Akiro hung up the phone. Then he opened up the lower

right-hand desk drawer and took out his gun, a stainless steel . 357

Magnum revolver with a three-inch barrel nestled in a black nylon,

belt clip holster. He had not worn it in years. He took a deep

breath, clipped the holster to his belt inside his jacket, and left the

office.

“Damn, they were so close, ” said Wyrdrune with an angry

grimace.

They were sitting in Fugisawa’s small apartment near the

Shibuya Station. None of them had eaten for hours, so they had

stopped at Makudonarudo for some take out. The old and

well-established fast-food restaurant chain, better know in the

West as McDonald’s, served exactly the same cuisine as the

American original, with a few idiosyncratic Japanese additions,

such as iced coffee and orange-flavored milkshakes. It seemed a

little strange to be sitting cross-legged at a low table, on the woven

tatami mats in Fugisawa’s elegantly traditional Japanese

apartment, eating hamburgers and french fries, but after what

they had experienced in the past few hours, a Big Mac was

refreshingly familiar.

“She’s building up to something, ” Modred said. “She’s consumed

a great deal of life energy and grown very powerful. And she knows

we’re closing in. She won’t be going back to that underground

hideout again.”

“Unless she figures it’s the last place we would look for her, ” said

Kira.

“It’s possible, ” Modred replied, “but I don’t think she’ll take that

chance. She isn’t stupid. Killing that chauffeur was a calculated act.

She didn’t want to leave any witnesses. And that limousine can

easily be traced to us. I still think we should have disposed of it.”

“I told you, that would have been a mistake, ” Fugisawa said. “It

would have turned up missing and then they would have come

looking for you to find out why. This way, you can claim the car

was hijacked while you were visiting the Paradise Club. And I could

say that I was with you, taking the report, when the murders

occurred. That gives you all an alibi.”