Eight Million Gods-eARC

by Wen Spencer

  He set her carefully on the other side of the trench and then leaped up and out with catlike grace.

  What were they talking about? Kenichi. The kami. Sharing the load.

  “Oh. Oh!”

  “What is it?”

  “Kenichi’s last scene. The kami told him to call all the women on his client list and had them come to his apartment one by one. He wasn’t sure what the kami had planned, so he picked a client he actively disliked and invited her as a guinea pig. Her name was Hitomi.”

  “Was?”

  Nikki realized that “was” implied “dead.” “Oh, no, Hitomi’s not dead. I’m just thinking in past tense because this happened three weeks ago. At least, that’s when I wrote it—I’m not sure when it really happened. The sad thing was that Hitomi was all excited because she thought it meant that Kenichi was really in love with her. She was pissed off that there was this gaijin at the apartment. The kami circled Hitomi—eyeing her like she was a piece of meat—and then told Kenichi that she was useless, to send her away and call the next woman on his list.”

  Leo growled. “Sensitives are drawn to Talents. Someone like Kenichi in a host club would be like dangling out bait. The kami must be hoping that some of his clients are strong Sensitives.”

  “She’ll be able to take them the way she took your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, that’s bad. Kenichi is worried about the girl he thinks he loves, the American heiress. He thinks of her as special, like no one else, that when she looks at him, she knows the real him, no matter how much he lies. He’s sure that she’s the one the Kami is looking for.”

  “Then probably he’s right.”

  “He’s been trying to protect her by putting her at the end of the list.”

  Leo growled softly. “Then he does not truly love this girl.”

  “He believes that he does, since he was afraid for her. If he didn’t love her, he wouldn’t care what the god did with her.”

  “If he loved her, he wouldn’t put her in danger’s way. He would leave her off his list. He’d call her and break up with her and never see her again.”

  It didn’t surprise her that Leo would do anything to protect someone he loved, even give them up. She had sensed that of him as she’d written his scenes. Despite the hardship of his childhood, Leo had grown into a strong man. Hidden under all the expensive clothes and brave swagger, Kenichi was still a fearful little boy. “When you’re taught nothing but fear, it’s hard to have courage. I don’t know if I would have the courage to stand against an angry god.”

  Leo gave her a bleak look and then turned away. “You wouldn’t have any choice. You’re too strong a Talent to stand against this god. Kenichi, though, is only letting fear rule him.”

  She knew that Leo was right. Part of her, though, wanted to protest because she’d been inside Kenichi’s head and known how twisted his childhood had made him. She could sympathize; her mother had done a prime number on her too.

  “I cannot take you with me when I hunt this creature. If it is within Simon and I managed to subdue my father, it could jump freely to you.”

  “And I could not protect you either,” Atsumori murmured.

  Nikki shivered. “Been there, done that, not doing it again. You should know that Kenichi’s nightclub is owned by the yakuza. I haven’t done a lot of research into the yakuza yet, so I’m not totally clear on how the gangs work. I get the impression that the owner was a low-level boss. He had a dozen guys that worked with him. They come and go at the club, keeping an eye on things, because there’s lots of competition between the clubs. Harada’s first kill was the owner. He got rid of the body quietly, and, in the next scene with Kenichi, there was someone pretending to be the man. I think a tanuki took his place.”

  Leo growled softly. “This gets worse and worse.”

  20

  Soba Noodle

  They stopped at a little hole-in-the-wall soba noodle shop that looked a hundred years old. The table was a large square of rough planks wrapping an elevated fire pit. Nikki wasn’t sure if she was relived or disappointed that there was no fire going so early on a summer day. There didn’t seem to be any chimney overhead, just a vaulted ceiling of rough beams and wooden planks. The menu was on wooden plaques tacked on the wall. Considering there was a McDonald’s next door, Nikki was surprised that Leo had chosen the ancient noodle shop.

