by Wen Spencer
“That would seriously piss me off.” Nikki shivered at the thought of being locked in the dark for so long.
“Her rage seethes around her like flames,” Kenichi said.
“So, how did she get out of the stone?” Miriam asked.
“The seals were broken long ago,” Atsumori answered. “Most likely she was freed in the landslide but marooned without humans to give her a way to leave the rock.”
“We were the only ones in the valley that prayed to her.” Kenichi laughed bitterly. “Everyone else was smart enough to stay away from her. Our land was said to be cursed. She complains that we were all too dense for her to take and that it’s our fault she was stranded so long.”
So she stayed trapped until Simon had accidently freed her to have her revenge. She was angry with the sun goddess. What did that mean for the human race? Whatever she planned, Kenichi was clueless. They needed Simon, who hopefully had picked up more than what Nikki been able to learn from him.
“We have what we need,” Nikki said. “We should get out of here.”
Miriam peeked over the top of the booth and then slid down low in the seat. “The yakuza are still in the way. Is there a back door?”
“It’s by the restrooms, but it’s chained so that women cannot leave without paying.”
Which probably made it a huge fire hazard, but the yakuza owners were thinking bottom line, not who could get out in an emergency.
“Shit,” Miriam hissed and bounced to her feet.
One of the yakuza stalked up and made a grab for Miriam. She backed out of his reach. Atsumori blazed to fully engaged within Nikki, whiting the edges of her vision.
“Come with me and you won’t be hurt.” The yakuza started to reach for Miriam again.
“Get away from her, dog.” Atsumori shifted Nikki to block the grab.
The yakuza’s eyes went wide, seeing Atsumori for the first time. “Kami!” He backed away, reaching into his coat to pull a pistol from a shoulder harness.
Miriam caught the gun with her left hand, jerked it up, and hit the yakuza’s wrist with her right hand. Like a magic trick, the gun was in Miriam’s hand.
Atsumori snarled, jerking the katana half out of its sheath to slam the butt of the hilt into the yakuza’s throat. The man staggered backwards, choking, as Atsumori finished unsheathing the blade. The yakuza’s features blurred, and suddenly a human-sized raccoon dog stood in its place, its lips curled back to show off a muzzle full of sharp teeth.
Atsumori slashed downwards with the katana. The tanuki gave an inhuman yelp of pain, abruptly silenced as the blade sliced him open. Hot blood sprayed across Nikki.
“More are coming!” Miriam cried. “Run!”
Miriam headed for the entrance.
“Let me block,” Nikki cried.
Miriam answered by veering out of the narrow walkway, stepping up onto the booth’s seat and then leaping up onto the high back. They raced forward, side by side, Miriam bounding the valley of the booths in running jumps. In their wake, the normal noise of the club erupted into the terrified screams of women.
Atsumori surged ahead, blazing against Nikki’s awareness until she was sure that her skin gleamed with his power. The tanuki saw them coming and opened fire. The bullets struck the leading edge of his power and flared into swallowtail butterflies, wings brilliant gold and wet-ink black.
The tanuki felt like nothing more than tissue before the katana, shredding into pieces of a paper doll as Atsumori sliced through the yokai’s body. It fell, part human, part dog, part something unrecognizable.
Beyond the booths was a long bar and then the narrow entrance with the cubbyhole office. Nikki collided with a tanuki in the tight space. He ducked Atsumori’s swing and caught Nikki by her wrists and slammed her up against the wall, feet dangling.
“Your vessel is too small to be useful to you, lord.” The tanuki pressed against Nikki, pinning her with its body. Its face was still fully human, but sharp pointed teeth filled its mouth. “But she’ll be the perfect size for our princess.”
Miriam leapt from the back of the last booth onto the bar counter and came skidding along the length of it. She snatched up a huge sake bottle as she went sliding by and used it to club the tanuki.
The male staggered, and Atsumori twisted it to his advantage, tucking up his legs and kicking it in the chest with both feet. Nikki yelped in dismay as the kami landed and beheaded the tanuki.
