17. The Hunt for Traitors
Chapter seventeen
The Hunt for Traitors
Kenji
The farther the twins and I went, the more grotesque it became.
One man had been stripped naked and tied to a central pole. Dozens of tiny bamboo shoots had been stabbed into his skin—arms, thighs, stomach, chest. Not deep enough to kill. Just enough to puncture and fester.
Each shoot had splintered inside his muscle, curling beneath the surface like barbed hooks.
His mouth hung open in a frozen scream, lips blistered and blue. His tongue had been sliced clean. Reo’s work, no doubt. My Roar had placed the man’s tongue neatly on a silk napkin at his feet—folded, elegant, obscene.
Only my Roar would think to present a mutilation like a dinner course.
And even crazier, the man wasn’t dead.
His lashes fluttered. His stomach heaved in tiny jerks. The shoots had missed his vital organs on purpose. I didn’t recognize this man, but I trusted Reo and knew he deserved it.
We stepped over another man clawing at the ground.
One of his legs had been impaled by a black bamboo tree. Blood soaked the moss in wide rings. His nails scraped uselessly at the ground.
He murmured in Japanese, “ Please. . .please stop this. Give me. . .mercy. . .”
I frowned. “Quiet him.”
Aki moved without a word, stepped forward, slid behind the man’s head, and wrapped the garrote wire once around his throat.
Aki didn’t let go until that final twitch came of the body surrendering.
Mercy delivered.
The wire unspooled. Aki stepped back into position beside me.
And then just like silently planned, the forest cracked open behind us.
First came the muffled thump of Kaede’s silenced shot, sharp and clean. A punctuation mark.
Next the chain. Toma’s metallic serpent clinked once—just once—and then came the first scream.
Wet.
Gurgling.
A gun fired.
Then the unmistakable sound of someone hitting the moss-covered ground. Lots of screaming came next.
Daisuke and the rest are torturing him. Good. That should draw out the others.
I turned my head west, just in time to catch a silhouette of my brother racing up the bamboo like a goddamn shadow with muscle. One hand gripped a stalk, the other flicked upward with a blade.
He was fast.
Fluid.
Unnatural.
His body arched in the air, knees bent, blade out. Death, climbing toward the stars.
The second man will be dead soon.
And that’s when I felt it.
Wait a minute.
Another prickle came again. This time, it hit my chest. The pressure. The chill. That third eye sensation that made my skin tighten across my ribs.
Another watcher. Not in the East or West, but right in fucking front of me.
I didn’t have time to think.
Just felt and heard the click— metal on metal —somewhere in front of me.
I screamed, “Drop!”
The word tore out of me before I even heard myself.
Me and the twins hit the ground at the same time, trained instinct snapping our bodies flat against the moss.
The bullet kissed my skin—just a whisper—but it sliced a line across my cheek. Hot. Immediate. I didn’t flinch. Couldn’t. I was already calculating distance, trajectory, wind.
A warm line of blood bloomed across my face.
I didn’t stop to wipe it.
Now I knew where the third bastard was.
“Straight ahead.” I jumped up and launched forward—low, fast, blood trailing my jaw. I raced that way and spotted the piece of shit.
His shadow bolted—zigzagging through stalks like he thought the bamboo would shield him.
Adrenaline spiked.
My legs took over.
Leaves slapped my arms as I shot through the thicket.
The twins moved with me—flanking like mirrored ghosts. I didn’t need to signal. Yuki dipped low, Aki veered high. They split angles like we’d choreographed this in another life.
We zipped past corpses—open jaws, empty eyes, slit throats still steaming.
Up ahead, bamboo cracked. He must have hit his arm or knee on a trunk.
A breath came next, and then a grunt.
My own pulse pounded thick in my ears. War drums pumping out a rhythm of rising violence.
I pivoted without hesitation, lifting my guns and shot in his direction.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The three shots echoed through the trees. The flashes lit up the forest in staccato bursts—brief snapshots of chaos.
Up ahead, the shadow ducked, but rushed on.
The bastard was fast.
But I was faster.
The bamboo hissed in protest as he tore through it.
I jumped over a dead man.
Shoots snapped.
Branches whipped against my arms. My shoes pounded on the earth when I landed and fired again.
Boom.
Boom.
The second shot clipped his shoulder. I saw it jerk. Heard the hiss of his pain.
Got you.
And now I was past instinct.
Now I was hunting.
Eyes locked.
Gun hot.
Blood drying in a line down my cheek.
This wasn’t just a chase anymore. This was execution. And I was closing in.
Poor bastard.