  His choice became less mysterious after he ordered the food; he went outside to do secret agent stuff with his phone to get Kenichi’s place of employment and his home address. She opened up her laptop and quickly connected to the McDonald’s Wi-Fi. She hadn’t wanted to use the hotel’s Internet since it might have given her location away, but they were leaving Izushi after they ate.

  She logged onto her ultra-secret forum. The log-in information was only linked to an e-mail account that had no data trail back to her. For this account alone, she was Mango Nana.

  The first message was from Miriam as SexyNinja on Monday. “Who has the ball?”

  “Incoming!” Pixii answered.

  “Have fun playing with ball!” ChibiX said from the northern reaches of Hokkaido.

  “Will do!” Pixii replied but posted an unhappy face on Tuesday. “Does someone else have the ball?”

  Miriam posted minutes later with, “OMG, you don’t have it? Scary-ass male came looking for the ball!”

  “Not me!” Jaynaynay said.

  “Me neither,” Cloud said.

  Nikki winced. She hated this sneaking around. “Bounce. Bounce,” she typed in. They deserved more information, but she didn’t know how closely anyone was tracking her movements. They’d know at least that she was mobile and checking in.

  Almost immediately, Pixii posted “Bounce!” in reply.

  And on the heels of that, Miriam posted, “Guard Dog sighted at Narita.”

  Nikki’s breath turned solid in her chest as she stared at the words.

  Her mother was in Japan? Oh God. Oh God. Her life had gone completely, impossibly insane, and her mother was here to witness it all? Nikki checked the news. Sure enough, there was a CNN sound bite of her mother visiting with an official-sounding cover story to make it seem like she wasn’t here to hunt down her mad daughter.

  What the hell was she going to do? Her mother would be looking for her in Osaka; she couldn’t go back there. She didn’t know anyone but Miriam, and her mother would have people watching Miriam’s place. Tokyo might be a city of twelve million people, but the idea of being that close to her mother was threatening to trigger a panic attack.

  Rather than sit and scare herself, Nikki logged off, shut down her laptop, and focused on breathing again. As if he’d been watching her, the elderly chef appeared with two heavily laden trays of food. He wore a blue happi with an apron and a little dark blue cap. He looked at Leo’s empty chair askance as he put the trays down.

  Nikki struggled not to blurt out “My mother is in Japan!” and mimed talking on a cell phone. What was the word for telephone? “Denwa.”

  “You eat.” The man pointed at the five small dishes of soba noodles he had just placed in front of Nikki, along with dishes of mystery sauces and possibly soft-boiled egg in a shell. Nikki had been discovering that Japanese had a certain love of raw eggs and total disregard of possible salmonella. “I bring more noodle.”

  “Arigato gozaimaisu.” She bowed in her chair in thanks, and he bowed back. Because he continued to hover, most likely to be sure she understood the proper way to eat the noodles, she picked up her chopsticks and one of the little dishes of noodles and dumped them into a dark sauce. “Itadakimasu!” Which basically meant, “I receive this food.”

  Apparently she guessed correctly—he grinned, and thankfully, went away, as she had exhausted her food Japanese. The spotlight off her, she went limp in her chair.

  Her mother was in Japan.

  Leo came back into the restaurant and settled beside her as she stared at her tray. She was reaching her breaking point o
n unknowns. Her mother was closing in on her, and she didn’t even know what she was eating, let alone where the nearest train station was. What was she going to do? Where was she going to go? Was the hell were these odd-smelling condiments?

  “What is this?” she whispered, pointing to a white sauce.

  “Daikon. Wasabi.” Leo named two of the pastes and pointed to the third condiment. “Not a clue, but it’s good.”

  She could live with “good.” Velveeta was “good,” and she had no idea what it was either, only that it was a “cheese food” that you didn’t need to refrigerate before opening. It remained the mysterious food of the gods; sinful yumminess that your mother never let you eat.

  Oh great, she was losing it. Her fingers started to itch with the need to write. She hadn’t written nearly enough during the day to satisfy the need, and news of her mother’s arrival was rattling her hard. She focused on applying her chopsticks to the slippery noodles.

