I know that someone, somewhere, is going to want to lynch me for this one. Those familiar with YnM should note that there is a lot more of depressed/angsty Tsuzuki here than of bouncy/playful Tsuzuki . . . but then, Tsuzuki admits himself, in the final arc of the anime, that bouncy/playful Tsuzuki is mostly an act designed to keep anyone from finding out his secrets.
This story takes place after the end of the anime and does not follow the manga continuity for the most part. I didn't bother to check back to make sure that the bits of dialogue and situation quoted from the series in places like the next-to-last chapter were accurate, so be prepared for some discontinuities there. Chapter titles were stolen from the first OST, with the translations of the track titles coming from theria.net, so if they're inaccurate blame that site, not me. Yes, the story's overall title is a version of that of the first manga chapter.
General warnings: Yaoi, group sex, recurring mild blood/violence kink. This is a lemon (that's NC-17 to you folks trapped in movie-land).
Disclaimer: The characters and world of Yami no Matsuei are not my property or invention, and I claim no ownership of them whatsoever. The only thing I really claim is the specific text of this story. Please don't repost it without my permission.
There had been a building here once--substantial, built of granite, aging and abandoned but still strong. Now there was nothing but rubble strewn around the edge of a crater. Rubble and blood.
They picked their way carefully across shifting stones toward a rag of torn fabric and flesh that lay at the point nearest the river. The dark-haired man's hand balled into a fist as his foot slipped and he fell to one knee, damaging his dark suit, but he did not curse. He seldom ever cursed. However, he did ignore his companion's offer of a hand to help him to his feet, and the long-haired blond in the lab coat frowned and shrugged, jostling the owl that sat on his shoulder.
It seemed to take them forever to reach the unconscious, bleeding person who had been thrown clear of the . . . explosion, or whatever it was that had happened here. The blond knelt down and turned the other onto his back, checking his neck for a pulse, while the dark man stood over them, glancing from side to side as though in an attempt to detect movement in the shadows.
"Well, he isn't any deader than he was this morning," the blond reported, his face uncharacteristically serious. "Can you see any sign of Tsuzuki?"
The dark man adjusted his glasses, then pointed toward the river. "There's some sort of blood trail leading out into the water, which could be from him . . . or from whatever it was that they were fighting. That--" He pointed to the upper half of a body resting right on the edge of the crater, eyes staring out unseeing, red hair matted with blood. "--is clearly not him, and there's no one else here. I doubt he would have left Hisoka by choice, so we must assume that he was injured in some way, or removed from the area against his will."
"Or killed again," the blond added with a grimace.
"Just so. Well. If the river has him, we aren't going to find him here, and if it does not . . ."
The two exchanged grim glances. They knew all too well what sort of things could have befallen the absent Tsuzuki, frequently victimised as he was by such creatures as psychotic physicians and demonic marquises.
"I'll arrange for a search to be made downstream," said the dark one. "You take Hisoka back to the infirmary. If we don't find Tsuzuki, it's imperative that we get his partner awake and talking as soon as possible. We need to know what happened."
The blond scooped Hisoka's limp body into his arms and disappeared. The dark-haired man, however, remained where he was for a moment longer.
That damned . . . His hand suddenly began to sting, and he realized belatedly that he had formed a fist so tight that his neatly-trimmed nails were biting into his palm. He immediately opened that hand, thankful that no one was present to witness his lapse in control. That no one was here to witness the evidence of the emotion that he would not admit existed, even to himself. Tsuzuki, where are you? If whatever did this was strong enough to defeat you and all your Shikigami . . . well, what chance do we stand without your help?
Everything was in darkness. I was naked, and standing on a perfectly level surface that had the texture of dust.
Where am I?
Light? Was that . . . ? I had to shield my face as it slowly rose to a level that made it bright enough to see by. Two intense pinpricks of yellow light, far away on the horizon, permitting me to view an endless, featureless grey plain stretching away from me in all directions.
"Hypocrite." The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, pressing against my skin. I covered my ears, but couldn't keep it out. "Your attempts to conceal your true nature from yourself make you so deliciously vulnerable, little lamb . . . You will bring him to me. The one I seek."
"I won't bring you anything!" My skin was slick with sweat, and I writhed as I tried to escape from that all- encompassing voice.
"Oh?"
"The worst murderer in the world doesn't deserve to be taken by you!"
Laughter--terrible, crushing me. I screamed. "I already have the worst murderer in the world, little lamb, but it isn't you I want. Find the one I seek and bring him to me, or I will give you over to your victims. They've been waiting so very long for you . . ."
The grey dust of the plain began to move, and I felt something rise to grip my ankle.
"No!"
"Tsuzuki-san!"
I whimpered. Then I realized that I wasn't standing on the grey plain anymore, and those merciless pinpricks of yellow light were nowhere to be seen. Instead, I was lying on my side in a dimly-lit room with someone's body pressed up against my back, and a pair of arms wrapped loosely around my waist. I blushed a little as I realized that both of us were naked, but the warmth of flesh touching flesh drove the nightmare away as I don't think anything else could have.
"Are you awake now?" A man's voice. Familiar? I wasn't sure, but when it spoke, I felt a strange little tremor inside my chest, as though my heart had just skipped a beat.
"Yes. Th-thank you." I reached for a name--surely if I was sharing a bed with this person, I at least knew who he was-- but all I could find inside my mind was the grey plain, and the yellow light, and the terrifying laughter of a creature playing at a game that I didn't understand. Shudders wracked my body, and I felt the wet heat of tears coursing down my face.
"Are you crying?" Fingers brushed my face. "Is it so terrible to be waking up here with me?"
"I don't know," I whispered. "I don't know who you are, or where we are, or even who I am. The only thing I can remember is the nightmare . . . I . . . I . . . Help me, please!"
"Shhh. It's all right." He reached past me, twisting so that he wouldn't have to let go of me completely, and picked up something shadowy that turned out to be a handkerchief. "Here, dry those tears."
I sniffled and obeyed.
"Try not to worry too much," he added. "Traumatic amnesia normally goes away on its own after no more than a few days, and given the size of the lump you had on your head when I found you in the river last night, it isn't surprising that you feel a little . . . confused. In the meanwhile, I will help you in any way that I can."
"Thank you." I wiped my eyes one last time and gave the handkerchief back to him. He closed his hand around it as though it were something precious. "I . . . don't know your name . . . or mine, for that matter."
"Your name is Asato Tsuzuki."
Asato . . . Tsuzuki. It woke no recognition in me, but at least it gave me a label for myself.
"And I am Kazutaka Muraki," my companion added. "We've known each other for a little more than a year now."
Kazutaka Muraki. That name did draw a flash of something--a brief tactile impression of someone undoing my tie and exploring the side of my neck with lips and tongue while I stood frozen, hands half-raised to ward him off, terrified and angry and unwilling to admit to myself that it felt good and I wanted him to keep touching me . . .
"Are we lovers, Muraki-san?" I blurted the question without thinking.
I felt him stiffen with surprise, and then relax again. "No, although not for want of effort on my part. You have always been unwilling to . . . commit yourself past a certain point, and I have done my best to respect that, although it's sometimes difficult."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarrass you." My face was getting hot.
A soft chuckle. "You didn't . . . and I should have expected the question. After all, it is a natural thing to ask when you wake up in the same bed as someone else and neither of you is wearing anything . . . but I assure you, I'm here to keep you warm, not to take advantage of you. Much though I would like to." He shifted his lower body slightly, and I blushed even more as I realized just what that hard thing rubbing against the small of my back had to be. I decided that I would really be a lot happier if it wasn't touching me anymore--even though he hadn't done anything so far, every movement I made had to be . . . frustrating him beyond belief.
I rolled over so that I was facing him, but with a little more distance between us . . . and found my lower jaw sagging open. He's . . .
Silver hair half-hid his right eye and framed what had to be the most absolutely beautiful face I had ever seen. Straight, perfect nose, slanting silver brows, and an unexpectedly sensuous mouth that was currently curved into a little half-smile. His left eye was slit-pupilled like a cat's, but somehow that just seemed to fit him. The right eye . . . I reached out and flicked his concealing forelock out of the way, winced when I saw the scarring around the socket and the glazed, fixed look of the eye itself.
"It's artificial," Muraki murmured. "I lost the original in . . . an accident, of sorts, some years ago. Quite a blow to my vanity."
I couldn't think of anything to say, because he was still the most beautiful person I had ever seen . . . Which is hardly surprising, since for all practical purposes he's the only person I've ever seen, period. I don't even know what I look like.
He gripped the wrist of the hand that had just fallen away from his hair and brought it to his mouth, pressing a kiss into my palm. I shivered, because I suddenly wanted him like he wanted me, this total stranger, with an intensity that frightened me.
No, mustn't let him . . . mustn't do this . . . it's too dangerous . . . The words welled up from somewhere deep inside me, and I snatched the hand back, cradling it against my chest. Muraki gave me an ironic smile.
"No more of that, then. Do you have any other questions for me right now, Tsuzuki-san, or would you prefer that I left you alone for a little while?"
"Alone, please." I need to think.
"Very well, then. Breakfast will be served in half an hour. Any of the servants will be glad to show you to the dining room. Unfortunately, your clothing was not salvageable, but there should be a robe of some description in the bathroom."
"Thank you." I barely did more than whisper the words, and I kept my eyes firmly on the coverlet as Muraki rose to his feet and slipped out the door. It wasn't until he was gone that I got up and went looking for something to supplement the sunlight filtering through the curtains.
I enjoyed how it felt when he touched me. Why was I afraid? It hadn't been fear of the man who had been kissing me, but something else, something I didn't understand . . .
The lightswitch was beside the door, right where I probably would have expected it to be if I had consciously remembered anything about lights or doors. Having flicked it, I stopped to look around the room, and felt my mouth falling open again.
It was huge--and maybe it could have been a bit better-lit, too, but I wasn't about to complain too much. The furniture was Western-style and massive, made from solid wood. Deep carpet on the floor, another door in the far wall, half-ajar and clearly opening on a private bath . . . Whoever Kazutaka Muraki was, he was certainly rich. How can I remember things like that when I can't remember my own name, or what I look like . . . Oh.
The full-length mirror was bolted to the wall beside the bathroom door. I hadn't realized it was there until the flicker of my own movement in it had attracted my attention. Or at least, I assumed those were my movements, since the beautiful young man in the mirror was mimicking everything I did.
I walked over to stand in front of it and took a longer, more critical look. Lean, healthy, well-proportioned body, skin darker than Muraki's--not that that would take much--but not tanned, and I suspected I didn't spend much time in the sun. Not much body hair. No moles, birthmarks, or freckles. No piercings or tattoos, either, but I had scars on the insides of both wrists--broad and slightly ragged on the right, paler and narrower on the left. Looking at them made me feel vaguely nauseous, and I was suddenly certain that the wounds that had caused them had been self-inflicted. I tried to . . . kill myself? A long time ago, surely. These aren't fresh. I wonder if Muraki knows.
My hair was dark brown and a bit shaggy, the face it framed as beautiful as Muraki's (I couldn't help but compare myself to him, since I had no other point of reference), but more delicate, somehow. There was something about the shape of my bones that made my eyes look larger than his.
My eyes.
I hated them from the first moment I saw them, their unusual violet colour filling me with revulsion, although I was at a loss to explain why. Hell, I didn't even know why I thought the colour was unusual. I just hated them . . . but at the same time, I couldn't look away from them.
Hello, Asato Tsuzuki, I thought. And just who are you, I wonder?
The reflection gave me no answer.
I leaned back against the closed door, only now allowing myself to shake. Spending the night so close to Tsuzuki without being able to join with him had been purest torture, but I knew, as I had always known, that raping him wouldn't assuage that hunger.
I needed him willing.
I pushed myself away from the door and began to walk down the hall toward my own bedroom, not particularly wanting to remain out here where I could be seen by the servants. Granted, they were all well-trained and discreet, and the sight of their master standing naked in the hallway with every appearance of being in urgent need of sexual release would just cause them to politely avert their eyes, the way they had last night when I had returned home with an unconscious, soaking-wet Tsuzuki in my arms, but I hated allowing anyone to see me looking vulnerable.
I didn't even really tell him a single lie, I congratulated myself. I don't know what god or demon granted me this opportunity, but perhaps . . . perhaps this time . . .
Vacant amethyst eyes staring up at me as I wiped away the tear that had just formed . . . No. Teeth gritted, I banished the image from my mind. I really had been half-mad in Kyoto, driven out of my mind with frustration and desperate need, and like a fool, I had let my instincts guide me. Demonic instincts. Worse than useless when attempting to court someone who believed himself human.
I suppose I had still more than half-believed that if I pushed him hard enough, Tsuzuki would wake to his true self, and understand what I had been trying to do. I had been certain that he had recognized something in me when we had first met--or had I only imagined that slightly stunned, almost hypnotized look that had appeared on his face when he came upon me kneeling before that altar? And then . . . well, perhaps he had woken that night in my lab, just for a little while. The murder-suicide he had attempted was an elegant and quintessentially demonic solution to the problem of his worst enemy and his destined mate being the same person, even if it wasn't quite what I had hoped for or expected.
All for you. My fingers brushed over the scar that was still visible low on my side. Normally it would have vanished long before--I may not have quite the freakish regenerative capacity of Tsuzuki or the other Shinigami, but I do tend to heal quickly and completely--but I had obsessed over the wound that had formed it, wanting it to mark me. It was my proof to myself that he was real, that I wouldn't have to be alone all my life, trapped in this damnable human world without ever seeing another of my kind.
This time . . . this time I'm going to do it right. If Tsuzuki's true self couldn't be forced out, perhaps I could coax it out instead. It was a very . . . human . . . solution, but this was, in its own way, a human problem. I just hope I can deal with the frustration.
I shook my head, realizing that I had been staring blankly at the door to my bedroom for quite some time without bothering to open it or go inside, and quickly remedied that oversight.
There is, however, still one thing that bothers me, I thought as I selected some clothing and began to dress. What was Tsuzuki doing in the river last night, and why did I find him, and not his Shinigami friends?
The red moon had been shining overhead as I had gone there to discard a bloody knife and discovered a figure in a soaked, torn and bloody black trenchcoat floating face-up in a backwater. He'd been as cold and as still as death as I had pulled him onto the bank. Judging from the state of his clothing, he had to have been severely injured when he went in, but when I had examined him, I hadn't been able to find any persistent wounds except the fading lump on his head. At the time, I had been too caught up in my own sense of outrage--how dared anyone hurt my Tsuzuki? Only I had that right--to make a closer examination of the venue, and I cursed myself for it now. Of course, I had been assuming that Tsuzuki would, with the correct prompting, be able to explain matters to me when he woke up.
Oddly enough, the only thing about the incident that wasn't suspicious was Tsuzuki's amnesia. I knew that there was something in his past that he was desperately trying to run away from--presumably, something that had happened before he had fallen under my grandfather's care back in 1920, which had caused his near-catatonia and series of suicide attempts--and it was hardly surprising that, given the excuse, he was now experimenting with the ultimate form of escape. I doubted it would last, since Tsuzuki just didn't have the kind of personality necessary to sustain that type of mental defense, but I prayed that it would last long enough.
Long enough for you to join with me at last, beloved.
"Hisoka?"
"Ugh." I did my best to swallow, but my mouth was dry as a desert and tasted like something had crawled into it and died. "Tats'mi? Whappnd? 'S Tsuzuki alri'?"
Someone tilted my head up and held a glass to my lips, and I swallowed gratefully, doing my best to ignore the searing wave of worry transmitted to me through that touch. I didn't try to open my eyes yet. The eyes were always the worst part, and I figured I'd save the headache for later.
"Hisoka, I know you'd probably prefer to go back to sleep, but this is important. Tsuzuki is missing."
It took a moment for me to get past Tatsumi's anger/guilt/fear to understand the words. "Tsuzuki is--" Without thinking, I opened my eyes and lunged straight up into a sitting position, then groaned and hid my face in my hands. I haven't felt this bad since the last time Muraki tried to kill me. "Ugh" indeed.
"Don't try to move." Anger/shame/pain-- Damnit, I usually have better control over my empathy than this! "All we need is your report--after that you can go back to sleep."
"Not with my partner missing, I'm not."
"You're in no condition to go after him right now, even if we can figure out where he is. Tomorrow or the next day, maybe, but if you try to get out of bed today, Wakaba-chan has promised to sit on you."
I managed a pitiful-sounding chuckle. It hurt. "Report. Okay." I gathered my scrambled thoughts together and tried to assemble them into something resembling the right format, because I knew that Tatsumi would want me to go by the book--that was just the kind of guy he was. "Um. I don't know how much you know about the most recent case Tsuzuki and I were handed, but for the past couple of weeks, there's been something running around Nagasaki killing people and doing . . . something . . . to their souls that's prevented them from reaching the Castle of Candles. All of the victims have been male, good- looking, between ages twenty-five and forty. Anyway, to cut a long story short, last night Tsuzuki decided to offer himself up as bait for the thing and, well, it bit."
"It?" Tatsumi prompted, taking a pen from his pocket.
"It. About twelve feet long, six legs, four batlike wings, glowing yellow eyes, single horn growing from the middle of its forehead." And huge teeth and breath that stank of sulphur and rotten meat. "It looked sort of like a giant carnivorous horse. I never got a chance to ask, but I assume it must have been a demon."
"A demon." Tatsumi's voice was flat, but his emotions seared me again, even though we were no longer touching--shame/rage/fear/love that he dared not acknowledge . . .
I had always known how Tatsumi felt about Tsuzuki, but I had never dared discuss it with either of them, and now . . . Please, let it not be too late. Let Tsuzuki be all right.
"Yeah. A powerful one. Tsuzuki called up Suzaku, but she didn't seem to be able to do much against it, and then . . ."
"And then?" Tatsumi's pen scraped busily over paper.
I flushed. "And then, like an idiot, I wandered into the line of fire, and it grabbed me. It kind of held me up in front of itself, gave me the fisheye for a bit, and then said something along the lines of 'You are not the one,' squeezed me like it was trying to make my heart squirt out through my mouth, and threw me away like so much garbage. I think I heard Tsuzuki trying to summon something else just before I blacked out, but I'm not sure. And then I woke up here."
Tatsumi's eyes narrowed. "When we arrived, there was no sign of Tsuzuki except a blood trail leading off into the river, which might not even have been his, and no sign of the demon, either. If they took each other out, at least this crisis is over, but . . ." Pain/fear/sorrow . . .
"Don't say that!" No! Please let it not have happened that way! I can't have destroyed my only friend- -the only friend I've ever had! I hunched down on the bed, hugging myself, not caring that it made me look weak. If that's what happened, then all I want to do is die. Again.
"Can you feel him anywhere?"
"Wha--Feel him?" Please, Tatsumi, just go away and leave me alone . . .
"You and Tsuzuki have been partners for quite a while now, and you're a strong empath. You've already shown more than once that you can sense his emotions at a distance. Can you feel him?"
I'd never deliberately tried to "find" my partner before, but I felt around cautiously inside myself. "I--Yes! I think . . . there's something . . ." I could have wept with relief. "I think he's either unconscious or very far away, but he's alive, at least as much as any of us are alive. Thank you, Tatsumi."
"No, thank you. I need to take your report to the Chief now. In the meanwhile . . . try to hold yourself together."
He stood up, the pressure of his emotions diminishing as he moved away. I pressed the back of my arm against my eyes, ignoring the twinges of pain from my half-healed ribs. Tsuzuki is alive. Now all we have to do is find him.
But I should have known things wouldn't ever be that simple.
I flinched away as the tailor came at me with another pin.
"Almost done, sir . . . just a little more . . . there."
I breathed a sigh of relief as he stripped the half- finished garment off me.
"I should have these for you tomorrow, sir."
"That's . . . fine." Somehow, I managed to find the words.
The tailor had been Muraki's idea, not mine. I would have been perfectly happy with borrowed clothes, or something bought off the shelf, but the silver-haired man had insisted, and I was still feeling too . . . stunned . . . to argue with him. I didn't understand why he was being so kind. The obvious explanation-- that he was in love with me--I had dismissed the moment it occurred to me. Why would a wealthy, educated, beautiful man like Muraki want to share his life that way with a formerly- suicidal violet-eyed freak?
Freak. I hesitated in the act of reaching for the jeans I had borrowed from one of the servants as I realized just how much that word was part of my self-image. Yes. I thought of myself as being abnormal. Just because of my eyes?
I shook my head and went back to fitting myself carefully into very snug denim pants. I hope I start to get my memory back soon--maybe then everything will make sense.
The white silk shirt was Muraki's, and too big for me. I pulled it on and fumbled for the buttons. I had most of them done up when I realized that I'd gotten the first one in the wrong hole, and that had made me shift all the others as well. But before I could fix the problem, someone twitched the front of the shirt out of my hands.
"You need to pay closer attention to what you're doing, Tsuzuki-san," Muraki said as he undid everything again. "Although perhaps it would be better if we simply dispensed with the buttons--I like you better like this, I think."
My eyes opened wide and my heart began to beat triple time as he pushed the shirt back on my shoulders, exposing my chest. He ran his hands down my sides, stroking and exploring, and then bent down to touch his lips to the flesh just below my collarbones. I almost let myself arch my back, inviting him to touch me more, but caught myself as that feeling of uneasiness began to grow inside me again.
I can't let him do this.
Why?
Muraki chuckled softly and straightened up again. "Or, then again, I might get terribly jealous if anyone else ever saw you this way." He began to fasten buttons again, quickly and neatly. Finished, he jerked the hem of the shirt straight and tucked it inside my jeans. I expected him to take the opportunity to feel me up, but he didn't. "Would you like to see the gardens, Tsuzuki-san?"
I nodded shyly. "And the rest of the house, I think. It's so big, and if I'm going to be staying here, it would be nice to be able to find my way around without bothering people all the time."
Muraki smiled. "Of course you will be staying--at least until you remember where it is that you're living just now."
He offered me his arm, but didn't seem surprised when I refused to take it. We left the house through a side door, which let out onto a narrow path between the vine-covered stone of the building's wall and a narrow strip of flowerbed bounded on the far side by a hedge with vicious thorns. It was warm and sunny, and I realized that it was early summer.
"At one time, my family owned several acres of land in this area," Muraki said as we followed the path toward the back of the house. "My father sold much of it some forty years ago, when the city of Tokyo first began to sprawl out this far, and in the process made the family very, instead of merely moderately, wealthy, but we retained the house itself and the grounds. My grandmother was fond of gardening, and what you are about to see was mostly her creation."
We emerged from the narrow passageway and into a riot of colour, and I found myself making soft sounds of delight.
The centerpiece of the garden was a sakura tree, still blooming even though I thought it was rather late in the year for it. A breeze tugged a few petals from the branches, swirling them through the air, and the sight brought tears to my eyes, although I didn't understand why. Lilac bushes, and tulips, and dozens of other flowers that I didn't recognize filled the air with a heady perfume. As Muraki led me slowly down a meandering path towards the tree, I realized that the several bushes that were still green, without a hint of colourful blossom, were roses, only just now beginning to bud. Muraki broke a bud from one particular bush as we walked past.
"It's beautiful," I told my companion. "Thank you for showing me this."
"I'm pleased that you like it." Muraki brushed sakura petals from a marble bench tucked under the branches of the tree, and we both sat down. I didn't object as he slid his arm around my waist, since that didn't seem to be enough on its own to waken my disquiet. Just a comradely gesture and not another pass, right. "I've been wanting to bring you here for quite some time, although I had hoped to do it later in the year, when the roses would be in bloom." He held the green bud he had cut in his lap and made an odd gesture, fingers stroking along the stem. The bud blushed red, then began to open, becoming a single, perfect red rose.
"For you," my companion murmured, offering it to me.
I blushed a bit myself, and took it. "How did you do that?"
"Don't you believe in magic, Tsuzuki-san?"
When I looked up from the impossible rose, I expected him to be smiling, to admit that he was gently teasing me. Instead, he met my eyes with a weird intensity that I found unnerving. My hand tightened around the stem of the rose, and I yelped as thorns bit into my skin. That was stupid, I thought, and raised my hand to my mouth in order to suck at the stinging little holes in my palm and fingers and maybe take a little of the pain away, but before I could do so, the flesh around the holes tingled warmly, and they closed over.
Healed. Painlessly. Without leaving so much as a red mark behind. The only evidence that I had ever hurt myself was the blood that had welled from the tiny injuries, now forming a little pool in the center of my palm.
I was still staring numbly at my hand when Muraki reached over to grasp my wrist, and then bent his head. He licked the blood away with two quick swipes of his tongue, and it shouldn't have been erotic but it was, far more so than a kiss would have been. I trembled in panic as I felt something deep down inside my subconscious mind stir in its sleep, and then subside again. I knew instantly that that feeling was what I was frightened of, but I didn't understand why, or what it was.
"You don't even remember what you are, do you? My poor Tsuzuki-san." Muraki let go of my wrist, and I breathed a sigh of relief . . . then blushed and bent forward, putting my hands in my lap to try to hide the lump in my too- tight jeans.
"I'm not human, am I?" My voice sounded brittle, terrified.
"Shhh. No, you are not human. No human could ever have such a perfect body, or eyes like yours. The blood of demons flows in your veins, Tsuzuki-san. You are a monster."
The words seemed to echo, inside my head. Monster . . . freak . . . I . . . this body . . . my eyes . . . So that's why I hate my eyes. Why I hate my life.
Muraki still had his arm around my waist. I jerked away from him.
"Don't touch me. Please, Muraki-san. I don't want to . . . contaminate you."
Muraki laughed. "Ah, Tsuzuki-san. As always, it is difficult to believe that such a gentle heart could have arisen from such a bloodline. Your condition is scarcely contagious, and even if it were it would hardly be possible to communicate it to a fellow sufferer."
A . . . fellow . . . "You're . . . like me?"
I didn't really need his nod to confirm it. It almost made too much sense. His eyes weren't . . . normal . . . either, even if they weren't quite like mine. Slowly, I let myself sit back again, felt his arm return to its original location at my waist.
