Blood Ninja
Page 33
She felt the delicate bones of a Tokugawa heir through his parchment skin, and felt the coldness of his dead body. She saw a living Tokugawa before her, many times over the better of her cruel, honorless father. She hardened herself. From now on, this was her care, this her responsibility.
Taro felt Hiro’s muscles and tendons straining.
Taro looked to his side. Hana’s tears were drying on her cheeks. Little Kawabata walked beside her, helping her to support the weight of the younger brother he would never know. It seemed to him amazing that this boy who had tried to kill him in the rice store on the mountain was now walking down the steps of Lord Oda’s tower with him, having helped him to get his revenge, and to survive.
He looked down. His blood dried on his friend’s robe.
Together they walked down the stairs as hard as stone, as hard as the path they still had to travel, and into the light.
None of them saw the drops of blood that fell from Taro’s terrible wound and laid a vivid trail on the stone.
None of them saw the drop that fell, as if ordained to do so by some cruel god, whispering on the air to distort its flow, into Oda’s open mouth.
And certainly none of them saw when, a moment later, the eyelids of that broken man opened wide, and he took in a rush of breath, the air whistling as it passed through shattered bones. The onyx eyes fixed on his enemies’ departing backs with a gimlet stare, as if to sear their semblances onto his mind, where they would burn in the lord’s hateful memory until he could exact his payment.
Lord Oda’s fury was like the waters of a dam following heavy rain. He felt it pressing against his eyes, his hands, seeking to burst forth. He felt it in the coils of his entrails, which protruded slick and glistening from his slit stomach, though already the wound was beginning, painfully, to close itself up.
His own daughter had betrayed him, had proven to be weak.
Yet the monks teach that Zen brings balance to those who are patient. A girl he didn’t know, a relative only in spirit and not in blood—Yukiko, she had called herself—had warned him of the Tokugawa boy’s presence in his tower. For that he would reward her.
Yes. He had lost a daughter, but an opportunity to redress his injury had arisen. It was perfect. He would make Yukiko his own, replacing that other who even as she walked into the sunlight was dead to him.
It would be beautiful: a child to kill a child. She would destroy Taro. He would train her. He would make her his tame sword saint, broken into doing his every bidding.
But first he had to live.
Fortunately, Oda knew much of the vampires, and that presented a way to mend his broken form, to staunch the life that even now was flowing out of him. There was risk, too. He weighed it in his mind.
You will be a monster.
On the other side of the scales, a shorter thought, more simple—
Otherwise you will die.
He decided.
He rolled himself over, gasping at the astonishing pain from his broken limbs, and began to lick up the drops of Taro’s blood. A thought crossed his mind.
Yukiko. I will make her vampire too. A vampire girl to kill a vampire boy.
As he worked, and his bones began slowly to knit, a person standing in that small, twisting space might have observed that his canines began to lengthen, and gleam.
But no one did.
CHAPTER 77
Kenji Kira stretched his back. These hills were ruining his poise, his balance, his inner calm. The ground was too steep for the horses, which he and his men had consequently abandoned in the care of villagers in the valley below. As a result the muscles in Kira’s back ached constantly, as did those in his calves and thighs. He cursed this hilly country, in which there was nothing to be found but pine trees, peasants, and rice paddies.
The men, too, were beginning to question his judgment, he was sure of it. Ever since he had killed the girl, that upstart of a ninja who had insulted him, they had grown quieter, more downcast of gaze. This was a matter of degree, of course, for the men always looked down at the ground when Kira was near, in the deferential stance that he preferred—not that he had ever been required to imagine any other stance, since the lower-ranking members of his coterie had always stood thus while in his company. Indeed, he was of such rank that no one apart from Lord Oda had looked at him directly since he was a child, and those who had known him then were all dead, either by time’s slow sword or by Kira’s own katana, which was sharper and had sent almost as many to their deaths.
He knew the men were asking themselves if he had lost his eye, were questioning the long search in the mountains that had led so far to nothing.
Yet he had been so sure. Several nights before, while his men had been carousing at an inn, Kira had made the company of a seasoned old soldier, now turned private guard, who had recently left the employ of Lord Oda. Or, more precisely, had been asked to leave, his drinking having grown to be an embarrassment. This man told an extraordinary story, of Lord Oda’s daughter, whom he had been paid to defend, and how one night in the country she had run away.
Kira had had a certain experience in the matter of runaway women. He usually caught them in the end.
Yet Oda no Hana had come back, to everyone’s surprise. It had been assumed, with some sympathy for her plight, that she had been escaping the marriage her father had arranged for her. And more surprising still, she’d come back with an amazing story—of how she had encountered four ronin, and killed them all with their own weapons.
To his surprise, Kira had found himself leaning forward intently as the old man laid out his tale, which Kira had never heard from his employer, Lord Oda, and he suspected the story had been covered up by the girl’s entourage.
Extraordinary—that the clue, the greatest clue, should come from Lord Oda’s daughter herself. Imagine if the story had never come out!
According to the guard, the tale showed that Lady Hana was a true samurai—brave, unhesitating, skilled.
