by Nick Lake
‘I don’t know,’ said Jun. Usually there were samurai of the shogunate on the bridge, watching over the flow of traffic. Now they were nowhere to be seen.
Taro stepped in front of one of the people leaving the city. A harried-looking woman, a child at her hip. ‘What’s going on?’ he said.
‘We don’t know. There’s fighting in the streets.’
‘People say the shogun is dead,’ said a man who was passing.
‘Dead?’ said Taro. He remembered the young boy on horseback, shooting dogs. He had just been thinking about how to challenge him, how to claim his destiny, and now it seemed like the decision no longer mattered.
‘He’s gone mad, I heard,’ said an old woman. ‘Ordered all his men to commit seppuku. Best to turn round and go back where you came from.’
Taro looked at Jun and Hiro. They both shrugged. ‘We’ve come this far,’ said Hiro. So they forged on over the bridge, against the current of the people and carts. From the city, several plumes of smoke rose, but it was impossible to say if they were ordinary cooking fires, or something more sinister.
They crossed more bridges, drawing closer to the Palace of Long Life. This time there were no street pedlars, no performing monkeys, no street magicians, no purveyors of vegetables and fish. Instead there was chaos. Everywhere they were assailed by the sounds of shouting, crying and fighting. Some of the people they passed were leaving – others were breaking into houses, or carrying objects they had obviously stolen or looted. They ignored Taro and his companions, for the most part.
At least, they did until Hiro dropped the dragon’s horn.
They were deep into the pleasure quarter at this point, the cheaper end of it, anyway. Not the floating world of the island where the best geisha worked, but the narrow streets where last time they had seen the tsujigimi with their mats. As soon as the package hit the ground, it rolled – there hadn’t been rain here for months, with the dragon drying the air with its fires. The horn came out, stopped against a stone in the road.
It seemed like in an instant, every man on the street was looking at them – and Taro realized for the first time the fear and greed that was in their eyes. ‘What’s that?’ said the closest man, a wiry character with a bald head.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Hiro unconvincingly.
‘Doesn’t look like nothing.’
Taro saw another man peering at him. This one had a tattoo on his arm. Not a good sign. It meant he was yakuza, a member of the criminal fraternity who ran gambling houses and the lower class of brothel. His eyes ran down Taro’s face, his left arm. Right down to where his hand should have been.
He’s seeing my burns, thought Taro. You didn’t get to be in the yakuza – no, you didn’t get to be in the yakuza and survive – if you were an idiot. Taro could almost see the calculation taking place in the man’s brains. If anyone were to know he had killed the dragon and was on his way to claim the prize, it would not bode well for him. Not when everyone knew that if they could take his place, they’d win land and a title – an income for life, that amounted to. After all, how was he going to prove it? By turning up with the dragon horn. Anyone taking it off him could do the same...
‘It’s a dragon horn!’ the yakuza shouted. ‘He’s only killed the bloody dragon!’
Sure enough.
Taro didn’t think. Some part of him that wasn’t his conscious mind counted the men in the little street. No more than ten. Easy. He whipped up the stick he used for walking, smashing it into the man’s face, feeling the nose break under the impact, maybe some of the teeth, too. Immediately he whirled, stick spinning to—
No. He tried to whirl—
His leg gave way beneath him. He went down on his other knee, hard, cursing. The blow he had intended for the next man’s head connected with his stomach, winding him, but not severely. The yakuza bent over for a moment, then came up with a knife in his hand, making for Taro.
Taro glanced over at Hiro. He was flipping a man who had made the mistake of running at him, using all that energy and momentum to catapult the moving body into the wall behind him. Jun, meanwhile, had produced a nasty-looking knife from somewhere. Full of surprises, that boy. Taro watched as Jun let a thrust from a short-sword go harmlessly past him, then impaled the heart of his attacker.
All that, of course, in a moment.