"Seventy or eighty years ago now, my grandfather, who was a physician like myself, ran a private hospital on the grounds here. The building itself no longer exists, but most of the patient records were preserved and passed on to my father, and then, after his death, to me." Muraki wasn't quite looking at me anymore. "One of the odder files concerns a young man, described as being roughly eighteen years old at the time of admission, with dark brown hair and violet eyes." I bit my lip. Me? "His name, apparently, was not known, although I think you would recognize the photograph from his admissions record, and he was unable or unwilling to identify himself-- unable or unwilling to speak at all, in fact. He also refused to eat, drink, or, as far as anyone could tell, sleep. The only voluntary action he ever performed was that of attempting suicide by slashing his wrists whenever anyone left anything by his bedside that was sharp enough to be used for the purpose. However, each time he made such an attempt, the cuts healed with impossible speed.
"He remained there for eight years," Muraki continued, "then simply vanished from his bed one night. My grandfather did search for him, but gave the hunt up after a relatively short time, on the grounds that, given the young man's state of mind, he was most likely lying dead in a ditch somewhere, and his records were filed away . . . although not entirely forgotten. I found the file while I was in the process of putting my father's affairs in order, and the moment I saw that photograph, I . . . knew. Knew that you were like me, and that I had to find you. It took me sixteen years, but I eventually traced you to Nagasaki. We met there last year, and I must admit that I was . . . astounded when you failed to recognize me, because all the information I had accumulated about our kind indicated that the attraction I felt for you should have been reciprocated."
Fragile tissue of truth and lies . . . mostly truth, though. Truth was stronger, would hold better if put to the test.
I wasn't certain why I felt it necessary to conceal from Tsuzuki the fact that he was dead. It wasn't as though he could contact Meifu or the other Shinigami without help even if I did tell him. It was only that if he thought himself to still be alive, he would be more likely to . . . what?
At least I understood, now, why he hadn't recognized me in Nagasaki. When I had licked the blood from his hand, his true self, the demon within, had stirred in response to my gesture of courtship, and he had forced it back to sleep again. He was terrified of what he really was . . . which provided some tentative answers to the question of why he had been hospitalized in the first place, all those years ago. Bringing him to the point where he was ready to accept me as his mate was going to be difficult and time-consuming, but I wasn't about to abandon the challenge.
He was worth it.
He's been looking for me for sixteen years? Because he wanted to be with me?
Not-alone . . . had I ever genuinely in my life not been alone before? Obviously, I had no memory to give me a definite answer, but logically, if I had known what I was, I had probably spent my time pushing other people away the way I had tried to do to Muraki . . . Had anyone else in my life ever refused to be pushed?
I realized that Muraki had turned toward me, that his other hand was resting on my shoulder, and I let him draw me into his arms, even snuggled against him, needing the reassurance.
"I know that this is a lot to absorb all at once," he murmured as he stroked my back, "and I wish I hadn't had to tell it to you that way, but I didn't think it was wise to wait."
"It's all right," I told him. "I'd rather know than not. You did the right thing."
"That remains to be seen, beloved."
Beloved.
I didn't need my memory to know that no one had ever called me that before and meant it. Nor did I need it to be able to tell that Muraki did mean it.
Sixteen years.
I pushed at his shoulders, and he immediately relaxed his grip on me, but I only pulled away from him a few inches, just enough to look him in the eye.
I don't think I'm ever going to find anyone else like you again. Someone so patient, so faithful . . . someone who understands, who knows what I'm hiding inside better than I do myself, and who isn't afraid of me. I'd be a fool to let you get away.
I leaned towards him, but stopped in mid-motion as I felt that thing hiding at the bottom of my mind shift again, just enough to remind me that it was there. He may not be frightened of whatever this is, but I am. Still, I wanted . . . he wanted . . . we both wanted . . .
He tasted unexpectedly sweet, and fortunately, the moment my lips touched his, he took over, holding me in place with a hand at the nape of my neck and coaxing me to let his tongue enter my mouth. And the thing inside me didn't bother throwing in its two yen worth this time, either. My body was almost tingling, and I felt very . . . alive.
Could I love you? Dare I love you, when I don't really understand what's happening inside of me? Do you love me? Can I trust you?
I had already trusted him with everything else. Why did adding this as well make me so uneasy? Or had I just been pushing him away so often, and for so long, that it had become ingrained habit, retained despite my amnesia?
Maybe it was just as well that I had lost my memory. At least this way, he and I would be able to start over again with a clean slate.
Maybe it was just as well.
My head felt like it was about to split open, but I shook it anyway. "Not that one."
Watari's right hand, and the mouse underneath it, slid across the desk, banishing one picture and bringing up the next. "You know, Bon, there aren't really many more left. Another dozen or so, maybe. After that, it's drawings and textual descriptions only."
"Shit."
"Well, I don't think there's a Hellish ordinance that requires demons to report in to Meifu or the real world once a century to be photographed. The only ones we've got pictures of are those we've tangled with in the past eighty years or so."
"I'm going to find it, Watari. I don't care if it's been hiding in the demon world for so long that the computer doesn't even have a name for it. I'm going to find it, and I'm going to find Tsuzuki."
Watari made placating gestures. "I'm sure you will."
I hoped he didn't notice that I had my hands balled into fists. Maybe he didn't. They were below the level of the desk, and I'd been very carefully keeping them there. The truth was that I didn't have any confidence at all that we would find Tsuzuki. He could have been literally anywhere, and even the Gushoshin didn't seem to be able to find a trace of him. I'd finally pestered those two ridiculous birds so much that they'd thrown me out of the library, but I just hadn't been able to help myself.
At least the last time he disappeared, we had a loose end to tug at--that bastard Muraki. This time we don't even have that much . . . and the truth was that I was beginning to lose hope, and I had the feeling that Watari and Tatsumi and the Chief were too.
He should have made some sort of attempt to contact us by now, if he's anything like all right. Something is very wrong.
"Hisoka? Are you here?"
"He's back here with me, Tatsumi-san," Watari called back before I could reply.
The grim expression on Tatsumi's face was nothing out of the ordinary, nor were the papers he was holding, but my empathy chilled me before he was halfway across the lab, and I knew that this wasn't just another complaint about Tsuzuki's creative accounting practices. So I wasn't surprised when he said, "The demon has killed again," and dropped the papers on the desk beside Watari's mousepad. The topmost sheet had a photo paperclipped to it, showing a human body that had been thoroughly ripped apart. "Or at least, we think it's the same one, although it seems to have shifted its base of operations from Nagasaki to Tokyo. Normally, this would be outside your jurisdiction, but under the circumstances, the Chief has given you special permission to pursue the case."
I nodded. "When do we leave?"
"I've never been up here before, have I?"
"Not that I know of." Muraki had his arms wrapped possessively around my waist, indicating to everyone around us in no uncertain terms that I was his. The embrace was more protective than confining, though--I'd confirmed through experimentation that he would let go if I indicated that I wanted him to.
I shivered a little as he kissed the nape of my neck, just lightly. A day and a half of constant touching, of gentle courtship, was beginning to wear away at my resolve not to get more deeply involved with him until I understood what was lurking below the surface of my mind and why it made me so afraid.
Everyone must be staring at us, I thought, as Muraki began to suck on my earlobe. I mean, two grown men necking in broad daylight on the observation deck of the Tokyo Tower . . . I ducked my head, knowing that my face was probably bright red for the seventh or eighth time that day. When I'd agreed to this little sightseeing trip, I hadn't imagined that Muraki would get some sort of crazy thrill from coming on to me in public places.
"I hope you're aware that your embarrassment is more likely to attract attention to us than anything I might do," his voice murmured in my ear. "People usually see only what they want to see, but you are making it entirely too obvious what is going on here."
"It would help if you didn't love teasing me so much," I whispered back, and felt, more than heard, him chuckle. He did straighten up and stop what he was doing with his mouth, though, for which I was very grateful.
I stood there in the shelter of his arms and looked down at the city from the tower that shared its name. So many buildings, all shadowed by the reflection of my dark-clad form in the window of the observation deck . . .
I'd donned the dark suit and black trenchcoat like armour when they had arrived this morning, knowing before I even touched them that Muraki was right and this was the way I normally dressed. It was a choice of clothing calculated to keep the world at a distance, even with the tie only loosely knotted and the topmost button of the shirt unfastened.
My stomach growled, and Muraki smiled. "Perhaps we should go for lunch now. There's a restaurant that opened up recently, a few blocks from here, and I'm told that it serves the best chocolate cake in the city . . ."
"Sounds good." I'd rediscovered my sweet tooth within hours of waking up at Muraki's, and I still didn't understand how I'd managed not to get sick from eating an entire pie all by myself--Muraki had taken a slice, originally, but had ended up feeding it to me instead of eating it himself . . . Actually, I wouldn't have been surprised to discover that he'd planned it that way. "I don't suppose you'd care to join me in having some, this time?"
The arms wrapped around me tightened, and I knew I wasn't imagining the roughness in his voice as he murmured, "I have other preferences when it comes to desserts."
My eyes widened. Oh, gods . . . I forced myself to breathe deeply as my body responded to his closeness-- and most especially, to the hardness I could feel rubbing up against my buttocks--by . . . suddenly making my pants much too tight. I'm not ready for this yet. Even without the additional complication of whatever's going on inside my head. And I think I'm a virgin . . . I'm pretty sure I've never been with another man before, anyway. I know what he wants to do to me, but I don't have any idea how it would feel.
He let go of me with a regretful murmur of, "I think that was too much, too soon . . . I'm sorry, beloved."
I smiled at him. "It's all right. I understand. You've been waiting for such a long time, and it must be awfully frustrating that I . . . can't quite yet. I don't know if I could be so patient, in your place."
"I would wait a thousand years, if it meant that I could have you at the end of it."
Did he know how I shivered down to my very bones when he said things like that? Probably, judging from the way he was watching me. I'd discovered that Muraki wasn't above carefully phrasing the things he wanted to say for maximum effect, just like he enjoyed teasing, and being mysterious, and occasionally messing with other people's heads. I could understand why--as a strategy for keeping people from getting too close to you, gentle manipulation is effective and relatively painless to everyone concerned, although I was too honest to be comfortable with using it myself.
"So, shall we go?" Muraki held out his hand to me, and I took it, feeling my face heat up again with a light blush. I glanced around quickly, but no one seemed to be looking in our direction.
There were three other people in the elevator with us, and they didn't seem to notice that they were sharing the compartment with two men who were holding hands either. In fact, I'd noticed since we had left the house this morning that people tended not to notice me. Their eyes slid past me as though I weren't there. It was strange, and I didn't understand why it was happening. Maybe . . . subconscious magic? Some kind of protective camouflage? That felt . . . almost right.
The street outside was . . . not crowded, exactly, but not what I would have considered quiet, either. And yet, somehow, no one else seemed to notice the scream. No, that's not quite true. A number of people started when they heard it, then headed away from the sound at a slightly brisker walking pace than they'd been moving at before. My instinctive reaction, however, was to jerk my hand out of Muraki's and run toward the source of the noise, ignoring my companion's soft curse and the rapid footfalls that indicated that he was following me.
It was too late when I got there, of course. It seems like it always is, in some sense--I suppose it goes with the territory. This time was worse than most, though. I could sense that, even though I couldn't, just then, remember the other times.
The alleyway was all but carpeted in little gobbets of flesh, the stripped bones stacked neatly to one side, and I didn't have to gather it all together to be able to tell that not much of the body was actually missing. In fact, I was willing to bet that it was all there, somewhere. The air was thick with the stench of blood and other things even less pleasant. Whatever killed the poor bastard even ripped his intestines open and left them hanging from that fire escape over there . . . ick.
It couldn't have been the dead man's scream I had heard, surely. It had to be someone else who had found the body, and then run . . . Gods, gods, what could have done such a horrible thing?
"The last time I saw anything like this, it was a rather tasteless prank committed by someone a year ahead of me in medical school," Muraki said from behind me. "Of course, he started with a donated cadaver, not a live subject. Whoever it is hasn't been dead more than a few minutes--none of the blood has even started to dry ye--"
Seconds later, when he still hadn't finished the sentence, I had to ask, "What is it?"
"Look at the wall to your left."
I looked. Bricks . . . that fire escape . . . what was that? Red against brown, but not another one of the irregular splashes of blood that stained the walls lower down. Writing? I squinted . . . and then went cold all over.
"No . . ."
Muraki's arms wrapped protectively around me as I stepped back and almost overbalanced.
This can't be real. It just can't . . . but when I looked at the wall, the words were still there.
Asato Tsuzuki,
Find him and bring him to me, or I will continue to search for him on my own.
The signature was an intricate glyph that I didn't recognize.
"There isn't any need for us to stay here," Muraki murmured in my ear, "and in fact I had rather not be here when the police arrive, especially not with your name painted on the wall. There would be questions, and the fact that you have no identification would complicate matters. Please, Tsuzuki- san . . ."
I let him take my arm and tow me back in the direction from which we had come. It was taking all the concentration that I could muster just to put one foot in front of the other, because there was a fair-sized portion of my mind that was still occupied with screaming.
No, not again . . . blood on roses . . . dead because of me . . . fire and darkness . . . why do I cause so many deaths just by existing? I don't want this! I don't want it! WHY?!
"Tsuzuki? Are you all right? Tsuzuki!"
We were standing, I realized, just inside the mouth of another alleyway. Facing each other.
"I think I'm going to be sick," I muttered. "Who-- what--could possibly have done that? And why did it leave a note for me?"
Muraki hugged me again, and I snuggled up against him in a way that was becoming all too familiar, burying my face in the shoulder of his trenchcoat.
"It's difficult to be absolutely certain at this point, but I think he was killed by a demon--a true demon, not one of us. Either that, or someone wanted us to think that it was done by a demon. As for what the demon was doing there, or why it left you a message . . . I'm not certain, and I must admit that that troubles me. I wish now that I had stayed to investigate a bit when I found you in the river, although I doubt there was much to find in any case. Perhaps if I could have found where you went in . . ."
"Why would I have tangled with a demon?" I asked plaintively.
"Knowing you, you were most likely trying to protect a human." Muraki sighed and stroked my hair. "You have this insane tendency to throw yourself between total strangers and the possibility of supernatural annihilation. However, I hope that next time, you will stop and think before you start running toward the source of danger. Until you remember how to use your magics, or I can teach you how to defend yourself, you will be extremely vulnerable . . . and unable to help anyone else. I don't want to have to avenge you, beloved."
I couldn't detect the least note of sarcasm in his voice, but I still winced, realizing what might have happened if my mad dash toward the alleyway had caused me to arrive while the demon was still there . . . "I'm sorry. I'll try to be more careful."
"Will you be all right if I leave you here alone for a little while, Tsuzuki-san? There's something that I need to do."
I sniffled. "You'll come back quickly, won't you?"
"This shouldn't take more than a few minutes."
"Okay, then." But I clung to him a moment longer before letting him go.
I waited until I had turned a corner and was out of Tsuzuki's line of sight before I relaxed my hold on my temper. Humans scrambled out of my way as I strode along the street, eyes narrowed behind the glasses that I wore as protective camouflage rather than an aid to vision, hands hidden in my coat pockets so that only I knew they were clenched into fists.
How dare anyone cause my mate such distress? Tsuzuki was mine, and I was the only one permitted to hurt him!
Having the violet-eyed Shinigami for a mate was sometimes an exercise in frustration. He didn't-- wouldn't--understand what he was putting me through, damn him, with his fears and his constant refusal to consummate our bond. My instincts demanded that I shield him from outside influences until we were properly joined, so that no one could steal him, but with him, such a thing was impossible, and it was causing us both unnecessary pain.
I should just have torn his clothes off and taken him right there, in the alleyway. He would never know how close I had come to doing just that, with the scent of blood thick in my nostrils, exciting me. Judging from his behaviour over the past twenty-four hours, he might not even have been entirely unwilling to let me do it . . . but it would have meant tearing the delicate tissue of truth and lies that I had used to bind us together, and I wasn't ready to do that quite yet.
The police still hadn't arrived when I reached the blood-coated, flesh-strewn area of cracked asphalt, but perhaps that was because those who had gone there to investigate didn't want them there. It is appallingly easy to turn the attention of normal humans away from something you don't want them to see--in fact, it requires barely any magic at all.
I slid my hands into my coat pockets and leaned back against one of the last clean stretches of wall, waiting for them to notice me. Of course, my presence here would make them assume, no matter what I told them, that I was somehow involved in the killing, but it was too late to do anything about that now . . . and to be absolutely honest, it could be said that in some sense, I was involved, although not as the perpetrator.
It was the boy who noticed me first. "Muraki!" He stumbled backward two steps and nearly knocked over the EnMaCho division's secretary, who had apparently turned away from his survey of the scene to adjust his glasses. Well, with Tsuzuki absent, I suppose it's inevitable that they would have assigned that child a temporary partner. Still, the shadowmaster is not someone I would have preferred to meet here today.
"Good day, Hisoka-san, Tatsumi-san." I bowed politely. "I trust that I'm not interrupting anything." I did want to get back to Tsuzuki as quickly as possible, but there were certain forms that had to be observed.
"I should have known that you had something to do with this!"
Precisely as I predicted. The fool. "I regret to say that I was not responsible for whatever happened here--in fact, I am just as mystified regarding the identity of the perpetrator as I expect you must be, and furthermore, I do not appreciate it when creatures not under my control do things like this within my territory. It tends to attract unwanted attention." There. Hopefully, they would consider that a plausible reason for me to be hunting this demon, because I was not going to let them know that I had Tsuzuki. "I believe that places us on the same side, for once. Have you found anything?"
The same side?
I was careful not to give any sign of it through word or expression, but inwardly, I was seething.
The same side?!
The carnage at the scene of the demon's attack was disturbing me more than I cared to admit--another life snuffed out completely, another soul shredded--and my partner was still missing, and I was in no mood to deal with the man who had killed me.
"Do you honestly think we'd tell you if we had?" I asked.
"Perhaps not." Muraki was smiling, damn him--that charming, warm smile that made normal people like poor Tsubaki-hime trust him. "I am surprised, however, that Tsuzuki- san is not here, given that his partner is. I do hope that nothing has happened to him."
"That's our line," I snapped.
Tatsumi's hand closed on my shoulder and squeezed it warningly. If it had been Tsuzuki doing that, I would have argued, but in this case I thought it was safer to shut up.
Muraki and Tatsumi stared at each other for what seemed like forever. I could feel them sizing each other up. It was like a pair of cats deciding whether or not they would fight over this particular mouse . . . except that a fight between these two would cause a lot more damage than just a few bloodied scratches on the loser's face. Still, Muraki had backed down from a confrontation with Tatsumi once before . . .
Tatsumi cleared his throat. "Tsuzuki is missing. We think he may be badly injured."
Some expression flickered across Muraki's face and was gone again too quickly for me to read it. With anyone else, I could just have picked the emotion out of the air, but Muraki had always had a sort of . . . black aura . . . about him that effectively blocked my empathy. Even now, I didn't understand the man, and I doubted that I ever would.
"Does this--" The doctor's sweeping gesture took in all of the carnage that surrounded us. "--have anything to do with what happened to him?"
"It's likely that it does, yes." Tatsumi looked at me. I stared stonily back, ignoring the cue. In the end, Tatsumi sighed, gave in, and provided a quick verbal sketch of the mess with the demon. Muraki absorbed it in silence.
"It must be very frustrated, or very desperate," he said, calmly, after Tatsumi was finished. "This--" He waved his hand, indicating the mess on the ground again. "--is not something that a demon would do while attempting to feed. It kept tearing at this man's body long after he was dead. I wish we knew what--or whom--it's searching for. The easiest way of convincing it to leave would probably be to give it what it wants."
He stared for a long moment at the message painted on the wall, then shook his head slightly. "I hope you will pardon me for leaving you so abruptly, but I had plans for today, which this matter has interrupted. I may attempt to contact you if I discover anything that I believe may be of use. Please excuse me."
Another bow, and then he was walking away. I gritted my teeth, feeling Tatsumi's hand on my shoulder, and let him go. I'm no match for him in a stand-up fight in any case. Galling to admit, but true. Muraki was ridiculously powerful for a living man, and between that and his eyes, I was almost certain that he wasn't really human.
One day, I vowed, staring at that white back. One day, I'm going to find out the real reason why you did it, why you left me to linger in pain for two entire years, and then I'm going to make you understand what it felt like. But the words fell emptily away into the silence inside my mind. I'd sworn that particular oath several times in the past, and was no closer to achieving it now than I had been when I had rescued Tsuzuki from the inferno of the doctor's secret lab.
Tatsumi was staring thoughtfully at the message painted in blood on the wall. "I wonder how much of that was the truth," he murmured. "I hadn't considered that the demon might be frustrated, but that does seem to match what we're seeing here."
"So you're going to believe him? Ch'." I shoved my hands into my pockets and turned away from my temporary partner. He didn't try to stop me, even though his hand still rested on my shoulder.
"His theory matches the facts. Until we come up with a better one of our own, I see no harm in adopting it. And . . . I'm certain that he would tell us the truth if he considered it to be in his best interests. However, I'm fairly certain that he was lying about what he was doing here."
"So you do think he was responsible for this somehow."
"It's a possibility . . . but up until now, his murder victims of choice have always been women. Why would he suddenly switch to killing men?"
"How should I know?" I jerked my shoulder out from under Tatsumi's hand.
"We'll have to talk this over with the others, but I think . . ." Out of the corner of my eye, I saw light flash off Tatsumi's glasses as he adjusted them again. "I think that, most likely, Muraki called up something that got away from him, and now he's trying to stop it before it makes too much of a mess and draws the attention of the mundane authorities to him. But how that relates to Tsuzuki, I'm just not certain. That message on the wall is the only part of this that doesn't make any sense."
"Maybe it's just there to confuse us," I suggested.
"Demons don't think that way."
"But Muraki does."
There was a moment of silence. Then Tatsumi waved his hand, and the writing on the wall vanished, leaving no trace behind.
"We don't need the mortal police asking questions about an Asato Tsuzuki, especially under the circumstances," he said, thin-lipped. "There's nothing further we can do here. Let's go back to Meifu."
The servant stopped outside a closed door, bowed, and left me. I hesitated, then opened the door without knocking. He was the one who called me up here, so he should be expecting me.
There were no lights on inside this room. The curtains on the window were open wide, but that only provided a moderate amount of light, since the day had turned grey and rainy not long after we'd left the Tokyo Tower. Muraki was sitting on a window seat, one leg half-curled under him, with a book in his lap and an ashtray on the sill beside him. I nodded to him and then, curious, paused to look around the room, because it hadn't been included on my tour of the house yesterday, and the interior was . . . unusual, to say the least.
Most of the walls had shelves on them, stretching from floor to ceiling, and on those shelves, carefully displayed, were hundreds of antique porcelain dolls. Their glass eyes seemed to watch me as I took a step forward into the room and shut the door behind me.
The wall to my left, however, was bare of shelves. There was a door piercing it that had to lead to some other room that I hadn't seen yesterday either, since Muraki hadn't spent much time showing me this end of the third floor and I would have remembered a blackened oak three-quarter-height door with a lockplate that massive if I'd seen the other side of it. Beside the door was a glassed-in cabinet holding another doll on the upper shelf and several large books on the lower. Beyond that, an antique saber hung slantways on the wall with some kind of gun crossed over it, and beside those . . . framed photographs? I went over to look at those, because they were the first images of people that I had seen in that house. Some of the rooms downstairs did have paintings in them, but they were all landscapes or still lifes, never depicting human beings even from a distance.
Old black-and-white photo of a youngish couple with a little boy . . . the man had a stethoscope slung around his neck, so these were probably Muraki's grandparents, the physician and his gardener wife, with the son who had eventually become Muraki's father. Another similar grouping in a more recent colour photograph, someone who might have been the little boy from the first picture as an adult with his arm around a beautiful woman who shared Muraki's striking pale colouring, and standing in front of them, a solemn, silver-haired little boy who could only have been Muraki himself, age six or thereabouts, holding what looked like one of the myriad of antique dolls that lined the walls here.
The next photograph over had to have been taken when Muraki was fifteen or sixteen. It showed him again, and his father, and another youth of about his age, with medium- brown hair and a cloudy-intense gaze that made him look like he'd been drugged. The photo itself had been deliberately damaged, with a surgically precise cut that sliced across the neck of the nameless young man. Disturbing, that.
The next picture had to have been taken within a year of the previous one--Muraki again, with another dark-haired young man of about his age, and a girl with black hair that fell almost to her waist. It was the only one of the pictures that showed Muraki smiling.
There was one more picture, smaller than the rest and probably as old as the first one. It showed only one person--a young man lying in a hospital bed, forehead and one eye obscured by bandages, tubes snaking into the front of his garment and disappearing somewhere inside. I flinched back, wide-eyed, as I recognized my own face.
"I should have taken that one down before allowing you in here." Arms twined around my waist again in a familiar, almost comforting, gesture.
"No, it's all right. I was just surprised, that's all. I don't think I quite believed that . . . it was all real . . . up until a moment ago. But it is, isn't it?" I touched the glass protecting the last photograph. "I really am ninety years old, and you really have been looking for me for all this time. I only hope you can be patient with me just a little longer." I hesitated, then added, "Kazutaka . . . who are the people in these other photographs? I think I understand the first two, but not these . . ." I brushed my fingers against the frames of the two most recent ones.
"This one--" He obligingly indicated the undamaged photo. "--is of myself and Oriya, when we were in our last year of high school together. Oriya was--still is--my closest friend, the one who helped me through the transition when I discovered my true nature."
"And the girl?"
"Ukyou . . ." Muraki sighed. "I suppose I would have had to tell you about her sooner or later. She is . . . my fiancee."
What?!
Muraki's arms tightened around my waist before I could even think of pulling away from him. "She was dying even when that photograph was taken, although we weren't aware of it until several years later. A hereditary wasting disease. When that was discovered, it became out of the question for the two of us ever to marry. Even more out of the question, rather. She has no idea what I am, and would never be able to share me with you. I've almost broken off the engagement several times, but each time, Oriya asked me not to. He's of the opinion that it would kill her if she discovered that I no longer had . . . feelings for her."
