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Yura was born covered in blood. She would die covered in it, too.
“Name?”
“Emi Sato,” she lied, the syllables rolling off her tongue as smooth as melted caramel. The curve of her lips was a slow, coy thing, genuine as the bouncer eyed her up and down before nodding. He didn’t even consult his list, but it hardly mattered. The name would’ve been there, regardless.
The real Emi Sato, not so much. Her blood had made her ash blonde hair so pretty, though.
“Go on in,” the bouncer said, bored, eyes already shifting to the next person in line.
Pouting, Yura entered through the doorway, the pounding music only growing louder as the lighting dimmed. The hallway was sticky, her red-bottomed heels squelching with each step. Cups littered the way, among other and far more revolting things, as she ascended up the stairs. Yura was grateful for the darkness enclosing her as she approached a heavy, thick black curtain.
She opened it, an entirely new world before her. The club, packed with writhing, sweaty bodies, was a black and blue mess of strobes and spotlights. Even where she was, a level up in the VIP section, it was busy – bar girls serving drinks between booths, and twirling around clubgoers. Smoke filled the air, too potent to be simply dry ice.
And there, at the far end of the VIP area, she found him.
Yura smiled and took off the mesh crop top she wore, leaving her only in a black, lacy bra, cleavage bursting. The mesh fell to the floor. It was time to go hunting.
She danced between bodies – redheads and blondes, black-haired beauties and colourful rainbow dyes – twisting with the music. The beat pounded in her ears, her heart, thick and heavy like crimson blood. She let it flow through her – a different person in a different life, a partier and a taker. The few people dancing in he VIP section flocked to her like moths to a flame. Yura knew what she looked like, what she screamed without saying a word. She reveled in it, grinding against soft, panting women and rough, sweaty men. Her smile was red, lipstick-stained, open-mouthed with her laughter.
But her eyes were on him.
Him.
Him, who caught her gaze as she slowly edged closer to his sectioned-off booth. Cocaine dusted the table, bottles of vodka half-filled and fallen over amongst the glasses. When he smiled at her, Yura licked her lips. She was hungry – had been for days it felt like. So when one of his bodyguards beckoned her closer, Yura went. She slid into his booth, slid into his space, fitting herself between his spread thighs as he looked up from the couch.
Him. Him with black hair, slicked back and thinning at the top. Yura desired to mess it all up.
“What’s your name?” he asked, dark eyes glinting in the club’s lights. His chiseled jaw flashed blue, then green, then blue again. Neither were her favourite colour.
Leaning down, Yura let the tiny smile on her lips grow. Her hands touched leather-clad shoulders, and when he didn’t push her away, she climbed into his lap. “My, do you really care?” she asked, barely loud enough to be heard.
He smiled, vile.
She danced, enthralled.
This was the hunt.
The pounding bass was rabbit-quick, the opposite of her beating heart. Despite the packed club, the booth she was in held very few people: a couple near-asleep and wrapped up in each other to one side, and a man with his eyes closed and a needle in his veins. He looked half-dead already, and Yura stared at him, distracted for all of a moment before her attention was snapped back. She gasped as hands – his hands – grabbed at her ass, tugging her closer. The bodyguards looked away, bored.
Pathetic, really.
“Darling,” she purred to him. “Do you want to know what heaven feels like?”
At the man’s laugh, Yura tugged at his face, shoving it into her cleavage. His tongue, wet, licked at her skin.
Her knife, sharp, stabbed right through the side of his neck. Then she stabbed him again, again, again, writhing her body in time to the music. No one looked closely enough to see. Blood dripped down his neck – blue, green, blue, not red, red, red – and she tightened her thighs, pressed his face deeper into her breasts. She whispered into his ear, even as he struggled fruitlessly. “Oops, I should have warned you. Even if this feels like heaven, you’re definitely ending up in hell. See you there.”
Yura continued her dance, her grind, moving his body to hide the weakening twitches as his life waned away. The blood only covered one side of him, and Yura laughed, breathless, as one of the bodyguards facing the opposite direction spared them a brief, disinterested glance.
They couldn’t see the blood. Not yet.
