Eight Million Gods-eARC

by Wen Spencer

  A mile beyond the bus stop, they turned at one of the small roadside shrines so common in Japan. It was nothing more than a miniature wooden house with offerings sitting before it. The narrow dirt lane there went a hundred yards back and ended in a wood-lined yard. The smell of wood smoke hung heavy in the air. The only sign of the modern day was the cell tower in the distance.

  “Well, this is the place.”

  Nikki cautiously got out of the sports car. The kitten hopped out and trotted off to do its business in a dirt of the road.

  The smoke poured from a chimney rising out of a lean-to built over a long, crudely made wood-fired kiln. Next to it was a traditional-style farmhouse with a steep-pitched thatched roof. The door opened and Pixii padded out onto the wooden porch, pale gold hair in two messy ponytails, rubbing at her eyes. She had on a plaid sleeping shirt and bunny slippers and looked all of twelve.

  “Ohayou gozaimasu.” Pixii yawned, hand over mouth. “Nani o osagashi desu ka?”

  Nikki twiddled her fingers in greeting. “Bounce?”

  Pixii squealed and bounded off the porch in surprisingly high hops and leaps and more squeals. She hugged Nikki, almost knocking her off her feet. “I was so worried! You said you were coming and then you never called! And Sexy hadn’t heard from you either.”

  For a minute it was impossible to speak since Pixii was hugging her so tightly. Finally Nikki got enough breath to say “I’m sorry.”

  Miriam popped the trunk. “Things got really crazy. We’re in trouble. Big trouble.”

  Pixii laughed. “Is there any other kind? Oh my God!” Pixii spotted Simon curled inside the trunk, wrapped in a sheet so only his face showed. The taut fabric made it obvious that he was nearly naked under thin white linen. Pixii leaned in, pressed a hand to his neck, and checked his eyes. “Oh, he’s cute—very Lawrence of Arabia.”

  “It’s a long story,” Nikki said.

  Miriam started to giggle.

  “And it’s been a very long night.” They had discussed ways to explain it all to Pixii, but the story had gotten sillier and sillier as they drove. The last version had flying turtles and Mickey Mouse. “We need a place to hide from some really bad people.”

  “Okay-dokay. Let’s get him inside and his feet elevated. I think I have something to rehydrate him.” Pixii giggled and bounced in place. “This is going to be great!”

  Nikki glanced to Miriam, who grinned largely.

  “Told ya,” Miriam said.

  It took all three of them to lift Simon out of the car and carry him to the farmhouse. The home was more rustic than the one at Izushi. Massive, rough-hewed timbers made up the vaulted ceiling . The walls were white stucco, but still it was nearly cavelike except for the pale dawn light filtering in through shoji doors. The smell of clay and cut grass and wood smoke filled the house in a way that felt like it was filled with life. The only nod toward present day was a single outlet that powered Pixii’s laptop and was recharging her cell phone. There were only two rooms, one with worn wood floors and the other with tatami mats. Off to one side was a step down into a kitchen with a wood oven and dirt floor.

  Two futons were spread out on the floor of the second room, both rumpled from sleep.

  “Here, put him on my futon.” Pixii indicated the futon with rabbits printed on the duvet. The other was a somber navy befitting an older man. The two were an arms-length apart, indicating that sleep was all that the two shared.

  “Where’s your teacher?” Nikki asked. “Are you sure this will be okay with him?”

  Pixii laughed as she took Simon’s pulse. “Sorry, I’ve been up every twenty minutes for three days—so I’m kind of wired.” She elevated his feet and covered him up with her blankets. “There, that will keep him nice and warm.”

  The far wall of the farmhouse was a large closet with four sliding doors. Still talking, Pixii slid doors open to peek inside until she found a section that was mostly full of cosplay costumes. She took two duffel bags from the bottom.

  “Let me tell you, at three in the morning, when you’re trying to feed wood into a kiln without getting third-degree burns, you truly question all your life choices. Very much ‘what the fuck’ time.”

