Cherry Blossom Girls 8

by Harmon Cooper

  His eyes narrowed as he spoke to his translator.

  “He can’t believe the spirit gave you that coin. It’s the spirit’s favorite coin,” Mary translated rapid-fire. “The spirit never gives objects like that away, especially his wrathful spirit.”

  “So the shaman can take more spirits?” Ingrid asked.

  “He sure can,” Mary said with a smile. “He is up to three now, and one of the spirits he takes is the spirit of a horse.”

  “Let’s save that one for next time,” I said.

  Mary laughed. “Not a bad idea. The horse spirit is absolutely mental.”

  Chapter Six: Sukhbaatar Square

  I was so happy I could cry.

  (Of course, tough alpha-types like myself only shed tears when we lifted too many weights, and only because pumping all that iron had somehow shaken free a repressed childhood memory.)

  All kidding aside, I was glad as hell when the next morning came around. I had received an email from Dorian.

  Thank Jeebus.

  “We’re so out of here,” I told Ingrid and Stella, coming into the room that they were sharing with Mary.

  I’d had my choice of sleeping in the shaman’s bedroom, or sleeping in the living room, and after his little performance last night, I definitely chose the living room.

  I didn’t want to meet his goddamn horse spirit, and I actually said that aloud last night, only realizing later how salacious it sounded.

  Or at least it felt like it should sound salacious because horses have giant cocks.

  Never mind.

  Quiet, Writer Gideon, I thought to myself in Grace’s voice.

  “What?” Stella asked, her hair a mess.

  I cleared my throat, canceling my inner monologue. “Tighten up that purty Dutch braid, milady, our besties are ready to get us!”

  “Please translate,” Stella said aloud.

  “I got nothing,” Ingrid told Mary.

  Both CBGs had slept on the floor, on makeshift beds made of fluffy comforters and pillows. Mary was on the actual bed, already laughing when she saw the stupid look on my face.

  “Thanks for letting me use your laptop, by the way,” I told her, now holding it under my arm.

  “What did your friend say?”

  “They said that they are in Nagasaki,” I glanced at the message again, “and that she is ready to get us.”

  “Boo. I was just starting to enjoy Mongolia,” Ingrid said.

  “Maybe you could come back,” Mary told her.

  “Yes, maybe,” I said. “But listen, kiddos, I hate to rush everyone, but we sort of have a mission to get back to.”

  “Let’s throw the milk first,” Mary said as she got out of bed. She was wearing an oversized Avatar t-shirt and pink leggings, which didn’t go so well with the thick leather Mongolian sandals she slipped into at her door.

  “Follow me.”

  She led Yours Truly to the kitchen, where she got a small shot glass and filled it with milk.

  “Where am I supposed to throw it?” I asked her.

  “Off the balcony,” she said. “And you need to do it three times.”

  “Okay, I can do that,” I told her.

  I left the kitchen with a shot glass full of milk and she called back to me, “Aren’t you going to bring the milk?”

  “Good call,” I told her as I went back for the cardboard milk carton.

  I followed Mary out onto the balcony, which was protected by a thick wall of glass. There was a handle to open one of the panes, which she did, allowing a cold morning breeze in.

  “Okay, throw it.”

  I tossed the milk out the window, wondering for a moment if I was going to piss any passersby off with milk from the sky. But we were pretty high up, so if anything, they could chalk it up to a bird crapping on them.

  After two more shot glasses, I returned to the living room to find Ingrid and Stella ready to go.

  “I will email Dorian,” I said, going for the laptop. “What’s the name of the square again?”

  “Don’t you want to eat breakfast first?” Mary asked.

  “Normally, I would say yes, but we have some very important stuff we need to do. Thanks so much for your hospitality, Mary, and tell your uncle that we appreciate him letting us stay here, and the advice his, um, spirit gave us. Wait, we may need him to take a ride to the square.”

