Minor Threat
The portal appeared, and I leaped out of it, landing silently in a dark, dank alley. One Hinoenma better have a good fucking reason to activate the emergency number.
Although I was relieved to get out of the protracted and long winded Daiyōkai council meetings, my return was necessary and possibly subject to incessant questioning by the older Daiyōkai who liked to lord it over us juniors.
I glanced at my screen for her gps signal. The red dot was erratically moving around from one ward to the next ward.
Tokyo wards are massive sprawls of the unsightly concrete jungle. One moment in Ueno on the eastern side of Taito ward, the next on the bordering Higashinippori in Arakawa ward. She should be in between.
Fuck it, can't always trust human technology. I had to return to the more troublesome yet trusty basics of hunting. The irony was that I used this skill more for finding my staff than to hunt for prey.
I folded my sleeves to reveal the serpentine tattoo on each forearm. One snap of my finger and the serpent tattoos on my neck and arms detached themselves from my body, flying off in separate directions to search for her.
If she is lucky, the one which found her won't attempt to bite her. Dad's old snakes were sometimes spiteful little critters, grouchy at not getting fed often.
Everything they saw, I saw. The nearer they were to her presence, the clearer the images were. Far better than those human made drones and they are invisible.
Through the small streets and the roads, along shops with their bright signs, past the humans going about their business. One had entered a vicinity near the park. A small cross was in sight. It paused and looked around the building for the address. The bluish sign was there with part of its address clear - the 'Higashinippori 5 chome'.
I quickly tapped on my iPhone to check for the area. A mark of a cross was clear on Google maps.
It was indeed a small church opposite a park. A portal opened in front of me as I entered the location. My other two serpents were converging on this area.
A neatly kept park greeted me with a statue in the shape of a misshapen woman. A couple went past chatting about their day, oblivious to my presence moving through the veiled borders of Kakuriyo to their realm.
There was no need to use the serpents. I could see the faint yellowing glow. An exorcist was near her. Now it was my turn to stalk as my form glided rapidly around the garden beds and a homeless man smoking his cigarette.
"Help," I could hear her call out to the other yōkai, who were already fleeing the area.
Catching the ghost who was flying past me, I asked, "what's going on?"
"A human. Just caught five of us."
"What type? Priest or monk?"
Not that it mattered. The spiritual power was weak, unlike the ones of the past.
"Not a monk, and I don't think he is a priest. Maybe out for shikigami."
I loosened my hold, and the ghost ran for dear life. An onmyoji practitioner with no affiliation to any shrine. We could usually sense the affiliation through their patron God's presence.
How interesting, and this made it easier for me to operate.
Only one Hinoenma was that weak to be cornered by this human.
That would be Oshichi.
She is the youngest of all my Hinoenma team. Of the eight, six were true yōkai while Oshichi and the other were of human origins. Both are ghosts and punished to roam as beautiful seducers of men. Vampiric in nature, their charm was irresistible to most humans.
The oldest Hinoenma is more than a thousand years old and code named Hinoenma with more experience and power to overcome such situations.
Oshichi is code named Hinoenma8, born and bred during the Edo period, in the current day Bunkyō ward of Tokyo. Her rumoured birth year was now a curse for all other women to be born into. For her namesake was Hinoe Enma, the name related to the year of the fire horse. However, it may not be all true.
Her past was rather shadowy. According to the other Hinoenma, Oshichi was punished to roam the capital of Edo because she had set fire to a temple, Daienji.
All over a handsome man, a temple employee of Daienji, whom she had met after the Great Fire of Meireiki, which burned down more than half of Edo city and killed more than a hundred thousand. The fire had burned for three days because of the wooden houses which fuelled it.
The Great Fire of Meireiki was easy to remember among all the other fires which broke out. It started off with a Buddhist priest attempting to destroy a cursed kimono in a purification ritual.
Burning is the best purification method for curses. This kimono had killed three girls who wore it. So burned it did with the smouldering ashes flying towards the kindling wood structure of the traditional shophouse.
Personally, I thought it was a coincidence of bad luck than curses. Because of that very fire, Oshichi spotted the love of her life. One fire already had brought him into her sight or life. Whichever I couldn't care for.
She wasn't the brightest spark in the sky. Going by her lovelorn teenager logic, silly Oshichi thought that another would bring them together. She tried to light the temple up and was caught.
The magistrate may have pitied her for her stupidity and gave her a chance to renounce her true age. Back in those days, family registration was not well tracked. Had that silly girl denied her age and stated a year younger, she could have escaped the death sentence.
Alas, foolish enough to admit her true age, Oshichi was burnt at the stake at Suzugamori.
Even after death, she had witnessed the devastating impacts of Mount Fuji's eruption and then the great 1923 Great Kantō earthquake long before it transformed into the large bustling metropolis of Tokyo.
She should know better than to get herself cornered.
And there she was stuck in an energy circle by a fat, middle aged, balding man. This guy was playing shikigami Pokemon-go with my employee. Gotta catch em all.
The smarter onmyoji practitioner would capture one, not five, to nurture them for good or nefarious purposes.
Easiest to capture were the ghosts than other yōkai. Once tied to the master, they could only inhabit certain items to take form and carry out his orders.
Oshichi was going to be number six of this fatty baldy's damn shikigami harem.
What fucking pissed me off was that this man is no saint. Of all the vices, he fulfilled three, enough to lower his level of spiritual practice.
The faint scent of the kitsune was on him, a womaniser who frequented Yako's nightclubs. Cigarettes could have killed his lungs in ten years' time and his alcoholism was no better with partial liver damage. Too bad he would not live out his natural life span.
All easy targets for a Hinoenma. She and I are going to have a long talk about this glaring issue.
With one step, my foot crossed the boundary of Kakuriyo and the mortal realm.
I was really not impressed with the human. Any competent onmyoji practitioner would be aware of my arrival.
There was no one around except those in the residential complex surrounding the park. I was in the dark.
My hand reached out and tapped him on the shoulder. He swung around, only to face my true form of the giant serpent with eight heads. Just the miniaturised form.
The fat turd of chicken shit barely even screamed. His hand clutched his chest, and he toppled over with his eyes wide opened and mouth agape.
Those years of cigarette tar clogging his arteries and the cholesterol caught up with the fear of meeting the true hideous form which was me. Threat eliminated.
No doubt that acute myocardial infarction would be on his death certificate.
"Get up and go," I said sternly as she rambled her thanks like some moron. "I will see you in the office when I get back."