by Jet Lupin
“He said if something ever happened to him not to call the police, but he gave no other instructions. I thought to contact Abby-san, but you arrived first. I was lucky you showed up when you did.”
Lucky for both of them.
“We’ll take care of it. Seal this room. No one in or out. Tell no one of what happened.”
Tabata shrank away, his robe looking bigger on him. “But I’ve already told them the lord is dead. I had to tell them something.”
“Don’t give them any details. Nothing leaves this house tonight. I assume Toshinori had them sign NDAs? Remind them of that.”
Someone taking the reins calmed Tabata, but Shige needed to push him a little harder before he was done.
That hand on Tabata’s shoulder slid down, holding his arm. “Can you tell me about the guests he had tonight?”
“Guests?” Tabata seemed genuinely confused. “Yours was the only visit scheduled this evening. Mishima-sama, he… didn’t write down his ‘play dates.’ They just show up. The security cameras are turned off long before they get here. We’re all told to look the other way.”
Prudent. Video footage meant evidence that could be used as leverage against him. Shige hadn’t taught him that.
“Round up the security staff. They must have seen something. Chiaki will do the questioning. You only need to get them to cooperate with her.”
In the meantime, the yokai searched the room for any other clues that might clue them in on who Toshinori’s visitors might have been, to no avail. Aside from the body and the powder on the floor, the room was clean.
This would be so much easier with Phil here. A peek into some minds, and they’d have it all figured out. But his training, and more importantly, his safety came first.
Shige shook his head at himself. Phil wasn’t an asset to be shuffled around as needed. He meant more to Shige than that. Ways to use that power cropped up so easily. Shige had to be strong enough not to pursue them. Phil would chew him out if he knew Shige’s thoughts, so Shige would do so in his stead.
Shige closed himself up in Toshinori’s study, one of the few rooms that didn't disagree with him, while Chiaki and the others worked with Toshinori’s staff. It reminded him of his own back in Midoriyama, filled with books, a lone computer but otherwise quiet and dark.
He got comfortable in the armchair seated at the desk and called Abby. He didn’t expect her to be available, but after a bit of phone tag, he got through to her.
She was in good spirits when she answered, the smile coming through clear in her tone. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Is it Phil? Did you annoy him to the point that he’s over this trip? Shall I chaperone him back to America?”
“I wish it was that simple.” He drew in a tired breath. “Toshinori’s dead.”
Nothing but silence came over the line for several beats. “By your hand?”
“Nay. I never got to meet with him.”
“Do you need me to fly out?”
“You know all his accounts and the business better than I do. I imagine most of his assets are in your name as we agreed. You know this.”
“They are. I just want to hear you say that you need me.”
Shige scoffed. When had she become so cheeky?
“I need you to handle this. We’ll need to appoint a new head to the Zukin Zaibatsu. I imagine you already have someone in mind for that position.”
“Of course I do. As soon as I can secure a flight, I’ll head out. Think you can hold on until then?” She sighed. “Hans won’t like me leaving. We had plans. You’ll have to make it up to him.”
“I don’t like you leaving either, but we’ll all have to adjust. When things have settled, you both should take a vacation.”
Abby promised to reach out as soon as she had something definitive to tell him regarding her arrival, and they hung up.
With a minute to himself, Shige poked around the office. Toshinori was always prepared, his industriousness dwarfed only by Abby’s. They were to meet today, so he had likely prepared all the materials ahead of time. There had to be something.
He found a small refrigerator next to the desk. He opened it and found packs of bagged blood. They were all fresh, but he let them be. His appetite still hadn’t returned, even with all these issues he had to deal with.
It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for in one of the lower drawers. He pulled out a thick binder with the date 14/4/18 printed on the front. A week after Chiaki had delivered Phil and Shige’s blood samples.
Chiaki had taken it a step further. Acting as Shige’s mouthpiece, she told Toshinori exactly what information Shige hoped to gain from the samples. Now to see if Toshinori had listened.
