City of Demons, page 25
part #2 of The Unseen Series
Still, the demons came.
***
Karen's eyes blinked open.
Across the large hallway, Yori-Sutoku rose again on flame-born legs. He spread his new wings and stretched out his neck, regaining himself after the bloody impact.
Karen, meanwhile, just struggled to sit up. She was hurt badly, at least one rib broken and more than a few dislocations from what she could feel. The speed at which she’d hit the wall would have killed a lesser woman, though her body couldn't take much more.
"That was foolish," Yori-Sutoku growled.
"Yes. It was." She pushed her rib back into place with a groan and located her sword, thankfully only a few feet away. Next to it Ibaraki's arm lay lifeless and cold.
Yori-Sutoku saw it as well. He looked from the arm to the hole in the shutters. He thought of the crater in the street below, the massive hole with no other explanation.
"I told you the Oni fell," Karen said, the hint of a smile on her lips.
Yori-Sutoku shut his eyes. He knew what she said was true, felt it in his hollow bones.
When he opened them again, he was screaming.
The bird-creature charged at Karen with fire burning in his dark eyes. Karen grabbed for her sword but he knocked it out of her hand with one swipe of a wing, then kicked her back to the ground.
Held down, Karen took a vicious beating at the clawed hands of Yori-Sutoku. In that moment, as he tried to pull the life from Karen's bruised body, he wasn’t a general. He wasn’t a businessman or a step-father or even an Ootengu- he was a man. A man set on revenge.
"Hayato."
A woman's voice in his ears.
"Husband."
He stopped tearing at Karen to look for the source of the voice. Karen picked her head up to see Kasumi, Miku's mother, the beautiful, bruised woman, standing across the room in front of a display of ancient armor.
She folded her hands in front of her. "I am the one you want to hurt."
"Go back to your room," he snarled, "I'll finish with you later."
"No. You have kept me half-alive for long enough- finish it now."
He took a step toward her. "You don't make demands, woman, I'm the one who gives the orders."
"There's a saying you may not know- he who talks most is too thick to listen." At this Yori’s bird-chest inflated and his wings shook. "Finish it," she said. "Leave your cowardly soul behind and finish what you started long ago. Become the abomination you were always meant to be."
Yori-Sutoku screamed. In a fury he spread his wings, pounding the ground with his talons. Karen went for her sword again but it was too late- he lifted off the ground and flew at the woman, a freight train of black feathers and blacker rage. Kasumi opened her thin arms, welcoming him in- welcoming death.
At the last moment, Kasumi took a single step to the right, revealing the armor behind her, and the ancient spear it held- the spear of his ancestor, Minamoto no Yorimitsu. The spear that killed Shuten-doji.
It pierced his chest with incredible force. Yori-Sutoku was impaled by the spear, straight through his heart. His eyes grew wide as the tip erupted from his winged back, his beak frozen in a scream.
"You were right," Kasumi said with a smile. "My life did have a sliver of worth left."
With no warning, Yori-Sutoku reached out and plucked her up in his gnarled claw.
Karen cried out as Yori crushed the woman's body with tremendous force. Her small bones broke, a blossom of pink growing from her mouth.
Yori-Sutoku dropped the broken woman. He was alive but stuck, held by the standing armor of his ancestor. He struggled with tremendous pain to free himself.
Karen got to her feet. She advanced on the monster with dead focus, both hands on the sword's red handle.
Yori-Sutoku laughed blood at her. "You can't hold the Yokai back from our destiny," he cackled. "Wherever you cut us, we will grow back stronger."
Karen’s lips drew back in a snarl. "Grow this back," she said. In one, swift motion, she cut off the bastard's head.
***
Down to fighting the last few demons, the students were exhausted. The energy it took for even a trained warrior to engage in extended combat was more than they had, but with an end in sight they pushed on. They punched and cut and kicked until there was nothing left to punch and cut and kick.