  Pixii had taken a hammer out of one bag. She was now pulling medical supplies from the other. She waved a bag of saline for emphasis. “You’re a highly decorated combat medic. You have a doctorate in Asian art. You could be teaching at a women’s college like Bryn Mawr or Wellesley, or at least someplace warm like Berkeley or Caltech. If you put ‘woman studies’ into the title of the class, only girls will sign up for it. But no, you’re up on a mountain with a crazy old man potter who smells of dirt making little mouse-size sake cups using techniques that haven’t changed for a thousand years.”

  “Mouse-sized?” Miriam asked when Pixii paused to hammer a nail into a post a few feet from the floor.

  “They’re freaking tiny!” She used a hand sanitizer while she described the process to make the sake cups. “You take a ball of clay about the size of an egg, push in your thumb, and pinch as it rotates, holding it just so. I could make them in my sleep if I could make them perfect.” She dropped her voice to a man’s deep gravel. “Perfection is for machines, soulless things that do not understand beauty.”

  She unwrapped an IV needle, cleaned the back of Simon’s left hand with a sterile wipe, and plunged the needle home as she continued in the deep-pitched voice. “Creation is focusing heaven. Become the god of the cup. Reach deep, find the divine inside yourself, and shape the raw clay. You must recognize that beauty is the reflection of the universe. Nothing is perfect. Nothing lasts forever. All things come to an end.”

  “So you are listening,” a man said from the kitchen, his voice deeper and richer than Pixii’s imitation. “I was starting to wonder.”

  There was a flash of movement out the corner of her eye, and she was aware that Atsumori was beside her, tense and frowning.

  Pixii had snatched up the hammer. She checked a swing at Atsumori. “Whoa. Who’s this?”

  “That is what I would like to know.” Pixii’s teacher stepped up onto the worn wood of the other room. Snow-white hair, gathered into a ponytail, and the wrinkles on his face marked him as an old man. There was nothing old, though, in his bearing. He was tall for a Japanese man and strongly made, with wide shoulders and large, powerful hands. He was barefoot and in shorts, showing off legs corded with muscles.

  “I am Taira no Atsumori.” Atsumori bowed low.

  Nikki eyed Atsumori humbling himself and then warily turned to the master potter. What exactly was this man? One of the few words she knew of Japanese was yama, which meant “mountain.” All the old legends spoke of mountain gods, suggesting that every mountain had its own god.

  Pixii seemed oblivious to the tension between the two males. She hung the IV bag from the nail she hammered into the post. “Yamauchi-sensei, these are the friends I told you about. ThirdEye. SexyNinja. And, um, Lawrence of Arabia.”

  Simon was British, just like Lawrence of Arabia, and a member of a government intelligence agency. Leo had mentioned that Sensitives were attracted to Talents such as Nikki. She could only stare in dismay at Pixii.

  The others ignored her as her world tumbled head over heels.

  “The kiln?” Yamauchi said.

  “I stoked the fire for the last time . . .” Pixii checked the watch on her wrist. “About twenty minutes ago. So, unloading should be able to start on—God, what day is it?”

  “In four days, regardless of what today is.” Yamauchi sighed. “I heard of what happened in Kyoto.”

  “These two are under my protection,” Atsumori said. “Will they be safe here?”

  “Not this one?” Yamauchi knelt beside Simon.

  “He has not been conscious since we found him. He has not entrusted his safety to me.”

  Yamauchi nodded his understanding. He studied each of them in turn. Atusmori waited, tense. “They are safe here,” Yamauchi said at last. “But you will do
nothing more to bring danger to what is mine.”

  29

  Betrayal

  Nikki slept. She hadn’t meant to. Pixii’s yawns proved to be contagious. They yawned through a breakfast of boiled rice, miso soup, and grilled fish. Gravity became impossible to resist, and they ended up sprawled out on the tatami, trying to explain the last few days. One minute she was listening to Miriam explain thatshe had been avoiding Kenichi because of the creepy scenes featuring the character “based” on him and the next she was cracking open her eyes to late afternoon. She, Miriam, and Pixii were curled around each other like a litter of puppies, covered up with blankets. Simon had been shifted to the far side of the house, the katana lying between him and the sleeping girls.

