Amanda and I returned to Wakumi Himura’s house. As we turned onto the street, red and blue flashing lights gave the neighborhood a surreal quality. It was nearly two in the morning. Crime scene tape blocked off the Himura house. Neighbors stood on the sidewalk in robes and pajamas. An ambulance was parked half on the sidewalk and half on the lawn in front of Wakumi’s home. News vans angled behind police cars, and cameramen pointed cameras at reporters.
“That’s not good,” Amanda said. “Shall we keep going?”
“They must have found the mangled cage,” I said. “Can’t see a reason for so many reporters otherwise.”
“Kinky,” Amanda said.
“Don’t go there.”
“Too late.”
I slowed and we drove past the house. A few police officers stood before the crime scene tape to keep the small crowd back, while plain clothes detectives conferred in the open doorway to the home. There was no way we could stop and get any information. The police weren’t going to open up to a witch or to a martial arts instructor. Not that they would know Amanda was a witch. To them she’d simply be a trust fund baby as she had no visible means of support. I knew a few policemen and women, but Denver is a big city so the odds of me knowing anyone on the scene were slim and none.
While I could have walked in and demanded information or at least checked the premises without them being able to stop me, there was no reason for me to hurt any officers.
“Something bad went down,” Amanda said. “Beyond what happened to Wakumi.”
I turned on a side street to head back to East Hampden Avenue. “That’s right,” I said. “They won’t know about Wakumi at this point. They might have found her blood in the basement, but they won’t know it’s hers, and there’s more blood down there. Unless there’s a body, I doubt the news will be reporting much until morning.”
“Technically, it is morning,” Amanda said.
“You know what I mean. We should head back to the hospital so you can get your car. I’ll check on Cho and Wakumi, and we can call it a night.”
There wasn’t much traffic at this hour, so we made good time.
“Tonight was the first night,” Amanda said.
“First night?”
“Three nights of the full moon,” Amanda said. “If Cho’s dad is really a werewolf, and assuming the guy you saw didn’t shoot him in the heart with a silver bullet, he’s going to wolf out again when the sun goes down.”
“He could be wolfed out right now.”
“If he’s alive, he is,” Amanda said.
“So maybe we should drive around and try to find him.”
“Do you have any silver bullets?”
“No,” I said.
“Is your sword made of silver?”
“Of course not.”
“Then maybe we should hold off on our werewolf hunt.”
“I can cut off its head.”
“Being careful not to let it bite you.”
“It won’t bite me,” I said.
“Nobody plans to get chomped by a werewolf.”
I shook my head.
“I know you’re an awesome fighter,” Amanda said. “The best even. But if it leaps on you from behind, it could bite you before you kill it. That would be bad.”
“Like a werewolf has ninja skills and I wouldn’t hear it coming.”
“Maybe you’d track it to a night club with pounding bass lines and—”
“Really?”
“It could happen.”
I rolled my eyes.
When I dropped Amanda off at her car, she leaned back through the truck window. “I’ll do some research on werewolves, and make a few calls to see if anyone I know has first-hand experience with them. Give me a buzz in the morning.”
“It’s already morning, remember?”
“Don’t throw my own lines back at me.”
“You left it hanging there.”
“Oh, you make it sound so dirty.”
“Really?” I said.
She laughed. “Just call me.”
I gave her a nod and moved off to find a closer parking spot. The whole concept of werewolves seemed bizarre to me. I’d experienced spirits who could take command of other people’s bodies before, and I’d dealt with vampires for the first time a few months back, but men turning into monsters during the full moon? That sort of thing should belong exclusively to the world of Hollywood and pulp fiction.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. Jennifer.
“How’s Cho?” I asked first thing.
“She’s sleeping.”
“Good. And her mom?”
“Wakumi is stable. I’m taking Cho back to my place for the night.”
“I guess that saves me from going back into the hospital,” I said.
“Thank you for getting Wakumi and Cho to safety.”
“Of course.”
“Did you learn anything when you went back to their house?”
“No.”
“All right. I just called to thank you.”
“Will Cho be staying with you beyond tonight?”
“Yes, I’ll take care of her until Wakumi is better unless I can locate a family member other than her father. She needs some stability.”
“Keep me posted.”
