A Kitsune's Tale Read online

  A Kitsune’s Tale

  The Roppongi Enchanters - A Short Story

  Phil Gabriel

  New Meridian International, Inc.

  Introduction

  A KITSUNE’S TALE

  Phil Gabriel

  To those who walk the streets of Tokyo, this most modern of cities, but still hear the whisper of spirits and feel the touch of magic

  Text copyright © 2017 Phil Gabriel

  Published by -

  New Meridian International, Inc.

  All Rights Reserved

  Created with Vellum

  Acknowledgments

  Fantastic Cover Design by:

  Cover Crafters

  Cover Art by - Runno

  Introduction

  Dear Reader,

  This short story is the second in the Tokyo Supernatural world. It features the introduction of Kitty-Sue, who plays a large part in later stories.

  Other stories in the series are also available on Amazon:

  The first novel in the series has recently been released. You can find it here:

  Mages in Manhattan - A Tokyo Supernatural Novel

  Another novel is in the works and will soon be published.

  You can keep up with new releases in this series on the Tokyo Supernatural website.

  Enjoy!

  Phil Gabriel

  1

  After disposing of my breakfast trash, I left the Roppongi Starbucks and headed toward Mori Park. There was a trio of two-story tall escalators that went up from the Starbucks on the lower level to the open air park. At this time of day, with crowds flowing to the park, the middle and right-hand escalators were going up. Later in the evening the flow of people and the escalator directions would reverse.

  As I walked I was making plans for my next creation. There were some ideas I wanted to try out that would lend themselves to a larger talisman. I desperately missed the ring I had given Akiko and needed to replace the power source very soon. I mulled over the pros and cons of diamond versus sapphire components.

  I took the middle escalator, casually looking over the people on my left who were riding the downward escalator. A tingle and the scent of magic warned me just before I sighted her. A kitsune, a fox spirit, was riding down. She was dressed in a tight-fitting black sleeveless blouse and a black leather miniskirt.

  With catlike grace (and she would hate to hear herself described that way), she placed her left hand on the handrail and leaped from the downward moving escalator to land lithely two steps ahead and facing me on the upward moving escalator. The momentary flash of her panties distracted me until I felt the thump of her landing. Unlike purely spiritual creatures like my ghost student, kitsune have a physical presence in our world. No one seemed to notice her acrobatics, either through some type of “you-don’t-see-me” spell or through natural Japanese composure. She was clad in a glamour that obscured her inhuman aspects. I shifted focus and could see her true form. Eye level with her lower set of breasts, I raised my gaze to meet her eyes as she spoke. She was beautiful in a way that promised endless nights of pleasure. I was instantly on my guard; the most powerful spells are not woven with magic.

  “Hello, Scott. I have a message for you.”

  “I have email, you know. Can’t you just send it?” I was wary. Kitsune are like the crazy friend we all have at one point. They’re a lot of fun and can do—and make you do—amazing things, but seem to walk away untouched when the consequences come around. They enjoy chaos and fun.

  She tilted her head, which showed the tip of one pointed ear poking through her black hair. My shifted focus showed what she looked like. Much the same, except her hair was red, and she sported a single tail, the white tip of which was just visible above her right shoulder. Her eyes, in both her projected illusion and reality, had the vertical oval pupils of a fox. Don’t ever call them “cat-eyes,” I reminded myself.

  “No, this message has to be delivered personally,” she said.

  She hopped down one step and leaned in closer, and I immediately picked up the musky scent of her, combined with perfume. Her tail waved seductively above her shoulder. My rising erection, as well as the hint of ozone, warned me she was trying to use a pheromone-based love spell. I immediately snorted to clear the pheromones from my nose.

  With my left index finger, I traced a design on the handrail where she had left a palmprint, my finger leaving a glowing trail until a glyph was left behind. I reached deep into my dragonskin satchel and brought out a lovely diamond-studded collar. It had once graced the neck of a djinn.

