Chapter Six
The wind caught at Kazuki's hair and set the long wrapped tails of it curving out behind him as he came over the top of the building in a single sustained rush, threads already spinning out from his hands to catch at Kanou. The boy dodged, then saw Juubei coming in the direction which he had thought was free, and tried to abort his movement mid-swerve, bringing his fans round in an attempt to deflect Kazuki's strings.
As this was no more than Kazuki had expected, his koto strings wrapped themselves round the handles of Kanou's fans and ripped them from the boy's hands, sending them arcing out to either side like falling wings in the evening sun.
Kanou cried out in mingled shock and something akin to pain. "No -- no, you can't --"
Juubei's needles marked the space around Kanou's body, sending him backing up against the wall. A single needle cut into the cement an inch from his right eye, in clear message. Look what I can do. It could have been your eye, if I'd wanted. It still could.
Kazuki spun the remaining loose string back into his bells, but kept one hand ready to bring it out again. He knew Kanou; the boy had a tendency to be cunning and devious, and even the smallest cornered rat had a nasty bite. "So," he said soothingly. They could begin without Toshiki -- he'd be with them in a moment, once he got back from guarding Kanou's other potential escape route.
The noises of Mugenjou drifted on the sunset air. Battles; brawls; arguments; somewhere, higher up, a woman singing.
"So nothing," Kanou said, folding his arms defiantly.
"I was under the impression that you wanted to talk to us." Kazuki kept his voice pleasant and gentle. "What would you like to discuss?"
Juubei weighed another needle in his hand, letting the light flicker along its steel length.
Kanou's eyes flicked to Juubei, then back to Kazuki again. He seemed to be waiting for something. When the silence grew too long, he set his chin mulishly. "I just . . . all right, I was rude. I'm . . . sorry. May I go now?"
"He was extremely rude," Juubei remarked to Kazuki, apparently ignoring Kanou completely.
Kazuki nodded judiciously. "But it has been a while since he was in Volts. Hasn't it, Kanou-kun?"
Kanou looked down at his folded arms. He muttered to his feet, "It's been a while since anyone's been in Volts, hasn't it?"
There was little that Kazuki could say to that. And perhaps there was little point keeping the boy here like this, interrogating him. It wasn't as if he had the nerve to run anything major on his own, and . . .
. . . and where was Toshiki?
"Juubei," Kazuki said, and Kanou looked up at the sharpness of his tone, shoulders tightening against the wall. The flicker of fear in the boy's eyes confirmed Kazuki's suspicions. If he hadn't been involved in something, he wouldn't be afraid now; but he isn't running it, therefore someone else is; and Toshiki still hasn't arrived . . . "Keep Kanou-kun here a moment. I want to see what's keeping Toshiki."
"As you order, Kazuki-sama," Juubei answered.
Kazuki leapt down from the top of the building from balcony to balcony, moving round to the route which Toshiki would have been following.
Toshiki's sash lay tangled in the empty street, amid the silence. There was nobody else there. The windows were shut, the curtains drawn, and Kazuki knew with a bone-deep chill that in Mugenjou nobody ever looked out to see what was going on, nobody dared to look in case they might get involved, and nobody could tell him who had been there.
He walked around the scarf, lips drawn thin and tight as he surveyed the area. That mark in the road, there -- that would have been one of Toshiki's blows, it had the right impact pattern.
There were only thin spatters of blood. Nothing major. No serious wounds. He was grateful for that.
There was . . . he frowned. A late shaft of light made the side of the building almost sparkle for a moment. He licked a finger, and brushed it delicately against the wall, then raised it to his eyes. The same sparkle caught the glow of the sunset.
Glass. Diamond dust. That meant Kagami Kyouji.
That would explain the sash, perhaps -- Toshiki had known enough to try to shield his breathing.
But that didn't explain anything else.
He was in a cold fury as he returned to the rooftop, the sash knotted around his own waist like a promise. Juubei half turned his head at Kazuki's footsteps, but didn't shift his gaze from Kanou. Two new needles stood in the brickwork around the boy, just above his shoulders.
Kazuki was silent until he stood directly in front of Kanou. Even then, the boy wouldn't meet his gaze.
