Karasu no Tengoku

Chapter Eleven: Artificial Lineage II

“It seems like they were all targets of a drug-dealing organization, quite alike to the Yakuza…”
“What’s its name??”
“The Crown’s Diamond…”
“It’s long…and quite weird…for a drug-dealing organization at least…”
“I know…but it seems that they were all on a kind of ’bingo book’…surely you know what it is??”
“Of course…”
“Well, they only copied the concept…”
“Interesting…and a good idea…”
“Kaito…do you still have the files that Ryuuichi sent you?? The last ones??”
“The ones that had all the information about the victims?? Yeah…why??”
“Let me see them…”
(Kaito printed them quickly)
“There they are…”
“The first victim, a girl of 14 years, the second a guy of 22, the third a girl of 18, the fourth a girl of 13, the fifth a guy of 28 and the last one, a girl of 16…they were all Russian…all born in Moscow it seems…”
“None of them bit in the carotid artery but in another random points, the first one, the insides of the mouth, the second one, the right wrist, the third one, the inner left thigh, not too far from the knee, the fourth one, the left wrist, the fifth one, the right ankle and the last one, the left inner elbow…”
“And they’re not showing any interest in the sexual organs or any organs at all…just the blood…”
“It’s definitely a vampire…or a vampiric maniac…the bodies are not being mutilated or anything, just drained and left to rot…”
“Are there a lot of Russians in Tokyo??”
“I don’t think so…”
“Do you think your friend could find that out??”
“Yeah…he could…”
“Would he??”
“Absolutely…”

(Three days later, Ryuuichi sent Kaito a mail containing a document in Acrobat Reader that listed all the Russians living in Tokyo and their occupations, the number of people was ridiculously low, only 30 people…)
“Wow~~, and here I thought they will go up to hundreds, at least…”
“Not even a hundred…and according to this, only 10 of them are unemployed and 5 of these live in Shinjuku…”
“We’ll have to tail those 5…”
“I don’t think that’s going to be difficult…”

(The one they were going to begin the tailing with, was a girl of 17 years that lived alone and that had runaway from home, having reached the country with money that she’d stole, but that had never been proved, and of course, her parents were dead and any other relative didn’t care, she really seemed like she was a zombie, all wrapped up inside her world, or maybe she was drugged, Hideki didn’t even have to care of being noticed or not by her, he thought she maybe wouldn’t even be able to register her surrounding anyway…she turned on a corner, and began walking through an alley, a dark one, quite dark one…Hideki then saw that someone came out from the left and began walking almost next to her, it was a man, or so it seemed, slightly lower in height that himself…’If it’s who we’re looking for, this is getting just way too easy…’, he thought, and for Hideki’s weird luck, it was, the guy suddenly grabbed the girl and pushed her against the wall, she seemed like she was going to cry out at any time, but she didn’t, the guy then took out a gun from his coat and shot her throat, it had a silencer, if not, a lot of people would have noticed, because it was a dark alley, yes, but Shinjuku was just way too full of people to ignore that as much of a nonsense as it may seem…Hideki kept watching intently…suddenly he regretted having come alone…so he sent a text message to Kaito’s cell phone, the obviously vampire now, bit the girl, who was immobile, probably already about to die, on the ear lobe…suddenly, the vampire grabbed the girl and began running towards the other side of the alley…Hideki, couldn’t help it, he HAD to find out who he was, so he began running behind him, not caring anymore if he blew up his cover or not…and Kaito didn’t arrive…and it began to rain…)

(I know I’m being followed, but I’m sure that I can shake them off at any moment, after all, my master said there was no problem if I was discovered or even followed, that they will tire out at some point, and I just can follow the orders of my master…oh good! There’s the car already…)

(The vampire had turned infinite times, it was obviously trying to lose Hideki, who was already out of breath, but he just couldn’t let it go, he had to know!! So he kept running, then jumping a fence, another time turning, they even went through several streets that had a little people, but the people seemed not to care, it was too much, this couldn’t be happening, and then, the vampire went into Kabuki Chou, it was as always, flooded with people, but they were all in their worlds, and the rain kept pouring, harder by the minute, the only ones that might care was because they were pushed aside or something of the sort, the vampire turned again into another alleyway and this time there was a car waiting…)
“Oh no…hey!! HEY!!!!!”
(He got inside the car and Hideki fell to his knees as the car left rapidly…)
“Shit…SHIT!!! Aaaaaaaah….”
(After a little while and after a bunch of weird gazes from random by-passers he stood slowly up and began walking back to where he’d left his car…it was a long way, and while he walked he realized that somewhere along the way he’d sprained his ankle…)