"Did you ever love her?" I asked softly. The answer to that question suddenly seemed very important.
"Before I knew of you? I'm not certain. It's difficult for me to recapture any of my emotions from that time. I discarded them too many years ago, along with everything else in me that was . . . human."
Truth again, unexpectedly. It would have been so much easier to say nothing at all, but he was so thirsty for information, and so I told him truths that no one save Oriya had ever heard before, truths that would have no connection to his past and so be unable to wake it. He'd never forced me to tell him the truth before . . . No, that wasn't true. I had said more than I meant to that one night in Kyoto, too, explained my feelings for him even as he had flinched away from me in horror and disgust.
Because I love you, I want to tear you apart. I want to pile corpses at your feet.
Rage, frustration, lust, insane protectiveness . . . the desperate need to make him accept me, to prove my worthiness as a potential mate. Emotions that he should have shared, but did not. And so I had to coax, tearing myself apart inside instead of him. Proving my worthiness to join with him in a different way, by demonstrating that I was capable of self-restraint. So painful and strange.
I did not know how much longer I could successfully imitate human tenderness, but I knew I had to continue to try, or risk losing everything.
"So you don't consider yourself to be human?" I asked.
"Not anymore. I think I wanted . . . to save myself pain. There are things that simply stopped hurting after I let go of that part of myself."
"I can understand that, I think. Nobody wants to be hurt." I hesitated, trying to think of something to change the subject to. "So, will you ever introduce me to this . . . Ukyou . . . or is this one of those things where the wife isn't supposed to know about the mistress?"
Muraki made a soft sound that was almost a laugh. "It would be pointless, in any case. She entered the final stage of the disease about two months ago, and when it reaches that point, it starts affecting the mind. The last time I went to see her, she didn't even recognize me. If you feel a need to know about her, ask Oriya when you meet him. But enough about that. I asked you to come up here because I wanted to discuss the demon."
I let him lead me over to the window. In passing, I noted that the saber hanging on the wall still bore an ancient bloodstain at the tip, and that the doll that had been put away so carefully inside the glass case was damaged, porcelain face cracked from top to bottom. I shivered. Something about the things in this room spoke of past tragedy, but Muraki clearly wasn't ready to explain them--not yet, at least. I had noticed that he had changed the subject without naming the youth in the mutilated photograph, and I suspected that the omission had been deliberate.
We sat down together on the window seat. Muraki's hand went instantly to the cigarettes lying beside the ashtray, but after a moment, he shook his head and put them back down without lighting one. I hadn't even known that he smoked. Instead, he picked up the book he'd been reading when I came in, a big leather-bound thing that might have come from the glassed-in cabinet with the doll, and opened it.
"Unfortunately, if there exists such a thing as a complete list of demonic sigils, it's in the possession of the inhabitants of Meifu and thus inaccessible to us," he began.
"In other words, you haven't been able to identify it yet," I said, wondering why hearing him speak the name of the land of the dead made me feel so strange. Meifu was a myth, wasn't it? Or perhaps it was only as mythical as demons, or as the rose that stood in a vase on my bedside table.
"It doesn't appear on any of the partial lists available to me, and while there is one other thing that I could try, it will have to wait until after dark. Perhaps, if the Shinigami identify it . . . but I have no reason to believe that they will share the information with me."
I blinked. "Shinigami?"
Muraki gave a quick description of what had happened in the alley after he had left me.
"It sounds like they don't like you very much," I said, frowning.
Muraki shrugged. "Hisoka Kurosaki holds me responsible for his death, for reasons I must admit I cannot fathom, and Seiichirou Tatsumi and I have been at odds since shortly before my brief visit to Meifu last year."
"What were you doing there?"
"Looking for you, as it happens."
"Oh," I said in a very small voice.
"In any case, it would be unsafe to attempt an attack on the creature until we know precisely which demon we are dealing with. Lesser demons I can handle easily enough--they are quite stupid creatures, really--but a battle with one of the more powerful ones would be . . . unsafe. Still, I don't doubt it will return to trouble us, since it seems oddly fixated on you, and I wanted to give you these."
"These", as it turned out, were several small slips of paper with unfamiliar characters inked on them. My fingers tingled slightly as I accepted them.
"These are magical, aren't they?"
Muraki's mouth tightened. "I had hoped that, once you had them in hand, you would remember, but it would seem not. Those are fuda--charms designed to control and channel a particular type of magic, one that I was regrettably never able to study. Those particular fuda happen to also be yours."
"Mine?" I frowned.
"I had them from you a few months ago, and this is the first opportunity I've had to return them. I had hoped that they would be some kind of defense for you."
I sorted through them more carefully, trying to make some sense out of the strange writing on their surfaces. Still nothing . . . until I touched one in particular, and even then the reaction wasn't quite what I expected. I felt a tingling in the skin of my chest, and a red glow showed itself through my shirt.
I unknotted my tie, Muraki reached for me, and, by unspoken consent, we both began unfastening buttons. When we got my shirt open, we discovered that the area of my chest that was glowing wasn't just random. An intricate design about the size of the palm of my hand was neatly centered a short distance below my collarbones.
"Almost directly over the heart," Muraki murmured, examining it with narrowed eyes. "A fairly simple curse, intended to seal your power away. Interesting. First it curses you, then it leaves a message, written in a dead man's blood, telling you to find someone . . . I thought your amnesia was caused by that trauma to the head and your desire to escape your past, but now I'm beginning to wonder if it might not have been deliberately imposed from outside . . ." A pale finger traced the outline of the curse, never quite touching my skin. "I'll have to break this if I want you to be able to defend yourself, but it would be easier if we left it until tomorrow morning, I think."
"Will breaking the curse restore my memory as well?" I asked. I'm not sure that I want that. That brief, flickering image of blood on roses that I had seen as we left that alleyway, and the feeling of guilt that had twisted my stomach, had made me begun to suspect that my past held something horrible.
"Possibly, but I doubt it. Even assuming that your amnesia is completely spell-induced, the spell in question would have to be interwoven with the curse somehow for a breakage of the latter to have any effect on it."
I breathed a sigh of relief. Muraki looked surprised. Then, slowly, he smiled. I think he might have said something else if we hadn't been interrupted by a knock on the door.
"Your pardon, master, but supper is ready to be served," one of the servants reported from the other side.
My stomach growled. Muraki silently rose from his seat and offered me his arm, and I, just as silently took it.
We went downstairs together.
I chalked the pentagram firmly in the center of the slab of slate on the floor, then set a lit candle at each point. Two things lay in the center of the encircled star--a dead mouse, throat neatly slit, and a scrap of paper on which I had drawn the best facsimile I could manage of the sigil from the alleyway, the one that also centered the curse on Tsuzuki's chest.
I lied to him again. Well, it had been bound to happen sooner or later. The curse on my violet-eyed Shinigami was, in actuality, ridiculously weak, at least to someone attacking it from the outside. I could have broken it with little more than a snap of my fingers. But just in case breaking it really did restore his memory, I had decided to put it off. To give us one more night, one more chance, before he had to remember that he hated me.
The incantation was only six words, including the name. I took my time, making certain to get them all right. Demon-summoning is a chancy pastime even for those of us with blood-ties to the darker realms, and I preferred not to make an error that might result in my calling up a creature other than the one I had intended to summon.
It was really quite a pathetic beast, nothing more than an imp, at the absolute bottom of the hierarchy of hell, and no danger to me even if I made the beginner's mistake of leaving a gap in the pentagram. It took shape only reluctantly until I added an additional, reinforcing word to the spell of summoning. Fully materialized, it crouched in the center of the pentagram, all bat wings and malevolent red eyes, and stared sullenly up at me.
"Look at the paper by your left hand." There was no need for me to waste words impressing upon the miserable creature the fact that it was in my power. I had summoned it many times before, and it knew that I was the master here. "Name for me the one whose sign is written there."
"I do not know."
I glared at it and half-raised my hand.
"Master," it added reluctantly. "I truly do not know."
"Then find out," I told it. "And discover also what it is doing in this world."
"As my master commands."
"Then take your price and go. I will summon you again when the time comes."
I didn't turn my back on the pentagram until the imp had vanished completely, and even then I did not extinguish the candles. That, too, was a beginner's mistake. I would snuff them only after the sun was up and I was certain that any malevolent influences remaining in the room had departed.
So. Enough. Time to return to my empty bed and dream of amethyst eyes for one more night.
Except . . .
What was that, brushing against my mind?
There was something inside the house with me--some unexpected, subtle, and undoubtedly dangerous spell. I had never bothered to ward the house or grounds very heavily, since until very recently, all my enemies had been distinctly mundane, and I had thought that hanging the property about with sorceries might attract unwanted attention. There were some defenses against gross physical intrusion, of course, and against the more obvious varieties of attacks, but this was something different.
And there was a completely defenseless Shinigami lying asleep in bed on the floor below me.
I ran for the stairs, hoping that I was not already too late.
--The broken body of a slender, dark-haired youth, bearing the deep marks of a cleaver on shoulder and side, my hand all bloody as I raised it to my mouth--
I meant to protect you! Why did this have to happen?
--Fire, fire everywhere, and my throat raw from smoke as I called for the dragon hanging in the air above me to burn more, to burn everything--
A creature like me doesn't deserve to continue to exist.
--The heft and exquisite balance of the knife as I rammed it through white cloth and on into the pale flesh of his side, blood spurting out and slicking my hand until it slipped from the handle--
No. No!
I woke in a cold sweat, heart pounding.
I am a murderer.
I scrubbed my hands almost frantically over my face, over my unhuman eyes, in a pathetic effort to cleanse myself, but the thought remained.
I am a murderer. That boy . . . I can remember the way the blood felt on my hands, the way it tasted, the way I enjoyed the taste . . . and Muraki . . . Oh, gods! I kill people who've never hurt me for no reason at all.
How could even the darkness lying hidden inside my soul want to kill Kazutaka, who was being so kind to me, so warm and protective? How could I . . . ?
I looked down at my hands, and for just an instant, I seemed to see redness splattered across my palms. Then my vision blurred, and I realized that I was crying.
I can't hurt him. I won't. Not my Kazutaka. I . . . how can I . . . If I leave, if I run far away to somewhere where I can't reach him and he can't find me, maybe then he'll be safe . . .
I scrabbled frantically at the blankets that still covered my lower body, then, once free, reached for my pants, which were folded neatly over the back of a nearby chair.
If anyone asks, I'll just tell them that I'm going for a walk, and then I just . . . won't come back. It should be easy. I pulled my shirt on, fastened it most of the way up, decided not to bother with a tie or my jacket. I didn't need either of them, not with my trenchcoat waiting for me in the front hall.
I bit my lower lip as I glanced around the room. I didn't want to just leave without any explanation at all--it would seem ungrateful, and Muraki deserved better, after all the care he had given me--but . . . Ah, there, on that little table tucked away in the corner. Paper, and a pen. That would be sufficient. I scribbled a note and laid it in the middle of the unmade bed. One of the servants ought to find it when they came to clean the place up. Now all I had to do was get to the front door without anyone asking too many questions and making me lose my nerve.
The house seemed deserted as I padded down the hallway to the stairs. Moonlight slanted through the window at the end of the hall, making little crosshatched patterns on the dark carpet and highlighting a handful of dust motes that hung in the air. Everything was utterly silent and still, making me feel like an invader.
I went down to the ground floor, almost jumping out of my skin when I heard the grandfather clock in the hallway near the dining room strike twelve o'clock. Midnight. Far too late for any of the servants to be up, then. I relaxed a little bit.
I retrieved my coat from the hall closet and my shoes from the entryway, then went to work on unlocking the door-- and the damned thing had three locks, one of them quite stiff, so that was a more complex task than it might otherwise have been.
"Tsuzuki-san."
I flinched and slowly turned, removing my hand from the doorhandle. Muraki was standing behind me, barely an arm's length away.
"I . . . had a bad dream, and thought a walk might help settle me a bit," I said. That sounds really pathetic . . .
"Asato . . . it is genuinely painful for me to watch you trying to lie. You are so terribly bad at it."
I think that's the first time he's ever used my first name . . . to my face, at least. I could have objected to the intimacy, but I liked the way he said it--like a caress . . .
"I was running away," I admitted. "I . . . really did have a bad dream. A very bad dream. Of . . . killing. There's something wrong with me, I know there is, and I'm afraid that I'm going to . . . harm you . . . if I stay."
His eyes--especially the false right one--caught the moonlight streaming in from the window above the door and held it, glittering silver. "So that's what I sensed."
I blinked. "I don't understand."
"About ten minutes ago, someone cast a spell in the general direction of this building. Apparently, it was the demon trying to make you do something . . . foolish, by planting those images in your mind and then intensifying your emotional reaction to them."
"Then the things that happened in the dream weren't real, weren't . . . memories." I leaned back against the door, knees suddenly weak with relief.
"What did you dream?"
I told him about the boy and the cleaver (which prompted no reaction from him), about the fire, and, reluctantly, about the knife. As I finished speaking, I realized that he had one hand pressed against his side at roughly waist level, right where I had stabbed him in the dream. My eyes widened. No . . .
"It was real," I said in a flat voice, feeling my shoulders slump.
"Some of it was, at least. You did stab me and then try to burn a building down around us in the spectacular and unusual fashion you just described a few months ago in Kyoto. You may blame me for that, if you wish. I was the one who left the knife not three feet from your bedside, even though I knew your state of mind at the time." Muraki smiled suddenly. "Actually, I was . . . flattered, in a way, that you considered me worthy of joining you in death, but there were still things that I needed to accomplish in my life. As for the boy . . . I don't know for certain what might have happened there, but I do know that you were possessed for a brief period when you made the mistake of tangling with another demon last year. Even if the event wasn't a complete fabrication on this demon's part, I doubt you were the one responsible for what happened."
"But I tried to kill you, and you still brought me here . . . looked after me . . ."
"Asato . . ." I hadn't seen him moving closer to me, and so I was surprised when I felt his hands on my arms. The moonlight shaded his hair silver and platinum, made him look colourless, ethereal, like a ghost or a spirit . . . and completely beautiful. I found myself licking dry lips as he looked at me. "You know how I feel about you. Do you seriously think that, having found you in distress, I would have abandoned you? Even I am not so much of a monster as to do that."
I turned my face away from him, pressing my cheek against the door. "You're not a monster at all."
"Am I not?"
His lower body held mine pinned to the door as he bent his head and kissed the exposed skin of my throat, in an echo of that tactile memory that had surfaced shortly after I had woken in his arms. And I felt much the same way as I had during whatever incident had created that memory--angry at him for forcing the issue, and frightened of potential consequences, and aching for him to go farther, to rip the clothes off my body and just . . . touch.
"St-stop," I choked out.
His thigh made a deliberate motion against my groin, sending a spike of pleasure through my body that made me grind my hips helplessly against him. "Asato, I warned you before: You are a terrible liar."
"I'm sorry. It's just that you're going so fast and I . . . don't think I ever have before. Done this, I mean." There was enough truth in the words to make me blush yet again. I seemed to spend a lot of time doing that whenever Kazutaka and I were together.
"This?" He feathered more kisses along my throat and jaw.
"Made love to another man before. I'm not even sure I've ever done it with a woman."
Soft laughter. "We've hardly gone far enough to call it 'making love'. Or was that an invitation?"
I was still trying to think of a reply when he took hold of my chin and turned my face toward him. Before I even knew what I was doing, I had parted my lips to let his tongue thrust deep inside my mouth, and my reluctance was beginning to evaporate.
I'm afraid of shadows. The thing inside my head is just . . . there. Harmless, as far as I know, and if it were dangerous, he would know about it too, and be worried, which he clearly isn't. And it's hardly surprising that he's going a bit fast--he's been waiting for this for seventeen years, and I've been teasing him for two days solid. Without meaning to, admittedly, but still teasing. It's incredible that he's been able to restrain himself this lo-- Oh. Mmmm. That feels good. That feels really good.
I adjusted my arms and shoulders to let my trenchcoat and the shirt that Kazutaka had just finished unbuttoning slide off, leaving my upper body bare, and let him explore the exposed skin of my chest. I moaned and arched my back when his mouth found a nipple and left me reeling with another unexpected stab of pleasure.
After a moment, he straightened up again and pulled me against him, chest to chest and groin to groin. I moaned again as my erection brushed against his, even though there were still several layers of cloth separating us.
"I think we should continue this elsewhere." He nipped at my shoulder, and even the small pain of his teeth felt good. "Otherwise, I am going to end up taking you right here, on the floor, and that would be less than comfortable for you."
I managed to make some sort of sound that could apparently be interpreted as agreement, because we were surrounded by white light for an instant, and when it cleared, we were somewhere else. A bedroom. Probably Kazutaka's, since it was half again the size of the guest room he'd put me in. I didn't have the time to notice much else about the place, though, before I was being pushed backward onto the bed, with Kazutaka straddling my thighs and touching me all over, stroking, exploring my body . . . all except one particular part, which was making its need to be touched again known with increasing urgency. Even now, he was teasing me, damn him.
I glared at him as he rose off me, suddenly afraid that he was going to end this no matter what he said, then relaxed a bit as he unfastened my pants and said, "Lift your hips." A moment later, the rest of my clothes were lying on the floor, leaving me completely naked to a predatory gaze that made me blush bright red again. He remained standing, unbuttoning his shirt with deliberate slowness and easing it down off his arms and shoulders, revealing an expanse of pale skin and toned muscle. His nipples were an unexpected pale pink, and my attention was drawn to them as he returned to the bed.
"Beautiful."
That one word was the only warning I had before his hand touched my penis, stroking it lightly from root to tip. A soft whine escaped me, and I closed my eyes and spread my legs, offering him fuller access, offering him anything he wanted so long as he kept on touching me there. My entire body jerked as he squeezed my erection gently, then kissed the tip of it. One hand stayed there, going back to stroking lightly, while the other slid further back between my legs, urging me to lift my hips again, to expose more of myself. I responded with a will until his hand was all the way back between my buttocks. But the moment that the tip of a finger teased at the opening there, something happened.
It had only been stirring in its sleep before, when Kazutaka had kissed me in the garden. Now it was awake and enraged, seeing through my suddenly open eyes, feeling with my body, using my hands to grip Kazutaka's shoulder and upper arm, digging my nails into his skin with enough force to draw blood.
Kazutaka didn't flinch. Instead, his eyes met mine, and he slowly and deliberately raised the hand that wasn't pinned underneath me to the scratches on his shoulder, gathering a bit of his blood on his fingers, then reaching toward my face and smearing the redness across my lips. My tongue darted out to taste, and I felt whatever the thing was that had control of me now react with approval. It raised my hand to my mouth and bit hard at the narrow web of skin between thumb and forefinger, then held it out to Kazutaka, who took me by the wrist and licked a drop or two of redness away before the wound had a chance to close. Offer and acceptance. I felt the thing that had taken me over relax, letting my body become truly mine again . . . mostly. I could still feel it there with me, watching, but it wasn't trying to control anymore. Mostly. Fear should have deflated my erection, but instead, I was in more urgent need of release than ever, and I instantly raised my hips again when Kazutaka moved his pinned hand, stroking the little pucker in the same gesture that had made my co-walker react so violently.
There was a small jar of some sort of oil, with a strong musky scent, standing on the bedside table, and Kazutaka dipped his fingers into it and began to ease one inside me. I wriggled a bit, trying to make myself comfortable with this strange new feeling. No, I've definitely never done this before. It felt . . .
Ooooh . . .
The tip of the finger inside me had just grazed something that sent a pulse of exquisite pleasure through my body. I found myself pushing back against those invading fingers, ignoring the small discomfort of being stretched, trying to recapture that sensation, hearing Kazutaka's soft laugh.
I moaned in disappointment as he repossessed his hand, then had it muffled by another kiss.
"Do you want me to finish it?" he asked.
"If you don't, I'm going to kill you." I wasn't sure whether it was the other speaking, or myself. Possibly it was both of us at once.
Kazutaka rose from the bed again and, turning his back to me, began to strip his pants off. I admired his body, the smooth pale skin that was just as clean of blemishes as my own, the leanness of him, the firm muscles . . . then he turned, and I felt my lips part and my tongue run slowly over them, as though the other inside me was contemplating a feast. That . . . inside me? How can we make it fit?
Quite easily, as it turned out. My body opened itself of its own accord to accept Kazutaka's erection, and the whatever-it-was that watched through my eyes breathed a sigh of satisfaction. It was wonderful to be filled by him--still strange, but entirely pleasurable.
The tentative thrust that followed startled a cry from me when it made his penis rub firmly against that spot inside me that his finger had brushed so lightly before. I flexed my hips and met the next thrust with a movement of my own, pleasure running through me like a shock.
The rhythm we set was fast and rough, and I cried out again when his hand returned to stroking my erection. My entire body felt like it was primed to explode, and having his hand suddenly shift to squeezing instead of stroking was all the encouragement it needed.
"K-kazutaka!" Vision whiting out, body beginning to convulse, I reached out blindly toward him and felt him grip my hand and hold it while I was wracked with spasms of unbelievably intense pleasure. Somewhere in the middle of it, I felt him thrust two or three more times, then stiffen and shudder as his own climax washed over him.
The real world returned very slowly. Kazutaka pulled himself out of me and lay down beside me, cradling me in his arms. I watched as he licked the hand that had been stroking me clean, taking my essence into himself just as his was already inside of me. I was too tired to speak. Instead, I kissed him one more time, tasting the oddness of my seed on his lips, then drifted off to sleep, content in the knowledge that we were together.
With shaking hands, I locked the door to my apartment. Then I collapsed to the floor, wrapping my arms around my knees, and wept as waves of intense, sexual pleasure washed over me.
Tsuzuki, how could you? How could you?
My partner had gone renegade. I couldn't think of any other reason for the sensations vibrating along the empathic link that joined us.
You . . . betrayed us? Betrayed me?
I bit my lip as I felt phantom fingers press inside my body, but a thin cry still escaped me. No! NononononoNO! This was . . . it was too much like . . . that night, under the red moon, when Muraki had . . . I could feel the energies of his curse throbbing against my skin as I scrabbled around inside my mind, trying to make it stop, to shut it off, before it drew me completely into the memory of reddish darkness under the sakura tree and hands playing over my skin, coaxing a purely physical response from my bewildered body even as my mind screamed and my heart hammered in terror . . .
Snap.
I leaned back against the door and took several deep breaths, swallowing against the taste of bile and feeling the warm tingle as my lower lip healed itself where I had almost bitten right through it.
Think through this logically, I told myself, pushing the memory of sakura under a blood-coloured moon out of my mind. It wasn't easy, but I'd had a lot of practice. So. Tsuzuki was having sex with someone, probably another man, and he hasn't tried to contact us. Is there any possibility he was being raped? I wished with all my might that I could lie to myself about that one, but I knew that my partner had been a willing participant in whatever had been going on. So either he had been bespelled or brainwashed into thinking he wanted whatever was happening when he really didn't . . . or he didn't want to come back to Meifu, and was counting on us thinking that he was dead. Dead-dead, that was, not living the odd life-in-death of a Shinigami.
I had to admit that the first person that popped into my mind when I tried to come up with people who might want to trick Tsuzuki into having sex with them was Muraki, but the truth was that Tsuzuki was a very attractive man and just about anyone might have taken a fancy to him for no reason at all. Hell, he'd been propositioned outside that gay bar not ten minutes before the demon had attacked us . . . And anyway, if Muraki did have him, we'd probably never find him--the mad doctor was subtle and twisted and knew we'd be looking for him, so he'd have him well-hidden.
As for the other possibility . . . I couldn't imagine what kind of person could make Tsuzuki voluntarily break his ties with Meifu. My partner might be able to do a really impressive imitation of a childish goofball, but I knew that underneath it all, he was solid, loyal, and honourable. He wouldn't knowingly and willingly betray us.
I used the doorknob to haul myself to my feet. So Tsuzuki is, most likely, being held somewhere against his will without being aware that it's against his will . . . I'm going to have to tell Tatsumi and the chief. They're still hoping he'll come to us, and I don't think that's going to happen. Tentatively, hoping that Tsuzuki and whoever-it-was were finally . . . finished . . . I reached inside myself again, trying to gauge my partner's emotional state.
I found nothing, not even the odd, dim feeling that I thought meant that he was asleep.
Dead?
I throttled down the initial panic reaction. Surely I would have felt something if he had died. No, this had to be my fault. I had to have ruptured the link during my frantic efforts to stop sharing Tsuzuki's erotic experiences, and I had no idea whatsoever how to go about restoring it.
The chief isn't going to like this.
With a heavy heart, I unlocked the door and went out into the hallway, headed for his office.
I woke to a feeling of warm pressure against my lips and opened my eyes to see a familiar face very close to my own.
"Good morning, Kazutaka."
It wasn't a dream. Almost impossible to believe, given how many times I had dreamed similar things . . . but here he was. With me. My mate.
"Good morning, beloved." I pushed myself up on one elbow and winced as sunlight struck me full in the face. Then my field of vision narrowed sharply as the pupil of my left eye contracted, and the pain went away.
"You're not really a morning person, are you?" my violet-eyed Shinigami asked. Teasing me gently, as he might one of his friends.
I smiled at him. "I suppose not. Sunlight makes me feel . . . uncomfortably exposed."
Had I imagined the waking of his true self last night? No, there were still healing scratches on my shoulder, although they would be gone in another hour or two . . . and if I looked very carefully, I could detect something, a hint of darkness, lurking in those amethyst eyes. It was there, inside him, but somehow not integrated with his human half.
How was that possible? The rift within me had never been so deep . . . but then, I had been an adolescent when my true self woke, and my Asato was approaching the century mark after seventy years of undeath as a Shinigami. And he had been fighting the demon within him his entire life, as far as I knew. Was I seeing some sort of multiple personality disorder brought on by a trauma experienced in my grandfather's day?
"What are you thinking about?" A hand gently caressed my face, my shoulder, my arm.
I shook my head. "I promised to break that curse for you this morning, didn't I?"
"It can wait until we have a shower and some breakfast, can't it?"
