Dragon 7 (Tokyo Empire)

Prologue

The Smiling Dead

Hiro

In the war room, six oni masks rested along the massive table between me and the Claws. Polished obsidian. Gold leaf. Crimson silk cords pooled beside them like spilled blood.

Every mask carried its own expression—wrath, sorrow, cruelty, and hunger.

Art twisted into violence. Will this be enough?

I sucked harder on the pink lollipop in my mouth. When I bought the gender reveal lollipops for Sora, I’d kept two extra boxes for myself—pink and blue.

Now. . .

My heart ached.

Now I would use them as fuel for my vengeance.

I looked away from the masks and even the Claws, and focused on the smiling dead people beyond them. Ghosts. They stood there, bleeding, watching me with smiles too wide for their wounds.

Sora had died in the clinic today, due to Kiko infiltrating my brother’s men. Now he stood in front of them. He held a pink lollipop in his left hand and a blue one in his right. His wide grin was proud, the way it had been the day he showed me the ultrasound photo.

Welcome back, ghosts.

My Tiger had helped them disappear after the Claws party, but Kiko had called them right back in that clinic.

I rolled the pink lollipop against the roof of my mouth and put my focus on the oni masks spread across the table.

Demon.

That's what oni meant.

The thing in Japanese folklore with horns, fangs, and skin the wrong color. The thing that waited in mountains and ate what wandered too close. The thing wicked souls became after death—murderers, tyrants, punishers in hell or the ones being punished. That's what the legends said.

But I had never believed the legends.

I believed oni were made—mountain hermits, starving women, abandoned warriors. People driven so far past the edge of what a heart could carry that the heart became something else.

What if the demon was the final shape of survival? The terrifying shell that grew when the human could no longer protect the wounded heart inside.

It didn’t matter anymore.

Tonight, I would become an oni to win this war.

I bit down on the lollipop.

The candy cracked between my teeth as I picked my mask up.

Hannya. The horned female demon.

She had been human at first, then heartbreak had consumed her until sorrow transformed her into a terrifying demon.

My tongue found the cracked bits of lollipop.

The mask’s horns had been polished smooth at the base and sharpened to lethal points. I intended to drive them through my enemies and spill their entrails across the battlefield. By sunrise, I expected blood to coat the front and intestines to be hanging from the horns.

Soon.

I twisted the mask to the side.

One angle revealed rage.

I turned it the other way and the new angle revealed mourning. I tightened my grip on the mask.

Perfect.

I flipped it over and in the dark gleam at the inside of the mask, I saw her.

Nura.

Beautiful dark brown skin. Lips parted. The smile she had given me in my father's hospital room a fraction of a second before the bullet found the side of her head.

I blinked.

When will I stop thinking about you, Nura?

I set the mask back down on the table.

Probably never.

My hands shook.

I placed them in my pocket.

Maybe. . .I’ll become a real oni one day.

Grief was already hardening my teeth into fangs. Betrayal was already growing my ears and sharpening them into horns. This unbearable rage had already wrapped around my soul.

I crushed the rest of the lollipop between my molars and lifted my view to my brother.

Kenji stood across the war room with a hardened expression on his face—his own real life oni mask made of his flesh and carved from so many years of doing brutal things to become the Dragon.

He stared at the phone as if contemplating something that would change all of our lives forever. His thumb moved across the screen and stopped.

Moved and stopped.

Moved and stopped.

What’s wrong?

My brother never hesitated. He had been making impossible decisions since he was young. However, the man across the room was doing something I had never seen him do before.

He was stalling.

What are you about to do, brother?

I set my mask down and looked at it.

After this war, which side of the mask would I be left wearing?

Done with the lollipop, I pulled the bare stick out of my mouth and held it in the air.

A man in a black uniform rushed over with a small tray, took the stick from my fingers, bowed once, and disappeared toward the back of the war room.

Hmmm.

I scanned the other masks.

Daisuke's sat at the far left.

Yamauba.

The mountain witch who devoured travelers but who, in some versions of the legend, had once been a midwife—a protector who turned predator only after losing too much.

White hair. Sunken eyes. A mouth that could nurse or kill, depending on which side of the mountain she met you.

The mouth had been carved open just wide enough to slip a blade through, so when Daisuke leaned in close, the man on the other end would never know whether the witch was about to whisper or bite.

Kaede's mask sat next to Daisuke's.

Tengu.

