Reikon

Part 3 - Kitsune

1

He squinted as his eyes tried to adjust as quickly as possible. There was something in the corner.

Or was there?

Damnit, he thought. Why won't my eyes adjust?

Daniel sat there staring at the corner, waiting for the shadow to shift and turn into a coat or a blanket draped over Shelley's over-stuffed easy chair. But, it still looked like a man. Even though it was dark, Daniel still knew what the man looked like. He would be a little over five feet tall, Japanese, and bald except for a horseshoe of jet-black hair circling around the back of his head. He would be smiling, his canines sharper and longer than normal. He would have a scar that traces itself down his forehead and through his left eye, an eye that is bluish-white, no pigment left to color it dark brown like the other eye. The other eye is a brown so dark that the line between the iris and pupil is almost undetectable. These eyes tell Daniel all he needs to know. He knows what Mr. Kitsune wants. He wants Daniel's-

Shelley moaned loudly and Daniel jumped, stifling a scream. He then looked at her nervously. Be quiet, he thought, he'll know I'm here. It was an absurd thought. It was a blanket or a coat on the chair, not some

(Mr. Kitsune)

Asian guy thinking mischievous thoughts. Or was it? He still couldn't make it out. As long as the shadows boiled and shifted, Daniel still saw

(Mr. Kitsune is here)

him. The man with the scar and the sharp teeth.

Shelley moaned again and turned on her side, which meant that this time she was going to wake up, and, this time, Daniel did not jump. He had seen

(I'm going to give you something, Danny)

it coming. He knew she was going to ask him to do something for her. Something so harmless, and yet something so deadly at the same time.

Her hand moved like a snake from her hip, that beautiful, smooth hip, over the small amount of mattress between them and finally up his side and onto his shirtless chest. She inched herself closer and kissed him on that spot she knew he loved; the spot just under his ear.

"Sweetie?" she whispered. "You awake?"

"Mm-hmm," he replied.

"Could you go get me a can of Moxie? I'm thirsty." It was something she had always done that was so adorable it had made him fall in love with her. Yet, at the same time, it so annoyed him that it usually drove him up the wall. Why couldn't she get her own damn can of Moxie? But, the way she sounded when she asked usually made him feel warm. Now, though, it only made him want to cry. She had no idea where she was sending him.

"Sure," he whispered, trying to keep the shakiness in his voice to a minimum. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the

(underneath the beach swimming things underneath)

bed. He reached down and grabbed his bedroom Mag-Lite from under the night table.

Shelley softly caressed his back, "Thanks, baby."

He got up and, as he walked toward the bedroom door, he got close enough to the easy-chair to see that it was neither a coat, nor a man. It was Shelley's favorite t-shirt, the one that said, "YOUR VILLAGE CALLED. THEIR IDIOT IS MISSING," on the front of it. Daniel brushed his hand over it, as though feeling it for the first time. He could feel the cotton catching on the ridges of his fingerprints.

He continued out into the hallway.

It was lighter out here (light streamed in from the half-glass front door and the skylight in the stairwell), but he still needed the flashlight, which he now turned on with hands that he could no longer keep from shaking. He felt him down there, like a vibration. It rang and jittered through his mind.