City of Demons, page 22
part #2 of The Unseen Series
"Shade is leader. We do what the leader says, even when he's not here."
"Maybe he shouldn't be leader anymore."
A mumble moved through the crowd. A few more Chromes crawled out of the decommissioned boats that had pulled into the mechanic bays years ago and never left.
"Take that back."
"Why should he be in charge when he lets his mate do whatever she wants? And since when did we start taking hostages?"
Danny reached the girl, herself distracted by the argument. He bent by her side, scaring her.
"You!" she whisper-shouted. "You're the reason they took me!"
"I'm here to save you, so…we're even?"
She frowned. "Yeah, sure we are. Get me out of here!"
Danny worked on untying her. The ropes were a mess, not so much distinct knots as a tangle of loops and swoops, spun around and pushed through at random intervals. "Clearly none of these guys were boy scouts growing up," he mumbled.
Meanwhile, the argument had escalated. A few of the others joined in on the shouting. As their voices rose, so did their threats.
"What the hell are those things?" the girl asked.
"It's a long story."
"Really? Because they seem a lot like vampires."
"Okay, I guess it’s not that long," he said, then paused. "Oh, but demons are real, too."
"Great. Anything else?"
He thought about it. "Spider-people?"
"Just keep untying," she hissed.
He continued untangling the rope. Then he stopped. "Also, there's this weird crab guy who lives in a pocket universe made of sand, and he has a pet monster and a fake sun that gets really angry when you-"
She cut him off. "Danny? I'm thankful you're saving me and all, but please. Stop talking."
He agreed. Finally he got the rope untangled. He pulled it free and tossed it quietly aside before helping her to her feet.
As they snuck back along the wall, moving as slowly as their pounding hearts allowed, the Chromes’ shouts gave way to the first shove. Then the first punch. Soon the entire pack joined in on the brawl, unaware of the two humans tip-toeing out the door thirty feet away.
Danny and the girl walked faster and faster across the now snow-dusted dockyard, until they were full-on running over and between trash heaps to the bike parked on the outskirts of the property.
Danny jumped on the snowy bike as the girl caught up to him. "Did you know they'd be looking for me?" she asked, catching her breath. "I could have used a little warning. Maybe like a friendly, 'Hey, don't set foot outside ever again.'"
Danny said, "Hey."
"What?"
"Get on the bike."
She turned around to see what he was looking at: halfway across the snowy yard, Shade and Cassie stood perfectly still, staring directly at them.
***
Despite the bad weather, it was still a holiday. Setsubun, ironically a day to celebrate the end of Winter, was underway. In the streets around Yori Tower, a few brave kids were celebrating Setsubun the way they always did: with mamemaki, the custom of throwing beans at demons for good luck.
As a group of black-suited guards kept watch at Yori Tower's front door, children of various ages trampled past them in warm boots and homemade red and blue Oni masks. They giggled through painted fangs as they threw beans at each other. "Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi," they shouted. "Demons out, luck in!" Tossing handfuls of beans while their parents and older siblings watched from a distance and chuckled.
One group of especially rambunctious kids ran up to the guards and began throwing their soybeans at them. The serious men in suits shouted at the kids, but the kids keep at it, pelting the guards with luck. Still laughing, the parents crossed the street to wave and apologize to the men.
Twenty-five floors up, Karen took the phone from her pocket and called Danny. On the fourth ring he picked up. "What's your status?" she asked.
"Shitting my pants!" he replied, nearly shouting into the phone. From the street that led directly to Yori's doorstep, the roar of the sport bike's engine cried out.
Danny was close. She ran to the side of the roof to look for him, but she saw nothing except for a snowy road.
Then she spotted him. Danny came around the corner at full speed, and he wasn’t alone- for one thing, there was a girl on the back of the bike.
For another, he was dragging a tail of Chromes.
***
Danny and the girl looked over their shoulders at the angry crowd behind them. The Chromes ran with teeth bared, their dirty fingers reaching out to pull the two off the bike. They were fast, hungry, and pissed off.
