CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jake woke up in the hospital. He knew it immediately from the antiseptic smell. All of the hospitals Jake had been in around the world had smelled the same way, so he wasn’t surprised when he heard a voice on the intercom asking a doctor to report to radiology.
What did surprise him was that he was not lying in a bed with his arm in a cast and a sling.
He looked around. He was lying on a couch with thick cushions in what had to be a small waiting room. There was a half dozen thick-cushioned wooden chair spread out around the carpeted area, with another couch on the other side by a large curtained window. There was small wooden table with some books and magazines spread out on it with a medium-sized flat screen television that was showing some kind of game show without any sound. Everything was neat and orderly.
Jake looked over his shoulder and saw a nurse through the large plate glass window there. The lights were dim in the corridor and the waiting room. Everything seemed calm out there, so Jake assumed that he was not on a critical floor.
Before Jake turned away, he saw a ghostly image of himself in the window, superimposed over the desk. He stared at the image for a few moments, wondering why he’d travelled to another body directly and not gone to the bar as he had before. Then he remembered all of the smoke surrounding him, and he thought that the man might be dead occurred to Jake. He also wondered what happened to Kaji.
His heart plummeted and he sat there thinking of all the friends and comrades he’d lost over the years. He leaned his face into his hands. His gazed grew unfocused and pictures of their faces flickered on the screen of his optic nerve, moving backward in time from his first host, Stephen, and then to those who’d died during the armoured car robbery, and finally, to his teammates who’d been killed on his failed mission to Afghanistan. The screams and the smell of blood and burnt skin filled his senses, then the images ceased suddenly when someone passed through his field of vision. It was two firemen, and they were wearing the fire suits; the same suit that Jake had been wearing earlier.
Jake shook his head to dispel the final vestiges of his disastrous mission from his mind, then walked out of the waiting room, turning toward the direction of the two men who had been walking and followed. It was a fairly short corridor, with patient rooms on both sides.
As Jake walked, he looked down. He was wearing a long-sleeved pinstriped oxford shirt with a loosen tie around his neck, a pair of suit pants, and dress-shoes that made a light tapping sound as each foot struck the floor. His balance felt good and his body felt very fit, more fit than his previous host at least. Jake guessed from the thick calluses on the edge of the man’s hands that he practiced martial arts, was even a high ranking student or maybe an instructor. He patted his pants pockets then pulled out a wallet. He looked inside and found documents that named him as a Sheiji Tanaka, the same last name as Jake’s previous host. He speculated on the implications of that as he returned the wallet to the pocket and walked into the room the firemen had turned into. He stopped short when he almost ran into the back of one of the men.
There were over a dozen firemen in the small room, surrounding a bed. A bed with someone in it. Jake moved his head a little and shifted his body to try to catch a glimpse of the person. After a few moments, one of the men nearest the bed moved and Jake got a clear view. He gasped in surprise.
It was Toshi Tanaka, his former host, and he was alive.
As soon as Jake saw the man, he felt a surge of pain throughout his entire body, similar to the pain he’d felt when the demon king had been chanting over Jake while pinning him to the floor. It wasn’t as intense, it made his knees buckle and he shot out a hand to lean heavily against the nearest wall.
One of the firemen saw him and reached out a hand to grasp Jake’s shoulder. He was young, maybe in his early twenties, with chubby cheeks, that were smudged with soot and sweat.
“Are you alright, sir,” the man asked. Jake looked at his eyes and read the concern etched there. He thought fast.
“Y-yes. I’m alright, thank you. That—that is my brother.” He pointed to the bed.
The fireman’s face changed from concern to sympathy and he stepped back and bowed.
“I am so sorry, sir.” He turned in the direction of the bed and spoke to one of the other men. When the young man was through talking, the other man, who looked like he was in his forties or fifties and was wearing a dress uniform with rank insignia and other regalia that identified him as some type of commander, turned toward Jake, bowed politely and asked Jake if he could speak to him in the hall. Some of the other men glanced his way but turned back and ignored him out of politeness.
Jake nodded and walked out of the room. The officer followed him. They walked a few feet away, in between Tanaka’s room and the next one. Jake turned toward the officer and waited. He was still in pain but only about ten percent of what he’d experienced in the room itself. It must have something to do with my proximity to Tanaka’s body, he thought. He grimaced as a wave of pain struck him then dissipated.
