Supernatural 10 - Rite of Passage (34 page)

“Brothers,” Ryan said softly.

“What?” Dalton asked.

“You’re my brothers.”

“He is correct,” a deep voice said.

A tall man in a dark suit was leaning against one of the landscaping trees decorating the perimeter of the building. Ryan hadn’t noticed him until that moment, but when he stepped forward, out of the shadows, Ryan saw the horns sprouting from his head.

Those are growing in us!
he realized.

“My three sons,” their father said, “by three different
mothers. I am Tora.”

Ryan stepped forward, fists clenched. “You—You raped my mother!”

“That is a human concern,” Tora said. “The time has come for you to rise above your humanity. The process has already begun—I’m sure you have each noticed your physical changes. You must, however, voluntarily complete the final rite of passage to become oni.”

“What if we don’t want to become oni?” Dalton asked.

“Speak for yourself,” Jesse said belligerently.

“You have no choice,” Tora said. “If you fail to complete the rite, you will die stillborn, half human, half oni. It is an agonizing end.” He paused to let that sink in. “Instead, I offer you power above human sheep, to achieve your rightful destiny.”

“We’d be as powerful as you?” Ryan asked. Then he could channel the rage inside him and focus on killing the man— this oni—who had killed his mother, even if her death was the reason Ryan existed.

“One day, yes,” Tora assured him. “But our time is short and first I would introduce you to the woman who will become my mate and your oni mother, who will replace the frail human mothers you never knew. Tomorrow we will be complete, a family. But tonight, my sons, you will become oni!”

Like hell,
Ryan thought bitterly.

As the oni led them through a door he had jimmied open, Ryan noticed Dalton and Jesse nodding, smiling at each other.

Oh, God,
he thought, appalled,
they actually want this!

* * *

Parked across the street from Hawthorne’s in her mother’s Odyssey, Sumiko had been about to climb out of the minivan after Ryan stopped in front of the department store when Dalton Rourke joined him, followed by Jesse Trumball in what must have been a stolen SUV. Instead, she snapped a few photos with her smartphone, but couldn’t get a clear shot of the man who spoke to them.

On seeing Ryan, Dalton and Jesse together, her first thought was,
Those three have nothing in common.

The only time Sumiko had seen them relatively close together was during the bomb threat evacuation at school. Other than that, as far as she knew, they were complete strangers. But seeing them standing next to each other, she realized that not only were they the same age, they were also about the same height and build. A suspicion began to form.

She opened her laptop, scrolled through pictures in her blog and checked photos from scanned yearbooks. Certain physical features were very similar. They had the same brow, nose and chin. Ryan dyed his hair blue, but it was naturally red. Jesse’s too, judging by old photos of him before he shaved his head. Switching on her portable Wi-Fi hotspot, Sumiko looked at social media profiles, ran searches on their names and found out they were born within the same week. She knew Ryan’s mother and Dalton’s mother had both died in childbirth.

That’s a weird coincidence,
she thought.
What about Jesse?

She called her friend Brennan Kennedy, who worked part-time at the Laurel Hill Library, and asked her to look up old newspaper records of their birth week. Twenty minutes
later, Brennan called back and confirmed what Sumiko suspected—Jesse’s mother had also died in childbirth. Sumiko had entertained the idea that they were triplets born of one mother then separated at birth, but there had been three mothers.

So, what if they were secretly related as half-brothers? That means one man is their father. That man they just met outside Hawthorne’s?

She brought up her blog dashboard and typed a headline: “What do these three have in common?” She positioned three photos of Ryan, Jesse and Dalton, side by side, which displayed their physical similarities.

If that man is Ryan’s father, he’s a criminal.

A criminal meeting his sons in an abandoned building. Sumiko had a bad feeling Ryan was involved in something dangerous. She wondered if it was somehow related to the fatal accidents happening all over town. How could she protect Ryan without betraying him?

She posted the blog entry.

Then she remembered the investigator who had contacted her through her blog and hadn’t scoffed at her supernatural theories about the weirdness in town. He might listen without suggesting an extended stay in the loony bin. He might even be taken seriously if he reported it to the cops. She had started to type an email to him when she noticed movement across the street.

Jesse Trumball, hunched over in a gray hoodie with his hands stuffed in the pockets, walked briskly to the red Durango. Before he climbed in, he looked back and forth across the parking lot, causing Sumiko to duck down out
of sight.

Though it was dusk and the light was fading, shadows losing their definition against the encroaching darkness, she could have sworn she saw blood smeared on his chin.

Is this some kind of fight club?

Jesse drove the Durango in a loop and parked beside the door. Sumiko watched as the tall man climbed into the passenger seat, Dalton opened the rear door behind him, and Ryan, his head bowed, walked around the back of the SUV and climbed into the seat behind Jesse. A moment later, the red SUV darted out of the lot and drove away from the depressed commercial district.

After a few seconds, Sumiko started the Odyssey, made a U-turn and followed.

Ryan, what the hell have you gotten yourself into?

Thirty

Ryan sat behind Jesse with his elbows on his knees and his face in his hands, trying to contain the roaring in his skull. It felt like ten thousand bees buzzed under his skin. It was hard to sit still, to try to think, to even remember who he was. For the sake of revenge—to avenge his dead mother—he had allowed himself to taste the oni’s blood. Now it burned inside him, driving away rational thought and replacing it with bloodlust.

When he’d entered Hawthorne’s dark interior with the others, his only goal had been to find a way to kill the stranger who could somehow speak into Ryan’s mind and had compelled him to show up on his doorstep. But he wasn’t a man, it wasn’t human. It was an oni, whatever that meant, some kind of mythical being that was apparently not so mythical after all.