"You should hold on," Danny told the girl.
"What do you think I've been doing?"
"Alright, well, hold on tighter."
He glanced up at Karen. Perched on the corner of the building far above, she readied her grappling hook, the black nylon cord in wide loops in her other hand. She watched Danny. Watched the guards. Watched the Chromes.
Success, failure, it would all come down to timing. Just a second too soon and everything would be lost.
With a whistle, she gave the signal.
The kids in Oni masks attacked the guards all at once, catching them by surprise. They swept the unsuspecting men off their feet, incapacitating them long enough for the older students- not at all their parents and siblings- to draw their blades and finish them. They left one guard standing, the man closest to the door.
Speeding toward the building, Danny shouted over the whine of the engine. "By the way, what's your name?" he asked.
"Are you serious? All this time and you don't know my name?"
"I don’t know. I figured you had a boyfriend."
As expected, the remaining guard went for the door. He entered his code into the screen and retreated inside to call for backup.
"So I only have a name if I'm single?" the girl said with a laugh. "Well I don't have a boyfriend. And my name is Fannie."
Danny smiled. "That's the greatest thing I've ever heard."
Before the guard could close it behind him, Danny drove through the open door and into the lobby of Yori Tower, bringing with him a horde of angry Chromes.
They crashed into the building like a tsunami with blood on its breath. The stunned guard barely managed to hit the panic alarm before being taken to the ground in a pummeling of teeth.
***
Watching the plan unfold from above, Karen spun her grappling hook. She had to be patient. Ignore the adrenaline in her system and wait for the right moment to strike.
Unwashed Chromes poured through the door below like a virus overtaking its host. The guards her students had made short work of were set upon by the pseudo-vampires. Karen winced at the sight of the men’s throats being torn open. She almost felt bad about serving them up on a tray to the Chromes.
Almost.
Karen’s ears perked up. The right moment had come. The building's alarm sounded, an electronic siren calling for backup to the lobby.
Focused on a balcony lower than the rooftop she was on, Karen released the spinning grapple. It soared through the snowy air like a missile. The hook missed its mark, but it grabbed a strong hold on one of the building's features. She tied off the other end with three knots, double-checked the line, and climbed on.
With the tower’s alarm already tripped, she hoped they wouldn't suspect a break-in. The plan was to make sure they didn’t see her coming.
Not until it was too late to stop her.
***
Yori’s tie and top button were undone, his face glossy with sweat. They were so close to completing the ceremony now. So close to the return of the Yokai and the glory that came with it. He moved to the window to see what the alarm was about.
From his vantage point he couldn't see the disturbance below. He took out his phone and called up the security cameras.
Yori was greeted with the image of the lobby in chaos. On the small screen, he watched his guards fend off an attack by what looked at first to be young punks, but what he quickly realized were a pack of filthy Unwanted, while some idiot on a motorbike drove circles around them and made a mess.
He motioned to the door. "You're needed elsewhere."
Ibaraki grunted. He exited, bonsho beam in hand. Just to be safe, Yori pulled up the window controls and closed the building's shutters. He caught his hand trembling and shook it off- there was too much work left to do.
The door reopened. A stunned guard was pushed into the room, holding the heavy wooden beam to his chest. Then the door shut again behind him.
***
The wind was bitter on Karen's face. She slid on the thick nylon cord toward Yori Tower, hoping it would hold.
Her older students were putting up a good fight far below. Adam led the younger ones to the emergency meet-up spot, as planned. As she passed far above him, Tom, one of her first students, landed a sloppy kick that reminded her why she failed him the first two times he took her class.
A sound from up high. The tower's shutters began sliding into place, including the balcony doors she was climbing toward. They were her way in, and they were closing fast. With no time to second-guess she reached the tower's glass and let go of the line to dig her fingers into the window frames. The space between was too thin to grip, especially with the snow melting on the warm glass, making the windows slick with condensation.
