Eight Million Gods-eARC

by Wen Spencer

  Sato walked through it and out into the overgrown garden beyond. There was muddy track that led up a hill. Leo’s boots and the girl’s small tennis shoes went out and returned. Without even glancing down at the footprints, Sato led the way. Dusk was starting to gather in the far eastern sky.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Chevalier asked.

  Sato stopped and nodded. “Yes, I know.” He turned and shot Chevalier. “I’ve known for two months now.” Sato stepped over Chevalier’s body and started back toward the car. “But that damn cat just made a mess of things.”

  Nikki jerked to a stop, dropping her pen and staring at the notebook in horror. She hadn’t written the bullets hitting Chevalier and the moment of incredible betrayal he felt as he died. He’d known that Sato was dangerous, but after years of working together, in a vague way, he thought they were a team. Friends. A thousand tiny freedoms he’d given Sato in the name of that friendship, all suddenly used against him.

  She snatched up the pen, clicking it rapidly as she realized that Sato had stopped Chevalier from calling Shiva until they could “double-check” Leo’s story. He didn’t want Shiva to go to the Kiss Kiss club and find out where Iwanaga was holding Simon. He’d probably been part of the Shiva search for Simon. Judging by his last comment, he’d found Simon and Iwanaga months ago and hidden them away from Shiva. Since he’d been familiar with the farmhouse, he had probably found the shrine that Leo had missed and then tracked down Kenichi, just like Nikki had. Only he had erased all the evidence in the process.

  “Oh, this is bad!”

  Sato had killed Chevalier to stop Leo from rescuing Simon. He knew that Shiva would go after Leo when Chevalier didn’t check in. Shiva only had to track Leo’s phone to find . . .

  “Oh! Oh!” The first time she called Leo, he arrived minutes later at the Osaka Castle, and yet they were attacked almost instantly by tanuki. After Harada’s attack, Atsumori’s kidnapping her and the weirdness at Inari’s shrine, she had taken the inexplicable assault for granted. Leo probably assumed that the tanuki had followed her, but she’d been at the castle for hours. She was filled with sudden certainty that Sato had found a way to monitor Leo’s calls, just in case Leo found the katana.

  She remembered when she tried to call Leo from the love hotel, the horrible sense that she had reached out and touched evil. The call hadn’t gone through to Leo, but it had connected to someone. Something.

  Shiva had been subverted by one of their own monsters.

  No wonder Iwanaga Hime was being so successful at quietly gathering power when Kenichi hadn’t been providing any information and limited cooperation. Sato had spent years cleaning up messes for Shiva; he put all that he’d learned to use for Iwanaga.

  The question was, what did Sato want out of the deal?

  Nikki picked up her notebook. Time to find out.

  “There’s a plane, Grandpa.”

  The newly repaired watch in Denjiro Sato’s hands read 8:10. Breakfast from a dozen kitchens, his own included, scented the air. The cicadas were starting to stir with the heat of the summer day, threatening to drown out the radio playing softly on the shelf behind him. His four-year-old granddaughter was standing across the street at the river’s edge, pointing toward the sky over distant Aioi Bridge.

  “A plane?” Planes weren’t unusual; Hiroshima had a number of military camps after all.

  “It’s high up.”

  Which meant it was an American bomber, because their planes couldn’t fly so high.

  “Just one?” There had been another plane earlier, cruising high overhead. It had sent them scurrying toward the air-raid shelters, but that had proven to be a false alarm. The all clear had come before they scrambled from bed, gathered up the baby, and reached the shelter. Maybe this was the same plane, returning. They’d heard stories of other cities being carpeted with bombs, of firestorms razing neighborhoods, buildings going up like tinder wood. So far Hiroshima had been blessed; not a bomb had been dropped on it.

  “Just one plane, grandpa. It’s so high it’s tiny; like a toy.”

  He ducked into their kitchen that was off his workshop. His daughter Kayo was frantically assembling breakfast onto the table in the small dinning room beyond the kitchen.

  “There’s a plane . . .” he said.

