Beyond Beyond was often a very busy place for so small a town, with people regularly coming from all over the region. Apart from their school, which served the whole county, the store was the only “busy” place in sleepy Craiger.
Dana loved the store, even though a lot of it was too far in the post-hippie new age lifestyle for her. But the people here were nice. Their focus was on positive energy, peace, and advancement of the soul, and it was hard to find fault with that.
They sat for a while and dissected the entire freaky occurrence at school, trying to make some sense of it. Melissa had Dana go through every detail.
“Crucified like Jesus?” she said when Dana was finished. “That is so sick.”
“You have no idea. And she said something about something called the Red Age.”
“Red Age?” mused Melissa. “What’s that?”
“I have no idea. I don’t have any idea what any of this means.”
Dana noticed that several times during their talk Melissa had touched the front of her blouse, right over where the small cross she wore under her clothes would be. Dana wondered if Melissa was aware that she did that a lot. It was a habit both of the sisters had developed ever since Mom had given them the crosses. Melissa wore a string of crystals over her blouse, each in a different pastel shade, each supposedly representing some kind of spiritual power. Dana wondered which mattered more to her sister, the cross or those crystals.
Behind them the register went cha-ching again. It seemed to break the spell of the moment. There was a blackboard on an easel just inside the side door to announce what classes were being offered that day. Right now there was only one, and Dana squinted to read it.
“Psychic Emergence…?”
“Oh, sure,” said Melissa, nodding. “That’s supposed to be great. It’s taught by that guy Sunlight.”
Dana raised an eyebrow. “Sunlight? His name is Sunlight?”
“That’s what he calls himself. Haven’t you see him, Dana? He’s so mysterious and gorgeous. He’s Corinda’s business partner and owns half of this place, though she runs it. Oh my God, there he is.”
A man came out of the room and paused to talk with two other arriving students, both girls from FSK High.
“Isn’t he awesome?” asked Melissa dreamily.
Dana had to admit that her sister had a point. The man called Sunlight was tall and thin with very dark hair and pale gray eyes. Dana thought that he looked like a poet, like Percy Shelley or Lord Byron. Full, sensual lips and an aristocratic and intellectual air about him. At first glance she thought he was forty, but she corrected herself. He was probably around thirty, but there was a sense of age and authority in the way he stood and moved. The students coming out of the class all smiled at him and nodded to him, and generally seemed dazed just to be in his presence.
“Isn’t he amazing?” enthused Melissa.
Dana nodded to a second, slightly shorter man who came and stood with Sunlight for a moment. Younger, maybe eighteen, with thick black hair and dark eyes. Where Sunlight was thin like a dancer, the younger man was muscular, like a gymnast.
“Who’s that?” asked Dana. Melissa must have caught something in Dana’s voice, because she gave her sister a knowing grin.
“Oh, him? That’s just Angelo. He helps with some of the classes here. I see him around school sometimes. I think he works part-time there, too. Why?”
“He’s kind of cute.”
“Not compared to Sunlight.”
“Oh,” mused Dana, “I don’t know about that.”
“Ah,” said a voice, “my two favorite red queens. Sorry I’ve been keeping you waiting.”
They turned and looked up to see the co-owner standing there. The sight of her always lifted Dana’s heart. Corinda Howell was an overgrown waif, with masses of wavy blond hair atop a willowy body that was nearly six feet tall. There were streaks and swirls of brown and red in that mane, though Dana could never tell if it was natural or a good dye job. There were thin braids mixed haphazardly in with the natural waves, and the looser strands were so fine that even the faint breeze when customers entered the shop made them lift and flow. She had a pale face and a splash of sun freckles, green eyes that she emphasized with too much eyeliner, and thin lips she tried to make larger by painting outside the lines. Her legs were long, and she wore lots of ankle and wrist bracelets. Dangling earrings, necklaces, and occasionally a stick-on glitter bindi. She was not particularly pretty but was very earthy, and a lot of men who came to Beyond Beyond seemed enormously attracted to her. Corinda wore swirling peasant skirts and blouses that were either batik, tie-dyed, or silk-screened with images of Hindu gods. Today was a batik day, and her colors were muted golds and plum and brown.