Karen centered her energy on her hands until she felt a shift beneath the muscle, deep in the bone. The fingers spread and thinned out, their structure reformed to make them easier to grip the windows.
She crawled up the tower with newfound ease, quickly reaching the balcony and pulling herself up to it, only to find a surprise- Peters, the young assistant, was trying to light the cigarette in his mouth with a dumbfounded look on his face.
For an eternity they stared at each other. Karen felt for the Killing Stone tucked into her belt, prepared to do what she had to.
Peters took the cigarette from his lips and returned it to the pack. "The other day," he said, "why did you let me go?"
"You were doing your job. Killing you wouldn't have solved anything."
"Former job." He put the cigarettes away. "If it had been Yori, he would've killed me."
Karen nodded. "In a heartbeat."
He nodded back. Without another word he retreated inside, leaving the door open behind him. Karen pulled herself up the rest of the way and slipped in.
-18-
The sounds of battle echoed in Yori Tower's expansive lobby. Blade on blade. Bone on bone. Karen's students mixed with suited guards mixed with the uncapped and filed-down fangs of Chromes, while painted birds watched the fight from above.
Danny revved the bike and maneuvered between two guards, then around the Chrome leaping on the guards. He took a sharp turn around the cherry tree to avoid another guard, but he got in too close. The man reached out to pull him off the bike. Fannie reacted quickly and kicked the guard in the balls. As the man crumpled, Danny shouted, "One down!"
An elevator pinged. The metal door slid open and released ten more armed men in black suits.
"A million to go," he added with a sigh. Fannie looked around at the chaos filling the wide room.
"Someone has to have heard all this noise. Where the hell are the cops?"
"In Yori's pocket. If they do show up, they won't be on our side."
Fannie frowned. At that moment, more of Karen's older students poured in through the front door, armed and ready to fight. They screamed in unison as they joined the battle.
Danny turned in the seat and grinned. "Luckily, we still have a few surprises left."
***
Karen snuck up on two guards, Killing Stone in hand. She noted how one man was smaller and more hunched than the other, his left foot dragging slightly.
She pushed the thought aside and attacked. The first guard went down easily, but the second, the smaller one, put up more of a fight. He pulled a blade from his belt and went a full nine moves before Karen put the sharp end of the stone through his belly.
She stood over the bodies of the two men. Aside from being the better fighter of the two, there was something about the way he moved that felt wrong. Familiar, yet wrong. The blade he pulled on her was the kind favored by the Yokai.
She checked their hands- the hunched one wore a red ring like Ibaraki's, while the other didn't. She slipped the ring off the dead man's finger. The second she did, his true form was revealed. Like burning paper, the illusion cracked and wisped away.
"Uh oh," she said, standing over the body of an Onibi.
***
More than half of the guards removed their rings to unveil the Onibi underneath. The students, Danny, everyone stared at their burnt faces in shock.
"Are those the demons you were talking about?" Fannie asked.
"Those were the demons I was talking about," Danny sighed.
"So there's really a crab guy?"
He nodded. "He's not even funny."
The fight continued, unencumbered by lies.
***
Meanwhile, Karen had found the armory. It was a long hallway, featuring what would be a respectable collection of arms if it hadn't been stolen from one place or another. Display tables featured shields and shoes. Dummies wore aged and battle-worn armor. Through the long line of windows, the winter storm pummeled Santa Fausta with wind and snow.
On a wall of mounted weapons, from maces to nunchaku to bo staff, Karen found her sword.
She took it off the hook by its yellow-accented handle and checked it for damage. There was a small nick in the handle's base, but unsheathed the blade looked to be in perfect condition, just the way she’d left it. The way it was the day her grandmother gave it to her, telling her how long it had been in the family, and to care for it like a child.
With no time for reunions, Karen stepped back and drew the Killing Stone. She held it in one hand, her family sword in the other, and brought the two close together. She felt in them a buzz of energy. A crackle of anticipation in their molecules.