  “Breakfast is done.” Kayo brushed past him carrying the rice. “It’s just one plane. They haven’t sounded the siren. And if they do, it will be a false alarm like earlier. I’m going to be late for work.”

  So like his wife. She never let anything scare her, not even his unnatural ability to mend anything. He was not so sure, though, that there was nothing to fear. He had already lost his son and son-in-law. What was here in this house was everything dear to him. One direct hit could destroy it all. He wavered in the doorway, heart leaping like a fish on the line in his chest. Surely the Americans would send more than one plane to bomb a city. But what did he know of planes? He had been born in a time before men even thought of flinging themselves through the sky in metal cans.

  “Rieko!” Kayo called to his granddaughter. “Come! Eat!”

  And his granddaughter was much like her mother. “I’m watching the plane.”

  From his blanket on the floor, his grandson started to fuss. Kayo made a small cry of exasperation and gave Sato an imploring look.

  “I will get her.” He hurried out of his workshop. The street was full of people heading to work. He scanned the sky as he wove his way through the crowd to the river’s edge. The one plane was so high up that it was just a dot in the sky. It was turning in a hard circle that would lead it back to the sea.

  “See it, Grandpa!”

  “I see it.” He gasped as something came falling into view. A single black teardrop of death. It was going to hit near them. “Oh no! Reiko! Run! Run to the shelter!”

  He started to reach for Reiko, and there was a massive, brilliant flash of light. It seemed as if he’d been dropped into the heart of the sun. Light sheered through him and a second later, a burning hot hand slapped him into unconsciousness with the roar of a thousand dragons.

  He came back to awareness in burning rubble. Night seemed to have fallen until he realized that great cloud filled the sky, blocking the sun. All around him was nothing but broken, burning rubble. It was if in one instant the entire city been smashed to nothing. There was a low crackle and growl of fire all around. Otherwise the world was eerily silent.

  “Reiko?” He tried to get up and gasped in pain. His right leg was pinned under a heavy piece of wood. He couldn’t even guess where it had come from; it seemed to be a rafter from a house, but he was down by the river, twenty feet from any building. He struggled to push it off him. “Reiko? Where are you, Reiko?”

  He didn’t have the strength to push the timber. Each time he shifted it, pain sho through his leg. Old-man strength. Old-man fragile bones. He cried in frustration and fear. What had happened to Reiko? She had been beside him. All around him was a mad confusion of broken lumber, roofing tiles, and bicycles. Flames licked on the wood, found it dry with summer heat, and leaped higher.

  The thin wail of an infant rose from the wreckage, and his heart lurched as he realized that he couldn’t tell where his house had been standing. The confusing jumble of broken timbers continued as far as the eye could see in the unnatural darkness. Was that his grandson crying? Where was his daughter?

  As if drawn by the baby’s cry, the fire reached out with questing fingers.

  “Kayo!”

  He needed to get the timber off his leg.

  He tangled his fingers in the spiderweb of possibilities and yanked hard. He screamed as the pain became unbearable. He was aware of the timber slipping back along the path that had brought it to him, a thousand splinters and shards leaping up and tunneling back to what was to reform the Fujii’s house halfway down the block. The house stood seemingly untouched, a sole upright building in a sea of shattered houses.

  The leg underneath was a mass
ive wound, gushing out blood. He clamped a hand on the wound, suddenly aware of the fine mesh of possibilities. He’d never noticed them on humans before. Head swimming, he pulled on the lines. The blood seeped back into the wound, the flesh merged back together, and his trousers mended.

  He stumbled to his feet, vision blurring and pain like a knife cutting into his skull. “Kayo!”

  “Papa!” His daughter’s voice came from the wreckage, trembling with fear. “The fire is coming closer. Papa! Help me! I can’t move! Papa!”

  Darkness surged in, and the last thing he heard was his daughter screaming as the fire consumed her and his grandson.

  * * *

  Nikki stared at her careful neat handwriting in confusion. She’d written several scenes from Kayo’s point of view, mystified how the events of World War II were going to affect her novel. The bombing had happened on August 6, 1945. Kayo’s father had been an elderly man in his seventies, having outlived his wife and various younger siblings.

