10 The Marker

[Still stuck somewhere out there]

A glowing figure of a fox-like creature with the shadows of its many tails, slowly formed into that of a tall well-dressed man in silvery brocaded outer gown, akin to the old Chinese hanfu.

Dark waist long hair tied up with a hair accessory, Jiuwei towered over Alex. His features were fox-like facial features, a heart-shaped face with a well-defined jaw, sharp chin and high cheekbones. His large reddish eyes delicately curved upwards with a cold, piercing gaze.

Bingo. He smirked to himself as Alex gasped in astonishment. The grand entrance never failed to impress humans, both make and female, of his otherworldly powers.

"I'm Jiuwei," he spoke icily, glancing at Alex with a once over look of nonchalance.

Mixed breed, Jiuwei thought to himself. Why would Kanghui be interested in this young man? Good looking, yes, but not better looking than Jiuwei himself.

"You have a Chinese name?" Alex asked, innocent of Jiuwei's nefarious intentions. "Nine tails?"

"Of course, only the rare few of my kind to be born with multiple tails in China during the rule of the Three Augusts and Five Emperors." he flashed the same feigned warm smile which never failed to disarm his targets or lower their guards. It was easier playing the 'nice one.'

"So your… um… tails are a mutation of some sort?"

Jiuwei's face changed immediately into a frown. Did the human dare call him a mutant?

"I am not a mutation, just a rare breed," he gritted his teeth, struggling to turn the frown into his disarming smile. Patience, Jiuwei told himself, humans are idiots and they think too highly of themselves.

"Ahh. Here I'm talking to the infamous nine-tailed fox. So you influenced Su Daji of Shang dynasty and Tamamo-no-Mae?" Alex continued on, unaware of Yata's grimacing expression and shaking head.

"Yes. I only influence. I'm not those women," Jiuwei replied, still struggling to keep the smile on, as much as he loathed with urgent passion being associated with those weaklings.

If not for their beauty, which melted the horny men too distracted by their gender to associate with danger, there was nothing he could work with.

"So why are you here?" Alex looked at him with suspicion.

Too many questions, Jiuwei glanced at him. Too smart for his own two shoes. The truth might yet hurt more than a lie. This could be fun.

"Don't you want to know why you are here?" Jiuwei countered.

"Well, yeah…"

"You fiddled with a device on a site. It brought you here."

"What site? I don't recall fiddling with anything." Alex scrunched his face up, thinking of whatever Jiuwei could mean.

"Kyushu. That's the only site I can think of."

"I don't know. I only cut myself and everyone made a big fuss about blood on some clay thing," Alex replied.

"It isn't a clay thing and blood activates it."

"But that's an ancient site. Where would they have a technological device? I knew Yamatai Kingdom was primitive, so it makes little sense," Alex said.

"Of course, humans are primitive, but not us. By the way, it isn't the Yamatai Kingdom, anyway. It is far older. Jomon period where Yamatai begun as a settlement." Jiuwei stared at Yata, who was trying to gesture for Alex to stop.

Yata glanced back and stopped in obedience, unwilling to get into trouble with Jiuwei. The old fox could beat his spidery ass to oblivion with one finger, that much Yata knew.

"You said device. It sounds like tech. But it looks like words carved instead of some outer-space tech."

"It is tech. Just not your typical sci-fi movie like Star Wars or Star Trek type made of metal. We don't come from outer space. We come from another dimension - the Japanese call it Kakuriyo, the Chinese call it Yin realm. Others call it Hades or hell, whatever it is. To us, it is a parallel dimension called home."

"So inter dimensional aliens?" Alex mused as he folded his arms. At least, aliens were far better than believing in the supernatural. Then again, don't they probe with some instrument? He cringed for a moment at that gory thought of anal probing which many had claimed.

"We were once living on this Earth. Long story short. Most of us are earthly inhabitants who went through the final evolution," Jiuwei replied. "Some are from elsewhere, but we don't enquire about their origins."

"So why did your tech bring me to this… hidden dimension?"

"Exposure to your DNA in the blood caused the device to mark you. The one who marked you isn't here at the moment but she will come soon…" Jiuwei trailed off and leaned forward to whisper to Alex for the maximum intimidation effect he could think of. "And your marker is not someone whom even I would piss off."

***

[Los Angeles, United States of America, Year: Late December 2019]

A petite arm encircled the sweat stained shoulders of the kneeling man from behind, holding his revealed muscular torso in a tight grip. Part of his broken armour still hanging from his body. Smeared on it was the reddish stain of blood and sweat.

