I fell into a steel chamber practically filled with men in combat armor.

  Hands wrenched my arms behind my back. Hard boots landed around me, and someone hooked the collar of my reinforced suit and pressed my cheek into the ground for good measure.

  Shouts barked in the language I didn’t understand. Asian in style, urgent, no-nonsense, a language I understood about as well as Latin. Black uniforms flooded my periphery, all high-end tactical gear, no faces not covered by a helmet. The air stank of ozone and metal and some kind of burnt lacquer. My mind raced to keep up, but my body just lay there twitching.

  A hand yanked my helmet off, tearing out a few hairs in the process. My head throbbed, vision pulsed black around the edges. The point of an assault rifle jammed the base of my skull, and a second later, cold metal wrapped around my wrists with an electric zap.

  Someone screamed something from the top of his lungs, directly into my ear. I didn’t understand shit, but it felt pointless to try to argue.

  They hauled me upright and slammed me against a reinforced wall, hands pinning my shoulders, knees, and even my head. Someone started patting me down, quick but professional. First, they took my assault rifle, remaining pistol, and emptied my pockets of ammo and grenades. There was a brief negotiation with my backpack with two agents yanking it in opposite directions until the straps snapped.

  The man rifling through my pockets found my phone, scanned it, and immediately tossed it into a pouch.

  No one attempted English. Around me stormed just a flurry of orders and counter-orders as the agents did their best to disassemble me in a humane fashion. I tasted blood, though I wasn’t sure from what. My back, and especially my left arm, hurt like hell, still bleeding from the wounds the flying demons caused me, and my ears kept ringing from the explosion and gunfire.

  My hands were cuffed behind my back, so I couldn't wipe the blood off my chin. I could barely breathe, as someone’s forearm was crushing my windpipe, but I got enough oxygen to see, finally, where I was.

  The walls around me were steel, the floors concrete, but polished. Pipes ran overhead, stenciled with kanji, and the space buzzed with fluorescent lights that didn’t flicker at all. The uniforms around me had a strange insignia, a red Japanese-style symbol as if of a shrine on a field of black.

  I had seen this symbol before. Takezo had it on its suit, so this was the Yamato Syndicate. Francesca threw me into the portal through which Takezo came.

  I exhaled, relaxing a bit.

  This wasn’t actually all that bad. I just needed to find Takezo. I tried to speak, but all I got out was a cough and a mouthful of iron. Before I got a word out, someone punched me in the solar plexus, and the words died in my lungs.

  They started dragging me down the corridor, which led to an unreasonably massive elevator.

  What were they designing this for, elephants?

  Two agents pinned me by each arm, and a third followed with a gun, basically jammed up my nose. The ride was short, but the doors opened to a view of a very sterile hallway.

  They shoved me forward. My knees almost buckled. The agents took me through the hallway and then through a sliding door to a small cell with a metal bed and a hole in the floor for a toilet.

  They moved me inside and threw me on the bed. One of them barked something into his headset, and they left, the steel door closing behind them.

  Damn it.

  I turned on the bed to sit, and really wished they had removed the cuffs. They held my hands in a really uncomfortable position, especially with the pierced left forearm.

  Then again, I was alive and didn’t have demons trying to tear me apart.

  Was Francesca all right though?

  Hopefully, tossing me off the bike allowed her drive faster to get away from the demons. Or to get off and tear them apart with her magic. Driving me around was very limiting to her ability to fight, in retrospect.

  Guilt knotted my insides.

  If I could drive the bike, she could sit behind me and handle all the demons.

  The door slid open, and beyond stood Takezo.

  He wore his usual suit, face covered with a rough stubble, hair tied up into a long, neat ponytail. A katana hung sheathed by his waist, his hand resting on the hilt. A smile split his face. “You look like shit, O’Connor.”

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  I couldn’t help but smile. “You wouldn’t believe how happy I am to see you.”

  “I would.” He strode across the room, leaned over me, and unlocked my cuffs. “You need medical.”

  Yeah, I really did. Life finally returned to my arms as I stretched them.

  He supported me from underneath my shoulder and lifted me up to my feet.

  We went through another set of corridors, this one less militaristic and even more sterile, like a hospital but for criminals. The walls here were lined with white tiles, and the smell of bleach and antiseptic made me lightheaded. A nurse in blue scrubs met us at the entrance, said nothing, and guided me to a cot.

  Takezo hovered in the doorway, his arms crossed, gaze inquisitive. He pressed his earpiece and muttered something in Japanese.

  The nurse started peeling off my jacket, and I realized with a distant sense of pride that I had bled through at least three layers. She dabbed my wounds with something icy cold and started bandaging me up with a speed that spoke of too much practice. I wanted to say something, anything, but my jaw was throbbing and I’d lost a lot of blood in the last two hours.

  To be honest, I’d probably lost enough blood for a normal person to die. Multiple people, maybe even.

  As the nurse patched me with the gauze, I kept bleeding. No matter how many layers of what cloth she put on me, I blood kept flowing. The nurse maintained a professional cool on her face, but her movements betrayed exasperation.

