Page 11 of Curses & Kitsune

It’s a promise I really hope I can keep. For his sake.

Jinta is still sleeping off the stress of yesterday when I wake up, so I kiss his cheek and leave him in bed. I change my clothes, grab an onigiri from the fridge, and jog downstairs to meet Ren. Ren drives me to the headquarters like usual. Two beefy bodyguards sit on either side of me, faces stern.

I frown. “Where’s Goto?” He’s usually on guard duty.

One of my guards lifts his shoulder. “Not sure, boss. We haven’t been able to get in touch with him since Tadaomi died.”

That’s odd. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him since I killed his brother.

“How’s things, boss?” Ren asks, lips quirking playfully. “Is Jinta feeling better?”

“Yeah.” For now, anyway.

Ren grimaces when she hits a wall of traffic. “Damn it. We should have left earlier.” We’re suspended in a traffic limbo for over a minute.

Bored, I pull out my phone and swipe mindlessly. “What’s the hold-up?” I ask.

Ren rolls down the window and peers out. “Looks like there was a wreck or something. I see some ambulances.”

The distant rumble of a motorbike gets closer and louder. A black bike with two riders appears briefly in the rearview mirror. Ren suddenly screams, “Get down!”

Twin blasts of gunfire shatter the window behind me. Blazing pain slices into my shoulder. People in the street begin to scream. My guard pounces on me and shoves me down into the seat, then grunts in pain. His weight crashes down on my back, and something hot and wet drips into my hair. Two more blasts make my ears ring, and another window shatters, the one in the front. God. I hope Ren is okay. Fear makes my heart race. The moment the gunfire stops, I scramble out from under the dead guard and fall outside. The bike bearing the two gunmen has already disappeared from view.

“Ren?” I tug on the driver’s side door. Ren leans into view, face pale and eyes wide. She jumps out. “Are you okay?” I try to grab her arms to check for a wound, but burning pain in my shoulder makes me wince and touch the wetness seeping through my shirt.

“I’m fine! Shit. Raiden, your shoulder!”

“It’s just a graze.” Burns like hell, but nowhere near as bad as it would be if I’d been shot, and it won’t heal. Must have been silver. “What about the guards?”

We run to either side of the car. The guard who shielded me folds in on himself, a bloody hole through the back of his head. The other guard grunts in agony. I jog around to where Ren is. She leans into the vehicle and opens the guard’s shirt. She gasps. “Raiden. Look.”

I lean over, and my stomach twists. The bullet wound in his chest has turned black at the edges, and the blackness seeps into his veins. Aconite poison. He’ll be dead in seconds once the poison reaches his heart. “It’s okay,” Ren says, voice shaking. “You’re going to be okay.” She rubs the guard’s shoulder as his eyes roll back and spit foams in the corners of his mouth. His heart skips, then stops completely.

With a shuddery sigh, Ren leans her forehead on his still shoulder.

Rage burns through the shock. Snarling, I lash out and scrape my claws over the roof. “Fuck!”

Those bikers were the Blades of the Onryo, and this was an attempt on my life. My guards are dead because of me. They were somebody’s friends, brothers, husbands, sons. I smack the roof of my car again, squeezing my eyes shut. If Namikawa were alive, would he have let this happen?

“Fucking hunters,” I growl.

Ren shakes her head. “Only one was a hunter.”

I whirl around to face her. “What?”

Ren’s hands curl into fists at her sides. “Right before the driver opened fire, his sleeve slid down. He had tattoos. I recognized them. There was a wolf fighting a dragon. That was Ishida’s tattoo. That bastard betrayed us!”

The realization sparks in my gut, and fury blazes inside me. “That son of a bitch…”

Goto Ishida joined the Blades of the Onryo to get back at me for killing his brother, and he almost put a bullet in my skull.

Fuck. This is bad.

Chapter 5

When I wake up, the bed is cold. Raiden’s left for his day at the Namikawa-kai headquarters. My fever is completely gone, and my stomach is settled, but only because I gorged on my poor boyfriend’s blood. A shiver rattles my spine. I’m almost relieved I don’t remember anything.

In the bathroom, I brush my teeth and wash my face. A cold breeze tickles my neck as I bend over and spit into the sink.

---