I am going through and editing each chapter again (over time). I will mark when they are each done so you can follow what has been corrected. I still won't promise that the chapters are error-free. I did my best to fix any small continuity errors that developed by working on this over the months, and I am tweaking my writing. I hope you enjoy the story.

Reposted 1/7/24

Usagi laughed to herself. Everyone she met in her daytime life thought she was all sunshine and light, but in reality, she was made for the night. She was happiest when the moon was full and shining down on her. And at moments like this, she felt alive when she was walking through the city streets with the moon overhead. Alive, she thought bemused; that word made her laugh too. She hadn't been alive for a very long time.

She lifted her hand and traced out the different constellations she could find that evening. She found comfort in them like they were old friends. After all, they were at their best at night, just like she was.

She turned from the sky and walked along the path in the park. She was new to Tokyo, well, sort of. The last time she lived there was over fifty years earlier. Tonight, she enjoyed spending her evening further reacquainting herself with the city.

Looking perpetually twenty and never aging forced her to move around - a whole lot. Especially once photography was invented, people started wondering why all your supposed ancestors looked just like you.

Right now, though, she was growing hungry. She made her way to one of the clubs she'd scouted earlier in the evening. It was three in the morning, so she knew that people should be well into drinking and having a good time. She loved the city's nightlife; people showed up around one-thirty in the morning, and the clubs closed at six. It was exciting, and the night pulsed with the beat of other people's lives. She loved the sweet smell of youthful vitality that permeated the night air.

Usagi made her way past the heavily muscled bouncer. She never had trouble getting into any club. She had an ID that lied about her age and a pretty face —getting in was simple. She smirked that she was actually older than her ID said, plenty old enough to drink. She was four hundred and seventy-two, after all, even though she looked twenty.

She died at twenty years of age. A vampire's obsession with her in her home country of Sweden led to her being turned. Her blond hair and her cornflower blue eyes entranced him, and he stalked her like he would his prey. After all, he knew how to hunt humans.

As the innocent Astrid, her original name, she ran from him both literally and metaphorically. Nothing she did or tried mattered. At the time, she didn't know what he was. She was sheltered and had never even heard of the word vampire. She wondered why girls were kept so "innocent" back then and not told anything. Her lack of knowledge didn't save her. It made her more vulnerable to attack.

He, Duncan, had been her first kill. When he'd turned her, he was young and relatively inexperienced for a vampire. Since she strongly objected to his belief that she was to become his eternal sexual plaything, she quickly figured out how to kill one of her kind. Something she discovered by subterfuge. She told him she needed to know how so she could avoid that fate. He ended up being staked by her two days later.

When he came to her, a seemingly willing woman that night, she struck. She had a stake hidden under her pillow. Before he could even fully get his pants down, she had plunged it deep through his heart and drank the blood that was left in him.

Duncan had been helpful, and he explained to her how to get power from another vampire. It was how she knew that by drinking the blood running through another vampire's veins, you absorb their power. However, she didn't know how much to drink. She didn't want to make him suspicious by asking too many questions, so she drank it all.

Eventually, she traveled the world. She loved the new experiences and all the different languages and people. She found that the various foods and spices across the globe made the blood taste different in each person, which fascinated her. She learned about Japan through friends, and when she could make it there, she fell head over heels in love with the place. The country fascinated her, and she loved the scenery and the language. Over the centuries, she still spent time in other countries, but she always came back to Japan.

Now, she was in the heart of Tokyo in a club, and the beat thrummed through her body. She inhaled the sweet smell of fresh blood that ran through everyone there. Well, everyone but her.

She danced, with whom she didn't care and didn't know. She loved the feeling of warm bodies pressed up against her. It warmed her blood and made her feel. She let them caress her and touch her. They returned the favor in the end when their guard was down, and she would suck on their neck and take a sip. Then she licked their necks, sealing the wound with a caress of her tongue.

Someone brought her a drink, and she took a large sip from it–it was bitter. She smiled at the creep who had given it to her and beckoned him close. He would be her main meal tonight. She liked finding the vile and reprehensible to slake her thirst fully. It made her feel like she was doing a public service. She hated men that slipped date rape drugs into drinks. She believed the world was better off without them. In the end, she would make this right.

He came to her and rubbed his hard cock against her thigh, inhaled her scent, he then smiled. "Would you like to get some air with me?"

She knew he wanted her out of the club before she started stumbling and drawing attention when the drug set in. She downed the rest of her drink and locked eyes with him. "I'm getting hot. I'd like that." He wasn't the only one who wanted something. She needed privacy, too, for her desires.

He pulled her out of the club into an alley. It made her want to roll her eyes at him. Really? She wanted to scream. An alley? Did he plan to rape her there?

In answer to her silent questions, he pressed her roughly against the building and pinned her hips with his own. She could feel his erection. She was seriously unimpressed and disgusted.

He waited, and she pretended to look woozy. He then leaned in and whispered into her ear, "I laced your drink with Special K. You're mine tonight. I can't wait to fuck you. Are you a virgin? I really hope you are."