“Hey,” said Melissa.
“Hey yourself. So, what can I get you? Wait—let me see if I remember. Coffee with triple half-and-half for you, Melissa, and some of my special tea for little sister.”
“Right,” said Melissa. “And muffins. There must be muffins, or it’s curtains for the free world.”
“Be right back,” said Corinda, and she vanished, leaving behind the mingled aromas of good perfume, incense, and vanilla. Melissa stared after her with a kind of starry-eyed adoration, as if Corinda was everything she wished she could be when she was older. Corinda returned almost at once with two cups atop which plates bearing fat muffins were balanced. She set everything down without spilling more than a couple of drops, fetched silverware and napkins, and a bowl in which stood a small pyramid of half-and-half.
Corinda began to turn away, then paused. “So sorry about what happened to your friend. Such a loss. A candle blown out so soon.”
Dana said, “Thanks, but she wasn’t really a friend. I never met her.”
“You don’t have to meet in the flesh to be connected by spirit,” said Corinda. “You knew her.”
“No, not really,” began Dana, and then she stopped as something occurred to her. “Wait, how did you know about what happened to Maisie?”
“You mean how do I know that you spoke with her in your dreams? And she appeared to you today at school?”
Dana gaped at her. “W-what…?”
Corinda straightened and raised one eyebrow, and she held her arms out to indicate everything in Beyond Beyond—the soul attunement crystals, the display cases of tarot cards, the divination bone sets, the bags of rune tiles, the casting sticks, and hundreds of other objects. “I don’t want to sound pompous, girls, but it’s literally my business to know.”
CHAPTER 10
Kakusareta Taiyou Dojo
5:23 P.M.
The knife came in so fast that Dana had no time to think, block, or even move. A flash of silver and then the feel of the cold edge against her throat.
“You’re dead.”
The room was still except for the sound of her own breathing.
She tried to tilt her eyes enough to see the knife under her chin. She saw a tanned hand instead, the knuckles callused and crisscrossed with scars, and followed the arm up to the shoulder and to the face of the Japanese man who held the blade. He was nearly a foot taller than her, with short black hair and piercing eyes that gazed at her with the supreme confidence of a natural predator.
Dana did not move.
The man lowered the knife and stepped back. Dana faced him for a moment, and then bowed. The man returned the bow.
“Dead, dead, dead,” said the person who had made the pronouncement a few seconds ago. Not the knife-man but a woman. Also Japanese, early thirties, slim, dressed in the same white gi as all her students. Only the woman and the knife-man wore black belts. The thirty students wore a variety of colors from white to brown. Dana wore a green belt, though it was new and stiff and hadn’t yet been softened by use. “Dead with your throat cut.”
Dana bowed to the woman, too. “Hai, Sensei.”
The woman gave her a tiny, tolerant smile and bowed by nodding. Not very formal. That was how she was. Sensei Miyu Sato ran her dojo with
some—but not all—of the formal strictness of traditional Japanese martial arts. Everyone wore uniforms, they used a handful of words and phrases—mostly hai for yes, iye for no—but there wasn’t any of the stern, humorless rigidity Dana had experienced in the karate dojo back in San Diego.
Of course, the Kakusareta Taiyou Dojo did not teach karate. The Hidden Sun style of jujutsu was an amalgam art developed by Sensei’s mother, aunts, and a few other women who were living in Japan during and after World War II. She told Dana once that after the war ended and the American occupation began, there was a rash of attacks on Japanese women. Martial arts were outlawed and all the dojos had closed, but women who were skilled fighters and also descendants of ancient samurai families banded together to form Kakusareta Taiyou, which skipped over much of the time-consuming formality of traditional martial arts and focused on actual lifesaving skills. The techniques were built on defense rather than attack.
