Insanity! Shinobu thought. Jumping into an anomaly to fight was madness.
“Your whipsword!” he said to Quin, cracking out his own.
In another moment, the boys were slashing at Shinobu, who’d positioned himself between them and Quin. He was trying to gain her more space to use the athame. If she didn’t succeed quickly, they would be trapped. That thought was terrifying…
And yet he’d been expecting those two boys. The journal had said this location was where the Middle had trained “two youths…of lowly families.” All day, somewhere in the back of his mind, Shinobu had been anticipating an encounter. He’d been hoping to find them. It was necessary. But why is it necessary? he wondered. The answer was as strange as it was simple: the focal had told him it was necessary.
From where he fought, Shinobu could see that Quin was having difficulty reading the athame’s dials in the low light. She hadn’t been able to strike it yet. She stood at his side now, fighting the oncoming blows of four miniature whipswords. Matching weapons for four mismatched boys, two dark, two light—though all had the same vicious style of fighting, the same smell of death hanging about them. The anomaly was behind the boys, casting them into shadow and making it difficult to see details in their movements.
He’d expected two boys, but there were four—and the two new ones were older and larger. All four were attacking them murderously, suicidally throwing themselves into the dark, unmoored time of There. And yet he felt a connection to them.
Stop, he told himself. There is no connection.
The small swords were both an advantage and a disadvantage to the boys—a disadvantage because Shinobu’s whipsword had a much longer reach, but an advantage because the boys could slip inside his blows and drive him back. Shinobu flicked his wrist, making his own whipsword shorter to match theirs.
He heard Quin muttering her time chant, attempting to keep her focus.
Knowledge of self, Shinobu began in his own mind, knowledge of home…But the fight took all of his attention.
“Push forward!” Quin yelled. “Out through the anomaly.”
“I’m trying!”
He blocked blows and turned his shoulders in an attempt to separate two of the boys from the others so he might more easily push them back.
He’d already lost track of how long they’d been fighting. Time was lengthening. His muscles were moving differently.
“The anomaly’s closing!” Quin said beside him. There was desperation in her voice, and he heard her making a heroic effort to throw the boys back. “Push forward!”
“We’re too late,” he told her, his voice disconnected and far away.
The anomaly was out of reach and losing its shape. The light was disappearing. And then it was gone.
In the darkness, he heard Quin strike a vicious blow, and then she clicked on the flashlight she’d taken from Shinobu in the woods. She pointed it into the boys’ faces as she slashed at them again.
“Knowledge of self,” he heard her chanting, “knowledge of home, a clear picture of where I came from— Shinobu, say your chant!”
He was trying.
In the dancing beam of the flashlight, his arms moved automatically to block the two boys fighting him. How was he keeping up with them? His mind slowly turned over this question, and he saw the answer: he wasn’t keeping up with them. He was slowing down, and the boys were slowing down as well.
All except one. The largest of the boys was still fighting properly and much too quickly for Shinobu’s eyes to follow. Quin’s whipsword tore here and there as the flashlight beam bobbed and swung wildly. She was so good at keeping her focus.
“Knowledge of self,” Quin was saying, the words so fast that Shinobu could hardly understand them, “knowledge of home…Shinobu, take him!”
The oldest opponent tumbled into Shinobu. In the moving beam of light, he saw blood across the boy’s chest, and something else—the boy was wearing a focal.
A vibration. Daylight. Shinobu was yanked roughly from behind. He fell and landed on grass and soft earth.
He was breathing, he knew that much. He could feel the hilt of his whipsword in his hand. But the air, the breeze, the clouds in the sky, everything was moving too fast.
Quin was standing in the grass nearby, still fighting the boy in the focal.
“Shinobu!” she called as her whipsword crashed into her opponent’s. “Please get up!”
Quin…Quin…With a force of will, Shinobu clawed his way back into the ordinary time stream.
He became aware of the pain all at once. His injuries had sprung back to life in the fight: his ribs, his leg, the sword wound in his side. Everything had been aching for the last few days—since he’d forced himself to stop using the focal. But this fight had turned ache into full-blown pain.
He wouldn’t put on the focal. He’d promised himself. He didn’t know what might happen to him if he wore it again—
“Shinobu!”
He rolled to the side, ripped his backpack open, and grabbed the helmet. He’d brought it with them on their expedition to Scotland, and he’d hidden it from Quin, though somehow it had ended up at the top of the pack after he’d retrieved the flashlight for Quin. He’d brought the focal with them not because he intended to wear it but because it pained him to think of leaving it in Hong Kong, halfway around the world. But there was no choice now. He was in pain and Quin was in danger.
He lifted the focal to his head—
And something heavy landed on his chest.
“Give it back! Give it back!”
He was being battered by small fists. The littlest of the boys was straddling him, snatching at the focal and striking Shinobu wherever he could.
Shinobu grabbed a fistful of the boy’s shirt, saw freckles and blackened teeth, and smelled the rank odor of rotting flesh. He butted the boy’s head with his own. His freckled opponent went momentarily limp, allowing Shinobu to get up onto a knee. Then the boy seized at the focal desperately, his nails scratching Shinobu’s hands.
