CHAPTER 1
ARRIVAL
I was not sure if I liked Tokyo but for Hex, my mother’s wayward werecat, it was love at first bite.
The twelve-hour flight from London had been uneventful. Mostly because I drugged Hex up to her furry eyeballs with tranquilizers before locking the ugly beast in her shipping crate. The last thing we needed was Hex taking exception to riding in the hold, transforming, and ripping through everyone’s luggage. Or worse, clawing her way into the passenger section and turning us into an episode from one of those badly made supernatural TV programs people who are not me watch.
It was a long walk through the brightly lit airport and only a very few foreigners waited with me in the immigration line. We seemed to be the last passengers in.
My hair is a rather startling shade of silver. My skin is pale. My eyes an uncanny emerald green. It had been years since I allowed just anyone to see the real me. The officials took my picture and my fingerprints. I smiled for my photo, knowing neither the camera nor the computer could reveal my true self – without or within.
Sorcerer, Soul Eater, murderer. Murderer many times over.
A new Soul Eater Cell had set up in Tokyo and I had come for revenge. It was two years since Caroline’s death at the hands of the Club. My Caroline. Her soul ripped out in a terrible ceremony of dark magic. Ironic justice the one person I loved would suffer that fate at the hands of the sorcerers I had pledged myself to since childhood.
I was a master of the Dark Arts, an initiate into the Soul Eaters at the age of twelve, one of the youngest in their long history of murder and magic. How clever I thought myself. How wise and wicked. ‘Pride goeth before a fall’ as they say. I had fallen hard and deep, taking Caroline with me.
The Council, masters of the Club and my fate – or so they thought -- had grown wary of my power. They sought to teach me a lesson with her death. I knew exactly what she had gone through in the final, terrible ritual. Who better? I had ripped the souls from our victims myself many times.
People have an amazing amount of energy, so much their physical bodies can barely contain it. The soul, or whatever you choose to call it, holds and harnesses this power. Magic has its own rules; its own physics and the power of the soul is all too real. Thousands upon thousands of years ago a small group of sorcerers learned how to transmute and consume this metaphysical energy. Their abilities and their lives were transformed. These men and women became Soul Eaters. Virtually immortal. Savagely powerful. But they could not do it alone. The ritual took four or five sorcerers working as one. They banded together to form a club. The Club. Unlike a ‘society,’ a club sounds innocent, even fun. A sociable group of people brought together for like-minded hobbies. In this case, the hobby was occult ritual and ‘The Club’ has been plaguing mankind ever since
Oddly, removing a soul does not kill the victim outright. Depending on the strength of their spirit, they can last days, weeks, even months – though it is rare. It took all my magic to keep Caroline alive for six months as I tried in desperation to find all the pieces of her broken self.
When the victim becomes too weak, body and mind, to keep their soul tethered to this earth, the sorcerers break the chain binding them and consume the soul utterly. At that moment, the body turns to dust. Caroline had become a swirl of spiritual dust in my arms and taken what little of my humanity remained with her.
What the Council learned from their lesson was I could be terrible in my vengeance. Now I hunted them and took their souls. Any Soul Eater would do to enhance my own alchemy. Their blood was one of the most powerful accelerants for spells I had discovered so far. But I was hunting for a special few, those who had taken the three parts of my Caroline’s soul. Two had fallen to my blade. The last one still eluded me.
Good thing there was no human database for supernatural felons. I’d have been in handcuffs in a heartbeat. Little good handcuffs would do them.
Still smiling, I took the escalator from Immigration down to the Customs level to pick up Hex and my luggage.
The werecat and I had been traveling companions many times. I stole her from my mother when I was sixteen, the last time I’d been back to our family estate near London. Hex didn’t seem to mind the change in ownership. She probably didn’t like my mother any more than I did.
Nobody really liked her. My mother, not the cat. For some obscure and unexplainable reason, everyone liked my monstrous cat.
Despite the beast’s hideous looks – one ear completely gone, bald spots where her muddy brown fur had just given up trying to grow back over the frequent scaring, the right side of her mouth twisted up into an unnerving sort of grin – she was an excellent tracker and look-out. In battle, she could be a bit of a wildcard. She belonged to the ‘bite them all and let God sort them out’ school of berserker logic.
Hex tried her best to stay on my side as long as she was bribed with large amounts of fish. When I told her she was coming with me to Japan, the cat was overjoyed. I several times saw her around London loitering outside Sushi bars scrutinizing menus and licking her whiskers.
I anticipated no problem getting her through customs. Unless they had a ‘no big, ugly cats’ law, we would be fine. The official paperwork for Hex was all in order. Though it nearly proved unnecessary since no one could seem to find her.
The duffle bags and suitcases I’d packed in London made their way onto the luggage carousel in a maddeningly haphazard fashion. Pets did not come down the ramp, they were wheeled out of the quarantine area by uniformed staff. My last bag finally made its way but still no Hex.
Customs agents in navy blue and white uniforms stood clustered together nearby like a flock of pigeons, shooting wary glances at me. Something was obviously up.
Waving my paperwork, I asked after my cat.
There was much bowing and head shaking. Apparently, she was missing from her crate, the wire bars of the door twisted and torn. She had escaped. The customs people were upset about this. As was I.