The man gasped aloud at the pressing sensation of a young East-Asian woman's body on his back. A sweet floral fragrance teased his nostrils as his chest rose with great difficulty to fill the much needed air into his oxygen deprived lungs.

An unintentional soft moan escaped from his mouth at the whiff of her sweet breath.

The young woman's silky voice purred in his ear as shivers ran across his spine, "Ahhh fear…"

Goosebumps grew on his clammy skin as beads of cold sweat started forming. His mind was swimming against the rough sea of confusion. Between his legs, his deepest, darkest primal desires were rising.

In a moment of clarity, he snapped out of the hypnotic state as his fingers attempted to clasp at her arm. Too late. A glint of metal reflected in his eyes before he could break free.

A big mistake. He, a boss of an influential crime syndicate, had let down his guard against this petite whore. Try Asian, they said. Submissive and will do anything to please the man. The young woman looked so demure with those unusual amber eyes.

Fuck the lust. Who was this bitch? A hundred and one questions kept popping into his head. What did she want? Was she an assassin sent by his major rival?

"Time to join your parents, wife, daughter and three sons…," she cooed in an icy tone.

His eyes widened in horror at her words as a sharp pain tore across his throat, spraying his own crimson blood all over the walls of his room.

His eyelids fluttered as the pressure from her grip loosened, rendering his body free to crumble on the earthen floor of his bedroom. Images of his life flashed past him.

The young woman, around twenty years old, looked down at him. Her amber eyes deepened into a cold, pitch black void resembled an endless abyss of despair.

In his last moments, he could see her blood stained foot rising and then stepping on his cheek and rolling his head with her sole in amusement as the bells on her ankle bangle jingled in a light melodious crystalline tune.

Despite his desperate attempts to say something, only gurgling and blood flowed from his mouth. His eyes fixated on the dagger in her hand, blood dripping from its serrated edged brownish stained blade.

A whitish wisp drained from the man's body into a carved red precious stone on the dagger's hilt with a snake entwined around it emitting a soft glow, warming her hands as her heightened sensation of euphoria faded into oblivion.

Two appreciative claps from behind caught her attention.

"You really turned up," a pretentious soft voice of the applauder spoke. "Did you really need to trash the whole place and massacre everyone in the mansion? Not to mention feed off his soul."

A smile blossomed on her face as she licked the blood off the serrated edge of the blade without a care in the world and inspected her marble smooth fingers tips.

"This is a warning, Morningstar," another disembodied voice spoke on her behalf.

Morningstar recognised it as the voice of the old primeval Arahabaki.

"Or what, Kanghui?" Morningstar materialised in front of her and addressed her, while ignoring Arahabaki. Some said that she was easier to negotiate with.

No words. She didn't even acknowledge him with a look. Morningstar stared at her stony expression. Unlike the European continent, which allowed his faction to gain a foothold against the old Primevals like Odin and Zeus, the Asian continent was another kettle of fish despite several attempts over the centuries. The old Asian Primeval beings had no tolerance of interference in the age old societal structure, be it East or South Asia.

On the East Asian side, situations often turned volatile in the past. Crucifixion, enslavement and castrations of his human settlers were frequent. The beings who controlled the Asian side did not stop at the brutality, often massacring their despatched human settlers en masse in the past few centuries. Morningstar and his faction tried to infiltrate their territories to shift the influence on the Asian humans for the last few centuries, only to fail.

The South Asian side was a tad more complicated - they associated his influence with the old South Asian Primeval beings. No matter how Morningstar tried, they twisted his influence by guile and turned back their populace back to the old ways.

He wondered how the others survived, then realised that they kept to their own with a superficial courtesy of never interfering with the greater population.

"You are free to do whatever you want on your side," Arahabaki said. "We don't send preachers down your way, so keep yours away from ours. Each to their own herd."

"You are way past your time…"

Before he could finish his words, an invisible force sent Morningstar's physical body crashing into the wall of the mansion, causing it to crumble like dust.

Maybe Arahabaki was not way past his time. Morningstar scowled as he picked himself up from the rubble. He cussed as he recalled they still worshipped Arahabaki in the older Shinto shrines in the North of Japan.

"I wouldn't talk back to Arahabaki, if I were you," Kanghui broke her silence

. "Your history isn't very long and at most we would consider you an Ancient, not a Primeval, like us."