  “We can just catch a taxi,” she said. “It isn’t very far, just a couple kilometers.”

  “Awesome, and the name of the square?”

  “Sukhbaatar Square.”

  It wasn’t thirty minutes later that we came to a stop at a busy intersection, a policeman in white gloves directing traffic. I didn’t know what it was with Asia having an actual person direct traffic, but it seemed like both a shitty job and a waste of manpower.

  Boy, was Ulaanbaatar congested.

  While we were technically driving on a four-lane road, other drivers treated it as if it were eight. There were cars coming in from everywhere, a few bicycles, motorcycles, buses, vehicles from the countryside, as well as storage trucks equipped with advertisements.

  The Mongolians loved their advertisements, and all the models they used on billboards and banners hanging from buildings looked cooler than any model I had yet to see in Asia. Whether they were wearing sunglasses and going for a hip-hop style, or doing something traditional, there was something very photogenic about the people from Central Asia, something that set them apart from the other regions.

  At least, that’s the vibe I got on the short drive to the square.

  “What’s that building called?” Ingrid asked, pointing at a glistening building across from the square.

  “That’s Blue Sky Tower,” said Mary. “It’s supposed to be shaped like the mast of a giant ship.”

  “What’s that have to do with the blue sky?” I asked her.

  She laughed. “Actually, I don’t know. You sure have a lot of questions.”

  “It’s my superpower.”

  “I thought you were a mimic, no?”

  “That too.”

  The cabdriver, who spoke very little English, pulled up to the side of the curb across from the square. We got out, and Mary led us to a crosswalk, where we waited with a large crowd of people to make our way to the other side.

  To the right of the square was an old opera house, definitely some Soviet architecture; at the end of the square, facing away from the street, was the Mongolian Capitol with a large statue of Genghis Khan in front of it; and to our immediate left was a string of old buildings that reminded me of some of the antediluvian structures around the New Haven green.

  We followed Mary toward the towering statue of Genghis Khan.

  There was also a statue in the middle of the square of Sukhbaatar himself, the man credited with bringing Russians to Mongolia. He was seated on a horse, the front two hooves coming up. Benches all around the statue were already filled with people.

  A guy wearing a tweed newsboy cap approached and showed us pictures that he’d drawn, asking if we would like to buy any.

  As I started to tell him no, I saw a purple flash at the front of the statue, my heart leaping into my chest as Dorian and Grace appeared.

  I reached them in a matter of moments.

  “We need to go,” I told Dorian, who was just about as happy as I’d ever seen her.

  Rather than say anything, she jumped into my arms, wrapping her legs around me, nearly sending the both of us tumbling down the steps.

  “I’m so glad to see you!” she said, Grace too coming at me and hugging both of us. Dorian was wearing her punk rock usual with a scarf, Grace going for a gothic Loli look.

  “Ingrid, Stella,” Grace said, not able to take her white eyes off me.

  “Are we ready to go?” Dorian asked as she got down.

  Mary came running up to us. “Wait, wait,” she said, her cheeks a little red from running. “Are these your friends?”

  “Yes, and we have to go, people are start
ing to watch.”

  Grace looked at the Mongolians and tourists who had gathered around us; all of their phones fell from their hands, shattering on the ground.

  Rather than having the intended effect of scaring the crowd, this angered them. A few of the men started to come forward.

  “Okay, Mary, thank you so much for your help, but we really have to go,” Ingrid said hurriedly. “I don’t know if we will ever be back to Mongolia, but if we do come back, we will look you up.”

  “Promise?” she asked.

  “Promise,” said Ingrid.

  “I’ll send you an email,” Mary said. “I still have your email address logged into my computer.”

  “Fine, that’s fine,” I told her.

  You don’t want me to wipe her mind? Grace thought to me.

  No. She was really cool to us, and I don’t think she’ll be able to do anything with the info she has, I thought back.

  As you wish.

  “I need a moment to charge.” Dorian looked around, spotting a tall building not far from the opera house.