"Ah, but Asato . . . we may be in the shower for a very long time, and this shouldn't take more than a moment or two." I didn't really want to do it at all, but with his powers sealed and a demon hunting him, he was at too high a risk of getting himself killed. And even if his memory returned, the point at which that would have been a complete disaster had passed last night, when he had tasted my blood and accepted me as his mate. Now even if the human part of him drew away from me in revulsion, the demon within would force him back to me, even if it took a century.
"All right, then, if you think it's so important."
We sat facing each other, and I placed my hand on his chest, palm flat, and spoke the words that should have made the seal visible.
A few red sparks glittered between my fingers, then guttered out.
I frowned. "It's gone, but . . ." How? It hadn't been any of my doing, and it had been one of those spells with all of its strength concentrated in one direction--weak from the outside, but nearly unbreakable from within.
Nearly unbreakable.
I looked at Asato thoughtfully, remembering the magnitude of the magical explosion that had destroyed most of the EnMaCho building in Meifu when I had driven him berserk with rage and despair.
"I think you broke it yourself," I said. "Last night. While we were both too . . . preoccupied . . . to notice."
"I didn't know that was possible."
"I would have thought it . . . very unlikely." I underestimated you. You're far stronger than I thought you were, but you hide it even from yourself. You're far more worthy of me than even I knew. "In any case, now that that appears to be taken care of, why don't we have that shower and that breakfast?"
The neon signs that decorated the building on either side of the street, and the headlights of the cars that coursed along the black valley between them, kept the night from ever being truly dark, and the sidewalk was well-peopled for this hour of the night. Tokyo was, as the cliche had it, a city that never slept. Which, in a sense, made my task all the harder.
We didn't even know for certain if the demon would make its next kill here, although the three other deaths in Tokyo to date formed a ragged pattern of almost equal spacing headed in this direction. And we certainly didn't know if we could stop it . . . but we had run out of other ideas. At least it was possible that we would learn something by confronting it.
It would have been so much easier if Tsuzuki had been here, but the report Hisoka had delivered last night had quashed my last hope of that. Tsuzuki wasn't coming back until we found him, and that might take a very long time if he didn't want to be found.
Tsuzuki . . .
It took conscious effort to keep my hands from balling into fists. Tsuzuki with a lover. Hisoka had been blushing and stuttering as he had admitted that. Held against his will, or abandoning Meifu . . . no, I should at least try to be honest with myself. What really disturbed me was that Tsuzuki had always seemed so innocent and fragile inside--an appearance that had only been reinforced when Muraki almost broke him--that I had never been able to imagine him going to bed with anyone . . . and now he had and it wasn't me.
It. Wasn't. Me.
It was difficult to admit that those feelings were even there, I had repressed them for so long. I prided myself too much on being controlled. Not cold or emotionless, but controlled. Perhaps too controlled. I had known Tsuzuki for years, ever since he had first come to Meifu, and I had been too controlled to make him an offer . . . and now it was too late.
Keep your mind on what you're doing, I reminded myself. Try to look like a victim. You're supposed to be bait.
This was exactly what Tsuzuki had been doing right before we had lost him. If I let the demon take me, would it send me wherever my . . . friend . . . had gone? Or would Watari, who was following me at a distance, lost in the crowd, be able to stop it? Just the two of us were probably no match for it, I had to admit, but I'd had to refuse Hisoka when he had offered to come with us, on the grounds that the demon might recognize him and sheer off.
It was difficult to tell with all the other noise present, but had a set of footsteps behind me just fallen into rhythm with my own? I forced myself to continue walking, to not look behind me. It was an exercise on much the same order as that of not thinking about a white elephant. I could almost feel someone's-- or something's--eyes boring into my back, and the space between my shoulderblades was itching.
There. An alleyway. I turned to the left, still walking briskly. Another left, and I was standing between the backs of two large buildings, invisible from the street. Now I dared to stop, and turn.
There was someone following me. Those footsteps were far too clear and loud to be coming from the street. I tensed as a figure came into view--a young man, shorter and slighter than myself, with shoulder-length hair and wearing a bulky leather jacket. If he had been a little less pretty, I would have thought that he belonged to some kind of gang, but as it was, he just seemed like a rich boy trying to look tough. I expected him to walk on past the mouth of the second alley, but instead, he turned to face me.
"You had some business with me, dead man?" And he looked at me with glowing yellow eyes.
I forced myself not to look surprised. Hisoka described it as winged and vaguely equine--has it possessed someone? "I was looking for you, yes."
"For what purpose?"
A deep breath. "I want you to stop the killing."
The alleyway echoed with a demon's laughter. "And why should I?" I could feel its power pushing against me. It's stronger than Saagatanasu was. I don't think even Tsuzuki could take this one without help--I don't stand a chance. It doesn't look good even if I can keep it distracted until Watari gets here, but I have to try.
"If you stop killing people, we'll help you find who- or whatever it is that you're looking for." The words tasted bitter, but I couldn't think of anything else to say, anything else that might interest it.
It laughed again. "Can you track a man based on the fourth-hand scent of his magic, Shinigami? I think not. I myself will not know the one I seek until I can goad him into attacking me."
"And you think this is the way to do that?"
"Oh, the killings have nothing to do with my search, except peripherally. I am not Saagatanasu, little Shinigami. I cannot waste the time required to take over the shells of creatures from this world, but in order to maintain myself for more than a few hours without such a vessel, I must feed frequently."
And, like most demons, you feed off human life, I completed. "If there isn't anything I can offer you that will convince you to stop, it's my duty to force you to stop."
It smiled. "Do you honestly think that you have the power to defeat a prince of Hell? If so, I wish you luck, because that's the only thing that could conceivably save your life."
Invisible hands slammed me back against a wall, and I gritted my teeth in agony as my glasses shattered and my ribs snapped like so much kindling. Then the force was gone again, and I fell to my knees. I could taste blood on the back of my tongue.
"Your name." Speech was agonizing, but I still somehow managed to force the words out. I am, as many have observed, a relentless man, and I wasn't going to waste this opportunity, wasn't going to come away from this confrontation empty-handed. Especially not now that this thing had given me wounds that would take hours to heal even for a Shinigami. "Tell me your name."
The demon laughed. "Are you hoping to achieve power over me that way?"
"Your name," I repeated, raising a shaking hand and somehow forcing myself to concentrate enough against the pain to make streamers of shadow coil around it.
"Ralatenalan." It was still smiling, damn it, and the name meant nothing to me, but I couldn't manage to do anything more. My vision was getting blurry--blurrier, rather, given that I'm nearsighted and really don't see all that well without my glasses--and breathing was agonizing, requiring a high level of concentration. I coughed, and almost blacked out as the pain spiked. At some point while I was fighting not to faint, I heard it leave.
Just concentrate on staying alive, I told myself, hugging my torso with both arms in an effort to support the shattered bones as they began to knit. I did get its name, and that's the first step to defeating it. If it had any weaknesses, Meifu would know of them, and now that I knew its name, we would know which records were relevant.
"Tatsumi!"
Watari, or at least I assumed it was Watari, knelt down beside me, spreading his arms, and I collapsed against him, still clutching my ribs.
"It got away," I managed to say. "Its name is . . . Ralatenalan . . ."
Darkness.
The room tucked in behind the one with the dolls was oddly shaped, like a wedge, but with the narrow end blocked off by a single floor-to-ceiling bookshelf that sagged slightly under the weight of dozens of huge leather-bound tomes and several scrolls in fabric cases. At the wide end of the wedge, beside the door, there was a desk and another set of shelves that held any number of random oddments--paper, ink, and brushes, candles and candle-holders, at least three knives in different shapes, sizes, and materials, a jumble of natural crystals, jars of dried herbs, some laboratory glassware, and, on the bottommost shelf, a small cage holding seven common house mice. The room was windowless, and presumably unheated as well, because it felt like it was several degrees colder in here than it was outside. I rubbed my arms and shivered, wishing yet again that I'd brought my suit jacket.
Kazutaka either didn't notice how cold it was, or was used to it. He was in his shirt sleeves, kneeling near the center of the floor beside the room's only other unusual feature--a large slab of smooth black stone, some ten feet square and perhaps an inch thick, that lay flat in the middle of the floor. He had a piece of chalk in one hand, and was sketching something on the black surface.
The things surrounding us, I knew, were the remnants of Kazutaka's experiments with magic, most of which he freely admitted to have been dead ends. What we were up here doing right now had to do with one of the ones that hadn't been.
The easiest way to get information on a demon is to ask another demon. It had all seemed so logical when he had said it, when we were lying in bed together early this afternoon. I didn't feel nearly as happy about it now, while preparing to summon a minor demon of our own, as I had then, but I couldn't quite bring myself to tell him I was having second thoughts.
He knows what he's doing, I told myself, not for the first time. The-other-inside-my-head seemed to think so too, or at least it wasn't trying to protest my lover's actions.
I still wasn't used to that, the feeling that there was something else living inside my brain and looking out through my eyes. It had been quiet ever since I had woken up this morning, but I knew it hadn't gone away, and I suspected it would be there for the rest of my life.
Kazutaka put the chalk down and examined his diagram for a moment, then lit the five candles that had been standing to his right. Then he rose to his feet and went over to the nearer set of shelves, picked up one of the knives in his right hand, and thrust his left into the mouse cage to retrieve one of the squirming rodents. He carried the little creature over to the stone slab, then efficiently slit its throat. I flinched.
"Did you have to do that?"
"Yes. Summoning a demon requires that you make an offering to it. Fortunately, for such a minor demon, a mouse is a sufficient sacrifice. If I wanted to summon one of the great nobles of Hell, I would need to kill at least one human being, and probably several."
I swallowed. "Oh."
"Asato . . . I told you before, it is not necessary that you be here. If any of this makes you uncomfortable--"
"No," I said instantly, interrupting him. "No, it's all right. I want to be with you." Ever since we had first made love, I hadn't been comfortable letting him out of my sight, and while he hadn't said so in so many words, I had a feeling that demon summoning was dangerous, even when you were just dealing with a minor imp. I don't want to lose you.
Kazutaka bent down and deposited the dead mouse in the center of the design he had been sketching, then set the candles neatly around it so that they described a regular pentagon. He stepped back, nodded to himself, and spoke a short phrase in a language I was completely unfamiliar with.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then there was a sharp pop! and the flames of the five candles turned blue. The bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling went out in a shower of sparks.
"Asato, get out."
"Wha--" I began. Kazutaka whirled to face me, and I had never seen such an expression on his face before. His good eye was like ice, his eyebrows drawn tight together, and he was frowning deeply.
"Something has gone wrong. Get out now-- you don't remember how to use your powers, and if I have to divide my attention in order to protect you, it will put my life at risk as well as yours."
I nodded sharply, swallowed, and tried to unlock the door. "It won't open!"
Kazutaka's reply was phrased in the sort of gutter language that I wouldn't have expected a man who normally spoke so formally and politely to know. He turned back to face the center of the room, keeping his body between me and the darkness hovering there . . . a darkness that had somehow acquired a pair of yellow eyes. And from the heart of the darkness, a voice spoke.
"So, you are the one who set that imp on me. It is the last spell that you will ever cast."
I smiled at the indistinct dark mass. "Overconfidence is a weakness," I said, and called.
I didn't really expect the gryphon-beasts to do it any damage--for one thing, I wasn't even certain that it was really, physically there and not using some sort of communication spell, and for another, they weren't really strong enough to do much damage to a major demon, which, unfortunately, appeared to be what we had here--but I did expect them to distract it for a moment or two while I teleported Asato and myself out of there. Instead, they vanished into the darkness, and a mere instant later, chunks of meat that bled smoke were flung back out at us. Asato flinched back, but I stood my ground while the bits of dead gryphon-beast evaporated at my feet.
And once again, the darkness failed to do what I expected, which was counterattack immediately. Instead, it remained silent and motionless for several moments, yellow eyes studying us.
"I must be certain," it said at last. And only then did the attack come.
Too strong! I knew it at once. My personal protections were intended to deflect the powers of Shinigami and spiritually-endowed humans, not those of major demons. But there was no time to worry about that, or about how badly I would be injured, and there was no question of dodging. If I moved, Asato would take the attack in my stead, and I wouldn't permit that to happen. Asato was mine, and I would not allow any other creature to touch him, even if I had to kill myself to prevent it. And so, instead of moving, I closed my eyes and braced myself, preparing to accept the pain.
But the blow never fell, and a moment later, I opened my eyes again to discover a curving wall of faint light positioned an arm's length or so in front of me. I risked a quick glance over my shoulder, and saw Asato staring down at the slip of paper he held in his hand with a bewildered expression on his face, as though he couldn't understand what it was doing there. Then he looked up, and I let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. There was no sign of returning memory in his eyes, only confusion.
"Thank you," I said softly. "You may just have saved both our lives."
I could feel the magic flowing through me and out through the paper in my hand, but I still didn't understand how I was doing it. I had fished the fuda out of my pocket on instinct, because I was desperate to protect Kazutaka. I smiled tentatively, because the warmth in his eyes told me I had done the right thing.
A sudden smashing blow against the barrier I had somehow established drove me to my knees. Kazutaka knelt down beside me, taking me in his arms, and I leaned against him.
"Asato, do you trust me?"
"Always," I replied, vaguely surprised that he had to ask.
"Good." The syllables that followed were in no language that I knew, like the demon-summoning incantation that had gone so disastrously wrong, and murmured so softly that I could barely hear them anyway. My eyes widened as I felt something move . . . inside me, inside my mind, and I almost dropped the fuda I was holding. It wasn't the familiar co-walker that had been haunting me all day, it was . . . something else.
<<Keep your mind on the barrier or we're both dead!>> Kazutaka's voice. Then this fierce thing moving inside me was him. I relaxed instantly. <<I wish I could think of some other way of doing this, but the only attacks of mine that I can think of that might harm it would level this house and most of the neighbouring ones, and I really would prefer to save that for a last resort. Lend me your power, please, Asato. I need access to the forces which you control.>>
I said I trusted you. Take whatever you need. I would have spoken the words aloud, but I felt Kazutaka acknowledge them before I had a chance to do so.
At first, he didn't seem to be doing anything, but then I realized that my free hand was reaching inside my pocket, pulling out the rest of the fuda and spreading them on the floor beside my knee, and since it certainly wasn't me doing that, it had to be Kazutaka. He sorted through the slips of paper for a moment, then selected one and brought it up to chin level in front of us.
"I humbly entreat the twelve gods that surround me." I didn't fight the impulse to speak the words, or the feeling of energy draining out of me as Kazutaka used my power to activate the fuda. "Come forth, ice wind, white tiger of the North . . . Byakko!"
Just outside my shield, the air rippled as something stepped out through a hole in the universe--a white tiger almost the size of a horse. The room seemed to shrink as the new arrival growled and lashed its tail at the demon.
"So you want to fight me, do you, little lamb? Well, then. Send your pet here, and I will deal with it."
Byakko drew in a deep breath, and I saw a sphere of light gather in front of it as it began to exhale. Behind me, I could feel Kazutaka concentrating on something, the form of some spell, drawing recklessly on my power along with his own in order to fuel it. Suddenly, the room was obscured by a flare of white light, and when it cleared, we were . . . somewhere else. Somewhere dark, and outdoors. The moon overhead, half- hidden by cloud, didn't even offer as much light as the blue- burning candles, so I really couldn't see much of anything, but I could smell vegetation and hear running water.
"Hey!" Lights came on to our left, with a human figure silhouetted against them. I squinted dazzled eyes, trying to make up some kind of detail. Kazutaka let go of me and stood up, carefully keeping a hand on my shoulder, and turned to face the silhouette, and the voice said, "Oh. It's you."
My lover smiled. "I apologize for dropping in on you like this, old friend, but we were in something of an awkward situation."
I heard the hiss of metal sliding against some other material, and realized, as the silhouetted figure brought something long, narrow, and slightly curved up to rest against his shoulder that he had just sheathed a katana. "We?"
I swallowed and rose slowly to my feet to stand beside my lover. "Uh . . . hello."
"Muraki, this is . . . !"
Kazutaka's grip on my shoulder tightened slightly. "Asato, this is Oriya Mibu, an old friend of mine. Oriya, this is Asato Tsuzuki . . . my mate. I should warn you that he is, at the moment, suffering from amnesia."
"I can see that we have a lot of catching up to do," the dark shape mused. "Come inside, both of you--you'll end up catching cold standing in the garden in your shirtsleeves at this time of night, and I know that one of you, at least, makes a terrible patient."
I had to watch my feet carefully as I followed the path and climbed the stairs to the porch on which Oriya was standing, because the light still wasn't very good and I was beginning to realize that I was very, very tired. Kazutaka had to steady me at one point when I didn't see some small object lying across the path in time--I'm not even sure what it was--and I felt a slight tremor in his arm as he did so. He's just as exhausted as I am, and trying to hide it . . . from me?
"You two look like you just walked here from Tokyo," our host observed as he opened the door for us.
"That might have been easier," Kazutaka said. "I teleported both of us, using Asato's power to augment mine. We need to get him to bed--he's all but sleepwalking even now."
"So I see. Here, let me take a bit of his weight--" My arm was drawn up and across the shoulders of someone too short to be Kazutaka, and I let myself lean on him.
My vision was completely blurred out now--even Kazutaka was only visible as a pale something-or-other off to my left. I think we went along a hallway and through another door, but I'm not sure. I did muzzily realize that the two of them were laying me down on a mattress of some sort on the floor, and I knew that it was Kazutaka's hands that stripped off my shoes, loosened the waistband of my pants, and covered me over with a blanket. His lips brushed against mine, and the last thing I heard before I lost my hold on reality altogether was his voice whispering, "I have to talk to Oriya for a little while, beloved, but I'll be back before you wake up. Sleep well."
I swallowed another mouthful of coffee, fighting to keep from gagging. I've always preferred tea by a considerable margin, but I'd decided to opt for the beverage with the higher level of caffeine, in the interest of keeping myself awake long enough to explain what was going on.
"And so that is where matters presently stand," I concluded.
Oriya, seated across from me, shook his head. "I swear, sometimes I don't know if you're a genius or an idiot. He doesn't remember anything about you?"
"As far as I can tell, no. The demon blocked his memory most thoroughly, and I would be much happier if I knew why, especially since it looks like it then deliberately dropped him in my lap." I turned the nearly empty cup, then set it down firmly on the low table between us.
"I don't suppose it could be you that it's looking for, could it?"
I almost laughed. "I suppose that is remotely possible, but I can't imagine why it would be interested in a self- taught sorcerer who is almost three-quarters human. Much more probable that it is looking for Asato himself, and playing with him for some reason of its own."
"Well, you'd know all about that, I suppose." Oriya gave me a familiar exasperated-affectionate smile. "Ch'. What are you going to do when your boyfriend snaps out of it and remembers what you did to him and his partner and all those helpless girls?"
"It hardly matters." The coffee, I discovered, tasted even worse lukewarm, but I forced myself to finish it nonetheless. "He is my mate now. The bond between us is such that, even if he hates me, he will have no choice but to eventually return to my side, just as I had no choice but to pursue him in the first place."
"Then you have what you wanted."
What I needed. "Yes."
"Do you love him?"
"Love?" I laughed harshly. "Do you think I would cheapen what I feel for him by calling it love? You, of all people, should know how much I hate that word."
"You used it to him once."
Because I love you, I want to rip you apart . . .
"So you were listening at the door that night. I only used it to try to make him understand. What I feel for him is so far beyond the weak, twisted emotion that humans call love that--"
"Whoa, there. Easy on the humans-are-inferior thing." Oriya looked at me thoughtfully, then added, "At least he's real to you. That's more than I had hoped for, to be honest."
"Real to me?" I had the odd feeling that I should have known what he was talking about, but the late hour and the mental fuzziness that came with exhaustion was preventing me from bringing that understanding into focus.
"Kazutaka . . ." A soft sigh. "I probably know you better than anyone else now living, and one of the things that I know is that most people . . . aren't people to you. They're dolls, or animals. Playthings, sometimes sources of food, but not worthy of your care or respect unless they're useful to you. I suppose it has to do with the psychology of demons. No one at all was real to Saki, as far as I was ever able to tell."
I tensed, eyes narrowing. "What is going on with you tonight? First you ask me if I love Asato, and now you bring up that name . . ."
"Well, this is the first chance I've had to talk to you since your boyfriend's Shikigami blew up your lab here in Kyoto, and I suppose I've been thinking a lot. Not to mention that I'm just a little angry at you for letting me think that you were dead for almost six months. And I think that maybe you need to talk about that brother of yours."
"I've put Saki's interference in my life behind me," I said coldly. "His head was destroyed in the fire. He's beyond my reach."
"That's a relief . . . but I wonder if it's really entirely true."
"My revenge against Saki was merely the means to an end." Not that Oriya would ever entirely understand that. Humans didn't normally have to prove themselves worthy of a mate by violence.
Oriya shook his head. "I can see that there's still no talking to you about some things. Go to bed before you land facedown in my lap. We'll talk about what you're going to do next in the morning."
I nodded and rose to my feet, padding down the corridor to the ground-floor bedroom at the back of the building where I had left Asato. When I arrived, I discovered that my beloved was still lying on his back in the position in which Oriya and I had left him, too tired even just to roll over onto his side. And too deeply asleep to notice when I slipped into bed beside him and curled my body protectively around his, thinking exhausted, fractured thoughts.
We've had so little time together, so very little time . . . Tell me, beloved, do you "love" me? Damn Oriya for putting that question into my head. Love is a lie, a cheap human facade laid over the desire to abuse and dominate. Worthless illusion. And yet you believe in it, don't you? My poor Asato. You could bleed your heart out, trying to turn that lie into truth.
We held the meeting in the infirmary rather than the conference room, because the demon had turned Tatsumi's ribs into a bunch of bone toothpicks, and Watari wasn't letting him get out of bed yet.
"Ralatenalan," the blond scientist said as he seated himself beside me. "Are you sure that was the name, Tatsumi- san? Really, really sure?"
"That's definitely what it said. It could have been lying, I suppose." Tatsumi looked unfinished without his glasses. He was half-sitting, half-lying in bed, propped up against a mound of pillows.
"I really hope it was." Watari looked more serious than I had ever seen him. "When I couldn't find anything in the computer, I thought it had given you a completely fake name, but around three in the morning, the Gushoushin found this."
"This" was a scroll that looked like it had to be centuries old. Watari was cradling it gently in his lap, careful not to touch the yellowed, crumbling edges. His touch as he unrolled it was incredibly delicate.
"Hisoka, is that the creature that you saw?"
The drawing was crude, slightly faded, with two holes where the eyes should have been, but there was no mistaking the shape--sort of like a winged anti-kirin. I nodded.
Watari's shoulders slumped. "That's what I was afraid of. According to this thing, Ralatenalan is the personal messenger of the king of the demons, and a major power in the demon world in its own right, although it has no fixed place within their hierarchy. It never leaves the demon world except on its master's business, never takes possession of human or animal bodies or invests itself in an object, and always returns home when it's finished running whatever errand caused it to leave, which is the only bright spot I can see in all this."
"On the other hand," Chief Konoe put in from where he was seated, a little apart from the rest of us, "that means that it's the king of the demons who's really looking for . . . whoever this thing is looking for. I don't like that. Does it have any weaknesses we can exploit?"
"If it does, they're not mentioned here." Watari re- rolled the scroll, once again taking infinite care with it. "The Gushoushin are still looking for more information on it, but to be honest, I don't think they'll find much. It seems to only show up in Chijou or Meifu once every few hundred years. Guess the demon king doesn't often need to have personal errands run in the other worlds."
"So we're back to the strategy Muraki suggested." Tatsumi shifted restlessly, then winced as he jarred his ribs. "Give it what it wants, and hope that it goes away."
"Which would be a lot easier if we knew what it wanted," I pointed out. "And I still think that bastard Muraki knows more about what's going on than he's let on. Could he have summoned it somehow?"
"Not without going on a killing spree that even the human police would notice . . . and even then, he wouldn't have been able to do more than invite it to cross over," Tatsumi said. "No one can control a demon with that degree of power, not even Muraki. Calling it up would have been extremely reckless . . . and whatever else the good doctor may be, he is not a reckless man. No, the only thing linking him to this, other than conjectures about who was sleeping with Tsuzuki last night, is his presence in that alleyway."
I winced back from him as the phrase conjectures about who was sleeping with Tsuzuki last night passed his lips, because even though none of it showed on his face, Tatsumi's emotions were seething. We'll get him back in one piece, I wanted to promise, but I couldn't, and it wouldn't have solved the real problem anyway.
"I hate to say it, but Muraki may even be a potential ally in this." Watari mumbled the words to the wall to Chief Konoe's left.
"No," I snapped. "He'd betray us to the demon without a second thought if it offered him something that he wanted."
"Still, it can't hurt to talk to him," Tatsumi said thoughtfully. "Preferably in some very public location in broad daylight. He did promise us an exchange of information, and I have no other ideas right now."
You must be joking! I glared at my temporary partner. Nearsighted blue eyes met mine without flinching. At least he wasn't an empath, so he couldn't tell that underneath my bluster, I was almost frightened enough to wet my pants. Muraki unnerved me even at the best of times, and the thought of deliberately going out and looking for him made me feel downright ill.
"Then it's settled," Konoe said. "Unless the Gushoushin find something more, Tatsumi and Watari will talk to Muraki and see if he has anything useful to say."
"I'm going with them," I almost growled. "Someone has to keep an eye on the bastard and make sure he doesn't try anything."
Arms around my waist, a body pressed up against my side. Skin separated from mine by at least one layer of cloth along the entire length of my body.
Why did I go to bed with all my clothes on last night?
Then I remembered. The summoning. The demon. The fight. Our unexpected dislocation. Oriya.
I don't even know where we are. Not in Tokyo anymore, judging from what they said while I was wandering around like a zombie.
I stretched, preparing to get up and have a look around, but the moment I moved, Kazutaka tightened his grip on my waist and threw a leg across mine. He's even possessive in his sleep, I thought with a fond smile. Every bit as possessive as I would have been of him, if I hadn't been convinced of his absolute devotion to me. It would have been an irritating trait if he hadn't been so conscientious about not letting it dictate his actions.
