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“Doesn’t mean a damn thing,” I said, “because
it’s not happening.”

“That’s your opinion,” Maria commented while
Akira nodded.

“And my opinion is the only one that
matters,” I grumbled.

“I don’t know, is your opinion worth
listening to?” a new voice asked. This time my heartbeat stayed
nice and slow as Dellar strode past me and settled himself on the
edge of Maria’s bed.

“How did you get in?” I asked. I had expected
him to come through the window.

“Front door was unlocked and my kind are
known for being silent,” Dellar answered. “Beat having to climb the
tree.”

“Ah,” I said. Something niggled at the back
of my mind and I narrowed my eyes as I thought about his previous
statement. “And I’ll have you know that my opinion is worth
listening to. There have been times that I’ve been the only voice
of reason amongst our friends.”

“This is true,” Maria admitted.

“I think I shall reserve judgment for now,”
Dellar stated, and I stuck my tongue out at him.

“You do that,” I said as sarcasm dripped off
my words.

“Anyway,” Maria interjected before yet
another argument could arise between the vampire and myself, “I
think it’s time we got down to business and worked out a plan.
Otherwise, I’m not letting Jane be bait.”

“I’d like to see you try to stop me,” I said.
“I’ve made up my mind.”

“Yes, and we know you’re the Queen of
Stubborn,” Maria shot back, “but I won’t let you risk your life and
soul without some sort of plan, blueprint, idea, you know. The
important things.”

“What we need to do first,” Akira
interjected, “is decide where we want to lure the
Gaki
, and
check it out.”

“Why don’t we use the park?” I asked and
worried the skin around my nails. “It’s ideal, there’s very few
people around late at night, and it has easy access to areas of
forest.”

“We could, but, it’d be rather suspicious to
have you calling the cops from the same place again if something
goes wrong. We don’t want that kind of record following us around.
Not to mention my boss would kill me.”

“He’ll have to wait until you go back to
Japan,” I said, “and that won’t be for a while.”

“Not really,” Akira said, and shifted in his
seat a bit. “He’s going to be coming here next month.”

“What?” Maria asked, startled.

“Akira had to file reports on all of this,”
Dellar said blandly. “My guess is that because we just don’t know
what you are, my dear, and the fact that Jane is now aware of the
‘other side’, so to speak, that a higher up needs to come and
evaluate the situation.”

“How do you know all this?” she asked.

“Everyone in the paranormal world is aware of
G.O.O.P.S. They’re whom we go to if we get in trouble or are in
danger of being exposed. They have to do paperwork like everyone
else. Reports are as much an integral part of them the way they are
any other law enforcement institution.”

“Yeah,” Akira said, his voice low and he
stared at his hands. “I have to make monthly reports, otherwise
they send in another agent to clean up the mess, whether it’s my
broken body or a political faux pas. That hasn’t happened in a
while, but the agency takes its missions and its operatives
seriously, and they have specialists who read our reports that can
tell if we’re lying or holding something back from the residual
energy alone. So there was no way to hide what’s been going on with
Maria.”

“Great, just great,” I muttered. “Now a
higher up big wig is going to be showing up. What is he, another
Tengu
?”

“No, but there are times I wish he were.
Would make life much easier.”

Before I could question him further, Dellar
cleared his throat and said, “Look, let’s cross that bridge when we
get to it. We need to take care of this
Gaki
thing first,
then we can worry about the fact that your boss is coming to
town.”

“He’s right,” Maria agreed. “Worrying is just
a waste of energy. Let’s get back to planning. We need a location
we can lure the
Gaki
to, preferably one away from
people.”

“I think I might know a place,” I said slowly
as a vague memory surfaced in my mind from my early childhood.
“There’s an old, abandoned farm about five miles away from the
park. I don’t know how long it’s been empty, but it’s been long
enough that the trees have grown up around it, and unless you know
about it you wouldn’t realize that there was a house back there,
it’s that hidden. It’s isolated enough that no one would come
across us too easily, and I doubt that anyone would hear anything
if it came down to a fight.”

