Disclaimer: Not Mine! (for the longer version of this disclaimer, see chapter 1)

Chapter Summary: All three looked at Genkai, who had been silent since the explanation had started. Yuusuke noted she was wearing her "things are bad" look, which was much akin to her "I need more sake" look and her "my, isn't it a lovely day" look. Genkai really only had one look, with small variations on the placement of her eyebrows.

-Chapter 5-

When it was over, and the raw emotions had been made into something gentler, more manageable, Yuusuke asked, "What will you do now?"

Kurama pulled away, trying to distance himself from the continuous feed of thoughts that flowed from Yuusuke into him. "There is still one more I am allowed to kill. It is not Hatanaka. When the last one is dead, I will be returned to the Reikai."

He ignored Yuusuke's sharp, incredulous look and tugged at his trapped legs. "So…you'll just let him get away with what he did?"

"No. I'll just have to find Hatanaka first."

Yuusuke disentangled himself and stood up, stretching. "Great. We'll come with."

Brief terror, surprising in its intensity. "No."

Yuusuke's eyes flashed. "Fuck you."

"Yuusuke, the risk is too high…"

"Don't."

Kurama bit down on the rest of his sentence.

"Don't you fucking patronize me," Yuusuke continued. "You failed your mother." Kurama flinched from the accusation. "But you get to make up for it. Give us that chance. " Yuusuke crouched so he could meet Kurama's gaze head-on. "Give us the chance to make it up to you."

Kurama considered him intently for a moment, and then smiled like a fox, sly with sharp teeth. "All right. But we've got to be quick."

Yuusuke bounced up and punched the air above his head triumphantly. "Yeah!"

Kuwabara answered the door, relief palpable when he saw them. "They're back!" he called over his shoulder.

Shizuru appeared from the kitchen, followed by Jiro. "Both of them?"

Kuwabara grinned and let them inside. "Yeah."

"Ha!" The woman held an expectant hand under Jiro's nose. "Pay up, pal."

"Man," Jiro whined and slapped a thousand yen bill into her palm. "Cheater. You had insider information."

Shizuru just waved the bill at him unrepentantly. "I just know never to bet against Urameshi."

Kurama noted a new arrival—Yukina, green hair shimmering like sea foam in the dawn light that framed her through a window. She sat on the couch next to Shuichi, who looked to be asleep, slumped sideways.

"How is he?" he asked her. She smiled serenely, and he took that as a good sign.

"Fine," she said, and picked up the boy's wrist to check his pulse. "He's just fine. It'll take a few days to work the poison out of his system, but I don't anticipate any complications."

Kurama felt the relief of one less thing to worry about. "That's good."

"So what's going on?" Kuwabara looked at Yuusuke.

"We're going hunting." Yuusuke prowled into the room, and opened the closet to search through it. "Where's my jacket?"

"For who?" asked Shizuru, holding Yuusuke's coat toward him as ransom for a straight answer.

"Hatanaka," Kurama said, quiet as death. The whole room paused to stare at him, and he looked at his feet.

"Right," Kuwabara cleared his throat. "Any idea of where to start?"

"Mayaboshi Company headquarters in Tokyo," Kurama said.

Kuwabara nodded. "I think I know where that is."

Yuusuke grabbed his coat out of Shizuru's hands and then snatched at the keys, but the woman had already anticipated him and tossed them to her brother instead, who caught them in midair and shrugged into his coat. Yuusuke glared at both of them and they grinned back.

"Let's go."

~*~

"The problem with trying to sneak into someplace during broad daylight," Yuusuke said, "is that you kinda lose that whole cover-of-darkness advantage."

They were hanging out in a small side street—more of an alley—across from Mayaboshi Company headquarters, Kuwabara and Yuusuke with hands deep in pockets and shoulders hunched against the biting cold.

"Stop your bitching," Kuwabara said. "I'll go check it out."

Before anyone could stop him, he crossed the street, timing the traffic with the ease of someone used to walking through a busy city.

The sky was clear, and the buildings reflected it all the way down their glass-window fronts, like pillars of winter blue. Kurama didn't feel the cold much, couldn't feel much of anything except a vague wrongness at pursuing someone during the daylight hours. He wondered where Kuronue had gone off to.

"Damn idiot," Yuusuke growled, slumping belligerently against a wall. "What the hell is taking him so long?"

Kurama decided against pointing out that it had only been minutes since they'd lost sight of Kuwabara as he entered the building. Yuusuke hated waiting, and there wasn't anything anyone could say to change that. Besides, teasing flickers of blackfire aura in the back of Kurama's mind distracted him.

Once, he would have been able to pinpoint Hiei's exact location and perhaps even his motivation if he was projecting loud enough, but now things were muddled. Kurama shared new links with Kuwabara and Yuusuke that hadn't sorted themselves out yet and that made reading any of them tricky.

"There he is."

Kurama focused again to see Kuwabara making his way back.

"Hatanaka's not here," he said as he rejoined them, and pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, handing it to Kurama. "He's at a warehouse, doing inventory. Apparently he's a real hands-on boss."

Kurama read over the address, then handed it to Yuusuke. "I don't know where this is."

Yuusuke shook his head in agreement. Kuwabara took the paper back with a despairing sigh. "You guys are useless. I know where to go. Come on."

Warehouses, such as they were, were difficult to approach with anything resembling stealth during the day. This one was typical, surrounded by identical buildings on all sides. Except the Mayaboshi Company's warehouse was circled by a high fence topped by barbed wire. Beyond the fence was a wide courtyard with no cover. On either side there were docking bays. Kuwabara had parked across the street and now the three of them watched the warehouse for any activity.

"It looks dead to me," Yuusuke said finally. "Are you sure you got the right address?"

"I'm sure."

Kurama leaned forward from the back seat. "What does the Mayaboshi Company manufacture, exactly?"

"Electronics," Kuwabara reported. "Mostly exports. They have a sister company in England that handles all of their finances. The police have been keeping an eye on them. One of their partners was nailed for dealing in narcotics, but so far, they've been clean."

"A squeaky clean record," Yuusuke said with a grin. "Always a sure sign that there's something shady going on."

"I'll check it out." Kurama opened the door and stepped out.

Kuwabara turned to catch him, saying, "Now wait a minute, Kurama, you can't—" But he found himself talking to empty air. Slouching back into his seat, he huffed softly. "How does he do that? In the friggin' open?"

Yuusuke just gave a grin of rueful admiration. "Well, he let us come along. It's not like he promised we could help or anything."

~*~

Tekko Arashi stopped at Kuwabara's desk and frowned when she found it unoccupied. She turned and scanned the busy bullpen for her errant friend, but he was nowhere to be seen.

"Hey," she said to a lieutenant as he passed her, "have you seen Kuwabara?"

The lieutenant paused to consider this, then shook his head. "I don't think he's come in today," he said, and moved on.

Sighing, she dropped the files she'd spent the morning trying to get released on his desk and unclipped her cell phone, hitting a fast dial number. It rang twice.

"Kuwabara," he answered in clipped tones.

"Where are you?" she asked without introduction, trying to keep accusatory annoyance out of her voice. "How can you help me if you're never around?"

"Tekko-san…"

"Don't start," she said, and propped her hip on his desk, folding her free arm in under her breasts. "You've been distracted all week. Did you know there's been another murder? I'll bet you dinner that you didn't."

There was a moment of silence as he digested that. "Okay, okay. I owe you dinner."

"Dinner and an explanation, buddy," she said, glaring at a passing co-worker who looked about to ask for a favor, and instead scooted past her quickly, avoiding eye contact. "I know this isn't really your case, but I think these killings and the Hazama kidnapping are connected somehow. I'm not sure exactly how, yet, but I could still use some backup here."

"I think they're connected, too."

Tekko paused on a breath, the next part of her snowballing rant on the tip of her tongue. "You do?"

"Yeah. But I can't talk right now. Call me back in… three hours?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Where are you?"

