Vindicta - a TEMPER sequel (Excerpts)

Prologue

"Isao! Isao, stop right here! Wait for me!" Throwing an half-eaten sausage stick away, Lana Martin darted after her three-and-half years-old boy. 

In a blink, the bustling crowds who had taken over the old neighborhood of Asakusa swallowed him. Extreme annoyance and downright panic warred inside her. With those throngs of people around them and his eel-like agility... Thank goodness he's wearing a red shirt and green cap. But what is he running after? Oh, he's going to get an earful this time! Killing me like this!

It was nearly dusk, everyone had had already too much to drink to celebrate the end of the biggest religious festival of the summer in Tokyo. No choice then. Time to apply tactics tested and proven during her wild days of partying in cramped European clubs.

Cursing under her breath, she elbowed passersby to carve herself a way in the human-shaped wall around her without giving them a second thought. Merry people wearing colorful summer yukata moved slowly out her way.

Much too slowly. And dammit, she was already panting! Her abyssal lack of shape was ridiculous! Recovering from Nana's delivery wasn't as challenging as after Isao, but boy, for sure she wasn't thirty anymore.

"Isao! Come back here at once!" she shouted again, this time in Japanese, at the diminutive figure she glimpsed ahead of her.

Perfectly pointless. Her child kept slaloming between legs without any difficulty, and even less a glance for his red-faced mother. She didn't bother controlling her boiling anger anymore. Where are Naruhito and his booming voice when you need them? He would freeze the boy in his tracks.

Right when she plowed between a beer stand and a booth selling fried squid, her phone rang in her back pocket. Yuki's ringtone. Not even stopping, she grabbed it.

"Lana san, where are you?" her wife's sweet voice didn't soothe her nerves for once. "Goshujin sama and I are --"

"Yuki sama! Isao just... just ran in the crowd, I'm... I'm after him, but I can't catch up!"

"What? Where are you? What do you see?"

"Ah, I'm... I'm heading toward... Er... I think... the entrance of Tawaramachi station?" Her lack of familiarity with the entire area was infuriating.

"Don't lose him from your sight, we'll check the tracking app!"

Of course! Girl, are you stupid or what? Instant relief stole her breath away. Isao carried a small tracking device so they could pinpoint his location on their smartphone in emergencies just like this one. "Yes, do it! I'm too scared to look away from him!"

But to her abject terror, right then, Isao vanished from her line of sight. Heart in her throat, she cleared the huge crowd and stumbled upon a side street, frantically looking everywhere. With the festival and literally millions attending, neighboring roads were blocked to traffic, the lone piece of good news in this fresh hell of hers. Only a few couples and groups of friends strolled around the quiet road.

With a groan of relief, she spotted Isao's red shirt dozens of meters away on her left, right when he ran under a tall niomon wooden gate, one of the side entrances of a Buddhist temple.

"Isao! Stop now!" she bellowed even if it was useless, before turning to her phone again. "OK, he just stepped inside the courtyard of a pretty large temple, but I don't know its name!" Of all neighborhoods in Tokyo to get lost in, it had to be the one hosting dozens of shrines and temples.

"Don't worry, we'll find you!"

Fear swept away by downright aggravation, Lana rushed toward the temple, but slowed down once she was under the arch of the niomon.