  “A love spell? On me? This reversal spell will make you my pet. Kitsune are hard to tame, but you left yourself open. You will wear this collar and sleep at the foot of my bed, waiting for me to call you.” I wouldn’t have tried this on an older, multiple-tailed kitsune; they have a lot more experience and power.

  Her eyes widened at the sign of the glyph and the collar; she backed up one step. The tingle of magic vanished, her tail drooped, and her pheromones cut off. My erection subsided. I was finally able to breathe deeply.

  I lifted my hand from the handrail, bringing the glowing glyph to the collar. I whispered a word to fix the spell, which caused the glyph to flow into the collar. I then put the collar back in my bag. The kitsune watched warily until the collar was out of sight, obviously hoping she would never see it again.

  We arrived at the top of the escalator, and she hopped backward gracefully and continued back-stepping in front of me as we walked toward the park. Remarkable agility, considering her miniskirt and high-heeled boots.

  “What’s your name and clan, Kitsune?” If she gave me her name, it would also give me some measure of power over her.

  “You can call me Kitsune-sama,” she replied.

  “More games?” I asked. “I don’t know much about status in your world, but I wouldn’t give you an honorific. You’re much younger than me. How about I just call you Kitty-Sue?” Not naming her clan was also a snub, as if I didn’t deserve to know.

  By now, we were near one of the many benches in the small park. Kitty-Sue sat in the middle of the bench and motioned me to sit at her left. Although I felt no trap there, I sat on her right side. At our back was a pathway running beside a man-made pool. Above the pool was a series of small billboards, each of which had water flowing down to the pool, fed by a hidden pump.

  “So, what’s the message that’s so important that a kitsune had to deliver it?” I asked.

  “You have angered Jorōgumo, taking prey from her web. She says that freeing the ghost of Akiko was a grave insult, as she had plans for her.”

  Jorōgumo is an old spirit, a strange amalgamation of a 400-year-old spider, whore, and goddess. Depending on which aspect is dominant, she can save lives, trap men in her webs to drain body and spirit, or destroy. I don’t mess with the older gods—their motives and decisions make the flakiest kitsune appear well-reasoned. Still, helping Akiko had been a good thing, and I didn’t regret the decision.

  “Plans?” I asked. “What plans? This city is full of other spirits Jorōgumo could take. What was so special about her?”

  “It is not for me to question Jorōgumo; I just deliver the message.”

  “OK, message received,” I said. “Tell Jorōgumo I will meet with her tomorrow at a place of her choosing.” I figured I could be on the next Metro to Narita airport and be five thousand miles away by tomorrow. Looking on the bright side, I missed the margherita pizza that made Naples famous. There was also a phoenix nest in the Castel’del Ovo where I could steal an egg for my next object of power. I stood up to leave.

  “She wants to meet you now; she is an impatient goddess.” Kitty-Sue looked down at her boots. “Her anger is to be avoided.”

  �
�Got it,” I replied. “Don’t piss off the goddess. I always try to stay on the good side of the gods.

  “I think you were sent to do more than deliver a message. You were supposed to deliver me in a nicely enslaved package,” I said. “What will Jorōgumo do if you don’t deliver as promised?”

  “You’re here, as promised. Jorōgumo will have to enslave you herself. I can’t be bothered to take care of every little detail,” she said with a sniff of derision.

  “Besides,” she continued, fluffing her hair, “I think you’re cute.”

  Ever since Kitty-Sue had mentioned Jorōgumo, I had been scanning the area for signs of her manifestation. She usually appeared near waterfalls, sometimes as a beautiful woman with red eyes, sometimes as a large spider. I guess the mechanically pumped fountain could technically be considered a waterfall, but I saw no spiders near us.

  Catching my look under our bench, Kitty-Sue laughed and said, “Oh, Jorōgumo is much too large to hide under this bench. She’s over there.” Kitty-Sue pointed to the center of the park.

