The strobing red and blue lights of the police cars cast the nighttime in alternating auras, first of hellish torment and then of frozen indifference, or so Inspector Tsugawa thought as he approached the scene. Yellow barricades were in place, as were the inevitable morbid spectators, though the officers were doing a good job keeping things clear. Tsugawa flashed his credentials and was greeted with a crisp salute.
"So what do we have here, Officer? The dispatch said one body, male, suspected homicide."
"Yes, sir." The uniformed officer let him past the tape. Forensics staff were already at work processing the scene with their usual quiet competence, interspersed by poor attempts at humor from Dr. Ogata. "Hiro Anzai, age twenty-six, architect by profession according to his business cards. He was found by a couple who'd been in that coffee shop there and were taking a shortcut through this alley to where they'd parked."
Tsugawa glanced back at the kissaten, getting the lay of the neighborhood, then nodded.
"The couple is over there, waiting to give a statement," the officer continued.
"Good, thank you."
The inspector stepped forward so he could get a look at the body.
"Not a pretty picture, is it?" Ogata said. "Murderers are such nuisances that way, never giving a thought for those of us who have to clean up after them."
A number of people, Tsugawa included, found Ogata's less-than-decorous manner irritating, even irreverent, but for all his faults he was an excellent forensic physician, both at the autopsy table and in the field. Nor was his judgment wrong in this case. Hiro Anzai did not make for a pretty picture.
The dead man was sprawled in the middle of the alley, near the mouth, and Tsugawa immediately began wondering why he was there. Had he been forced that way, or had he gone willingly with his killer, or had he simply been passing that way for his own reasons like the couple that had found the body, and been ambushed? Questions that would have to be answered. His face was twisted into a rictus of fear, his eyes wide and staring, almost swollen in their sockets like a frog's.
"Quite curious, really. He wasn't shot, he wasn't stabbed, there are no indications of blunt force trauma, and he does not appear to have been asphyxiated. However, his hands make it quite clear that extreme violence was involved."
Ogata pointed with his pen, but it was hardly necessary to call the inspector's attention to the injuries. Each of the dead man's hands had been bent back on itself so that it appeared that the fingers of each hand were clutching the wrist they were attached to. In essence, the hands had been turned inside out.
"It was done ante-mortem, from what I can tell under these conditions. See how the nails are biting into the skin, drawing blood? The pain must have been excruciating, yet no one heard him call out, because he'd been dead at least two hours before he was found. Personally, there's no way I could have...handled...the pain."
Tsugawa ignored the pun.
"Move this case to the top of your list, Doctor," he instructed Ogata.
"Of course, but why the rush?"
"I want to go to bed knowing if I have to solve this case, or just hand it off to the NOS."
Tsugawa looked at the corpse's hands again, then flexed his own fingers as if making sure they were still intact. Of the two options he'd mentioned to Ogata, his money was on the latter.
-X X X-
The pink and gold light of sunset streamed through the gaps in the Venetian blinds and threw their shadows across the carpet. The offices of the Tatsuhiko Shido Private Detective Agency were a bit dilapidated, with cracks running through the plaster, faded patterns on the furniture, blinds that didn't quite close, and a battered desk scarred by years of use in various firms. Still, more than any place Shido had lived for a long time, it was home. "Where the heart was," as the saying went.
"You got to see Hanae Matsuura last night? I'm jealous!"
"Mr. Shido took me," Riho said proudly.
"What an idiot! They're sleeping together and she still calls him Mr. Shido."
That was Guni, a fairy who'd years ago attached herself to Shido as a kind of sidekick or familiar. There was nothing of the children's picture-book fairy about her beyond her foot-tall height, not unless one's picture-book featured fairies with bright green skin, bat wings instead of butterfly, and a sassy, sharp-edged tongue.
"Hmph! Unlike some people, I was raised to have manners," Riho snapped back.
"Take it easy, girls," the woman who'd originally spoken said with a laugh. Yayoi Matsunaga was tall and beautiful, if prone to skirts that were a bit too tight and shirts cut a bit too low than suited a government employee. Shido supposed he could understand it; Yayoi had spent much of her life, from childhood to her early twenties, with her face wrapped in bandages to conceal horrific burn scars. Now that she was strikingly attractive it wasn't surprising she'd go out of her way to enjoy making a positive impact on people. "I'm glad you had fun. Shido needs reminding every now and again that there's more to life than drinking blood and hunting night breeds."
"Like donating blood and hunting night breeds?" Guni quipped.
"You know, Guni, my marksmanship has been slipping lately. What I need is practice on a small, moving target."
"Shutting up!" Guni flitted to the top of a floor lamp and perched there.
"I need a boyfriend," Yayoi decided. "When I start living vicariously through the undead, I know I'm in trouble."
"Actually, Yayoi," Shido said, "the night breeds did manage to intrude on our happiness last night." He went on to describe the scene they'd interrupted, and what he'd sensed.
"I still think it's that Mr. Ohta," Riho declared. "He was so nasty that it's easy to imagine him as a breed."
