The biker hesitated and the thing in the raincoat pounced. He was flung to the ground, spread-eagled, with the creature on top of him, its mouth clamped to his.
‘Ew, gross!’ Kenny said, backing away.
Kiyomi shook her pounding head to clear it and hauled her bike into an upright position. She heard Kenny’s warning shout, looked up, and her blood chilled. ‘Kenny . . . ’ Kiyomi said, her voice low but in a tone not to be argued with. ‘Get back here, now . . . We can still get away. Poyo, jubun da.’
Poyo unclamped his jaws from the biker and sniffed the air. His eyes grew wide and he bounded over to Kiyomi, whimpering. She picked bloodied, matted hair out of her eyes and pulled herself up on to the bike.
The creature released its lips from the now-still biker and leered up at Kenny, who was rooted to the spot. Blood dribbled down its chin and it began slithering towards him.
‘Run!’ Kiyomi yelled.
Kenny sprinted to her, hurdling the fallen bikers who lay groaning on the ground.
The creature reared up again. Its coat flapped open and Kenny glimpsed rippling coils covered with tiny scales.
‘What is that thing?’ he said, scrambling up beside Kiyomi.
‘Nure-onna,’ she said, wobbling on to the bike. ‘Bad news. Let’s go.’
‘What, and just leave those guys here for its dessert? We can’t do that.’
‘OK, it was just an idea.’ Kiyomi groaned and reached down into a side panel. ‘Here,’ she said, withdrawing a can of Pringles.
‘You’re going to eat crisps now ?’ Kenny said.
Kiyomi pressed her thumb against the end of the can; the fingerprint reader bleeped and it popped open.
‘Whatever you’re doing, can you hurry it up?’ Kenny said. ‘That thing’s getting closer.’
The nure-onna slithered over the three bikers and advanced towards Kiyomi and Kenny. The scritching sound of its scales on the asphalt set Kenny’s teeth on edge.
‘Aim for the head,’ Kiyomi said, handing Kenny the contents of the Pringles can: a short sword in a scabbard as long as his forearm.
‘This? You want me to fight that thing with this – this pocketknife?’ Kenny said, pulling out the blade halfway. It was exquisite, brightly polished, with Japanese lettering engraved on it.
‘Well, duh,’ Kiyomi said, putting her hand to her head and pulling it away, sticky and red. ‘Look, it’s your idea to stay and fight. I’ve got blood in my eyes and I’m seeing two of everything, otherwise . . .’
‘All right, all right,’ Kenny said, moving away from the bike. ‘But I’ll take any help you can give.’
The forked tongue licked at the air. Kenny backed away and the nure-onna closed in. He clutched the wooden scabbard tightly in one hand and gripped the short sword in the other.
‘Uh, you,’ he said. ‘Freaky snake-woman thing. You probably can’t underst–’
‘I know who you are, Kuromori-child,’ it hissed.
Kenny froze. The awful serpentine voice had sounded inside his head; its lips hadn’t moved.
‘And I know why you are here . . . but you will not succeed. A thousand starving yurei cry out for vengeance. You will not stand in their way.’
The nure-onna slithered closer, swaying as the snake body undulated beneath the raincoat. Kenny held his ground, trying not to look at the beady eyes, the long wicked fangs or the flickering tongue. He glanced into McDonald’s, through the windows behind the creature, but no one seemed to have noticed anything unusual happening in the car park. He was on his own.
Turning and running seemed a good idea, but the nure-onna was almost upon him. ‘Kiyomi . . . now would be a good time to do something . . .’ he muttered.
‘Poyo! Kame!’ Kiyomi said.
The tanuki shot across the car park like a guided missile and sank his sharp little teeth into the creature’s tail. It shrieked and in that instant Kenny rammed the scabbard into its open mouth, forcing the wooden case down the open gullet. The nure-onna gagged and Kenny whipped the blade across its neck, slicing through flesh. A startled expression stayed on the nure-onna’s face as its head bounced across the ground and the body flopped at Kenny’s feet, writhing and churning.
Poyo spat out a chunk of tail and retched in disgust, trying to dislodge the taste. He leapt back, startled, as the body crumbled to a fine dust.
Kenny lifted the raincoat with the point of the sword, but it was empty. He wiped the blade on the coat, picked up the scabbard, slotted the sword home and handed it back to Kiyomi. She started up the motorcycle and the engine hummed softly.
‘Come on, we should go,’ she said, scooping up Poyo. ‘One dead biker is going to attract attention. Or are you still going it alone?’
Kenny took in the scene around him: three wounded bikers lay moaning on the ground; one was still; the empty raincoat flapped; and the fine dust eddied away. ‘That thing, it was after me, wasn’t it? These guys just got in the way.’
‘Something like that, yes.’
‘And there are more . . . things out there too? More of them after me?’
Kiyomi nodded, her lips pressed tightly together.
‘OK, I’ll come back with you. You’re very persuasive,’ Kenny said and he climbed on to the motorcycle behind her. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘look at the trouble you get into when I’m not around.’
Kiyomi elbowed him, hard, and then opened the throttle, pulling out of the car park so fast that Kenny had to fling his arms round her waist to keep from falling off.
‘Oww!’ Kiyomi said, squirming away from the huge servant’s grip as he applied antiseptic to the cut on her head.
‘Oyama used to do sumo,’ Harashima said, as if this explained everything. He was pacing the floor in front of the screen covering the TV monitors.
‘So who were those guys, the ones who jumped you in the car park?’ Kenny said, putting down his hot chocolate and pinching his nose to stifle a yawn.
Kiyomi’s face twisted in disgust. ‘Bosozoku,’ she said. ‘A biker gang.’ She glanced up at her father, whose face remained impassive. ‘I got into a race with one of them a while back, beat him easily. He said I’d cheated and wanted my bike as payment. Fat chance.’
Kenny nodded. ‘So they were waiting for you?’
‘Yeah, bunch of cowards. I could have handled them if they hadn’t snuck up on me.’ Kiyomi touched her scalp, felt the broken skin and pulled her hair back down to cover it. ‘Feels like a taiko drummer inside my head, but I’ll live,’ she said. ‘You did pretty well, though. Where’d you learn to fight like that?’
Kenny turned away. ‘You don’t spend seven years getting shunted from one boarding school to another without learning how to defend yourself.’ He was unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice. ‘Plus, my grandad taught me a few moves last summer.’
Kiyomi tilted her head to appraise him. ‘You were lucky. You have poor technique, no balance. If those guys could fight properly, you’d be mincemeat.’
Oyama cleared the medical kit from the table, bowed and left.
Kenny