(He didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep waiting until he was awakened by the sound of the car’s engine turning off and the outer door closing itself, a door slamming a bit too violently, then he heard footsteps, well, a bit of dragging too, then the inner door opening and closing slowly, and a heavy sigh that seemed more like a grunt…he got off from the couch and turned on the lights of the entrance corridor, and saw Hideki, a tired, angry and drenched Hideki…)
“What…happened??”
“What are you doing here Kaito???”
(Hideki walked past him and hang his raincoat on the hall-stand, throwing his keys upon the little table that was there and sat on the sofa in the living-room, closed his eyes and when he threw his head back to get some fake rest the migraine began…)
“No…not again…Kaito…you haven’t answered me…”
(Kaito walked towards the other couch and just kind of reclined standing near to it…)
“I came here to wait for you to ask you how did the chasing go, and I can see it went bad…”
“It went awful…bad is an understatement…I can’t believe I lost him, I still can’t…and on top of that I’m drenched, with migraine and with a sprained ankle…”
“Why did you go by yourself????”
(Hideki’s head snapped back up and wave of pain and nausea drowned him, so he lowered it slowly, putting his fingers on his temples…he concluded that the rumour about acupuncture being useful against migraine was just a great, big and fat lie…)
“I…sent you a message…didn’t you receive it??”
“No…never…”
“Damn…I just couldn’t keep up to him…he kept running and running…he didn’t really care to be found out…he was just running aimlessly…maybe to get rid of me…”
“If you lost him…what happened??”
“It seems…there was a car waiting for him…he wasn’t just trying to get rid of me, he was making his way there, obviously more difficult to get rid of me…all the same…”
“So…did you see the car??”
“Yeah…a black BMW…”
“Wow~~~~…I didn’t know he had that much money…”
“Whatever…I have to find that car…it’s impossible there are so many BMW’s in Tokyo…”
“I wouldn’t be that sure…”
“Well I don’t care…I’m going to tail the next victim and this time I won’t lose him!!!!”
“I’m going with you…”
(Hideki just nodded…Kaito left a few minutes later, Hideki then, went to the laundry room and undressed completely, throwing his clothes on the washing machine, and put it to work, he then reclined a bit upon it on his back, he thought of how could he have lost it…it was obvious, he was a mere human, if it truly was a vampire, in physical abilities, he couldn’t even compare…he went upstairs and took a shower, a hot one, he didn’t want to catch a cold, the migraine had subsided a bit, after that, he put on some underwear, some pants and an old shirt, when he was going to lie down his ankle suddenly throbbed with pain and he remember he had sprained it, he decided he was too tired to treat it and to angry to care about it, so he just lied down and let himself fall asleep…)

(Not even 3 hours had passed since Hideki’d fallen asleep when he suddenly started and woke up, he was uneasy, very uneasy, the same sensation he’d had that last time he’d taken caffeine, but he hadn’t drank any…he sat on the edge of the bed…and saw the clock, it was almost 5 a.m., he stood, and obviously realized his sprained ankle wasn’t that bad anymore, went to the bathroom and splashed some water on his face, then he quickly dressed, some black jeans and a black turtle-neck (yeah, he loved black, so what?), he went downstairs and took his raincoat from the hall-stand, grabbed his keys and put on his shoes, closed the inner door behind him and decided he’ll grab the first train, it was a quarter to five, he’ll make it to the train station on foot and then grab the first train to Shinjuku…)

(When he was on the metro and began entering Shinjuku, the uneasiness grew…he arrived at the station and got off the train, there wasn’t much people, which was weird, usually Tokyo’s metro was crowded regardless of the hour, that was common knowledge, well, he then began walking through Shinjuku, and his feet took him involuntarily to where he’d lost track of the guy or girl, he couldn’t quite tell, in Kabuki Chou, he’d only been to Kabuki Chou a little number of times, 4 or 5 max, he was standing in the sidewalk where the car had been parked and waiting for the ’thing’, he scanned the avenue quickly and didn’t notice any trace of the car, he kicked a rock and then decided to walk down the street to calm down his nerves, somehow the uneasiness wouldn’t go away…)