"He sounds like a real winner," agreed Guni. "I'd hate to have to work with someone like that."
"So you'd like me to look into this for you, Shido?"
"Yes, please." As a senior field investigator for the NOS, Yayoi had access to considerably wider-ranging sources of data than did Shido. Her agency had nationwide jurisdiction over supernatural matters, especially the night breeds--creatures of darkness that longed for human bodies so they could enter the light but who sustained themselves by taking life. "We'll need background details on those four people, to help identify the breed, and also whether or not there have been recent breed incidents that tie in with the milieu. I'd like to save whomever it is if I can, but if the darkness has already taken hold of their soul, there will be no choice. I'd rather know if there's any hope right away, instead of having to find out in the middle of a battle."
The breeds weren't vampires, but the strongest ones could be powerful and dangerous. More than once a breed had put Shido's own life at risk, such as in the Yoko Asahima case, or the Ishida affair, and it would be better if he knew if he could fight all-out before encountering the creature.
Thinking of the fight with the breed possessing Yoko Asahina naturally led him to consider other aspects of the case. The aspiring young actress had made a "deal with the devil," willingly offering her body and soul to the night breed in exchange for the talent and charisma to become a star. She'd succumbed to the breed's darkness, though, murdering to feed its hunger for human flesh.
"I wonder," Shido remarked aloud, "if it could be the same."
"The same as what, Mr. Shido?"
"Yoko Asahina."
"You mean...that Ms. Hanae would have given herself to a breed? That's where her talent comes from?"
"Or that her 'composer's block' has driven her to call upon unnatural help. That's more likely; if her original successes were due to a breed, she wouldn't have gone so long now without new music."
"Unless it had left her," Yayoi said, probably thinking of the actress Yoko had claimed her devil from, but Shido knew that wasn't the case.
"No, that's not it. The darkness last night was fresh, not the lingering odor of past corruption," he said. "There's definitely a breed associated with one of those people."
"I'll make a few inquiries," Yayoi said. "The NOS gets copied on all suspicious incidents from the local police, so even if things haven't escalated to murder there might be a clue in our files."
"Thank you," Shido said.
"Maybe you've caught a break for us, by going on that date. If we can actually do something about the breed before it corrupts its host into a killer, we might be able to save them as well as future victims."
Shido nodded, but somehow, he doubted it. It was far too easy to lure humans into darkness. Greed, ambition, anger, and despair all beckoned to the night breeds, and it was all too easy to lure a tainted soul into acting on those emotions. Hanae, Seiichi, or Ohta...whomever had been caught by the breed was probably lost to the light.
-X X X-
"It's useless!" Hanae screamed. She stood up from the piano so sharply that the back of her thighs struck the bench and tipped it over onto the floor with a crash. Seiichi rushed into the music room at the sound, and watched her lash out with a swing of her forearm, sweeping the candelabrum off the piano. The fragile ornament hit the floor hard; one of its arms snapped off and the unlit candles were scattered everywhere.
"Hanae!"
She slammed her fists down on the piano top, her frustration so intense that it demanded a physical outlet. Once, twice she pounded her hands against the hard wood, and then Seiichi was there, grasping her wrists so she couldn't continue.
"Stop it, Hanae; you'll hurt yourself! Your hands..."
"What does it matter? I might as well smash my hands, break them. They're no good to me anyway! What's the point of protecting them when they have nothing to play?"
Blood trickled down her bare arm from where she'd cut herself on the silver filigree. It felt good she thought. Physical pain to balance out what she was feeling inside. When the blood touched his fingers, Seiichi loosened his grip in surprise, and she pulled free of him.
"Hanae, you've cut yourself?"
"It's just a scratch. Do you think I care about a little cut like that? It's gone, Seiichi. I try to play, but nothing comes. There's nothing inside of me." She held her hands out in front of her, staring at them; they trembled faintly. "What do these hands matter now? Songs I've already written, anyone can play them. That just takes talent and practice. What matters is what comes from me. New music that doesn't exist until I give it life, and it's not there!"
"This is that bastard Ohta's fault," Seiichi growled. "Constantly pushing at you, pressuring you. How could you be expected to create with him snarling at you that way?"
He folded her petite form in his arms, but she only laughed bitterly and pushed him away.
"You don't understand at all, do you? Ohta's demands don't matter. He's always been like that. His soul is all about money and nothing else. Music is only the way in which he earns it--other people's music, since he has none of his own. The problem isn't his demands, the problem is that I have nothing to give! I have to find it again, Seiichi. If I can't find it I...I'm nothing!"
She brushed past him, suddenly bolting for the door.
"Hanae!"
"I...I have to go!"
A couple of seconds slow, he followed her out of the music room, but she was already running for the apartment door, flinging it open and charging out without even stopping to grab her coat or purse. Two droplets of blood had fallen from her arm to the floor just inside the foyer; they gleamed against the hardwood like scarlet-tinted pearls. Seiichi could only stare helplessly at the closed door.
"Hanae..." he whispered, feeling the weight of all the pain he could not seem to help her bear.