His shift in position had left his morning erection pressed against my thigh, and I wiggled my arm out from where it was pinned between us to stroke it gently. I felt the pattern of tension in his body change as he woke, the arm that had been wrapped around my waist shifting so that he could massage the growing swell at my groin.
No words were exchanged as I wriggled out of my pants and rolled over onto my stomach, spreading my legs, although Kazutaka did laugh softly as he first penetrated me with a fingertip and I pushed back, trying to get more of him inside me even though the slender digit wasn't nearly enough to satisfy. Damnit, don't make me beg . . .
I made a soft throaty sound as he finally penetrated me properly, then bit down firmly on my lower lip. I don't know how thick the walls in here are, or who might be on the other side, and the last thing I want to happen is for us to be interrupted now, so I had better not make too much noise . . . but staying quiet was difficult, because having him inside me felt so good . . . I dug my fingers into the mattress. My entire body was flexing now, demanding harder and faster and more, and Kazutaka obliged almost as though he could read my mind. It's obvious that we were always intended to be together, isn't it? Why else would we fit together so well? Oh yes that's . . . Just a little more . . . KAZUTAKA!
"I could get used to waking up like that every morning," I said afterwards, as he pulled himself out of me. "It's . . . very nice." Then I yelped as his fingernails unexpectedly etched a path across the small of my back.
"I could almost see your tail wagging." Kazutaka sounded amused. "I wouldn't have expected you to turn out to be such a sensualist, given the way you behaved toward me when we first met."
"Such a sex addict, you mean." Definitely an addict. I'd give up a chocolate cake--hell, an entire meal, complete with dessert--if it meant that I could spend ten extra minutes with your cock up my ass . . . I used the coarse words deliberately, inside my own head, and was surprised to discover that they didn't cheapen my memory of the act at all. "It's a good thing that I heal so fast, or I probably wouldn't be able to walk." And even as it is, I think I'm getting permanently stretched back there . . . and I don't think I care about that, either. "Now . . . do you know where we can find breakfast?"
"Asato . . ." Kazutaka shook his head, but was interrupted by a knock at the door before he could say anything else.
"Doctor . . . Are you awake? Oriya-sama asked me to bring up a tray for you and your friend." A young woman's voice.
"Leave it outside the door," Kazutaka told her. "We'll get it in a moment."
I sat up, shifting a bit to one side to avoid the wet spot I'd left on the bedding, and realizing that it had been pretty pointless to try to keep quiet when whoever did the laundry was going to know soon enough what had happened here anyway. "Was that Oriya's wife?"
"He isn't married." Kazutaka was pulling on his trousers from yesterday, which he had left beside the bed, neatly folded. "That was one of his employees."
"He runs a business out of his home?"
"It's a tradition of his family. Excuse me for just a moment." He went and fetched the tray. I grabbed at a pair of chopsticks before he had quite set it down, and my lover smiled with familiar amused indulgence. As usual, he ate relatively little- -far less than I--which meant that a modest breakfast for two became a nice substantial meal for one.
"That was good," I said twenty minutes or so later, patting my stomach. "So what now?"
"A bath, I think. And then I need to talk to Oriya again, to see what we can do about getting you a passport."
I blinked. "Why?"
"Because leaving the country is our best chance of escaping the demon for a while. It would be difficult for it to follow us to Europe or America. If necessary, we'll find some way to smuggle you out, but it would be easier just to falsify the documentation."
"Oh."
Oriya caught up with us while we were in the bath-- soaking together in a hot tub big enough for five or six people, to be exact, after having put some scented bath oil to a use for which it had probably never been intended. I really was turning into some kind of crazy sex addict. Having Kazutaka four or five times a day, every day, seemed like barely enough. I wouldn't even have objected if he had suggested that we permanently attach our bodies together surgically . . .
Why did that thought suddenly give me the cold shivers?
Our host walked right in and set a pile of cloth on a shelf near the door, then came over and sat on the edge of the tub. I blushed a bit. Other than Kazutaka, he was the first person that I could remember ever seeing me naked. Still, it could have been worse. I liked the dark-haired man, with his knowing eyes and wry mouth, and he kept those eyes focused on our faces, not what was below the surface of the water.
"You two are going to ruin my reputation," he said.
"Not unless your girls gossip a lot more than I think they do," Kazutaka replied. "I didn't expect you to be looking for us so early."
Oriya shrugged. "I thought you could both use a change of clothes. The kimono is mine, but it should fit you, Tsuzuki-san. The girls should have your clothes clean for tomorrow."
"Thank you," I said.
"And?" Kazutaka prompted after his friend had been silent for a moment. "You didn't come in here after us just to talk about laundry."
"I got a phone call this morning. From a Seiichirou Tatsumi."
Where have I heard that name before?
"Oh? And what did Tatsumi-san want?"
"Your home address. I gave it to him, but I didn't tell him that you were here, or that Tsuzuki-san was with you. I figured you'd want to have a little breathing space to think about how you wanted to deal with them."
"I don't need to plot about this, old friend. I'm a victim this time. Completely innocent." For some reason, Kazutaka seemed to find that funny, but Oriya was frowning. "If he calls again, tell him that I will join him for dinner tonight."
"Here?"
"No. I don't want you to get any more involved than you already are. Choose a place for me. Make certain that it's public enough that he won't be uncomfortable about meeting me there."
"All right."
Oriya was rising to leave when Kazutaka added, "I'm sorry. That night . . . I promised that I would never ask you for anything else again, didn't I?"
"You also promised to disappear," the dark-haired man said. "I don't mind you breaking the other promise as long as you make sure not to keep that one."
I leaned back against Kazutaka's shoulder as the door closed behind our host, but even snuggling up with my lover wasn't enough to make me feel better. "Kazutaka . . . How well do I know this Tatsumi person?"
"What makes you think that you know him at all?" Kazutaka wasn't actually frowning, but his good eye was narrowed, clouded.
"The fact that Oriya said specifically that he didn't tell him that I was here. Obviously, if Tatsumi had never heard of me, he wouldn't care where I was, so he either knows me, or knows of me." Don't patronize me. I'm not a child, and I'm not stupid, even if my memory is gone.
My lover sighed. "Seiichirou Tatsumi is a Shinigami, an undead enforcer who works for Meifu's Shokan bureau. I believe I've mentioned him to you before. You and he are acquainted, on friendly terms I believe, but I have no idea to what extent, since he and I do not get along. I do know that he was one of the people who pulled you out of the fire on the night that you stabbed me."
"But I thought that was you." To the extent that I had thought about it at all, that is. It was inconceivable that Kazutaka might not have tried to rescue me.
"I almost wasn't able to save myself. I had lost far too much blood, and I blacked out for the better part of a minute, right there in the middle of the fire. When I regained consciousness, you were already gone, and I only just managed to teleport myself out of there before the ceiling caved in and crushed me."
My fingers found the scar on his side. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I lost nothing of any value on that night." He lifted my hand to his lips, kissed it, and then began to slowly lick the water from my skin, sucking on each fingertip.
"You want to talk to Tatsumi about the demon, don't you," I said as I watched him. "Do you want me to come with you? Assuming you meet him at all, that is."
"Asato . . . I always want to have you with me, but in this case, I think it would be better if you stayed here. If the demon should choose to come to this place while I am gone . . . well, there are a few old protections here, left over from the days when a temple stood on this site, but they are too time-damaged to be trustworthy, and Oriya has never learned to use what spiritual power he has offensively. Even without your memory, you have some magic. It could make the difference between life and death for him and the others here."
"I understand." Most of my fuda had been left behind at Kazutaka's, but I still had a few, and if he honestly thought I might be able to do some good . . . well, there was no question of what I should do, was there?
The house was big and solid and looked like it was probably a hundred years old. The yard was fenced in, and not with some insubstantial little property-marking fence, either. It was against that six-foot-high stone wall that Tatsumi and I were currently leaning while Watari used the intercom beside the gate to argue with someone inside in an attempt to obtain admission.
So that bastard Muraki is rich, too. Well, at least now I knew where to find him. I suppose that's a good thing.
Tatsumi still had one arm in a sling. Watari had pretty much ordered him to keep it there, because of the way his collarbone had been broken. Shinigami bones mend quickly, but the blond still wasn't sure that Tatsumi's were back up to full strength. I was surprised that Watari had let my temporary partner come with us at all, to be honest, but when he'd tried to leave him behind, Tatsumi had just given him a thin-lipped glare, and that had been that.
Watari glared at the intercom one last time and turned to us. "Apparently Muraki isn't in. He left rather abruptly some time last night, taking a house-guest of his with him. There's no one inside but the servants, and they don't seem to know where he's gone, or why, and they won't let us in to look around."
I was ashamed to discover that I felt relieved when he said that. No Muraki . . . I wouldn't have to go through another confrontation with the man who had killed me. Not this time.
Wait a minute. A house-guest?
"I'm going inside to have a look around," I said.
"Bon--"
"I want to know who else was here," I explained. "I don't think Muraki gets many guests. The person the servants were talking about might have been the demon, or even--" I closed my mouth firmly before I let Tsuzuki's name escape. Tatsumi didn't need that right now. "I'm going in."
Tatsumi gave me a Look over his glasses, but it was Watari who sighed and said, "We're not going to be able to make you change your mind, are we? Let's get this over with."
Glance up and down the street to try to make sure we weren't being watched. Become invisible and fly over the wall. Try all the ground-floor windows until we found one that wasn't locked that opened into an unoccupied room--some sort of formal parlour, from the looks of it. And then, still invisible, prowl stealthily around, looking for clues.
I jumped as something brushed against my elbow, but it was only Watari trying to get my attention without making any noise that might alert the servants to our presence. I raised my eyebrows and he pointed up at the ceiling--clearly, he'd found something upstairs. I waved my hand in a "lead on" kind of gesture.
It was a nondescript door at the far end of the topmost floor of the house, unexceptional except for the fact that the knob almost burned me when I reached out to open it.
"Bon?"
I cleared my throat. "Something terrible happened in this room, once." The impressions I had gotten from the door were confusing and very old, but the pain and terror had been clear.
Watari reached past me and turned the knob for me, and we stepped inside.
So this is where Muraki keeps his doll collection. Their glass eyes seemed to stare at me accusingly. You should have been one of us, but you refused him . . .
I shook my head, forced myself to look around and notice something other than the hundreds of staring, empty eyes. Except for the ashtray on the windowsill, the room was immaculately neat.
"It's the door in the far wall," Watari said quietly. "It's locked from the inside, and as far as we can tell, there's no other way into the room. Tatsumi's gone to have a look."
And it was at just that moment that the door opened.
"It's his workroom," Tatsumi said. "And I think you should both come and have a look."
Watari went first. Just outside the door, I stumbled, and reached out a hand to steady myself against a glass case I had vaguely noticed earlier.
Even through the glass, it burned, drawing me into--
--"Mother? Mother!"
There was so much blood. It stained the carpet and dyed her dress and her pale hair a vivid red. The damage was . . . oh, gods . . . eyes gouged out, each finger and toe lovingly severed then tied off with a tourniquet of her own hair to keep her from bleeding out completely, the tendons at the back of each knee slashed, tongue torn out so that the only sounds she could make were animal, grunts and whines and moans . . . and despite it all, she still lived.
We had heard the screams, of course, but she often screamed. She had been insane even before she had married my father, and the passage of time had made her worse instead of better, until she had to be kept locked up in this room with her dolls. Our dolls.
Who could have done this? She might have been mad, but she was also harmless as long as she was properly supervised.
"Mother, it's Kazutaka." I sat down beside her, took her upper body into my lap. In her madness, she had hurt me over and over again, but she was still my mother. "It'll be all right--I'll find some way to make it all right--" I was babbling, and I knew it. It was obvious even to a high school student who hadn't yet begun his premed training that there was no way to fix this, that she would finish her life as a maimed, mad thing . . .
Her mouth moved, and even though only a grunt came out, I could read the words her lips formed. Kill me.
The knife lay right beside my knee, where the torturer had discarded it. I wrapped my hand in a fold of her dress so as not to leave any fingerprints on the haft. I might not be a doctor yet, but I had read over my father's and my grandfather's anatomy texts, and I knew where the body's major arteries were located. One quick slash was all it took. So easy. It was only after her breathing stilled that I laid her gently back down on the floor and rushed off to the nearest bathroom to vomit.
It was half an hour or so before they found us. I sat on the floor beside her cooling body, the doll that she had flung aside when she had been attacked cradled in my arms. It was broken, but that didn't seem to matter. So was I.
"Kazutaka--" My father stood in the doorway. After my name passed his lips, the only thing he could seem to do for a very long time was gape. I saw his mouth form my mother's name, but no sound came out.
It was only when he snapped out of his daze and stepped forward that I realized that Saki was standing behind him. My half-brother's face was predictably expressionless except for the little half-smile that never quite went away, his eyes clouded.
Was it you? I wondered. Did you do this? But I knew that, even if I could gather up my courage and force myself to ask the question while my father was right there in the room with us, all I would get would be a slight widening of that smile--
--"Bon!"
I was staring at a broken doll inside a glass case. I blinked and shook my head, tasting bile, my stomach heaving with someone else's remembered nausea along with my own. I'd seen a lot of ugly things since I'd become a Shinigami, but never anything so cold-bloodedly brutal as what had been done to that woman.
"I'm all right," I said, and put the past of this place out of my mind, along with the fleeting, unwilling sympathy for Muraki that it conjured up. That was the worst part of being forced to view that scene, actually--the way it made me feel, if only for a split second, some shred of pity for the man who had raped and murdered me.
"Your empathy again?" Watari asked. I grunted and followed him through the door.
Even I could recognize the pentagram in the middle of the floor, with the melted remains of candles set at the points of the central star. Someone tried to summon a demon here? Well, that is the sort of thing Muraki probably does in his spare time . . . Tatsumi was kneeling beside the pentagram, and Watari was going through the bookshelf at the far end of the room.
"This is actually pretty interesting," Watari said cheerfully as he paged through a massive leather-bound book. "The notes he's got in the margins, I mean. For all that he clearly doesn't have any formal training in magic, our mad doctor is obviously a very bright man, and I might even enjoy working with him if he was sane . . . Ulp." The blond scientist re-read something slowly, his face taking on a distinct green cast. "Bright and completely ruthless, that is. Bon, check that desk, will you? I'd like to see if he left any other notes behind."
I shrugged and took a step toward the piece of furniture, then stopped dead as something crackled under my feet. What the . . . Paper? That just struck me as wrong, when the rest of the room was almost painfully neat. I could see Muraki leaving chunks of bleeding human flesh lying around on his floor, but not garden-variety litter.
I bent down and scooped it up--several strips of paper, somewhat longer than my hand but not quite as wide. Fuda? But I've never seen Muraki use them . . . Or are they Tsuzuki's? I know he was carrying some when Muraki grabbed him after he blew up the EnMaCho building, and we never bothered to confirm that the stuff he had with him was destroyed in the fire . . . The longer I looked at them, the more the calligraphy resembled my partner's.
"A major demon was here not all that long ago, I think," Tatsumi said, looking up. "There's a residue . . ." He held up a fuda, the inked characters on it glowing a disturbingly familiar shade of yellow. "On the other hand, there is a dead mouse in the center of the pentagram, and while I'm not exactly an expert demonologist, I do know that you don't sacrifice mice if you're trying to call up something this powerful."
"So Muraki went fishing for minnows and hooked a shark instead?" Watari closed the book he was holding and put it back carefully on the shelf.
"Perhaps. It would certainly explain why he left so abruptly."
I tried to picture the scene in my head. Muraki, surprised by the sudden arrival of Ralatenalan or some comparable creature, stepping back from the pentagram and . . . what? Trying to use one of the fuda? Or had they been lying on the desk and gotten knocked off in the struggle? If he hadn't been trying to use them, why had he had them lying around at all when he was busy with something else? Something doesn't fit.
"Did you find Muraki's bedroom?" I asked, groping after a thought that wouldn't quite form.
"It's on the second floor . . . right below us, I think," Watari said. "It's a mess, actually--unmade bed, clothes on the floor, open bottle of some kind of massage oil on the bedside table. It looks like he was in bed with someone not long before this happened, and either he's got a boyfriend or she's a transvestite, because there were two ties and two suit jackets."
My eyes widened just a little. Tsuzuki? Were you here? Protecting him? Making love to him? No, I can't-- won't--believe it. There's no real proof, and you hate him too much.
"I'm going to call Oriya again and see if he has any idea where his . . . friend . . . might have gone," Tatsumi said, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket.
"Shouldn't you wait until we're back home for that?" Watari suggested. "The servants might hear you."
Tatsumi gave him a cold look. "Do you have any idea what the long distance charges between Meifu and Chijou are like? If the servants haven't noticed us yet, this won't attract any more of their attention." He dialed. "Oriya-san? Seiichirou Tatsumi. I'm at Muraki's home, and it appears that he left last night on a journey of unspecified duration--do you know where he might have gone?" My temporary partner's eyes narrowed. "What? He-- Tonight? Where?" A moment of silence. Then Tatsumi folded the phone back up and slipped it back into his pocket. "I've just received a dinner invitation. Apparently, Muraki was in Kyoto all along. He wants to talk to us. Tonight."
Oriya put the receiver back on the hook. "He said they'd be there--three of them. Are you sure it's safe for you to go through with this?"
Kazutaka smiled lazily. "Life is full of risks."
"That isn't what I meant."
"Oh?"
"Don't give me that look. We both know you're still too weak to defend yourself against even one Shinigami, much less three of them, and that you don't dare go out and drain someone right now. You can't remind these people that you're just as dangerous as the demon if you want their help."
I continued listening quietly, leaning against Kazutaka's shoulder, just as I had done while they'd still been talking about false documents and how to smuggle me on board a ship or aircraft. I'd discovered that I could learn more that way, even if it was in tantalizing bits and pieces. My lover wasn't quite as cautious when talking to his old friend as he was when addressing me. Just as dangerous as the demon . . . Isn't that a bit much, Oriya-san? After all, the demon nearly killed him . . . Then again, I suppose that when you're talking about interacting with normal humans, any supernatural power is too much.
"And what do you suggest I do about it? I cannot-- will not--call off this meeting. If they have any useful information at all, I need it. For Asato's sake."
"That wasn't what I had in mind." Our host extended his hand, palm up, toward us.
"Oriya . . ."
"Take it, damn you!" The dark-haired man's eyes were suddenly very intense. "You need it. I want it. You know you can't hurt me like that anymore. So don't even try to make excuses."
Kazutaka remained silent and motionless for just a moment, then reached out and fitted his hand over Oriya's, and I felt something happen between them. I wasn't quite sure what it was, but the moment it happened, the-other-inside-me surged into the forefront of my mind, and my mouth was suddenly flooded with saliva. It was starving to death, on the verge of desperation, and it needed to be part of whatever Kazutaka and Oriya were doing. I was shaking as I fought it for control of my body.
"Asato--"
"Help me," I whispered. "I . . . don't understand what's happening . . . Kazutaka, please . . ."
My lover's eyes narrowed. "Oriya . . . do you have enough for both of us?"
"You mean he's--"
"I think so. Do you have enough?"
"How should I know?" But the dark-haired man was already extending his other hand toward me. Slowly, still fighting to make sure that the action was my own and not that of that other, I reached out to take it.
Oh . . .
It was like biting into a piece of sinfully rich chocolate after having had nothing at all to eat for days, except that instead of coming from my mouth, the sensation was soaking through the skin of the hand I had joined with Oriya's, flowing up my arm, and sinking deep into some hidden part of my brain that I only now realized was uncomfortably empty. The-other-inside- me relaxed slowly as it realized that its needs were being filled, but it was still more intensely with me than it had been since my first time with Kazutaka.
I turned to my lover and we exchanged a kiss, then another. Yes, that was exactly right, to be touching each other even as we shared whatever it was that Oriya was giving us . . . The-other-inside-me seemed to think so too. It was the first time that I could ever remember us wanting exactly the same thing.
I slid my hand up Oriya's arm to the elbow, our kimono sleeves bunching awkwardly as we reduced the amount of space available for them to fill, and felt the delicious sensation of something entering my body spread up my arm. With my free hand, I unbuttoned the cuff of Kazutaka's shirt so that he could do the same, and Oriya moved unhesitatingly forward until he was all but kneeling in our laps. It was Kazutaka who slid his arm around the dark-haired man's back and drew him in towards us for a kiss, but by that point it could just as easily have been me, and I certainly took advantage of the change in our relative physical positions soon enough.
Oriya's lips were unexpectedly soft and pliant, and what the flowing sensation did when it spread to the more sensitive tissues of my mouth was extraordinary. There was blood on his lower lip where the flesh had split--no, it had been bitten, either by Oriya himself or by Kazutaka, and the dark- haired man had never made a sound--and I found myself enjoying the taste, even craving more, although not quite badly enough to bite him myself. I made a tentative motion with my tongue and the dark-haired man all but sucked it down his throat. Yes, oh yes . . . Then something snapped inside my head, and I jerked back. It felt like someone had driven needles into my eyes. I pressed myself against Kazutaka, burying my face in his shirt and feeling the fabric dampening as tears of pain squeezed themselves out of me.
After a while, the pain began to go away, but even when it had faded sufficiently for me to be able to raise my head, I felt like there was something wrong with my eyes. The sunlight streaming in through the window seemed to burn them, and I had to turn away from it. Oriya and Kazutaka were both staring at me. The dark-haired man was frowning, concerned. My lover . . . I think it was the first time I had ever seen him genuinely surprised. Then a delighted smile spread slowly across his face.
"Beautiful . . . I had never imagined . . ." His tongue caressed me as he licked the tear-tracks away. Then Oriya knelt beside me and took my hand again, and I sighed and sank back into the delicious flowing sensation that I was beginning to love.
I didn't resist when Kazutaka began to carefully work my kimono, then Oriya's, off, leaving us both more than half- naked. The dark-haired man submitted calmly to my embrace as Kazutaka leaned back a bit and began to unbutton his shirt. Relieved of that garment, my lover knelt behind Oriya and put his arms around both of us, bowing his head to the dark-haired man's shoulder. Oriya shivered and pressed forward against me, rubbing the only-half-expected hardness of an erection against my thigh, and it wasn't until Kazutaka lifted his head that I realized he had bitten his friend--not just a little nip, either, but deep enough to leave a neat crescent of toothmarks that were rapidly filling with blood. With a wrench, I became aware of the- other-inside-me as a separate entity again. It was fascinated by the trickle of redness over pale skin, and wanted to taste. I felt . . . Actually, I wasn't quite sure how I felt. If Oriya had protested, I would have been indignant on his behalf, uncomfortable . . . even angry, but his acceptance was outside my experience.
"Tsuzuki-san . . ." Oriya spoke almost in my ear. "Stop holding back. I know what you want. Take it."
His hand wove itself through my hair and pushed my head sideways and forward until my mouth was pressed against his skin not far from the bite mark. I allowed myself to part my lips, to taste, and the-other-inside-me sighed with satisfaction. And when I lifted my head again, Kazutaka's mouth fitted itself over mine. Oriya leaned cautiously back, entrusting most of his weight to Kazutaka, and I followed as my lover lowered his friend gently to the floor, pinning the dark-haired man to the tatami mats with my body.
Kazutaka slipped around behind me then, and began massaging my buttocks and lower back, almost incidentally removing my underclothing as he went. Meanwhile, Oriya wriggled underneath me, slipping out of the rest of his own clothing. It was only when I lowered my weight onto him, pressing the whole length of my bare body to his, that I realized that I'd had an erection for the past several minutes. It sent a delightful shock through my body as it rubbed against the similarly swollen flesh of the man underneath me. I ground against him for a moment, then guiltily remembered Kazutaka, who had to be getting terribly jealous, and stopped.
At just that moment, slick fingers slid between my buttocks and into my body, and I yelped with startled pleasure. Kazutaka kissed my shoulder and worried lightly at the skin there with his teeth, then slid his hand down my hip, coaxing me to push upward and into the penetration. I obeyed instantly. My lover's hand moved again, slipping down between my body and Oriya's. I caught a quick glimpse of a tube, and moaned as he touched my penis, coating it with something wet. Then Kazutaka lifted Oriya's legs over my shoulders and put one hand on my waist and the other on my buttocks to guide me forward.
It was indescribably delicious. Even lying along his body hadn't prepared me for what it would feel like to have whatever strange energy was passing from Oriya's body into mine surround and soak into the sensitive flesh of my erection. And then there were Kazutaka's fingers, back inside me again, stroking . . . I thrust violently, once, twice, three times, and then came, not wanting to but unable to help myself.
I blushed as I separated myself from Oriya, whose penis was still quite stiff, looking down at the floor as Kazutaka took my place and hoisted his friend's legs over his shoulders. It was an unexpected soft cry from Oriya that made me look up again. Kazutaka was being even rougher than I had been, really slamming into the other man, but the look on Oriya's face was one of transcendent pleasure. Kazutaka had never taken me with such force, such violence, and I found myself wondering what it would be like, with predictable results. By the time Oriya had vented another soft cry and splattered semen all over both their stomachs, I was achingly hard again.
I shifted a bit closer to them, took Kazutaka's hand, and deposited it firmly between my thighs. To my surprise, my lover pulled himself out of Oriya's body, still hard and unspent, seated himself facing me, and then lifted me by the hips and brought me down onto his lap. I was still stretched enough that the sudden penetration didn't hurt, and I gripped his shoulders for balance and leaned forward to kiss him, feeling the pressure of his erection inside of me change subtly as I shifted my weight. I rode his short, sharp upward thrusts to a second climax, and then rested against him, feeling limp and completely, languidly sated.
"Are you all right?" Kazutaka asked suddenly, but he wasn't looking at me.
"Tired and sore, but it was worth it," Oriya replied. "I just hope that whatever girl I end up having to marry doesn't look at my shoulders too closely, though, because I'm pretty sure this one is going to scar."
"Let me have a look at that."