  Maru was sitting on her chest, patting her gently on the nose. When she opened her eyes, he gave a nearly silent meow.

  She sat up, cuddling the kitten.

  Yamauchi’s futon had been rolled up and stored away for the day, leaving no sign of the man who might be a mountain god. Simon was still sound asleep but had been shifted to the far edge of the tatami. The katana lay beside him, as if Atsumori was keeping watch over him.

  The shoji doors were pushed open to let mountain air and sunlight to pour into the room. No smoke rose from the kiln’s chimney. The car sat on a patch of grass; during her sleep, the dirt road they’d followed had been erased. Nor was there any sign of the cell tower on the far hill.

  Shivering, Nikki padded to the porch and scanned the clearing. Ancient trees surrounded the farmhouse without a break. It seemed fairly safe to assume Yamauchi was a god. They’d found safe refuge in the mountain god’s home.

  But what about Leo? It had been hours since he’d been hit by a car and taken away by a fake ambulance. Who had taken him? Why? She hadn’t been able to focus on him after she’d finished the scene yesterday. A few days ago, she would have been annoyed by her “writer’s block.” Now she was afraid that it meant something darker.

  She found a pen and took out a notebook. Now that the moment was here, she was scared. What if Leo were dead? What if he had died while she was asleep?

  Tears burning in her eyes, she put the ballpoint to the paper.

  Was Leo alive?

  Leo woke with the grogginess that told him he’d been drugged. The bars inches from his face told him by whom. He was in one of Shiva’s strongholds, probably still in Japan, although the nondescript cage in the modern concrete basement full of shadows gave no clue to which one. They could have shipped him back to the United States without him being any the wiser.

  He could even guess why he’d been taken captive: after six weeks of wearing out Ananth’s patience, he’d reached its end. He’d shifted to his true form while unconscious. His clothes were in tatters. His wristwatch painfully tight on his arm. It told him that he’d lost a full day since he’d left Nikki at the love hotel. Had she taken the money and run? Had she gotten safely out of the country? He desperately hoped she had, even though it tore at his heart to know that he would probably never see her again. She trusted him, but she might decide that cutting all ties with him would be safer than seeking out his father’s house in Hawaii. And she probably would be right. If she were smart, she’d go and lose herself someplace in the world where he’d never find her.

  He was afraid, though, that when he didn’t return, she would do something dangerously brave and unpredictable. He snarled with anger and grief. He’d lost Simon, and now he’d lost Nikki.

  There was a whisper of movement, and he realized that Williams was standing in the shadows. Waiting. Watching.

  He glared at the black man.

  “Where are Sato and Chevalier?” Williams asked, his teeth flashing white in the darkness.

  That wasn’t what he was expecting. “What?”

  There was a moment of stillness and silence from the shadows. “Where are Chevalier and Sato? They reported you sighted at Izushi.”

  He swore softly and rubbed his face with his hands. “You think I did something to them.”

  “They were told to bring you in, and now they’re missing.”

  He was only alive because Shiva wasn’t sure who had gone rogue: him or Sato. If they couldn’t find a body, then they would continue to be unsure. There were other possibilities.

  “I had a lead on Simon!” He wanted to roar with frustration. “The yakuza are using tanuki. They have a host club in Dontonbori.” He growled as he realized that he had no proof to support that claim, only Nikki’s word. He couldn’t let them know about her. “Simon disappeared on the land of one of their hosts. Chevalier thought it was a good enough lead to follow. We were going to question the boy.”

  “Chevalier hasn’t reported in since you were sighted.”

  “I don’t know what happened to them! We talked. We didn’t fight. Chevalier was even halfway civil.”

  “People keep disappearing around you. Simon. Nikki Delany. Now Chevalier and Sato.”

  It took all his control not to react to Nikki’s name. Shiva knew about him discovering the tanuki at Nikki’s apartment and nothing more, otherwise they would be asking about the katana.

  “Something ancient and powerful was buried on that land,” Leo said. “It was causing all the problems with the dam. And when my father went there alone, it took him! And the damn boy was home that day, clearing the house before the flood took everything. The kami used him to gain access to the yakuza and then it started to collect yokai. We’re looking at a major outbreak.”