Miyu waved Dana to the side, and she bowed off the mat, turned, and knelt in her place. Almost all the students in this dojo were girls and young women, with only a few boys mixed in.
“I know you’ve been going through a rough patch,” said Miyu. “No, don’t look surprised. It’s a small town and people talk. None of that matters. None of anything matters when your life is on the line. Muggers and rapists don’t schedule convenient times to attack. That’s not how the world works. Danger is real, and its potential is constant. We must always be prepared.”
“Sensei,” said Dana, “how does that work, though? If Saturo—or a real bad guy, I mean—just jumped out at me, how am I supposed to get myself ready all at once?”
Miyu smiled, as if that was exactly the right question to ask. “Defense is not about being prepared in the moment,” she said as she padded quietly across the tatami mats. “It is about being prepared before the moment.”
Saturo shifted and began pacing with her, eyes focused on his aunt, knife loose in his hand, his body moving with the oiled grace of one of the big hunting cats. Stalking the much smaller Miyu, his face set, unsmiling, intense.
Dana watched them move around the mat, trying to predict how Saturo would attack. And when. Her dad had told her a lot about angles of attack and seizing the opportunity, but most of his lessons were broader, more about military tactics than personal combat.
Suddenly Saturo seemed to blur as he lunged in at a sharp right angle to how he’d been pacing. The blunt aluminum training knife was almost invisible as it slashed in a tight, vicious arc.
He’s really trying to hit her, thought Dana, aghast.
Miyu was right in the path of that blow, caught flat-footed and unprepared.
Except …
Except she suddenly became part of the attack.
It was bizarre. The blade sliced a line through the air at face level, and instead of trying to back away from the attack, Miyu turned into it, pirouetting along the inside of Saturo’s arm so that the circular cut wrapped around her, the blade missing by inches. Then Saturo was staggering, tilting, falling, and there was the after-echo of soft thuds from the flurry of strikes that Miyu delivered to stomach, groin, throat, face. Saturo crashed to the mat, and the knife went flying, landing, bouncing, and finally sliding to a stop four inches from Dana’s knees.
It was all so fast.
Too fast to follow. How many times had Miyu hit him? Six? Eight? More?
Miyu stood wide-legged, her hands low and open, her body now angled toward the fallen attacker, positioned to offer every opportunity to continue the attack while allowing no real or useful opening. Suddenly she moved again, cat quick, and chop-kicked Saturo in the face.
So fast.
And then stillness.
Miyu gave a short, soft exhale and stepped back, her body instantly transitioning from combat to calm.
Saturo rolled onto his knees, then hopped to his feet. He bowed low, and Miyu returned the bow. Only then did Saturo smile. He was completely uninjured, because the blows had lightly tagged his denser areas and merely brushed the skin of his face and throat. This was kime, focus, the skill of absolute precision that allowed deadly arts to be practiced at full speed.
And that speed had been awesome.
“If you wait until an attack happens in order to plan a defense,” said Miyu, “then you’ve already been defeated. We train our whole lives to be ready for attack so that in the moment we react correctly, using muscle memory, reflexes, and deeply ingrained repetitive skill development. There was a saying among the samurai that we train ten thousand hours for a single moment that may never happen. Ah, but if it does, then all of that training has been worth it. And … if it doesn’t, then those were hours well spent, because a samurai was not judged on the sharpness of his sword but on the sharpness of his mind.”
“Osu,” said Saturo, using the general term of emphatic agreement.
“Now,” said Miyu as she walked over to stand in front of Dana, “try it again.”
“Hai, Sensei,” said Dana as she got back to her feet.
“Oh, and this time try not to get your throat cut.”
Dana looked at Saturo, who was still smiling.
“Hai, Sensei,” said Dana weakly.
CHAPTER 11
Craiger, Maryland
5:24 P.M.