"Following a lead."

"Where?" she pressed.

A soft sigh. "Look, I have to go—"

"Why are you keeping me out of the loop on this?" she asked, trying to quell the sudden hurt that squeezed her chest. "What's going on?"

"Listen, Tekko, I'm sorry, but I can't—wait, there is something you can do."

She frowned. "Which is?"

"Go to my apartment. Talk to a couple of kids named Shuichi and Jiro. See if they can remember anything about the Mayaboshi Company in connection to your victims."

She straightened a bit at the name. "The Mayaboshi Company?"

"Please."

She sighed, knowing that when Kuwabara got stubborn the best thing to do was to just follow his lead for a little while. "All right."

"Great. I'll meet you there in a few hours. I'll bring Thai."

"This does not get you off the hook."

"I'll keep that in mind."

She resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at the phone, and instead snapped it closed muttering a grudgingly affectionate, "Jackass."

~*~

Kurama followed the echo of voices across metal rafters that crisscrossed over a twelve-foot drop. Below him were tall stacks of packing crates. He wished for the reassurance of crow vision and a bird's eye view, vaguely unsettled by the wrongness of hunting during the day.

However, his demon was well and truly awake, cold and calculating fury flexing claws, so very eager to deal out retribution to the man who had sworn to love and honor his human mother. Darkness rose, quelling unease. He was silent as he cat-footed across the beams. The human voices got louder, and the crates gave way in a long clearing, where a busy force of men were unpacking and repacking boxes full of electronics and…

Not drugs. Guns.

Kurama eased down into a crouch, eyes narrowing. There were nervous guards armed with semi-automatics pacing the area, and it would only be a matter of time before someone spotted him. He should head back to Kuwabara, tell him what was here, let him call backup. This really wasn't something he should be involved with. Then a familiar voice made his hands clench into white-knuckled fists and froze him to the spot.

Below him, Hatanaka Sen stood with palm pilot in hand, eyes hidden behind the sheen of his glasses. Kurama could see his corruption clearly, now that he was looking. It was like black oil over the human's soul.

How had he missed it—how had he missed it? That sort of darkness, that worm-eaten core of evil at the center of the human's soul… How had that monster escaped his notice?

Please, he pressed his hand to his chest and searched deep within. Please let him be one of the names.

But of course he wasn't, so Kurama could do nothing but grit his teeth and ease muscles readied to attack. He stood slowly, and concentrated on breathing past the hate and anger. Then Hatanaka looked up at him and smiled.

~*~

Yuusuke had confiscated Kuwabara's cell phone and was on the third level of Tetris when Kuwabara sat up sharply. Yuusuke looked up to see him staring out his window and followed his line of site, but there was only the warehouse, looking as empty as it had before.

"Kuwabara…?"

There was a black static shock beside his window and the rei gun was charged and ready at his fingertip before he even recognized the living shadow.

"Hiei? Dammit!" He hit the window button, realized the car was off and flung open his door instead, stepping out onto the street. "What the hell was that?" he demanded. "Give a guy a little warning…" He noticed a coarse cloth bag in Hiei's hand that was dripping something blackish, and smelled a familiar scent that raised hairs on the back of his neck. Blood. "Uh…Hiei?"

The fire demon finally looked at him. "Kurama's in trouble. Come on." He blurred out.

"Wait!" Yuusuke called after him, wishing that, just once, Hiei would linger long enough for the delicacies of a situation to be explained. Of course, he also sometimes wished that Keiko had a gentler tongue, but that didn't seem likely to happen any time soon, either.

Kuwabara was out of the car, locking his doors and checking his gun. Yuusuke couldn't help gaping until Kuwabara turned impatiently toward him. "What's the matter, Urameshi? Old age slowing you down? Let's move!"

"But…but we can't just…They're human." Kuwabara eyed him incredulously, and Yuusuke shut his mouth. "Right," he said, kicking his door closed and shoving his hands into his jacket pockets, before walking around the car to join Kuwabara. "You're all insane."

Kuwabara grinned. "You know that's why you love us."

Hiei was a blur of black and glint of sword that paused briefly—not even long enough to solidify into shape again—at a bay door. A flash of sword, molten yellow streaks and sparks, and the door fractured, then exploded inward as Hiei blew past. Yuusuke and Kuwabara slowed to glance at the melted edges of metal as they passed through the doors.

"Shit," Kuwabara said, awe and annoyance. "Could he be less subtle?"

"Since when have we done subtle?" Yuusuke grinned and jumped into the lead.

Kuwabara took out his gun and ducked through boxes, as Yuusuke climbed on top of them and picked out a more direct route. Hiei was nowhere to be seen, but ahead there were sounds of screaming and bursts of gunfire. Yuusuke tracked the sound until the boxes gave way to a clearing.

He took stock: Hiei a murderous streak of black; Kurama with a thin sliver of black-crystal sword; man with glasses avoiding Kurama's attacks as easily as if their battle were choreographed; Kuwabara skidding around the corner, gun ready, using boxes as cover; various men with automatics.

Live ammunition, something whispered, curled and fearful in his mind. Youki and reiki were one thing. Fists and feat were another. But guns were something else altogether, and Yuusuke balked at it.

Then he scoffed, gritted his teeth, and dropped down on two men who'd escaped Hiei's wrath and were taking aim at Kuwabara. He was aware of the guns as they clattered to the floor, as he kicked one man in the head and right hooked the other. They were still at the edge of his awareness as he spun and dropped the man creeping up behind him with a heel to the side of his knee.

Then someone caught him by the collar and threw him down, landing on top of him. He lashed out before he even registered Kuwabara's, "Shit! Get down!"

The world fractured in a bright explosion.

~*~

Time slowed to a stand still as Hiei sped up. Edges of fire and smoke burned in a frozen starburst as he grabbed Kurama around the waist and lifted him clear into the rafters. It wasn't until after the bomb had exploded that he wondered if maybe he shouldn't have grabbed Urameshi and The Idiot as well.

"Hiei!" Kurama snarled, struggling.

Hiei set Kurama down and backed off. Kurama was darkness and rage, the edges of the hilt on his strange sword cutting into his palm. Blood dripped down Kurama's fingers to the metal beam. Hiei didn't quite know what he was anymore, because he didn't really feel like Kurama, and his aura was wrathful, sparking and leaping like lightning, wild in his eyes.

"I lost him!" Green eyes accused Hiei of the crime, not really seeing him as anything more than an obstacle. On the ground, fire uncurled, a nest of sinuous snakes across wooden boxes as Urameshi and The Idiot lay dazed on the ground.

Then Hiei caught the edge of another aura leaping at the periphery of his awareness, this one oil-slick and purple madness. Kurama sensed it, too, head whipping around, eyes narrowing. He was gone before Hiei could say anything, coattails rolling smoke in their wake.

Hiei gritted his teeth and dropped next to Kuwabara and Yuusuke. The Idiot was sitting up, wincing with pain. Hiei looked around at the creeping fire that hissed to him quietly. He soothed it and it died to a smolder.

"The human authorities will be here, soon," Hiei said.

"I'll take care of them," Kuwabara said, rubbing his shoulder. Hiei glanced at Yuusuke, still unconscious. Kuwabara followed his look and grimaced. "I've got it covered. Just go, already."

Hiei nodded, and the world slowed down again.

Outside, it was easier to follow the slick sickness of the alien reiki than Kurama's wildly fluctuating signature. When he found them, they were frozen in an arcing aerial battle, Kurama in a point of descent, sword close to his chest for a straight thrust, the glasses-man crouched and waiting.

Hiei got close enough to see what Kurama, in his blind battle-hunger, probably had not. The man was smirking. He looked as if everything were going exactly to plan.

Hiei took in a quick calculation of the surroundings. They were on the docks in broad daylight. There were people everywhere. The fire demon knew a disaster when he saw one. There wasn't much he could do to contain the situation, and he was running out of distance to think. He made a decision.