“Run!” Kenichi had followed them. “They’re not the only things here.”
“Shit!” Miriam caught Nikki by the left wrist and dragged her into the tiny elevator. “Something is coming.”
Nikki glanced back the way they had come. Something large skittered across the ceiling. She got the impression of impossibly long, thin, yellow-stripped legs and a huge hourglass-shaped body before the doors shut.
“Oh my God, what the hell was that?” Nikki punched the lobby button even though it was already lit. Atsumori slipped out of her, leaving her feeling hollow and rubber kneed. She was panting and trembling, and there was blood splattered across her face and chest. She felt weirdly elated; they might be running, but that had to classify as kicking butt.
“Jorojumo.” Atsumori’s voice sounded as winded as her own.
The elevator thankfully started to drop, albeit with painful slowness.
Apparently Kenichi wasn’t sensitive enough to pick up Atsumori’s voice. “I don’t know. All the new yakuza look normal, but there’s something strange about all of them.”
It was telling that despite looking terrified of Nikki, Kenichi trapped himself in the tiny elevator with her instead of staying behind.
“What’s a jorogumo?” Nikki whispered. A loud bang echoed down the elevator shaft as something hit the club’s lobby doors.
“Yokai,” Atsumori said unhelpfully. “A man eater. Very dangerous.”
“Jorogumo translates as “binding bride” or “spider whore”—depending on what kanji is used,” Miriam explained completely. “It’s a yokai that can take the shape of a beautiful woman, but its true form is a giant spider. And yes, it eats men that it traps.”
“This does not bode well,” Atsumori said. “Iwanaga Hime must have promised something dear to have gathered this many yokai who are willing to serve her.”
27
Night at the Imperial
Kenichi fled the first chance he could. He unchained his bicycle and paused only long enough to say, “Come with me to Tokyo.” When Miriam shook her head, he rode off without another word.
Atsumori muttered darkly about the cowardice of whores as Nikki and Miriam ran through the nearly deserted streets.
“You just hacked three men to pieces in front of him.” Nikki felt responsible for the betrayal of Miriam’s heart. She had written the scene that made Miriam fall in love with Kenichi.
“They were tanuki.” Atsumori missed the point entirely.
“They looked like men to him.” She understood the fear that moved Kenichi. If things were slightly different, she’d be heading to Tokyo, too. She’d spent a lifetime being made helpless; the katana was the only thing that was allowing her to believe she could actually help someone else.
Atsumori snorted with contempt. “Kenichi knew they weren’t men.”
“We’re probably being chased by a giant geisha spider,” Nikki pointed out. A fact that had her jumping at odd shadows.
“They are web-hunters,” Atsumori said calmly. “She will not chase us out into the open.”
“She won’t?” Miriam stopped running. “Good.”
“Kenichi knows that there are probably more tanuki with the goddess.” Nikki winced as the statement felt very true.
“He’s not going to understand.” Miriam turned in a circle, getting her bearings, and then set off in a purposeful walk.
Nikki lost track of who “he” might be. “Kenichi?”
“Taira no Atsumori!” Miriam used the Kami’s full name. “The Genpei War was between the Minamoto an
d the Taira—both clans were descendants of imperial family members who been demoted to the rank of samurai. One of the Minamoto Clan allies was the great warrior Kumagai Naozane.”
“What?” Nikki wasn’t sure why Miriam was suddenly giving her a lesson on ancient Japan. “Where are we going?”
“You said that Leo drove his car to Dontonbori and parked it close to the Platea Dontonbori Hotel Gloria.”
“Yes, the hotel with the goofy head statues.”
“We’re going to rescue a man who is nearly dead and currently tied up. A car would be useful for a quick getaway. I don’t really want to try to carry him around on our shoulders through the subway. Especially if we’re being chased.”
“Oh, good point.”
“Anyway, before the battle of Ichi-no-Tani, Kumagai heard the sound of a flute being played in the enemy camp. He had been impressed at how refined the player must be—a true noble.”