Kazutaka ended up going for a first aid kit and bandaging the bite while I lounged on top of the two discarded kimono. I was beginning to wonder what in hell had just happened, but I wasn't quite sure how to ask for an explanation. I knew that this hadn't been just a normal threesome--or foursome, counting the-thing-in-my-head--but I was at a loss to explain what the difference was, other than that it had something to do with the energy flows that had passed between me and Oriya, and presumably between him and Kazutaka too. And there was still something wrong with my eyes, although it wasn't until I went to clean myself up and saw my reflection in the mirror over the bathroom sink that I figured out exactly what had changed.
My pupils weren't human-round anymore. Instead, they had contracted into slits, like a cat's. Like Kazutaka's.
I don't know how long I stood there, staring numbly into the mirror, before Kazutaka found me.
"What did you do to me?" My voice didn't have any strength to it, and the question came out as a pitiful whisper.
"You did this to yourself."
I opened my mouth to deny it, but couldn't. How could I tell him that it had been the-other-inside-my-head that had held out my hand to Oriya? He would think I was insane.
"Such beautiful eyes," Kazutaka murmured. "Truly the eyes of a demon now. I enjoyed sharing my prey with you, beloved. Perhaps this was not the best time for such a thing to happen, but it relieves me to see you beginning to heal at last."
"I wasn't aware that I was hurt," I said.
Kazutaka smiled. "I know. And now I fear I must leave you for a time, to prepare myself to greet my dinner guests. I will see you again this evening, beloved."
He left me there, still staring into the mirror.
Prey. The eyes of a demon.
It wasn't until I turned away that I realized that the demon's eyes were full of tears.
I hadn't expected Muraki to choose such a good restaurant for our meeting, and I hid behind Tatsumi as we entered, feeling underdressed.
Muraki had taken a table by the window. He rose to his feet and bowed as we approached him. "Tatsumi-san, Hisoka-san, it's good to see you again. And . . . ?" He looked at Watari and raised his eyebrows in inquiry.
"Yutaka Watari. It's a pleasure to meet you at last, Muraki-sensei."
"On the contrary, the pleasure is mine, Watari-sensei. The research that you did during your lifetime is quite fascinating. I've read most of your papers, and if it is possible, I would appreciate an opportunity to discuss with you any progress you may have made on certain points over the past few years . . ." More bows. Muraki was smiling his charming smile. I gritted my teeth. Trying to smash his face in would just make him laugh, or get me thrown out, or both.
"What happened to your glasses?" It took all my self- control to make the words come out as more than a growl.
"My abrupt departure from Tokyo--I'm certain that you are already aware of the circumstances--caused me to leave them behind. Since they are, strictly speaking, decorative rather than functional, I saw no need to attempt to replace them." Still smiling. Playing with us. With me.
We all sat down. Tatsumi took the seat directly across from Muraki and Watari the one to his left, leaving me beside Tatsumi and across from Watari. I was almost relieved until I caught Muraki's amused glance. Can't stand being too near me, can you, boy? I broke the eye contact and deliberately opened my menu. I am not going to let that man get to me.
"You had an encounter with the demon just before you left Tokyo, I believe, Muraki-san." Tatsumi had only given his menu one quick glance and then set it aside.
"Regrettably, yes. It was completely unintentional. Sometime earlier, I had delegated an imp to determine the creature's name, habits, and weaknesses. Apparently, the imp was not circumspect enough in its enquiries, because when I attempted to summon it again, our mutual acquaintance came in its place." Muraki absently stroked the stem of the half-full wineglass that stood in front of him. "I was able to distract it long enough to let myself escape, but it was not pleased and I suspect that it may now be looking for me, in addition to its original target."
Which couldn't have happened to a nicer person, I thought.
"Muraki-sensei . . . If you had its name, could you bind it?" Watari asked. "I noticed that you had several works on demonology in your workroom, and your researches in that area are clearly more advanced than those of anyone presently living in Meifu . . ."
"Would you be willing to permit me to take the lives required to fuel such a spell?" There was a moment of uncomfortable silence. "In any case, the answer is no. It is far too powerful. I could attract its attention by summoning it using its name, but I could not guarantee that it would respond, or control it once it did. Do you have its name?"
"Ralatenalan." Tatsumi was watching Muraki closely as he spoke it.
"As unfamiliar to me as its sigil," Muraki admitted. He turned to face the window for a moment, and sipped from his wineglass. Red wine, I noted. The light of the sunset outside made it look like blood. How very appropriate.
"Apparently, it's the personal messenger of the ruler of the demons," Watari explained.
"And what possible interest could such a creature have in Asato, I wonder?" The question would have been mocking if Muraki's smile hadn't vanished long since.
"That's what we'd like to know." Tatsumi's voice was controlled, but it was all I could do not to cringe away from his anger.
Watari stepped in and told Muraki what else we knew about Ralatenalan. The two of them conversed easily while I hid behind my menu and Tatsumi stared silently down at his hands.
I shouldn't have come here tonight. Having to be civil to Muraki, or at least keep myself from attacking him outright, was making me feel ill. Muraki, of course, would have been comfortable doing anything up to and including flirting with his worst enemy, and I doubted that this was putting any strain on him at all. Even when he'd been . . . doing what he had done to me . . . his surface veneer of charm had never completely fallen away, just twisted into a darker charisma.
What is he? It wasn't the first time I had wondered that. Possessed, as his eyes suggested, or merely insane? My empathy had never worked on him at all. A dark mist seemed to surround him, giving off such an intense impression of something twisted, evil, and wrong that I had never been able to force myself to penetrate it.
I ordered a small salad and forced myself to eat it all, not willing to show how uncomfortable I was. Tatsumi only ate half his entree. Only Watari seemed undisturbed by our host. The two of them continued to chat amiably. I could only follow about one word in three most of the time, but my empathy told me that the blond was very happy to finally be able to talk about whatever it was that he did in that lab of his to someone who at least partially understood and could offer suggestions. He even told Muraki how to contact him through one of the postal boxes in Tokyo that the Shokan bureau sometimes used as an information drop, although I, for one, wondered whether Muraki would be more likely to use the information to correspond with Watari or send love letters to Tsuzuki.
Damnit, where was that purple-eyed idiot? I had almost been hoping that Muraki did have him, which was . . . extremely disturbing . . . but Muraki hadn't even mentioned my partner, except for that one half-wistful question. I couldn't make up my mind as to whether that was out of character or not. I couldn't believe that Muraki was capable of being concerned about Tsuzuki's absence, but normally his interest on my partner seemed to border on obsession, and I couldn't believe that it had all just . . . dissolved. Maybe he's just worried about saving his own skin from the demon. There was a selfish motivation I could believe . . . but there was still something niggling at the back of my mind that didn't seem quite right.
What was Tsuzuki doing? Even having him in Muraki's clutches would have been better than this . . . nothing.
By the time the meal was over, my hands ached from being clenched into fists, Tatsumi was coming to a slow, poker- face emotional boil, and Watari and Muraki's conversation had gotten so esoteric that I was getting maybe one word in ten. Even Muraki's polite insistence on picking up the tab for all four of us didn't improve Tatsumi's mood much.
"So that was Kazutaka Muraki," Watari said quietly as we watched the back of a white trenchcoat retreat into the dusk outside the restaurant. "I was right--I could get to like him if he weren't a homicidal maniac."
"Ch'." I kicked a pebble off the sidewalk and into the path of a passing car. "I don't understand how anyone could like that bastard. He's got a heart of frozen granite."
"Watari, did you learn anything useful?" Tatsumi asked. "There were parts of your conversation that I couldn't follow."
"Not much that would be of use in handling the demon, or at least not directly, although he did confirm that it seems to favour kinetic attacks. He gave me a few ideas for things to try in my research on the gender-switching potion, but I don't think you would be interested in that."
"So this was a waste." Normally, Tatsumi wouldn't have let a remark like that slip out no matter how he felt, but like all of us, he'd been under a lot of stress lately.
"Maybe not," was Watari's thoughtful reply. "We did confirm what happened at his house last night, and I think he might be willing to help us get rid of the demon just out of pure self-interest, so long as we didn't ask him to put himself at risk."
The niggling at the back of my mind was getting stronger. Something Muraki had said that hadn't been quite right . . . Then I had it.
"Asato."
Both Tatsumi and Watari turned to look at me as though I'd suddenly lost my mind, and I explained, "Muraki said, way back when we first got there, 'And what possible interest could such a creature have in Asato, I wonder?' But Muraki's always obscenely polite, even when he's torturing someone. He would never, ever use Tsuzuki's first name . . . unless something had changed between them."
"You think that Muraki has him, and didn't tell us," Tatsumi said, eyes narrow. "And that Oriya didn't mention it either."
I shrugged. "It would be just like Muraki, and Oriya . . . he's an honourable man, but his first loyalty is to his friend. Anyway, I'm going to the Ko Kaku Ro to have a look around. Are you two coming with me?"
Sunset over the garden behind the Ko Kaku Ro had been an impressive sight. I wasn't certain why I was still standing there, though, given that the colours had long since faded from the sky and the stars had begun to come out. The moon, just rising, was full and oddly tinged with red. Somehow, its light, and that of the stars, were more than enough for me to see by. In fact, my surroundings were clearer now than they had been when I had first come outside, because the light wasn't dazzling me anymore.
The eyes of a demon . . .
What was happening to me?
"You okay?"
I jumped a little, because I hadn't heard him come up behind me. "Oriya-san. Is Kazutaka back yet?"
The dark-haired man snorted. "He's only been gone an hour--unless something goes wrong, I don't think he's going to be back for half that long again."
I swallowed. "And . . . do you think something is going to go wrong?"
"It's hard to say, really. Depends on who the first person is to say or do something stupid. The Shinigami don't like Muraki very much, but I don't think they'll deliberately start anything in a public place. Too easy to involve innocent bystanders, and the powers-that-be in Meifu don't like it when they do that. Screws up the Kiseki."
"The what?" Why does that name sound familiar?
"The list of people who've died. According to Muraki, anyway. All I know about Meifu is what he's told me."
"You've never been there?"
Oriya laughed. "Oh, I probably have, on my way from my last incarnation to this one, but it isn't as though I'd remember it. I mean, I'm only human. Not like you or him."
Monster, whispered a hidden memory. Freak. "I never wanted to be anything but human, either."
"Not many of us ever get what we want. Do you have any idea what I would do, what I would give, to be able to trade places with you?"
"You're in love with Kazutaka, aren't you?" I blurted out. I'd been wondering about ever since . . . well.
A shrug. "It doesn't matter if I am. Anything I might feel for him would be completely one-sided."
"But he . . . but we . . ."
"You know, you're downright cute when you blush. I wouldn't have expected that. Then again, I suppose tiger cubs are cute too. Do you even understand what happened this afternoon?"
"No," I admitted. "I don't know what I thought I was doing, and I didn't have a chance to ask Kazutaka to explain it to me. And anyway . . . half the time, when I ask him to explain something to me, I get the feeling he's leaving out bits and pieces." Just like he talks about anything possible except our relationship over the past year, before I lost my memory. If I hadn't dreamed, I'm pretty sure he would never have mentioned that I had tried to kill him.
Oriya sighed. "Look. There's a bench over there-- why don't we sit down, because I'm still not all that steady on my feet, and this is going to take a while."
We sat at opposite ends of the bench. The stone was still warm from the sun, and it soaked into my skin through the borrowed kimono.
"The first thing you have to understand," Oriya said quietly, "is that Muraki is still scared stiff of losing you. He loves you, although I doubt he'll ever be able to bring himself to admit it to your face--fact is, he's convinced himself that he doesn't do 'love' to the point that he writes 'itoshii' in kana to avoid using the ai kanji--and I don't think he still quite believes that you're going to stay with him. So there're certain things he won't talk about with you if he can help it. He doesn't want to scare you away by talking about the horrible things he's done. I'm a bit more of a realist. I think that, if the two of you are going to be happy together, you have to understand each other, and neither of you will ever get there with him talking around things the way he always does."
"Nothing he's done could possibly be any worse than what I know I've done," I said. "I don't remember clearly, but I know I've been responsible for lots of deaths--not just this demon killing to get my attention, but other things before that."
"The demon wasn't the only one to kill to get your attention, Tsuzuki-san. Muraki did that too."
I recoiled. "He what?"
"Committed a string of murders here in Kyoto late last year mostly for the purpose of getting your attention. Because that's how a demon courts another demon, by demonstrating his power, and he'd tried everything else he could think of. Muraki . . . isn't very stable, for a lot of reasons, and I think he was teetering on the edge of genuine insanity for a while. I also think that you're good for him. He's been more relaxed and at ease since the two of you got here last night than I've seen him in years, even with that demon on your tail."
Kazutaka . . . killed for me? I suppose I shouldn't be that surprised. Last night, he showed he was willing to die for me, after all. But the sheer cold- bloodedness of it was . . . disturbing.
"Do you love him?" I asked. If someone besides me loves him, then he can't be entirely evil.
Oriya looked away. "Yeah. But like I said before, it doesn't matter. I'm a human. I can't ever be his mate, just his prey. Which brings us back to this afternoon, I guess. Muraki's magic is purely demonic--he takes other people's spiritual energy and uses it for . . . whatever. Ever since he started to discover what he was, he and I have had an arrangement: I give him my energy, and I get him the only way I'm ever likely to, as a victim that he instinctively wants to demonstrate his power over. Except that this time, you were there, and you've been starving the demon part of you for so long that when you saw your mate feeding off me, you went berserk. So you ended up getting most of the energy I'd intended for your boyfriend, and then screwing me for good measure."
"Oh." I was blushing again. One day I'm going to be used to this sex stuff, and it'll stop embarrassing me so much. "I . . . didn't hurt you, did I?"
A laugh. "Actually, it felt pretty damned good--up until the end of last year, I'd been getting drained every month or so, but I'd been storing that batch up for nearly six times that long, and I was starting to feel a bit swollen. I think that, over the years, my system's adapted to being fed off of by overproducing spiritual energy. Muraki alone probably couldn't have taken everything I had. As it is, I'll just be sleeping a bit more than usual for the next couple of days."
"That wasn't what I meant." I must look like a fire engine.
"Oh, that." Oriya gave me a quick, wry grin, and waved it away. "You weren't yourself, and the truth is that I didn't really mind. You're his mate, so I figured that you'd end up being included in our arrangement eventually, although I did expect to have another week or two to get used to the idea."
"Oh." I seem to be saying that a lot, lately. "Um . . . Do you understand what happened to my eyes? That part I still don't get." It was a relief to be getting all these questions out without worrying that Kazutaka's evasiveness would distort the answers.
"Well, I don't know for certain, but I'd bet it happened because, for a few seconds, you accepted the demon part of you. Your eyes were probably always supposed to be like that, but you wished so hard and for so long to be human that you managed to alter reality."
"You think it's wrong for me to wish to be human."
"I think you're deluding yourself, and that it's pretty surprising that you're not as crazy as Muraki is. You both need to find some better kind of balance, inside yourselves, between human and demon--otherwise, one of these days, you're both going to snap, and probably blow up a few cities before someone manages to stop you. If anyone does manage to stop you."
I shivered, and drew my borrowed kimono more tightly around myself. Am I really that dangerous? I don't understand. I don't want to hurt people--I want to help them! But I know that, even during the years I don't remember, things have always kept going wrong . . . Maybe my demon blood has me under a curse. After all, demons aren't supposed to help people, are they? They're supposed to hurt them. How does Kazutaka . . . No, I know how he deals with this: by not allowing himself to be human at all. And that isn't something that I'm willing to do to myself.
"Oriya, if you've hurt him, I will kill you. Even you."
"I'm all right," I put in immediately. "Please don't hurt him."
Kazutaka still embraced me protectively the moment he was settled on the bench between us, though, and I let him. I needed him to. His love was the one constant thing in my world right now.
"And anyway, if you were going to kill me, you'd've done it years ago," Oriya said. "How was your dinner date?"
"Not as profitable as I had hoped, but they were able to identify the demon for me. However, I'm uncertain, at this point, of whether or not that benefits me. I think that, for the moment, I will be putting all my energies into Asato's . . . reeducation. If you don't mind, beloved. The two of us together might have a chance of dealing with this creature. I certainly can't do it alone."
"I want to get rid of it as badly as you do," I said. "Before it hurts anyone else."
"Are you still going to leave the country?" Oriya asked.
"I don't know. It would solve some other problems, but I suspect that the demon is likely to follow us."
My stomach chose that moment to growl. Kazutaka smiled and tousled my hair. "Haven't you eaten yet?"
I shook my head. "It's strange. I didn't even realize I was hungry." And even now, there was a component, a deep craving, missing from that hunger. Maybe the only reason I'm always so fascinated with food is that the demon inside me was hungry for energy, and I was translating that into something . . . more normal . . . without even realizing it.
"Well, let's get you something to eat, then." Oriya winked at me. I smiled back tentatively, then turned my head as I caught a flicker of motion out of the corner of my eye. Something pale--a person? Yes, a boy, maybe sixteen years old, handsome verging on pretty, with green eyes and light brown hair. Wearing jeans and a T-shirt that were utterly out of place in the carefully maintained slice of an earlier century that was the garden of the Ko Kaku Ro.
"Oriya-san, who is that? Is he supposed to be here?" I nodded in the boy's direction.
Oriya frowned. "There's no one there that I can see." The boy, in the meanwhile, had gone paper-white, and was mouthing something that looked very much like my name.
"But he's right there," I said, pointing. "A teenaged boy--"
Kazutaka took one look and stiffened. "Oriya can't see him unless he chooses to reveal himself, beloved. That is a Shinigami." He tightened his grip on me and raised his voice. "It's considered impolite to spy on people, boy, or to break into their homes. Exactly what do you think you are doing here?"
"I was looking for someone, and I think I've found him." The voice was . . . vaguely familiar? Do I know you?
Oriya jumped a bit. The boy must just have revealed himself. Whatever that means.
The boy had a slip of paper in his hand--a fuda? "Let go of him, Muraki!" The green eyes were ice cold as he glared at my lover. Without thinking, I pulled myself out of Kazutaka's arms and stood up, placing myself between him and the boy.
"Don't you dare hurt him!"
"Don't you dare hurt him!"
"Tsuzuki . . ." I spoke his name almost involuntarily. My partner. Alive, well, and staring at me without recognition. Defending Muraki, of all people.
"Asato . . . there is no need for you to concern yourself." The pale man rose gracefully to his feet and placed his hand on Tsuzuki's shoulder. "Hisoka-kun lacks the power to do me any serious damage. You, on the other hand, are not capable of defending yourself against him in your present state. I don't want to see you hurt, beloved."
That last sentence made me shudder. Lies, lies, all lies! But Tsuzuki smiled at the mad doctor as though he believed him.
Something cold grazed my throat, and I swallowed carefully, squinting downwards until I could glimpse the gentle curve of the katana's blade. Oriya wasn't sitting on the bench anymore. But I didn't even see him move--he's even better than I thought he was. Almost supernaturally good.
"Put the fuda down, Bon." The voice came from behind me and to one side. I released the strip of paper, letting it flutter to the ground. It was blank, anyway, because that wasn't the kind of magic Chief Konoe had been teaching me. I'd just been using it as a prop, hoping that Muraki would think exactly what Oriya evidently had . . . but I should have known that the mad doctor wouldn't be so easily distracted.
"I thought that you, at least, had some honour," I said quietly, without turning.
"It wouldn't have done him or you any good to tell you that he was here, Bon. He isn't himself. Let it go."
"What do you mean, he isn't himself?"
"I mean that he doesn't remember you, and even if he did, he'd probably think you abandoned him."
"I do know you, don't I?" While my attention had been on Oriya, Tsuzuki had been walking up the path toward us. With Muraki, whose arm rested possessively around my partner's waist . . . and Tsuzuki was reciprocating the gesture. It was enough to make me feel sick. "Please, what's your name?"
"Hisoka Kurosaki." I turned my head away, ignoring the steel at my throat. I just couldn't stand to look at them any longer, because I knew that the shadow in my partner's eyes, the anger that dictated the firm set of his mouth . . . they were both there because of me. Not Muraki.
"Oriya-san, do you really need to do that to him?"
The cold edge lifted itself away from my throat. "I must be more tired than I thought I was, because I actually forgot I was holding this thing. Stupid of me. And dangerous. Especially when I'm holding it to the throat of someone I don't particularly want to hurt."
There was a warm tingle at my throat as shallow cuts healed themselves.
"Now," Oriya added, "where are your friends, and where exactly on my property are they trespassing? I know you're not here alone."
I shrugged. "Watari went in the front way. I don't know where Tatsumi is."
There was a snick as the katana was slid firmly back into its scabbard. "Then let's go round them up. I know you're all going to want to talk to your long-lost friend, and it'll be easier to have you all do it at once."
"You want me to leave Tsuzuki alone here with him?" I glared at Muraki even though I wasn't addressing him. He rewarded me with a smirk. He hadn't yet spoken anything that a neutral observer could have interpreted as a threat, but at the same time, he radiated a familiar danger that turned my blood to ice.
"They were together for several days before they showed up here and your friend is still quite all right. Ask him if you don't believe me."
Muraki was standing slightly behind Tsuzuki now, with both arms around my partner's waist, alternately nibbling his ear and murmuring something into it that I couldn't quite catch. And Tsuzuki was smiling, a sweet, genuine, uncomplicated smile that even I had rarely seen on his face before. Even as I watched, the two of them turned toward each other and exchanged a deep kiss, Tsuzuki unashamedly pressing his body against Muraki's, his hips making small motions that could be interpreted in only one way.
"Ch'," I muttered, turning away. "All right, let's go."
I kept on staring at the boy's--Hisoka's--back until the door shut behind them. Only when he and Oriya were both gone did I turn to face Kazutaka. "He was afraid that you were going to hurt me. Why?"
"Hisoka Kurosaki has many reasons to distrust me," Kazutaka said. "We are enemies . . . and far too much alike for his comfort, I suspect." A dark smile graced my lover's lips, and for an instant, the light of the red moon made him look terrifying- -truly demonic. I froze as I was struck by suspicion.
"Did you kill him?" I asked slowly.
"Oriya has been telling you things about me that he shouldn't have, hasn't he? Yes."
"Yes what?"
"Yes, I was the one who killed Hisoka Kurosaki."
I swallowed. "Why?"
"Because he caught me killing someone else . . . and because he stole something precious from me without even being aware of it. One would expect that an empath would have been more sensitive."
I wanted to flinch away from him, but the underlying tone of bitterness in his voice, so subtle and faint that I doubt he was even aware of it himself, kept me from moving, and so I stayed where I was, in his arms, until I had thoroughly digested his words.
"I can't approve of everything you've done," I said slowly. "I don't like it when people get hurt. I don't like the fact that you've killed, even though I know that I'm a killer too. But . . ." I touched his side. I couldn't feel the scar through his several layers of clothing, but I knew it was there. "You forgave me. I can't do any less than forgive you, too. Not when I love you this much. Not when we need each other so badly."
He kissed my forehead. "I did try to warn you that I am a monster, Asato."
"And I didn't want to listen. I know. Well, at least we can be monsters together."
"That is all I ever truly wanted." He buried his face in my hair, and we clung to each other.
"I didn't want to believe you, but I suppose that now I have to."
Kazutaka and I jerked apart as though we'd been stung. Oriya and Hisoka were standing not ten feet from us, with two other men. It was one of the strangers who had spoken, a bespectacled man in a dark suit. He looked like an accountant.
"Tsuzuki, are you sure you're all right?" he added. He seemed to be deliberately gentling his voice for my sake. It almost hurt that I didn't know him, didn't recognize him, because he obviously felt that I was very important to him.
I tried to smile, but I suspected it probably wasn't very convincing. "I'm fine. Well, except for being amnesiac and confused. Are you Seiichirou Tatsumi?"
"You remember me?"
I winced as hope flooded his eyes. "I'm sorry, but no. Just a lucky guess."
"Yutaka Watari," his blond companion introduced himself. "And this is 003," he added, gesturing at the little owl perched on his shoulder. "It's good to see that you're still in one piece. There were a couple of times that we thought you were dead--really dead, not just stuck in between." He had an irrepressible grin and an outrageous southern accent, but his eyes were serious.
It was Oriya who broke the momentary silence that followed. "Well, if you aren't going to start slinging magic at each other, why don't we go inside? I only set you up to meet up here to reduce the mess you'd make if you decided to fight."
So we all trooped inside and ended up in a small, private room at the back of the building, furnished in the traditional style that seemed to be normal here. Oriya settled himself near the door, with his sword on the floor beside him. Kazutaka knelt down a short distance away, and I positioned myself beside him, turning my head away as Tatsumi looked at me with naked hurt in his eyes. The three Shinigami placed themselves in a clump across from us, with Hisoka still glaring at Kazutaka as though he would go for his throat any minute.
The silence stretched out uncomfortably for several minutes. One of Oriya's girls came in with tea for all of us and a light supper for me. I picked up the chopsticks and began to eat more or less mechanically, and if the food had any taste, I couldn't detect it.
"You erased his memory, didn't you, you bastard," Hisoka said coldly, glaring at Kazutaka.
My lover shook his head. "I admit to taking advantage of the situation, but Asato was like this when I found him. There was some evidence that he had taken a blow to the head, and that, in combination with his psychological state, would have been more than enough to produce the results we are seeing here."
"Shut up! You erased his memory, and then you brainwashed him, because otherwise he would never have agreed to . . . to . . ." Hisoka's voice trailed off. His eyes darted to where Kazutaka's hand was resting casually on my thigh, then away again.
I set my chopsticks aside. "Stop talking about me like I'm not here. Hisoka-san, I realize that you consider yourself my friend, but my relationship with Kazutaka . . . is none of your business. I love him, I want to be with him, and that's all you need to know."
"On the contrary, it is our business." Tatsumi's voice was flat. Dead. "It's against the rules for Shinigami to enter into relationships with mortals. The only reason we're talking this over instead of hauling you back to Meifu right now is that you're our friend, and you're clearly . . . confused."
"You're saying that I'm one of you, that I'm . . . dead." Unbelievable, but . . . This is not the body of the ninety-nine-year-old that Kazutaka claims I am. I looked at my lover. "Is this true?"
