Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games

by Marion G. Harmon

  Nope, still not breathing well.

  Kitsune wouldn’t stop grinning. I couldn’t look away.

  What could I do?

  If I accepted, would he hold me to it? He was an old-fashioned Japanese fox; of course he would.

  “It’s his forfeit.” Jacky had walked up to my other side without my realizing it, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. “There are laws against that kind of thing.” She looked ready to skin herself a fox.

  I shook my head again. “Against marrying a kami? I don’t think so. It’s not like he’s an animal—he’s a person. Probably a breakthrough who completely identified with the Miyamoto family legend.”

  “He? The first story about ‘him’ was as a samurai’s fox-wife!”

  “That’s—” I closed my mouth, sighed. “Since he’s whatever gender he wants to be it doesn’t matter.”

  “Dammit, Hope—” Her fangs were actually growing, making her oddly resemble Grendel at that moment, and her hands twitched like she wanted to pull her guns and start hunting.

  But we don’t get to choose, whatever we might want. “I—” I closed my mouth. And things we don’t want to do…

  What didn’t Kitsune want to do?

  I didn’t know.

  What wouldn’t a wild spirit like a kitsune want to do? Be unwillingly bound.

  “I—” My voice shook but it worked. “I accept. Serve my family.”

  Ozma actually gasped. Kitsune stopped smiling. Jacky started to snicker as our fish darted about in ecstatic circles, having the time of their weird little lives.

  Yes! / Yes! / Yes! / Yes! / Yes!

  I held my breath and watched the fox. Storm-gray eyes, I realized, blinking. Eyes that narrowed in consideration but not concern. My heart rose into my throat. Would he—

  He straightened proudly. “I accept. Well played.”

  I was pretty sure I was going to faint, or vomit, but our fish were so excited I thought they might explode into raw sushi. Then they froze mid-shimmy, quivering with thought. I started counting heartbeats. Mine, Jacky’s, Ozma’s… Ozma was calmest.

  They finally resumed swimming.

  A draw! / A tie! / Splendid! / Splendid! Oh / perfect!

  What did that mean? If Jacky lost— I sucked in a hard breath. If Jacky lost then nobody won. One win, one tie, one loss, tied game and nobody went home.

  “My turn,” Jacky said to her fish.

  * * *

  This was going to kill me, and Jacky didn’t seem to care at all.

  “My turn, right?” Her fish darted about her head and she didn’t bother following it with her eyes. “Pick one, they take their best shot and then it’s my turn? Bare hands? Weapons? Can I shoot him?”

  You may not use / your firearms, there / is no honor in / them! Swords! / You may borrow!

  “Works for me. I pick—”

  “One moment,” Ozma interjected politely. “To be clear, the one receiving the blow may not attempt to evade or resist it, correct? And may anyone, on either side, assist them after they receive the blow?”

  Yes! / Yes! / Yes! / Correct! The shining fish-chorus circled excitedly.

  Jacky shrugged. “Are we okay, then?” When Ozma nodded she pointed. “I pick him. The boss-man. Let’s see him take his best shot.” She didn’t bother to bow.

  The oyabun glared, but did not object. To be honest, I’d completely forgotten about him; he’d used the grace period of the first two contests to collect himself, and if it wasn’t for his racing heartbeat he’d have fooled me into thinking he was cool, calm, and even angry at Jacky’s rudeness.

  His heartbeat told a different story, but then so did mine; as he took off his tailored silk coat, rolled up his sleeves, and accepted the sword held out by his tame ninja, I tried to convince myself that Jacky wasn’t about to die.

  Because she could—maybe not die die, but something worse for her.

  Jacky was a vampire—she had died once already and risen as an undead creature of the night, and she’d told me once that something that died and rose was very hard to kill permanently. She’d even told me about one time in New Orleans when another vamp had cut her head off and she’d reawakened once it had been put back on her shoulders and the wound was given a few minutes to “heal.”

  But could she do that now? “Jacky…” I whispered.

  Her hearing wasn’t quite as sharp as mine but it was still preternatural and she heard me. A headshake was all she gave me, and my heart lodged in my throat; she knew my concern. Just three weeks ago, after a night-fight that had gotten unexpectedly desperate, she’d let me see her greatest fear.