Taro turned his eye back to his own opponent and got the stick up just in time to deflect a stab. He turned the stick, brought the other side down on the man’s wrist, and had the satisfaction of hearing it snap. This was what he lived for, he might have realized, if he was capable of thought in this moment. Losing himself in the fight, in the kill-time.
It was a kind of meditation.
He jammed the stick into the ground, pulled himself up to standing. He roared as he swung the stick to knock the man out—
And he stopped, seeing Hiro and Jun lower their weapons too, backing towards him.
There were more yakuza entering the street, all armed with unpleasant-looking weapons. More yakuza. And he was crippled, not capable of fighting at his usual strength. He turned round. More behind, too.
Dozens more.
A club caught Taro on the back of the head. He staggered, still swinging wildly with his stick; more by luck than anything else, he struck his attacker’s jaw. The man’s head snapped sideways, and he dropped to the ground, unconscious. A moment later Taro heard Jun call out as a dagger tore his arm. Blood spattered on the cobbles. Hiro was grappling with a burly yakuza who was trying to make off with the dragon’s horn. Giving Hiro an advantage was the fact that another yakuza was attempting to get his hands on it too, whacking his supposed companion on the back with what looked like a whip.
Taro cast his eye around desperately, looking for an exit from the alleyway. Nothing – just houses on either side, a walled passage, like the one in which Shusaku died. Taro had faced death so many times now that he was surprised it still scared him. He wasn’t ready to meet Shusaku again; there were things he wanted to do. If he died now, he would never have the chance to apologize to Hana. He would never have the chance to fulfil his destiny.
One of the men came at him, a dragon tattooed on his neck. Taro ducked, tripped him with the stick – he felt the Buddha ball press into his side as he bent down. The man’s head collided with the wooden door of the house behind Taro. He slumped to the cobbles.
That was when Taro noticed the door.
There was a red lantern hanging by it, not lit right now. But where normally there would have been o-fuda charms, or red monkey carvings, to ward off evil spirits, there was nothing at all. Hope flared in Taro, like a torch lighting in the darkness. He knew only one street where the businesses along it would not need, or want, such protection.
He turned to the others. ‘In here,’ he said. He didn’t wait for any response – he just lifted his good leg and kicked out, straight forward from a bent knee, a kick Shusaku had shown him that was usually used to force an opponent backwards, buying time. The door shattered inward, the top hinge breaking, the remaining boards hanging crazily from the bottom hinge. Taro was moving in already.
There was a woman in front of him. He wasn’t sure if it was the same woman, the same house, as before.
‘What are you—’ she began, but he pushed her aside, plunging farther into the candlelit gloom. He heard footsteps behind him and hoped it was Hiro and Jun. He spun on the spot, stick up. Hiro came skidding to a halt.
‘Hold them as long as you can,’ he said. Hiro nodded. The narrow corridor would force the yakuza to come one by one.
Taro carried on, going through the open door at the end of the corridor. The space inside the ground floor of the house was made up of a single room, like a warehouse, but it was subdivided by silk screens, painted in the Chinese style with peacocks, carp, cranes and mountains. A dull red light glowed through the screens. As Taro went deeper into the room, he began to make out the customers, lying on beds. Smoke was rising from just off to his le
ft, and for a moment he panicked, thinking it might just be an opium den. But then, resolving out of the penumbra, he saw an incense stick smouldering. The woman lying on the bed beside it had two circular holes in her neck, trickling blood.
Yes.
In Taro’s head, a vague plan had been forming. He could hear sounds of fighting behind him. Let Hiro hold them a little longer, he thought. Taro didn’t have a blade on him, apart from Kusanagi, and he didn’t want to take that out from its hiding place under his clothes. He sank his teeth into his wrist instead, tearing as he bit, like a dog feeding. Blood swelled, then poured. He started with the woman below him. Her eyes were wide and staring; there was no way of telling if she saw him or not.
He gently opened her jaw, let the blood trickle into her mouth. Guilt gnawed at him, more painful than the wound in his wrist. But he reminded himself of what the woman vampire had said, last time he found himself on this street – most of these people would die anyway, growing sicker and weaker the more they were fed on. At least this way – if he turned them – some of them would survive.
