I automatically brought out the small talisman, the one I got in the trade with Yokocho, from my pocket and immediately shoved it into my mouth. I bit down. Hard.
There was a crunch, and I felt the pain in my arm and leg immediately subside.
Without wasting another second, I bolted out the window that the dog-creature had shattered in his escape. There was a lightning-fast flash of pain across the back of my thigh as I cleared the windowsill, but there was no time to look. The dog was fast.
I stumbled for a second. Shit, the talisman, it didn’t heal me, it just made me think it did. In the back of my head, I realized that if I pushed myself too hard even with the talisman, I might be making my ankle worse. And in a sort of afterthought, I realized that stopping might be a good idea.
But what I did was lean harder into the sprint, feeling the wind against my bare face.
Wol yowled. “Jain! Careful! We do not know what it is yet!”
I wanted to answer, but I couldn’t.I’d been sprinting for maybe ten seconds, and I was already out of breath.
Mina passed by me with all the speed of a track-and-field star bundled into nervous energy and predatory chasing instincts.
Maybe all Society Practitioners are trained since childhood in things like running, basic self-defense techniques, and all the miscellaneous requirements that humans need to keep up with the supernatural. Mina was nearly as fast as the dog-creature, her boots pounding against the pavement. Seoul was right on her heels.
“Hallow! I need help!” she yelled out effortlessly.
“Hwari!” I cried out, hoping that the bond between us was enough to convey what I wanted.
Up ahead, before the dog-creature could leap into an alleyway, Hwari breached out of the shadows right in front. Her breach drew a perfect circle of shadow in the air, ready to be fed with power. My Third Eye materialized the connection in the image of a red string, which snapped taut between the circle and Hwari. Immediately, Wol latched on with his own connection —a black string— feeding it power.
Still sprinting, I took out my knife, opening it with a flick of my wrist. I pointed it at the circle. “Eldritch!”
My own connection shot forward, spreading like infectious roots and intertwining with Hwari and Wol. The chant was already ingrained with a specific action for me, and my sixth sense reached inside of me, into the part of my spirit connected with the supernatural world. Through it, the shadow eldritch creature inside my knife awakened and fed the connection.
The entire alleyway in front of the dog-creature erupted into black and lavender flames.
Fire burns the body.
Eldritch flames corrode the mind.
Dread exploded out of the flames in an invisible wave of palpable fear. Mina, who was already leagues ahead of me, staggered, falling to her knees. She made a warding sign with one hand and shoved it in the direction of the flames. To the unpracticed, it was just a hand gesture. To me, I saw it for what it was: a sign to ward against evil. Seoul was in front of her in an instant, his nubs glowing with faerie-blue light and shielding her from the worst of it.
The dog got the worst of it.
He instantly fell, and at his speed, he ended up tumbling head over tail over legs. He scrabbled against the floor with maddening desperation, skidding the last couple of feet along the ashphalt with his ribs. The dog-preternatural whined, long and scared, trying to find purchase and get away from the wall of dreadful flames that I’d conjured.
I think I would have felt proud of myself if the dread didn’t affect me too.
Every nightmare, every fictional horror, came alive, and everything I’d seen in the last few days came rushing back at once. The images flooded my mind, threatening to reduce me to a babbling piece of wreck. The time in Abigail’s car when I’d been driven mad had made my mind vulnerable somehow, made me more susceptible to the worst of eldritch influences—even if it was my own. I choked, lowering the blade and slowing to a walk.
Wol’s voice came right next to my ear, his claws jabbing painfully into my shoulder. “Jain! Extinguish it!”
His words brought me back, and I sliced the air with the eldritch gravity knife, cutting the strings connecting Wol, Hwari, and myself to the circle. Instantly, the flames died down to a few glowing embers before fading out of this layer of reality.
The spines on the knife pulsed with emotion against my fingers. Frustration.
I gasped, the exertion from the sprint combined with an instinctual holding of breath when faced with otherworldly dread. “The preternatural, Wol.”
Wol leaped out of my backpack, bounding ahead.
Mina recovered faster than I did.She stood and walked over to the whimpering dog-creature.While she did, she took out her staff too.The girl held it against our quarry.
“Don’t move,” she said, panting.
I eventually dragged myself over. When I was next to her, I saw her eyes flicker over to the knife in my hand. She quickly tore her eyes off of it.
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Seoul did not. He growled as I approached.
“Calm, Seoul,” she said, shoving a finger into her facemask and tearing it off. She threw it on the floor. “Look in front.”
“He bad person.”
“Seoul, I said front,” she hissed.
The haetae gave me one last growl and turned his attention back to the dog.
I found the dog’s chest heaving with exertion. His eyes darted back and forth between everyone. There was an impressive number of us. Mina, Seoul, Wol, Hwari, and I. We’d effectively surrounded him.
I took the time to study it. It was covered in reddish-yellow fur and had long legs that were nearly the length of its body. I was once again reminded of how big this thing was. Even lying on its side, its body came up to my hips. Its tail was tucked between its legs. I’m not a dog trainer or anything, but I’m pretty sure that meant it wasn’t happy. The umbrella was actually a parasol, the kind you see in old eastern movies, made of bamboo and oiled paper. I picked it up, making sure it was out of reach of the dog.
“Jain, can you bind him?” Mina finally asked.
“Me? Can’t you?”
“You’re the conjurer,” she said flatly.
“…Makes sense,” I admitted and took a knee, opening my backpack to take out chalk.
“No need, practitioners,” the dog said. The voice was definitely female. “I will not attempt to escape. I give my word. I will remain prisoner in your keeping.”
“You’re a little too big to not be bound,” Mina said. “Jain?”