  With a soft shake of her head, she removed the third attempt at a bandage from my arm.

  I must have gotten caught by something from the demons that stopped blood coagulation. It might have been in the air of the dome we snuck into. Or on the beak of one of the vulture demons.

  Takezo returned with another nurse in tow. This one was also Japanese, but had a completely different outfit though, a white one, which was a lot tighter, and also somehow showed a lot more skin. This outfit could have been sold at a party costumes… or a sex shop.

  Takezo motioned the original nurse to step aside. “Elshiko will take care of this,” he said in English. He said it again in Japanese, and the nurse in blue bowed slightly and stepped aside.

  The nurse in white, Elshiko, skipped to me, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “It doesn’t happen that Takezo needs something from me. So, tell me, boy, what does Takezo owe you?” She leaned toward me, her perfume a light, rosy scent. Her fingers nimbly ran around my wounds, analyzing them without getting dirtied by blood.

  “Nothing,” I replied. “Why?”

  She frowned a bit, clicking her tongue. “I need something on Takezo. If you’ve got nothing, then you can’t pay for my services.” She slid from me and caught Takezo by an arm, leaning against him. “You’ll have to pay me yourself then. You can pre-pay me here, in another room, or promise double the pay later.”

  Takezo grabbed her by the hair and yanked her away from him. “Do your job, Wench.”

  “Ou! That’s so rude.” Elshiko crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m doing nothing then. He can bleed to death, very, very, very slowly.” She glanced at me. “Well, not that slowly, but you what I mean.”

  Takezo grabbed her by the hair again and dragged her towards me. “Your only reason to exist in this realm is to be of use. So, be of use.” He shoved her to me, so her head almost bumped into mine.

  Her hair moved as he shoved her, revealing the base of a horn.

  “Is she a demon?” I blurted.

  “No!” Elshiko shouted. “I’m not a demon. I’m the cutest succubus from Hell, and certainly the hottest one here in Tokyo. And the best healer, too.”

  “A healer that doesn’t heal is useless.” Takezo lowered his hand to the hilt of his sword. “Fix him.”

  Elshiko stuck out her tongue and pulled down her lower eyelid as well. But then, she turned, her fingers tracing my wounds again. “This is what he does to me all the time,” she said, clearly talking to me. “When he needs something, it’s all do your work, harlot, or your only reason to exist is to be useful and other stuff like that. But it’s never, how about we go for dinner after work? Or wanna Netflix and shag?”

  After a bit of staring, I finally closed my gaping mouth. “Why is a demon working here?”

  Elshiko gently motioned me to flip onto my stomach, to which I obliged.

  Takezo snorted. “You haven’t been told much. Do you know of Lucifer and the whole hell gate thing?”

  “Partially. I know something about him creating portals and them exploding.”

  “Tokyo was his home base, and he used the portals to bring demons to the world to do his bidding. After the portals blew up, the demons remained behind, and since the original Yamato Syndicate had been mostly wiped out by Lucifer earlier, it was recruiting. The demons didn’t want to return to Hell, so they made a deal to serve the syndicate and remain on Earth. Elshiko is one of those demons.”

  “The cutest of those demons.” Elshiko corrected him. She kept running her fingers down my back, and I realized stuff didn’t hurt all that much.

  I glanced at my arm, and it wasn’t bleeding anymore. It didn’t even seem to be damaged. “How did you do that?”

  “I used my miraculous power of—” Elshiko started.

  “She sewed it closed with blood magic,” Takezo interrupted her. “She’s somewhat good at that.”

  “Somewhat? Excuse yourself!” Elshiko shouted. “When you are cut up so badly your limbs hold on strings to your body, you crawl to me to put you together. When you got almost half of your body blown off, you had them bring you to me. But I’m somewhat good at it?”

  With a grunt, Takezo turned away.

  “This is what he always does,” Elshiko finished with my lower back and started rearranging my clothes. “Whenever I win an argument, he refuses to acknowledge it and turns away, acting all cool and mighty. He should be down on his knees begging me to allow him to apologize.” She finished with the clothes adjustments. “There, all done.”

  I stretched a bit. Nothing hurt. “That’s incredible.”

  “See?” Elshiko smiled towards Takezo. “Others can see divine talent when they encounter it. Only you act like it’s the most common thing ever.”

  Steps and talk from the hallway interrupted us as they approached. We all turned, and the words were actually in English.

  The man, clearly talking into a phone, said, “For the last time, Isabella-dono, we do not have your operative captive at our headquarters. The accusation itself is both ridiculous and preposterous at the same…” The man walked into the medical room, and the words died in his mouth.

  Elshiko waved at him, grinning from ear to ear.

  The man rubbed his face with his palm. “We will prepare the landing pad for you, Isabella-dono. He’s alive and well.” He turned off the phone and slid it into his pocket. He wore almost identical clothing to Takezo, a black suit with a black shirt and a red tie, the symbol of their syndicate on his breast pocket, two long katanas hanging by his waist, his face weathered and clean-shaven, his hair short, his gaze tired but inquisitive.