"It is true that you have been working for Meifu as a Shinigami. I must admit that I am somewhat less certain that you are genuinely dead, but I cannot prove otherwise."
I closed my eyes, digesting that. Why didn't he tell me? Stupid question. He didn't tell me because he was afraid he would lose me if he did. "That's what you were always so careful not to talk to me about how we met, isn't it--I ran into you first in my official capacity as a Shinigami. Investigating someone that you'd killed, or some magic that you had done."
Does this really change anything? Despite everything, even knowing that he had lied to me, I still wanted him. Still loved him. My Kazutaka. I . . . suppose that normally Tatsumi would be right, that it would be wrong for someone who's dead to have a relationship with someone who's still alive this way, but Kazutaka and I aren't exactly normal people. The other Shinigami would never be able to understand the demon inside me. I doubted they even knew about it. Kazutaka was my kind. They were not. And there was a loneliness, an emptiness inside me that only one of my own kind would ever be able to fill.
I licked my lips. "Isn't it more important that we think of some way to deal with the demon right now?" Hidden from the three Shinigami by the low table on which the remains of my dinner sat, my hand crept over to find Kazutaka's, fitted itself around it, and squeezed. I am not giving you up.
"That would be easier back in Meifu," Tatsumi said slowly. "Assuming that you're willing to come with us."
I shook my head. "I'm not going anywhere without Kazutaka."
"Tsuzuki--"
I glared right back at Hisoka. "What reason do I have to trust you, really? You claim to be my friends, but I haven't yet seen anything that would prove that. And every time I turn around, you're trying to convince me to separate myself from my mate. How do I know that, once you've gotten me away from Kazutaka, you won't try to lock me up until I 'come to my senses', which I never will?"
"Asato, under the circumstances, surely you do not expect them to trust me." Kazutaka offered me another dark smile. This . . . bitterness, shadow-rage, dark but cunning near- madness . . . it wasn't a side of him I had seen before, and I wished that I wasn't seeing it now. It made me angry that the Shinigami had forced him to reveal it.
"No," I said quietly. "No, I don't expect them to trust you, beloved. But if they're the friends they claim they are, I do expect them to trust me." Watari winced.
"We do trust you." Tatsumi said the words as though he thought they were going to choke him. "But Muraki-san is a very convincing liar, and we believe he is deceiving you. Unfortunately, proving that in a way you would find acceptable, with you in this state, could take weeks, and the demon could kill hundreds of people during that time."
"What is it that you don't believe?" It was an effort to keep my voice quiet, calm, and reasonable, but I managed somehow. "That he loves me? That he wants to get rid of the demon in order to protect me and himself? Because there isn't much else that matters right now, and besides, anything else . . . we can work out, he and I."
"A monster like that isn't capable of loving anyone." Hisoka was staring down at his hands as he spoke. He can't look me in the face and say it--why am I not surprised?
I opened my mouth to say something else, but stopped when Kazutaka's hand touched my arm.
"Since it seems that my emotional state is the thing most at issue here, let us have a definitive ruling on it and get on to more important matters." And my lover held out his hand to Hisoka.
It's for my mate, I reminded myself as I kept my hand there, extended; as I kept the barriers that surrounded my mind lowered, prepared for the intrusion. If I do not do this, they will attempt to take him away from me by force. At best, I lose allies; at worst, I will be fighting a battle on two fronts when the demon comes. There is no other way.
Why was that wretched child hesitating?
Come on, boy. You know you want it. More than anything, you want to know why I did what I did to you. Just like I wanted to ask Saki why, and never had the opportunity. I know you from the inside out. You can never acknowledge how alike we are without losing your sanity, but I know. The slender hand was reaching out now, almost touching mine.
Come.
There was no change in Muraki's expression as he held out his hand to me, no lessening of his confidence. Could he lie to me this way too? Or would I just sense the familiar black mist again, with no way through? I took a deep breath, touched my fingers to his, and was instantly surrounded by--
--the scent of sakura and blood in a world lit only by the red moon. I licked my lips, tasting copper and salt, and lowered the body slowly to the ground. The knife went into the pocket of my red-spattered trenchcoat, and I wondered absently what excuse I was going to have to make up for losing this one. Eight in the past year . . . surely one of the servants had noticed by now . . . but such things mattered very little under the light of the full red moon, with the spiritual energy of a dead stranger etching my nerves with lightning.
What was that noise?
How could he have gotten so close without my noticing? A pretty youth, perhaps fifteen years old, with a face that seemed too delicate to belong to a boy. Staring at me with a glazed expression, making me suddenly very conscious of my disheveled state and the corpse at my feet.
Why was he looking at me like that? It wasn't just fear that clouded those eyes. There was something else there as well. Something . . .
He's like me! Another part-blood demon, trapped among humans with no way out. The first I had ever met, besides my own relatives. That meant . . . that perhaps I would not be forever alone. Perhaps he was real too, the violet-eyed one I had been seeking for so many years. Oh please, let it be true, let this boy be what I think he is, let him understand . . .
Silently, I extended my hand to him, bloody as it was, offering to let him share in my kill. When he flinched back, the suspended moment was lost forever.
I had only hoped for a split second. How could the loss of that hope hurt so much? Perhaps opening myself to that emotion again, so long after it had last died, had broken something inside me. I was drowning in a kind of agony that I could not defend myself against, and I felt my mouth distort itself into a snarl.
I lunged after the boy as he made to run away, tackling him and pinning him to the ground under my weight. I could have slit his throat, but it would have been far too easy a death, far too quick and gentle. Let him die slowly and in agony, let him feel all hope draining away until he shared my pain, and maybe, just maybe, it would be enough to soothe my agony--
--I shivered and wrenched myself away from the memory, rebounded into--
--So fragile, so limp, so cold in my arms, his torn clothing soaked with filthy water from the river, his pulse so weak under my fingers . . . was he dying? Again? No! I had been alone for so long, and now, now that he was finally in my arms . . . I laid him gently on the ground, breathed life into him once, twice, three times, until I felt him stir, and turned him on his side so that the water would run out of his mouth. There was a lump on his temple, and I explored it cautiously with my hands until I could determine that the skull underneath it was not broken--or if it had been, it had already healed. That injury . . . the torn clothing . . . some of the water dripping from his clothes was faintly pinkish with blood, although I could find no other wounds.
Someone hurt him.
How dare they?
My entire body shook with rage. Who had dared harm my mate? Who?! Tsuzuki was mine! I would not permit him to be harmed by some stranger! Whoever had done this to him would pay, and pay and pay and pay until he came to wish he had never been born--
--and I flung myself away from that, too, my entire being shuddering with the force of Muraki's anger. Question answered: I didn't know whether the pale man genuinely loved Tsuzuki, but he did seem to want to protect him . . . from everything but himself. He would fight Ralatenalan alongside us if we asked him to. The danger would come when the demon was gone, because that was when the mad doctor would consider himself free to turn on us.
But where was I now? Everything around me was dark and empty, and there didn't seem to be any emotions here but my own. I wasn't back in my body, but at the same time I had never experienced anything quite like this while in contact with another mind. Maybe Muraki really was part demon, as his memory had suggested. His mind certainly didn't seem to follow the patterns that I thought of as normal.
There was a faint yellow flicker behind me now. A light? Was there something here besides myself?
I turned.
He looked like he was about the same age as I had been when I died, maybe sixteen, sitting cross-legged on the ground with a doll--one of the elaborately-dressed porcelain antiques that Muraki favoured--on his lap and something small and rectangular in one hand, a candle in a holder standing by his knee. He looked up at me, solemnly, and I fought not to flinch as I saw his eyes were silver, with cat's slit pupils.
"Who are you?" he asked.
I shrugged and shoved my hands into my pockets, trying to act casual. "Hisoka."
He put the doll aside carefully, stood up, and bowed to me. "I'm pleased to meet you, Hisoka-san. My name is Kazutaka Muraki." Picking up the doll, he added, "And this is Victoria."
"Do you live here?" I asked.
"I do now," he said, sitting back down. "I came here to hide, at first, but I decided after a while that I wanted to stay. It's nice here. Nothing ever hurts, and I don't have to worry about my mother being . . . strange . . . or about Saki . . ." He looked down at the little rectangle in his hand, bit his lower lip, and seemed to steady himself a bit. "I like this place, even though the one I love will never find me here. But he'll be happier with the other me, anyway. The other me is strong. He isn't afraid even when he's hurt. He'll be able to look after our beloved like I never could."
I think I understand now. This is all that's left of the human Muraki, the person he was before he turned into a sociopathic monster . . . I wonder how long he's been trapped here, alone in the dark. "Are you . . . happy here?" I asked softly.
The question seemed to confuse him a bit. "I think . . . yes, I am. Or at least I'm not unhappy, and that's what's really important, isn't it?"
"Even without your beloved?"
"Yes. He needs help, needs protection, so much . . . it's better for him if he stays with the other me. I'm not strong. I can't give him what he needs." A long hesitation, then, "Would you like to see my picture of him, Hisoka-san? Normally I wouldn't show it to a stranger, but you seem like a nice person . . ."
"Yes. I would like to see it. Please."
The silver-haired youth held out the rectangular thing he'd been holding ever since I had first seen him, and I took it carefully. A photograph. An ancient, sepia-toned black-and- white picture of a man--of Tsuzuki--lying in a hospital bed.
"He looks like a good person," I said, returning the photo to its original owner. "You're very lucky."
"Thank you. If you see him, you will tell him, won't you? That I love him? The other me has trouble saying things like that, sometimes, because I was hurt by everyone who ever said them to me."
I nodded, eyes stinging with tears. "Will you be all right alone here?"
"Of course." And he smiled an unexpectedly sweet smile that was completely unlike the real Muraki's smirks. "Thank you for worrying about me, Hisoka-san. Good-bye."
I opened my mouth to say something else--
--but there was a wrench and I was lying in Tatsumi's lap, being scalded by his concern.
"I'm all right," I said, and sat up to prove it.
I glanced at Muraki. There was no hint in his face of what I had found inside him, and I looked away again, down at my hands.
The man and the boy, that night under the sakura tree . . . they hadn't really been so very different from one another, both strangers who longed to find others of their kind, or at least, others who would accept them for what they were. Hope awakened, and then just as quickly extinguished . . . Damn you, Muraki! The last thing I want is to feel sorry for you! But I did. The passage from one life to the other had been painful and brutal, but it was over now, and I knew that even if I could, I wouldn't wish myself back to life and away from my friends. I had a place where I belonged now, and Muraki still had nothing.
Except Tsuzuki.
Well, maybe Oriya as well, I thought, glancing up at the dark-haired man with the katana who still knelt, silent and patient, watching and listening but saying nothing. He's the one I really can't fathom. I'm going to have to arrange to shake his hand or slap him on the back one of these days and figure out what in hell he thinks he's doing, giving aid and comfort to a known serial killer . . .
Tatsumi and Watari were both looking at me, both wanting to ask the same question, neither quite daring to open his mouth. Ch'. What a nuisance.
"We can trust him," I said aloud. "This once, for this one thing. Until Ralatenalan is gone." The words still tasted bitter, but they had to be said.
Can I forgive you? I wondered for the first time as I met silver-grey eyes. Even you? I . . . My gaze flickered back to Oriya again, remembering what he had once said to me, what he had made me realize about myself. I thought I had grown past the need for revenge, but maybe . . . not quite. Until I can forgive, I'm not sure I'm going to be able to move past the way my life ended, and I know I need to do that if I'm ever going to be . . . whole. Maybe if I let you go, someday you'll find the strength to let me go as well.
It was just an open space of land at the edge of the city of Kyoto, bare dirt with a few clumps of grass growing out of it, but Watari had said it was a good place for what we intended to do, and if so, who was I to complain?
Muraki paced out a circle, frowning, his head moving from side to side, then looked at me and shrugged. It will do. Watari caught the motion as well, and vanished, going elsewhere to collect what we would need. Hisoka had wandered off alone to the far edge of the space, near the rusting, disused railroad spur line, while Tsuzuki . . .
Muraki said something to him, and even the dim and fickle lighting could not hide the fact that Tsuzuki's lips curled into a smile. The two embraced and kissed. I turned my head away.
We would not be doing him a kindness by requiring him to return to Meifu with us. I had known Tsuzuki for decades, and yet I had never seen him so genuinely happy as he seemed to be now, in the arms of that monster.
Do I love him enough to let him go? I had tried to do that once before, but Hisoka had stopped me. This time, even he seemed uncertain. And I knew that Watari wouldn't interfere--he was Tsuzuki's friend, but he had never been as close to him as Hisoka and I.
I don't understand. I don't know what the right thing to do is anymore. Tsuzuki had asked for our trust. If I genuinely believed in him, I wouldn't try to separate them. But . . .
I raised my hand, letting delicate streamers of shadow coil around it, invisible in the darkness.
Muraki, you son of a bitch, if you hurt him again, I'm going to kill you.
I walked the perimeter of the pentagram one more time before lighting the candles, making certain that the lines were unbroken. Futile effort, of course, given that Ralatenalan was certain to throw off such a pathetically weak restraint, as it had before, but it made it easier to ignore the Shinigami arrayed around me. I still didn't quite trust them, or entirely understand why they had decided to help, but having the five of us working on it together offered me the best chance of defeating the demon that I had had yet, so I had accepted it.
I stopped beside Asato. He took one look at me and embraced me. Do you think I need comfort, beloved? Don't you understand yet that it's enough just to have you here?
"You are all right with this, aren't you?" he murmured. "Them, I mean."
I kissed him instead of responding in words. Don't you understand, even now? I would do things far more repugnant than teaming up with these if it meant saving you.
"Hey, you two almost ready?" The boy was looking at us--not glaring, just looking. Without animosity. Curious, that.
Asato tried to separate from me immediately, but I raised my hand to the nape of his neck and held him where he was for a moment longer. And in the morning, when this is over and the other Shinigami are gone, we will laugh and make love, won't we, Asato? It was entirely possible that someone was going to die here tonight, but I would sacrifice those others without a qualm if it meant saving the two of us. Even if they were his friends, and he would hate me for it if he ever remembered.
He was flushed and breathless when I finally let him go, and I had no doubt that his body was aching for mine just as mine ached for his, but we had no privacy here, and while the thought of turning the other Shinigami--especially the shadowmaster and that boy--into involuntary voyeurs was amusing, I knew that Asato wasn't enough of an exhibitionist to enjoy such a thing very much.
"Are you ready?" I asked softly, for my beloved's ears alone. He nodded, fanning the handful of fuda that the boy had given him earlier.
I turned away from him, facing the pentagram, and lit the candles with a twitch of my mind. There would be no sacrifices this time, because there was no need. I had something that the demon appeared to want, and that would be far more potent bait than any life force.
I saw Watari shudder as I began the incantation. A bit squeamish, are you, Sir Scientist? Well, I suppose I don't entirely blame you. There is a reason why there are very few retired demonologists in the world.
The candles flared blue almost immediately, and I braced myself as a shadowy shape materialized inside the pentagram, solidifying into something vaguely horselike as I spoke the name Ralatenalan.
"Greetings, Fallen One," it said, staring at me with burning yellow eyes. "You have led me on quite a chase. I should have known from the beginning that it was you that I sought."
I stared at the demon as it lowered itself to one knee in front of me, surprised but not wanting to show it. It was looking for me all along? Why? The Shinigami were all staring at me, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw Asato separating one fuda in particular from those he held in his hand, and hoped that he knew what he was doing.
"My master extends his greetings through me to you, his grandson," the demon continued, "and asks that you return home with me, that you may take your proper place among your own people."
I kept my face as expressionless as I could manage, but inside, I was reeling with shock. My master . . . you his grandson. My mother's previously unknown demonic father had been the fallen angel who ruled the demon race? And . . . return home with me? Ralatenalan was inviting me to come with him to the demon world, normally forbidden to mortals?
"You are the first of his kindred to awaken to your true self," the demon added. "Those who fell do not normally breed true. My master has no heir, save yourself."
Heir?!
My mind stuttered to a complete halt at that point, overwhelmed. I just stood there, staring at the demon, until Asato's hand brushed against my elbow.
"Kazutaka . . . you aren't thinking of leaving me, are you?" Such sad amethyst eyes . . . I had thought that I loved those eyes when they were full of tears, but now the evidence of my beloved's pain did nothing but enrage me.
I turned away from the demon and faced Asato squarely. "I am not going anywhere without you. You are my mate, and I . . ." I could not force the word love out of my mouth, no matter how much I knew he needed to hear it, so I settled for, "I won't leave you, beloved."
"You . . . that . . . Perhaps you are not entirely awake after all. You could not have bonded to such a creature--it thinks it is human!" The demon snarled, and energy lanced out from its horn.
Just like the last time. That was the only thought that had time to cross my mind as I shouldered Asato out of the way. The attack was aimed squarely at me, and there was no way that I could see to save both of us. I gritted my teeth as darkness enveloped me, shutting out the light of the candles and the moon.
There was . . . no pain? Or very little, at least. There was an ache in my back and shoulders, but it was the sensation experienced when a cramped limb is stretched for the first time in hours. The pain in the socket of my lost right eye was vicious, but highly localized and soon over, as the flesh there convulsed and pushed something small and hard out to fall to the ground. Other than that, it was like every cell in my body was . . . being washed clean. My flesh tingled, and I heard something tear, but the agony I expected never arrived. What is this? Not an attack, but something else, something that I didn't understand . . .
I took a half-step forward to retain my balance as the darkness shredded and fell away from me. My shirt was torn, and the night air was cold against my back and . . . my wings?
Yes.
My wings. I could see them out of the corners of my eyes--both my eyes, even though my artificial eye was lying on the ground at my feet--broad and white and beautiful.
"Are you awake yet, Fallen One?"
This is my true form. Demon. Fallen angel.
I flung my head back and laughed.
Kazutaka?
His laughter was beautiful. He was beautiful beyond comprehension, although other than the wings and the restoration of his lost eye, I couldn't put a finger on just what about him had changed.
"I always was." It was still his voice, just as it was still his face, but it had acquired an additional richness, a resonance that hadn't been there before. I jumped a little as he stepped toward me, twining an arm around my body and draping a wing over my shoulders. "And this is my mate," he added as I breathed in the scent of starfire and distance and him. "None of your machinations can change that."
I looked calmly at the demon. "He is my mate and he's staying with me," I told it firmly.
The demon laughed. "He is your enemy, little lamb. Have you forgotten so easily?"
The vacant lot in which we stood vanished into greyness, and I couldn't feel Kazutaka's arm or the weight of his wing anymore. I glanced frantically from side to side, but the place where I now found myself was flat and featureless except for two glowing yellow eyes directly in front of me. Flat and featureless and familiar. Just like the dream from that first morning . . . which wasn't a dream at all, from the look of it.
"I scented his magic on you from the first," the demon said, "so I erased your memory to reduce the number of distractions and let that tie drag you along until you found him. But I don't need you anymore, little lamb, and in fact you're beginning to be a considerable nuisance. Receive once more what I took from you."
It took me a fraction of a second to decode that, but when I did, my eyes widened and I tried to channel power through the fuda in my hand. No, I don't want to know . . . Blood and roses, the scars on the insides of my wrists, what it felt like to die . . . I don't want to remember those things!
But of course, it was too late from the beginning.
--"I'm sorry. This is very embarrassing. Was there . . . something you wanted?"
It took me a moment to tear my eyes away from his beautiful face, from that inexplicable lone tear, and ask, "Did you see a woman with long hair run in here?"--
--"Hisoka Kurosaki."
What's with his attitude? I wondered as I watched my new partner's almost expressionless face.--
--"Show me your body!" Watari said, and began ripping at my clothes while everyone else stared.--
--" . . . but perhaps we should use something else to bet with instead of money."
"Something . . . else?" I had a feeling that I wasn't going to like this.
Muraki smiled. "Perhaps your body would do, Tsuzuki-san."
I'd been blushing ever since he had tried to hand me those damned roses, but I had to be fire-engine red now. Doesn't he ever quit trying? I'd been propositioned a few times over the years, but no one I had known before had ever been as persistent as Muraki. Why did he want me so badly? He was handsome, educated, charismatic, seemed to be reasonably well-off financially, and no one but us knew that he was a sociopathic murderer . . . He could have had almost anyone he wanted, so why did he persist in pursuing a dead man?--
--"If I were to die . . . Would you trust me then, Tsuzuki-san?"--
--"You're the killer, aren't you?"
Muraki set his chopsticks carefully aside and looked up at me with a smile. "Correct. I am behind all the murders this time."--
--"Burn, Touda. Burn everything . . ." I raised my hands in invocation, calling the dragon down, as Muraki and the disembodied head inside the fluid-filled cylinder vanished behind a sheet of flame.--
--then the grey plain vanished, and I was back in the vacant lot, being steadied by Kazutaka's--Muraki's-- arm around my waist. I tasted bile even as I clung to him, trying to find my balance again. What have I done? I . . . with him? How could I ever have let him . . . ? I shuddered.
"Asato? Are you all right? Did he hurt you?" Concern was writ plain on the face of the fallen angel. And he was entirely beautiful even now that I knew "fallen" to be the operative word, and my body still craved his touch.
I gave him a smile that wasn't, really. "He only reminded me of what I really am." I shrugged Muraki's arm off and stepped away from him, and he made no move to follow. Understanding flashed across his face, followed by . . . could that be pain? It was gone too quickly for me to be certain.
"There is nothing between you now, Fallen One." If the demon had been equipped to do so in this form, it probably would have been smirking. "Will you desist in this delusion of yours and come with me now?"
"You are wrong . . . and you will pay for your attempts to separate us." Cold, cold silver eyes. A ball of light began to form between pale hands. "Asato is my mate." Energies crackled around him, and the light inverted itself, becoming an empty pool of lightning-edged darkness from which something began to emerge. The demon seemed to snap out of its daze, but it wasn't quick enough to avoid the pale dragon that shot out of the dark hole. It tumbled over backward, locked in combat.
What am I still doing here? I wondered. Surely Muraki could take care of himself . . . and besides, if the demon did take him away, it would be doing a favour to the world. But . . .
It's because a Muraki with the full power of his demonic heritage behind him would be ten times more dangerous than Muraki the self-taught sorcerer, I told myself. It wasn't because I still wanted to feel his hands on my body, or because the demon within me stirred restlessly at the thought of letting him go, oh no. It was all purely altruistic.
All lies, but they made me feel better.
The dragon screamed as the demon's claws tore it to shreds, and I could tell that Muraki was clamping his teeth shut on a curse. The demon righted itself, shook itself like a dog, and then looked at us.
"Tell me, little lamb, why are you still here? I would have thought that you and your dead friends would be long gone by now."
I smiled, baring my teeth at it. "I told you before that the worst murderer in the world didn't deserve to be taken by you. I didn't expect to have to stand by those words . . . but I will."
"And the others stay because of you. I see. How very . . . annoying."
Now. "I pray to the twelve gods who surround me." The fuda I held began to glow under the touch of my mind. "Come forth, Suzaku!"
Thank you, neesan, I thought as I heard the scream of the phoenix and saw the orange/crimson light rise above and behind me. As she swooped down toward the demon, I took a step backward and to the side, which placed me beside Tatsumi.
"It's right, you know," I said to him. "You don't really have to stay. My friends."
"Shut up," Hisoka replied, as I'd pretty much expected him to do. "You think we're going to abandon you after all this?"
You don't understand, I thought sadly. Neither of us is worth it. I wish I could force you to go, but . . . I can't.
Tatsumi raised his hand, and the demon's shadow surged up and knocked it off-balance. Watari was muttering something and sketching on a bit of scrap paper with a mechanical pencil. I winced, because I knew his powers, like Hisoka's, weren't really very useful for offense. They really should have left, but I knew they wouldn't. They didn't understand what I really was. They thought I was worth saving, despite everything, even now that my eyes declared my true nature instead of just hinting at it.
Suzaku isn't hurting it, I realized as I watched the ballet of phoenix-Shikigami and anti-kirin-demon. It can't hurt her, either, but she isn't hurting it, just like Byakko apparently couldn't. I'm not sure that any of my Shiki would be able to hurt it, and Tatsumi's shadows aren't doing more than stagger it. We need to think of something else. Involuntarily, my eyes skimmed over to Muraki, who was watching the battle with a slight frown on his face. No, wait, he is doing something . . . Whispered words, small hand gestures . . . The demon's movements were slowing, as though it had suddenly gotten mired in molasses. Quickly, I fumbled through my fuda. That one . . . no, this one. The banishment was intended for demons far lesser than the one in front of us, but I didn't have any better ideas. I held it up and willed it to activate.
"You miserable SHEEP--" The horn tilted in my direction, and black light gathered around it. I flung myself sideways, but from the first, I knew that I wasn't moving fast enough. Something slammed into my chest, knocking me back some ten feet. I hit my head on the ground, dazing myself so that it wasn't until after the first time that I failed to scramble to my feet that I realized that there was something--no, someone--lying across my legs.
Muraki.
He had placed himself in harm's way for me again, only this time, there had been no miraculous reprieve. I could see the distortions in his flesh that indicated that the demon's blow had broken his left arm, and probably his shoulder and several ribs on that side as well. His left wing was stretched out over the ground, limp and twitching, and there were feathers everywhere--burnt, broken, torn, bloody. Oh, Kazutaka . . .
"Are you . . . all right, Asato?"
"Yes." Not really a lie--I had bruises, but I could already feel them healing. His interposition had saved me from anything worse. "Why did you do that?" Risking your life to save a dead man a little pain . . .
"You are my mate. Mine. How could I have let that touch you?"
"So you kill yourself to stop it? I'm already dead, remember? I never wanted even you to waste your life this way." I'm crying. Why am I crying?
Muraki coughed. "Even your pain belongs to me." Then, more softly, "I never meant to hurt you this time, Asato. Please forgive me."
"I . . ." Oh, gods, he's dying. I could see the blood on his lips. One of those broken ribs had to have punctured a lung. I'm never going to see him again. All those murders . . . They won't be gentle when they judge him. He's headed for thousands of years of torment because, in his own way, he loved me. I whimpered. I never wanted anyone to die for me again, not even him. I've killed so many . . . so many . . .