“Sir, are you alright,” the officer asked. He stood there for a moment and Jake gave him a quick once over. When he looked closer, Jake saw that the man was older than his first guess. He had heavy ‘crow’s feet’ on the outside of his eyes. A thick, wide nose that looked as if it had been broken several times and a small scar on his chin, peeking out from a day’s growth of salt and pepper coloured stubble. Jake thought the man was in his early fifties. Looking at the uniform, he noticed that is was pressed and clean. Jake recognized the Japanese insignia for Captain on the shirt collar and read the name on the metal name plate over the man’s right breast pocket.
“Yes, Captain Maruniho, I’m alright. Thank you for asking.” He put his hand to his face and rubbed the unfamiliar features for a moment as he thought.
“It has been a very long day, and my brother—“ he gestured to the room and shrugged helplessly, allowing the man to come to his own conclusions.
The Captain nodded sympathetically.
“I understand, Sir,” he said. Do you mind if I ask you some questions about your brother?” He reached into a pocket in his pants and pulled out a small notepad, then pulled a pen from his shirt pocket. That’s when Jake realized that this man was not a fireman, but a policeman. His thoughts swirled. He’s going to want to know what Tanaka was doing at the building, why he had a knife and why he was dressed in fire gear. He had to be very careful what he said.
“Can you show me some identification, please,” the Captain asked.
Jake pulled out his wallet and showed the identification inside to the police Captain. The man looked at them for a few moments, wrote something in his notepad, then handed them back to Jake.
“When was the last time you spoke to your brother,” he asked.
Jake ran his left hand through his hair as he thought.
“I talked to him this afternoon when he had lunch,” he said. “He was in the city for a business conference and we got together. We rarely see each other when he was transferred to Sapporo for his job. We were supposed to meet tonight and go out.”
“Oh?” Where did he work,” Maruniho asked. He looked at Jake curiously and held the pen poised over the notepad.
Jake told him the name of the company remembering it from his exploration of Tanaka’s belongings while in the hotel room earlier that day. The Captain wrote it down. He looked up when he was through writing. Here it comes, Jake thought.
“If he worked for….” He glanced quickly at the notepad. “Sakura Foods. Why was he at the Seiko office building and dressed as a fireman?” He stared hard at Jake, waiting for an answer.
“He had an appointment with one of their purchasing directors,” Jake said smoothly, remembering from the papers he’d read, that Tanka was a sales representative from that company.
“As for the fireman’s clothes, I have no idea why he would be wearing them.” He shrugged and kept a neutral expression on his face.
Maruniho stood there for a moment, nodding his head with a sad expression on his face and scribbling in his notebook. Jake listened to the pen making scratching noises as it moved across the paper. When the pen stopped, the police Captain looked up.
“So, Mr. Tanaka, you look to be in good shape. Do you practice Martial Arts?” At first, the question seemed innocuous, but Jake instantly understood where the man was going to lead him. He allowed his face to show startlement.
“Why, yes I do. Why do you ask?”
“Oh, I just noticed the calluses on your hands.” He nodded towards Jake’s hands. “How long have you been practicing,” he continued.
“Most of my life,” Jake said noncommittally.
“Ah,” Maruniho nodded his head.
“And what about your brother? Does he practice?” He looked Jake in the eyes and squinted a little when he asked, a sign that this was a serious question, belying the casual way he said it.
“No, not that I know,” Jake said while shaking his head. He remembered how soft the man’s hands had been and how he’d had that twenty to thirty pounds of fat around his middle. “He’s more of an inside person, someone who does not exercise much in any way.” Jake decided to elaborate a little. “He’s been that way since we were children.” He stopped there and looked at the police Captain, waiting for the obvious question.
Maruniho didn’t keep him waiting.
“Mr. Tanaka, can you think of any reason why your brother would have had a Bo staff and a military type combat knife?”
Jake stepped back and allowed his mouth to drop open, and his eyes to widen in astonishment for a moment.
“What are you talking about,” he asked.
