ヒス

Pai screamed as the pain from the pressure of the tail wrapped around her ankle felt like it was crushing the bones to dust. The sound of shattering glass filled the air for only a second before she was forced to stop shooting as she was jerked high up into the air. She stoically held onto the gun.

The Oni snapped its large teeth up at her. A fetid odour rose from its bowels, a stink like that of a rotting army of dead rats wafting up to her. There were three bleeding holes scattered on its forehead, oozing a strange black liquid. Any normal creature should have been dead with three bullets in its head, but the Oni was clearly only hurting from it, and still very much alive.

And very, very angry.

"Pai hurt me." It growled. "Pai, sweet, mine Pai, hurting."

She whimpered in pain as the tail around her ankle squeezed tighter, scales digging in hard enough to draw blood, and she shut her eyes. When she opened them again, through the dangerously large black spots dotting her vision as blood rushed to her head, she saw what could only be described as a grin on the Onihitokuchi's large face, each tooth the size of both her feet, blunt. Even then, when crunching on something hard enough, they looked strong enough to completely grind bone to dust.

She was going to die.

"Pai, sweet, sweet blood, Pai."

Teeth gnashed. Saliva drooled over the edges of the gaping mouth as she was held over it like a string of meat.

Pai angled her aching arms as best she could and pulled the trigger.

The riot of bullets that would have hit the Onihitokuchi right in its massive eye went sideways as the Oni flicked its tail at the last moment and flung her away.

She didn't even have time to scream. She flew through the air, weightless for one blissful moment, before she crashed into one of the crates.

The pain was unlike anything she could imagine. It was like her body was breaking in half, all her organs jumping and squeezing tight together from pain as her back took the brunt of the force. Her head snapped back against the crate, and she could almost feel her skull cracking from the jarring force before she rolled to the ground.

Her limbs ached and burned, and her head was splitting itself apart from the pain of being knocked back so viciously against the crate. The rifle slipped from her hands, clattering on the ground before coming to a stop a few feet from her. She managed to lift her head, slowly, every move sending a screaming torrent of pain through her whole body.

The Onihitokuchi shuffled towards her, every step a thud on the ground, its tail whipping about in a furore, eye blazing down at her with such fierce anger that she was surprised she didn't go up in flames from it.

She managed to push herself to a sitting position, groaning at every move. She whined softly as she pushed back against the crate, pathetically trying to put as much distance as she could between herself and the Oni that was about to devour her. Her hair was matted with blood, stark and deep against the white. Her shoulder blades rubbed at the steel of the crate, the knobs of her spine aching from how hard she tried to press herself into the cold, unrelenting metal.

It hurt. Everything hurt, so bad. Even the tears that slipped down her cheeks when she blinked burned like lava.

"Pai, sweet, sweet, Pai."

She glanced down at the gun, but she knew, even if she made a final, desperate lunge to it, she would never make it. It was too far away, and she was too tired – she was drained, and despite getting shot at three times already, the Onihitokuchi was still ten times stronger than her, and faster, no matter how large and bulky it was.

I'm...I'm going to die, she thought dimly, frowning, almost confused by the thought, by the idea of it, how both real and impossible it seemed. I'm going to die.

Through her dimming vision, she spied a dark shape behind the Oni, outside the dusty windows. An instant later, there was a loud crash of glass as the windows of the warehouse were broken through.

Unable to move, she just barely managed to turn her head to the side as the shower of glass fell over her. One particularly large curve of glass struck her cheek, drawing blood. It dribbled down her chin as she struggled not to succumb to the blackness calling to her, the idyllic darkness of unconsciousness.

She – she wanted to. It would be so easy. She was so tired, so, so tired, and the darkness that beckoned to her every time she blinked was so tantalizing, so welcoming. Her eyelids drooped heavily, and she couldn't bring herself to force her eyes open again. She thought she was finally going to fall away into the darkness. She was exhausted from all the running, the powerful fear in her blood, everything.

She just wanted it to stop.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if she gave in. The pain would stop, the fear would drain away. That was what the darkness told her, in its simple quiet. If she was going to die, being unconscious as it happened will be better than having to live through those final moments, wasn't it?