"Shhh." I don't know what it cost him to raise his right hand and touch my face, but somehow he did it. "It's all right. In a few moments, all the torment I've caused you will be over."
"No," I whispered. "No, it won't."
Even as the fallen angel, I discovered, he still tasted like my Kazutaka. But even as our lips parted, his body went lax.
No!
The demon inside me suddenly boiled up out of the corner of my soul where I had confined it.
My mate!
The sound coming from my chest was a deep growl, but I wasn't making it. Nor was I the one who raised and swiveled my head to look at Ralatenalan, who was still trying to dodge Suzaku.
How dare that creature harm my mate?!
Power building up inside me, as it had before only a few times in my life.
It's going to pay for that.
I had always hated the demon within me because it was indiscriminately destructive. Twice it had ruined my life, and when I had arrived in Meifu I had chained it and gagged it and drugged it and locked it away at the bottom of my subconscious, where it had mostly stayed until Muraki had begun his concentrated efforts to wake it and set it free. This time, I gave myself over to it completely, wanting--needing--the power that I could not tap without its help.
You're dead, Ralatenalan.
"Suzakugetoutoftheway!" I gritted out in the moment before I/it loosed the energy. The black-edged wave of otherwise invisible force narrowly missed my Shiki's tailfeathers. It lifted Ralatenalan and slammed it back into the ground, leaving it as crumpled and broken as Kazutaka . . . but the demon didn't use its final breaths to murmur protestations of love to its mate.
"Master!" it screamed, and then spoke a name that made the demon within me prick up its ears.
Oh, hell, I thought as a patch of even darker black appeared in the air above the horselike corpse, then winced at the irony.
We're in for it now.
Tatsumi and Watari covered their ears as the demon called out to its master. Something inside me lurched when the creature spoke the dark name, but it didn't fill me with the same revulsion that it clearly did my friends, so I was probably the only one of the three of us to actually see him emerge.
The portal hanging in the air above Ralatenalan's body began to glow with light, first in delicate shades of gold and rose, then purest white. Then an arm and a leg thrust themselves through, and he stepped down onto mortal soil for what had to be the first time in millennia--perhaps even the first since the Fall.
He did resemble Muraki--a younger, more graceful Muraki, with long hair that fell unbound to his waist. He was just as pale, although his flesh seemed to glow faintly from within as the mad doctor's hadn't even after he'd suddenly sprouted wings, and even more beautiful . . . and obviously wrong in a way that Muraki had never been. His wings were gorgeous, his face and body perfect, but his fingers ended in talons and his teeth were fangs and his total nudity revealed a large and very erect penis which the angel that he appeared to be should not ever have had.
Fallen One. My lips shaped the syllables, but I couldn't speak them. So this was the Master of Hell, the angel cast down from Heaven for daring to declare himself a god. Lucifer, as the Westerners call him, although he has other names in Meifu.
He prodded Ralatenalan with a taloned foot. "Why did you call me?" A beautiful, terrible, inhuman voice. The lesser demon, apparently too far gone to speak again, raised a shaking forelimb to point at Tsuzuki and Muraki, who were still sprawled together on the ground. Lucifer's gaze followed the gesture, and he smiled slowly.
He crossed the vacant lot unhurriedly, making an unexpected detour to pause in front of me. I swallowed repeatedly as he reached out to grasp my chin and tilt my head up, feeling the delicate prickle of his talons against my skin and wondering how he managed to make his every motion both a declaration of power and a sexual solicitation. My own penis was straining at the inside of my pants, even though the thought of those delicate, beautiful, twisted hands touching me intimately made me want to vomit.
The eyes that met mine were molten silver, with the same cat's slit pupils as his grandson's, but deep inside them lay the reflection of Paradise. Fallen and corrupt though he was, the demon emperor had never forgotten what he had once been. It burned me as I stared into it, but I could not force myself to look away. Then Lucifer made a soft breathy sound that wasn't quite a laugh, patted me on the ass with the other hand, and let me go to resume his interrupted journey.
He knelt down beside Tsuzuki, and my partner--or whatever he had become--met his gaze with unflinching insolence. Lucifer kissed him on the forehead. I blinked. A greeting for a relative of sorts, his grandson's mate, or an acknowledgement of . . . what? I could see him telling my partner something in a low voice, something that was making Tsuzuki blush or flush, but I was too far away to hear what it was. Then he raised his voice.
"For two of such ability . . . I can wait." He straightened Muraki's broken wing and folded it carefully at the mad doctor's side, then ran his hands over the pale man's side and shoulder. "You will come to me in your own time, both of you. Kinsmen." His hand brushed lightly against Tsuzuki's face again. Then he rose to his feet. "Ralatenalan." His voice was suddenly arctic with anger, and I winced even though he wasn't speaking to me. "You will place yourself at the service of these two. If either of them summons you for a task, you will accomplish it to the best of your ability. And if either of them ever has any complaint about you, or you ever again harm either of them in any way, you will be executed. I have no patience with incompetence."
One final molten-silver look at me that made my very soul cringe. Then he walked back over to the lesser demon, threw its broken body over his shoulder, and used the talon-tipped index finger of his other hand to tear another hole in the air.
It wasn't until several moments after he had vanished that I managed to let out the breath that I had barely realized I had been holding. I touched my chin, where the nerves still somehow half-felt the prickle of claws. Watari shook himself out of his daze and went over to examine Tsuzuki and Muraki, although I noticed that he avoided crossing the path Lucifer had taken, or kneeling where he had knelt. I went over to join him.
"--nothing worse than bruises," the blond was saying. "As for Muraki . . . he's alive, but unconscious, and it's difficult to tell how much damage he might have taken. Tsuzuki, did you notice if he'd hit his head? Hey, Tsuzuki . . ."
My partner was rising slowly to his feet with Muraki in his arms.
"I'm taking him back to the Ko Kaku Ro," he announced. "Let Oriya look after him. And after that . . . I'm coming home." Finally, finally, his smile was once again the sweet expression of the Tsuzuki I knew. Even his eyes looked almost normal, with the pupils dilated by darkness, in the instant before he vanished, taking the pale man with him.
Tatsumi cleared his throat. "We should probably leave the pentagram until morning--none of us has the training to dismantle it safely in the dark," he began, but I was staring at the space where my partner had been. He'd acted as close to normal as you could expect, under the circumstances, but inside he had been bleeding.
Tsuzuki . . . are you going to be all right?
If the transition into my true form had been almost painless, my body's return to near-humanity more than made up for it. The indescribable agony that ran through me when my every cell suddenly ceased to be immortal and went back to inexorably dying made me whimper, because if I had screamed I would never have been able to stop again.
Slowly, slowly, I realized that someone was holding me, but that someone was not Tsuzuki, not my mate. Familiar, though.
"Oriya," I croaked, and he held a glass of water to my lips. I drank slowly, letting my parched tissues rehydrate at their leisure.
"He brought you back here and left you," my friend told me. "You've been unconscious for not quite a day. Can you sit up?"
I shifted my limbs gingerly, and realized that my shoulder and side--and my wing, wherever it was now?--were healed. With Oriya's support, I did manage to sit up. Back at the Ko Kaku Ro, I realized, taking in my surroundings.
"Did Asato say anything to you?" Did he leave a message for me?
"Only that the demon wouldn't be coming back. I didn't ask him to explain. Some of what had happened was pretty obvious. Y'know, it's a shame--I liked your new look . . ."
"I have no intention of letting this . . . reversion . . . be permanent." There had to be a way to regain my true self. Perhaps Ralatenalan would know . . . I remembered Lucifer's voice giving his messenger over to Asato and myself as though it had been something from a dream, but I was certain that it had been real. I would have to summon the creature as soon as I was strong enough, and have a little . . . talk . . . with it.
"So what are you going to do now? Go after Tsuzuki-san? Somehow I can't see you just giving up on him, either."
I smiled. "I don't have to go after him. I told you before--he is my mate. He has no choice but to return to me, even against his better judgement."
All I have to do is wait.
Seeing Watari run out of his lab and into the hallway the moment before something inside the room exploded was nothing new, but I stopped in the middle of the corridor when I realized that Tsuzuki was with him. Normally Tsuzuki-- and the rest of us--stayed away from the blond's lab unless in desperate need of something only he could provide. It wasn't safe otherwise, because Watari had the unfortunate habit of making passers-by into involuntary experimental subjects.
Watari grinned at Tsuzuki and wiped soot off his face with the back of his hand. "Sorry 'bout that, but I know I'll get it right next time--"
Tsuzuki smiled back. "Come and look for me when you do. I'm going to get some more coffee."
There were, I noted, dark circles under Tsuzuki's eyes. He's been back for almost a week and he's still not over the nightmares--what did Muraki do to him?
"There's some in my office," I offered, coming up beside them. "I haven't had a chance to talk with you since you got back . . . and I promise, I'm not going to try to ambush you about old expense reports this time." I wasn't about to admit that I wanted to ambush him about something else instead.
Tsuzuki shrugged a "why not?" and we headed off together as Watari cautiously poked his head back into his lab to gauge the extent of the destruction.
"What were the two of you doing in there, anyway?" I asked. "Don't tell me that he actually convinced you to test one of his batches of would-be gender-switching potion."
"Of course not. We were trying to find a way to change my eyes back to . . . normal." Tsuzuki's fingers brushed lightly against the inside of his right wrist. "Assuming that that's even possible. I may have to go out and get myself tinted contact lenses."
Do you really think they're so ugly? I wanted to say, but the words died before they left my mouth, because I found those violet cat's eyes disturbing too. Demon's eyes. The rest of us had been pretending that we hadn't noticed the change, because this was the first time that Tsuzuki had mentioned it, however obliquely. He wouldn't discuss what had happened with Muraki, either. Well, not beyond the thirty- second executive summary, "Ralatenalan erased my memory, teleported me from Nagasaki to outside Tokyo and dropped me in a river there, Muraki fished me out, and then he spent the next several days looking after me and trying to get me into bed with him while we were both dodging the demon." No mention of the fact that Muraki's attempts at seduction had succeeded, and I didn't know whether, by not talking about it, he was trying to spare us . . . or himself.
Fortunately, we arrived at my office just then, and I was able to occupy myself serving us both from the contents of the small coffee-maker I kept in the corner--not an extravagance, that, but a necessity, given the number of hours of overtime I was sometimes forced to work in order to untangle the division's accounts. Tsuzuki added three spoonfuls of sugar to his and stirred it slowly, never quite looking at me.
"Are you all right?" I asked quietly.
He shrugged. "Just not sleeping well, that's all."
"Are you sure? I've been getting the impression there was more to it than that, but if you're not ready to talk about it yet, that's all right." How badly did he hurt you?
"I . . . miss him." All but whispered, so softly that if I hadn't been straining my ears to hear him, I wouldn't have known he had spoken. "Or rather, I miss the person I thought he was. It's silly, isn't it? I know it was all a lie, but I want that lie back so badly . . . He was the only person who ever really understood me and loved me in spite of it, and I want it back."
"Lies like that really do hurt, don't they? They can end up destroying your life, if you let them." I touched his hand, and he finally looked up at me. "Do you know why I took this job, after I dropped you as my partner, instead of staying on in Kyoto? It was so I could tell a lie very much like that one to myself, and I've only recently begun to realize how much damage that has done me."
"A lie . . . ?" Tsuzuki bent his head again and stared into the depths of his cup.
"A lie," I confirmed. "You see, there was someone, another Shinigami, that I discovered myself developing feelings for, but . . . that person . . . was too fragile for me to tell them so, or so I thought. I was terrified of hurting . . . them . . . or myself, but I didn't want to go for tens or hundreds of years without seeing them again, either, so I decided to get a desk job here at headquarters, to set up circumstances where I could meet them without getting too intimate. But I don't want to hide behind my ledgers anymore." I gritted my teeth and forced myself to take the plunge, to just say it. "Tsuzuki, I realize this really isn't the best time for me to be saying this, but . . . I love you."
"Tatsumi . . ."
I reached out and wrapped both my hands around the one of his that wasn't holding the handle of the coffee cup in a death grip. "I realize that, after what Muraki did to you, it may be a very long time before you can bring yourself to return my feelings, but I . . . thought you should know."
Tsuzuki looked almost . . . hungry? . . . as he snatched his hand away from me. It wasn't an expression I had ever seen on him before, and it was just as disquieting as his new eyes. "Tatsumi . . . oh, gods, I wish I could . . . but . . . I'm sorry!"
I barely heard the thud as his overturned chair hit the ground, or the sound of my door slamming open as he ran through it. I just sat there for what seemed like hours, staring at the untouched coffee cup, at the teardrops on the surface of the desk beside it. At the space where he wasn't.
Well, so much for that bright idea. Maybe in another hundred years, if we both survive that long, I'll be able to try again. Maybe. But I doubted it.
I wanted to unlock the bottom drawer of my desk, take out the brandy I kept hidden there for those occasions when I had to deal with Tsuzuki's expense reports, and drink it straight from the bottle until I couldn't remember my own name anymore, much less the fact that the person I loved had just refused me. I wanted to, but there was something else that I felt I had to do first.
Hisoka was probably in the library, I decided, based on what I knew of Tsuzuki's partner's schedule. With a heavy heart, I set out to find him.
And here I thought that trying to let go was the real test of love. I was so naive . . . but then, this is the first time I've ever had to do this, to do what was best for my loved one despite this pain. Oh, gods, it hurts. How do people deal with this? Does it ever go away?
I found him underneath a sakura tree beside a small, still pool, his pain wrenching at me whenever I lowered my defenses and tried to sense his location. It would have been much worse if we hadn't renewed our empathic bond the day after his return to Meifu, though. At least this way, I had known instantly, before Tatsumi had even finished explaining what had happened, that my partner was at least still alive.
He looks like hell, I thought sadly. So much hurt inside him, and it had gotten worse instead of better since we had gotten back from Kyoto. He'd lost the ability to cheerfully pretend that the worse things in life didn't exist when he wasn't actually face-to-face with them, and his attempts to fake it weren't quite working even on the others, much less on me. This wasn't the Tsuzuki I'd gotten used to working with, but rather a man I'd glimpsed only on one long-ago foggy morning in Kyoto, a man who carried a crippling burden of guilt and grief that he never let anyone else see.
"You've been avoiding me," I said as I sat down beside him.
Tsuzuki stared straight ahead, refusing to look at me, his face covered with tears. "I didn't want to face you. The others can't see through my masks so easily. But it's so difficult, right now, for me to joke around as though nothing happened. And then Tatsumi . . ."
"Tatsumi told me what he did," I interrupted. "He was the one who asked me to come out here and make sure you were all right. I could have killed him for doing something so stupid. The last thing you do to someone who's just been raped as ask him to get into bed with you, no matter how you feel about him."
"I wish the problem were something that simple," Tsuzuki said. "I've known for years that Tatsumi had feelings for me, but I could never have taken him as a lover--not because I don't like him, but because of this." His fingers hovered first over one eye, then the other. "Because I'm half demon. A monster. Most people are too disgusted to get near me after they find out, and of those who've been brave enough or insane enough to want me anyway, Muraki is the only one who has survived touching me. The others were killed by the demon inside me."
"Tsuzuki . . ." The emotions rolling off him, the rage, pain, and shame, choked me, and I forgot what I had been about to say.
"I can't control it." Tsuzuki continued his dull-voiced monologue as though I had never opened my mouth. "I used to be able to keep it locked up somewhere down at the bottom of my subconscious, but even then it would occasionally break loose and do things like blow up buildings, and now it won't stay quiet anymore. It's always there, looking out through my eyes, searching for its mate, and I'm afraid that one day it's going to displace the human me completely. And I don't know how to stop it."
I gritted my teeth and reached over to brush my fingers against the back of his hand. The impression I got . . . was rather like a yin-yang symbol, actually: two personae nested together within the same body, giving the illusion of being separate and opposite while in fact being two facets of the same being. The anger I had sensed was the demon's, the pain and shame were Tsuzuki's, but in a sense they were all Tsuzuki's emotions, too.
And even worse . . . I'd been spending so much time in the library lately because I'd been researching demonic social behaviour and mating customs, trying to fathom what Muraki had meant when he had called Tsuzuki his mate. The fragmentary references I had found had been . . . alarming, to say the least. Mating was just about the only form of social behaviour between normal demons, and once the bond had been established and consummated it had all the force of a biological imperative. Mated demons could no more spend long periods apart than humans could survive without food or sleep, and if they were separated for more than a certain amount of time, they developed a gradually increasing craving for each other's presence. I had hoped that the effect would be less in Tsuzuki, or pass him over entirely, because he considered himself human, but I was beginning to think that we wouldn't be so lucky.
"You need to go back to him." The words tasted like bile and ashes, but I forced them out anyway. "To Muraki."
"I--"
"Shut up!" I snapped. "I know what you're going to say. The idea sickens me, but I think it's the only way to keep the demon from getting loose and you from going crazy, and having you be all right is more important to me than my revenge." I touched the site of a long-healed wound, remembering how Oriya had taught me that with the point of his sword. "And besides . . . you love him, don't you?" I knew what I had felt, hidden underneath the shame, a searing emotion that had made my mind flinch away from it.
"I don't know," Tsuzuki admitted. "I don't want to love him. He enjoys being a monster. He . . . glories in being what he is, and I hate that. I hate what he did to you. I hate the way he tried to force me to come to him. But once I stopped trying to get away from him, he was kind, loving, and caring like no one else has ever been to me, and even though I keep on telling myself that it was a lie, part of me doesn't want to believe it."
"You love him," I repeated, not a question this time. "And he loves you, or the little part of him that's still human does. I . . . found that out when I probed him at the Ko Kaku Ro. You need each other."
Tsuzuki didn't say anything. Steeling myself against what I knew I would feel when I touched him, I hugged him, awkward because of our relative positions. You've done so much for me, and I just want you to be happy, even if it means you're sleeping with that murderer. Even if it means releasing you to participate in a relationship that would be warped and dangerous if the people involved were truly human. And before I even let him go, I felt something inside him crystallize, and knew that he had come to a decision. I didn't ask what it was, because either way, I didn't want to know. I just got up and went back to the library, leaving my partner sitting under a sakura tree and staring off into the middle distance.
He'll be all right now. He has to be. Otherwise, I might as well have killed them both at the Ko Kaku Ro, and saved everyone some pain.
The garden of the Ko Kaku Ro hadn't changed in my absence. It was almost like a continuation of the evening that Hisoka and the others had interrupted, except that this time, I was wearing my own clothes, not a kimono borrowed from Oriya, and I knew who and what I was.
"About time you got back." The voice came from almost directly behind me. I turned and bowed.
"Oriya-san, I thought I should return this. Thank you for the loan."
Oriya accepted the folded kimono without comment and just stood there for a moment, studying me. "He's still here. Upstairs. Do me a favour and get those cigarettes away from him. He hasn't quite been chain-smoking, but pretty close, and I'm starting to worry that he's going to burn the place down, never mind what it's probably doing to his lungs. And if you need anything--" He gave the word a peculiar emphasis. "--feel free to ask. Any time."
I swallowed, because I knew exactly what he meant. "Thank you."
Upstairs at the Ko Kaku Ro was a maze of small, and sometimes not-so-small, rooms where the girls entertained their clients, but I didn't have to ask which door Muraki was hiding behind. The demon inside me knew. It had been able to taste its mate's presence in the air ever since I had materialized in the garden, and it wasn't going to let something like a mere lack of detailed directions get in its way.
He was sitting at the window, cigarette in hand, overflowing ashtray beside him. "Asato."
"Stay where you are," I said as he began to set the cigarette down. "We need to talk, and I would prefer that we do it before you try to distract me. Kazutaka."
His eyebrow quirked, but he nodded. It was all I could do to shut the door then lean back against the frame instead of ripping my clothes off and throwing myself at him, but I managed somehow.
Now. "I want you back," I admitted in just so many words. "But there are some things that I just can't accept, so there are going to be conditions. If you can't live with them, then tell me so, and I'll find some quiet, isolated rock in the middle of the ocean and call Touda down again." Better to burn than to release what's inside me, and go over to that side as your . . . kinsman . . . predicted I would. I had decided that after Hisoka had left me that afternoon. And maybe it will frighten you just enough.
Was that a flicker of concern I detected? Yes. Concern, or something . . . but for me, or for himself?
I drew in a deep breath. "I won't have you killing people for no reason, or to feed. Self-defense is one thing, murder another. So from now on, I want you to at least ask yourself, before you kill someone, whether or not I'd approve . . . and let them live, if you don't think I would."
"And you would trust me not to lie to myself on such a topic?" The cigarette had burned down almost to his fingers now, and he stubbed it out, never taking his eyes from my face.
"You've done more difficult things than tell yourself the truth, in order to have me." I ignored the edged smile with which he responded. Hisoka said that there was still a bit of humanity inside you. I think you'd hate it if I told you that I wanted to try to bring it out, to nurture it . . . but I also think that you need to come to terms with it, and you can't do that if you keep on hiding it from yourself. Maybe this will help, as well as salving my conscience. I don't know. But I have to try.
A very long time ago, someone had offered me a second chance--offered me a second life as a Shinigami despite the way I had ended my mortal existence, despite everything the demon inside me had done. There was at least as much innocent blood on my hands as on Muraki's. Maybe he would be able to benefit from a second chance, too. It was my best, possibly even my only, hope.
"Is that all?"
"No." I licked my lips. This had to be even more delicately phrased than the rest, if I wanted to head off the danger. "Hisoka Kurosaki is my partner. That means that, even though he isn't my mate, he and I are going to have to be spending a lot of time together. I value him, and I don't want to see him hurt. I want you to stay away from him as much as you reasonably can, and to not play mind games with him or attack him in any way when the two of you do have to interact." Get that boy a mate of his own before my grandson kills him--no one likes an unattached individual sniffing around his mate. Hopefully this would be enough to stop the words whispered in my ear by a fallen angel from haunting me, at least for a little while.
"Do you think I would be jealous of that pathetic child?" He seemed to see the yes in my eyes, because his smile faded away after a moment. "Very well. For the time being, I accept the conditions you have set in return for your companionship."
There was nothing else to say except, "Thank you." Then I finally allowed myself to give in to the need that was making my entire soul ache.
We met in the middle of the room. Underneath the bitterness left behind by the tobacco, he still tasted like my Kazutaka, even now. The demon inside me sighed and seemed to relax as we clung to each other.
I slid my hands down his back and into his pants, then, feeling a slight stab of nervousness, spread his buttocks and slipped one hand between them, probing gently. I hadn't been certain that I was going to do this, but right now, I needed to know. I kept my eyes locked on his as my fingers found what I was looking for, silently asking, Will you let me? Is it all right? He pushed back lightly against my hand. Of course it is. Go ahead. The response of someone who considered me an equal. That eased something inside me, even as I shook my head minutely. Not tonight, but someday soon, I think. I'm going to enjoy seeing you learn about those sensations, because I know you're as much of a virgin that way as I was in all ways when we first came together. You would never let your prey touch you like that.
I palmed the tube from my pocket as I let my trenchcoat and suit jacket fall to the floor, remembering the way the girl running the cash register at the drug store had looked at me when I had bought it, and how I had blushed. Kazutaka, in the meanwhile, was dexterously unbuttoning or unzipping everything within reach without even being able to see most of it, and soon most of our clothes were on the floor.
We tumbled onto the futon together. Kazutaka stroked my hips and the outsides of my thighs, but I refused to spread my legs as he was suggesting. Instead, I bent my head and gave him what I meant to be a gentle love-bite on the shoulder . . . except that the demon took over for a split second and made it much harder than I had intended, clamping down until blood invaded my mouth and Kazutaka growled softly, both expressing pleasure and warning me not to go too far. I swallowed, unable to decide whether the copper-salt taste was the ultimate in delicacies or absolutely revolting. Much more of this and that thing inside me is going to get loose. Best do it now.
I moved, surging up and over until Kazutaka was the one lying on his back and I was straddling his thighs. I opened the tube as quickly as I could and smeared his erection with some of the gel inside, then poised myself over him. He didn't even try to stop me.
My body did the best it could, but because I had chosen to do this without any form of preparation at all, it did hurt, and I felt flesh split just before I got myself fully seated. I gritted my teeth and waited for the warm tingle that would come as my flesh healed itself around Kazutaka's penis. This was what I had wanted, a reminder to myself that this wasn't pure pleasure, wasn't a fairytale. Instead, it was going to be difficult and sometimes painful . . . but it was what I needed.
I am shaped to fit you now, I thought as I rode the first short, sharp upward thrust, raising myself so that I only half-enclosed him, then lowering myself back down again. Committed to him. By choice as well as out of need.
His fingers glided lightly over my skin, teasing, before he gathered my erection into his palm and began to do things to it that I had never felt him try before. We know so little about each other, even now . . . mostly the bad parts, and not even all of those. Did Oriya teach you how to do this? I'm glad someone di--oooh, don't stop . . .
I reached out to brush my fingers lightly along his jaw, and he turned his head and captured the tips of them in his mouth, sucking lightly on them in an echo of what was happening in the place where our bodies had fused. I couldn't take my eyes off that, even as a particularly hard thrust lifted my entire body half an inch or so before letting me down again. He was matching the other rhythm precisely, making me doubly aware of it, of the building waves of pleasure that were taking over my body, and I threw my head back as the grip on my penis tightened, shattering my self-control.
When the real world slowly returned, I was lying in his arms, feeling warm and . . . safe. Safe, with Muraki. Six months ago, I would have laughed in the face of anyone who had suggested such a thing. Now, I just sighed and snuggled closer. How many years had I spent staring up at institutional ceilings, dreaming an impossible dream about someone who would hold me and love me and never let me go? I had thought that the only way of having that was to go back in time and somehow arrange to be born human, but I suppose that dreams don't ever come true in quite the way that you expect.
I couldn't have broken his grip on me even if I had
wanted to, so I took the little nagging voice that said I should
have been on my way back to Meifu and locked it up in the
closet that had once belonged to the demon, returned my mate's
embrace, and let myself drift off to sleep.