(Several minutes went by and he kept on walking, he then reached something that seemed like a drugstore, a traditional one, and quite big, it was a complete building, with 3 stories and heavy Chinese-like, dark curtains that didn’t allow anything from within to be seen, and façade…parked outside the said drugstore…was the car he’d seen…he wasn’t wrong, it was THE car, because he remembered it had a ’six’ sticker on the back, a red one, and there it was!!...he peeked inside, and there were stains of blood on the steering wheel too, which was weird, but there were…the street was almost deserted, so he went to the alley in the back of the building and as he expected, found a back door, it seemed like it was a bit rusty and actually a bit ajar, so he decided to open it fully, when he went inside, the first thing he noticed was the smell of rusting iron, or, in this case, rotting blood, it was very similar…)
“I can tolerate it…”
(He told himself as he crossed all the stands filled up with herbs and several medicines, and went to the back of that first story, there, he opened a door that seemed to take him into some kind of corridor, there was an office at the end of it, and a staircase that took to the second story in the middle…he climbed the stairs slowly, and began to hear voices that came from the third story, it was actually just a pair of voices, a pair of girls in fact…the one saying something like ’I’ll give you eternal peace…’ or crap like that and the other saying she didn’t want to die…all quite hushed, like if they were afraid of being heard, but by who??...Hideki saw that, the second story, was completely empty, there were just some boxes with labels like ’handle carefully’ and so and so, he figured out they would be medicines…Hideki didn’t notice, but more than half an hour had passed and the sun was beginning to rise…)

(I began to hear footsteps on the second story, but I just ignored them, I supposed I was going crazy, but this senses of mine, had gone overboard when I began to hear someone breathing near me since the girl was already dead…and then, the click of the lock of a gun…)

(Hideki climbed the stair to the third story and peeked first, then something metallic inside his raincoat poked him, and he touched it, it was his gun, he hadn’t taken it out when he’d arrived home previously that night, so he grabbed it, and peeked again, it was the girl, it DO was the Russian girl!! He really couldn’t believe his theory had proven itself right…he just couldn’t….but he decided to leave his surprise for later…he climbed up the rest of the stairs and began walking slowly towards the Russian vampire, she didn’t seem to notice him or he was being ignored, when he was right behind the vampire he raised the gun and aimed it at the nape of her neck, the click of the lock echoed through the room…)
“Hey…how come it’s you??”
(The girl turned slowly, and a bit amazed, stood up, she smiled when he saw him, the gun still aimed at her face…)
“Wow…so it WAS you who was running after me…I see that the effect of the drug I put into your coffee hasn’t worn out yet…”
“Wha-what?? So, you DID put drugs in that coffee?!?!?”
“Yeah…may I know?? How could YOU actually track me down??? I didn’t think you would make it…”
“Well I did…but I don’t think you have to know HOW I did it…I want you to tell me…who is ordering you to kill all those Russians?? Aren’t you Russian also???”
“I am…but what makes you think I would tell someone like you??”
“Oh…so you do admit you’re being ordered by someone…”
“What’s with that?? That proves nothing…I could be killing them just for fun…just for blood…”
“Oh really…I don’t think so…these people appeared on a ’bingo book’…there IS someone ordering you…”
“Well…aren’t you a little cunning fox?? I guess you aren’t as stupid as I first thought…”
(She moved too quickly for him to notice and then he was on the floor, with her upon him and her hands around his throat…)
“Gah!!”
“I’m impressed…but you know what?? You’re just a mere human my dear…”
(She lowered her head; her hair was tickling his face…)
“There’s no way you can compare to me…I’m going to suck you dry and leave you here to rot and die…don’t worry it won’t be painful…”
(There was a window right behind the girl was a bit open and it was already about 9 o’clock, the wind that filtrated through the broken windowpane moved the curtain and a thick ray of light slipped inside, hitting the girl’s back between her shoulder blades and burning her, her arms faltered for a single moment, and Hideki saw his chance and shot her through the throat…)
“Gah!! Aaah!!”
*bang bang*
“Aack!!”
(She might have been a vampire, but wasn’t a strong one, so she passed out and fell backwards with a heavy thud...Hideki grabbed his throat and winced a bit, when he sat again he went near her and saw that the three shuts had hit not critical points but at least important ones, and that she wouldn’t wake up for a while, he sighed and fell on his back again…he grabbed his cell-phone and dialled Kaito’s one…)
“Hello!?”
“Why do you sound so alarmed??”
“Hideki!!! Where the hell are you??? I came to your house and you weren’t there!!...”
“Sorry…hey…can you come to a certain place to pick me up?? I kind of…need your help with something…”
“Where are you???”
“Kabuki Chou…”
“What?!?!?!?!”
“Yeah…a drugstore…Chinese…called the Green Dragon…I’ll be waiting on the third story, go through the back door…see ya…”
“Hide-!!”
(He hung up and remained there lying down to wait for him…)