  Whoosh!

  The five of us teleported away instantly, appearing on the tall building. The square was now to our right.

  Dorian crouched, a vein pulsing on the side of her head.

  “I can get a phone back in Nagasaki and mess with your settings,” I started to tell her.

  “No, I’ll be fine, it was just long-distance. That can be a little… Well, you know.”

  “I know,” I told her.

  “I’m so happy to see you all,” Grace said, now smiling at the others. “If we hadn’t set up a network to talk to each other, this would have been impossible.”

  “Agreed,” I told her. “But it wasn’t my idea, it was Michelle’s. She’s the one that wanted a phone, which led to all of this.”

  “I’ll be sure to thank her when I see her here in a bit,” she said cheerfully.

  “Michelle is going to be so happy to see us,” Ingrid said. “We should be very careful about how we approach her unless we want her to run one of us over.”

  “She already knows you are coming.” Dorian adjusted the red headband she sometimes wore. “And yes, you should be careful. She ran so quickly around the room after I told her that she almost burned a ring in the flooring.”

  “That’s so Michelle,” Stella said.

  “Totes.”

  She looked at me funny.

  “You’ve never heard that term before?”

  “Not from a man,” she said, sticking her tongue out at me.

  “We are in Nagasaki, right?” Ingrid asked.

  “Yes, but we aren’t staying with the cute old man and his wife any longer,” Dorian said. “We got a hotel thanks to this one.” She pointed her thumb at Grace.

  The psychic shifter shrugged. “Look, I didn’t come to Asia to stay in an Airbnb.”

  “Agreed,” I told the group, “let’s live it up a bit.”

  Chapter Seven: There Goes Our Sunny Morning in Nagasaki

  “GIDEON!!!”

  Michelle pumped her fist in the air before pacing back and forth as slowly she could, trying to contain her excitement.

  “It’s okay to hug me,” I told her, spreading my arms wide, but rather than the young speedster coming into my arms it was Veronique, followed by Chloe, both of them hugging me tightly.

  “Tell us everything,” Veronique said, a slight agitation in her voice.

  “Where did you guys go?” Michelle asked Ingrid, tugging on her arm. “I mean, what country?”

  “Mongolia.”

  “Wow! Where’s that? Near America?”

  “Did you pay attention back at the training facility?” Ingrid asked her.

  “Pay attention to what? The classes they made us take? Sometimes, but…” Michelle looked around the room. “My mind wanders.”

  “I need a shower,” said Stella, “and also, hi, everyone. I’ll forget the fact that no one hugged me.”

  “Do you need a hug?” Michelle asked, launching herself at Stella. Stella laughed as Michelle squeezed her waist tightly.

  “How’s this? Tighter? Dorian, help me!”

  “I’m not hugging it out,” Dorian said, even though she was already approaching Stella, just in case the vector manipulator actually wanted one.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Stella said. “But I do want to take a shower.”

  “Pay attention to me,” Veronique said, draining just a bit of my power.

  By this point, she had led me over to the couch. The television was on in the background, Chloe was sitting on my left.

  “I’m trying to pay attention. Having so many people in our group can be distracting,” I said, biting my lip instantly. I didn’t want to make this sound like we needed any less people; luckily, no one took it like that.

  “Well, what happened?” Chloe asked. “Or do I need to ask Grace to download it from your brains and transmit it out?”

  “I’m always available for that,” Grace said, sitting down on the armrest next to Veronique.

  There was plenty of seating in the spacious hotel that Grace had booked for us. I just so happened to be sitting on a loveseat, but I also saw a longer couch directly across from the TV, and another loveseat.

  Quite the pad.

  Behind the television was a gray wall, which had two large windows on either side of the TV that provided water views. There was an open concept kitchen space as well, the hotel more of an extended stay type of place than a one-night affair. Ingrid and Michelle went to the kitchen area and took some drinks from the fridge, heading off into one of the bedrooms.

