Her mother’s eyes went wide, and she stepped back behind Williams.
The black man nodded in understanding. “A very strong Talent if you two can cooperate in that manner.”
“Let me see Leo. Give him water. Clothes. If you allow that, I’ll give up the katana and tell you where Simon is.” Getting Simon off Yamauchi was going to be their problem.
She’d run out of time writing out scenarios. It became apparent that if she didn’t meet her mother here, Leo would die in the cage before she could arrange another halfway successful meeting. She only knew that she saved Leo and got the huge machine that was Shiva lurching after Sato.
After that, she had no idea what would happen next.
38
Cages
The stronghold turned out to be just down the road at the rebuilt Izushi castle. When they’d rebuilt it, they’d dug several levels of additional basements to make a secret base where strangers coming and going would be unnoticed.
In the end, they demanded that she give up the katana before seeing Leo. Apparently scenario number fourteen—where she used Atsumori to cut open the cage—was too obvious.
They had a small shrine built into one of the underground rooms. Atsumori appeared beside her as she ducked through the low door.
“It’s tiny.” She hated it. There were no windows, and once the door closed, it would be coffin dark.
“Relativily speaking, it’s huge.” Atsumori eyed the room. “A nice place to dream, so to speak.”
Her disbelief must have shown on her face, because he smiled gently at her.
“You cannot see it with my eyes. The comforts of a kami are different than a human.”
There was a wide shelf in the back of the small room. She laid the katana on the shelf, feeling like she was doing something horribly wrong.
“This is how it needs to be,” Atsumori whispered. “I learned the hard way that the mind is the greatest weapon. Being clever wins the war—else I would have never died on that beach.”
Nikki stood with fingers pressed to the polished wood of the sheath, not wanting to break contact with it. The katana had made her feel strong and capable. Without the sword, she’d go back to just Nikki, the girl who kept finding herself locked up and helpless. The girl who can’t even speak the language . . .
A squeak of dismay slipped out as she realized she wasn’t going to understand any of the conversations going on about what Shiva should do about the goddess.
“What is it?” Williams asked.
“I don’t speak Japanese.”
Williams breathed out something that might have been a laugh, and then amazed her by kindly saying, “We’ll just stick to English then.”
The other guard shifted impatiently and said something in Japanese. The words tumbled past her with no meaning—Atsumori had left her already.
Completely alone in her mother’s stronghold, she let them lead her away from Atsumori. She could only pray that they were taking her to Leo and that she was there in time.
The thing in the cage wasn’t wholly human. It looked like fever dream of a cat or a mad painter’s attempt at a silver tiger, its fur a wild mottling of white and black. It cringed as she looked at it, backing into the shadows. She glanced around the room and recognized it. This was the room in Leo’s scene. That was the cage that they were holding Leo captive in. It was Leo’s watch on the creature’s wrist.
The thing in the cage was Leo.
No wonder he didn’t like the name Scary Cat Dude.
This was what Miriam had sensed about him in the subway. Why he had frightened Miriam so much in a sea of people.
“You’re spectacularly not coping,” she whispered to herself and forced herself to see Leo crouching on all fours, panting raggedly with dehydration. It made it easy, then, to hurry to the edge of the cage. “Leo, I brought you some water.”
He was trying to not look at her.
Williams gave the bottles of water only a cursory glance before turning his full attention to the clothes she’d brought for Leo. She pushed the bottles through the bars, trying not to show how anxious she felt.
“I’m sorry, I only brought two. I know that’s probably not enough, but I was afraid they would take them off me if they weren’t in my bag. I brought you some clothes, too, but you didn’t have any spare shoes. We got Simon away from the goddess . . .”
He had hold of her hands before she even realized he was moving. It was definitely Leo’s human eyes gazing at her from the beast face. It seemed unreal—like he was wearing a very good mask. “You saved my father?”
“Yes.” She squeezed his hands. “He’s exhausted, though, and we couldn’t get him to wake up or we would have had him call in and explain everything to—to—whoever.”
“But he’s safe?”
“He’s safe. Drink.”
He let go of her hand to fumble with one of the bottles of water. The two-liter bottle was large and unwieldy, still slick with condensation. His fingers ended with great black claws that clicked on the plastic as he tried to carefully work the cap. She took the other bottle, twisted off the lid and pushed it into his hands.
“Drink it all. I’m not sure what comes next, but it feels like the shit is going to hit the fan. The creepy music has started. The monsters are coming. You need to be ready.”
The guards steered her through a maze of hallways. She clung to her backpack, afraid that they would take it from her. She had come prepared for all-out war, but she’d be left nearly defenseless if they took everything off her. The need to write was growing like a wild fire. The fear that they would take away all of her paper and pens only threw fuel onto that blaze. She had minutes before the need became utterly uncontrollable. The scene with her grandmother haunted her. How quickly would she be reduced to that?
She closed her eyes even as she walked. Seashore. Palm trees. The roar of the ocean. The white foam of the surf on the sand. Leo, out of the cage, wind blowing his dark hair.
