The red demon didn't move like a predator. It moved like a puppet being jerked by invisible, clumsy strings. Its twenty-meter-long body dragged across the subway tracks, the skin scraping against the rusted rails with a sound like a wet shovel hitting gravel.
It began to circle them.
The creature was so long that it practically walled them in, its tail disappearing into the darkness of the tunnel while its eyeless head hovered just inches from the platform edge.
"Don't move," Sakura whispered. She stood at the center of the trio, her hands down at her sides, the three chains pulsing with a faint, oily light. "Keep your breathing steady. It doesn't have eyes. It's tracking the vibration of your hearts."
Masaru gripped his Berettas, his palms slick with sweat. He'd killed things in sewers, in abandoned apartments, and in back alleys, but he'd never seen anything like this. Usually, demons were a mess of teeth, fur, and rage.
This thing looked unfinished.
Its skin was too smooth, its limbs too long, like a god had started sculpting a nightmare and then got bored halfway through, leaving the raw, red clay to rot.
And then there was the talking.
Demons didn't talk. They hissed, they screamed, and they made wet, gurgling noises, but they didn't tell you to clean your room.
"Jin," the demon said again. The voice was high-pitched and maternal, but it came out of that vertical, toothless maw like a recorded message played through a broken speaker. "It's time for dinner, Jin. Wash your hands."
"Is it... is it talking to us?" Yuki whispered. She was vibrating with terror, her knees knocking together.
"It's not talking," Masaru muttered, his eyes locked on the creature's throat. "It's mimicking. It's like a parrot that's eaten a housewife."
The demon stopped circling. The air in the station suddenly felt heavy, like the atmospheric pressure had tripled in a heartbeat.
Then, it lunged.
It was impossibly fast. For a creature that looked like a slow, bloated worm, it moved with the speed of a fired bullet. Its massive, red-skinned claw—a hand with too many fingers and no nails—swung toward Sakura's head.
Sakura didn't flinch. Two more chains erupted from the shadows at her feet, whipping upward with a metallic clack. They intercepted the claw inches from her nose, the force of the impact sending a shockwave through the platform that cracked the floor tiles.
But the demon wasn't done.
While the first claw was pinned by the chains, a second limb tore out from the creature's side—a hidden arm that hadn't been visible before. It swung in a wide, horizontal arc.
Sakura tried to pull back, her boots skidding on the concrete, but she wasn't fast enough. The jagged edge of the demon's "finger" caught her across the cheek.
A spray of bright red blood hit the floor. Sakura stumbled, a thin, jagged line opened from her ear to her chin.
"Sakura!" Yuki screamed, losing her footing and collapsing onto the floor. She scrambled backward, her ice-blue energy flickering out like a dying lightbulb.
"Shut up and fight!" Masaru barked.
He raised both Berettas. He didn't wait for an order. He squeezed the triggers, the sigil-etched steel rounds humming as they left the barrels. Bang-bang-bang-bang.
The bullets slammed into the demon's eyeless face, tearing small chunks of red meat out of the smooth skin. It didn't have brains to splatter, but the impact was enough to stagger the beast, its head jerking back with every hit.
Next to him, Alex had dropped his backpack. He pulled out a bulky, metallic device that looked like a cross between a telescope and a vacuum cleaner.
"Right then!" Alex shouted, his British accent cracking under the strain. "Let's see how you like a bit of concentrated sunlight, you ugly sod!"
A hum filled the air as the demonic ray gun powered up. A beam of searing, white-hot energy shot out, lancing into the demon's shoulder. The smell of burning ozone and scorched flesh filled the station.
The demon let out a sound that wasn't a voice anymore—it was a high-frequency screech that made Masaru's ears bleed.
The creature thrashed, its long body slamming into the pillars of the station, bringing down showers of dust and concrete.
Sakura wiped the blood from her face with the back of her hand. Her expression hadn't changed, but the violet in her eyes was glowing with a feral, predatory intensity. She raised her right hand, her thumb and forefinger forming the shape of a pistol.
"Enough," she said.
She focused. The air around her hand began to warp, swirling into a tight, dense sphere of black-and-violet energy.
Boom.
She "fired." A concussive blast of pure demonic pressure hammered into the creature. The force was so great that it tore two of the demon's secondary limbs clean off their sockets, sending the red, rubbery appendages flying across the tracks.
The demon slumped, its massive jaw hitting the platform with a dull thud. For a second, Masaru thought it was over.
Then the mouth started to twitch.
"Jin," the demon groaned, the voice now deep and distorted, like a slowed-down vinyl record. "Don't... make... me... come... in... there."
The creature began to haul itself back up, the wounds on its body sealing over with a disgusting, bubbling foam. It was regenerating faster than they could damage it.
"It's not dying!" Alex yelled. He reached back into his bag and hauled out a heavy, revolving grenade launcher. The cylinders were etched with glowing orange runes. "I'm going to put some shells in its mouth! Cover me!"
Alex began to fire. Thump. Thump. Thump.
The grenades weren't explosive in the traditional sense. When they hit the demon, they erupted into spheres of holy fire, cauterizing the wounds and slowing the regeneration. The demon began to back away, its long body coiling like a wounded snake.
Masaru saw his chance.
The demon's head was distracted by Alex's barrage. Its flank was wide open, the soft, pale underbelly exposed as it twisted on the tracks. If Masaru could get behind it, he could empty his remaining magazines into the base of its spine.
He didn't think. He didn't ask. He just moved.
Masaru sprinted toward the edge of the platform, his boots pounding against the concrete. He planned to jump down to the tracks, circle around a support pillar, and hit the thing from the blind side.
In his mind, he was back in Shinjuku, hunting solo. He was the scavenger. He was the guy who won because he moved when others stayed still.
He reached the edge of the platform and leaped, his body soaring through the air. He was focused entirely on the red, pulsing skin of the demon's back.
He crossed the twenty-meter line mid-air.
The iron chain around his neck, which he had almost forgotten in the heat of the fight, suddenly vibrated with a violent, high-pitched hum.
Masaru felt a cold shock snap through his entire body. It felt like his soul was being jerked backward by a fishing hook.
The chain didn't just break. It shattered.
The rusted links exploded into a thousand shards of black glass, the sound of the snap echoing through the subway station like a gunshot.
The protection was gone.
And in that same instant, the red demon's head stopped twitching. It turned—perfectly, unnervingly still—toward the man hanging in the air without a leash.