by Jet Lupin
Being tossed around the car’s cabin was enough to wake Phil up.
“What the hell?” The car rammed them from behind, sending him flying face first into Shige’s lap. He struggled to pull himself upright, but Shige tugged him back down.
“Stay down.” He shielded him with his head and arms just in time for a bullet to knock off the passenger’s side mirror. Another shot shattered the rear window and exited through the roof inches overhead. Phil yelped, fingers tightening in Shige’s shirt.
“Either of you armed?” Shige shouted into the front seat.
“I’ve got a handgun.” Naoki pulled it from the console between the seats. “There’s a sword in the back, but that’s it.”
The gun was likely their best bet at getting them to back off.
“You know how to use that?” Shige nodded towards the gun in his hand.
Naoki looked down, ashamed. “No. It’s not even loaded. We don’t have any bullets. Flashing it’s usually enough to scare people off.”
They might look like thugs with their serious faces and odd colored hair, but they couldn’t help that. They passed better than most of the yokai at Ten no Mon. They relied on their physical capabilities and intimidation. Naoki and the others had no use for the weapons for men, but Shige did.
“Find a place to pull over,” he barked, unbuckling his seatbelt.
Phil looked up from his lap with terror in his eyes. “What are you going to do?”
“Have a chat with our friends out there to see if I can get them to stop shooting at us.” He’d never been a warrior, but he could swing a sword. A few bullets—even one to the brain—wouldn’t incapacitate him immediately. He’d at least get the shooter before he slowed down. It would be on Junpei and Naoki to clean up the rest.
“Wait!” Phil shut his eyes, gripping the seat back. His fingers tightened, the leather creaking around them. Suddenly the car ramming them swerved, crashing into the corner of a building.
He came back to himself, his eyes glazed and unfocused. “I stopped them, but I don’t know for how long. Now you can pull over.”
Shige watched all this, unsure of what was happening or how Phil had pulled that off, but the details of how Phil managed that would have to wait. “You heard him!”
Junpei guided the car into an about face and stopped right in front of their pursuers. One of the headlights had been crushed in, the other shined blankly back at the SUV.
The car’s doors were closed, the men inside unconscious or dazed. Shige took the sword when he got out anyway. He wasn’t going to leave anything up to chance.
Junpei approached the driver’s side door and tore it off. One by one he hauled each of the occupants out where a waiting Naoki tied them up.
They secured the two in the front without incident. Before Junpei could subdue him, another shot rang out. The large shifter backed away from the door, blood pouring from his shoulder.
The shooter turtled in the car, curled around his gun. He wasn’t coming out of there without a fight. Shige was prepared to give him one.
They already had two captives. Losing one was no big deal. A quick strike from behind and they’d be done with this ordeal.
He’d started to circle to the back of the car when Phil went into action again, doing something to the man’s mind to render him inert. “Get… him...” Whatever he was doing, it was taking a greater toll on Phil than anything else Shige had seen him do.
Shige hauled the last man out of the car by his collar. On the floor of the backseat were boxes of bullets, more guns, and knives. Their intent was clear.
Naoki worked his knot magic on the final assailant while Junpei gritted through his injury.
“Will you be alright?”
“Yes, Shige-sama. Once I get the bullet out.” Perspiration speckled his forehead.
“You do that. Don’t rush. Naoki, watch them. I’ll call for back up.” Shige returned to the SUV where Phil was stretched out across the backseat, his eyes barely opened. Other than exhausted, he seemed OK. Shige had to get him somewhere safe.
Pulling his phone from his pocket, Shige made a call. “Abby, are you still with Bastian? There’s been an incident. We’re going to need his help.”
PHIL
The ghost of a chill made the hairs on Phil’s arms stand up. He was cold, stripped of his kimono and left in the under robe. The blanket covering him was inadequate, but he curled up under it anyway. Gauzy white curtains billowed in a machine made breeze in front of a shut window. Soon, warmth came up through the vent.