Williams promised that once Simon had been found and Leo’s innocence established, they both would go free. She’d been inside his head. She knew that he would keep any promise he made, one way or another. He was a man who kept his sanity by clinging to a code of honor. His word was his form of pen and paper. If Sato and her mother weren’t in the equation, she’d have nothing to fear.
The guard pulled her to a stop and said something in Japanese.
Beyond the solid door was a windowless room that seemed like a closet, minus any shelves. The floor was tatami and was big enough for her to lie down. A single light bulb housed in a sturdy cage lit the cell. In the very back, there was a miniature sink and toilet, so it was a true proper cell.
The guard gave her a nudge forward.
She stepped into the tiny room, glad that she wasn’t claustrophobic on top of all her other instabilities.
All that vanished as the guard tugged at her backpack.
“No!” She clung tighter to the bag. “Don’t take it. I need it.”
He said something that she didn’t understand.
Her mind blanked on how to say “no” so she just howled it in English. “No! Kudasai!”
The guard jerked the bag free and slammed the door in her face.
“Baka!” She shouted one of the few Japanese curse words she knew. She crumbled down to the floor, cursing in English. Keeping the backpack had been a long shot but she had hoped that they wouldn’t take it off her. “Damn it.”
She needed to write, and she needed to write now. She fumbled with the front of her jeans and pulled out the folded sheets of paper that she had tucked into her panties. She had dissembled a pen down to just the ink cylinder and steel point. She had tucked it into her bra so it lay against the wire support. She had purchased the pen and hidden it and the paper just prior to tracking down her mother. An old pen would have leaked but this one still had a plastic glob over the tip.
She was trembling as she frantically pried the plastic off. So little paper
. She had to be careful or she’d use it all up.
Leo was shaking with anger and disgust. Under the label of the water bottle was Simon’s Shiva key card. She’d given him all he needed to save himself. Leo gripped the card, hating himself.
All his life he’d wallowed in pity that he’d been captured by Shiva and forced to be an operative. Listening to Williams explain Nikki’s deal with the cold bitch of her mother, Leo realized now how lucky he’d been. Simon had been a good caring father who’d protected him at every step. Since Simon had freed him in Hilo when he was seven, he’d never again been tied up, caged, or restricted in any way. From what he’d gathered in the last few hours, Nikki had spent most of her life imprisoned by her mother. It was her mother that she’d been hiding from, protecting herself with her wall of secrecy.
Nikki had given up her freedom for him. She had seen his beast form and hadn’t been afraid. And they had locked her up. The one person who had less than him had given up everything for him.
He wasn’t going to let them keep her locked up. Williams might promise her freedom, but the man didn’t have the authority to keep Nikki’s mother from dragging her back to the United States, drugging her senseless, and locking her up in a mental hospital. Leo needed to free her and find some way to hide her and protect her from her mother.
He forced himself to be human again.
He dressed, shivering from the change. He drank the second bottle of water that she’d brought him. When he was ready, he swiped the key through the cage’s lock. With a quiet click, it opened.
He slipped out of the cell and crept barefoot to the door out of the detention area.
Beyond the access door was a freight elevator to the surface so larger creatures could be muscled easily to the detention cages. It was standard Shiva layout. The prisoner cells for humans would be up a level.
There was a great hollow space where the access door to the prisoner cells should stand. Around the edges of the ceiling were strands of silk from a jorgumo yokai. The giant spiderlike monster was deadly by itself, but it couldn’t have taken down the door.
Sato had been here.
Leo hurried down the hall, fear churning in his stomach. The spider-whore was a man-eater.
Around the next corner was a huge splash of blood and flesh like someone had exploded outward with massive force. There wasn’t enough to identify the person but he recognized the scent and the high heels. It had been Nikki’s mother.
Around every corner were signs of Sato’s passing. He’d gone straight to the temporary cells.
The cell door had been ripped from its hinges. Sheets of paper littered the ground with her careful tiny handwriting, splattered with blood. Leo stared at them in grief and dismay . . .
Nikki stared in horror at what she had written. Not only had she written it, she’d written it in ink. There was no erasing it. She started to frantically cross out the words when she realized it was useless. She had no power to change what was rushing toward her—she was trapped in the closet, and everything was already happening.
She flipped the page and wrote what any sane person would at that moment.
Leo, I love you. I wish I’d kissed you and held you tight and kept you from leaving me at the hotel. I wish I had kept you safe.
She heard the soft scurry of claws, and a shiver went down her spine. It was coming for her now. The door rattled, and she whimpered in fear. She wanted to be brave. The door rattled again as sharp claws dug at the edges, and then suddenly it jerked open as it was torn from its hinges. She hated that she screamed as the creature reached for her, but she knew it was going to hurt her. There would be blood. Maybe a lot of it.
39
Churn the Dark Waters
Nikki woke in a backseat of a car driving through the night. An echo of a headache and a parched mouth told her that she’d been given Ambien. The streetlights flashed overhead in a steady beat while the wheels whistled and whined on the grooved highway.