She surged forward and bit his neck, drawing blood as he tried to scream out. She'd covered his mouth. She sucked on his neck, draining him of blood, and he eventually passed out. She kept drinking until he was bone dry. She loved that expression.

When he was dead, she tossed him in the trash bin and walked away. She felt he should have been found there.

She pulled out her cell phone and called, "He's in the bin behind the club, Inferno. Check his prints and DNA. He'll show up in the system. I know a serial predator when I see one." She then hung up and tucked her phone back in her pants—another monster, dead.

Chiba Mamoru brushed the hair out of his eyes with his arm, careful not to use his gloved hands, as he leaned over the dead body. The coroner, who stood across from him, pointed at the dead man's fingernails. "See that?"

"Yes, his one fingernail is longer than the others," he observed.

"We'll check him for drugs. It might be what killed him."

"How did you get that from a fingernail? Most of him was rendered unrecognizable."

"Well, all rats that feasted on him are dead, so something is in his system. It looks like he might have been a cocaine addict. He would have dipped his finger in the drugs and taken a dose that would fit in that fingernail."

"His fingernail would be the size of the dose?"

"Sadly, yes, which wasn't enough to kill him, from my experience, which meant that it was probably laced with fentanyl. That's all assuming I'm right about his nail."

"Is there another reason for long nails?"

"Well, if all the fingernails on his right hand were long, I'd say acoustic guitar."

Mamoru looked at him and raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"Plucking. On an electric guitar, they just use a pick."

Yamato let out a long sigh, and due to the surgical mask he was wearing, his glasses fogged up. Mamoru's mouth twitched into a small smile. Yamato then pulled off his gloves, tossed them towards the trash, missing the trash bin entirely, and pulled off his glasses to clean them so he could see. "Draw some blood and send it to the lab. You know how to do that."

"You don't want to check my work?" Mamoru asked.

Yamato laughed and shook his head. "No, you're the best intern I've ever had. I would be thrilled if I could convince you to become a Medical Examiner rather than a doctor. I've had interns for…." he trailed off, trying to come up with a number. "Ah, fifteen years, and I've been doing this job for twenty-six years."

Mamoru flushed pink under his praise. "Thank you, really. I've learned so much from you already. When I do my residency, I'll have visual clues and insights into people I wouldn't have had without you."

"Just remember to draw hypotheses, not assumptions. Always back up everything with facts. Also, I'm saying this out loud to teach you, but I never would've said that in front of an investigator or anyone else. If this guy ends up being a Shinto priest who got knocked on the head, I would end up looking like a fool. Hypothesize and then verify."

Yamato wasn't a fool and was very good at what he did. When the blood work returned from the lab a few days later, Mamoru read the report. It was cocaine, but not enough to kill. It was the fentanyl that did him in. That was enough to kill eight men. The epidemic finally reached home for Mamoru. The rat-gnawed dead body in front of him was grizzly proof of all the news articles he'd read.

He held up the report and said to Yamato, "Well, he's not a Shinto priest."

"Do you have an identification on him?"

"Yes, and a missing person's report to match it. He got tossed out of rehab three times, all according to Detective Artemis."

"It's a shame. There isn't any pride in being right on this one. Another life, thrown away."

He took the report from Mamoru and sighed, "I am classifying this as a murder. You don't have that high a dose of fentanyl in cocaine if you want repeat customers. And to make money, you need repeat customers."

"Murder?"

"Yes, but Officer Artemis would already know that from the report."

He walked over and pulled the man's body from cold storage. He removed the sheet, looked down, and said, "Too bad the rats ate his right shoulder. I wonder if he had a tattoo there."

"Why? Why would you look for one?"

"I would look for a Yakuza tattoo. There has been a territory battle starting, and the encroaching group deals in a lot of kinds of drugs. It would be horrendously stupid, though, to buy drugs from a rival. But… addicts are never expected to be smart."

Mamoru looked down at the man; he then looked at the report and added the name in his head, Ishii Kanashii; what a fitting name.

"Does it mention affiliation?"

He looked back down at the paperwork and nodded, "Yes, Chikyu Yakuza."

"Unfortunately, I was right. He'd have a compass rose tattoo, signaling the earth's four corners on his arm." He shook his head sadly and put his hand out for the file. Once it was in his hand, he opened it up and read. "I can feel a bit better about his death now. He has murder and a death threat to three judges on his list of accusations. Still, he might have a family. His choices weren't theirs, so there would be sorrow."

Mamoru frowned; he couldn't imagine throwing the love of a family away when that was all he ever wanted. Well–he remembered wanting it since he was six and woke up in the hospital with no prior memory.

And then it struck him with frightening clarity. That family didn't deserve the news coming, and he didn't when he was six, either. He hoped they coped better than he did.

And that was the problem. Everything returned to the fact that he had no one on his side. No one loved him, and no one would mourn him if he died. The yakuza member who lay cold on the slab might have more people to cry over his death than Mamoru would.

Everything in him wished for love to come his way.