As reluctantly as he’d climbed in, Handa followed me out of the car, and we joined Chief Kobayashi at the hood, just as he was putting his phone away. With a brief smile, he gestured to the building’s back entrance. “We’re expected.”
“Who’s expecting us?” Handa demanded. “What is this place?”
“Patience, if you please, Handa-kun.” Using a FOB, Chief accessed the steel door and stepped into a bright, but sterile hallway.
I nudged my partner in ahead of me, and then blinked at the scathing lights as I entered. The door slammed behind me, shutting out all sounds of the rain, and I heard it lock again. Ahead of me, the hall continued on a way until it opened into a quiet lobby packed with chairs and houseplants. Everything was so blank, it was impossible to tell where we were exactly, but it looked like either a medical clinic or a vet’s office.
Next to me, Handa stood unnaturally still, with his fists clenched. He didn’t look so good in the light, his neck swollen and red, wet hair clinging to his forehead, and a sickening amount of blood stained his shirt collar. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and his skin nearly matched the white around us. He shuddered slightly. “Where are we?”
The chief ushered us around a corner, just to our left. “You might call it a sort of hospital.”
Everything clean and up to code, the place looked like a hospital. Heavy doors lined both walls, like in a general ward, but, here, silence replaced the hustle and bustle I was used to seeing in a hospital, and there wasn’t so much as a single nurse walking around.
Though he rarely admitted it, I knew Handa hated impersonal places like this, and, accordingly, he stayed closer to me than usual. His normally graceful movements appeared unsteady, and he brushed against my sleeve from time to time.
“Is anyone even here?” he wondered.
As soon as he’d said it, a man at least two decades older than the chief, wearing a lab coat, emerged from one of the rooms and stood watching us approach, arms folded behind his hunched back.
“Itsuki,” he rasped, when we’d reached him. “On a such a gloomy night, an old man like me ought to be in bed.”
Chief smiled pleasantly. “Excuse my rudeness, Yamada-sensei.”
Coughing, Sensei took the glasses from around his neck to settle them on his crooked nose. “Well, which one?” His old eyes took us in, and then homed in on Handa. “I see.” He hobbled closer, peering up at my partner and going so far as to sniff at him, like a bloodhound. Up close, he looked even more wizened, white hair sticking out everywhere, and the thick glasses magnified his yellowed eyes.
“This way, please,” he grunted. Expecting Handa to obey, Yamada-sensei turned to putter back into the room he’d come from, but my partner held his ground.
“Is that it, Ossan?”
“Ossan?” Yamada-sensei whipped around, chest puffing with outrage.
“You didn’t introduce yourself,” Handa pointed out. “Or explain anything.”
Yamada drew himself up, shooting Chief Kobayashi a punishing look.
“Handa-kun.” The chief arched an eyebrow at him. “Don’t be rude.”
“I deserve to know what’s going on,” Handa insisted. “I’ve heard a lot of strange things tonight, and I’m not sure I want to follow a stranger into an unfamiliar room without knowing the reason.”
“You’ve got back-up,” I reminded him, even though I felt like an idiot, after the way I’d failed to back him up earlier.
“Handa-kun,” Chief soothed. “Yamada-sensei is an old friend of mine, and he’s a doctor.”
“If I need a doctor, why didn’t any of you.” He glared up at me. “Call me an ambulance?”
“An ambulance wouldn’t have been able to help you, Detective,” Yamada-sensei decided. “And I’d like to be able to give you an explanation, but I won’t have one until I examine you. So, please, this way.”
“Just do it.” I nudged Handa. “While we’re young.”
Still, he lingered a little longer, frowning at the doorway and rubbing his injured neck, before finally muttering, “Go find me some tea while you’re waiting.”
“I’m staying right here.” Folding my arms, I leaned against the wall.
“This won’t take long,” Yamada-sensei assured us, and then Handa disappeared into the room with him.
A little loudly, Handa warned, “Don’t even think about sticking your fingers up my ass.”
“That shouldn’t be necessary,” Yamada-sensei retorted, indignantly, as he shut the door.
Chief released a sigh it sounded like he’d been holding in for a long time. Slumping against the wall, at my shoulder, he uttered, “Thank you for your help, Sugita-kun. I knew this would unnerve him.”
“He’s stubborn,” I grumped.
