Page 50 of Secrets & Sake

I crack a grin at him. “They were too easy to kill. You really should have trained ’em better.”

Takada’s shoe flies toward my face. My nose crunches, blood floods down the back of my throat, and I choke. The injury heals in seconds, but I’m still coughing on blood.

Takada fists my hair and hurls me to my feet, then shoves me straight into a wall. I bounce off and use the momentum to slam into Takada. We both crash to the floor, and he gets me beneath him. He slings back his fist, and I see white as his knuckles crack across my cheek.

With a strangled snarl, Takada hurls another kick at me. Takada leans down, sneering in my face. “All this trouble for some human cock? How low you’ve fallen, Noboru. I’ve had my fill, Namikawa. He’s all yours.” Takada leans against the wall, ready to watch whatever torment Namikawa has planned for me.

Namikawa comes toward me, his steps calm and composed. “I warned you, you know.”

I huff a laugh at the ceiling, tasting blood in my mouth.

“It’s clear I’ve given you too much freedom if you truly believe you can defy direct orders and get away unscathed.”

Tendrils of fear wrap around my insides. “Fuck you.”

A cold smile lifts Namikawa’s mouth as he crosses to me and undoes the cuffs. He tosses something on the ground. A silver blade.

“Would you kindly pick it up?” he says, and his words wrap around my mind.

Against my will, my hand reaches toward the blade. The words he carved into my chest long ago begin to burn.

“Screw you!” I snarl at him, trying to wrestle back control, even knowing it is futile.

I fight as hard as I can, but my fingers wrap around the blade. Shaking, I lift the blade and hold it at the ready, pointing the edge at my chest. Breathing hard, heart racing, I look to Namikawa for instructions.

“You know what to do.”

To my horror, my left hand moves to lie flat on the floor, fingers splayed. My other hand positions the blade over the first knuckle of my little finger.

“Do it slowly. I want you to feel every slice.”

The blade bites into my skin, and I howl as the flesh begins to smoke and burn. Inch by inch, the blade sears its way through my skin and lodges in the bone. My throat is already hoarse from screaming, and I know deep down that this torment has only just begun.

Blood flows, soaking the palm of my hand. I’m doubled over from the pain, on the brink of passing out, and yet my hand keeps cutting, cutting, cutting until the blade cleaves through bone. I’m vaguely aware of Takada laughing at my pain.

Gasping, cold sweat soaking through my clothes, I squint at Namikawa through eyes watery from agony.

Namikawa leans over, inspecting the severed tip of my finger, floating in a pool of blood. “Good. Good. Now, on to the next knuckle.”

I will not beg. Never. I’ll bear this torment as I always have. I may not be able to fight the hold he has over my mind, but I am in control of my own response to it. I’ll endure. I’ll survive.

And someday… I’m going to kill Kensuke Namikawa.

Even if, in the end, I go down along with him.

Chapter 13

Aday later, and I still can’t believe it.

Werewolves are real. The pictures I took sure look real enough, and yet, I can’t stop myself from replaying the events of the hunt over and over again.

I barely know Raiden, but I trust him. Fuck. I trust him. I let him hunt me as a damn wolf and trusted him not to tear my throat out. He had the perfect opportunity to kill me then and there to preserve his pack’s secret, but he didn’t. Though he sure almost killed me with pleasure.

I have so much to process. The existence of a whole paranormal world, for one.

But I have no time to take in any information. I’ve got to continue my investigation, so I stay late after work and dig up archived newspapers going back to the 1920s.

For hours, I flip through page after page, taking note of any articles about random disappearances, then cross-referencing the names of the victims identified in the mass grave to see if they’re a match. It’s a mind-numbingly boring process that consumes my entire day.

---