Herein is a report of the Sample 223-120 of unknown origin. A full spectrum analysis was run as well as a comparison to control samples of Classified Origin. These are the findings.
Shige’s understanding ended there.
Pages of charts and graphs followed along with very long English words he didn’t understand. That would be something else for Abby to deal with once she arrived.
An hour and a half later, Chiaki joined him in the study with a loose description of the pair that visited Toshinori this evening. The man was Japanese, his head nearly shaved except for a thin moustache and thick brows. The woman was a fair skinned foreigner, but she didn’t look very white. They couldn’t pin down her nationality as she spoke unaccented Japanese on top of her indiscernible looks. Both seemed young, the woman came across as arrogant, which wasn’t unusual for foreigners. That was the extent of what the staff could tell them.
They let them stroll out of here, unaware of anything amiss. Toshinori trained them that way. Now, he paid the price.
“I put Tabata to bed.” Despite the night’s findings, Chiaki looked no worse for wear. “He insists on handling disposal of the remains himself. He says he’ll follow any instructions you have.”
“Have you taken pictures of the scene?”
She nodded.
Shige pushed up from the chair with a groan, his vertebrae creaking after sitting for so long. “Then we’ll leave him to it. Abby will be here soon to settle his affairs. Tabata can handle the cremation. I don’t think there’s anything else we can get from the body.”
Putting that job in Tabata’s hands, the hands of someone who cared about Toshinori more than he did was best. Seeing his child laid out dead from such a violent act didn’t move Shige’s heart in the slightest. He was a child born of convenience, not love or admiration. And Toshinori had never liked being beholden to Shige for extending his life. He would have become a viable threat given enough time, the one thing there was no shortage of for creatures like them.
Shige would go back to his hotel and prepare for Abby’s arrival. Together, they would discover who did this and if they were a threat to them all.
Chapter 9
PHIL
Phil sat alone in the garden. Chiyo hadn’t accompanied him, but he sensed her in one of the windows. Today was a free day when he could sit and practice whatever he liked. Afterwards, he’d reconvene with Chiyo, and she’d go over areas where he could improve over tea. The last time Phil had done this, the day had dragged on. This time, the day was nearly done, and it felt like he’d just started.
He’d moved on from the net and the boat imagery. He took a deep breath and held it for a second. As he exhaled, he imagined his consciousness as a creeping frost, icing over everything in its wake. He could sense animals now, on the ground, flying, swimming in streams, and it gave him a better sense of the landscape. He held this picture for a second, and then slowly he coiled it back. Each time he concentrated on his breathing, and he spread further, covering more ground.
Phil had come far in less than 12 days. He could control his power now in ways he hadn’t thought possible. Though, the real test would come when he got around humans, but he‘d face any situation head on. Now, he spent his time perfecting the new tricks Chiyo taught him.
He’d left the bounds of Ten no Mon and started combing the surrounding countryside, listening, watching, juggling all of these tasks with ease. Chiyo’s drills hadn’t been for naught.
Peering into a shifter’s mind was still beyond him, but according to Chiyo, no one had achieved that. They were too close to animals, but like them, they could be influenced in simple ways. She hadn’t elaborated, and Phil had yet to figure out if she was pulling his leg.
In the beginning, he spread his presence out over the house and the grounds, monitoring the goings-on. Though he didn’t know all of their names or the true content of their thoughts, each mind had its own signature. He identified them by the circumstances he found them in. For example, the shifter he called Peppy spent a good deal of the early evening in the kitchen and was very into their work. Their mind was always an excited tangle when they were there and not much else. They were often paired off with Cloudy, a mind that seemed to dim in their presence.
He stretched his perception beyond them, beyond the house. Humans lived further down the mountain and on neighboring hills. He didn’t engage their minds much, only enough to sense them. Their goings-on weren’t particularly interesting. He acknowledged them and moved on.