“Cool car, Trumball,” Dalton said. “Stolen?”

“Borrowed,” Jesse said. “My neighbor’s on vacation. I let myself into his house and grabbed the keys. He won’t miss it until Monday.”

Ryan tried to hold onto his identity—his old identity, not the monstrous hybrid he had become—and not think about the promise of violence and the overnight transformation to come. He tried to remember what had happened in Hawthorne’s so he could fight the driving urge to kill …

After the oni led them toward the back of the department store, Ryan saw the disheveled woman tied to one of the support columns on the lower level of the store. The woman looked battered and hopeless, almost unconscious on her feet. Ryan wondered if his mother had gone through a similar ordeal. When Ryan stepped forward, intending to untie the woman, the oni caught his shoulder in one massive hand and squeezed hard. It smiled and said, “She is no concern of yours, young one.”

“But she’s—”

“Though it would grieve me,” Tora said evenly, applying more pressure until Ryan winced, “I would rip your spine from your body.”

Then the oni lined the three of them up in a row and explained the ritual of blood needed to complete their transformation from hybrid to oni. “A taste of my blood will imbue you with strength beyond that of humankind,” the oni said while pacing in front of them, rubbing his bare hands together while his cane dangled from his belt. “Thus fortified, you will go to a human gathering to proclaim
your dominance with a slaughter. You will have weapons to aid you, but at least one killing blow must come from an oni trait you now possess, your nascent fangs or your hardened fingernails. When your skin runs red with the blood of your victims, your body will begin the final stage of transformation. With the dawn, you three will be reborn.”

“And if—if we don’t do this by dawn?” Ryan asked.

“Your body will reject your dual nature. It will literally tear itself apart,” Tora explained. “Your muscles will constrict until your bones snap. One by one your organs will shut down. You will experience excruciating seizures and your brain will hemorrhage. But, with my guidance, I am confident none of you will fail.”

The oni chanted in a guttural language and then, with one inhuman fingernail, sliced open his opposite forearm.

“With a taste of my blood you will experience some of my power and invulnerability,” the oni continued, “enough to sustain you through the violence of the ritual. Succeed, and with the dawn, the power will rise from within you.”

One by one, he smeared his blood across their lips. First Jesse, then Dalton, and finally Ryan tasted oni blood—and it was like a contact high. Ryan felt a surge of power, like he could run through a brick wall and feel no pain.

As disgusted as he had been by the idea of tasting the oni’s blood, Ryan wanted the power it offered. Anything to give him an edge against the inhuman creature that had violated his mother. But at the moment the blood touched his tongue, Ryan had to admit to himself that he craved the power the way a hungry man craves food. His physical
transformation had already started and with it his temper had run wild, almost beyond his control, a powder keg ready to explode. Now he
wanted
to explode.

But I won’t kill,
he told himself.
I won’t become a monster.

Ryan shook his head and tried to focus on his current surrounding, in the Durango. He couldn’t change what had happened in Hawthorne’s, but he could keep the promise to himself. He had to stay alert for any opportunity to fight back.

“We need a gathering?” Dalton asked. “Lots of people in a confined space?”

“Yes,” the oni said. “Do you have something in mind?”

“Damn straight,” Dalton said, grinning. “The Cheshire Theater.”

Jesse laughed for some reason. “I know it well.”

Ryan looked back and forth between them and tried not to stare at the oni, worried that his hatred for the monster would be visible in his eyes.

The oni opened the duffel bag at his feet and handed them each a long curved knife. “Keep these concealed until we are inside,” he said. “Then kill as many as you can. But remember to save at least one for your fangs or claws.”

“Almost there,” Jesse said.

Ryan took his knife and stared at the gleaming blade. He imagined plunging the blade into somebody and trembled with excitement. He squeezed his eyes shut.

Don’t become the monster. Don’t … become the monster …

Trailing the red Durango, Sumiko slowed when Jesse parked the SUV on the right side of the street. When all four of them
got out of the Durango and walked down the sidewalk, she had to make a decision. Ryan would never hurt her, but that left three extremely large males with violent backgrounds, while she was one slender teenaged girl who was too nosy for her own good. She stayed in the Odyssey and drove past them, raising her right hand and forearm in front of her face in case they looked as she passed.

As she crossed the intersection, she glanced in the rearview mirror and was surprised when they walked into the Cheshire Theater. According to the marquee,
Fiddler on the Roof
was the featured play, two shows daily.

Oh, Ryan, no!
She made an illegal U-turn and drove back to the theater, parking on the opposite side of the street.

Please tell me you’re not helping them rob the place.

She darted across four lanes of traffic, eliciting a strained chorus of car horns.

When her hand fell on the handle of one of the ornate wooden doors of the theater, she paused, uncertain of her next course of action. She could talk Ryan out of criminal stupidity, but not those other three goons. Maybe she could drag Ryan out and to hell with—

Screams erupted from inside.

Sumiko jumped back from the doors as if she’d been shocked.

Too late. God, I’m too late …

Continuing to back away, she patted her hip pockets, remembered she had left her phone on the passenger seat of the Odyssey, and ran back across four lanes of traffic as the light turned yellow. A driver intent on running the yellow
light had to stomp on his brakes to avoid hitting her. The car screeched, its bumper striking her leg, almost knocking her down. Laying on his horn, the driver spewed curses out of his window in between questioning her mental capacity. She barely heard him as she jumped in the Odyssey and dialed 911.

The cell reception was horrible. Static overwhelmed the operator’s voice, swallowing whole words. Sumiko shouted, “Robbery at the Cheshire Theater! Hurry!”