So stubborn. I might have known he’d follow me into the alley, regardless of risk, even if I’d taken the time to explain everything. That was merely one of many things that made him a great and reliable partner. He’d done everything in his power to protect me.
The guilt was staggering, and I nearly dropped to sit on the floor.
“More importantly,” Chief persisted, “I’m relieved he’s willing to listen to you.”
“Most of the time.”
“You trust one another. Depending on our outcome here, that’ll be a crucial component in moving forward.”
I studied his aquiline profile, detecting some concern in it as he gazed across the hall at the door. “What outcome do you expect, Sir?”
“It’s too early to say.”
“There must be more than one option,” I ventured, struggling to stay calm and not be too blunt. I answered to him, even in a crisis situation.
“It’s very tricky,” he replied. “I don’t want to say too much.”
“But Handa is going to be all right, isn’t he? I healed him.”
“Well...”
The doctor poked his head out to call us in.
“One step at a time, Sugita-kun,” Chief cautioned.
My stomach started knotting up again as I followed him into a small but typical examination room, where Handa sat up on a table covered in paper, expression irritated, shirt unbuttoned, my green tie hanging from his grip. It had only been just this morning that I’d loaned it to him, after we’d gone to the gym, but it already felt like days ago.
Chief sank into one of the nearby chairs and straightened the seams of his slacks. “What’s the prognosis, Sensei?”
“No reason to sugar coat it.” Yamada snapped off his nitrile gloves and disposed of them. “Unfortunately, Corporal Handa-kun was indeed infected by a kyuuketsuki; I intended to take a blood sample, but I hardly think it necessary. There are already signs.”
I took my eyes off the array of shiny instruments on the counter beside me. “Signs of what?”
The doctor’s shaggy eyebrows shot up. “It’s as I just said. He was bitten by a kyuuketsuki.” Without touching Handa, he gestured to his swollen neck. “It appears the healing process has been accelerated somehow, which saved the subject’s life.”
At least I’d done one thing right today.
“However.” The doctor coughed again, lightly. “Because the wound is closed, any chance I may have had at extracting the venom has been lost.”
“Wait.” I did a double take of him. “What?”
“Oh, dear.” He removed his glasses to polish them. “The chief wasn’t exaggerating when he said the two of you know practically nothing about what’s transpired.” Decisively, he settled the glasses on his nose again and squared his jaw. “I shall start at the beginning.
“Kyuuketsuki, known to other parts of the world as vampires, are a complex breed of yokai unlike any other. Though they sustain themselves on the blood of humankind, they also reproduce asexually by infecting their victims with a sort of venom. The tricky part is, they’re such bloodthirsty creatures, and the experience of biting a human is so extraordinarily pleasurable to them, they’re hardly ever able to restrain themselves enough to change someone.” He cast a furtive glance at Handa. “It’s typically a slow and agonizing way to die.”
My stomach turned sick as I remembered the corpses we’d discovered in the monster’s lair. I still didn’t know if that had been Kishi, but it had been some helpless woman, someone’s daughter, an innocent citizen I should have been able to protect.
“Despite it being their main method of reproduction, finding a changeling is rare. There are likely no more than a few thousand kyuuketsuki left in the world altogether.”
“We normally kill them on sight,” Chief added. “A tough order in itself. Kyuuketsuki are, for all intents and purposes, immortal, and can only be killed using very specific methods. Even the one you shot point-blank, in the head, would be able to recover if given time.”
“That’s impossible,” I objected. “I checked its pulse. It was dead.”
Handa snorted. “Kyuuketsuki don’t have pulses, jock-strap.”
I scowled at him, but Yamada-sensei agreed, “Kyuuketsuki aren’t living or dead. At least, not in ways we understand.”
“Like Schrodinger’s cat,” Handa suggested, like I had any idea what that meant.
Chief said, “You did the right thing tonight, Sugita-kun, pursuing it and immobilizing it.”
Dryly, Handa muttered, “Thanks for all your hard work, Sugita-kun.” And then he looked at the doctor. “What exactly are you telling me? No offense, I thought you weren’t going to sugar-coat it.”
“That’s true.” Yamada-sensei faltered. “I’m trying to help you understand two things, Detective. The first being that you’re on your way to becoming a kyuuketsuki already, the second, I don’t have any way to help you.”
“What?” I half-shouted, stomach dropping. “What the hell are you talking about?”