When her vision winked in again, her eyes pulling open almost against her will in a final bid to see, she didn't understand what she was looking at.

Shin stood over her, back to her, twin katana blades drawn and nestled comfortably in his hands. She could just see the flicker of an ethereal, white light fading away as Shin drew his wings in. A light sprinkling of the glass he just stood through dusted his black hair, shimmering like diamonds in the sky as he stands under the lights. Hostility and deadly intent flowed from his silent form as Shin stood facing down the Oni, waves of barely leashed anger coming from him that even she could feel in her quickly numbing state.

He was the most beautiful thing she was ever seen.

Shin moved, just enough that she was in his periphery while still facing the monster, ready to leap into an attack or defence at a moment's notice. He stood mostly in front of her, shielding her with his body.

"Can you stand?" his voice was frigidly calm despite the way it seemed to double and echo in itself.

For a moment, all she could do was stare. Shin's form seemed to glow with a thin layer of dense but blurry red light that outlined his firm body – she couldn't tell if she was imagining that light or not. Despite his casual stance, she could see the tension in every muscled line of his body. All it would take was one small movement and he would whirl into action.

She wondered what that would look like.

He glanced back at her quickly when she didn't immediately respond, and – his eyes.

They were not the deep blue she knew. They were a burning crimson that glowed with a life, a fire, of their own. The effect they had on the angled planes of his face was beautiful and sharply inhuman, striking a chord deep in her, and not at all settling to her already completely frayed nerves.

This was Hayashi Shin, who she had grown so used to around Ayashi House. But that person was a seemingly ordinary man who was never too far from his blades. She had been around him for a whole year now, and she had never seen him like this.

This person in front of her, she didn't know. This unrestrained, lethal edge to him was wholly new and unfamiliar. She knew what he was, she (thought she) knew what he was capable of, but she...she had never seen him like this. It had never struck her so completely as it did now, in this moment, just how not human he was.

Sometimes, I forget that you are not human.

Shin spoke again, this time not quite so frostily composed. There was a trace of something there, of something like worry in his voice. "Pai?"

She parted her lips to respond, to tell him she could stand though she knew that if she tried, she would simply collapse again from the effort, when the Onihitokuchi made a low sound.

"Mine, mine," the Oni moaned in a deep, gravelling tone that sounded like boulders scraping across a blackboard. She winced at the sound of it, the little move sending a spark of pain lancing through the back of her neck where the wound from its tail still lay open and bleeding. Shin didn't move as he kept his eyes on the creature. "Mine, mine, gimme mine."

Shin ignored its calling. He acted like the Onihitokuchi wasn't there, even though he didn't look away from it.

He said again to her, in a carefully measured voice, "Listen to me, Pai. Focus on me. Can you tell me how badly you're hurt?"

"I..." she couldn't. She shook her head dazedly. Her breath hitched painfully as she tried to shift, the move sending a sharp, stabbing pain pressing into her lungs. Her laboured breathing sounded awful to her ears. "I can't. I can't move. It..." her voice breezed out of her in an exhausted breath, thin and whistling. "It hurts, Shin."

He started to turn at that, at the sound of his name leaving her lips in such a pained way.

"Gimme, gimme, gimme mine, mine, mine!" the Onihitokuchi roared. In a sudden move, it lunged for Shin, clawed arms outstretched.

Its sheer massive size should have been enough to surprise Shin, but in one swift move he stepped forward and slashed at the Oni, right across its grossly swollen face, down its large eye. The blades sang as they whistled through the air before making sickening contact with the Oni's skin.

He moved so quickly, so gracefully, in a blink, that she was almost sure he didn't move at all. She knew he did when blood spurted from the gaping wound and the Oni fell back with a heavy thud to the floor, screaming. The sound was horrible, deep and loud, sending nail-biting shivers down her spine.

In the next instant, Shin was there, kneeling beside her. His proximity sent a hot flash through her body as she looked up into his disconcerting red eyes, catching the dark blue flecks in them. Her eyes were largely dilated, the black of her pupils almost swallowing the light brown irises when she stared at him as if she wasn't completely sure he was there.