“What does this have to do . . .”
“Just listen,” Miriam snapped. “The next day the Minamoto Clan stormed the Taira fortress and set it on fire. The only survivors were those that fled to their ships. Kumagai spotted a samurai swimming toward the ships that were already sailing away. He taunted the samurai, calling him a coward. Despite overwhelming odds, the samurai returned to prove his courage. Kumagai defeated the samurai easily and struck off his helmet for a finishing blow. To Kumagai’s horror, his opponent was a handsome boy the same age as his young son. Even as he realized that he had lured a boy to his death, there was no way to forestall it. The Minamoto were killing all that they found. Weeping, Kumagai beheaded the boy. When he searched the body for some way to identify the boy, he found a flute. The boy was the flute player that Kumagai had admired. He was so grieved by what he had done that he gave up his sword and became a priest.
“The boy was Atsumori.”
“Oh!” Nikki turned to look at Atsumori with new eyes—but of course there was nothing to see. The boy was dead, and all that remained was a powerful spirit.
“Anyone as stupidly brave as Atsumori is not going to understand Kenichi.”
“I was not stupid,” Atsumori grumbled. “Odds were that I would have drowned; I was in full armor.”
Miriam stopped at the edge of a parking lot. “So, what kind of car are we looking for?”
Nikki dug out Leo’s keys and tapped the “lock” button on the key fob. Distantly a car chirped. “That one.”
Leo had parked in shadows, backing into the spot like any Japanese driver would have. Just seeing it made Nikki want to cry. She knew that saving Simon would be what Leo would want, but it felt wrong to be doing anything but looking for Leo.
“Oh! An BMW Z4! Okay, Mr. Freaky just gained serious style points for his car! Oh my God, I think I’m in love.”
Nikki unlocked the car with the fob and then realized that she was on the wrong side of the car to drive. Japanese drove on the other side of the road. Her driving experience was limited to automatic transmission and a mall parking lot in New Jersey. “Can you drive a stick?”
“Oh, yes, I can,” Miriam said with obvious relish.
Nikki tossed Miriam the keys.
Miriam slid into the driver’s seat and then yelped as Maru scrambled into her lap before she could close the door. “Jesus fucking Christ!”
“Maru!” Nikki snatched up the kitten before Miriam could hit him out of pure knee-jerk reaction. He purred at the attention but chewed at her fingers with razor-sharp teeth. “Ow, ow, ow, stop that.”
Miriam scooted the seat forward so she could reach the pedals. “That’s not your bakeneko, is it?”
“No, it’s Maru from Atsumori’s shrine.”
“Oh!” Miriam’s eyes went wide. “Okay, that’s cool and weird. The actual kitten.”
“It gets weirder when it’s people.”
“Considering some of your characters, I’m hoping to avoid meeting any of them.”
* * *
They swung down off the Hanshin Expressway onto the city streets. The Imperial Hotel rose in front of them, a tall building at the edge of the river, its reflection gleaming on the dark water. It looked easily thirty stories tall, meaning that it would have hundreds of rooms, all with locked doors. Nikki had no idea what name the goddess was checked in under; she doubted it was Iwanaga Hime. If the goddess had been using Simon’s credit cards, Leo would have found him ages ago. And writing out scenes wouldn’t solve the problem either—so far all her names had been wrong.
But it would tell her if Iwanaga was currently possessing Simon or not. She juggled the katana, the kitten and her backpack to find a notebook and pen.
“What do you think? Hotel parking? Across the street?” Miriam drove slowly past the hotel, its lobby a gold-lit cave in the night.
“I’m checking.”
Something had happened. The pattern of Simon’s hell had changed. He was bound and gagged on a hotel bed, but night cloaked the room. Instead of facing the window, he faced the door. Cat statues covered every surface, half-hidden by the darkness, faint streetlights reflecting off unblinking eyes. A gleaming line in the darkness showed that the door to the connecting room had been unlocked and left cracked open. In the room beyond, a woman was speaking what seemed to be Japanese, her voice hard and angry.