  There are four bedrooms, just in case you are wondering, Grace thought to me.

  This caused my hair to stand up on the back of my neck for a moment. I forgot what it was like to have you in my head, I finally thought back.

  You were only gone for two days.

  Yeah, but I had no access to the outside world, so it felt longer. You’d be surprised what two days feels like without having any access.

  Sometimes it seems like the Internet has rotted everyone’s brains.

  I don’t disagree, but I wouldn’t be a best-selling writer without the Internet, so I consider it a necessary evil.

  Veronique elbowed me. “Stop thinking to Grace.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “You had a look on your face. Now, what happened, Gideon?”

  “Right, what happened…” I took a deep breath in. “I will keep this as short as possible because I know that I can be a little long-winded at times.”

  “A little?” Veronique asked.

  “Basically, we were banished to Mongolia by Bae, and Angel was with us.”

  “He was?” Chloe asked.

  “We didn’t see him back there,” Dorian started to say.

  “Yes, he was with us,” I said. “We actually parted ways yesterday. And he wasn’t the only one. The woman who assaulted us at the police station was there too,” I told Grace. “Her name is Arianna Lord, in case you forgot, and she was invisible until we took her prisoner.”

  “And I am guessing she went with Angel?” Veronique asked. “Or is she here right now?” She glanced around, trying to be playful and failing.

  “Um, yeah, that’s right. It was between us taking her and Angel taking her, and…” I swallowed hard. “I let him take her.”

  “Good.” Dorian sat down on the longer couch. She turned to me after curling her knees to her chest. “It’s not easy keeping a prisoner.”

  “Tell me about it,” said Chloe.

  “Sure, after Gideon finishes,” Dorian said, laughing.

  I remembered what it was like to have Dorian as our prisoner, how she had woken up in Austin, thirsty, and how I had stupidly brought her a glass of water. For a while, I had even thought that she had betrayed us, until she appeared in my jail cell and rescued me.

  How long ago was that?

  It seemed like a century had passed since we were at that dusty hotel in Austi
n, Texas, off Congress Avenue. How could such a complex time suddenly feel simple to me?

  I stuck my hand in my pocket, feeling the coin that the shaman had given me.

  What a life, what a fucking life.

  “Anyway,” I said, “I thought it was better to let Angel take her. And now I’m sort of regretting it.”

  Veronique rolled her eyes. “Why would you regret something like that?”

  “Because who knows what Angel will do with her.”

  “She’s our enemy,” Chloe reminded me.

  “She is, but at least three people in this room right now were once our enemies.”

  “Do you think you could have turned her?” Dorian asked.

  “I don’t know. She did try to seduce me too, which was weird as hell.”

  “And you resisted, right?” Veronique asked.

  “Of course I resisted. I’m still here, aren’t I? If I’d let her out, she would have beaten the hell out of me, possibly killing me. Well, at least that’s the vibe I was getting when I looked into her mind.”

  “Better Angel’s problem than ours,” Grace said, focusing on the television remote. Using her telekinetic power, she began changing the station. There was a kid’s show, then a nature show, then a baseball game, then…

  “Go back to that one,” I said, looking at the TV.

  Grace went back to the previous station, a news channel, where we saw a Japanese newscaster speaking frantically. A video played over her shoulder of an attack of some sorts. Unfortunately, all the information was in Japanese.

  “Someone hand me their phone.”

  “Here,” Veronique said, taking her phone out of her back pocket.

  I went to GoogleFace and began doing a little sleuthing, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

  It didn’t take me very long to find live updates from the attack on the Imperial Palace, and when I read the next words, I knew that we needed to act now.

  “The Aum Shinrikyo have taken the Emperor and his wife hostage,” I announced to the group.

  “The who?” Chloe asked.

  “Ah,” Grace said, her eyes suddenly white. “That’s the name of the terrorist group that we took down in Shibuya.”