She felt a small frown light on her brow as her eyes dropped to his lips. "Your teeth...they're so sharp."

She felt so dull, tired, unable to comprehend even the smallest thing. All she was aware of, in this moment with Shin so close to her, was that his canines looked like they had inched a bit longer than was normal, almost like small fangs, but not quite.

Shin's lips twitched at her comment, almost like he might smile. She wondered what that looked like. He so rarely smiled, at least that she had seen. He pulled out the tanto blade tucked in his boot and pressed it in Pai's palm, closing her stiff fingers around it.

"Keep this with you while I deal with the Oni," he said. His lips were close to her ear that he didn't need to shout over the screaming Oni to be heard. He was close enough that she could feel his warm breath on her cheek. It was nice. "Use it if you need to, until I can come for you."

She didn't even have the strength to nod, to show she understood – just barely. She was so tired, and there were more black spots dancing across her eyes than before. She could hardly make him out through them.

Shin looked into her eyes as she stared woodenly over his shoulder at the still shrieking Oni before them. She didn't register when, in an uncharacteristically gentle move, he tucked a loose, wispy strand of her hair behind her ear, a finger tracing down her jaw.

She was so cold.

×

Shin sprang to his feet an instant later, quiet rage churning in his gut as he whirled around and advanced on the Oni. As he approached it, perhaps the Oni could sense its impending defeat. Perhaps it sensed its coming death, for it struggled to its squat feet and lurched again for Shin in a desperate bid to reach the source of its craving, blind with hunger that it didn't take the chance to flee instead.

Shin's hands clenched around the hilts of his katanas, ice cold fury encasing him as he looked down on the pathetic, disgusting creature that so hurt Pai. This time, Shin smoothly moved to the side as the monster barrelled toward him and, at the last moment, twisted and brought the blades down on the Oni's exposed neck. Not enough to severe bone, though. Not enough to kill it. Not quite yet – soon, but he wanted it to suffer first.

Pai lay broken and bloody mere feet away, barely clinging to consciousness. This infernal creature did that to her. It did not deserve the easy way out after hurting her.

Black blood spurted, splattering over Shin's clothes. He hardly noticed it. The Onihitokuchi swung around in a drunken fashion, delirious with pain, razor-sharp claws out as it tried to slash at Shin just the way he had at it.

It missed.

In the same instant, Shin twisted around in preparation to defend against another body he sensed behind him that was not Pai. He frowned when all he saw was a black cat on top of the crate beside the one Pai was propped up against, with one yellow and one blue eye. It had a bell tied around its neck with blue silk, a bell that made no sound when it moved.

The cat paused as it stalked around the two, heading towards the window. As Shin looked at it, he saw twin tails twine around each other, and he knew that this wasn't an ordinary cat. He turned from it, too preoccupied to deal with the Bakeneko. Whoever it was, they knew not to interfere.

No one in the Ayakashi world could mistake a Daitengu in action.

Shin's lips curled in distaste at the pathetic weakness of the Oni as it whined and whimpered in pain. He hated creatures that terrorized those weaker than themselves. He hated what this Oni had done to Pai. He hated that he knew he was thinking of Pai as one of those who would always be weaker than the supernatural, always hunted and sought after for reasons beyond her comprehension.

He hated that this had happened to Pai, and that he didn't make it here sooner.

"She mine, she mine, sweet, sweet blood, Pai, mine," the Oni moaned. "Tasty, so tasty. Find her first. Find her first. She mine, gimme!" it whined like a pitiful child denied candy.

It sickened him, how it claimed Pai as its property like it had any right. It angered him, that they hadn't prevented this from happening. He knew they should have taken into consideration the few Oni that lived in Sapporo when it became clear that Pai would live with them – not just for Shiori's sake, but Pai's as well. Pai's aura marginally protected her from Yori Chiisai, but they had never been able to confirm if it did the same with Oni.

Now they knew.

The supernatural were known for their taste in human flesh, but a lot of them only hunted humans with appealing scents, and ignored the vast majority of humans. They should have prepared against something like this happening. Shin should have.