“Well, what I’m saying is that these weapons were found near your brother when he was rescued from the fire. There was an office worker dead in the freezer and a fireman dead down the hall from him. Both with apparent slashes and stab wounds. Now, the knife we found had blood on it that we thought was from the fireman.”
Jake started to say something, to protest, but Maruniho held up a hand to stop him.
“Wait sir, I’m not through,” he said. “As I was saying, we THOUGHT it belongs to the fireman. That was before we heard the stories of the fire workers that were being held in the building by some kind of psychopath who was dressed like a fireman too. They said that they set the fires and trapped them in the storage freezer, then killed one of the men who’d tried to escape. Shortly after that, they said your brother and another man attacked the psychopath and got those people safely out of the area. From what I gathered, it was quite an intense fight. They said some other things that were a little crazy, but that’s of no importance.” He waved his hand in front of his face, as if he were erasing those strange stories.
Jake shook his head, with astonishment. “I’m assuming that you’re going to ask me if I might know who this other man was and what reason he was helping my brother to stop this-this psychopath from killing those people, right?” He was taking the offensive here, in an effort to lead the questions, to keep the Captain off balance and preventing him from catching Jake with a surprise.
The Captain nodded his head and started to say something. Jake interrupted him as a thought occurred to him.
“Captain, the only reason I can think of for my brother to have those weapons would be to maybe present them as a gift.” He took a deliberately shaky breath and rubbed his face again.
“Since we rarely saw each other, he would bring me gifts whenever we would get together.” The Captain started to ask something but this time Jake held his hand up, “never anything large or elaborate. Just things that had personal meaning to us.” Jake shook his head and lowered his eyes as if contemplating his ‘brother’s’ relationship. He didn’t like lying, especially to a police officer, but in this case he felt he had to. He was about to raise his head and ask the police Captain where the weapons were when a fireman ran from Tanaka’s room and yelled for a nurse. An alarm started ringing from the room.
Maruniho turned, and Jake followed him as he rushed into the room. When they got there, Jake gasped as the pain hit him fully again. He looked to the bed. Two firemen stood over Tanaka performing CPR, pumping his chest and breathing into the man’s lungs. Although his chest was covered in bandages, Jake could see wires that ran from his upper body to monitors beside the bed, and two IV’s to his arms. He must have been burned after I left, Jake thought.
His thoughts were interrupted as a doctor came swiftly through the door, followed by two nurses, one pushing a cart with a defibrillator and other items on it into the room. The doctor went directly to the bed and ordered the men who were not performing CPR to leave the room. After they had left, it only took a few moments for the nurses to set up the machine beside the bed. They put a breathing mask and pump over his mouth and nose and squeezed the bulb to inflate his lungs. When the defibrillator was charged and ready, the doctor took the paddles and had everyone move away, then placed them on an exposed area of Tanaka’s chest and released the charge. Tanaka’s body jumped as the charge ran through him. The doctor looked at the heart monitor to see if the heart was working. Jake heard a steady tone, signifying that the heart was not beating. Flatline, he thought to himself.
The doctor tried again, with still no response. He told one of the nurses to give him some adrenaline. He injected it directly into Tanaka’s heart and let the fireman continue pumping his chest. The monitor still continued to ring in a steady tone.
While Jake watched the doctor continue with his efforts, he noticed something strange. From where he stood against the wall by the door, he saw a hazy shimmering spot, about the size of, or maybe a little larger than, a basketball. Jake rubbed his eyes, then glanced at the nurses and the police Captain beside him, but they didn’t appear to see it. He watched the spot for several minutes while the doctor continued to work on Tanaka, once more putting the electrically charged defibrillator paddles on the dying man’s chest in an effort to restart his heart. When he lifted them, the monitor continued to ring. He stopped the fireman and the nurse from continuing their efforts to resuscitate Tanaka. He looked at his watch.
“I’m calling the time of death at zero three eighteen.” He walked over to Jake and bowed respectfully.
“I am sorry, sir,” he said, a note of resigned anger in his voice. Jake guessed that the man didn’t like to lose patients. He bowed, shook the man’s hand and thanked him for trying. As the doctor left, taking the nurses with him, Jake walked over to the bed. He looked down at Tanaka’s body, hardly recognizing the face he’d seen in the mirror five or six hours ago. He leaned against the bed, panting from the pain he was feeling and the mental anguish from losing another innocent. He lightly touched the unbandaged side of Tanaka’s face, said a brief prayer, hoping that this man was saved and asking for forgiveness. Tears came to his eyes and he let them fall for a few minutes, totally unashamed.