Without waiting to see if the blood had worked, he moved on to the next addict. A young man this time. This one’s mouth was open; he let his blood fall in. Then the next, and the next, and the next. He moved around the room, between and around the screens, absorbed in his task. He realized he must have gone all the way round when he saw the woman he had started with crouching on her bed, alert, blood filling the whites of her eyes.
Just then Hiro burst into the room, bleeding and panting. Taro couldn’t see the dragon horn. He tried to remember if Hiro had been holding it when he saw him in the corridor.
‘Coming,’ was all Hiro said. Jun was just behind him, holding his arm to his side as if it was broken. The woman Taro had turned didn’t hesitate – she leaped right at Jun, obviously seeing him as the weaker target. Her pounce was like a cat’s, hands stretched out in front of her like claws, mouth open, teeth long and sharp. Jun didn’t even get his weapon up in time – she flew towards him and—
Taro’s stick formed a blurred arc in the air, then connected heavily with her head, sending her sprawling into a screen, knocking it over. She had just been turned and she was strong, but he was more than that. He was trained. He glanced at her crumpled body, a little ashamed, but he didn’t have any time for that. The Buddha ball was in his hands. And besides, she would soon recover – his blood was in her veins.
As the first of the yakuza poured into the room, he was already falling through clear skies towards the islands of Japan below him, droplets of steel in water. He allowed himself to be in the Buddha ball and the human realm at the same time, pouring all his qi into a single call, the call of his blood to his blood, spread among the lost people in this room.
They had been fed on, again and again, and now they had fed.
It was a feeling like the harmony of different instruments, like a chorus, when his blood spoke back to him. All these vampires he had just made were uncontrolled, untrained, but he had turned them, and they recognized him as master. The room echoed with the sound of his own heartbeat in fifty chests, a rhythmic percussion that resembled an enormous, collective yes. He funnelled his life essence into a silent voice, shouting the words in his head.
I am your master.
Leave these two. Leave my friends. A picture of Hiro and Jun formed in his head, and his one eye focused on them too.
Kill these. Feed on them. He focused now on the yakuza – even as he brought up his stick to parry a blow from a short-sword, even as Hiro ducked under a punch and swept a man’s legs out from under him.
With a colossal effort, he unbound the new vampires, threw them forward. They surged forth like water, around him, over him. They were fresh, all of them, and Taro remembered that feeling. They moved, men and women, of all ages, so fast and fluid that the yakuza were taken off guard, the only ones in a fighting stance those who had been clashing with Hiro and Jun. Some were lifted from their feet even as they came through the door, slammed backwards to the ground.
Then the beat of Taro’s own blood, echoing back at him, was drowned out, as the room resounded with the sound of screaming.
CHAPTER 48
THERE WAS A sickness in Taro’s soul as he looked around the room. Some of the yakuza had actually survived – he had commanded the vampires to leave them, then had told those yakuza to run. They had complied, more than willingly, whimpering as they lurched from the slaughterhouse. Most, though, were dead or dying. He chose an already dead one who looked strong, thick banded muscles below his tattoos, and knelt to drink deeply himself. He needed the strength, after turning his little army.
‘What have you done?’ said Hiro, glancing warily at the new recruits.
‘Saved our lives,’ said Taro. He gestured at the corpses. ‘Find the horn,’ he said.
Hiro wandered off, head down.
Jun, on the other hand, seemed impressed. He was watching the vampires as they came to stand behind Taro, obeying his silent order. ‘They are like slaves,’ he said.
Taro frowned, uncomfortable. ‘Yes.’
A little while later, Hiro – who had disappeared down the corridor – came back with the horn in his hands. It was stained with fresh, red blood. He jerked his head back towards the door. ‘Come on then,’ he said, without meeting Taro’s eye. ‘Let’s get this to the shogun. If he’s still alive.’
Jun nodded. ‘We should hurry,’ he said. ‘Before more come.’