The last Onibi came around the bend. Like a slimy eel it wriggled through the spaces, penetrating their wall of defense. Brandishing a long, blackened blade, it made a straight line for Danny, intending to cut his throat. Danny saw it coming. His fate. The inescapable end to the fight. The punchline to the joke that was his life.
Then he punched the demon in the face.
Two students rushed in and finished it with their knives. Danny looked at Fannie, amazed with himself. "I think I broke my hand," he said with a smile.
She rolled her eyes. "My hero," she said.
***
The headless body of Yori-Sutoku danced on the end of Yorimitsu's spear, the last few muscular twitches before the body went still. Five feet back, laying on its side, his removed head stared out the window at the softening snow. The skies grew calm as the life left his marble-black eyes.
Karen stared with reverence at Yorimitsu’s armor. She would like to think he would be satisfied with the outcome. His spear ridding the world of a second Great Yokai.
She knelt beside Kasumi. The woman was barely alive, and slipping fast. She looked up at Karen with bloodshot eyes.
"Thank you for saving my baby."
Karen shook her head. "You were the hero today."
"I see why…why she went to you. There is one more…one more thing to ask of you."
"Of course."
The woman’s eyes filled up with tears. "Love her."
Karen thought about Miku. Pictured her small face and her strong spirit. "I already do," she said.
Kasumi smiled, a true smile, the kind her face hadn't seen in years. Then she simply exhaled, like a sigh, nothing more, and her body relaxed. Karen gently closed the woman's eyelids with her fingertips.
Out of the corner of her vision she caught movement. Something left behind. She looked up to see Miku looking back at her.
Karen rose and walked to the girl. "I told you to hide."
"I went back for this." She held out the scabbard to Karen's katana.
"Thank you." Karen took it from her hands as Miku looked across the room to her mother.
"We have to go now," Karen urged gently. "If the police come they'll take you away."
Not listening, Miku went to her mother. She knelt by the woman's side and whispered something.
"She saved my life," Karen said. "In the end she was very brave."
Miku kissed the woman's cheek and stood to face Karen. "No," she said. "She was always brave."
***
Karen's students gathered in the lobby, checking wounds and taking head counts. As they did, Danny filled his pockets with knives, rings, shuriken- anything belonging to the Yokai he could get his hands on.
Fannie watched him with a wrinkled-up face. "What are you doing?"
He stuffed a piece of demon cloth into his back pocket. "I know a guy at Crossroads Market who'll buy all this junk."
She shook her head. Suddenly a noise came from the stairwell. One more arrival. Everyone tensed, ready to fight whatever came through the door.
Karen stepped over a dead demon, with Miku behind her. Danny laughed with relief. The students smiled and shook their heads at each other. It confirmed what they already knew, what they spoke about when she wasn’t around- if the world fell apart today, and every man and woman had to fight for their lives, their money would be on Karen Kimura.
She looked around at the lobby, the floor littered with the bodies of Yokai and Unwanted alike.
"Sloppy work," she said. "But not bad."
-22-
Karen, Miku, Danny and Fannie walked into the quieting snow, Danny wheeling the busted-up sport bike. Fannie glanced over at Karen's torn and bloodied clothes. "Lady, you need a new outfit."
Karen held her side. "What I need is a hospital."
"Speaking of new, what's that?" Danny pointed to the red sword at Karen's side.
"The Killing Stone made friends with my family sword," she said, then tilted her head. "I suppose you could call it the Killing Sword."
Danny scoffed. "Really?"
"What?"
"Would it kill you to be a little less bad-ass?"
Karen shrugged. Her students were limping off in the other direction. "I expect to see you all on Monday," she called out to them. They nodded and waved, planning to sleep until then.
"So what now?" Danny asked. "I always wonder what happens after the credits roll. Like, do we go on with our lives and pretend the most interesting part of it hasn't happened?"
"It’s far from over," Karen said. "To start with, I have to figure out what to do with you." She messed Miku's hair as the girl looked up at her.
"With any luck the foster system will swallow her up and ruin her like it did me," Danny said. Miku stuck her tongue out at him.