Idiotic werecat. She was probably already on her way to Tokyo Bay preparing to eat her way through the wholesale fish district and anyone who got in her way.
The officials declared their earnest intentions to search for her. I said I would wait here in the customs clearance area until they completed that task. They left me with my pile of luggage and I quickly shifted to shadow mode, scampering up the down ramp on one of the luggage carousels as fast as I could go, just in case she was still in the building.
She was.
I saw her almost immediately. Well, half of her. The other half was buried inside the belly of a large red sea bream. Leave it to Hex to find something edible in the bowels of the airport transportation system. The end of her ragged tail zipped by on one of the other conveyors just out of reach.
“Hex!” I shouted. “Come here at once!”
Of course, she ignored me.
Stupid cat.
I ran up one conveyor belt then down another. Abandoning her catch, she jumped nimbly to avoid being shuffled into a loading bin, keeping just out of reach as we played tag in the underbelly of the airport. She seemed to be having a very good time and led me on a wild chase through the machinery. The fast-moving luggage loaders had become a vast kitty amusement park.
Leaping inelegantly over suitcases, boxes, and bags, I jumped from one belt to the next in pursuit. Shadow does not mean invisible. I would be showing up as a sort of gray smudge on security screens somewhere I was sure. No doubt setting off alarm bells and frightening the staff.
Hex worked her way closer to the loading docks near the gates, tractors pulling in and out with loads of luggage for departures or arrivals. Loading crews stopped to stare as the largest and ugliest cat in existence jumped up and over their workstations. They probably thought some wild beast had escaped. I could only hope she wouldn’t decide to transform into were-mode just to make things more difficult.
A chorus of shouts came from several directions, whether in pursuit of me or the cat I couldn’t be sure. Probably both at this point.
Werecats are not regular cats who have gone rogue. A distinct species, nearly sentient, yet in many ways much like other felines in form and function. No one knows exactly where they come from. The most common answer is, “Faerie.” In my opinion, the Faerie races probably herded them all together long ago and dumped them into our world to be rid of the bloody beasts.
I nearly had her when she stopped to sniff at a load of boxes. They had to contain frozen fish, nothing else could distract Hex faster. I actually held a handful of fur when she flipped up and over onto a swiftly moving ramp going back into the airport’s innards leaving me with nothing but a fistful of fluff.
Jumping after, I saw her a short way ahead. Hex was facing me, standing up on her hind legs. She could walk on two legs for a time if she wanted. Even for a sorcerer of my experience, a cat on two legs is an unnerving sight. She started to wiggle her hips back and forth in a mocking ‘you can’t catch me!’ sort of dance. It was, however, her undoing. A low-slung barcode scanner smacked her squarely on the back of her furry head so hard I heard the thunk from where I balanced, two conveyors below.
She fell like a stone.
Leaping up and out, I tried to grab her as she bounced and rolled off one conveyor belt onto another. She was heading for the floor and a hard landing. Straining every muscle, I flung myself after, just managing to catch her by the tail before she hit. She swung back and forth in pendulum fashion directly above the heads of two luggage loaders. They scampered off in different directions waving their arms and screaming.
Flipping her up and into my arms, I ran back the way we had come, over and under conveyor belts, and sliding down the luggage ramp only to find I was now in the wrong terminal. Cursing, back I went through the maze of machinery, leaving confusion in my wake. I tried again, a long and tiring distance and this time got it right. As I climbed down onto the carousel, I could hear an ascending chorus of shouts behind us.
I threw her across the slick linoleum and pushing into the between-time of slipstreaming, jumped back to crouch behind the chewed-up pet crate where the security cameras could not see. Letting the shadow melt away, I stood just as Hex came to a stop next to me, legs splayed wide, quickly followed by a small herd of customs officials.
The best defense is a good offense.
I pointed accusingly. “What have you done to my cat!”
Her fur, patched and torn, skin scarred, and one good ear drooping, the customs people stared in what can only be described as bureaucratic horror at the devastation they believed had been wrought upon my beloved pet.
The cat in question groggily raised her head and proceeded to be extremely sick.
Werecats can throw up approximately 29.7 percent of their body weight at any given time. Quite a prodigious amount.
It was over an hour and much paperwork later before we were bowed out by the customs officials and airline staff full of apologies for allowing my cat to escape from an obviously faulty crate and be so horrifically damaged.
Pushing my luggage and cat-laden cart through the automatic sliding doors and into the arrivals terminal, I saw a sign with the Pantera family crest on it.
Albert Pantera, half-human, half-Daemon lead singer of the famous Albert Einsteins rock group, youngest son of Pantera Trading Inc. ‘Specialists in Exotic and Rare Items’ and the closest thing I had to a friend in this or any other world. He had arranged both a driver and accommodations for me.
Traditionally the Daemon were go-betweens for the supernatural, spiritual, and human races. Peacemakers, deal brokers, they just wanted everyone to get along. Albert’s family interpreted that in their own unique and financially rewarding way. Pantera Trading carried on rather a lot of business dealings with the demon Oni clans of Japan as well as other supernatural beings in the Far East. They kept full-time offices and staff in Tokyo and Beijing.
The young Japanese man bowed. “Welcome to Japan, Lord Lake.” He took in Hex’s disheveled appearance “Is your cat ill?”
I tossed the cat at him and told him to shut up.
