The members of the Preying Mantis gang were running full-throttle that evening too. The night before, the word had gotten out that they’d lost their boss, and then in short order, the underboss as well. The second underboss had stepped in at that point, so leadership of the gang was currently unquestioned.
All that occupied their minds now was tonight’s prey. The girl the night before was a helluva handful. It was time for some regular fare. Raid a tourist group full of ripe young things, snatch a bunch of MILFs out on the town for a little adventure. Rape and pillage backwards and forwards, right side up and upside down, slaking their burning desires in every wet and warm hole.
Then bury the remains in the ruins. Because that was how it was done in Demon City. These were animals devoid of virtues or morals who nevertheless bore the full weight of responsibility for taking on such brutal natures.
Except that the animals had already been frustrated from eating their fill.
A street buggy was parked outside their headquarters in the ruins of the old Shinjuku Technical High School in San’eicho. Catching sight of the young man standing there, his face like a cool winter moon, their eyes filled with murderous glee. He must be a cop, and they had their own ways of breaking in a rookie.
No need for niceties like introductions. They drew their Japanese swords and charged. The weapons danced through the moonlight. Blood showered from their severed shoulders, staining the asphalt a darker shade of black.
“Where’s your boss?” the beautiful genie asked, standing there without a care in the world.
“M-me.” The number three man stepped forward. Now that he was number one, he couldn’t show fear in front of his underlings. The AutoMag trembled in his right hand, but they probably couldn’t tell.
“Last night, somebody grabbed a girl on Okubo Avenue. Where is she?”
His nonchalant manner finally rubbed off on the gang boss. He settled down and rekindled a bit of his courage. “No idea. Who the hell are you?”
He swaggered and thrust out his chest while making sure the gang members on his left and right were readying their automatic pistols. There was no such thing as overkill when it came to cleaning house.
“Playing dumb leaves me in something of a quandary,” said the visitor. “Reliable sources say otherwise. Where is she?”
By this time, the gang boss had noticed the young woman in the driver’s seat of the street buggy. She was one hot babe, and that got the blood flowing to all the right places in a flash. He was already imagining grabbing her ass and giving it to her long and hard.
“Kill him! But don’t touch the woman!”
The cry was answered by a hail of gunfire. But the foe in front of him didn’t scatter to the wind as expected. The gang boss whirled around. His underlings were the ones spouting blood.
He felt himself seized by madness. His own soldiers were firing at each other. The thin thread twined around their necks. Needles of pain they could not resist ordered them to betray their sworn loyalties.
“I’ll ask you one more time,” Setsura Aki said in a low, calm voice, as the gang boss stood there, veiled in the shades of death. “Where is she?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Three spotlights trained their white beams on one corner of the playing field. According to long tradition, that was where the trophy was displayed.
A murmur shot through the crowd. A young woman lay naked on the grass. She seemed to be floating there in the white, like the sacrificial victim on a funeral pyre wrapped in incandescent flames.
In the stands, a look flashed across the face of the young man in black, a long-forgotten memory springing back to life. He had witnessed the shape of the seal.
✦ ✦ ✦
Beneath the moonlight, a raven flapped its wings. Like a black cloud carried by the demonic miasmas, it flew over the crumbling mountains of bricks and rubble.
As if exercising some deep magic, this angel of death flew in a straight line from San’eicho to the Shinjuku Coliseum near the Shin-Okubo Station ruins, the hems of his slicker flapping in the wind.
This angel sported the face of Setsura Aki.
✦ ✦ ✦
To be continued.