Sitting in the passenger side was a beautiful Japanese woman who looked somehow familiar. As her elaborate haircut shifted unnaturally, Nikki realized that there were gleaming black spiders hidden within her hair. Nikki recoiled and the woman laughed, clicking her teeth, and it was the sound that Nikki remembered first and then her face. The monstrously large spider had worn this face as it loomed over her, eyes staring into hers hungrily.
Nikki clawed at the handle to the car door and jerked on it. The door didn’t open.
Sato said something in Japanese.
“What? I don’t understand. I don’t speak Japanese.”
Sato breathed out a laugh. “Of course, the giant’s child comes to our land and we are the ones that must speak its language. So it is—the victor stands triumphant at all levels.”
She frowned, confused, and then realized that he was referring to the idea that the United States was the sleeping giant awakened when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping Iwanaga Hime? You know what will happen. This is your homeland. This will be like Hiroshima.”
“Exactly. The Americans wiped the slate clean and built what they wanted on that scorched earth. I learned that lesson well. The best way to remake the world is to completely level the old one first.”
“But—but your family died.”
“Yes. Humans are like cherry blossoms. They bloom, they shower you with their splendor, and then they are gone, only to come again. I have lived for nearly two hundred years. I have lost track of all the flowers that withered at my feet. And that is the fault of Amaterasu’s grandson, Ninigi no Mikoto.”
It took her a moment to grasp that he was talking about the sun goddess and her grandson who had founded the imperial bloodline. “Huh?”
“Amaterasu’s grandson. Ninigi, was to marry Iwanaga Hime, the eldest daughter of Ohoyamatsumi. On the way to meet his bride, though, he happened onto her younger sister, Konohana Sakuya Hime, on the seashore and they fell in love. He refused Iwanaga Hime and took Konohana Sakuya Hime as his wife.”
“I don’t understand.”
Sato laughed bitterly. “Of course not. It’s all just random sounds to you. Iwanaga Hime means the Rock Princess and Konohana Sakuya Hime means Flowering Trees Princess. If Ninigi had married Iwa Naga, humans would have been enduring and long lasting as stones. But he had chosen the goddess of blossoms, so human lives are short and fleeting as cherry blossoms.”
The car was stopped at a cliff edge. The earth fell away in a sharp line. Clouds gathered below in a rumbled blanket of gray.
Sato got out of the car, saying something quietly in Japanese.
The spider woman climbed out of the front and yanked open Nikki’s door.
Nikki yipped in fear, scrambled into the front seat and out Sato’s door. The spider woman scrambled over the car on all fours and leapt at her, tackling Nikki to the ground.
Nikki screamed and flailed but the woman pinned her easily.
“If you fight her, she’ll hurt you,” Sato said calmly. “She knows I can heal you from near death.”
Nikki forced herself to stay still despite the fear that was choking her. A lifetime of dealing with orderlies made it possible. The spider was just like a gorilla orderly, leering at her like she was prime beef.
A second car pulled up, headlights cutting through the predawn gloom. It was the big black luxury sedan that the goddess had been using.
Slender feral men got out and stood guard as a girl wearing the golden kimono of the goddess drifted out of the backseat. While the woman they had seen the night they rescued Simon had seemed slightly older than Nikki, this girl seemed only about thirteen. She was a tiny little thing lost within the folds of the kimono. Blood was streaming down from her eyes.
The girl drifted toward the cliff edge. The hem of the golden kimono trailing behind her made it painfully obvious that the girl was a foot too short for the garment and that she wasn’t moving under her own power. It was possible that the girl wasn’t even fully
conscious.
She floated off the cliff and paused there, a dozen feet out and hundreds of feet up. Nikki whimpered slightly. What was Iwanaga planning? Nikki didn’t want to see this girl die.
The girl jerked like a puppet whose string been pulled and then crumbled into a heap. As if the girl had been a skin that she had shed, a tall woman in a shimmering kimono of white and gold stood in her place. She looked mournfully down at the girl’s body and then walked on. The girl lay there a moment and then dropped silently downwards into the clouds below.
No other women got out of the car. Where was Umeko? Had Iwanaga burned through all her shrine maidens? Was that why Sato kidnapped Nikki—Iwanaga would need a vessel after they remade the world? Or would they just throw her off the edge of the world to make sure she wasn’t revealing his plans to Shiva?
The spider woman hoisted Nikki up and carried her to the edge of the cliff. Only as they neared the edge did Nikki see that the air was distorted beyond the crumbling face. They stepped off, and she locked down on a scream. She could see down through the wispy clouds to the shrine maiden’s body like a small broken doll on the rocks below.
And then there was a bridge under them of gleaming white as if sunlight had become solid.
The need to write had been nibbling at the edges of her awareness, pushed aside by her fear. As the spider monster carried her up the steep arch of the bridge, heading for where Sato stood waiting with the jeweled spear, the need surged up, drowning her. She writhed against her will in the spider’s hold, her hands fluttering madly, seeking anything to write. She knew, though, that she didn’t want the relief that a pen and paper would provide. All that was left of the story was death and destruction. All her characters—every single of them a real living person—Miriam and Leo and Pixii and Simon—were about to die in a massive tsunami. Riding the madness of her OCD, her mind was filling with the images of bodies thrashing in dark waves.