He blindsided Kurama with enough force to slam him into the ground. The world returned to real-time as he felt Kurama's bones crack, arm and ribs, but forced himself not to worry. The thin, black sword spun out of sight. Kurama was incoherent in his fury, struggling without method or finesse. Hiei closed hard fingers around Kurama's throat, found the windpipe and jugular and squeezed. He could only hope that there was enough of Kurama's consciousness left to recognize him, to not kill him.

"Well," the man said, resettling his glasses, fingers splayed to partially hide his face. "This is an interesting development."

"Back. Off," Hiei growled.

The man's face dropped into lines of cool indifference, but Hiei could read him well enough to sense anger. "This has nothing to do with you."

Kurama jerked, hand closing on Hiei's wrist, nails digging in. Hiei pressed harder on his throat, willing him to stay down. "Does now."

The man's eyes narrowed, and Hiei wondered who he thought he was intimidating. Hiei let his power flare, true demon stretching just under his skin. The dragon burned on his arm and wanted to wake. He couldn't release it for fear of losing control. The risk was too high, but oh, the dragon was eager.

"Leave," Hiei said. "Now."

Anger was sudden and ugly on the man's face. "He can't always hide behind you."

Hiei remained unimpressed. "We'll see."

The man growled, but took a step back, opened a pocket dimension and blipped out. Hiei frowned, wondering where a human had picked up a demon trick, but was distracted from his musings when Kurama kicked him in the head.

He rolled with it instinctively and to his feet, hand automatically grabbing for his sword. He froze when he grasped nothing but air. Kurama stood slowly, painfully, Hiei's sword in hand. The fire demon noted how quickly the bruises on his throat developed and then faded away. Then Hiei watched the point of his own blade swing in a slow arc, coming to rest facing him. Pointing down, so not overtly hostile, but certainly not friendly, either. Kurama's expression was flat, unreadable.

Think fast, Hiei. That was easy. It was the speaking that would be difficult. Just tell the truth.

"I couldn't let you kill him," he said quietly, keeping still and watching his sword. "He was smiling. He wanted it." Finally, he looked away from slender steel and into green eyes even sharper. "Besides, what would have happened if you'd killed him? He's not on your list, is he?"

A corner of Kurama's lips turned down, but his eyes crinkled around the edges—a good sign. With a snort, he tossed Hiei his sword and said, "You've been talking to someone."

Hiei caught the sword with one hand, pointing up to a large crow circling overhead with the other.

Kurama glanced up. "Traitor," he groused.

Hiei was restless in the open. "We should go. Follow me."

"You're too fast."

Hiei was unsympathetic as he turned and leapt easily to the roof of the nearest building. {Just keep up.}

~*~

They landed in a large garden, private and gated, and hid in a small, enclosed nook of bushes and old Sakura trees. Kurama knew Hiei had chosen the spot to put him at ease, surrounded by so much greenery. He could hear the earth breathing around them quietly, and closed his eyes to listen. But now he knew he could stop that breathing with the barest thought, and it made him nervous, edgy.

Hiei glared as the crow landed nearby, nearly at eye level. "I don't want him here."

"He can listen in, regardless."

The headband came off with a flick of fingers and Hiei's third eye gleamed a flat purple. "No he can't."

Kurama didn't feel but a faint echo of the mental booting Hiei delivered, but it still left him dazed. It dropped the crow like a stone. Kurama watched it only long enough to make sure it was still alive.

"That was cruel," he said without much rancor.

The fire demon shrugged, unapologetic. And then they were left staring at each other, Kurama struggling to find something to say that wouldn't sound too dramatic or childish.

{You don't have to pretend that it's not completely different. You don't have to pretend nothing has changed.}

Kurama frowned, and his fingers traced the cuffs of his sleaves nervously. "I never wanted to hurt you."

{I know. That's what hurt the most.}

Hiei sheathed his sword, then plucked at his coat to resettle the folds. He hadn't changed much in six years. The others had grown up, filled out. Their voices deeper, their eyes a little wiser, their movements more wary. But Hiei was a moment frozen in time. Kurama realized he had no idea how fire demons aged, but he knew that watching Hiei made his throat ache. He looked away.

{The man you wanted to kill. He smelled human but felt like a demon.}

Kurama wrapped his arms around himself and stared hard at a leaf, memorizing the details, the pattern of veins through its sunlit surface. He deliberately ignored the white noise that threatened to overtake his hearing.

{Kurama?}

He couldn't get past it enough to speak. He knew why Hatanaka's aura felt inhuman, but he also knew that he wasn't about to tell the volatile Hiei. Besides, it was still his fight, and it felt too close to weakness to ask another for help.

{I can kill him for you.}

"Don't." The word was more guttural growl than anything else, deep and grinding against the back of his throat.

Hiei waited with the patience of someone who hadn't aged in six years.

"He's mine," Kurama said, finally. "I'll deal with him."

In their time apart, Kurama had somehow forgotten Hiei's speed, but he remembered abruptly when the fire demon was next to him, suddenly. Hiei's hand stopped just short of touching Kurama's cheek, but still the kitsune reeled, struck by Hiei's aura, like a negative star, steeped in blood and violence and so hot/bright it could turn a soul to a wisp of vapor.

—{Don't come near me don't go far away shining sword and darkest fire soul full of bright/dark want and need and guarded innocence like the green-haired girl so adored who knew she could see so much more with only two eyes than I can with three? And what else is there left but to ease darkness in darkness until there is no painful light}—

Something shattered, loud and crystalline in the stillness. Kurama panted, trying hard to regain his balance, and realized that he'd touched a branch as he'd flinched back, and it had blackened and broken off, cracking apart on the ground.

{You can't even let him touch you without falling apart.}

"Shut up," Kurama ground out, fighting for control. He took a step back to distance himself from the raw feeling Hiei's presence agitated. "It's different when I'm fighting. I can focus—"

Words cut off abruptly, unable to speak through the sudden shortness of breath and awareness of a blinding pain, up under his ribs, dropping him to his knees. He put a hand to his mouth and coughed blood.

{To the exclusion of all else.} Hiei cleaned his dagger and resheathed it.

"You stabbed me." Kurama was wide-eyed and incredulous. He stayed on the ground, though the healing factor had kicked in almost immediately and repaired the deep wound before he could die from blood loss.

{Yes.} Hiei might have been amused, if his eyes hadn't been so serious.

"Little bastard."

{I've been called worse. If it saves you from your own idiocy, I'll suffer insults gladly.}

Kurama grinned slightly. "You'll regret your generosity."

{Kurama. I had given up hope of ever hearing you again. I don't care what you call me, as long as you stay around long enough to say it.}

"Don't say such things." Kurama tried for humor, the Yoko in him determined to tease the fire demon for his sudden poetry, but it came out too quiet, the attempted smile too pained. "You're like to break my heart."

{We'll be even, then.}

Kurama could only stare at him, feeling something empty open in his chest. "I'm so sorry," he whispered, unable to stop from saying it even though he knew it was foolish.

Hiei glared at him, as if implied pity just leant more insult to injury.

"Don't do that," Kurama said quietly, turning away.

{You asked Yuusuke to help you and you haven't said a word to me.}

"It's not like that. I didn't really ask him, he just demanded to help and I…"

Hiei's fire-bright aura burned a hole in Kurama's awareness like an afterimage of the sun. Kurama hugged his arms to his chest and hunched his back. He didn't want to finish the sentence, didn't know how to finish it, but Hiei seemed to be waiting for something.

"I needed someone. He was there."

{Kurama…}

"He was there, Hiei."

Even as he said it, Kurama knew it wasn't really fair. Wasn't really the whole story or even half of it. But Hiei didn't believe in spontaneity of actions, or complexity in emotions, or the answer "Because it just happened."

Hiei was silent, and though he didn't move, Kurama could feel him withdrawing, pulling back. It was like being pushed away from a fire on a cold night.