  Williams breathed in the shadows. Silent. Thinking. Weighing. “What’s the name of the club?”

  “Kiss Kiss.”

  * * *

  Nikki flopped back with relief. Leo was alive and seemingly unharmed, although judging by his emotions, far from safe. As long as Sato and Chevalier remained missing, Shiva would suspect him of the worst.

  Maru took advantage the fact that she was lying on her back to make himself comfortable on her stomach. She petted the ginger kitten absently, wondering what had happened to Chevalier and Sato. There had been no sign of them at Kiss Kiss. They must have been considered “missing” long before they were supposed to meet Leo at the host club, otherwise Shiva wouldn’t have had time to find Leo and capture him. The two agents must have fallen out of contact before leaving Izushi.

  They were in her story. They were her characters. Could she actually write a scene from their perspective? It was a scary idea; it meant she could possibly crawl into anyone’s head that crossed her path and know what they were thinking and what would happen to them in the future.

  Could she push her power to include anyone?

  She sat back up, pen and notebook in hand. Chevalier had been lead agent, so where did he take his team?

  Because Chevalier was Impenetrable, people often thought he was imperceptive and insensitive, too. But he was a Frenchman, and so, when it came to love, he saw things perfectly clear.

  Mister Pussycat was in love.

  Chevalier found it endlessly amusing. He sauntered through the ancient streets of Izushi, retracing his steps to his car, grinning hugely.

  Secretly he liked cats. Perhaps it was because the French were like cats. They did what they wanted and didn’t care if it pissed people off. If a cat didn’t like you, it left. Dogs wouldn’t leave. They had to come over, see what you were doing, and usually decided you needed to be chased off, especially if you were Impenetrable. Big dogs bit. Little dogs barked, barked, barked and waited for your back to be turned, and then bit. He hated dogs.

  Just because cats didn’t care what you did as long as you left them alone, it didn’t mean that they weren’t loyal. Others thought Simon’s fierce kitten was dangerous, but it was clear to Chevalier from day one that Leo’s sun and moon circled around his adopted father. Nothing got the little tomcat growling and hissing more than something threatening Simon. Chevalier used to take pokes just to get him to spit; teasing him had gotten to be a dangerous habit.

  So, yes, secretly, he actually like
d Leo. He had been worried that their kitten was going to go rogue after Simon vanished. But Leo was in love with a strong Sensitive. And, more importantly, the girl obviously loved him back, and that changed everything.

  Sato was waiting by the car. By the lack of emotion on his face, the Talent was clearly upset. The man was a clam; the more vulnerable he felt, the more he withdrew into himself. It was only by years of association that Chevalier had learned to read him.

  “You’re just leaving him?” Sato’s tone suggested that he didn’t care one way or the other, which meant he cared very much indeed.

  “We’re going to go kick some pretty-boy butt at a club called Kiss Kiss in Dontonbori.” He opened his car door but didn’t get in. In a mood like this, Sato probably would just stay standing on the curb. “There will be pretty boys for me to smack around. Yakuza for Mister Pussycat to bloody. Tanuki for you to vanish into thin air. It will be fun. Come on. Get in.”

  “You’re going to attack a human nightclub based on what he says? Without checking that what he claims is true?”

  Chevalier stood tapping on the roof of the car. He had planned on going without double-checking. He trusted Leo to move the world to find Simon. But there was the girl—her motivations were unknown—and a boy in love is easily swayed. God knows, the boy wasn’t experienced in the dangers of romance. It was possible that it wasn’t even the girl that was moving the pieces on the chessboard, but the god of the sword.

  Sato stood unmovable on the sidewalk. “You know what Ananth will ask if you call in and tell him where we’re going.”

  Yes, Chevalier did. He checked his watch. They still had time before they needed to check in. He rapped twice on the roof. “We’ll check it out.”

  So off across the torn earth of the dam construction they went, the noise of the bulldozers deafening close up. Five minutes of walking from there, they reached an abandoned farmhouse. It was a seedy old place where obviously the owner had spiraled downward before dying without anyone that cared to clear out the space.