By day, Edo lived as though each moment might be its last. Which was, he was forced to admit, not that far from the truth.
Somberly-clad women hurried through the narrow streets, arms full of their shopping, ridiculous little paper umbrellas held just so to keep the sun off their skin. Tradesmen hauled cartloads of goods and produce under their own power or that of their apprentices, making deliveries to the walled compounds of those too proud or too impoverished to flee the city, bawling the day's specials on handy street-corners when the bulk of their business was done. There were no real markets any longer, and hadn't been for a long time, only the occasional tiny shop and the opportunistic street vendors that moved from place to place at whim. Open porticoed tea houses and bathhouses, those that remained open, did a brisk business, limiting the numbers of their custom to avoid the malignant attentions of day-hunting predators. Too many people in once place drew the Akuma, like blood drew flies, with predictable results. In some quarters, temple bells rang low and mournful, columns of incense-rich smoke rising skyward a silent testament to the work of the night-hunters. The people of Edo had learned not to let the grass grow under their feet when it came to disposing of the dead. In other quarters, uniformed functionaries bustled about nearly-empty offices, administrating what little existed of civil government: the fire-fighting brigades, the pitifully inadequate civil police force, the corpse removal crews.
There were no children to be found anywhere – not swimming in the admittedly questionable waters of the harbor, not playing rough-and-tumble in the sporadically tended public parks, not dressing up as miniature adults to fly their kites or pose their dolls just so or gaze solemnly upward at a perfect autumn moon on festival days. He, at least, sharply felt the lack, accustomed as he was to the presence of one child in particular. Children, where they existed at all, were kept behind closed doors, were kept protected and silent as best their parents were able. Or they were sent away to relatives living outside the city, or sometimes to the relatives of neighbors, or sometimes to perfect strangers willing to board a healthy child in exchange for work. Mothers-to-be, too, were little in evidence – new human life coming into the world called the more sensitive breeds of Akuma even faster than a large gathering. Sensible women fled before their time was near, giving birth in a stranger's house being preferable to birthing anywhere near Edo. The less sensible ones, their unfortunate newborns, and not infrequently their entire families swelled the nightly tally of the dead.
Sturdy locks on paper-paned doors, blessed incense and ofuda charms and plain steel had little deterrent effect on the average Akuma. They'd learned that years ago, and yet they kept trying. It said something, he supposed, about the nature of hope, and the way the human mind and spirit worked in these people. In his lightest moments, he could even appreciate it for what it was: indomitable courage in the face of soul-crushing fear, of horror no other place in the world felt as keenly and as constantly as this one. He could even admit to admiring it, in a not at all abstract way. Courage was a thing of beauty, especially held up in the face of death and worse than death. Everything they did to affirm their own lives was rendered more heartbreakingly poignant by the fact, by the inescapable reality, that they could all be snuffed out at any moment, by a single monstrous whim.
In his darkest, moments, it made him want to play with them a little – or a lot – depending on the relative monstrosity of his own whims. Fear was beautiful, too, and pain, drawing it out or ending it quickly, the subtle gradations and textures, the ways it could be inflicted and used. A torturous punishment levied for self-serving cowardice. An agonizing reward for selfless compassion.
At the current moment, balanced between extremes, he felt little enough of anything. A part of him – a large part – was sated, drowsy with satisfaction, half-asleep with the pleasant sound of a choked scream still ringing in his ears, the memory of a slender body convulsing in mortal agony under his hands. (An ornate silver button warned in the hollow of his palm, flat inner face etched with a name he couldn't bring himself to think, much less speak aloud.) An even larger part wanted to somewhere, anywhere else or, failing that, drunk enough to tolerate prolonged contact with Debitt and Jasdero, which was very drunk, indeed. Consequently, he was half way through his third bottle of very good, very expensive sake, the consumption of which had furred his nerves to an admirable degree. A cigarette hung at an improbable angle out of the corner of his mouth and he amused himself by blowing the occasional smoke ring through which several slightly tipsy fragments of Tease flittered unsteadily. (No one was more surprised than he to learn that cannibal butterflies have a taste for sake.)
At the current moment, he hated cufflinks and collar buttons far more intensely than anything human and so he disposed of them with extreme prejudice, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows and his front opened halfway down his chest. He couldn't remember what had happened to his hat, but he'd thrown his coat over the artistically arranged, partially mummified remains of the gardener that had attended this particular park, mostly because he wasn't finished enjoying his present mood. Lying on his back in the middle of a largely abandoned park, stretched out on an unswept, unsanded moon-viewing platform with a fresh pack of cigarettes and an as-yet-unconsumed quantity of alcohol at his side, warmed by the sun and fanned by the autumn breeze, he could simply be. Loneliness wasn't his favorite state of existence but at the moment it was a tolerable one, compared to the alternatives. The rest of him would wake soon enough, and when he did, he didn't want to be in the company of anything human, blood-drunk hangovers being even worse than normal for everyone in the immediate vicinity. And sometimes he didn't want to be worse than normal, a facet of his personality that, of them all, only Rhode grasped completely. The rest of the family, he thought, rather looked upon his regard for humanity as a particularly noisome and incomprehensible vice, one of many, and he never felt the urge to disabuse them of the notion. Rhode, as vicious by default as he was at his darkest moments, understood him better and he had no desire to let her see through him just now, see the friction between his two minds, see the weary regret and the feeling not unlike remorse and the slow-growing fear he harbored that he showed no one else. He was already too vulnerable to Rhode's unchildish perception, and he quietly dreaded what she'd do with it before all was said and done. Rhode enjoyed hurting things a little too much for his peace of minds.
At the current moment, far from the trickles of human life passing through Edo's heavily depleted veins and from the claustrophobically enclosed environs of the clan's fortress-prison-home, he could admit to himself that he missed his friends more than he ever missed his family. He missed friendly games around the campfire and sleeping two to a blanket under railroad trestles or in fragrant haymows. He missed settling in to dinner pleasantly weary from a hard day's work that didn't involve killing anything or anyone and eating until he couldn't eat any more. He missed staying up far too late to tell stories that they'd all told dozens of times because every town and tavern they passed through made those stories new again. He missed walking until he was too tired to take another step, Eaze on his shoulders whispering that it was just a little further and not to stop. He missed terrible gin and rot-gut wine and the easeful company of the ladies that provided both. He missed singing badly in public due to excessive drunkenness at the turn of the year and waking up the next morning to a breakfast of whisky-sauced pudding to take the edge off and the first snow of the new year.
He missed having a life worth living and people around him worth sharing it with.
Rhode knew that, and he felt the threat of her knowing it as sharply as he'd ever felt anything. A dangerous habit he'd fallen into, letting her that close. She knew he was back, and had let him pass through her doors without challenge, but it wouldn't be too long before she came looking for him. He finished the last of his cigarette and poured the last of his bottle out for Tease to drink. With effort, he convinced his legs that it was time to stand and, more importantly, time to move. Neither the world nor his family would wait for him much longer.