“Talk to me about Wanyudo, Bakeneko, Nekomata, Kasha and Shinigami.”
He gave him a stern frown. “I’m sure you know they’re yokai.”
“Yeah. And?”
Yuichi shrugged. “They’re different kinds of yokai? Not sure what you’re asking me.”
Luke jerked his chin toward the paper in her hands. “We’re looking at soul-eaters. Since those yokai are more your wheelhouse than mine, I wanted to ask you about them. Would any of them be interested in murdering a college student and taking her soul?”
Yuichi screwed up his face as he considered that. “The Wanyudo are nasty bastards. Not only do they steal souls, they eat children and torture their parents with it. When they appear, it’s always a male face in the center of a burning wheel. Legends say that if you see them you’ll die and they take your soul. Or if you have a child, they’ll kill the child instead and take the kid’s soul.”
Sorcha felt sick to her stomach. “Seriously?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Not my favorite yokai. They’re so bad, my mom didn’t even use them to threaten me with when I was a kid. She was too afraid of them to mention their name.”
“What about the others?” Luke asked.
“Bakeneko, Nekomata, and Kasha are roughly the same. They’re all kaibyo…cat yokai. Bakeneko and Nekomata are often confused with each other and they overlap. They have a lot of shared abilities. Biggest difference is a Bakeneko has one tail and a Nekomata has two. There are some tales that they have taken souls, but they usually prey on those who deserve a bad end. It’s said that they take the souls to make sure evil doesn’t return to this life through reincarnation or any other means. Kasha are also Bakeneko, but they usually eat a corpse, not a soul. There might be something written about souls with them, but I’d have to research it. Like I said, they normally eat corpses.”
Luke nodded. “Thanks. That helps. I can mark them off the list.” He took the paper from Sorcha’s hand and used his finger to strike through the names as he’d already done with the vampires. Another impressive power. “Any other soul-eaters in Japan?”
Yuichi considered it for a few seconds. “You mentioned the Shinigami, but they don’t take souls. While they’re attracted to places of violent death, they go there to possess someone…usually someone evil so that they can cause more evil.” He smirked at Sorcha. “They are definitely something my mom used to scare me with as a kid and it’s why she hates my job. She’s terrified I might come in contact with one and cause it to stalk and kill me because I’m evil for not calling my mother more often.”
She could relate. “My mom loved the boogeyman. That and the invisible venomous snakes under my bed she swore would bite me if I left it after bedtime. ’Course that ended after I peed in my bed because I was too afraid to go to the bathroom. Wish I’d done that sooner.”
They laughed.
She looked at Luke. “What did your mom scare you with?”
He shrugged. “That she’d tear my throat out and eat my heart if I disobeyed her.”
Not what she was expecting to hear. “No, she didn’t!”
“Hellhound. They do that to misbehaving pups. If you can’t listen, you don’t deserve to live. Why would I doubt her? Not to mention, she could always say she’d let the devil have me…and in my childhood that really meant something.”
“Well…” Yuichi cleared his throat. “I’ll never complain about my mom threatening me with yokai again. I’d much rather have those fears than yours.” He looked back at Luke. “Anything else I can help with?”
“That’s it. Thanks for narrowing the list.”
“Anytime. If I think of something else, I’ll let you know.” Yuichi left them alone.
Sorcha took the list back from Luke and looked at what was left. Revenants, Wendigo, Draugr, Daimons, Lamia, Ammit the Devourer, Souruita, Valravn, Bubak, Ankou, Cat-sith, Raven Mocker, Slaugh, Boo Hag and witches.
She took another drink of her coffee. “Why did you need to consult Yuichi? Didn’t you know the difference between the yokai?”
“I’m not omniscient. And while I have a general knowledge of many paranormal creatures, I don’t know intricate details about the ones I never interact with. Like you know Germans live in Germany. You might even know some of the language, but chances are you don’t know what their favorite communal brand of beer is or what time they usually sit down for dinner. What kind of Easter traditions they celebrate, etcetera.”
“Point taken. But being who you are, I would have thought you’d have interacted with most of the paranormal creatures.”
“First, not my thing. Again, I was a lazy, useless layabout. In Hell, ambition will get you horribly tortured. So the only ambition I had was to stay in my room as much as possible and remain on my father’s lesser bad side.”
“You mean good side?”
“He doesn’t have a good side. Or even a blind side. You step into his presence and you’re risking a lot.”
Okay, then…
She returned her attention to his list. “Are vampires really a thing?”