He bared his teeth at the Oni. Having his True Ayakashi so close to the surface not only changed the colour of his eyes, but sharpened his canines and enhanced all his sense. It made him colder, more rational, but no less bloodthirsty for the anger that fuelled his every action. Being like this, with all the training he had done from childhood, made him the ultimate warrior. A killing machine, if need be, as it once had.

The Oni shrunk away from him. It knew who the weaker was in this battle. Its eye was wide and coated with a film of dust and dirt and, strangely, tears. Did it regret its choice in meal?

Shin didn't care. He felt nothing at the sorry sight.

"She is not yours."

In a lightning-fast whir, Shin leaped into the air and brought both blades simultaneously down on the fleetingly unprotected, bald head of the Oni. He struck hard and quick, and felt the Oni's soft head, hardly protected by the almost membrane-thin skull that surrounded the stupid creature's tiny brain, give way beneath the deadly blades. His feet rested for only a moment on the head of the Oni before he kicked off, landing smoothly on the ground behind it.

He turned to watch as the Oni fell face-first to the ground, dead. Its body twitched in minor death-spasms before it finally stilled, now only a large husk of dead meat lying at his feet.

In a matter of seconds, the body disintegrated to brown ash. The wind from the broken windows blew the ash in little whorls, scattering what remained of the creature that tried to eat Pai.

He felt nothing. No remorse, no guilt. A part of him only regreted that he didn't have time to draw out its suffering, to prolong his meting out of its punishment. But he didn't, because Pai needs him.

Shin sheathed his blades and briskly jogged over to Pai. As he moved, the glowing of his red eyes faded back to the sharp, deep blue they normally were, going back to his almost-human form now that the threat had been neutralized. He kept his True Ayakashi close, unwilling to let his guard down so easily. It was a part of him that is almost like a separate person, a different being, that always fuelled a hot surge of sensation that heightened his every sense and made him more aware of everything around him.

He could never truly separate himself from it, but he could suppress it enough to focus on what mattered in the moment.

Pai was unconscious by now, her head tilted back on the crate she was propped up against, her pale neck so vulnerably exposed. After the ordeal, her body unable to cope with everything she had been put through, Pai finally lost the fight to remain lucid. The tanto blade he gave her was still in her hand, her fingers wrapped around the hilt loosely. He eased it out of her ice-cold grip, and tucked it safely back in his boot as he carefully watched her face for any sign of lucidity.

If not for the pallor of her skin, the dirt and blood streaking her face and clothes, she would look like she was only fitfully sleeping. Her dark eyelashes, a stark contrast to the white of her hair, fluttered over her cheeks as her bluing lips quavered. She breathed in quick, shallow bursts, like perhaps it hurt to breathe too deeply. There was a thin stream of dried blood from a nosebleed and more trickling from the corner of her lips, looking like liquefied rust on the paleness of her skin.

He placed two fingers gently on the side of her neck, heart in his throat, breath caught in his chest. Her skin was deathly cold – but there, there was the flutter of her pulse. Shin didn't know enough of the human body to know if it was supposed to beat that slow. He didn't think so. Hengen and humans couldn't be that different.

He ran his hands over her body lightly, checking for any injuries so that he could quickly report them to Kanou once he gets to the healer. A sliver of dark anger coiled through him as he touched the multitude of scratches and blossoming bruises decorating her arms and legs, and the gash in her cheek. The short blue shirt she had on, the one he had seen her leave the house in only a few hours ago and thought she looked nice in, was darkened with drying circles of blood, and the pale yellow trousers were ripped down her thighs. When he pressed a hand gently to her stomach, she winced. She probably had a fractured rib at the least, if not broken.

Her breath caught in her throat and he quickly removed his hand, worried that he might have pushed the injured rib into her lungs. He couldn't tell how many of them were damaged. Her clothes were torn, shoulders dyed with red. As Shin reached around to touch the back of her neck, his hand came away slick with something wet, and thick.

Blood. Her blood. More than he thought it right to see. He lifted his hand to his nose and sniffed, lips pulling back over his teeth at the subtle, foul trace of poison mingled with Pai's blood.

