A/N: For every patient reader who's waited for this chapter....

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Yokai

In the frigid night air, Antonio sneezed, but didn't bother to wipe the snot from his upper lip. It was in wee hours of the morning, the darkest period of the long night, and there wasn't a man in the fourth squadron who wasn't stone drunk.

Finally feeling the lull of his alcohol, the inebriated captain staggered for his personal blankets. Then paused.

"I don't suppose any of you halfwits need this second fire, eh?" Towering over the flickering embers, he was already undoing his belt.

"Captain," protested one soldier, growling the title like a curse, "we agreed that any excretions would be attended to an arrow's flight away."

Antonio grumbled, a "t'hell with the rules" danced on the tip of his tongue, but somehow the words seemed too difficult to form and the faster he pissed the faster he could get to sleep. And on that eloquent thought, Antonio lumbered off into the woods.

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Willfully neglecting to give his belt a second securing tug, Antonio looked around to find the route back to camp. He hadn't wandered far and only needed to retrace his steps. Or so the captain thought.

In the dark one tree boasted the same silhouette as the last, but just a short ways he spied an amber light's glint. Antonio tottered after it like a small child chasing a firefly home. Suddenly, his beckon was snuffed out, gone in the next wind. Antonio felt his gut plummet. If that wasn't his camp, where was he? How had he lost his way? Escorted by some will-o'-the-wisp?

"Welcome."

If he had been shocked by lighting, Antonio couldn't have jumped higher. A disembodied voice surrounded him from all sides. He was most clearly outside, the wind whipping past, but the voice held resonance lent only by an enclosure…and it must have been close.

"Huh," the voice scoffed. "But why should I waste civility on you? Welcomes are meant for guests. You are an intruder."

Trying to sift out a clear thought in his foggy brain, Antonio recognized the lilt of the voice. It was speaking relatively good Portuguese, yes, but it had the natives' undeniable accent as it tripped over a syllable or two. Antonio reached for the saber at his side, and the hilt slipped uselessly through his numbed fingers. He cursed. Should have brought the rifle; why hadn't he been thinking?

Suddenly, as if reading his very thoughts, the air was punctuated with a mocking chuckle. "A weapon? That's only good for a mortal. What am I to you?"

Only good for a mortal? What the hell did that mean? Then, superimposed over the shrubbery before him, Antonio saw the storyteller's ghostly demon from earlier that night. He shook himself, picking up the sword in a firm grip. "You're…you're one of those idiots from the camp playing a foul trick! That's all!" Antonio bellowed, gathering his courage. "You're an imbecile if you think you'll get away with this alive!"

"And you are a fool."

Immediately following the voice, a warm wind washed over charged with a current for which there are no words in any human tongue. Antonio heard something that sounded like a snared rabbit whimpering and it took several seconds to realize it was no one but himself. He cowered in the wake of terrible sensation that shocked every nerve in his body and frayed it to the limit of hysteria. The need to run thudded in his ears – so visceral, so basic, a natural reaction in the audience of any predator.

Predator.

Fear raced up Antonio's spine, hot on the heels of the grim conclusion that he was, by every definition, prey. Antonio was prey for…"What the hell are you?"

"There is another word for my kind, one which has most recently entered your lexicon: yoh—"

"Stop!" Antonio hastily interjected. "There is no such thing!" The warm breeze brushed past his cheek, like fur on bare skin – unsolicited and unnerving. Antonio spun around, his grip trembling as he tried to locate the speaker. He panted now. His eyes darted. In front a shadow slipped by, but behind the bushes rustled. Maybe there were two? Three? A pack? At least two, no one could be that fast.

"No such thing?" the voice echoed, edged with sadistic mirth. "And would you believe your eyes?"

"N-n…Nnnn…" Antonio couldn't get his tongue to work. He went slack-jawed entirely at the creature that lurched out of the thicket before him. A growl trickled out of the beast's chest followed by a snarl that ripped through the air. Its upper torso, stripped to the waist, resembled a man's, but sliver fur flowed over one shoulder. Like some hellish canine, the monster stood on backward bent legs, taller than either dog or man as some feral hybrid of the two. In the spotlight of a moonbeam, Antonio could see how this creature's mouth was outlined in dark, ragged stripes, its fangs scraped past its chin.

The rabbit squeals chorused louder as one clawed hand extended for the captain's throat.

"How does it feel, Antonio, to be pushed to the brink of existence?" Blood-red eyes peered out from under a crescent moon marking. "Do you feel alive…or wish you were dead?"

The scarlet eyes flickered for a moment and the entire face changed for a moment. Antonio gasped and no amount of drink could have stopped the recognition from clicking like a reset barrel. That young man, that pest who had so bothered him like a rock in his boot…The handsome face stretched back to its former countenance, chuckling. It was him! He was the beast, the demon, the yokai – there was no other word for it. But that human appearance from just days ago…a façade? How many more walked this wretched land in human guise?

The eyes danced as recognition sparked Antonio's glassy eyes.

"Or are you so blind, Antonio?"

Then, abruptly, Antonio laughed. The sight he caught over the demon's shoulder left him delighted, relieved, joyous and delirious all at once that his men were coming for him.

"Get him! Shoot him!" he commanded in the face of a handful of shiftless men.

They exchanged a few shrugging looks. Finally, one slumped forward. "Uh, shoot at what, capt'n?"

The claws around Antonio's collar tightened. "I realized it's not so bad being ignored."

"H-how…?" he gasped.

"I can control my audience. I can occupy a space of your mind and control you. Right now, because I will it, you, contemptible guest and honored intruder, are the center of attention."

And all eyes were on Antonio, especially that one bloody, crimson pair that would never fade.