Taro squeezed the ball. He sent out a thought. Guard us. Half in front. Half behind. Then he headed to the exit.
‘You’re bringing them with you?’ asked Hiro.
‘What else do you want me to do with them? Anyway, the streets could be teeming with yakuza, for all we know. Better that we should be protected.’
Out on the street, the new vampires fanned before them and after them, sniffing the air, moving silkily along the ground. Taro could understand, suddenly, why people were afraid of vampires. Why they were seen as evil spirits. These he had just turned would drain babies, he thought, if they came across them. He wasn’t sure why he had been so different – perhaps because he’d been running from ninjas at the time. Anyway, he was glad he had been different, when he was turned – but for the first time he could see, really see, why Shusaku had considered it such a bad idea to confess to Lord Tokugawa that he had turned his son.
Or maybe the minds of these ones had simply been weakened by all the blood they had given up, in return for the bliss of being bitten.
He hoped it was that.
Negotiating the complex maze of streets and bridges, they drew ever nearer to the palace, the vampires flanking them. The journey was relatively uneventful now – those who did want to make trouble were soon discouraged by the sight of the vampires or, in a couple of unfortunate incidents, their teeth. The city was still a mess, though, with looters and semi-uniformed soldiers running amok everywhere. They passed quite a few corpses, many of them wearing the shogun’s mon.
When they came to the gates, they were halfway through before a nervous-looking guard peered out from the gatehouse. It looked to Taro like he had torn the mon from his chest, so as not to show his allegiance, which struck Taro as strange and worrying.
‘Halt,’ the guard said, his voice not as confident as the word suggested. ‘You can’t go in there.’
Taro indicated the men and women he had brought with him. ‘These are vampires,’ he said. ‘Kyuuketsuki. I can order them to tear you apart.’
The guard hesitated still, so Taro sent out a thought.
Show him your teeth.
An instant later the guard was shut behind the door of the gatehouse, and they were going deeper into the palace, through the corridors and gardens.
Here, inside the shogun’s palace, which had once been the palace of emperors, it was quiet. Dead quiet. It made Taro anxious. Not a single person greeted them, or even walked past them – no one was to be seen in any of the paper windows. Most disco
ncertingly, there were bloodstains at odd intervals on the ground, as if a great running battle had been fought, but there were no bodies anywhere.
‘I don’t like this,’ said Hiro.
‘You always say that,’ said Taro.
‘I know. Because you’re always dragging me into dangerous situations.’
Taro smiled. His friend almost sounded like his old self. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I have to try to get rid of you somehow. I kept thinking you’d get the message, but—’
Hiro punched him in the arm – the sound was loud in the courtyard they were passing through, uncomfortably loud. They both shut up after that, their smiles fading. They went through a door, and then Taro could see the way they had gone when they’d found the shogun shooting dogs. He began to follow the path.
‘Where are you going?’ said Jun. He had stopped by an ornate door.
‘This is the way we went last time,’ said Taro.
‘I know. But that time the shogun was practising his inu-oi. This is the most direct route to the throne room.’
‘It is?’
‘It is.’
Taro stopped. ‘How do you know that?’ he asked. He didn’t mean for it to come out sounding pointed, but it did.
Jun didn’t seem to notice, though. He shrugged. ‘Shusaku showed me the floor plans of many castles when I was assisting him. He thought I would make a good ninja one day.’ A touch of pride had entered his voice.
‘Lead the way, then,’ said Taro. If Jun had become angry, or defensive, he might have been more suspicious. But he didn’t seem to notice the accusation beneath Taro’s words, and if he did, he didn’t seem to care about it.
Taro went over to the door, which Jun was holding open. He sent a message to the vampires, asking them to follow, but not too close. If I call you, he said to them, come to my aid. Jun went ahead, down a corridor lined with tapestries. Beautifully decorated katana swords were attached to the walls too, in between the fabric hangings. A red silk carpet that looked to be of ancient Chinese manufacture covered the floor.