Yamada-sensei rubbed the top of his balding head, and his voice turned grave. “Gradually, the venom will alter Handa-san’s DNA. By the time the process is over, he won’t be human any longer.”
“I got that. What do you mean you can’t help? Isn’t that why we’re here?” I whirled to face the chief.
Expression sympathetic but somber, he met my gaze. “We came to explore the options, yes.”
“Unfortunately, there are no options,” Yamada countered. “When you healed your friend’s wound, you saved his life, but you sealed his fate.
Horrified, I faced Handa. His eyes were round, but he’d shut his mouth tight, making his lips look thin and pale.
“Your bedside manner sucks,” I spat. “So what? I should have let him bleed to death?”
Yamada-sensei’s mouth quirked in a slight frown. “That depends on your perspective. If you think he’d be better off dead…”
“No, no.” I started to pace. “That can’t be right. There must be some way to stop it.”
Yamada’s voice dropped, taking on a gentler tone. “I’m very sorry. The honest truth is, even if you’d managed to get your friend here alive, I’m not sure I could have saved him. It’s extremely rare for a human to survive a kyuuketsuki bite, even when the yokai is trying to change them.”
That thing hadn’t been trying to change him, of that I was sure. Maybe, though, if I’d acted faster. I should have fired the second it touched him. I’d been so afraid to hit him. Between the dark and the rain, my visibility had been so bad.
No excuse. I should have tried harder.
“If you had been able to transport him here,” Yamada continued. “Instantaneously, so that he didn’t bleed to death on the way, I could have attempted a blood transfusion, but there’s no guarantee it would have worked, and at this point, I’m afraid it’s worthless to try. Once the body begins to heal from the wound, the venom is in its ideal environment—a strong, living host—it takes root, gradually affecting the muscles, nervous system, and, in time, the brain and heart. If he was bitten more than a half-hour ago, it’s surely been absorbed into his muscles, like a drug, and—”
“Wait, wait.” Handa clenched my tie tightly in his fist. “Is it a venom, or is it a disease? Or is it a parasite?”
“That’s what makes finding a solution so difficult, you see.” Yamada wheezed, coughing just a little. “It’s not really any of those things—it’s the bite of an otherworldly creature older than humanity—it’s evolved to be nearly unstoppable; and cases like yours are so rare, no one has been able to collect sufficient data. In fact, what I just told you is more or less all there is to know.”
“That’s unacceptable,” I snapped. “There must be something.”
Dolefully, he agreed, “Once, nearly a hundred years ago, in another country, someone did manage to keep a kyuuketsuki changeling alive long enough to study the process. He kept that young lady imprisoned for approximately two weeks before she was simply too dangerous and had to be killed.”
“Two weeks!” I blurted. “You’re telling me we only have two weeks?”
“Less, really. He may not be a fully realized kyuuketsuki in two weeks, but he will be altered enough that he won’t be able to function as a human being anymore.” Seriously, he faced Handa. “A lot of terrible things are going to happen between now and then.”
My partner lit a cigarette, and I noticed his hand shaking again. This time, I knew he was rattled. “So, I won’t be able to eat garlic anymore?”
I could have punched him in the head. Of course, this wouldn’t be any different to him than any other problem that occurred in his life; of course, he’d just brush it off and pretend it didn’t worry him.
Yamada frowned at his glib tone. “In a matter of a few days, you may not be able to stomach any human food at all.”
Handa’s brow wrinkled, but he gave a slight nod, as if the doctor had told him he had to cut bread out of his diet.
“Stop acting so calm!” I lunged at him, screaming in his face. “Stop acting like none of this scares you!” I turned on the chief next. “Stop acting like this is just another day on the job!”
“Sugita-kun,” Chief counseled, “staying calm is of the utmost importance right now.”
“Why should it be? How can any of you be so calm? How can you expect me to be calm when Hideki’s about to—”
“I don’t see any sign that it’s started yet,” Yamada told me, a bit loudly. “But it should go without saying, there’s a psychological transformation as well. If your partner gets riled up, it could be dangerous for him, and for everyone around him.”
“Good thing it bit the calm one,” Handa decided, puffing his cigarette. “You’d be a vampire right now.”
I stepped back a moment, making myself breathe and fighting the guilt and fear. This just couldn’t really be happening.
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