"I won't let that happen," Karen said. "We'll find your family. And if we can't, then I'll just have to be your family." The girl smiled, and Karen smiled back.
Fannie smacked the back of Danny's head.
"Oww!"
"She just lost her mother," Fannie scolded him.
"It's a coping mechanism, alright?" To Miku, Danny said, "You can have my spot on the floor at the dojo." He motioned to Fannie. "I got a new floor."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Just because you saved me- from the danger you put me in- doesn't mean we're together."
Danny threw his hands up. "See? This is the crap I'm talking about. Happily-ever-afters are bullshit. No one ever-"
She shut him up with a kiss on the cheek.
"All I mean is, we could start with dinner."
"Oh." He smiled. "Do you like Japanese?"
***
Zipping up his red and yellow bike jacket, Blair left his third favorite club- he’d been kicked out of the first two for arguing with bartenders- and started the walk home. On the way there, he pictured what he would do when he got his hands on the little weasel who’d stolen his bike. Probably he would start with the fingers, then move to the knees.
He rounded the corner and onto his block. A white cat was perched on a shoulder-high brick wall, licking the snow from its paws. He made kissing sounds with his lips. "Here, kitty," he said, getting the cat's attention. He reached out to pet it, but instead he pushed the cat off the ledge and into the garbage pails just behind it. He laughed at the crashing sounds it made.
"Dumb kitty," he said.
Then he saw it: his bike was back. Incredibly it was chained to the apartment stairs, like it had never left. Excitement filled him as he approached it. "What the-" he said, smiling from ear-to-ear.
As he got closer, he saw the truth. The paint job was marred with dozens of deep scratches. Extensive damage had been done to the chassis, the exhaust pipe was gone, and one of the wheels was bent at a bad angle.
He found another note, this one on the bike itself. He snatched it up and read it aloud.
"You’re still a dick."
He turned it over to see if there was anything else written on the back. Nothing. He had a feeling he knew who'd left him the note, the same little punk who'd trashed his bike. The next time he saw that little punk, he was going to be a dead, little punk.
The white cat he'd knocked over hissed, startling him. It growled as it ran from the sidewalk and into an alley, it's tail puffed up to twice its size, the back spiked into a mohawk.
"Who's there?" Blair called out.
A girl stepped into the streetlight. She was kind of cute, but a bit beaten up. "My name's Cassie," she said. "I like your cologne."
"I'm not wearing any."
"Mmm, I disagree." She came closer, holding something in her hand. It looked like a pill bottle, but an empty one, nothing fun inside.
She held it up and said, "Wanna see a trick?"
***
In the street in front of Yori Tower, a deep crater sat silently in the night. Deep inside it, along with piles of rubble, the ruined plans of Hayato Yori sat beneath a final dusting of snow. Unrecognizable shards of ancient bronze mingled with pulverized blacktop, all soon to be repaired, paved over, and lost forever.
A single pebble fell out of place. Then a rock tumbled. Soon a cascade of debris fell out of the way as something rose from underneath.
Ibaraki's twin horns emerged from the rubble. He crawled from the crater, clawing his way out with one arm. His pants in shreds, he wiped the dust- and someone’s intestines- off his naked torso, then looked back into the crater, pinpoint pupils taking in what was left of the bonsho.
It was destroyed, in more pieces than he could count. There was only one forge he knew of that could fix it, but that was very far away, and he doubted anyone was still alive who knew how to run it.
There was a dull pressure in his head, by his ear. He reached in and pulled something sharp from his ear canal- a fang, too small to be his. He tossed it into the crater and walked away.
Ibaraki entered the empty tower, walking around the bodies strewn across the lobby and up the broken stairs. He was forced to climb where the steps had been destroyed completely. It wasn’t easy to do one-handed.
In the armory he found the body of Yori-Sutoku- half man, half Yokai. The friend who took him in, mixed with the master he never knew, both impaled on the spear of Yorimitsu, the human he hated most. Even in death, the samurai had taken everything from him.