The knife came in so fast that he had no time to think, block, or even move. A flash of silver and then the feel of the cold edge against his throat.
“You’re dead.”
The room was still except for the sound of his own breathing.
Then the edge vanished as the knife-man stepped back. The boy turned to run, tripped, fell hard, scrambled up again, and looked for some way out.
But there was no way out.
The room was big and dark. The doors were shut and locked. There were sheets of plywood nailed over all the windows. He was trapped in here. Him, and the tall man with the wicked knife.
“I expected more from you, Todd,” said the angel as he lowered the knife. His voice was soft, kind, mild. “The dawn of the Red Age is at hand, and I thought I could rely on you to help bring it about and make it a reality.”
“Let me out of here.”
The angel suddenly darted forward and the tip of the knife licked out, fast and bright as lightning. Todd cried out and tried to block, tried to punch. Failed at both because the other man was simply too fast. Hideously fast. Todd felt a burn on his cheek and touched it, then cried out again as his fingers came away slick with blood.
“I won’t tell,” he insisted, hating how his voice broke in the middle, showing the weakness that he’d never known lived inside him. His body was strong, muscular, made tough by years of jujutsu at the dojo and wrestling in school, but none of that had prepared him for this.
“You can’t lie to me, Todd. I am in your mind. I am in your thoughts, your prayers, your hopes and dreams. I know that you told the girl about me.”
“And you freaking killed her.”
“You told her my secrets. You told her, and therefore her blood is marked against your soul.” The angel began pacing again, going in the opposite direction this time.
“You killed her,” repeated Todd. Blood ran hot down his cheek and along the side of his throat.
“No, you killed her. With a whisper to her, you doomed that girl to death in this world and damnation in the next,” said the man. “The guilt is yours, and that’s such a pity, such a waste. You brought us to this moment.”
“You’re a maniac.”
“Tell me who else you told, Todd. Tell me who else knows about the Red Age.”
“I—I—”
“It’s okay. Tell me and then you will be allowed to ascend.”
“They’ll—they’ll catch you.… They’ll stop you…”
The angel bent close so that Todd could feel his breath, smell it. It was a reek like spoiled meat. A carnivore’s breath. Ugly and filled with awful promises.
“Stop me? How?” he asked softly. “I am not something that can b
e stopped. Surely you, of all people, know that. You’ve seen what I can do. You’ve looked into my mind and witnessed what I will become. You know that there is nothing and no one that can stop me.”
Todd could feel himself going away. Whatever had happened was already bad. So bad. Maybe a door had been kicked open for him after all. If he could slip through before this got worse.
“Go … to … hell,” he gasped, forcing each word out, paying the cost to make them clear, to fill them with his anger and his hurt.
“No,” said the angel as he raised the knife. “Hell is waiting for you.”
CHAPTER 12
Scully Residence
7:54 P.M.
Gran was asleep when Dana got home.
“Don’t wake her,” said Mom, intercepting Dana outside Gran’s bedroom. “The doctor was by earlier, and he prescribed something for her to help her sleep.”
Mom wore a smile, but Dana could see how thin it was. Like paper held in place by small pieces of tape.
Melissa came out of the kitchen with a bowl of grapes.
“Hey,” she said with a huge mouthful.
“Hey,” said Dana, and plucked a single fat grape and ate it.
“Why don’t you girls go upstairs?” suggested Mom. “Let’s keep it quiet down here, okay?”
“Okay,” said Melissa, pulling at Dana’s arm.
Charlie came down the stairs wearing a black plastic bucket on his head, in which he had cut two small eyeholes. He had a black trash bag draped over his shoulders like a cloak and carried a stick that he’d painted Day-Glo orange. He stalked toward them, breathing heavily and audibly, paused for a moment, pointed at Dana, and said, “The Force is strong with this one.”
Then he stalked away, humming an ominous theme song. The sisters watched him go.
Melissa said, “He’s completely bonkers.”
“Uh-huh,” said Dana.