When he felt some of the sadness decrease, Jake looked up and saw that he was alone in the room. He started to make his way to the door when he noticed the hazy spot again. It was about four feet over the bed. When Jake looked at it, he rubbed his eyes, thinking it was maybe some kind of dust or something in his eyes, but it stayed there in the same place. Jake started to shrug it off and leave when the ball of haze moved. Jake watched curiously as it floated down until it was at eye level about three feet away from him. It floated there for a few moments, then distorted and transformed into a face. Jake’s jaw dropped as he recognized the face. It was Toshi Tanaka!
Jake watched as Tanaka’s features sharpened, then looked at Jake. Its’ mouth moved. He was trying to something. Jake stared at the floating head, trying to make out the words, it looked like he was saying, ‘I’ll be ok.’ Jake looked at the doorway to make sure no one was there. “You’re going to be ok,” he asked quietly.
‘Yes,’ the figure mouthed and nodded. Jake breathed a sigh and was about to ask the figure a question, when it turned and floated toward the bed. It stayed a few feet above Tanaka’s body for a moment, then disappeared. When it did, the pain Jake had been feeling disappeared also.
Jake shook his head, wondering why that had just happened. He shrugged it off and glanced at the body again. His anger came back. He turned toward the doorway to leave, the tears were dry now; the sadness left his face to be replaced by a look of anger and determination. He was going to find Kaji and send Orias back to Hell tonight.
When he walked into the hallway, he saw Maruniho down by the nurse’s station, talking to the doctor who’d tried to save Tanaka and taking notes. Jake glanced to his right and saw a corridor that branched off from this one. He looked back at the police Captain and saw the man folding his notebook closed. Jake didn’t have time to waste, answering the man’s questions, but he still needed some kind of sanctified weapon to defeat Orias. An idea came to him. He quickly crossed to the other corridor, walked until he saw an elevator, entered it and pushed the button for the lobby. When he got there, he made his way to the exit. He saw a cab in the parking lot and got in, asked the driver to take him to the nearest internet café. When they got there, Jake paid the man and walked into the café. He was surprised that there were about three dozen people using the computers or sitting there talking quietly.
He walked to the counter and was about to order an espresso, when he saw that the café sold alcohol. Behind the counter, there two or three dozen shelves stocked with different types of alcohol, and there were three different areas, each fronted by glass doors and containing different varieties of beers and fast foods. He started to ask for a bottle of black velvet, but stopped himself. He only wanted a little buzz, not to knock himself out.
Jake walked to one of the coolers and pulled out a six pack of Michelob beer, paid for it and paid for an hour of internet time, using some cash that was in his host’s wallet.
Jake walked to an empty table at the back the back of the store near the wall and sat down, making sure to face the door. He moved the chair so that the twenty-four inch monitor was blocking his head from sight from the outside but he could still see anyone who approached the store. He set the six pack on the table and opened one of the bottles, then lifted it to his lips. It only took him twenty seconds to drink the whole beer.
He put the empty bottle back in the cardboard container and took the second bottle, opened it, and placed on the table beside the keyboard. He burped, loudly enough for a few young people that looked like college students at the table next to him to look up from their conversation and stare at him. He stared at them angrily and they turned away and continued their conversation.
Jake turned to the monitor, moved the keyboard to a comfortable position, then typed in the store’s WIFI password. He then entered the website Father McLanahan had told him to go to in order to contact him. The high speed connection put him through in a matter of seconds. He looked at the clock in the top right corner of the computer screen, then calculated the time difference between Japan and U.S. He hoped that the priest was not on the flight to the Vatican yet, or if he was, that he could still get in touch with him.