Ibaraki found his arm. He shoved it back into the socket with a dry crunch, wiggling it around until it settled into place.
After a few seconds, he made a fist.
***
On the first warm day of spring, with the snow melting into dirty rivers that led down drains and swelled the sewers, Hana woke in her small bedroom.
The hour was late, birds chirping in blossoming treetops. Either she’d slept through her alarm or she'd never set it in the first place. She would have to hurry if she was to open the shop on time.
She washed her face in the sink, stopping to feed Neko, who seemed especially tired herself. "Anything exciting happen last night?" she asked the white cat. The cat paused a moment as if to answer, then yawned in the woman's face. "Me, too, Neko. Me, too."
She shuffled into the shop, flipped the sign in the front window and moved to unlock the door. To her surprise, she found it already unlocked.
"Damn Onryo," she muttered. She resumed the work she’d stopped the day before, taking out a yellow dress a few inches. ‘Too much dessert and you'll be seeing me,’ she always said. Hana sat behind the sewing machine and turned it on.
As she did, the bell above the front door rang- the first customer of the day.
"Koko ni," she said without looking. She couldn't be expected to come running anytime someone walked into her store.
A woman's face appeared above the sewing machine. Hana paused her work, hiding the way her hands moved from prying eyes. "Can I help you?" she asked the woman.
"It's me."
Hana looked closer. She couldn’t believe her eyes. It was Karen. She hadn’t seen the girl in years.
"Oh, Kichona." She dropped the yellow dress on the floor and came around the work desk, hints of tears in her eyes. Karen stood so tall now. Not only that, but there was a young girl at her side, looking up at Hana with big, brown eyes. Eyes she somehow remembered. "Yes, of course. With the little girl. I remember now," Hana said.
"Miku," the girl reminded her.
"Nice to meet you again, Miku." She looked back to Karen. "She has the spirit of an important Yokai inside her, I hope you know that."
"I had noticed that," Karen replied.
"Have you figured out which one?"
"Tamamo," Miku said.
"Tamamo?" The grandmother nodded, impressed. "My, my. But of course I should have known. In her time, Tamamo was considered the most intelligent and beautiful woman in all of Japan." Miku blushed at the compliment. "What can I help you with today, Miku? Do you have a hole in your sock?"
"She asked me to teach her about The Unseen," Karen said. "I told her no one knew more about the subject than you."
Hana smiled her wrinkly smile at Karen. If there was one thing she had a lot of, it was thread. If there was another, it was stories. And she loved the chance to tell a good story.
"I'll make some tea," she said. "Stay a little while and I’ll tell you all about Tamamo."
Karen looked down at Miku, the girl so eager to learn about the past as well as her future. There was a class to teach later that day, the first official session after the re-opening, but that was more than two hours away.
"Okay, Grandmother," Karen said. "We have a little time."
***
-Epilogue-
Two thousand miles east, in the town of Shallow Creek, Officer Monton was fielding the third call in a week regarding knocked-over garbage cans.
"I don’t know what to tell you," he said, "either the kids are bored or the raccoons are taking over the town." He paused, listening to the crazy lady on the other end. "No, I don’t think they can actually take over the town."
He rolled his eyes at Officer Sherman, who didn’t notice. That was because Sherman was busy following up leads on an investigation he didn’t discuss with anyone. Sherman glanced across the small station house, trying to make it look casual as he watched Butcher closely.
Franklin Butcher was at his desk. "Don’t worry about it, I’ll pick him up," he said into the phone. "Enjoy your date."
"It’s not a date," Elaine replied.
"Okay. Enjoy your not-date."
Elaine laughed softly. "You’re impossible."
"That’s what the divorce papers say." He smiled. "Listen, I’m just glad you’re getting out of the house. And it’ll be good to get some time with Jake."
"About that," she said. He tensed up, waiting for the bad news. That his boy didn’t want to see him. "He says to make sure you don’t forget Felix."