He was everywhere, like a force of nature. He was omnipresent, able to survey the area and every living thing in it for miles around. Part of him called it his land. No one else knew it the way he did, except for Chiyo, but she didn’t challenge his claim.
As good as this new power made him feel, it also put him in a vulnerable position. He couldn’t stay this way for long without protection, no matter how tempting it might be.
He hovered another moment, surveying his domain, when something new came into his range. Shifter minds racing up the mountain. Gekko and Nikko no doubt. They were the only ones who ever left their mountain hideaway for supplies. Phil narrowed his focus on them for a closer look. He found three more minds with them, Another shifter, and… Shige and Abby too!
Why’s Abby here?
He pushed the question to Shige, but Shige’s mind wrinkled and contracted on itself like a slug exposed to salt. Was this what confusion felt like?
It’s Phil. Calm down.
That only made things worse. Shige was excited now, his mind in complex knots too complicated for Phil to follow, everything buzzing like a swarm of angry bees. Phil pulled back. He’d just wait to talk to him when he arrived.
Getting used to his body again after stretching out his consciousness was a slow and frustrating process, like trying to fit an umbrella back into its sleeve. It never fit right once it was used.
When he’d settled, he opened his eyes, taking in his immediate surroundings. The garden was largely the same; a few leaves had fallen and blown across the ground in front of him. The little white fox sat a few feet away, its bright gold eyes on him.
He’d seen it a handful of times since that first night here, always at the end of his solo exercises, always from a distance. He tried approaching it once, and it snarled and snapped at him. As long as he kept space between them, they got along fine. Chiyo denied any knowledge of a fox roaming her garden. Yet here it was. Too bad he didn’t have his phone on him to snap a picture.
Gekko and his passengers would arrive soon, and Phil was in no state to meet them with soil on his clothes and grass in his hair from when Chiyo came out, dropping blades of it on him to distract him. He needed to bathe, and if he rushed, he might be done by the time they got here.
He managed to clean up in minutes, not hours. Abstaining from having a long soak hadn’t been easy, but now that Shige was back, maybe they could take another bath together.
The door to his room opened as he stepped out of the bathroom, and he assumed it was dinner. This was about the time that he and Chiyo ate together, but after her spill, she took dinner in her room every night, though they still met for breakfast. Shige was still minutes away. Phil had enough time to start his meal, but should he? Or maybe should he wait until after they’d been reunited? Did it make sense to bother getting dressed? He might bring Abby with him to the room, so maybe…
He was overthinking this.
He stepped into the room proper, a towel clutched around his hips. He intended to hustle with drying and at least throwing on a robe. Instead, he froze in place.
Someone was here with him.
There was no food, so not the girl who brought his meals and it was still too early for Shige. Only Kaoru stood there, a robe of his own, splashed with bold prints of vibrant purple flowers, tugged around his thin frame.
They’d successfully avoided each other for days, though, Phil happened across him during his exercises. His mind was always busy and far enough away that Phil could comfortably ignore him.
Why the hell did he have to show up now?
Kaoru said nothing, staring past Phil and out the window. His eyes were wild and his hair roughly tossed, for once looking less than pristine. Phil glanced back. All he saw was night claiming the garden.
Phil groped blindly behind him for his own robe. With how disturbingly disheveled Kaoru looked, Phil didn’t want to take his eyes off him.
He threw his arms into the sleeves and pulled it around him. The fabric would do little to keep him from harm, but it was better than having nothing between him and this potentially crazy person.
“Kaoru?”
The man said nothing and continued to stare.
The door to the garden was closer than the one blocking Kaoru, but not by much. Running for either would be risky with a human attacker, but Kaoru was no human. Phil didn’t know much about shifters, but he wouldn’t bet against one in a human foot race.
He had to try.
He took a step back towards the garden door.
Then, everything happened at once.