{Kurama…}

Hiei's presence shifted closer soundlessly, suddenly. Kurama bowed his head and had to clench his fists to keep from retreating.

{Do you blame me?}

It was asked so quietly, a breath of thought brushing against the small hairs of his mind. And he jerked, startled to cold stillness.

"Blame you?"

{For your death.}

That was enough to make Kurama turn, when he thought nothing would move him again. He stared at Hiei, who stood studying something to his far left with an intensity that meant all his focus was actually on Kurama.

"Hiei…" Kurama reached out, hand brushing against the edge of blackfire warmth, inches from Hiei's shoulder. But something in his hesitation must have been misinterpreted, for Hiei retreated so quickly that the brush of his coat against Kurama's hand burned. "HIEI!"

Hiei! He tried to catch the fast-fading edge of the fire demon's telepathic signature, but it was closed to him. The sky above him was winter-blue, the trees dormant and empty.

~*~

Tekko was cursing her affinity for cigarettes after ten flights of steps up to Kuwabara's apartment. She also spent a good deal of time hating Kuwabara's elevator, which was broken. And then, for good measure, she held a general annoyance for the rest of the world. Finally reaching the last step, she shoved viciously against the door leading to his floor, but the springs prevented it from hitting the wall and she felt cheated.

Having never actually been to Kuwabara's apartment before, she'd found his apartment number on his mailbox. But as she entered the hallway, she realized she needn't have bothered. She deduced Kuwabara's door was the one surrounded by suspicious-looking men in black business suits. His luck just tended to run that way.

She leaned against the doorframe to catch her breath, and watch them. There were seven of them, and they were milling, like confused bugs before a glass window, unable to comprehend the barrier in their way. They wore suits so crisp and unwrinkled they looked more like smooth paint than cloth—midnight black with a sheen of blue and stark white shirts. They looked generally European, she thought. All had the same cut and color of hair—buzz-short, caught somewhere between dark blond and brown, body-builder shoulders. Ex-military, she judged.

One bent to examine the doorknob. As Tekko drew herself up and eased forward, he sniffed it curiously. Then, a long, pointed tongue slipped out of his mouth and touched the doorknob questioningly.

She wrinkled her nose and took out her gun. "Police! Freeze right there!"

They turned as a unit and looked at her. Something in their empty gazes made her steps slow a little, and she squinted. She couldn't be certain from this distance, but she could swear that the dark of their eyes expanded to cover the white and absorb the pupil. Tightening her grip on her gun, she continued her cautious approach.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" she demanded.

The one who'd licked the doorknob opened his mouth, but instead of speaking, his square jaw dropped deeper, dislocating, lower teeth growing and arcing outward in sharp points. A deep, guttural sound issued from his throat, and his shoulders hunched violently with the crack of reforming bones.

Tekko's mind took several things into consideration at once: she was facing a civilian who had yet to bodily threaten her, so even though she wanted to squeeze the trigger until she ran out of bullets, her deep-seated training against shooting without sufficient reason made her hesitate; she had no idea how she was going to explain this one down at the precinct; her instincts had always been good—not infallible, but still good—and right now they were telling her that she was facing something wholly inhuman and quite possibly pure evil; finally, she decided, she was never ever doing Kuwabara a favor again.

They were all transforming, as if created from more malleable stuff than bones and flesh. In the moment they surged toward her, instinct kicked training in the head. She opened fire. Ten bullets later, they were still standing. They reacted to being shot the way most people reacted to getting hit with water. A little flinch and a moment of inconvenience and that was all.

"Shit," she snarled, backing up as she ejected her clip and reached for another to reload, though something in her realized that it wouldn't do any good.

The first one reached her before she could slap the clip into place. She cracked him across the face and then ducked under his punch. Whirling, she snapped the blade of her foot into another one's knee. He collapsed and she jumped over him and punched a third in the face. Elbow to the solar plexus took out the next one. She turned, grabbed his arm and threw him into another one.

The seventh grabbed her shoulder and spun her around, slamming her into a closed door. His long nails scratched her skin as he wrapped his fingers around her neck. She grabbed his wrist and dug her fingers in, twisting, but she might as well have been fighting granite. He leaned in and she could see his eyes were black without whites or pupils, empty and endless and she could smell sulfur and charcoal.

Then the door behind her opened, and they both dropped backward into an undignified heap.

"Get off my lawn!" a woman's voice demanded above her.

Someone grabbed Tekko's arms and pulled hard, separating her from the man, dragging her further into the room beyond the door. There was screaming—inhuman, distorted so it almost sounded more like a machine being gutted, rather than anything living. Then a door slammed and there was silence.

A boy with bleach-blond hair let go of her arms and leaned down to look at her. "Are you all right?" he asked.

"Nothing's broken," Tekko answered automatically, sitting up. She wanted to crab-crawl across the ground, to put as much distance between herself and the door as possible, but made herself hold still. "What were those things?"

"Monsters," a crisp, female voice told her. "Some type of zombie, I think."

A tall woman in browns leaned against the door. She was dressed in fawn-colored slacks, an ivory men's shirt, a tan tie and chocolate-colored vest. Her hair was lanky and mud-toned. She was pale and looked tired, but still solid, as if she could buffet any wind and still be standing afterward. She lit a cigarette and raised an eyebrow at Tekko's gaze.

"Monsters," Tekko parroted.

"Nasty ones," the woman confirmed.

"I just brawled in the middle of the hallway with monsters."

"And took down six out of seven," the woman said as she exhaled a mouthful of smoke. "Not bad."

"Thanks." Tekko stood up and looked around. The apartment was decently sized. There was a painting of fruit in a basket on the wall. There were files and papers stacked on the coffee table and in the kitchen on every available space. "Miss…?"

"Kuwabara," the woman answered. Tekko blinked and looked at her more closely. "Kuwabara Shizuru."

"Wife?" Tekko asked automatically.

The woman curled her lip in distaste at that suggestion. "Sister."

Tekko supposed she could see the resemblance if she squinted—in the stubborn line of Shizuru's mouth and set of her jaw. Kuwabara had never spoken of his family, but, then, he rarely spoke of his personal life.

"Should you be smoking?" the boy asked.

"Bite me." Shizuru took another deep draw on the cigarette to emphasize her point.

"And you are?" Tekko asked him.

"I'm Jiro." The boy beamed as if his very existence were cause enough to be happy.

"Who are you?" Shizuru asked, dropping her cigarette into a coffee cup sitting on an end table beside the door. She pulled out another and lit it. Tekko found herself staring at it with a deep craving.

"Tekko Arashi. Can I have one of those?"

Shizuru looked vaguely impressed, and tossed her a cigarette. "Kazuma's friend from the precinct?"

"Yeah." She held out her hand for the lighter.

Shizuru finally pushed off the door, pausing to light Tekko's cigarette as she moved into the kitchen. Tossing the lighter on the table, she pulled a bottle of water out of the refrigerator.

Jiro followed Shizuru and began hunting through the cupboards until he discovered a box of cereal. Leaning against the countertop, he stuffed a handful into his mouth and munched happily. It reminded Tekko that Kuwabara owed her dinner, and she hadn't eaten anything all day but half a bagel for breakfast.

"What are you doing here, Tekko-san?" Shizuru asked, cool but polite.

"I was promised dinner," Tekko answered. "Er. I mean, I was supposed to question two boys about their knowledge of the Mayaboshi Company." She looked at Jiro. "I'm assuming you're one of them."

Jiro shrugged, and spoke around the cereal in his mouth. "I don't know much, but I'll help you if I can."

Tekko nodded. "I'm sure whatever you can give me will be—" Her voice cut off when something solid slammed into the door with enough force to make the coffee cup rattle. "But maybe I should deal with those…things, first." She jerked her chin at the door.

"Don't worry," Shizuru said, handing Jiro the bottle of water. "They won't get in."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because I'm keeping them out." The way she said it, and the way the copper in her brown eyes gleamed for just a moment made it seem a very dire threat indeed.