The website popped up and he clicked seven pages into it then put his mouse arrow on the blank area McLanahan had told him about and clicked the left button seven times. The screen went black. Jake quickly moved the arrow up to the top left of the screen and clicked the left button twice. A small blinking cursor appeared and the rest of the screen stayed blank. Jake typed in the password and waited. The cursor disappeared and the screen stayed blank for two minutes. Jake fought the urge to tap the mouse buttons to try to make things go faster. McLanahan had told him this was the process, and if any buttons were clicked after the password, it would disable the whole sign-in process for twenty-four hours and that password would be disabled permanently, plus, someone would be notified of what happened, so basically, he’d been told not to screw it up. He took a few sips of beer as he waited.
After the two minutes was up, the screen printed a question. WHO IS THIS? He typed in his name and hit enter. He waited thirty seconds. What can we do for you? It said. Jake typed, I’ve confronted Orias. It took Kaji. I was hurt, but somehow switched hosts. I need another sanctified weapon— need a firearm—two of the three Kaji had are in police custody. He gave an abbreviated version of the encounter, then waited for a response. This time, it took almost five minutes. Jake sat back and finished two more beers while waiting for the answer.
When the answer finally came, he turned to the couple at the next table and asked if he could borrow a pen and piece of paper. When they gave him the items, he thanked them and wrote down the information, logged off of the website, gave the students back their pen and gave them two of his beers. He drank the last one, got up, walked out of the café, and hailed a cab. He gave the cab driver the address of the Sensoji Temple and sat back in the car, trying to relax. The driver didn’t say much to Jake, somehow sensing that he wanted peace and quiet. The beer helped a little, but his thoughts raced as he worried about Kaji. What could the demon be doing with him? Was he still alive or dead? He hoped the demon wasn’t torturing the monk. He remembered what Crocell had done to McLanahan and he felt sickened. He tried to keep his thoughts in check, but the same images of McLanahan hanging bloody on the cross flashed in his mind. He stared out the car window, his eyes unfocused, not seeing anything until they passed a large building with a small blue and red neon cross on the roof. The light brought him out of his trance. He stared at it as the cab passed it and recognized the building as a church. A feeling tagged at his heart.
Jake told the driver to pull into the church. The driver, a small Japanese man, with a sour expression on his face turned to him in surprise, but Jake motioned back toward the church, pointing with his thumb. The man shrugged his shoulders philosophically and made his way to a place where they could turn around. Once they got to the small parking lot in front of the church, Jake handed him some bills and asked if he would wait for him. The man’s face expressed surprise for a moment, then he nodded as he quickly folded the money into his pocket.
Jake got out of the car and stared up at the cross, then at the church. It was a fairly small building, maybe twenty feet wide by twenty feet high. He took a few steps to the door, which was made of rough, hewn wood that looked unfinished. He grasped the knob and turned it, knowing instinctively that it would be unlocked.
It was. He opened the door and looked in. As soon as he entered, Jake felt a calmness envelope him. His swirling thoughts slowed and then cleared. He breathed a sigh of relief, then looked around.
The place was small, but it looked comfortable. Jake guessed that the distance from the door to the back was fifty to sixty feet. There was a tightly woven carpet on the floor that looked worn, but clean. Fifty padded chairs, were arranged in five rows of five on each side of a narrow aisle, which showed more wear than the rest of the rest of the carpet.
In front of the row stood a nicely appointed pulpit made of a dark stained wood, with a cross on the front made in a nicely contrasting lighter shade that drew his eyes to it. To one side, there were a dozen chairs facing the door, and a keyboard, electronic drum set, a few guitars, some equalizers, and amplifiers. He looked closer and saw some wires running from the equipment to the amps, then to the holes in the concrete walls. He looked at four large speakers bracketed to the walls about seven or eight feet above the floor and imagined the music playing in here. A song of praise he'd sung as a child came to his mind and he hummed it quietly as he made his way to the front of the church.
When he got there, Jake knelt down on his knees in front of the pulpit and stared at the cross. After a few moments, he closed his eyes and started to pray.
Jake didn’t use any flowery or pretentious words. He talked to God as he would his father or to one of his commanding officers.
“God, thank you for caring about me and loving me. I don’t know why I was picked to do this, but I prove worthy of your decision. Father, please protect Kaji. Orias has him and there’s no telling what kind of pain he’s experiencing, what kinds of torture the demon is inflicting on him. Please protect him from the pain and give me the strength to defeat Orias. Thank you Lord. In Jesus name, Amen.