  Jacky’s years of being on a purely liquid diet had made her as much a beer snob as a coffee snob, so that night I’d followed her to her rooms and sat and matched her drink for drink while she downed glass after glass of Porter’s double chocolate stout, Kona coffee stout, and DuClaw’s Sweet Baby Jesus (a peanut butter chocolate stout that tasted like a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup and was so thick and creamy you could almost chew it). With my superhuman recuperative ability it took lots of hammering shots of hard liquor to get me drunk (and even then it wore off fast), but beer couldn’t even give me a buzz so I’d still been completely sober when she’d loosened up enough to relax and actually share.

  And I’d learned that my stone-cold and relentless BF’s greatest fear was dying again.

  Back when we’d fought Villains Inc., we’d been present when Doctor Cornelius had used his Word of Healing—a Word supposedly given to him by The Source, a word more metaphysically real than reality and which he couldn’t use again because it was gone from his head. The Word had not only brought Orb back from being freshly dead, it had brought Jacky back from being undead to fully alive; after years of “living” with a liquid diet and a severe allergy to direct sunlight she’d become a daywalker, able to experience all the joys of living again.

  Jacky was fully alive, now, but if she died again, without that Word could she come all the way back on her own? Or would she rise as an undead fiend of the night again? No pulse, no heartbeat, no breath except to speak, cold as the grave when not full of stolen blood. Forever.

  She didn’t think she’d be able to live with that. Not again.

  But Jacky had obviously watched at least one Japanese historical drama somewhere, and knew what the situation called for. While the oyabun prepared and I silently freaked out for her, she gathered up her hair to let it fall forward over her face and leave her neck bare, then opened and pulled down her high coat collar. When the yakuza boss stepped forward on her right side she knelt, resting on her toes and balancing forward over her widely spaced knees, hands laid on her thighs.

  It was the image of the ancient seppuku ceremony, honorable ritual suicide—here going straight to decapitation without the first step of voluntary self-disembowelment.

  Ozma grabbed my elbow before I realized I was moving, and my own shock stopped me.

  “Trust her. And trust me.”

  And the oyabun actually hesitated. I couldn’t imagine what was going through his head. He was about to strike a fellow superhuman, and he didn’t know the full extent of her powers. Since she was letting him, she had to be insane or insanely confident she’d get her turn. Was that smart?

  I started praying.

  He stepped up behind Jacky’s shoulder. “Are you ready?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t mess up my hair.”

  For a breath-catching moment I thought he wasn’t going to do it—then he raised the blade high over his head, planted his feet, and struck with a shout.

  Jacky’s head fell to the pond surface in a spray of red and Shell stopped cleaning herself. “Now that’s just every kind of wrong.”

  The air left my lungs without a sound, but I was already moving. So was Ozma. If the oyabun hadn’t moved he’d have been flung to the ground as I flew forward, and as Jacky’s headless body slumped I reached around her and grabbed her head. Reaching us, Ozma grabbed Jacky’s shoulders and pulled her b
ack and down to lie on the surface of the pond.

  “Wait,” she said before I could hold Jacky’s head to her blood-leaking neck. She’d folded and put away the magic box, but reaching into her sash she pulled out the last paper packet of Six-Leaf Tea. Neatly ripping it open, she sprinkled the fine-crushed leaves over every inch of the gory stump with impressive speed and precision. “Now.”

  I pushed Jacky’s severed ends together, holding her by the sides of her head and trying not to feel the rough shock of her neatly bisected vertebrae rubbing against each other. Ozma felt around her neck with steady hands and corrected my position a fraction of an inch while I closed my eyes and listened for a heartbeat while counting seconds.

  Nobody moved. Not the oyabun, not Shell, not Kitsune. Even the fish were still. The human brain can survive without oxygen for only minutes. Did Jacky’s vampiric state add to that at all? I didn’t know, tried not to think of anything but holding still. One minute, two, and my cheeks were wet.

  Please, please come back alive. Please. If you don’t then you’ll hate me and I’ll hate me, and it’s not going to be any fun.

  Jacky’s first strangled gasp lifted her chest and pulled her head from my grip. She reached back to claw for my reaching hands, grabbing them in a crushing hold as she choked, coughed, and filled her lungs again and I heard the first powerful beat of her heart. She kicked against the pond surface beneath us, bowing her back and spasming repeatedly before slumping, head on my knees, to just breathe.

  “Sh-shit.” She choked and spat. “That was worse than the last time. Hurts more when you’re alive.”

  “Serves you right—you’re not the Green Freaking Knight! You scared the crap out of me.” It was all I could do not to pull her up into a front-to-back hug and never let her go. I could listen to her heart forever.

  She barked a laugh—probably shocked by my near-obscenity—and coughed and spat again, lips red with her own bright blood. Our hands were tacky with it. Her own fish darted down to lightly touch her red-stained neck.