“I will.”
“Children are resilient,” I said.
“Yes they are.”
I got off the phone and closed my eyes. Cho was only eight years old. She deserved better. I knew that plenty of children were in worse situations, but I’d stared into Cho’s eyes, held her hand, felt the fear she tried so hard to hide with her little shrugs.
Cho remained on my mind as I drove home. And that night, as I lay in bed, she was the only person I thought about until sleep took me away for a few hours.
***
The news at five in the morning reported an incident at a Denver home. Blood found at the scene, but no victims discovered. They spent most of their time talking about the cage and, thanks to the syringe, the possibility of drugs and strange sex crimes. The police were looking for any information the public could provide. The newscaster spent less than thirty seconds on it before moving on to a story about a local teacher who deserved more recognition from the community.
So Ichiro wasn’t dead, and the mystery man who fought him must have survived as well.
If Ichiro was a werewolf, and he got away from the other guy, he’d be changing back to human form when the moon went down or the sun came up or whatever. I checked online for the sunrise time: 7:22 and the moon set time: 7:24. They were close enough together to not matter. The temperature was in the low forties, and was supposed to get up to low sixties. A nice October day.
I pulled onto Ichiro Himura’s street at 6:20 in the morning. The news crews and police presence had moved on, though a single patrol car sat at the curb a few houses down. I couldn’t be certain they weren’t watching the house, but as they didn’t have a body, odds were they had better things to deal with, and that cop could be there on other business. I drove past the house, past the police car, and turned left on the next street. I wheeled to the curb, slipped from my truck and zipped my leather jacket against the slight chill.
The sky was beginning to grow lighter, but the shadows were still strong. I darted silently into the darkness beneath a tree, vaulted a fence into a neighbor’s backyard and slowly made my way toward the Himura house, which was the fourth on this side of the street. Nobody noticed me as I moved from yard to yard, though I did encounter a sleeping pit bull. The dog snored on as I drifted by like a light breeze. When I dropped onto the Himura’s property, I kept myself silent and still in the shadow of a tree. A swing set stood in the center of the yard, and I imagined Cho swinging back and forth in happier times.
The yard remained quiet and I didn’t sense anyone else around. I moved to the back door. The sunrise kept creeping closer, rays beginning to jut into the sky like spears. Dark spots stood out on the porch leading toward the grass. I knelt and stared at the splotches. Blood? Maybe.
I tried the sliding glass door. It wasn’t locked, though police tape crisscrossed the entryway. I pulled the door open, slipped under the tape, and spotted droplets of blood leading to the door from the basement. Numbered cardboard markers stood next to each drop, so they were hard to miss.
Once inside, I slowed my breathing and cocked my head to the side, focusing on my hearing. The house remained quiet.
I darted down the stairs to the basement. Three walls were concrete, but one was drywall. Sections of the drywall were caved in and cracked. Yes, there had been a struggle. I’d seen part of it. Cut marks sliced into the wall. Based on the angle and the cleanliness, I guessed the cuts were made by a katana. The steel cage stood with mangled bars bent outward. The door to the cage hung at an odd angle with the top hinge broken. The syringe and bottle were gone, tucked away in evidence bags at the local precinct.
The basement probably held other clues, but I’m not a detective, so I didn’t know what to look for. None of that mattered to me. A werewolf and a man fought in the basement, and neither of them left a corpse behind. Those were the pertinent facts.
I crept back up the stairs. The house remained soundless even as I swept through it. I hesitated in Cho’s room, but shook away the emotion and returned to the living room where I leaned against the wall to wait.
It was 7:00.
Forty minutes later, the sun was out, and light streamed in through the windows. I heard a sound in the backyard and chanced a glance out the dining room window. A Japanese man in tattered pants pushed himself up from the grass, clutched his left arm close to his body and staggered toward the house. He had bare feet and no shirt, so he had to be freezing. He ran into the swing set, and the chains rattled. He gripped the metal frame and left a bloody handprint against the gray pole.
I moved into the kitchen, which led right to the family room and the sliding door. I drew my sword and waited as Ichiro stumbled up to the door and yanked it open. He batted the police tape down with one hand and nearly fell into the house.
“Welcome home,” I said as I pressed the point of my sword against his neck.