Jake knelt there for another minute or two, taking in the feelings of comfort and peace that surrounded him, then stood up and walked down the aisle toward the entrance. When he got to the door, he turned and looked at the pulpit for a moment, and thought to himself that he’d like to come back here after he takes care of Orias and rescued Kaji. He nodded his head, then walked out, got into the cab and told the driver to go. Jake’s thoughts turned to his plans as he watched the neon cross get smaller as they moved farther away. As it disappeared in the distance, he turned back to the front while mentally preparing himself for the coming battle. If anyone could have seen his face at that moment, the look of fierce determination, they would have gotten out of his way very quickly.
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Thirty minutes later…..
Jake walked past Shitimachi Museum on his left and toward the edge of Shinobaz pond. He’d come here after going back to Kaji’s quarters at the temple where he’d gone down to the cave, gotten some of the weapons there, including an MP-5 Heckler & Koch sub-machine gun with a silencer on it and two flash-bang grenades. He also carried a Samurai sword. Following instructions he’d gotten from the Sons of Solomon website, he’d gone to another area of the cave and had found the sword hidden in a recess in the floor beneath some crates of camping gear. After retrieving the weapons, Jake found another cab and followed his demon sense to Ueno park, which was only about a ten minute ride from the temple. The cab had let him out in front of the museum and he’d waited until it left, then took the weapons from the large sports bag he’d put them in to keep them hidden from site. He folded the bag up, stuck it into the waistband of his back, then adjusted his weapons. He stuffed the scabbard under his belt at his left side, stuffed the grenades in his front pockets, and held the silenced sub-machine gun in his right hand. He inserted the thirty-round magazine, pulled back the charging handle, releasing it to set a round in the chamber, then moved the safety switch from safe to semi. He took a few deep breaths and shrugged his shoulders to ease the tension there.
Jake walked past the museum, ignoring the architecture as he focused on finding the demon. When he made it to the edge of the pond, he looked over the surface of the pond. In the small island of its centre, he could see the lights from the Benzaiten Temple shimmering and reflecting off the pond’s surface. In addition to the normal night sounds of frogs, insects and such, he heard calls from several of the animals that were housed at the Ueno Zoo, on the opposite side of the pond.
Jake stood there for a moment, his senses telling him that the demon was very close. He looked to each side and behind him, but everything was clear. It has to be the Temple, he thought. He was about to start walking around the pond to get to one of the bridges that led to the island when he saw an object floating on the surface of the pond. It was a row boat, and it looked like someone was in it.
Jake squinted at the boat, trying to see who was inside. At that moment, the full moon came out from behind some clouds and gave him a good view of the boat. There were two figures sitting it. He recognized both. Kaji was sitting in the front. Orias was sitting behind the monk, its’ clawed hands resting on Kaji’s shoulders and the bottom of its’ snout resting on top of Kaji’s head.
Jake stared at Kaji for a few moments, thoughts of sneaking up on the two of them running through his mind when Orias shattered his thoughts.
“Demon Stalker,” the demon yelled. “What took you so long? We’ve been waiting for you for hours.” All of the frogs and other night sounds stopped “What do you want, demon,” Jake replied yelled back.
“Why, I think that should be obvious, Jake Steele. I want you.” The demon king paused for a moment, and Jake was about to say something when it continued. “I’ll make you a deal, you come out here and fight me, and I’ll let your friend go.”
Jake thought about it for a moment. He knew Orias was setting him up somehow, but he had to take the chance. Before he though, he had to find out something.
“Kaji,” he yelled. “Are you alright?”
“Jake-san,” Kaji yelled. “Yes, I am ok. No worse than I was a few hours ago. Don’t do it, Jake-san. You can’t trust a demon. It will most likely kill me before you get out here.”
Jake heard the demon king chuckle.
“Now, now monk, if I wanted to kill you, we both know I could have done that earlier, right?” It shook the monk a few times, making the boat rock back and forth. The surroundings were so quiet, Jake could hear the water lapping on the sides of the boat. Jake took a few breaths, thinking. He remembered that although the demon looked like an alligator, its’ powers were connected to fire. The Sons of Solomon website had said that it tried to avoid water.
“Alright, Orias, I’ll come out there, but I want you to rele