Carefully, Shin put one arm under her knees and the other around her back, lifting her up in his arms. She was weightless, like a feather in his arms. She was so frail, her bones like that of a bird. He looked down at her face as her head lolled back. Shifting slightly, he lifted her head and nudged her so that her head was settled on his shoulder.

He frowned when he turned and saw a gun, a thin stream of smoke lifting up from its tip. Shin wondered how Pai could have known how to use it. He was glad she did, though – it was the sound of rapid gunfire that brought him to this warehouse in the first place. What Kaede heard from the whispering gossip of the Yori Chiisai only pointed him to this general area. If he hadn't heard the shots, he wouldn't have known where to look, exactly.

If he hadn't heard the shots of Pai fighting to live, he might have made it here too late.

Shin briskly walked to the jagged hole of the windows, boots crunching on the broken glass littering the ground. He jumped up on the frame of the window, released his wings, and leaped from the building.

It was like letting go of a long-held breath, pent-up in stress. It eased some of the tension surging through his veins, anger that had only been eased minutely by the act of killing, allowing himself to be in his element.

He let himself hang buoyant in the air for a brief moment before he beat his wings against the currents of the winds, angling straight for the small mountain Ayashi House stood on. Shin kept a tight hold of Pai, both to make sure she didn't slip from his grasp and in an effort to coax some warmth into her cold body with the perpetual heat of his own.

But, before long, shivers shook through Pai's small frame. Her dark brows pulled down in a frown from the discomfort of the cold, and her face was ghostly white. It didn't help that her clothes were wet.

Shin flew faster.

It wasn't until it was too late that Shin realized his Mask was no longer wrapped around his wrist.

×

Back at the warehouse, a figure stood at the edge of the roof, watching as Shin flew to Ayashi House with an unconscious Pai in his arms. The light of the moon illuminated the figure's striking form as the clouds blew by.

It was a man, beautiful, with a sharp nose, high cheekbones, and dark brown hair that was ruffled from behind blew about in the cold night wind. Disconcertingly, blazing red eyes glowed as they tracked Shin's fast retreating shadow.

It wasn't the eyes, though, that were the unusual aspect of the man. It was the group of nine fox tails he had, each moving independently, tasting all the scents that hung on the wind and relaying the information back to the man.

The tails were a beautiful silver-gold, each tipped with a circling line of black. They shimmered with an almost ethereal light, and to look upon them was to feel as though one could see them, yet see through them. Tied with a thin string around his head, resting among the dark curls at the top of his head, was a fox Mask with a painted, sly red smile across it.

He raised a hand to his lips and pulled on one last, final dreg of the cigarette burning in his hands. He dropped the butt of the white stick on the ground before lifting a boot and deftly crushing the burning embers. He tilted his head back, bright red eyes still on Shin – now only a speck against the backdrop of the dark night – and released the smoke in one long, white stream.

His eyes flicked to the cloud of smoke hanging over him for a brief moment before he took a single step forward and plummeted straight down to the ground below, right beside the churning waters of the Sea of Japan.

He landed lightly, with hardly a sound, as if he hadn't just dropped from a roof almost ten stories high. He walked to stand by the edge of the wharf, looking down into the waters below before he straightened.

A jingle of a small bell.

"You know, they're still only kids."

He smirked. "You think that matters?"

"You don't think it's too soon?" the man's voice asked behind him. "She hasn't recovered her memories yet. If it happens before she remembers, she'll flip and lose it, probably, with her track record."

"'Too soon'?" he repeated, looking out at the moon reflected on the still, calm ocean waters. His lips twitched in a flat smile. "Time is relative."

A heavy, irritated sigh. "Be that as it may, if she can't handle what's coming, she'll die. For real. Before she should."

"Perhaps that is a better alternative to what is coming for her."

He could feel the annoyed look shot at his back, but he didn't turn around. "You know we need her, but only when she's ready. You think they're ready? Any of them?"

"We will have to see if they are. If they're not, they will all lose what matters most to them, one by one." He focused inhuman eyes on the flapping dark wings of Shin. He smirked, turning his attention away from the Bakeneko at his back. "It's your move, Shin. Let's see how strong you are without that false illusion of control."