Kira disagreed. He thought it showed she was a liar.
However, it was impossible to prove the question one way or another, since when the guards had gone to the place indicated by Lady Hana, the very next day, there had been no sign of the bodies.
“What could it mean?” asked the guard. “What happened to them?”
Kira smiled, for he knew what it meant. Hana had met the ninja.
The next day, the old guard—remembered by everyone as a friendly individual, garrulous when in his cups, but who wasn’t?—was found in the irrigation canal, his throat slit and his blood nourishing the village’s rice crops. Kira was already on the move. A couple of days later, he heard a strange report about a man who had confronted a rice thief—a day’s ride away, no more—and had been bitten on the neck by this same thief. The people of the villages saw the malign influences of the spirits. Again, Kira saw the ninja.
And then had come the incident at the village of Suto. The ninja girl who had slowed them down by pretending to be Taro. It had taken place so close to where the man was bitten—only a single valley away!
But since then the trail had gone cold.
Now, days later, Kira stretched his back as he pissed into a mountain stream. As usual, the activity was unpleasant. The Portuguese doctor sent by his merchant masters as a gift to Lord Oda had said that there were stones in Kira’s bladder, and Kira was greatly pleased by it. So long had he lived on water and the things that grew in the land, avoiding all flesh, that his very body was becoming stone. It was almost beautiful.
Unfortunately, it was also very painful.
The urine, which had always flowed easily at his command, now trickled out in excruciating drips—sometimes even containing blood. That was when he was able to make it flow out of him at all. It was ironic, since in his professional life Kira had experienced something like the opposite of this phenomenon. He had found, as he got older, as his skills of persuasion increased, that information flowed more easily toward him than ever.
Kira decided that he had probably got as much out as he ever would, and turned to go back to the men. He cursed them. They were younger than he, and more suited to roaming around on mountainsides, chasing after the gakkyo imaginings of some foolish peasant, who had probably only been bitten by a snake or something equally boring.
As he turned—that was when he saw the crumpled-up piece of paper, wedged between two stones by the side of the stream. Kira stooped, picked it up, unfolded it. It began My dear Taro.
Kira grinned, all thoughts of pain and aging suddenly gone. He turned to his men. “Turn around. We’re going to Fuji mountain. The boy’s mother is there.”
CHAPTER 78
Yukiko walked through the tradesmen’s district. It was not a good place to be out at night, all alone.
And that was why she wanted to draw her assassin here. Deliberately she wore a fine silk gown, tabi unsuited to fighting, knuckle-dusters that looked like jewels.
She knew that Tokugawa had sent a ninja after her. She knew because Lord Oda knew, and the things Lord Oda knew were true because they were sealed in blood.
Lord Oda knew also that Kenji Kira was on his way to Fuji mountain, there to seek Taro’s mother. The fool had put this in a pigeon message to the lord, not knowing he was signing his own death warrant.
In a moment—the time it takes to ink the strokes of a name character on a piece of paper—a man’s fate can be sealed. As they had agreed, Lord Oda would give Kira to Yukiko to kill, and she would give him Taro in return.
Once this ninja was dispatched, she would mount horse with a couple of samurai and go meet Kira there. Perhaps she would arrive before he killed Taro’s mother, and that would give her the gift of finding the Buddha ball first, and the greater gift of presenting it to Lord Oda.
Look, how I repay your trust.
Of course, she wouldn’t give it to him. He was still the spider at the center of the web that had trapped the abbess and Heiko.
No, she would hold it out to him, taunt him with it, then use it to kill him. But first, she would kill Kira.
Slowly.
The ninja dropped from the roof on the left side of the street, where Yukiko had until now been listening to his progress. A moment before, he had killed a cat, thinking to preserve what he thought was the silence of his operation. Yukiko thought that was a little cruel.
The ninja crouched, absorbing the impact of the ground, and leaped straight into a kick to Yukiko’s face. She staggered back, though her apparently fearful movement disguised the way she leaned with, and diluted, the force of the kick.
The ninja reached for his short-sword, lowering his eyes for a fraction of a second.
In a moment a man’s fate can be sealed.
A moment later Yukiko looked down on the corpse of the first man she had ever killed. A single tear rolled down her cheek.
But she expected to suffer. It was in the nature of revenge.
Acknowledgments
I’d like to thank Caradoc King, Elinor Cooper, and Louise Lamont at AP Watt for their always excellent editorial feedback and encouragement—the book never would have got off the ground without them. My editor, Alexandra Cooper, also gave brilliantly insightful comments that helped to improve the story immeasurably. Krista Vossen deserves thanks too, for the startlingly awesome and deceptively simple design. In terms of influence: Anyone who has read Shogun by James Clavell cannot fail to see its echoes in this book. Thanks to him for sparking my interest in this subject matter in the first place.
Finally, I’d like to thank Stella Paskins, who, when I jokingly suggested a story about vampire ninjas, said, “Oh, you should write that.” This book would literally not exist without her.
Table of Contents
Cover Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Acknowledgments