  How could this be the Sato that Nikki had met? It had been impossible to judge the age of the man at Izushi. He could have been anywhere from his early thirties to a wel-preserved late forties, but he certainly hadn’t been in his seventies, or nearly a hundred and forty.

  But what if he somehow reversed his age in his desperate attempt to heal himself so he could save his daughter? What if he was the same man who had lost everything that day? Daughter. Grandchildren. Home. Business.

  The entire city blasted away in a blink of an eye.

  She had wanted to know what Sato planned. It was terrifying to think that this was the answer.

  She had to contact Shiva and let them know that Leo hadn’t killed Chevalier and that Sato was planning something awful.

  30

  Needle in a Haystack

  Simon was younger than Nikki had expected. Even with his face pale and etched with exhaustion, he seemed only in his mid-thirties. He must have been only in his early twenties when he’d adopted Leo. He was tall, lean, and fair-haired with laugh lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. Despite weeks of imprisonment, he was clean-shaven and well-groomed. Iwanaga apparently did not want to appear disheveled when she was hosted in his body.

  Nikki shifted the katana to one side and knelt beside the sleeping man. She had never seen anyone look so fragile before. The hotel room and the garage had been full of shadows and fear, otherwise she would have never been so cavalier about sticking him into the trunk of the sports car. If she had seen him clearly, she would have taken him straight to the hospital.

  But then Shiva would have been alerted and Sato’s people might have arrived first. Trying hard to believe she was doing the right thing, she tentatively shook Simon by the shoulder. “Simon. Simon. Wake up.”

  His eyes flickered as he awakened. He shifted, moving as if he was trying to sit up.

  Atsumori flooded into her, snatched up his katana, and had the blade to Simon’s throat.

  “What are you doing?” Nikki cried. “Stop that!”

  “He was going to hurt you,” Atsumori said.

  “I don’t care. What the hell would I tell Leo? Good news is I found your dad, the bad news is I killed him?” She struggled a moment to lower her hand. “Atsumori, back off!”

  “You’re greatly overestimating my ability at the moment,” Simon said quietly. “I might have planned on attacking, but I don’t think I can move.”

  Atsumori eased back cautiously and then loosed his hold on her body.

  “I told you not to do that,” Nikki growled, shaking away the feel of him on her.

  “I am sorry, Nikki-chan,” Atsumori’s voice murmured from somewhere behind her.

  Simon gazed over her shoulder, eyes narrowing. “I don’t know you.” He shifted his gaze to Nikki. “Either of you.”

  She glanced behind her. Atsumori stood watching tensely, fully visible and not looking apologetic at all. She glared at him and turned back to Simon. “Yeah, we got into this game late. Long, complicated story, but here are the important parts: Sato is working with Iwanaga Hime. She’s the goddess that has been holding you captive. He killed Chevalier and framed Leo. Shiva hit Leo with a car and locked him in a cage—somewhere. Sato and Iwanaga are planning something really, really big, and it’s going to be bad.”

  “Sato.” Simon gasped as if he’d been handed a piece of a puzzle. “Of course.”

  “Huh?”

  Simon lifted his hand as if it weighed a hundred pounds and dragged it over his face. “He’s been drifting on the edge of my awareness. I knew there was something tugging at me, like a song played so faintly that you can barely hear it, and yet the chords are so familiar that you still recognize it. Sato has been meeting with Iwanaga. I think he’s the reason I’m still alive; she would have worn me out weeks ago otherwise.”

  Apparently Sato could extend his ability to heal.

  Simon’s eyes drifted shut, and his breathing deepened.

  “No! No!” she cried, shaking him again. “Don’t go back to sleep!”

  Across the room, Miriam bolted into a sitting position with a gasp. She looked around, confused by her surroundings. “Where the hell . . .? Oh, Pixii’s place.”

  Nikki waved her to silence as Simon’s eyes fluttered open. “Simon, we need to save Leo, but I don’t know how.”

  “Call Ananth,” Simon whispered. “Tell him that Iwanaga Hime is looking for Amenonuboko.”