He didn’t know whose graveyard he’d just run into. This forest wasn’t natural.
I designed it with Reo—every stalk, every twist, every deceptive clearing. It took us seven months and three architects to perfect the layout.
Each section had purpose just in case someone tried to escape: confusion in the West, entrapment in the East, open kill-zone at the center. The wind patterns weren’t an accident. Neither were the trees that grew slightly curved, like nature had a bias for death.
We laid it out like a blade—tip to hilt.
I knew every blind corner. Every soft patch of moss that muffled footfall. Every stalk that we sharpened at the root so it could skewer a man from below if he stepped too hard.
He bolted right.
I angled left, grinning.
There was a bend ahead. A curved tree with false shelter behind it. We let it grow on purpose. Its trunk was wide, low, and slanted—a natural place for cowards to hide.
But behind it?
Dead end.
Another twenty feet and he would run into a wall of stalks, so thick and woven they might as well be stone.
Now I know where the other two traitors are hiding.
He thought he was gaining distance. He didn’t know this was my forest, and now it was closing in around him.
The bamboo ahead dipped into a shallow arch. I didn’t slow. I slid beneath it, one palm grinding into the damp earth, fingers splaying for balance, knees bent, absorbing the glide like a panther on wet stone.
Dirt sprayed up my side.
My body compressed, every muscle tight, braced, until I cleared the bend and sprang up again, fast and clean, shoes gripping moss like claws.
The bastard was still running.
But now I was faster.
Now I was hunting.
Out the corner of my eye, Yuki dropped low, his silhouette slicing through shadow. “I see another coming in from the right to help him.”
“Get the new guy.”
Yuki slid feet-first under a fallen trunk, his movement so smooth it looked rehearsed. At the last second, he twisted his hips mid-glide, one hand bracing the dirt, the other ready to draw. Then—fluid as smoke—he sprang upright again, blades flashing in both fists, never losing stride.
To my left, Aki launched off a rock like it was spring-loaded.
“Other one must be east and coming up on your right,” I called out.
He didn’t answer—just leapt trunk to trunk, arms out for balance like a tightrope assassin, disappearing into the thick.
My target kept limping forward, fast but unsteady now, shoulder dripping blood from my last shot.
He looked over his shoulder once—eyes wide, panicked.
Big mistake.
Because I was right there and I saw his face.
Watari. Yes. You were the main one I wanted to personally kill.
I dropped my weight, boots slamming the earth, sliding under a bamboo arch with one palm pressed to the dirt for control. My knees bent, coiled like springs.
I exploded up just as he turned forward again—too slow, too late.
My fist caught his ribs hard.
He gasped.
And then we collided—limbs grappling, knees twisting, guns still held but forgotten for the raw brutality of bone and knuckle.
No more running.
Now it was just violence.
I was on him.
With his gun up, he twisted out of the way.
Fired.
Missed.
I didn’t when I fired and got a bullet in his fucking knee. I could have shot him some more, but he’d helped put my men in a fucking circle of death. He wouldn’t get off that easy.
I dropped my guns, grabbed his wrist, slammed it into a bamboo trunk.
His pistol scattered from his grip.
He threw an elbow and caught my jaw.
Blood filled my mouth.
I grinned.
Then headbutted him hard .
He gasped and bucked, knees jabbing up.
I took one to the ribs.
Fuck!
I caught his next punch mid-air, twisted his arm until it cracked, and then slammed my palm into his throat.
He choked and spat blood, but I didn’t let him recover.
My elbow came down on his collarbone—once, twice—until I heard the pop. Then I grabbed a jagged shard of bamboo from the ground and buried it in his thigh.
He screamed.
Too loud.
I grabbed his head.
Slammed it into the stalk.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
He slumped over.
Not dead.
But done.
A new body to feed my bamboo forest.
Sound erupted behind me.
I turned.
There we go.
The twins were a storm of motion.
Aki’s garrote wire flashed in the moonlight, whipping around one man’s throat. His opponent struggled, only for Yuki to crash a knee into his ribs.
The sound was wet, final.
And then, Yuki returned to fighting his man.
The final guy charged Yuki with a wild punch—bad mistake.
Yuki dodged, hooked his leg around the guy’s ankle, and spun him into Aki’s waiting elbow.
The man crumpled but Aki didn’t stop—he mounted , fists raining down, rhythmic and brutal, until the forest echoed with the wet thuds of knuckles breaking bone.
I watched, chest heaving and a huge smile on my face.
Father, you gifted me with a circle of my own dead men. This morning. . .I will gift you with fire.