No one’s taking the helmet, Shinobu thought. It’s mine.
Planting a foot on the small boy’s chest, Shinobu heaved him away and pulled the focal onto his head.
A discordant vibration filled his ears, but he’d come to enjoy that feeling. Even before the focal had settled, Shinobu understood that it would see him through this fight. Already the pain was receding, replaced by a heightened awareness of his surroundings. They were on the Scottish estate, he saw. In the darkness, Quin had chosen the coordinates she knew best.
The youngest boy, the one Shinobu had just booted away, was lurching back to his feet. Nott. His name is Nott. He remembered that from their first encounter. Or did that name exist inside the focal? The other three boys were chasing Quin at full speed toward the commons.
They want the focal, but even more they want the athame of the Dreads, Shinobu thought, understanding something the focal had been whispering to him. They want these things because they belong to their master, the Middle Dread. Without him, they’re only nasty children. With him, they have a purpose.
But the Middle Dread is gone.
Shinobu looked down at his arms and legs. With the focal on his head, his limbs felt farther away, yet more responsive.
He sprinted after Quin.
The grass of the commons had grown unchecked for almost two years and was more than five feet high. The boys and Quin were in the midst of it, only the tops of their heads visible above the tall stalks. One of the boys struck Quin hard with his fist.
“Hey!” Shinobu yelled.
His mind and the focal were humming together, and he saw every move he must make in order to beat these boys. This was his own knowledge and fighting experience, being clarified by the focal; it felt different from the other things he’d felt inside the helmet—things that were new and secret.
As he got closer, he saw that all of the attackers were badly injured. Their faces were ashen, and their initial burst of energy was gone.
He plowed into them at full speed, knocking them into each other. One of the older attackers lost his whipsword in the impact. The boy chased after it and kept running.
Another opponent, one Shinobu had seen before—Wilkin—looked desperate. His face was bruised and he was bleeding heavily from his nose. Shinobu lunged menacingly, and that was enough. Wilkin stumbled away through the high grass, and Nott followed at a distance.
The oldest boy, dark-skinned and tall, the one wearing the focal, had Quin pinned to the ground only yards away. He was standing on one of her arms, his whipsword raised to strike.
He’s going to kill her, Shinobu thought. And I’m too far away…
He felt a surge of terror. The helmet screeched in his ears. His own thoughts and the focal were suddenly at odds, as though his panic could not mix properly with the intense awareness brought by the helmet. Immediately his mind began to argue with itself.
Quin.
The boys—I wanted to find them.
Quin. He’s going to strike her!
She’s not important. The boys are what matters.
She’s all that matters. Quin!
The whipsword flashed down at Quin’s head. She rolled herself onto the boy’s boots, and the sword hit the grass behind her.
Her assailant raised it again. He wouldn’t miss a second time.
I was looking for the boys. They can be used.
I don’t care. Quin! Quin!
There was a vibration in the focal so high and sharp, it felt like metal picks in his ears. The pain became deeper, overwhelming, as though Shinobu’s mind were being torn in half. He cried out as he trampled through the grass.
Maybe I want something different, he thought.
No! I know what I want.
He flicked his wrist, collapsing his own whipsword. Then he cracked it out as a whip. The oily black substance wrapped around the boy’s arm, and he yanked him off Quin. Shinobu twisted his wrist hard, drawing the whip back and forming it into a sword. He raised it to strike.
The moment her arm was released, Quin took hold of her own whipsword and was back on her feet. The boy in the focal, bleeding and exhausted, looked at both of them and knew he was beaten. He ran after the other three, who were already at the edge of the forest.
Quin took a few steps after him, then collapsed. Shinobu ran to her.
“Hey,” she whispered when she saw him above her. Her dark eyes were unfocused, her hair spread out on the broken stalks of grass.
“Hey,” he said, kneeling down.
He gently checked her for wounds, but there was no blood. Quin, he thought. Why had he cared anything about those boys? He’d gotten confused. No one mattered but Quin.
“He hit my head,” she whispered. “I thought I’d lie here for a minute…”
A vibration reached them from the woods. The boys were using an athame.
“Did they take the athame?” he asked.
“No. It’s not our athame they’re using,” she whispered. “It’s yours—or your mother’s. It had a dragon on the pommel.”
“What?”
“They have your family’s athame.” Her eyes came into focus on him. “You’re wearing the focal,” she whispered.
“I had to,” he told her. “I wouldn’t have made it.”
She nodded, and her eyes fell closed. He slid his arms beneath her and lifted her easily.
“I’m taking you back.”
Her head was heavy against his chest. She was spent. After a moment, she murmured, “I thought he was going to kill me. But you stopped him. You saved me.”
Shinobu carried her through the anomaly and back to Hong Kong. As soon as they were safely in a taxi, headed for the Transit Bridge, she pulled the focal from his head. He collapsed against her immediately. Quin held him, and he wrapped his arms around his stomach and groaned quietly, as his body came to terms with separation from the helmet.
Her own head was throbbing, and she was dizzy from the blow the largest boy had dealt her. She closed her eyes as she laid her head against the seat, and felt the taxi spinning around her.
