Chapter Twenty: Change in Direction:
December 5th, 2010.
A hungover party
girl wandered through the alleyways to get home. Last night felt like overkill.
Too much booze. Too more white powder. Too much partying. Too much dancing. Too
much hooking up. The party girl stumbled in her tall golden glitter heels
against a dumpster. By grabbing onto said dumpster, she was able to stop herself
from landing on her butt. The party girl put her hand to her forehead and
groaned.
“I need a
cigarette,” she muttered as she tried for ten minutes to stand. When the party
girl got her balance back, she continued her walk. However, she slowed to a stop
and dropped her orange purse.
Her screaming
filled the Tokyo morning sky.
--------
9:35 a.m.
A crowd watched
as the police examined the body. The victim lay face down on the pavement. They
had no wallet or ID on them, but that wasn’t all missing.
“Where is the
skin?” one the cops whispered. “Or clothes? Or the hair?” His partner shook his
head.
“Think it still
has the teeth?” he asked.
“Yeah. We’re
waiting for the CSIs to get here.” He and his partner turned back to the body.
It reminded them of meat cooking in the winter sun.
-------
Tsuzuki and
Hisoka watched from across the street.
“Another one of
Asmodeus’ victims, huh?” Tsuzuki asked. His partner frowned.
“Something isn’t
right,” Hisoka said.
“Huh?” the older
shinigami asked.
“Where’s the
other victim?”
Tsuzuki looked
at the crowd as two CSIs made their way to the body. “You’re right. Maybe they
died elsewhere?”
“But wouldn’t
they skinned and stripped too?”
His partner
thought about the circumstances. Suspicion increased when he caught onto the
medics’ talking as they walked by with the bagged up body.
“What kind of
sicko skins the body, chops off the genitals, and removes the teeth and tongue?”
one of them asked. Tsuzuki turned to Hisoka.
“Did you catch
that?” he asked.
“Yes,” his
partner said. Suddenly, Tsuzuki’s phone rang.
“Hello?” he
asked.
“Good morning,
gentlemen,” Asmodeus purred on the other line. Tsuzuki’s nostrils flared.
“You!” he
snapped. Hisoka whipped his head around.
“Calm down,” the
lust demon said. “I just called to apologize to you.”
-------
Last night
wasn’t supposed to happen like it unfolded. The target was stabbed in the
abdomen. She stood, blinking.
“Y-Y-You stabbed
me,” she said. But, she didn’t fall down or bleed. Her date dragged the knife to
her chest. The woman with the light blue hair didn’t move. There wasn’t even any
emotion on her face. Her date frowned. This wasn’t supposed to happen.
He got off on
the fear. Blood and violence were his foreplay. The final moments of the woman
life at his mercy made his mouth water. But she wasn’t reacting how he wanted
her to. She wasn’t scared or dying. Shocked, but not scared. Her date shook his
head.
“What… What are
you?” he asked. The target pulled out the knife. Her date’s eye widened as the
metal hit the pavement.
“Why did you do
that?” she asked. Her date began backing away.
“No…” he
murmured.
“What’s wrong?”
the target asked. “I just want love.” She leapt forward and tackled her prey.
“Love me!” the
target shouted. He didn’t even get a chance to scream.
--------
“I assume you
saw the latest body?” Asmodeus asked.
“Why?” Tsuzuki
asked.
“It wasn’t
supposed to go like that.”
“Uh-huh.”
“My kills have
been intimate as you have seen in the past. That… was just savage.”
Tsuzuki narrowed
his eyes. “Why should we believe you?”
“Follow the
police and see.” The lust demon hung up before questions could follow. Tsuzuki
gritted his teeth.
“Damn it,” he
hissed.
“Him again?”
Hisoka asked. His partner lowered his phone to his side.
“Yes.”
“What did he
want?”
It made the
older shinigami want to vomit to repeat it. “To apologize.”
Hisoka gave him
a confused look. “What?”
“Yes. He wants
us to follow the body to a prove a point.”
Hisoka frowned.
“Do we really have a choice?” Konoe had already started asking questions. The
boys had to be vague with their reports. They didn’t have any way to slip hints
back to Ju-Oh-Cho just yet.
“Shall we get
this over with?” Tsuzuki asked.
“We don’t have a
choice,” Hisoka pointed out. His partner grimaced as they teleported from the
scene.
--------
Asmodeus lowered
his phone. Not all plans go off without a hitch. That one wild card jumps in and
wrecks everything. The lust demon knew what came next.
“Something
wrong?” a woman’s voice asked. Asmodeus turned his head.
“Oh, it’s you,”
he said. Kaede closed the door behind her as she entered the room. Her footsteps
made no sound as she walked. She took a seat in front of his desk.
“Not really,”
her boss said. “I just had a minor setback with a succubus.”
“I am sorry to
hear that.”
Asmodeus shook
his head. “She hid her energy so well to. I’ve been around since the Roman
Empire and she threw me off. He himself wasn’t the problem.”
“Now what?”
“I’ve already
sent the boys to go look at that serial killer’s body in the morgue as proof I
had nothing to do with that death.”
“And the
succubus?”
Her master
leaned back in his leather rolling chair. “Long gone by now.”
“Where did you
find her?”
“Her friends
found me through our hooking up web site.”
“How is that
doing, master?”
“Really good. I
have another match lined up.”
“And Anna-san?”
Asmodeus’ lips
curved into a smirk. “We’ll just have to see how long before she cracks.” He
began to frown. “But that seal around her neck has to go.”
“Yes, master.”
Asmodeus’ mood
changed again. “Did you want to see me for something?”
“Yes,” Kaede
said. She handed him her black tablet. The lust demon read over the screen. He
smiled and scowled through the screen to the bottom.
“Excellent,”
Asmodeus said. He stood up and walked out of his office. Kaede followed behind.
--------
Tsuzuki and
Hisoka stood silent outside of the police station. The older shinigami turned to
his partner.
“Well,” he said. “Asmodeus was right. He certainly didn’t have all of that done to him.” Hisoka didn’t speak. Did this mean they would have to deal with three problems now? Tsuzuki sighed and rubbed his forehead. Hisoka shook his head.