  Across the room, Miriam cried, “She’s what?”

  Nikki waved harder as Simon closed his eyes again. “Oh shit! Simon!”

  “He is very fragile still, Nikki-chan. It would be best to let him rest.”

  Nikki wanted a pen.

  No, she didn’t want a pen, she was afraid of whatever else she might write that was utterly, horrifically true. That she was way too late to change.

  What she wanted was to grab Simon and shake him until he coughed up the location of all the Shiva strongholds. In the world. With detailed drawings of how to infiltrate them to the detention block.

  She suspected that she’d kill the man if she shook him at this point.

  She might be able to choose Ananth as a character and narrow down his phone number like she had with Leo, but the moment she dialed in, whatever mechanism Sato had in place would be screening the call and running interference. So much she didn’t know.

  Miriam climbed out from under her blanket, blurry with sleep. She must have borrowed clothes from Pixii, as she was wearing a sleeping shirt that barely fit her. She stared a moment out the open door and then came to cuddle up to Nikki. It was very unlike her.

  “Are you okay?” Nikki asked her.

  She shook her head, face pressed to Nikki’s shoulder.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She took a deep breath and sighed it out. “Stupid dream. I think my subconscious hit me with every one of my insecurities in one majorly fucked-up nightmare. I was naked at a final exam in a class I forgot I had, and these sixty-foot ninja clown turtles were chasing me.”

  “Ninja clown turtles?”

  “I wake up and the road is gone and I’m at the house of a mountain god who likes to make pottery. Real life isn’t supposed to be weirder than your dreams.”

  Right.

  What exactly is Ame—Ame—” Nikki stumbled with the Japanese word. “Amenonuboko?”

  “The heavenly jeweled spear,” Atsumori and Miriam both said.

  Miriam added, “It’s the spear that Kenichi said was stolen. Why Iwanaga was punished. If she’s looking for it, it means that it’s real . . .”

  “Of course it’s real,” the boy god said.

  “Yes, I know,” Miriam whined. “I just didn’t get that until now. Somehow it stayed just mythical in my head up to this moment.”

  “I take it that we’re talking a spear with jewels on it?” Nikki said. “Is it a shintai like your katana?”

  Atsumori shook his head. “My katana is nothing but a hollow reed to the Amenonuboko.” He frowned a moment, and t
hen started slowly to explain better. “In the beginning of all things, the universe was a sea of chaos, without shape, sunk in silence. Then there was sound, and with the sound, there was movement, and the particles that made up the universe separated.”

  Atsumori lifted one hand above his head. “The pure, light particles created the heavens.” He held out his other hand at his waist. “The rest of the particles gathered into the dense and dark mass of the Earth. That is the difference between humans and kami. Why most humans cannot see the kami and your machines cannot register our existence. Why even the yokai see us as separate and above them. We are not of wholly of the Earth.”

  “And this relates to the Amenonuboko how?” Nikki was still lost.

  “My katana was made by humans and blessed by Inari, which is why I had you seek him out.”

  “Wait. You met Inari?” Miriam asked.

  “I—I’m not sure what we met.”

  “We met Inari,” Atsumori stated firmly. “If you took a reed and dipped it into gold, while it shines brightly in the sun, it is still just a reed.”

  It took her a moment to track back the conversation to what the reed represented. “Your shintai is made from common elements.” She followed that much. “And the spear is . . .?”

  Atsumori thought a moment before answering. “When the first gods decided that Earth should be perfected, they called forth into existence Izanagi and Izanami. They gave the two the heavenly jeweled spear and commanded that they make the first land.

  “Izanagi and Izanami took the spear to the bridge that floats between the heavens and Earth. Standing on the bridge, they stabbed the spear into the endless sea and churned the dark water. When they lifted up the spear, water dripped from its blade and became Onogoro Shima, which means the self-forming island. Izanagi and Izanami then crossed the bridge and made their home on the island.”

  Nikki saw the point that Atsumori was trying to make. “The spear was created in heaven by the first gods. It’s not of the Earth.”