Page 32 of Secrets & Sake

“Of course he will. He’d have the right idea.” The thought twists like a knife in my chest, but I won’t reflect on why. It’s unimportant. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh? So you wouldn’t mind if I taught him a lesson about stealing another wolf’s prey?”

My hand shoots out and grabs him by his scrawny neck. A grin splits Takada’s face even as I squeeze. “You lay a finger on him, Takada, and not even Namikawa’s truce will be able to save you.”

Takada’s words fill me with fury and something else. Dread. I won’t let him touch Hiro. He tries, and it’ll be the last thing he does. Namikawa can be as pissed as he wants, but I don’t care if it starts a war between our packs.

No one touches Hiro.

He’s mine.

Chapter 8

Ibring my bike to a stop as I reach the top of the hiking trail and lean it against a tree. I’ve never had a bike stolen, so I leave it without a care and book it through the woods toward the crowd of police officers and ropes of yellow tape stretching from one tree to another.

As I near the crime scene, the cop I recognize as Kenichi ducks beneath the tape. “That was fast!”

“Thanks so much for calling me,” I say, panting as I stumble to a stop beside him. I’ve got my press badge on and my camera in hand. Kenichi has always been a reliable source of information. “I really needed a big story.”

Although big might be an understatement.

“Where are the witnesses?”

Kenichi motions toward two women in hiking gear. “We’ve already questioned them.”

I approach the witnesses, and although they appear unsettled, one of the women, Hana, opens up to me about what happened. “My friend and I were hiking. I felt something snap under my foot. At first, I thought it was an animal bone. But then my friend found a skull protruding from the dirt. There were more bones. I’ve never seen so many. It was so creepy!”

My pen flies over my notepad, writing down her every word. There’s a whole team beyond the tape carefully unearthing… bones. And more bones. My stomach churns as one of the forensic workers puts a skull inside a bag, then what looks like an arm bone.

What the fuck? Why are there so many human remains here?

“What happened here?” I ask as I return to Kenichi, thoroughly disturbed.

Kenichi lowers his voice, “Don’t put this in your report, but… I think it’s the remains of the people who went missing back in 1924.”

What? That would make these remains a hundred years old! I turn to him in shock. “People went missing?”

“My great-grandfather was a cop back then. He told my dad stories. People started disappearing. Kind of like they are now. Same pattern. Nobody could figure out a motive or where they were.” He expels a bitter breath. “It always ate my grandad up that the victims were never found.”

“What about the culprit?”

Kenichi shrugs his shoulders. “Never caught.”

My mind is reeling. This happened before, and nobody was ever caught. Unless the person behind this is literally a vampire, there’s no way it’s the same person abducting all these people. This makes no sense. Is there any way this is some weird coincidence? Or maybe even a copycat?

My stomach twists at the idea that the copycat could be Raiden. The idea just doesn’t sit right with me. The more I spend time with him, the less I believe he could be responsible. Fuck. My feelings are getting in the way of my job. Anger rises in me. This is a huge story I’m onto here. If Raiden is responsible, I’ve got to be subjective. Maybe I should have thought about that before I let him fuck me.

Unless… maybe the person behind the kidnappings is Takada? I still remember when the owner of the izakaya accused the Namikawa-kai of allowing people to be abducted from Taito. Takada would do anything to incriminate the Namikawa-kai. It’s a possibility, one I shouldn’t ignore.

“Was there a shrine here?” I ask. There are ruins of some kind looming over the mass grave, overgrown with moss and weeds.

“Looks like it.”

A shiver runs down my spine. Could these remains have been part of some bizarre ritual?

An idea comes to me as I leave the crime scene and bike back down the trail, wheels bumping over the earth. If this has happened before, then is there a chance there were any survivors? It’s a slim chance in hell. Most of them would be dead by now or close to it, but if there’s any chance I could speak to a survivor, or maybe the relatives of a survivor, that would be hugely beneficial. If these disappearances are connected, then to understand what’s happening in the present, I may have to dig into the past.

Once my shift is over, I stop in a convenience store to shop for dinner. While I’m shopping, my phone buzzes. I smile when I see Raiden’s name, then quickly wipe it off my face. I’ve got to get a handle on my feelings.

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