Then the door took another impact and shuddered. Shizuru whitened, her lips tightening into a thin line. She moved to the sink and scrounged in the cabinet underneath, coming out with a short sword. Some sort of runic design ran up the middle like a spine. She handed it to Jiro, who had to juggle his cereal and water until he had a hand free to take it.

"Try to take their heads off," she advised.

Jiro nodded with a humorless smile, and moved past Shizuru, disappearing down a hallway into a room, shutting the door behind him. Tekko watched him go and wondered about the weight in the air. It was as if they were all standing by a sickbed, waiting for someone to die. Yet the two of them were dealing with the situation so calmly that she could only follow suit.

Shizuru voice was like a splash of cold water. "I've called for backup. They should get here, soon."

The door shook again. The coffee cup fell off the table by the door and bounced on the ground, dribbling old coffee and wet cigarette ash in an arc.

Tekko picked her gun up off the floor and reloaded it. "How soon is soon?"

Shizuru shook her head.

"Is there another way out of this place?"

"Besides the ten story drop out the window?" Shizuru exhaled smoke. "No."

"Where's your phone, then? I'll call backup."

"I don't really think that'll help." Shizuru sprawled into a kitchen chair and tucked her hair behind her ear. She sounded weary, and Tekko noted the lines of stress deepening around her eyes and wrinkling her brow.

"Why not?"

The wood of the door crackled in protest on the next impact, bowing a little.

"No one will get in. Frankly, I don't know how you got in here. There's some sort of barrier spell around the building. I can feel it."

"But then how will your backup—"

The door swung inward with a crash, flying loose of one hinge. Shizuru flicked ash from her cigarette onto the floor and looked unimpressed as the seven business-suited men flowed into the room. For a moment, they seemed more shadow than substance. Tekko set her jaw and took aim, waiting for them to solidify.

"The fuck is all this?" a ringing tenor demanded from the hallway behind the men. They pulled back, parting into two groups on either side of the door, and revealed a compact man of medium build, hair gleaming like a raven's wing in the light. He took stock of the scene and grinned, shoving the loose sleeves of his leather jacket back from his hands like a man ready to work. "Oh good. Bad guys."

Tekko recognized him as the smart-ass punk that hung around with Kuwabara once or twice every year and always managed to piss her off in the process. What was his name again?

Kuwabara appeared next to him a moment later. "Urameshi, would you stop posing and just get to it, already?"

"Hey," Urameshi protested. "Don't rush the master."

"Master Moron," Kuwabara muttered, shoving him to one side unceremoniously. Tekko blinked when a white-gold sword of light with a sharp orange edge blazed to life from his clenched fists.

The seven reacted instantaneously. Tekko flinched as they screamed—high, searing wails like machines in pain—and flung themselves at Kuwabara and Urameshi. Kuwabara sliced the first two in half with one swipe. They divided like torn oil, features flattening paper-thin, blackening and dissolving away. The third proved little more trouble. The fourth went the same way just as quickly.

After a moment, Tekko put her gun away and went to sit at the table with Shizuru, who offered her another cigarette.

"REI GUN!"

Sudden blinding white-blue light from Urameshi's part of the hallway seared her retinas, forcing her to look away. When her vision returned, Kuwabara was standing alone, looking a bit singed.

"Dammit, Urameshi!" Kuwabara squawked.

Urameshi strolled past Kuwabara without apology and into the apartment, looking pleased with himself. Then he froze as he saw her.

"Uh… hi there," he said, "normal person." He turned a glare on Shizuru. "That I wasn't warned about."

"I was preoccupied," Shizuru reminded him with a sneer, and flicked more ash on the floor.

Tekko lit her cigarette and waited for an explanation, which was sure to be spectacular.

"Besides, she's cool," the brown-haired woman continued. "She's Kuwabara's partner."

"We're just friends," Kuwabara and Tekko corrected automatically in unison.

Urameshi rolled his eyes. "Whatever. The important question is—who the hell were those guys and what were they after?"

Kuwabara stepped into the room, and something gritty scraped under his foot. Bending down, he picked up a strip of scorched paper that had kanji on one side. "This should help answer that." He held it up for Urameshi's inspection. "Paper servants."

Urameshi frowned. "I've never seen paper servants that powerful."

"Paper servants?" Tekko spoke up. She was ignored.

"Can you read any of that?" Urameshi asked Kuwabara, indicating the kanji.

Kuwabara squinted at it, then shook his head. "This one almost looks like 'death,' but it has an extra line. And this one could be an upside-down 'river.' But other than that, no."

Jiro stuck his head around the corner and considered the situation. "Is it safe to come out, now?"

"Safer than usual," Shizuru muttered.

"Hey," Tekko tried to cut in. "Paper servants?"

"Were they after us? Or were they looking for Kurama?" Kuwabara wondered, glancing at Urameshi, who shrugged in return.

"It's not like we can ask them."

"This is bad," Kuwabara continued. "If they are after Kurama, who has he tangled with that can cast kekkai and throw away seven high power paper servants on an errand?"

"And if they aren't after him," Urameshi said, "who have we tangled with that can cast kekkai and throw away seven high power paper servants on an errand?"

"Kekkai?" Tekko queried, voice sharpening with frustration.

Jiro prowled past her, holding the sword Shizuru had given him earlier. Kuwabara spotted it.

"What are you doing with that?"

Jiro looked at him, wide-eyed, and the pointed accusingly at Shizuru. Kuwabara turned on his sister, who shrugged.

"Hey, if you leave your weaponry lying around, you can't come crying to me when I put it to good use."

"That's for Rekai Tantei use only!"

"Rekai Tantei?" Tekko parroted, helplessly.

Shizuru rolled her eyes. "How long has it been since you touched any of the Rekai Tantei stuff? I'm surprised it isn't rusted." She took a drag on her cigarette, the flicked more ash on the floor.

"That's not the point and stop smoking in my apartment."

"Hey," Urameshi snapped, waving the slip of paper. "Can we get back on track, here?"

"Why's Shuichi's name on a piece of burnt paper?" Jiro asked curiously.

"What?" Urameshi blinked. "Where?"

"There." Jiro pointed to a singed corner, and Tekko frowned as Urameshi leaned down and squinted at the spot.

"What do you know. It is Shuichi's name."

"What does that mean?" Jiro asked.

"I don't know," Urameshi said and he exchanged a glance with Kuwabara. "But I know someone who might."

"Genkai?" Kuwabara asked.

Urameshi nodded. "Genkai."

"Genkai?" Tekko echoed, trying to get a word in edgewise. "Who's—"

"Shizuru pack some food—we don't know how long we'll be staying there," Urameshi ordered, all business. "Jiro, get Shuichi ready to travel."

"I'll bring the car around," Kuwabara said, turning toward the door.

"I'll come with you." Urameshi followed him.

Tekko had had quite enough. "Listen—"

"My door," Kuwabara bemoaned, looking at the damage.

"Oh suck it up, Kuwabara," Urameshi said, brushing past him.

The taller man glared. "Easy for you to say. You won't have to explain this to my landlord."

"HEY!" Tekko felt a brief and vicious triumph when the rest of the party turned and looked at her with startled expressions. "If someone doesn't at least attempt to give me a reasonable explanation for all of this immediately, I'm not going anywhere."

Urameshi and Kuwabara exchanged another one of those maddening secretive glances.

"She's your problem," Urameshi told the taller man.

"Tekko-san," Kuwabara began, in a tone of voice that told her there wasn't a reasonable explanation in sight, "I swear I'll explain everything when we have it all figured out. But, right now, we're not even sure what's going on."

Tekko folded her arms, unconvinced and unmoving.

"Come on, Tekko-san," Kuwabara wheedled. "We're going to see someone who'll probably be able to put the pieces together."

Tekko scowled.

Kuwabara sing-songed. "I'll buy you diner."