"Kazuki-sama . . ." Juubei began, then fell silent.
Kazuki reached forward and delicately took Kanou's chin in his hand, tilting the boy's head until he was obliged to look at Kazuki. "Kanou-kun," he said, each word deliberate and frozen as the anger burning in him, "you had better have some answers for me."
Kanou shivered. The pulse in his neck jumped, then settled at a new, higher rate. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said too quickly.
Kazuki felt his grip tighten slightly, as though it was someone else's hand on Kanou's face. "Kagami Kyouji. If it is him you are frightened of, Kanou-kun, then rest assured you have far more reason to be afraid of me."
Kanou's breath caught in his throat. He swallowed. "I don't know anything about it," he said, with a firmness that surprised Kazuki.
"Kazuki-sama, perhaps if I . . ." Juubei let the words trail off in such a way as to strain the nerves.
Kanou still didn't say anything.
With a snort, Kazuki released him, and trailed his fingers through the air as though it could wash away the touch of the boy's flesh. "It's Masaki."
"No!" Kanou cried out furiously. "It wasn't! I didn't say --"
"Of course you didn't," Kazuki cut in. "But there's nobody else that you would protect."
Patterns shifted as he considered them. Masaki and Kagami working together, with Kanou as the ignorant lure. Had it been Toshiki in particular they were after (and if so, why?) or had it been any of the three of them? There had been no trail left behind at the scene of the battle, but it was reasonable to suppose that Kagami would be returning to Babylon City.
With Toshiki.
He turned to Juubei. "We must make haste. If we are lucky, we may be able to intercept Kagami before he reaches the Beltline or crosses it."
"And . . ." Juubei jerked his head towards Kanou interrogatively.
"Well, we can hardly leave him here to run back to Babylon City." Kazuki considered the options. Carrying the boy with them would slow them down, but tying him and leaving him here would only be a temporary solution.
His phone rang.
"Excuse me," he said in automatic courtesy, and slipped it out of his pocket, flipping it open. "Hello?"
"Kazuki." It was Makubex's voice. "We are under attack, and I would be grateful for your help."
For a moment, Kazuki considered shaking the phone to see if that would correct its apparent malfunction. "You, you are under attack, Makubex?"
"Yes." There was a faint backdrop of bangs and thuds and not-quite-distinguishable screaming to Makubex's words. "They're using black threads. Would you . . ."
Kazuki wanted to scream, not now, but he knew that wasn't an option. There had to be something deliberate behind this. Timing like this couldn't possibly be random. But now he had to choose between saving Toshiki, or helping Makubex against the people who he had been hunting for since the death of his family, and it wasn't just Makubex, it would be Sakura and Emishi in the firing line as well, and everyone else down there, and . . . there was no damn choice at all. If it had just been news of the Black Thread Clan, he could have let that go by for a moment, for long enough to find Toshiki, but if it was all the others in the balance as well . . .
Toshiki, forgive me. I swear that I will find you. I swear that if they have hurt you, there will be no hole so deep they can hide in it from my vengeance.
"I'm coming," he said firmly. "Can you hold your position?"
"A while," Makubex answered, and Kazuki could hear the relief in his friend's voice, however much the other was trying to hide it. "We're having some problems with the computer security."
Kazuki reckoned distances and times in his head. "We'll be there in half an hour," he said. "Forty minutes at the most. Hold on."
"We'll hold," Makubex answered.
Kazuki snapped the phone shut. "Juubei," he said flatly. "I will bind Kanou, you carry him. Makubex needs our help at once."
Juubei frowned, his heavy brows drawing together. "Kazuki-sama, what about Toshiki?"
"Toshiki will have to wait." Each word seemed stained with blood. "He knows we will come." And we will, Kazuki vowed. We will.
---
Toshiki was aware of the voice before he was aware of the light, and he was aware of the pain in his arms and neck before he was aware of the voice. It was a low voice, a man's voice, one that he had heard before, and it was continuous, like a river over shale, pausing for a moment as though to wait for an answer, then replying to itself and going on again.