Kaoru dropped his robe, and God help him, Phil looked. He wore nothing underneath it. He was so thin, but muscles rippled beneath his skin as he made his way forward. Phil was drawn to the way he moved, but when his gaze trailed lower, he tore it away and pointed it to the side. Phil stumbled back, but the door was too far. Kaoru was on him in two steps. A strong hand gripped the back of Phil’s neck and yanked him into Kaoru’s embrace. The other man smelled like earth and open air, as if he’d been outside. He had the scantest second to register Kaoru’s firm body pressed against him before Kaoru mashed his mouth on his, rough and urgent.
Phil got an arm between them and pushed, but Kaoru was too strong.
Stop!
The word wouldn’t come out of his mouth, but he screamed it in his mind.
Stop!
For a second, Kaoru stopped.
SHIGE
“Chiaki?”
They’d been embroiled in a discussion on settling the last of Toshinori’s affairs when she stopped talking mid-sentence.
The woman had gone rigid, her face pinched in discomfort. Shige called her again. Her mouth twitched, her eyes darting in his direction as if she wanted to speak, but she said nothing.
All the shifters around them stopped moving or speaking as if obeying a silent command.
“What’s wrong?” Abby climbed out of the van, tugging her ride rumpled clothes back into place. She had to step around Nikko who stood between her and Shige utterly motionless.
“I don’t know,” Shige said. “They all just—”
Stop!
The word echoed in Shige’s mind and for a moment, he froze as well. But as suddenly as it took hold of him, whatever it was, it released him.
“Stay here.” He ran inside, leaving Abby to see to Chiaki and the others.
The situation in the house was no better. Shifters stood like statues, paused mid-action. Shige passed one doubled in half, halted while he reached for laundry from a basket at his feet.
That call left a similar sensation in Shige’s mind as their brief interactio
n earlier. He didn’t hear Phil’s voice in it, but it felt familiar enough. Checking Phil’s first made the most sense, and luckily, if it wasn’t Phil, Chiyo’s room was close by.
Whoever it was from, they needed help.
Shige found Phil wrapped in another man’s arms. Kaoru’s naked back facing him. On the surface, it looked like infidelity, Phil dallying with this pretty thing, and for an instant, Shige was prepared to allow him that. Then, he saw Phil’s face, and his hands weren’t anywhere on Kaoru’s skin.
He struggled against Kaoru, but the smaller man’s preternatural strength easily kept Phil pinned to his chest. It all clicked into place.
He swooped in and wrenched them apart so forcefully, Kaoru toppled back onto his bare ass. Blood thundered in his ears, crying out for more action, more violence until this fire that had risen up in his breast was sated. He beat it back with slow, steady breaths.
“Explain this.”
Kaoru scrambled to his knees, hands in his lap covering his nudity. “My lord Shige,” he rattled off in very fast, very old Japanese, “What have I done wrong? I’ve merely been taking care of your guest like I assumed you wanted. He asked that I come to him, service him, so I have, every day.”
“That’s a fucking lie,” Phil shouted. He tugged his robe over fresh scratches on his shoulders. “That psychopath came in here and jumped all over me!”
Shige and Kaoru both stared at him, the latter with his mouth hanging open. Chiyo said they hadn’t needed Kaoru to translate for them, but hadn’t explained why. They would discuss it in detail after all of this.
Kaoru recovered first, snapping his jaws shut. He turned back to Shige, bowing lower. “But it’s true, my lord. Every other night he’d had me come to him.”
Phil’s mouth was swollen, a cut on his lip, likely from Kaoru’s teeth, glistened with blood. The faint scent from those wounds made Shige salivate. He wanted to take deep breaths of it, drink it in, but he found clarity in his anger.
Even if Phil had been sleeping with Kaoru, which Shige didn’t believe for a second, he wouldn’t have been so bold as to start it when he knew Shige was minutes away. Kaoru must have smelled them when they got close and decided then was the time to act. Kaoru’s gambit had already failed. He just didn’t know it yet.