  For a moment, all I could see was a strangely shaped post, some decoration for the park, through the bustling crowd. But as my eyes moved up, and up, I finally realized she was pointing at a sculpture of a giant spider called Maman. As I gazed at the monster, her four pairs of eyes blinked open with a metallic clank. Her eyes were blood red; two dinner-plate-sized eyes set below three teacup-sized pairs.

  Unlike the Fae, Jorōgumo had no trouble with the cold iron of the sculpture. She had taken over the spider sculpture as her personal shintai. I silently cursed the French artist who had created the sculpture.

  I flashed back to the time I had dated the spirit that resided in the Statue of Liberty. I had placed a warding circle around her home so no other spirits could move in while we went to see the original Ghostbusters. She had been excited about her cameo. That date had ended well, but I doubted this date would end on a good note.

  Jorōgumo’s voice snapped me back to the present. It came from the region of her thorax, probably produced by her spiracles, giving it a breathy, musical quality.

  “Hello, Scott, welcome to my parlor,” she said. The sound of her voice vibrated through my body, causing inner organs to tingle.

  “Very punny. Nice to meet you. Hey, can we reschedule? I have this thing tonight…” My voice trailed off as her voice turned to a haunting celestial melody that perfectly accompanied her singing. The music and her singing intensified. Oh crap, one of her aspects was as a siren who attracted men to their deaths with music. I reached into my bag and pulled out a set of earbud headphones and stuck them into my ears. The rocking beat of Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” drove away the sound of her music. Bob wasn’t Orpheus, but would do in an emergency.

  Unfortunately, the sound seeped around my earbuds. I felt my eyes glaze over and my foot start tapping to accompany her music. I stood to stop the tapping. A glance to my left showed Kitty-Sue standing several feet away. Smart girl.

  I needed more noise to overcome the effects of Jorōgumo’s song. I popped out the earbuds and whispered an augmentation spell. The earbuds morphed into large speakers, which I placed on the ground, facing Jorōgumo. Cranking up the decibels, I chose a song from my playlist; the raw sound finally dispelled her entrancement.

  “What’s that noise? It’s terrible,” she exclaimed.

  “I made a mix tape. ‘Music to piss off goddesses.’”

  A glance to my left showed that Kitty-Sue was unaffected by the spider’s music.

  Jorōgumo decided to change tactics, as her music wasn’t cutting it. Her enormous steel form shimmered slightly, then morphed into a gorgeous Japanese woman.

  In her hands was a biwa, a lute-like instrument. She was wearing a beautiful shift of purest silk (naturally), embroidered at hem and neckline with suspiciously red thread. Over her shoulder was a strap that held a silk bag at her side. The bag appeared to contain dozens of ovoid objects, like large eggs. Her form shrank down until she was my size, but I remained wary. In the magical world, size has very little to do with power.

  Around us, the crowd continued to mill about, each pursuing their own path, oblivious to the spectacle taking place in front of them. The men would hesitate pon hearing her music but continue on their way after a moment’s pause. The song and spell were not aimed at them, so they escaped. As Jorōgumo settled into her new form, the bustling crowd grew fainter and fainter, fading away until we stood in an empty Mori Park. Jorōgumo had pulled us into her world, where she was much stronger.

  In her world, Mori Park was empty. It looked exactly the same, but examining the light poles surrounding us, I noted the presence of webbed-up bundles. Former enemies of Jorōgumo? Late-night snacks? The remains of idiots who tried to defeat her?

  Not being an idiot, I attempted a step forward, preparatory to running away, and found that the legs of my pants had been webbed in place. A gesture called up fire, which burned the webs away, as well as charring my pants. Damn, I liked those pants.

  Her eyes glowed a deeper red, indicating she was getting angrier. She tilted her head down and spat out three bubbles of a white substance, connected by a thread. The bubbles quickly ballooned to fist size. Looking up, she spun the balls above her head, using both hands. The balls made a whistling sound as they cut through the air.

  Bolo, I thought just before she let loose. I accelerated time for myself, slowing down the rest of the world, and leaped to my right. The bolo sailed under me, exploding against the bench behind me. The web strands from the burst bolo globes stretched out hungrily.

