As they plunged through the crowds, someone draped a shirt around Sayaka’s shoulders. “Thank you, everybody,” she shouted over her shoulder.
They crossed the common to the street they’d arrived on. An old electric taxi was parked at the Meiji Avenue intersection. The two of them practically dove inside.
The elderly driver cast a suspicious look through the ballistic glass partition. “Where to? Don’t go getting me messed up in any funny business.”
His suspicion was well deserved. Kyoya was still holding the scorched, rolled up newspaper. Sayaka hadn’t had the time to button the shirt and had one hand pressed against her breasts, exposing her smooth round shoulders and stomach. It was obvious at a glance that she had nothing else on beneath. An unusual sight even for a Demon City hack.
“Shinjuku, Kabuki-cho,” said Kyoya, rapping on the back of the front seat. “And step on it.”
“Ain’t driving into the middle of a dangerous place like that.”
“Then as close as you feel comfortable. The sooner the better.”
“You got any money?”
“Want me to buy you a new car?”
“Aye aye, sir.”
Its outward appearance notwithstanding, the cab accelerated with remarkable smoothness. Kyoya twisted around to look out the rear window. The demons were after them. They had defeated the espers.
“Faster, man.”
The taxi raced down old Meiji Avenue, devoid of signs of human life. Without tearing his eyes away from the rear window, he cast a tense sideways glance at Sayaka. She said in a choked-up voice, “Do you think—they—”
“Let’s just imagine they got away by the skin of their teeth and we’ll see them again someday. Okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, managing to hold back the tears.
“So, kids, this an elopement or a kidnapping?” the cabbie asked, humming to himself.
“The latter. And I killed five more just for getting in my face.”
The cabbie laughed. “Good job! Not enough youngsters with initiative around these days. Say, you need any help with the ransom, let me know. Don’t mean to boast, but I’m as good as they get in Shinjuku. I can shake a mobile police patrol car just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “How about twenty percent?”
Kyoya and Sayaka didn’t have an answer to that. A fireball appeared in the middle of an intersection behind them. Kaki and Suiki were closing the distance, the road and ruins dissolving like wax in a hot oven in their wakes.
“But I’d settle for fifteen,” the cabbie said with carefree nonchalance, that seemed to include not looking in the rearview mirror.
Kyoya closed his eyes, pushing his nen into the ragged newspaper. “All right,” he said, his face pale with concentration. He opened the window.
The cabbie misunderstood. “It’s a deal,” he said enthusiastically, thumbing the steering wheel. “A hot little number like that, partner, and the sky’s the limit.”
The two demons were less than fifteen feet behind them. “Here’s a holy hand grenade for you!” Kyoya shouted, and threw the newspaper at them.
A tongue from the ball of fire reached out and snapped at it like a dog. As the flames consumed it, at a point midway between the cab and the demons the sword erupted in a colorless, soundless explosion. Kyoya’s psychic energies scattered like shrapnel in all directions.
With a roar, the fireball blew apart. The ruins stopped dissolving. Suiki must have caught some of the damage as well.
After confirming the results, Kyoya sat back heavily in the seat. The skirmish in the plaza and the nenpo hand grenade had used up much of his mental energy. The loss of Asura alone had proved exhausting to his psychic reservoirs.
“They won’t be coming after us for now.”
“Did you defeat them?” Sayaka asked anxiously, peering out the rear window.
“No. The fight back there in the plaza pretty much drained me. All I can do now is slow them down. They’ll be after us again in no time.”
“What are you chattering on about back there?” the cabbie interrupted. He hadn’t noticed his own close escape from death, and was remarkably relaxed for somebody who’d just taken an active stake in a kidnapping. “So where do you plan on hiding her? There’s an empty warehouse over by the Imperial Gardens. Now and then, these huge carnivorous worms make their nests there.”
Ignoring the cabbie’s chatter, Sayaka lay Kyoya’s head in her lap. When he tried to resist, she flashed him a fierce look. The young nenpo master smiled wryly and closed his eyes. He was exhausted physically, mentally, spiritually.
He was at his limit. And two of those monsters remain. He still had to break the Sorcerer’s spell, and seriously feared going down for the count before they reached the enemy’s lair.
And as if she could see into the heart of the uncharacteristically enervated Kyoya, Sayaka thought as well: It was the last thing on earth he wanted to do. And yet he fought like this tooth and nail. So did the espers.
She really had been a burden. The least she could do was give him a place to lay his head. At that instant, Sayaka wished to ride to the ends of the earth feeling Kyoya’s weight on her lap.
Several minutes later, the taxi barreled up to the Meiji Avenue and Yasukuni Avenue intersection. Though the surrounding ruins looked no different, the pedestrian traffic had increased markedly. Yakuza and pimps and hired guns dressed in garish threads and wearing threatening looks, the cut of society that gave a place a bad name.
“So those are the kind of people who live around here?” Sayaka asked the cabbie.