The room smelled clean, but stuffy, like it hadn’t been used in a long time. It was too sparsely furnished to be the hotel, and what furniture that was there was too nice for this to be a hospital room. Good. He didn’t fly around the world to just wind up in a sick bed. So where was he?
The last thing he remembered was using his abilities to stop the guy who’d shot Junpei. That was certainly new… He wondered if there was anything like this in the book Chiyo had given him. Too bad his Japanese skills hadn’t improved over the last few days.
The door opened and Phil sat up, blinking through a wave of pain. Reaching out to see who was coming in, was out of the question with his head throbbing this way. His head was out of commission, but he’d have his legs ready to bolt if he had to.
He relaxed as Shige stepped cautiously around the creaky door. Only once he’d shut it behind him did he notice Phil was awake. “How are you feeling?” He sat on the foot of the bed away from the window.
“Alright. Head hurts a little. Where are we?”
“Sebastian’s home. The real one, not the one he uses to entertain in the city.”
“What time is it?”
Shige checked his phone. “A little after one.”
“In the afternoon?” Phil glanced at the window again. Sure enough, that was sunlight streaming through the window. No wonder he was starving. It had been almost 16 hours without food.
“You were out for whole eight hours. I guess you needed the rest.”
“What about you? Did you get any sleep?” From the looks of him, the answer was likely no. He was still in the clothes from last night. Bags darkened his bloodshot eyes.
“I got a nap in. I’ll get more later, but I had to see how you were doing. But, also.” He moved closer, taking care to stay out of direct sunlight. “What was that last night?” Phil couldn’t help grinning at the eager energy wafting from Shige.
“You’ve been waiting to ask me that all night, right?”
Shige’s gaze darted away. “I...might have, but I can hardly be blamed. I’ve never seen anything like that before. Did Chiyo teach that to you?” He crept closer, his hand resting on Phil’s calf.
“Honestly, I’m not sure what that was.” Chiyo hadn’t taught him that, it just sort of happened. He took a deep breath, calling up all he could remember. “I wanted them to stop. I reached out to their minds, though I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. Just that I needed to do it fast. I was able to touch them all at once.” His voice wavered, his hands trembling as he recalled how it felt, the satisfaction of trapping them all. “It was like I was controlling them. I said I wanted them to stop, and they did. They stopped everything which made them crash. I was still holding on when they veered off the road and that shook me up, too. That’s how I lost control of the shooter.” And Phil remembered what happened because of it.
What scared him the most was how natural, how easy it felt to jump into someone else’s head and seize control. He didn’t want to think about it now.
“Is Junpei OK?”
“He’s angry at himself, and the shooter, but fine. It could have been worse.” Shige’s smile dimmed, a corner falling down. “Do you remember when I returned to Ten no Mon and Kaoru was pawing at you?”
Phil snorted. “How could I forget?” The memory made Phil sick to his stomach. “I remember wanting him to stop then, and he did, for a moment.” Phil hadn’t connected to Kaoru then. It had been more like a s
cream of frustration. He would have tried anything to get Kaoru away from him then. All he knew was that it worked, and then it didn’t.
“He wasn’t the only one. All the shifters were frozen in their tracks. We were lucky the van had already stopped. It froze me and Abby, too, though for not as long. There was a voice in my head shouting at me. That would have startled me, but there’s more to it than that. I couldn’t move until it released me, no matter what I did.”
Phil didn’t know what to say to that. Hearing that he’d done it without meaning to left him unsettled. Had Chiyo meant something like this when she spoke of his potential?
“Is that how you found me? You came right to me that night. I didn’t even think about it. It makes sense now.”
“I’ve never had a voice in my head when I was with Chiyo, though, I knew she occasionally poked around. This didn’t feel like her. It felt like you from earlier. I was going to check on her if it turned out you were OK” He was lying beside Phil now, a hand on his hip. “With that power, you could protect yourself from almost anything, anyone!” Shige was excited by the prospect, but Phil’s stomach churned. He blinked back the pain that had taken root behind his eyes.