When the car had wound its way down steep streets and they were closer to the harbor, she heard Shinobu’s breathing evening out. He was lying in her lap by then, and when she opened her eyes, she found him looking up at her.
“You brought the focal with us,” she said.
That was why he’d turned away each time he’d opened the backpack. He hadn’t wanted her to see it.
He looked ashamed. He closed his eyes. “I’ve been wearing it, Quin. A lot.”
“You have?”
He opened his eyes but didn’t look at her. “I don’t know why. I—I couldn’t stop myself. It was like opium, only much, much better.”
She ran a hand through his hair and leaned over, so her face was close to his.
“You saved me with it. You saved both of us.”
He nodded, but he didn’t look happy about what she’d said. He rubbed his eyes, then took one of her hands in his own. He was gazing up at her with that look that was particularly his, the look that said he would do whatever he must, just as he’d done in this fight, just as he’d done every other time he’d saved her.
“Maybe the focal helped today,” he whispered. “But I never want to wear it again. Don’t ever let me put it on.”
“Was it so bad?”
“It’s always strange. But today, during the fight, it hurt. I felt it twisting my mind.” Such a pained expression had appeared on his face that Quin pulled him closer, as though she could ward off the bad memory.
“I won’t let you use it again,” she promised him. “I’ll find somewhere to lock it up.”
“Good,” he said. “Good.”
Her head fell back against the seat, and she watched the tall buildings rolling by outside.
“We were right about those boys and the Middle Dread,” she said after a while. “They were still there, at that fortress where he trained them almost two centuries ago.”
“Yes, they were,” he agreed. He was holding her hand tightly.
When they reached the Hong Kong Island side of the Transit Bridge, they left the taxi and tottered onto the Bridge thoroughfare. Quin was completely exhausted from the fight, and Shinobu was barely able to keep his eyes open. By leaning against each other, they made it to her house somehow.
Fiona was home. She pushed both of them into Quin’s examination room, where she cleaned up their cuts and bruises as Quin tried to explain some of what had happened. Then her mother helped them both upstairs and they collapsed onto Quin’s bed.
When Fiona had gone, Shinobu pulled her close, fitting her body into the shape of his own. Quin felt, as Shinobu’s father used to say, like a bruised sack of potatoes—and one that had been awake for days.
“I didn’t really think we’d find anything, following those journal entries,” she whispered. “At least, nothing quite so dramatic.”
“The Middle was very busy,” Shinobu murmured into her ear. “And whatever he was doing…part of it’s still happening, with those boys.”
She nodded. “Shh now,” she said softly. “I can’t keep my eyes open another moment.”
“You’re always trying to sleep with me,” he murmured, his voice barely audible, as if he too were almost unconscious.
Quin smiled as she drifted off.
—
Quin woke to the warmth of sunlight streaming in through the window by her bed. Her body was sore, but her sleep had been so deep and so long that she was restored. With her eyes still closed, she reached out for Shinobu. She found only the rumpled covers, cool and unoccupied.
She opened her eyes. She was alone in bed, still dressed in her dirty clothing from the day before, with splatters of mud on her trousers.
“Shinobu?” she called.
She heard footsteps downstairs, but after a moment of listening, she knew they belonged to her mother, not Shinobu.
When she got to her feet, she saw the note on her bedr
oom floor.
Quin—
I have to go. Something isn’t right in my head. Don’t worry. I’m going to make it right again.
—S
She knew at once the focal had harmed him. Had he ever followed Mariko’s instructions for using it?
She ran downstairs and looked through all the rooms on the main floor. She found Fiona cataloging herbs in the treatment room, but no Shinobu.
Back upstairs, she pulled open the closet door in her bedroom. She’d thrown the focal in there last night, before they’d collapsed. It had seemed safe enough, just for one night, until she could hide it better.
The focal wasn’t in the closet. She searched the entire house for it, just to make sure, but the metal helmet was gone.
So was the athame of the Dreads.
19 Years Earlier
The train shook as it went around a corner, and the lights flickered off and on. Catherine was in London, gray and rainy London, which seemed so much more severe than Hong Kong had been. Her body swayed as the train straightened out, the dark tunnel flashing by outside the windows. She was riding the Underground to meet her parents.
They’d forbidden her to move around the city on her own, unprotected, but she was ignoring that order. Her parents were probably right. Anna was dead, and she herself could have been killed in the club in Hong Kong. Catherine still bore the bruises of that encounter across the back of her head and on one side of her jaw. But she wasn’t unprotected. As the train took another turn, she felt the comforting weight of her whipsword at her back. And she was standing, even though the car was only half full, because standing kept her alert. If another mystery Seeker was planning to attack her, she would not be caught unawares. It felt good to be back, to be ready to fight, to be a Seeker again.
On the same day Catherine had been attacked in Hong Kong, Anna had been attacked—by another person looking for their athame, possibly a brother of the one who’d attacked Catherine. Anna had lived long enough to explain that much. Judging from the amount of blood at the scene, her parents believed Anna had severely wounded her attacker, but she’d died before she reached the hospital. The athame had survived, well hidden in her parents’ bank safe.
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