuki. “You Yokai pigs should know better than to come sneaking into Tengu territory. You know what we do to scum like you, right?”
“Chirp at me til my ears bleed?” Anzuki suggested. “I don’t care what happens to me. Meet my demands or you will regret it, chicken.”
My mind ran at double speed. What was she thinking? Why did Anzuki come to Ten-Ko solo if she wasn’t going to attack it? Why the Hell did she cut the power?
Momo cackled, “What’s that mean? Demands? Or else what, you’re gonna bleed all over me Mister-- oh.”
The Tengu noticed the bulge of Anzuki’s breasts. A cruel smile splayed onto her lips. “Are these useless lumps of fat what I think they are? Not a Yokai pig after all. More of a sow.”
“Let him go,” Anzuki murmured.
My heart nearly skipped a beat. Oh no.
“You have captured someone who is important to me. I offer myself in exchange for his freedom,” Anzuki said, with enough intensity to make babies cry.
She tailed me. Again. And when she saw me brought into the building, she must have thought I’d been caught. She came here to save me.
“Oh dear. There’s another of you here? Don’t worry Oni sow, I’ll find and send him screaming to Nirvana right after I finish you. Promise.”
Anzuki bowed her head in defeat. Momo drew back a talon tipped hand, and thrust it at the Oni girl’s chest.
I don’t make a habit of doing stupid things. I try to avoid it whenever possible. However, I’d rather do something stupid, than do something wrong. I’d nearly earned a spot in Hell for standing idly by while evil deeds went about their merry way. I’ll be damned if I ever let it h
appen again.
My hand shot out, and caught Momo’s by the wrist. In the dim emergency lights I could just make out the shock on her face. Her attendees were dead silent.
“Charles. Let go,” the Tengu said.
“Charles?” Anzuki whispered.
“Sorry. I can’t let you do this,” I replied.
“Why not? I need to kill this Oni. I need to avenge my father. You promised to help me. What they did was unforgivable.”
“You think I don’t know that?” I demanded. “This is wrong though. This woman is not your enemy. And the Oni did not kill your fa--”
“Traitor,” her voice was small, but the weight of the solitary word was immense.
“Momo, listen to me.”
My words fell on deaf ears. Momodara took two steps back before tears filled her eyes anew.
“Traitor!” she screamed.
It was enough of a signal that her entire train of attendants threw themselves at me.
Crow Tengu rushed to aim rifles at me. Suits clamored to escape. Servants produced makeshift weapons and doggedly blocked the narrow exit. And in the center of them all stood Momo.
I had to act fast if I was going to save my life and Anzuki’s too.
Numbers tend to be a disadvantage in my experience. The gunman buddy standing next to you rarely knows what you plan on doing, and coordinating numbers beyond experienced duos gets exponentially harder.
It didn’t help that birds, Mundane or otherwise, don’t make for very good bruisers.
I punched the nearest Crow Tengu in the beak, caught his nearest buddy’s gun and steered it clear of my body before knocking him out with the butt of his rifle. The attendants would be even easier to wade through. Unfortunately, I didn’t take one very dangerous woman into account.
Just as I clipped the wings of the last Crow Tengu, I felt my skin ripple and the air get heavy with humidity. I craned my head to look over my shoulder just in time to see an attendant give a strange ringed staff to Momodara, who immediately brought the magical locus to bear.
The thin ceremonial looking staff sailed an inch over my head as Momo swung it in a wide arc. Good thing I ducked. As the staff collided with the wall near my head, the whole building shook.
Two to Tengu (Secret Magent Book 2) Page 6