A long-nosed mountain demon with a beak that came forward like a bird's. Red lacquer. Black accents. Gold leaf had been pressed along the edge of the beak in a thin line, so when Kaede turned his head in battle, the strike of the gold would flash like a warning.

Toma's mask was a Namahage. A red-skinned ogre, the eyes bulging, the snarl hooked. The eyes had been carved deep and angled downward, so anyone Toma stood over would feel the ogre staring straight into them long before Toma himself ever looked down.

Then I settled my gaze on the twins’ masks.

I chuckled to myself.

Much to Reo’s annoyance, they had refused to wear demons on their faces and had chosen kitsune instead. Kitsune were yōkai—spirit foxes. Shapeshifters who could take human form for years before slipping back into the trees.

Tricksters.

Sometimes lovers.

Other times guardians.

They grew more tails as they aged. Nine tails meant the oldest, wisest, and most dangerous.

And a kitsune that bonded with a human heart stayed bound to it forever.

Through distance.

Through time.

Through death.

Perhaps that was what the twins loved about kitsune most of all—the everlasting love and loyalty.

Their masks rested side by side. Gleaming black.

Golden teeth bared in matching grins. Silver whiskers swept back along the cheeks.

Pointed ears tipped in gold. Eyes carved long and narrow.

The artisan had matched them so precisely that even the brush strokes on the whiskers ran in identical directions, so no enemy on the field would ever know which twin he was about to die from.

Indistinguishable.

This will be the first time I won’t be able to tell them apart in battle.

I dug into my pocket, pulled out a blue lollipop, and unwrapped it slowly.

Across the table, Daisuke's eyes tracked the wrapper down to my fingers and back up to my mouth. “Another one?”

Here we go.

Daisuke held the expression of a bartender watching an alcoholic order his seventh drink. “You’ve already had two since we walked in here.”

“Only you would be more worried about my getting a cavity than our possible deaths tonight.” I slid the candy into my mouth.

“There’s the sugar rush too.”

I sucked on the new lollipop. “Let’s get back to strategy.”

The Claws stood in front of me with their weapons racked behind them. Magazines stacked on the side table. Ammunition crates open.

Rin's poison vials were laid out on a black silk cloth that the Fang had left before disappearing—probably to say goodbye to his new lover on the other side of the island.

I cleared my throat. "Kenji and I believe that our brother, Akiro, will go for the mansion first. He thinks Kenji and I will be inside, waiting like cowards in a fortress. So that's the first thing we change.”

Toma looked up. “How will we do that?”

“We won’t be in the mansion. We'll be in the trees."

Daisuke nodded once.

"The mansion stays lit. Looks occupied. Some of Reo's Scales will move through it to give the impression that we are home. Akiro's first wave will hit it expecting to find us. They won't."

I sucked harder on the lollipop. "Antiaircraft on the outer ridge will take down what it can.

We are not stopping every helicopter and plane.

We are not built for that. Some of them will land.

When they do, the Scales engage on the ground—they have the numbers, and they have the terrain.

Our job is not to clean up after the landings. "

Toma loaded another round in his gun and looked up. "Then what is our job?"

"Our job is the Fox, Akiro, and the men protecting them. Let the Scales get the lower soldiers to win the battle. We focus on winning the war."

Toma tilted his head to the side. "How do we know where Akiro will be? And even more, how do we know if the Fox is even coming?"

I glanced back at my brother.

Now Kenji stood at the strategy table with Reo at his shoulder. His phone rested in his hand. His head was bent low taking in the map in front of him.

I looked back at Toma. “My brother has a plan to get the Fox on the island.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know yet, but I trust him.” I took in all of their faces. “We trust him.”

They all nodded.

I cleared my throat. “We will figure out where Akiro is during the battle. Until then, we stay in the shadows of the forest and come out when it's time to deal with the true threat."

Movement came behind Toma's shoulder. Right in the doorway to the war room stood a woman in a leather kimono with a whip coiled at her hip.

Hiroko, I was wondering when you would start haunting me.

The ghost’s eyes found mine and she smiled. A bullet hole sat at the center of her forehead. Blood spilled out.

"Hiro?"

I snapped my eyes to Kaede. “Yes?”

"You stopped talking."

"Sorry. I was thinking." I cleared my throat again. The sugar from the lollipop coated my tongue. "Spread your men. But I want coverage in two places specifically."

Aki crossed his arms over his chest. “Ours are armed and ready. Where do you want our people?”