“Any chance we can go visit this place right
now?” Akira asked. “We can discuss things further on the way there
and back, but I’d like to get an idea of the place, see what it’s
like.”

“Sure, it’s only about twenty minutes from
here. Do you feel well enough for a short trip, Maria?”

“I should be OK, Dellar is great support.
It’d be good to get out of the house for a little bit, too,” Maria
said as she got out of bed. She tried to stand but her knees
buckled slightly. Dellar immediately moved to drape her arm over
his shoulder and wrapped his arm around her waist.

“I can lend some support, too,” Akira said
and moved to the other side, so that they formed a pair of living
crutches for Maria to lean on.

“All right, I’ll give Mom a call and let her
know I’m going to be late getting home so that she doesn’t call me
nonstop for an hour. She can also give me directions. I’ll meet you
at my car,” I said, and exited the bedroom as I pulled out my cell
phone.

“I claim shotgun!” Akira called out as they
exited the house.

“Whatever,” I said and rolled my eyes. Dellar
and Akira settled Maria in the back, and she scooted over to make
room for Dellear as Akira opened up the passenger door.

“What kind of house is this place?” Akira
asked as he climbed in.

“You mean other than abandoned?”

“Two story, one story, etc?”

“I think it’s a two story building with
several large windows facing the old driveway. It’s in the old
Plantation style with columns and such. There’s a shed in back,
with a run down barn. You can see, or you could when I was kid,
remnants of fencing that was up, but most of it had fallen down the
last time I was there. We’ll need to keep an eye out for possible
squatters, it’s kind of an ideal place for other teens or homeless
people to congregate since it is so isolated.”

“We’ll make sure to do a thorough sweep of
the place,” Dellar said, and I nodded.

“I’m not sure how overgrown it is, it was
pretty much almost all forest aside from the buildings when I was
there last, and I do remember the barn looked like it was rather
saggy, so it might not be there anymore. There were trees
everywhere, young ones and lots of fully-grown ones. Great place
for a picnic,” I commented as I navigated the roads

After about twenty minutes I slowed down and
began to look for the entrance to a side road that Mom told me to
keep an eye out for. We were just on the outskirts of town and the
beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Fall was spread out before
us. The road we were on was rather curvy, so I wasn’t able to
really pay attention to the colors, but I grinned with pride when
Akira commented that no matter how much he saw of the mountains,
their beauty always awed him.

I spotted an opening in the trees that looked
like a possible gravel road, and very carefully maneuvered my car
onto it. The under carriage made a horrible grinding noise, and I
grit my teeth as I navigated the narrow passage. Everyone else was
silent in an effort to not distract me, especially since at one
point the right side dropped down into a small gully twenty feet
below us before it leveled out again.

We all breathed a sigh of relief when the
trees suddenly opened up in front of us to reveal the old house. It
looked almost like I had remembered it, two stories with a sloping
roof that might have been green once, but had faded out to dull
grey and large windows facing what was once a driveway. Most of the
glass was gone, probably broken out by vandals or weather, but
considering how long it had been abandoned it still looked like it
was in pretty good shape. The front doorway had warped to the point
that it looked like two drunks being held up by a ruler, but the
cracked dirty white walls were still solid. The bushes, trees and
weeds were out of control and had taken over the lawn, and I
wrinkled my nose when I stepped out and found myself wading through
knee high grass. I made a mental note to check myself thoroughly
for ticks when I got home.

I looked in the direction of the back of the
house and noticed a twisted pile of wood that had once been small
buildings the last time I saw them.

“Barn and shed are gone,” I said. Mother
nature had been busy, moss and lichens had already taken over, and
I shuddered when I thought about what was most likely living under
all that rotting wood.

“You two wait here while we check out the
house,” Akira said.

“Oh no,” I said and shook my head. “No way,
you’re not pulling that ‘leave the women behind while the menfolk
do all the dangerous work’ crap on me.”