  “Spider-slut, didn’t anyone ever tell you that customers prefer girls who swallow?”

  It took a second for the insult to process, but it had an effect, as evidenced by the brightening of the red glow in her eyes. Jorōgumo is also known as the “Spider-Whore” in Japanese folklore, but even she didn’t like my insults. I was hoping that the madder she got, the worse she would fight.

  Reaching out to one of the many tendrils of magic floating through the park, I drew in more energy for a fire spell. Not quite topped off, I reached for another tendril. Only to have it blocked by a web strand that shot from her left hand. Crap, if she could cut me off from ambient magic, I would quickly run out of juice. A reach with my left hand was similarly blocked. Even at my accelerated speed, she was faster than me.

  She shot a few more strands my way, which I easily evaded. After a moment, I realized she was building a web around us, a web that would soon block my escape. This was the point where I would usually run away as fast as possible, but she could easily outrace me, turning an escape into suicide. I had to keep facing her to see where she would next throw her web.

  Adding to the urgency, hundreds of spider minions were busily weaving in a large circle around us. Given enough time, we would be encircled in a web globe impossible to escape.

  A quick mental inventory of my magical assets left me with few good options. My ring was gone, given as a spirit home to my ghost student, Akiko, and the contents of my dragonskin bag were pretty much useless against an entity as powerful as Jorōgumo. A moment’s consideration of using the collar that had terrified Kitty Sue on Jorōgumo met with the cold realization that the collar only worked on human or half-human creatures. There had to be a core of mammalian essence to let it work. Jorōgumo was pure spider; her female form was a shapeshifter’s illusion. Using the collar on her would be like trying to leash a tiger with a cobweb. My mundane sword would be useless against her carapace, and stabbing her eyes would only bring me closer to her jaws.

  A quick look around showed that one nearby bundle contained the remains of a fae knight, his magical sword gripped in his lifeless hand.

  Jorōgumo noted my glance and said with a malevolent smile, “Would you like to use that sword against me?”

  My mind screamed “trap,” so I just answered, “It didn’t do that bastard any good. Anyway, I prefer longer ranged weapons.”

  I reached into my sa
tchel and brought out a .45 M1911A1 Automatic. I wasn’t a great shot (why use slug throwers when you have magic?), but needed to attack her from a distance. I whispered a spell as I fired off three shots. Aided by my spell, all three shots hit her in the forehead. Each shot plinked to the ground, one by one, as they failed to penetrate. It did serve to piss her off even more. Another three shots to her torso were similarly ineffective. The last shot I aimed at her mouth, hoping that her insides were easier to damage than her outsides. I was disappointed to see her chew up and spit out the final round. I added upgrading my ammo to my “to-do” list if I survived.

  Dropping the .45 back into the satchel, I pivoted and ran towards my right, hoping to slip through one of the rapidly shrinking holes in her web. She foresaw my plan and cut me off with more webs that jetted from her wrists. I briefly wondered if she had learned this trick from the Spider-Man movies. The only hole left was about seven feet up. I could easily make the jump, but at high speed, against a fast opponent, it would be suicide. Hanging in the air, even for a second, would give her abundant time to web me up. Better to stick close to the ground.

  “Kitty-Sue,” I said, “much as I like your company, you better get out of here. Don’t think my skinny ass will be enough for this hungry bitch.”

  A glance to my left showed that Kitty-Sue had disappeared through one of the rapidly disappearing holes in the web. She could find her way back to reality once away from Jorōgumo. Strangely, I was glad she had gotten away. Jorōgumo tended to treat all as prey, including those considered her allies.

  The bag itself was a potent weapon. I briefly considered entrapping Jorōgumo in its multidimensional folds. However, that would leave me with a deadly predator inside the bag. The next time I reached inside would invite a poisonous bite from a pissed-off goddess. What I needed was a giant can of Raid or a flamethrower.