Footsteps. Slow and heavy. She stopped with the swords and listened, listened but couldn't place their location. As if they came from the floor itself, or perhaps-
The wall of weapons exploded, sending a mass of deadly blades outward. She reacted like lightning, maneuvering out of their way to avoid being sliced to ribbons.
The stone, in another act of defiance, angry at the interruption perhaps, shifted shape and put itself in harm's way. A naked sai struck the stone and knocked it from Karen's twisting grip. The stone slid far down the weapon-filled hallway and out of reach.
From a cloud of splinters and drywall dust, Ibaraki stepped through. He was in his true form- a big, red demon with big, red fists. Seeing his actual, undisguised face, Karen understood for the first time who she was dealing with. Why she had been met with defeat more than once at his hands.
"Demon of Rashomon," she said.
Ibaraki grinned. He appeared to love the old name.
"I'm ready for you this time," she said. "No more cowardly sneak attacks. No more dirty tricks."
With a deep growl, Ibaraki took the black baton from his belt and slapped it into his other palm. It sounded like a hundred-year tree falling to the dense forest ground.
Karen raised her family sword. "Let's see how strong you really are," she said.
***
Danny weaved the bike through the fight, with Fannie still holding him tightly. On their left a Chrome bit the charred neck of an Onibi. On the right, one of the students swept a Chrome's leg and finished it with a blow to the face.
Fannie screamed, and they both ducked to avoid an Onibi blade. It missed them by an inch, but Danny lost control of the bike. The front tire rammed into the decapitated body of a guard.
The bike flipped over and sideways, throwing the two off. They tumbled and slid along the tile floor, coming to a stop some twenty feet later.
Danny sat up and looked around for Fannie. "Are you okay?" he asked her. She knelt on the floor ten feet from where he landed.
"I think so," she said, not feeling anything broken.
Across the lobby, Danny spotted Cassie. Bent over a human guard, she snapped the man's neck with the happiness of a child at a playground. She tilted her head up and sniffed the air.
"I think it’s time to go," Danny said.
Fannie nodded. "Yeah. Let's do that."
***
Ibaraki's baton smashed a display to shards. He raised it again and swung it over Karen's head. She felt the gust of air in her chest. His drive was that of a tank, crushing ever forward, a juggernaut of old anger.
Between swings, Karen struck out with her family sword, a jab, a slice, a parry, but all she managed to damage was the over-sized suit sewn onto him by a fleet of tailors. Each cut took a shred of jacket, a slice of shirt, until the material hung from his swinging torso in ribbons. The flesh beneath was blood-red by birth, but not by damage.
Ibaraki tore the rest of the material away and threw it aside- not a scratch had been made by Karen's blade. She wondered what kind of power it had taken to perform the ritual scarification on his chest.
He raised the baton again to strike, but Karen grabbed a shuriken from its display and hurled it at the giant's hand. It struck the baton, knocking it from his grip and across the room.
The Oni wasn't pleased. He smashed the wall with his fist, punching a hole straight through, and began to throw anything he could get his hands on at Karen. As she manipulated her body out of the way of the demon's rage, a full suit of armor crashed through the window next to her, shredding the shutters open like tin foil.
A piercing wind entered through the building's gaping maw, bringing with it frigid tendrils of snow. With her hair blowing around her face, Karen saw the Killing Stone against the wall behind Ibaraki- just out of reach.
***
Like two lost tourists, Danny and Fannie twisted and weaved their way through the battlefield on foot, trying their hardest to reach the front door but finding every path blocked.
Sensing something behind her, Fannie spun and found herself staring into the bloodied face of a skeleton-thin Chrome. It hissed at her, but instead of a tongue emerging from its fanged mouth, the burnt tip of a blade pierced through from the back of its throat. The Chrome dropped to the floor, revealing the Onibi that had killed it.