“What if I hurt someone with it? I don’t know what I’m doing all over again. I’m back where I started.”
“You know that’s not true. You’ve learned so much, come so far.” Shige scooted close enough to capture Phil’s hands. “Nothing’s reset. Things have merely changed. We can adapt to change.”
We.
The two of them together. They were back on the same page. Phil loved hearing that.
“You’ve learned so much, become so capable. Don’t ignore that.” All of that was true. The Phil that came to Japan wasn’t the same one leaving it.
He was stronger. Not knowing everything he could do only spoke of his potential. He looked down at their linked hands. He felt like he was on the verge of something incredible… and terrible. But he wasn’t alone.
Phil tugged Shige’s hands closer to him. “I’m gonna hold you to that. You and me. Together from here on. No take backs.”
Shige’s grin grew vibrant again as he got up on his hands and knees, pressing Phil back towards the pillows. “No take backs.”
They weren’t out of danger yet, but everything to worry about was outside that door. For a few minutes, they could focus on this one bright spot amidst the chaos.
Silky black hair tickled Phil’s forehead as Shige leaned over him. Phil brushed it behind his ear. Those dark eyes stared down at him, so intense, but so full that they made Phil’s chest hurt.
God, he’d never felt so much for someone. He felt so vulnerable, so open. That was more terrifying than anything outside or in his head.
Shige’s chilled lips warmed within seconds of being pressed to Phil’s. He draped his arms around Shige’s middle and crushed him to his chest. Since they’d met, danger had lurked on the periphery of their relationship. They needed more moments like this where they were free to be like everyone else. At least as much as they were able.
Shige squirmed and whimpered as Phil worked a hand into the back of his pants. They needed to come off if he was going to take a sorely needed nap. Phil was just helping him out.
Someone knocked at the door and they both groaned in frustration. “Can we ignore it?” Phil murmured, giving Shige’s rump a squeeze.
“Shit.” Shige pushed himself up, brushing the hair out of his face. “We can’t.” He fixed his shirt and adjusted his pants so his hard-on was less apparent. Phil clutched the blanket in his lap. This under kimono thing didn’t leave much to the imagination.
Abby waited on the other side of the door, a pair of notebooks in her hands. She looked past Shige to Phil still in bed, showing no signs of getting up anytime soon. “I’m going to assume you didn’t tell him what you came in here for?”
She had Phil’s full attention. “Tell me what?”
Abby rolled her eyes as she pushed past Shige to enter the room. She took up in the sole chair in the room, the air about her all business. “I won’t take up too much time. It’s obvious that you guys are busy. First,” she waved the thinner of the two books. “I’ve translated Chiyo’s notes for you. She told me about them the last time I saw her. Rather than sit around waiting for you to wake up and ask, I went ahead and did translated them for you.” She tossed both books onto the bed.
Thumbing through it, Phil was immediately jealous of her handwriting. It was neat and precise. Knowing she’d had hundreds of years of practice did nothing to temper his envy. He stopped on a page with the image of lines radiating from a pocket watch, all hand drawn.
“You even copied the drawings?”
Abby shrugged. “There wasn’t much else going on since we’ve all stayed awake” She relaxed in her chair. Shadows of fatigue aged her face at least five years. “I’m sure you’re aware of the blood samples Shige sent ahead of your trip?”
“I… not really?” He knew Shige had sent something, but not what or why. With everything that had been going on, he’d forgotten about it, if he ever known the truth of it.
Abby glared at Shige who busied himself with his phone. “He knew what he needed to. I didn’t want to distract him. I was going to tell him now.”
“But you didn’t.”
“I’ll tell him!”
“Then do it.”