Exhaustion weighted his body until he felt like he was made of stone. He was too weary to try to move. Just to breathe seemed too much effort.
“Iwanaga’s not within Simon right now.” Nikki closed her eyes and focused on the unwritten sections of the scene. “He’s alone in the room, but there are several people in the adjoining room. I think the female speaker is the goddess housed in one of the shrine maidens; I think Simon’s picking up on the fact she’s speaking old Japanese. The maid at Izushi said that Atsumori uses a style of Japanese that seems out of a samurai movie.
“And you’re right.” Nikki closed her notebook. “We’re going to have to carry him out.”
“Hotel parking then.” Miriam pulled up to the entrance of the underground parking grarage. She rolled down the driver’s windows and took the ticket that the machine fed out to her. “And we’ll have to find a luggage cart or something.”
Nikki clicked her pen nervously, her mind racing through what they would need. In theory, she knew how to pick locks, but most hotels had gone to a magnetic key system. Some had mechanical override, but still it took her minutes to get through a single lock. There were hundreds of rooms, which meant hundreds of locks. If they went around, blindly opening doors, someone was bound to call the police.
How could they safely find Simon at the hotel? Had there been anything in Simon’s scene that would indicate which room he was in?
“The goddess was using beckoning cat luck statues as backup shintai,” Nikki said.
“Yeah.” Miriam was focused on finding a parking space. “So?”
“In a earlier scene I wrote of Simon, he knew he was about to be taken over because the statue exploded and dust was settling on him. It was a pattern; it happened enough times that he knew what was coming. The statues are too weak to contain Iwanaga, and when they explode, she has to move to a new container. Kenichi said that Iwanaga leaves a trail of dust wherever she goes.”
“Dust, eh?”
“Yeah, I think we might be able to follow them like breadcrumbs.”
The hotel lived up to the name Imperial. The lobby was an expanse of cream walls, soft butter ceiling and a geometric carpet of blacks and reds, looking properly regal. They scouted for a luggage cart while acting out “we’re debating our plans” complete with one of her notebooks standing in as a tourist book, pointing at things that didn’t exist on the page and making random remarks like “I want to see Osaka Castle at night” and “I want to go to Dontonbori.”
They’d just found the nook where the carts were stored when Atsumori suddenly flooded into Nikki, caught hold of Miriam, and pulled her into the darkness of the storage alcove.
“What are you . . .?” Miriam star
ted to ask.
“Hush,” Atsumori murmured.
For a minute, Nikki wasn’t sure what Atsumori was reacting to. Then she realized that the far across the lobby, the left-most elevator had opened up and men in dark suits were spilling out. There was something very strange and feral about the way they moved. They tipped their heads up as if sniffing something floating on the air.
They were yokai. Nikki pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle a cry of dismay. Was the goddess taking Simon away? Surely he was too weak for her to use again.
The “men” conferred quietly and then split into two groups. Some continued to walk toward the doors while the others waited, watching the display over the right-most elevator. The car was stopped on the tenth floor. After a minute, it started to descend, counting down the floors.
She gripped Miriam tightly. “If Simon is on the next elevator, we’re going to have to follow him.”
“Will you be able to recognize him? I don’t want to mess with them if we don’t have to.”
Would she know Simon? She had recognized Leo instantly. Chevalier and Sato had looked familiar. “I think I will.”
The quiet chime of a bell announced the arrival of the center elevator. The door slid open. A woman in a beautiful crimson and gold kimono stepped off. Behind her were three shrine maidens in their traditional loose red trousers and white half-length kimono jackets.
“Holy . . .” Miriam whispered. “It’s her.”
Nikki swallowed hard as her stomach turned cartwheels. If this female got hold of her, there would be no escaping. The goddess, at least, didn’t glance in their direction. She moved toward the hotel’s front entrance so smoothly it seemed like she was gliding on ice. Was she even moving her feet?