They would.
Smooth as silk, Yura rose, pressing him into the couch. His dead eyes stared back at her, lifeless. It was nothing like the way he had looked at her seven years ago, unbuckling his belt while she screamed so hard she tasted blood in her mouth. “Call me Master,” he had demanded, “and I’ll make it hurt less.”
It took the guards fewer than ten seconds to realize what she’d done, to realize that those tight, tight pants of hers held more than simply an outlet for sexual pleasure. They descended upon her.
Yura was born covered in blood. She would die covered in it, too.
One by one, she killed them. Two with her knife. Another with her red-bottomed heels. Screams grew louder than the music, and Yura laughed, running, running through the press of oblivious, dancing bodies.
An exit. Stairs. The slapping of her bare feet on cold concrete was nothing to the sound of her heart’s pounding rhythm, her laughter in her gasping breaths.
Running down an alley, Yura nearly crashed into a dumpster, high on the thrill. She could hear them coming, knew they’d have guns, knew they wouldn’t stop until they found her. Her brain told her to run. Her heart begged her to stay, to stop. She was so tired after all these years. Yura had a blood-soaked list since she was fourteen years old, and tonight, that list was done. Finished.
A streetlight ahead shined like a beacon, painting the alleyway red.
When strong arms wrapped around her, a bag thrown over her head to block her vision, Yura didn’t fight, was only surprised she hadn’t noticed them so close. She had still heard shouting in the distance.
Hands carried her, lifting her like a sacrifice. Her capturers ran. A door. Metal. It squeaked as Yura was brought inside. She didn’t know where she was, didn’t know how close or how far from the club she had gotten. Her body was pressed into a chair, limbs left free and unsecured.
Yura frowned. When the bag was ripped off of her head, her expression still hadn’t cleared.
Seated across from her was a woman, roughly the same age. Her makeup was pristine, as pristine as her straight black hair and her white suit and her perfectly manicured stiletto nails.
Painted red.
The woman raised a brow at her, brown eyes assessing every inch of Yura’s body. “So,” she started, no-nonsense and to the point, “it’s you who killed Gatenmaru.”
Biting her tongue hard enough to bleed, Yura said nothing.
“Do you know just how powerful a man he is?” The woman smiled then, amused. “Or, rather, was.”
Yura watched, waiting. This was surely a prelude to her own murder.
“As head of the Hidaka Family, I’m a bit torn. Do I thank you for murdering someone I was planning on shooting myself? Or do I kill you because you’re clearly a walking red flag?”
Now, Yura grinned. She let the blood in her mouth show. “I didn’t think I’d even make it this far, so what does it matter?”
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “It matters.”
There was a weight to the statement, a declaration. Yura balked at such conviction. It rocked her, threw her off the only solid ground she knew. Such was the shock of it that Yura blurted, rather breathlessly, “My list is done. What else matters?”
“My name is Kikyo,” the woman said, a non sequitur if Yura had ever heard one. “I run this city. More often than not, I kill for it, too. If I want them dead, they are. If they won’t speak, they will, and then they’ll die, too.”
Where was this going? Yura waited, wondering, watching Kikyo lounge before her with an air so powerful, it was like electricity humming. A spark about to ignite.
Rarely had Yura seen another woman, just like her. A mirror, drenched in blood and death.
“Who do you work for?”
The question made Yura grin. Her teeth were still pink. “The devil.”
Kikyo watched her for a moment, then hummed. It was hardly a kind sound. “Do you want to work for me?”
Yura had thought, at the start of this, that this was an interrogation leading to her demise. Instead, it appeared to be an interview. “Pardon me?”
Kikyo rose from the chair. The way she did it, moving with such self-assuredness and power, it was like she rose from a goddamned throne. A true mafia queen. A devil in her own right.
“I have a list of my own,” Kikyo stated. “My list never ends, though.”
Heart stuttering in her chest, Yura’s blood-stained smile grew. “Oh dear, that sounds like a dreadful problem. I’m sure I could help you out with that…for the right price.”
Yura was born covered in blood. She would die covered in it, too.
Just maybe not quite yet.