Shige returned to the bed just slow enough that it seemed like his idea and not Abby’s command. “We talked previously about Pampa. His reaction when he bit you was abnormal. I thought it might be you, but when I drank you blood, I was fine. I had to find out why. Our pharmaceutical division and our main lab are here. Toshinori ran them, so I had him look into it, and Abby read through his findings.”
“It turns out,” Abby said, relieving Shige of duty. “That the vampire that saved you is very old. Older than Pampa, at any rate. And there was something in their blood, a protection of sorts. Vampires sometimes feed from each other for pleasure, to assert dominance. But they can’t ingest large amounts without becoming ill. But it usually happens with far more than what Pampa took from you. We don’t have a definite reason why that happened with you, but we have theories we’re working with. Theories I’ll confirm when I meet with the vampire in your family, and we establish our own lab back home.”
For once, Phil was glad Shige had kept something like this from him. He didn’t know what he’d do if he had that weigh on him along with everything else. He turned back to Shige. “Who is it?” Surely Shige could tell him now, considering he’d promised to and he owed him.
Shige held his face carefully blank as if considering not doing the right thing. Phil shoved him in the shoulder. “Tell me!”
Abby toyed with her cellphone, but Phil could tell she was listening as raptly as he was.
“It’s Soldana.”
“Soldana Soldana? From Nasu? From the alley? That Soldana?” Phil couldn’t have heard him right. “How long have you known?”
“I’ve known her for centuries. But I’ve only heard about her connection to you since that night.”
That sounded true, and it was acceptable if it was. He couldn’t think of a reason for Shige to lie about this. Not now. He’d take it.
“What does any of this mean? Soldana, the blood. What does this make me?”
Abby shrugged. “No clue. I can’t say anything for certain until I talk to her and get a sample. It could be a coincidence, it could be nothing.”
“Or it could explain everything.” Phil put his back to the wall. That was a lot to deal with and yet not enough.
“It doesn’t mean anything more than it’s always meant. You’ll still be you.” Abby paused, tapping a finger on her chin. “But between the cells you got as a child from Soldana and the help from Shige, you could probably drink blood if you wanted.”
“Blood?”
“You’ve got more vampire cells than the average sensitive. They aren’t just expelled from the blood stream, otherwise
sensitives or vampires wouldn’t exist. They stay with you.” She shrugged her thin shoulders. “It might be worth trying out to see what happens.”
“He’s not an experiment to be poked and prodded,” Shige growled. “Careful, you’re starting to sound like Toshinori.”
“Having a healthy thirst for knowledge is not the same as trying to find ways to squeeze profit from the pain and suffering of everything around you. I told you that man was trash from the beginning, but you didn’t listen!”
Phil had never heard Abby shout before, but she was talking loud, and in outright challenge. Toshinori must be an old wound. But he was gone now. They could move on.
In a further upset of the norm, Shige regained his calm first. “Now is not the time for this conversation, Abena.”
Displeasure continued to issue from her, but she kept it to herself. Their stuff was mended on the surface, but no one had asked what Phil felt about all this.
If there was a chance of making any of this clearer, of knowing for certain what was going on with him, he would take it.
“We can try it. Now if you’ve got blood here.”
The vampires stopped their silent seething at each other to stare at Phil.
“Of course we do, but you don’t really want that. It was a joke… mostly.” But Abby was intrigued. Her mind was alight with theories and projected outcomes. Phil appreciated her not trying to pressure him into it, however.
Shige’s expression said he didn’t approve, that he wanted to argue the point, and when he left the room, Phil thought he did so in protest. But he returned with a glass with little more than a swallow of dark liquid in it. “I cut it with vodka. That’s how we drink it from a glass. You don’t have fangs, so you can’t drink it the other way.”
He started to hand Phil the glass, but stopped. “Don’t drink it all at once. Sip it.”
“Got it.” The glass was cold between his fingers. Despite the added alcohol, the blood stayed as dark and rich as it had been tapped from a vein.