“Uh…” I hesitated. “She said she surrendered, though.”
“So?”
“So we don’t need to bind her.”
Mina turned towards me, while somehow keeping the dog in her peripheral vision. She made sure to keep the staff pointed at the creature. “Are you funny in the head, Jain Shin Hallow? We’ve just come upon a place where our guide’s contact was killed. This preternatural is dangerous. Bind it.”
I frowned. “Yeah, but it gave us its word. Crossed its heart and everything. And it doesn’t have fingers to cross it behind its back.”
“And you trust it?” she trilled.
Whoo boy. I knew this would happen sooner or later. I just didn’t think it’d happen so soon.
I took a carefully measured step towards Mina.
Seoul made a motion to get in between us.
“I can take care of myself,” Mina snapped to her familiar without looking at him. Then, to me, she said, “What? What are you going to say? You going to threaten me?”
I purposefully kept my voice low. “No, Mina. I’m not. I mean, I can, I guess. But I’d rather not. I’d rather treat you with respect, despite how you’ve treated me. Because at the end of the day, I told you that I’m willing to work together and I want to honor that.”
My words were delivered calmly, without any anger in them. She deflated a bit. “Then?”
“I want to tell you that you need to trust me,” I said. “Because if we’re going to do this, and make sure that both of us walk away with something, us being at each other’s necks isn’t going to help.”
She glared at me. “So you’re suggesting every time something like this happens, we do it your way? Because—”
“If you really want me to draw a circle and bind this preternatural, then I’ll do it,” I said. “But Mina, that’s not my style. I’m just saying, maybe this one time, we don’t need to do it your way.”
This time, she didn’t say anything.
Her eyes wavered. One more push. “She already surrendered. We don’t need to be cruel.”
“That would be nice,” the dog said.
“Not another word out of you,” Mina snarled at the preternatural. It was hard to tell who was the homo sapien from the words alone. “I swear, Hallow, if something funny happens, I’m going to kill this dog, then break your other ankle. You got it?”
I lifted my hands. “Yassuh massuh.”
The young practitioner girl let out a disgusted grunt. “Fine. Also, just for the future, this is not how Society Pratitioners do things.”
I breathed a sigh of relief, turning to the dog. “Alright, let’s start with introductions. What’s your name?”
“My name is Akasa. I am of Lady Sana’s.”
“Isn’t this place called Sana’s Cafe?” I asked.
“Indeed,” Akasa said. “I serve Lady Sana, who watches over this place.”
Mina stiffened.
Her words were tinged with a permanent growl, having to come out through a canine snout. I guess physiology is still a thing even for supernatural creatures. Or maybe it was because there was a belief that her words should sound like that.
I spoke without looking at Mina. “Man, I wonder what would have happened if we mistreated whoever works for the person in charge?”
Mina scowled, looking in the direction we’d just come from. “What’s taking them so long?”
“Most likely picking over the books that were scattered on the floor,” Wol chimed in.
“Are books that valuable?” I asked.
Mina gave me a horrified look. I guess that was a yes.
I cleared my throat and returned to questioning Akasa. “So, did you kill that guy?”
“Wow. Great question, Jain,” Mina said, rolling her eyes.
“You want to do this?”
Mina grumbled some korean words (most likely swear words) under her breath but didn’t answer.
“Well?” I asked Akasa.
Her tongue lolled out of her mouth. “No, it was not I. I was trying to catch a scent of the killer when you four entered.”
I scratched my head. “Are you telling the truth?”
“Yes.”
“Holy shit, you’re actually one of those,” Mina said.
I sighed, ignoring her. “I think I believe you. Why’d you run?”
“Because I believed you were the killers,” Akasa said. “That you’d returned to the scene, and would kill me now.”
“OK. do you still believe we’re the killers?”
“No,” Akasa said. “Though, if you are indeed a conjurer, you could have easily summoned another being to do your bidding.”
“Fair enough. Any chance you can guide us to this Sana person?”
Akasa stiffened. “You wish for me to guide you to Lady Sana?”
I gave her a nod. “Yeah.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re looking for information,” I said. I also put a name to what kind of preternatural Akasa was. “And if Lady Sana frequently sends out Inugamis to investigate things, I’m sure she knows a lot. Slums, projects, hoods, shady characters, I mean, how can she not deal in information?”
Akasa seemed to be thinking, her stare unreadable. “Will you swear not to offer Lady Sana and hers harm?”
“Careful, Practitioner,” Wol said.
“Don’t do it,” Mina hissed.
“As long as she can guarantee guest rights for me and mine,” I said.
“…I do not have authority to—”
“No need, my practitioners!” Yokocho appeared out of nowhere, like an invisible curtain had lifted off of him. “I know where Lady Sana is! And I was going to lead you there next!”
‘I did not sense him again,’ Hwari said in my mind, annoyed.
“What took you so long, bakeneko?” Mina asked.
“Why, I am a trader! It would be a crime to leave such a trove of treasures untouched!” Yokocho exclaimed. He sauntered up next to me. “Ah, one of Lady Sana’s Inugamis! Impressive feat of control, capturing one intact without so much as a wound on your precious selves! But I do advise that we send her ahead to let Lady Sana know of our arrival. It would be… well-mannered.”
I looked at Akasa. “Are you willing to do that for us?”
“…Yes,” Akasa said. Her snout pointed towards the parasol. “May I have my Wagasa back?”
I handed it back to her. She took it in her jaws.
“Then I will take my leave,” she said, her words even more garbled with the parasol. Then her body heaved, muscles flexing, and within seconds, the inugami sped away.
“Well then,” Yokocho said. “Shall we?”