“It’s not crap,” Akira said seriously.
“Maria’s not fit enough to do any exploring. You need to stay here
to protect her while we’re gone in case something happens. Just
having her lock the doors won’t cut it if there’s someone in there
that’s carrying a gun. This is what I believe you call the
backwoods, isn’t it?”

I stared at him and sighed while Maria
grinned at me. “You are one manipulative son of a bitch
sometimes.”

“Maybe, but it doesn’t change the fact that
I’m right,” he said and tapped my nose with a finger before he and
Dellar turned and eyed the house. It wasn’t hard to find a way in,
the drunken doorway was minus a door, and they quickly vanished
into the interior shadows.

I leaned against my car while Maria sat in
her seat with the door open, her eyes taking in our surroundings. I
did the same, making mental notes that there was plenty of cover
for the guys to hide and ambush the
Gaki
from, provided we
could lure it here. Even the house itself could be part of our
plans. There were a lot of possibilities that could work in our
favor. There were also an infinite number of ways this could go oh
so wrong. I shuddered and my teeth started vibrating against each
other softly as my jaw muscles tensed up.

Maria was silent next to me, so I glanced
down to check and make sure that she was all right and to distract
myself from my dark thoughts. I sucked in a horrified breath that
froze in my chest when I was met with those strange, milky white
eyes that I now knew signaled that she had gone “elsewhere” and
that the
Gaki
had taken control of her body.

Every muscle in my body tensed and I barely
dared to breath in some strange effort to remain unseen by the
alien being that now occupied my best friend’s body. My efforts
were in vain as the
Gaki’s
strange, milky white eyes focused
and Maria’s mouth smiled at me in such a way that my stomach turned
into the swaying deck of a cruise ship out to sea.

“Well,” Maria’s voice said, a dark, sinister
undercurrent to the words that Maria would never have been able to
duplicate on her own even if she took years of acting, “if it isn’t
the little friend. I see that, despite my efforts to separate you
two, you’re still here.”

“Why have you been trying to separate us?” I
swallowed as my voice came out in a dry whisper.

“Because that damn
Tengu
is hanging
all over you and trying to hunt me down,” the
Gaki
said.
“Have you bedded him yet?”

I gaped. The crude question had thrown my
thoughts into such chaos that I didn’t see the
Gaki
reaching
out until he had wrapped one of Maria’s hands around my neck and
squeezed slightly. I pulled back and tugged at Maria’s wrists but
her hand didn’t budge. My air hadn’t been cut off, but I was caught
and unable to pull away when Maria’s other hand came up and placed
two fingers on my forehead between and slightly above my eyebrows.
It was the same position that I had seen Akira using on her when he
had been trying to track the
Gaki
, and terror ghosted down
my spine as those fingers began to grow warmer and warmer against
my skin. I tried to jerk my head back, but didn’t get very far.

“Oooooo, you are attracted to him,” the
Gaki
purred, “but you’re holding yourself back. So much fear
and uncertainty here, and you cover it very well with a thick layer
of anger, but that doesn’t stop it from being there. Your mind is
utterly fascinating. So that’s what happened to the
Oni
who
worked at that particular gas station. I had wondered when I didn’t
see him around if he had finally gotten caught or killed. My, my,
nasty business that, and ooooh, you even had an experience with him
prior to the fight.”

“Stop,” I whispered as my mind and soul tried
to contract in on themselves. I hadn’t realized that this level of
violation even existed, and it made what I had done to the
Oni
to keep from being arrested feel like a walk through
dandelion fields by comparison.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I strained
against the hands that held me captive.

“Now this is an interesting little memory,”
his voice was positively gleeful, which was all the more sickening
because it was Maria’s voice that issued forth, Maria’s face that
stared at me, Maria’s lips that were being licked as her mouth
smiled. “Shoplifting, hmmm?”

Something inside of me snapped in a red haze
and I surged forward against its hold. My hands released its wrist
and darted forward to grab a fistful of Maria’s glossy hair.