  Apparently the noodles were “all you can eat.” After Leo quickly slurped his way through the first five small dishes, the chef brought out another round.

  “Big eater!” The chef grinned at Leo as he sat five more dishes in front of him. He looked at Nikki’s last dish, which she had emptied by adding the noodles into the dark soy-based sauce. His smile faded slightly as she shook her head.

  Two men in suits came through the door, triggering a call of “Irasshaimase” from the shop owner. Somehow they seemed familiar, even though Nikki was fairly sure she didn’t know either of the men. It filled her with alarm, since the last person she “recognized” had been a tanuki. The taller of the two men was non-Asian. Something about his messy dark hair and fashionably scruffy clothing said “French” to her. The other was a slender Japanese man, so clean and neat that he looked like the emperor doll in the traditional Girl’s Day collection.

  Leo surged out of his seat, growling in anger. It was deep and snarling as a lion’s snarl, and it raised the hair on her arms to hear it. In a flash of heat, Atsumori flowed into her, readying for a fight. They reached under the table to grip tight the katana.

  “What are you doing here?” Leo rumbled.

  “You’re being a bad monster, Mister Pussycat.” The French man swung around to the other side of the table and pulled out a chair to slump into it. “Not going where you’re supposed to go. Not being where you’re supposed to be.”

  Nikki locked down on a gasp of surprise. She did know these men; they were Chevalier and Sato, the cleaners. Somehow meeting Leo wasn’t as nearly as creepy as suddenly being across the table from two of her characters. Perhaps it was because she had been inside Leo’s head, sensing he was a good decent man before he walked out of the darkness. The only thing she knew about these men was that Chevalier liked to taunt “monsters” and Sato was far more dangerous than Leo.

  Chevalier eyed her with puzzlement and mild concern. He seemed genuinely concerned that the nice little girl was sitting and eating with a monster.

  Sato shifted his gaze from Leo to Nikki and back. It reminded her of the countless times doctors had considered her, face impassive, weighing her possible sanity, her mother’s influence, and their own needs and convictions. They were always the ones who bowed to her mother’s wishes.

  “Who is this?” Sato said.

  “I’m Natasha Deming.” Nikki said the first lie that came to mind. All Leo’s strengths aside, he was apparently not a glib liar. “I’m an art student at the Osaka University of Arts. I’m studying manga creation under Kazuo Koike.”

  Leo glanced at her with surprise and slight alarm. “We found out what happened to my father. There’s a shrine on the hill behind one of the abandoned farmhouses. There are signs that something was sealed there under a rock like a namazu, but all the wards are broken. Simon got too close to something powerful, and it took him.”

  Some emotion was smoothed off Sato’s face before Nikki could identify it. He drifted backwards, as if putting distance between him and Leo.

  “Such devotion,” Chevalier said. “Sato, if I go missing, will you search for me so diligently?”

  “I would leave you in whatever hole you fell in,” Sato said.

  Chevalier grinned at this as if it were a joke.

  Sato hit the doorway and said quietly, “She’s not fully human.”

  Chevalier’s eyes widened with surprise, but he was instantly on his feet. “She’s not?”

  Leo growled a deep rumbling menace. “She’s not dangerous. She’s helping me find my father.”

  “What is she?” Sato said.

  Nikki opened her mouth to spin out a lie, and Atsumori said, “She is harmless. I am the one that you can sense. I am Taira no Atsumori Kami.” He gave a slight nod of her head, a suggestion of a bow, and brought up the katana so that it was visible to the two men. “I have business in Osaka I wish to attend to.”

  “Oh hell,” Nikki hissed. “I told you not to do that.”

  “He is dangerous,” Atsumori said. “And the other is solid granite.”

  “For the love of God, will you let me deal with this?”

  “I thought—” Atsumori started.

  “No, you did not think,” Nikki snapped. “Just—just—just let me do the talking.”

  Chevalier whispered “Merde” and took three steps back. Weirdly, even though Nikki didn’t know French, she understood he had just said “shit.” It made her realize that the entire conversation so far had been in Japanese. Apparently it was some god superpower to speak all languages.