She was about to ask him what made him think some lame-ass attempt to bribe her would get him off the hook, when her stomach growled loudly. Narrowing her eyes, she dared him to comment, but he only gave her that damnably innocent smile.

"Fine," she growled. "But this had better be one hell of a meal."

Genkai spent most of her wizened mentor years avoiding trouble when she saw it coming. She preferred leaving messes to the younger, studier, more flexible generation. Their bones healed faster and they had a slim chance of breaking a hip just by slipping on some stairs. But something in the air that morning had told her trouble was going to be unavoidable. Tied as she was to the Makai and the Reikai, feelings like this were not uncommon, and usually right. So all she could do was head it off with a good pot of tea, or a bottle of sake.

Halfway through her third bottle, she heard the clatter of careless feet running across her gravel yard.

"Hey, old crone!" Yuusuke said cheerfully as he slid the temple door open with a bang. Then he gave a low whistle, and shoved his hands into his pockets as he prowled across the wooden floor toward her. "Three down already? You're starting early."

Genkai categorized several things with a cursory glance over her former student. He looked as if he'd rolled down a hill of sharp rocks—roughed up and filthy. She smelled blood and gunpowder and singed hair. She braced herself for the bad news.

Yuusuke crouched next to her and picked up the bottle of sake nearest her cup, peering into it. "Anything left?"

"Not for you," she grumped, taking it back with a swipe of her hand that was quick enough to make him blink. She pointed to a small, plain teakettle on a tray with ten cups, sitting near the low-banked fire. He straightened and wandered over, feeling the kettle's side.

"It's cold," he complained.

"You're late," she told him tartly.

Kuwabara's bulk cut a man-shaped wedge out of the light for a moment as he stood in the doorway, letting his eyes adjust. Genkai shivered as a solid kekkai enclosed the room. He moved a few steps into the temple like a man dragging weight, and was carrying something in a burlap sack that smelled strongly of a messy death.

Genkai bristled at the foreign magic and frowned at the bag. "What's that?"

Kuwabara paused, then looked down at it as if surprised to see it there in his hand. "What—this? It's a head."

Genkai's eyebrow twitched ever so slightly. "A head."

"Yeah. Should I leave it outside?"

"A head," Genkai repeated, hoping that clarification might prove her ears wrong.

"Yeah," Kuwabara confirmed doggedly.

"What is it doing here?" Genkai asked.

"I couldn't leave it in the car," Kuwabara explained with an air of perfect logic.

"Of course," Genkai agreed affably, though she couldn't stop a muscle in her cheek from ticking.

"Look," Kuwabara sighed and ran his free hand through his hair. "I know it's weird. It's… a long story. Is there somewhere I can put it for now?"

Yukina materialized at his elbow with a sweet smile. "I'm sure I could find some place for it."

"Er." Kuwabara looked down at the diminutive ice maiden and colored slightly. "You shouldn't… I mean… It's a head."

Yukina just continued to smile as she took it from him calmly. "So?"

"Er."

"Don't be such a moron, Kazuma, she's a freakin' demon." Shizuru, smoking cigarette dangling from a corner of her mouth, shoved between the two of them. "They're not squeamish. Now move."

She was carrying a large cooler, and by the way she walked Genkai guessed it was heavy. Clomping across the room, she set it down against the wall, then meandered over to the fire where Yuusuke was pouring tea into the provided cups.

Yukina drifted past the doorway, heading for the storehouse, and a woman that Genkai had never seen before finished the trek across the yard to take Yukina's place. She had someone piggybacking, covered in a blanket so all Genkai could see were bare legs and feet, and a tuft of brown hair. She paused on the threshold, looking first at the gaping Kuwabara and then at Genkai and frowned.

She had dark eyes, narrowed and naturally suspicious. Her mouth was the crooked line of the oft sarcastic, and her face was composed of hard, solid features. She was wearing black slacks and a navy blue winter coat. Her hair was cut short enough that only the edges could be seen under her knit hat. Genkai liked her immediately.

"What's up?" The stranger directed her question and steady gaze at Kuwabara.

"Tea," Yuusuke answered as he finished pouring into the last cup.

"Tea?" the woman asked. She shifted her burden slightly and made no move to come in.

"Apocalyptic tea," Yuusuke confirmed, holding up the kettle and rattling it a little. "You'll like it. Tastes…minty."

"And does the world end if I don't?" she asked.

"Naw," Shizuru explained, flicking ash from her cigarette into the fire and flipping her hair over her shoulder. "Whenever the shit's about to hit the fan, we all come to Genkai's to sit around drinking tea and discuss the end of the world. It's tradition."

The woman looked at Kuwabara, who shrugged and smiled reassuringly.

"Okay," she said, and stepped into the room. "Where can I put him?"

Genkai had a sense of being invaded, of an army coming to occupy her temple, digging trenches in preparation for a battle. It was rather alarming, even if she'd had experience in dealing with this before. She did well to hold her face in a neutral expression as yet another new person—this one an exuberant boy with an obvious bleach job—came bouncing into the temple carrying two armfuls of bedding.

"This way," Shizuru said, and lead both the bleach blond boy and the new woman out of the main temple and toward the smaller rooms, usually occupied by Yukina or Genkai or any of their frequent guests.

Genkai didn't like the idea of strangers running around her grounds, even if she felt nothing dark about them. She looked at Yuusuke reproachfully as she lifted her sake cup to her lips, and pressed him with the silent weight of her questions.

"Eh he hee…" Yuusuke grinned ruefully at her familiar look, rubbing the back of his head. "Sorry we didn't give you advanced warning, Granny. Coming here was sort of an impulse."

"An impulse." The flatness of her voice was a statement of disbelief.

He gave her his best shit-eating grin. "Yeah."

"An impulse with enough time to pack a cooler?"

Kuwabara finished untying his shoes and kicked them off before coming to join Yuusuke by the fire. Her former student set the teapot down and faced her, hands loose fists on his thighs.

"Listen," Yuusuke said, his dark eyes serious, the reflected fire lighting an inner spark. "We're worried about Kurama. I know you told us not to be," he added hastily, responding, she suspected, to the sudden hardening of her expression, "but we are. He's our friend and he's in trouble and we think he may have tangled with something out of his league."

"What makes you think that?" she asked.

Yuusuke took a neatly folded, singed piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. Even though the magic had been canceled, she could feel its lingering strength.

"What is this supposed to mean?" she asked.

"We were hoping you could tell us," Yuusuke said.

She unfolded the paper with a flick of her wrist and studied the kanji designs. The strokes of ink were steady and delicate, written by a master's hand. After a moment, she set it aside and felt deep-seated trepidation leaden her chest. "It would take a high-powered priest to make such creations."

"A priest?" Kuwabara frowned curiously.

"This is not mere arcane magic. These are divine words, used in prayer. They have been corrupted."

A wrinkle of worry formed between the eyebrows of her former student. Yuusuke knew that divine magic almost always meant more trouble. "How can you tell?"

"They have been inverted and reversed. The ink has been mixed with blood."

Kuwabara paled. "Human?"

Genkai shrugged.

Yuusuke's face had settled into hard lines. "Can you tell us anything else, Granny?"

"Not with a simple slip of paper." Genkai dismissed it decisively and went back to drinking.

"We think that whatever Kurama is hunting may actually be hunting him," Kuwabara spoke up, expression just as grim as Yuusuke's. "And I think that the missing persons case I've been working on is tied into it. May be the key to figuring out the pattern."

Genkai set her cup down and folded her arms, still unwilling to be drawn into this, but curiosity piqued nonetheless. "Pattern?"

"Look." The orange-haired man took a folded map of Tokyo and the surrounding suburbs out of his coat pocket and opened it on the floor in front of him. He turned it toward her and pushed it into better light so she could see the little Xs that were marked. Genkai frowned.

"Do you recognize it?" Yuusuke asked.

"It's a map of Tokyo," she told him dryly.