The light ran thin needles under his lids and pried at the back of his skull. Bands of pain ran round his wrists and forced tendrils down the muscles of his arms, leaking into his shoulders and neck, aching worse with every passing moment.
Toshiki opened his eyes and managed to stand upright, taking the stress off his arms. A room. A window giving onto a pale twilight sky. A man sitting near the door. Chains ran from the cuffs on his wrists to the wall above his head, tight enough that he couldn't pull away from the wall.
He wasn't entirely surprised.
The man sitting by the door broke off his private monologue and turned to look at him. The light from the neon strip in the ceiling caught on the backs of his gloves and the metal pin in his collar, glinted ferally on his single eye.
"You're awake," Fudou Takuma said.
This was not good.
"You are . . . Uryuu Toshiki." Fudou rolled the words in his mouth as he rose from his chair, toying with them as if they were alive and could squirm. "Yes. Uryuu Toshiki."
Toshiki repressed the urge to squirm back against the wall. Everyone knew that Fudou Takuma was obsessed. Obsession was nothing. He could handle the obsessed. They just needed to be persuaded into talking about whatever it was. It was Kazuki he was worried about. What had happened to his leader, with him not there? How could he have been so careless as to let Kagami take him down? "Yes," he said, and tried to keep his tone level. "I am Uryuu Toshiki. You are Fudou Takuma, aren't you?"
"Yes," the other man growled. He took a pace closer to Toshiki, and then another.
And this time Toshiki truly had to work to keep his body language calm and to stop himself tensing up in a useless readiness for battle, because the miasma of pure insanity that he could now see behind Fudou's single eye, read in every aspect of his movements, was something which chilled him. Lucifer was obsessed but he was sane. This man isn't sane.
"I know about you." Another pace. Close enough that he was almost within arm's length. "You are the one who . . . Midou Ban brought back to life."
"Yes," Toshiki said, in calm agreement, trying to think if he could use this against Fudou. Midou Ban, yes, that's the keynote of his obsession. "Yes," he lied. "I remember that."
"I heard about it." A brief frown flickered across Fudou's face, but was gone again as quickly as a cloud before a storm. He stepped closer, and reached out with his right hand to touch the wall besides Toshiki's head, leaning his weight on it. "Tell me. Tell me what Midou Ban did to you."
"There was a ceremony," Toshiki answered. He knew that much. Kazuki and Juubei had been strangely reluctant to go into detail, and to be frank, he hadn't wanted to know much about it himself. "The blood of the Witch-Queen's descendant . . ."
"Yes." Fudou brought his left hand up to touch the side of Toshiki's neck, and Toshiki could feel the metal through the thin fabric of the man's glove. "The blood of the Witch-Queen's descendant, given to you . . ." There was a glazed madness in his face. "Midou Ban touched this skin . . ." His hand moved upwards, across Toshiki's face.
"Let go of me," Toshiki said, trying to keep his voice level. Don't struggle. It'll excite him. Struggling is prey behaviour. Don't struggle, stay calm. He could feel the hardness of the wall through his hair as he tried to force his head backwards.
"Midou Ban kissed these lips," Fudou whispered, making the words intimate, as he pressed the tips of his fingers against Toshiki's mouth.
Toshiki could feel the edge of metal through the cloth, almost enough to cut through it and into his flesh.
Fudou shifted his weight, leaning against Toshiki, fingers tracing from his lips down to the side of Toshiki's neck again. "Blood," he murmured, and this time Toshiki could see the arousal as well as the madness, and conscious thought deserted him, and he tried to squirm free or to bring his legs up and kick out, but the chains on his wrists were too firm, and the other man's body too heavy and too strong. "This blood . . ."
"Fudou-san, stop," a girl's voice said.
Slowly the sanity returned to Fudou's eye. His breathing slowed. He leaned away from Toshiki again, brushing one finger against Toshiki's neck like a promise, and took a step back, turning to face the door.
A little girl in a frilly dress stood there, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders, clasping a white rabbit doll against her. "Fudou-san," she said, voice gentle but strangely adult, "we need him alive, remember. Don't worry, Fudou-san. We've promised you Midou Ban. You will have him and you can do whatever you want to with him."
---
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