  “They’re cooperating?” Sato asked.

  “He’s benign.” Leo moved sideways to stand between Nikki and the men. “He’s only involved because his shintai was stolen by the American, Gregory Winston.”

  Sato turned his gaze to the Frenchman.

  Chevalier gave a bitter laugh. He pulled a slender metal case out of his suit pocket and selected a dark-papered cigarillo. “Let the muscle take the sword?”

  “It is your job,” Sato said.

  Chevalier grunted. He put the cigarillo into his mouth to dangle there. “Getting the sword would be easy. Doing it without hurting the girl, would be difficult. Personally, I don’t see the need.”

  “Protocol is . . .” Sato started.

  “ . . . determined by the lead agent,” Chevalier finished. “Mister Pussycat was told to find the katana, and he did. He is in Izushi, as he claimed, and he has a lead on his father, who is a useful agent. This is all—how do the Americans say? Win. Win.”

  Sato gazed coldly at Chevalier for a moment and then stalked away.

  “Well, that put him in a snit,” Chevalier murmured and lit his cigarillo.

  Leo took out his wallet and threw money onto the table. “I think whatever is riding my father is behind the raids on the various shrines we’ve been investigating. The kami is seeking a shintai strong enough to hold it. It’s using tanuki to do its legwork. There is a good chance my father is alive if it’s being careful with him.”

  Chevalier nodded. “Do you know where it is now?”

  “I think it’s in Osaka.” Leo obviously didn’t want to explain why. “We were about to head there.”

  Chevalier glanced to Nikki, one eyebrow raised in question. “You’re going after one kami with another in tow? Not the most brilliant of plans.”

  “I’m not leaving her with you.”

  Chevalier grinned with delight. “Oh, Mister Pussycat wants all the sweet cream for himself.”

  Leo rumbled with annoyance that only made Chevalier grin wider.

  Nikki blushed hot and stalked out of the restaurant. Once safe beyond the doorway, and sure that Sato wasn’t in sight, she quickly shouldered the katana and dug out a pen.

  In the noodle shop behind her, she heard Chevalier laugh and say, “I will get Sato and meet you in Osaka. Even you should not try to face a kami and a pack of tanuki by yourself.”

  She fled toward the onsen, face still burning with embarrassment, clicking her pen. They had kept Chevalier and Sa
to from knowing about her writing, but they knew that Atsumori could easily possess her. Shiva would be after Natasha Deming, but how long would it take for them to realize that Natasha didn’t exist? Hours? Minutes? Any idiot could guess that the American girl with the sword was Nikki if Natasha didn’t exist.

  Chevalier, though, seemed to be perfectly happy to label her as a “good monster.” Having Shiva know about her might not be the disaster that Leo painted it. Certainly Leo and Sato seem to be waltzing around Japan without strings attached.

  Her mother, though, wanted her locked up and tied down. And her mother was in Japan.

  Leo appeared beside her, silent as a cat. “Are you okay?”

  She considered telling him the truth, but would he understand? He loved his foster father; could he understand that she wanted nothing to do with her mother? “I’m scared,” felt safe to admit. Any sane person would be scared by now.

  He went still beside her. After a moment, he took a deep breath and murmured, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  It would be more comforting if her mother didn’t often say the same kind of thing.

  She trusted him—perhaps more than she should. What did she really know about him? That he had been a scared little boy nearly twenty years ago? That his foster father loved him? She wasn’t even sure love moved him to find Simon, let alone how he felt about her.

  “I need to—” Surely to him she could confess that she sometimes had to write. He would understand that she wasn’t crazy. Wouldn’t he? But she wasn’t sure. “I need to take a bath before we take off—since I’m not sure when I’ll be able to take another.”

  He nodded without looking at her. Only after he walked her to the hotel room did it occur to her that he must be impatient to get going. Still, he didn’t complain, only stoically said, “I’ll be waiting by the car.”