"Granny, don't get snide," Yuusuke retorted. "The Xs. We think they're supposed to form a symbol of some sort."

Genkai squinted and moved closer, kneeling in front of the map to give her old eyes a better view. Though bits and pieces of her succumbed further into old age every day, she could always rely on her memory. She reviewed her knowledge of arcane imagery.

"There are at least fifty symbols I know of that could match this," she said, and went back to her sake. Hopeless causes and goose chases didn't interest her.

Kuwabara leaned forward. "I don't think it's finished. I think there's at least one more point to go. Does that narrow it down?"

She sniffed. "That just broadens the field."

A sharp female voice spoke up from the back doorway. "What about the pictures?"

The woman, whose name Genkai still didn't know, came back into the room like someone shoving her way through a crowd—full of violent and frustrated purpose. Shizuru was her sardonic shadow.

Genkai was unimpressed, but she turned back to Kuwabara, making sure to keep her expression neutral. "Pictures?"

Kuwabara reached into his inner pocket and pulled out an envelope, handing it over. Genkai opened it and pulled out a handful of photographs. Each one displayed a different symbol, carved into a victim's body. Memory never failed her, and the pictures kicked forward a sudden alertness.

Yuusuke read the subtle shift in her posture. "Genkai?"

"I know what these are," she said, low voiced, and began to lay them out. "This one was first—the dark moon?" She held up a picture for Kuwabara to identify.

"Yeah." He looked surprised.

She put it down on the floor deliberately. "The dark moon on the left palm. And then the serpent's eye, on the right shoulder." She placed another picture on the floor.

"That's right," he confirmed, but she wasn't listening to him any more.

"The sleeping eye on the left shoulder." She paused at the picture of a woman's arm. All of the veins had been opened with clean, skillful cuts. "And the roads on the arm. The beacon on the left breast and the waiting traveler on the right. The broken lock on the foot and death's hand on the stomach." She laid the last of the pictures out and considered them grimly.

"So what does it mean?" Yuusuke damanded impatiently.

"You're missing the gateway."

"What?" Kuwabara asked.

She looked up, and surveyed her guests coolly. "You're missing the gateway—the final symbol to open a door to the Makai. Someone is trying to summon a demon."

"What?" three voices chorused.

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Genkai could almost enjoy the looks on their faces. Yuusuke looked like he wanted to hit something, Kuwabara like he didn't know how he always got into these messes and the new woman like she'd been caught in a comedy having memorized a tragic script.

"A powerful one," Genkai elaborated, almost gleefully.

"Not again," Yuusuke groaned, flopping over.

"Wonderful," Kuwabara muttered.

"You're kidding me," the woman said.

Shizuru just smirked and lit a cigarette. Genkai had always liked Shizuru.

"Listen," the new woman said, stepping forward. "I don't mean to be disrespectful, but we've got a homicide investigation here. Eight people are dead—more, if we include the victims in my case—and I was under the impression that you might know something useful. I know I'm not exactly up to speed about what's going on around here." She glared at Kuwabara. "But how are folk tales about magic and demons supposed to help us?"

Genkai sipped her sake before looking up at the frazzled young woman. "Who are you?"

The woman swallowed whatever she'd been about to say and frowned. "Tekko Arashi."

Smiling her most pleasant smile, Genkai gestured at an empty spot on the floor. "I can tell you're under a lot of stress. Take off your coat, have some tea, sit down." The smile lost its pleasantness. "And shut up."

Tekko sputtered indignantly, until Shizuru grabbed her collar and pushed her out of her coat. Tekko stumbled, and Shizuru disappeared through the back door again, presumably to put the coat somewhere.

"Tekko-san, sit," Kuwabara advised.

"But—"

"Plant your butt," Yuusuke said with a glare.

Tekko sat down and plucked the knit hat off her head, rubbing a hand through her flattened hair so it became a mess of loose curls. "Fine. There. I'm sitting."

Genkai always enjoyed breaking in the newcomers. "Good for you," she said in her driest tone.

Tekko glared at her. "So, is someone going to explain what's going on?"

Kuwabara and Yuusuke exchanged a look while Genkai sipped her sake. She was old, and didn't have to explain herself if she didn't want to.

"I guess it depends on how well you can suspend your disbelief," Yuusuke said finally.

Tekko's eyes issued a challenge as she folded her arms. "Try me. I'll let you know if my head is going to explode."

An hour later, they had resorted to sock puppets.

"Okay, say this is Koenma." Yuusuke held up his right hand, which had been sheathed in a sock. Shizuru had supplied him with a permanent marker so he could bestow it with Angry Eyes. " 'Hi, I'm Koenma,' " he said in falsetto, bobbing his hand in time to the words. " 'I'm a boob. And I'm also a god.' "

Kuwabara was laughing so hard he nearly choked, and sploshed tea over the flow charts they had tried earlier. The female police officer seemed less than amused. She'd held the same look of stoic disbelief throughout Yuusuke's rendition of the Three Worlds and their denizens.

"I think we're getting a bit off track," she said.

"Man," Yuusuke complained, "tough crowd."

Tekko finally quirked a small smile. "It's not that I don't appreciate the effort, it's just that—besides shaking the foundations of reality upon which I base my life—you haven't really told me anything useful. Let's just skip to the part where I accept all of the craziness you've told me and you explain how this helps us stop a serial killer."

"There will be only one more killing."

All three looked at Genkai, who had been silent since the explanation had started. Yuusuke noted she was wearing her "things are bad" look, which was much akin to her "I need more sake" look and her "my, isn't it a lovely day" look. Genkai really only had one look, with small variations on the placement of her eyebrows.

"Well, that's good, I guess," Tekko said. "Know when?"

Genkai took sip of sake. "Yep."

"What?" Disbelief from Kuwabara. "When?"

"Three days from now. Saturn will be in the Dragon's mouth, and the longest night will be upon us."

Yuusuke had always admired how Genkai could make anything sound dire. He pulled the sock from his hand and put it back on his foot, Angry Eyes up.

"It's like…demonic Tarot cards," Tekko muttered.

"So we know when. We still don't know where," Kuwabara pointed out, and dragged the map over to scowl at it.

"Maybe Kurama would know," Yuusuke suggested. It suddenly occurred to him that Kurama didn't know where they were. Last time the redhead had seen them, they'd been in Kuwabara's apartment, and they hadn't left any sign indicating they'd relocated somewhere. Well, excluding the damaged door, which really didn't send the right kind of message.

"Kurama?" Kuwabara echoed.

"Yeah." Yuusuke turned toward him. "You know, maybe we should have…" What? Called him? Left a little sticky note? Yuusuke wondered what it would have said.

Dear Kurama,

We wanted to move Shuichi someplace safer, where the bad guys would have a hard time finding us. So we've gone to Genkai's shrine. In writing this, we're assuming that all the bad guys can't read. See ya.

Yuusuke

But Kuwabara wasn't really listening. Instead, he put his thumbs next to each other and pressed his hands to the map, spreading his fingers out like wings.

"Uh…Kuwabara? What are you doing?"

"Shut up," he snapped, and picked up Shizuru's permanent marker, abandoned by Yuusuke's teacup. "I've got it."

Tekko leaned over. "Got what?"

"Look." Kuwabara began drawing lines between the points. "Wings, tail… It's a crow!" Kuwabara held up the map so Yuusuke and Tekko could see it better.

"Maybe if you squint…" Yuusuke said disbelievingly, tilting his head to study the quick sketch from a different angle. "It's missing a head."

"Yeah." Kuwabara turned the map back to him and frowned. "I'm guessing that's the last point."

"But how do we know exactly where it'll be?" Tekko asked. "Or even the general location? We don't have any reference."

"Do you have your case files here?" he asked.

"In the car."

"Think you could go grab any pictures you have of the Crow symbol?"

"Sure." She got to her feet and trotted out, pausing only for her shoes before continuing down the path toward the stairs.

Jiro padded into the room, looked around and apparently decided not to ask any questions. Instead, he knelt next to the teakettle and picked up two cups, padding back out again. Yukina picked up the teakettle and moved off to make more tea.

"What I don't understand," Shizuru said, lighting another ever-present cigarette, "is how everything fits together—the people summoning a demon, Shuichi's father, the gun shipments, the crow… what do they all have in common?"

"They all get people killed?" Yuusuke ventured.

"What are Crows, exactly?" Kuwabara asked, looking toward Genkai.

"Souls returned from the dead for the purpose of revenge against those that killed them," Genkai recited in a bored voice.

"Then maybe whoever's after Kurama…is someone Kurama's been sent to kill?" Yuusuke wondered. "Trying to save their own skin."

"Do all Crows wear the same design of makeup?" Kuwabara asked Genkai. "Is that part of the ritual?"

Genkai nodded.

"Then we know that whoever killed Kurama knew about the Crow," Kuwabara said. "Remember—they cut his face to look like the make-up he's wearing now."

"That's right," Yuusuke remembered, sitting up straighter. "And it wasn't just Kurama. Remember? It was those other people, too. Like, six or seven of them. Around the same time. They all had the same design cut into their faces."

"And they all died…horribly." Kuwabara swallowed. "Tortured… their families…"

Yuusuke felt something click into place. "Kuwabara, what do we know about ghosts?"

Kuwabara frowned, blinking out of past memories. "They're discontent spirits. People who died so dissatisfied with their lives that they couldn't move on."

"Right. And the Crow is like… the ultimate form of a ghost, right? Someone so cheated out of life that a Higher Power lets them come back to exact revenge."

"Right…"

"Well, put that together with someone going around killing people in terrible ways and marking them with the Crow symbols…"

Kuwabara's eyes widened. "Someone was trying to create a Crow."

Yuusuke nodded. "And they succeeded with Kurama."

"But," Kuwabara protested, frowning, "why would someone deliberately create something that would be hell-bent on destroying them?"

"Crows," Genkai said solemnly, "are not just power over death, but also over life. Their animal companions can resurrect spirits and imbue them with near-invincibility. Can you think of no evil soul who would desire such a thing?"

"I can think of a crapload," Yuusuke said. "The hard part's going to be narrowing it down."

"Who do we know," Kuwabara worked the problem out loud, "that knows Kurama and wants someone to come back to life?"

"And how do Shuichi's father and the demon fit into this?" Shizuru put in.

"Maybe they're trying to resurrect a demon soul," Kuwabara speculated.

Genkai nodded. "Possibly."

"Okay," Yuusuke said, "so how many dead demons do we know that know Kurama?"

"A lot," Kuwabara concluded mournfully.

"A lot of what?" Tekko asked from the doorway, pausing to kick off her shoes.

"Dead demons," Yuusuke answered cheerfully.

"Right," Tekko said without missing a beat. "Here are the pictures." She handed an envelope to Kuwabara.

Kuwabara opened it and took out a picture of the most recent crime scene, where the Crow symbol had been burned into a brick wall. He set it down on the map and tried to line up the points. Yuusuke leaned over to see if they matched.

"Too small," Kuwabara said, frowning. "If we could make the picture bigger somehow…"

"We have a computer program down at the precinct that does that sort of stuff," Tekko offered.

"There's a computer in the back," Genkai said.

Yuusuke turned to gape at her. "Granny? You? Have a computer?"

Genkai scowled and gave a defensive, one-shouldered shrug. "The damned ice maiden bought it. It wasn't my idea."

"It was so shiny!" Yukina spoke up as she came back into the room, carrying the teapot. Her eyes were wide with innocent enthusiasm. "Like ice! And so alone in the display window…"

Yuusuke wondered, not for the first time, how much of Yukina's child-like wonder was sincere, and how much of it was an act that kept her out of trouble.

"Now it's all alone in the back," Genkai reiterated conclusively. "Gathering dust all over its shiny surface."

"Anyone know how to hook up a computer?" Shizuru asked the room in general.

"I do," piped a voice from the back of the room.

Everyone looked to where Jiro leaned against the doorframe, dark eyes watching them curiously.

"Where is it?" he asked in the silence. "I can set it up in five minutes flat."

It actually took close to fifteen minutes, because Genkai hadn't even bothered taking it out of the box, or storing it in a room with electrical outlets. But once it was up and running, it was truly impressive—sleek, silvery plastic exterior, flatscreen monitor, tall, thin speakers, and a scanner/copier/printer. It took another fifteen minutes to install all of its extra software, before Jiro could scan the picture.

Yuusuke watched impatiently as the kid measured out the points on the map and enlarged the picture accordingly, isolating the crow image and cutting out the background. Then Jiro darkened the lines and printed a copy. Taking the paper and the map, he taped the former on a window and then placed the map over it. The sunlight shining through the window made it possible to see the image of the crow overlaid with the map.

"Ta da!" Jiro tossed a triumphant smile over his shoulder.

Yuusuke moved forward, but Tekko beat him to it. She circled the area of the crow's head with a fingertip, frowning.

"That's about a square kilometer of space," she said. "In the middle of the business district. It'll take time to find anything there. And we don't even know what we're looking for, exactly."

"We'll know it when we feel it," Yuusuke said, practically bouncing. It had been far too long since he'd done anything constructive and he was starting to get antsy.

"We can feel spirit-power fluctuations when we get near them," Kuwabara explained before Tekko could ask.

"So…" The female police officer raised an eyebrow. "We're going to follow your Spider Sense to find the bad guys?"

Yuusuke grinned, letting a hint of the demon shine in his eyes. "That's the plan. Let me know if you think of anything better."

She rolled her eyes, but relented. "All right, that's fine for you. But how am I going to find anything? What do I look out for?"

Outside, the warm orange sunset light shifted suddenly into purple, and thick black rain splattered against the windows, clinging to the glass like tar.

"Um." Yuusuke blinked, a chill shivering down his spine as his nervous energy compressed into alertness. "Things like that."

The reiken lit in Kuwabara's hands, its glow clashing in sickly colors with the strange light. The orange-haired man braced and scanned the room, looking for something to attack. But, besides the sound of oddly solid rain hitting the window, it was eerily calm.

"Urameshi? Where's it coming from?"

Yuusuke stretched his senses. "I don't know. I can't pinpoint it."

As Tekko pulled out her gun, Jiro reached out and hit a light switch Yuusuke hadn't even noticed on the wall. The room was bathed in the white-blue glow of fluorescent lighting that was hidden along the beams in the wall.

"I can't see anything," Tekko hissed, as she tried to scan out the window. "Where is everyone else?"

"I'll find them," Kuwabara volunteered, moving cautiously to the doorway.

"No!" Yuusuke saw Kuwabara start at his sudden command, and blink at him.

"What…?"

The air was pressing in. Yuusuke could feel it, darkness hovering around his vision, full of sharp edges.

"Oh shit," Kuwabara breathed, just before the edges coalesced and surged.

The taller man went down first, the reiken dissipating as he fell to his knees and clutched his head. Before Yuusuke could move toward him, a sharp sound pierced his eardrums like a thin wire, and then ripped open a black tear in his head that poured a frothing foulness. He was drowning in sound, a rising discord.

Yuusuke's demon blood responded immediately, white fire burning up his veins, and driving back the dark enough that he could see men in black push their way into the room. They were armed with rifles. Sharp alarm made Yuusuke shove stubbornly to his feet, though his center of balance kept shifting as if he were standing on violent water.

It was difficult and painful to focus his reiki as he took aim, like pulling blood through his body backwards. Before he could call enough of it, one of the men raised his rifle and pulled the trigger.

The impact hit him with enough force to make him stagger. As he looked down at the small silver shaft and red feather sticking out of his chest, all he could summon was a vague sort of resentment. What kind of demons ran around with damned dart guns?

Then he passed out.