  Things should be / neat. And suddenly she was, nothing but a thin red line on her pale skin to show where she’d come in two. My hands were just as clean, my cheeks were dry, and I couldn’t smell the onmiyoji’s little accident or my own rancid fear-sweat either. The ice shown spotless where Jacky’s blood had pooled. Total reality control, and the fish used it to keep their little world clean and tidy.

  I started laughing, couldn’t stop.

  “Can I get up now?” Jacky asked from my lap. When I let go of her hands she pulled herself up before I could help, turned her head side to side. “That’s never going to get old.”

  I stopped laughing. “Don’t you dare—” Biting off the rest, I took a breath. “Twice is a career limit. Promise me.”

  My fish rubbed my cheek and I jumped, spun to look at the little golden koi. It ignored me to watch the oyabun. All of the fish were. When Jacky stood I did too, staying close behind her, and when she looked back at me her smile was evil and her fangs were out.

  “Let me borrow your little knife?”

  * * *

  “Are you going to kill him?”

  “If he’s stupid enough to get on his knees.” She hefted Cutter. Her preternatural strength wasn’t close to mine but I’d seen her pick up a three hundred pound man and dangle him by his throat; she could do the job of swinging Cutter’s hundred pounds for at least one good executioner’s blow. “Stopping me?”

  “No.” The skin of my face felt like ice, and she stopped balancing Cutter to search my eyes.

  I understood. I did. He’d cut her head off. She could have died and not come back, or worse for her come back halfway. And it was the deal—a blow for a blow. How could I tell her that, as much as holding her severed head in my hands was going to contribute to today’s nightmare fuel, seeing her kill a man in cold blood was going to be so much worse?

  Whatever she saw in my face, she nodded. “Okay.” Resting Cutter on her shoulder she turned to the others. The mob boss stood talking to his pet onmiyoji.

  Then / we are ready! The / final trade!

  The oyabun nodded agreement, stone-faced. The sorcerer stepped up beside his boss, one of the Six Leaf Tea packets in his hand. I wanted to laugh hysterically. They’d watched that horrible scene, the oyabun had felt Jacky’s head come off under his borrowed blade, and they’d lost; even if his man could do for him what Ozma had done for Jacky, the best they could hope for was a draw—which still meant a win for us. So, why?

  He’s hoping Jacky can’t do it. My trapped laugh became a strangled choke. Or that I’ll stop her.

  His gamble was breathtaking—hoping that we weren’t as ruthless as he was, that we’d forfeit. Sure we’d killed two of his men, but that had been in a fight; we were killers, could we be murderers?

  The man bowed to Jacky, with a smirk as he showed her how it was done, and knelt. Adjusting his position, he nodded to her. My palms ached where my nails bit into them.

  “One moment.” Ozma held up her hand, actually managing to look apologetic.

  Yes? / Yes? / Yes?

  “I feel that I should inform my colleague—” She bowed to the onmiyoji. “The tea treatment may not be so effective for your employer. Our friend has supernatural healing powers which, on their own, have saved her before. The tea may have sped the process considerably, but for your employer…”

  “It may not be enough.” The rail-thin man studied the packet in his hand, returned Ozma’s bow. “Thank you for your warning. The choice remains my oyabun’s.”

  The mob boss grunted without looking up. “Get on with it.” But his shoulders relaxed minutely and I choked down my unthinking protest. He’d taken Ozma’s warning as a ploy to shake him, which meant he really didn’t think Jacky could do it.

  But Jacky wouldn’t risk a forfeit. Maybe for herself, but not for Ozma and me. She wouldn’t risk it.

  She was going to do it.

  And I was going to watch, because she deserved that from me.

  I stopped breathing, opened my hands. I wasn’t going to hurl. I wasn’t going to move again until it was over. Then… I’d keep it together until we were out of here, until everyone was safe. And I’d find someplace I could be alone to deal with it without putting it on Jacky.

  Jacky’s mouth moved, and I could have heard her but I wasn’t listening to anything but the rush of my blood. And she swung.

  Blood sprayed, the oyabun’s head rolled as his body slumped—and then it didn’t. I blinked, gasping, and for one moment thought he’d pulled a Detective Fisher reset. No. No, my memory told me what had happened; I’d anticipated the awful moment so strongly that I’d virtually hallucinated it but there was no severed and rolling head and slumping corpse. Jacky had drawn in, sliding on her back foot as she’d swing to shorten the reach of her swing, and Cutter had kissed the yakuza boss’s neck with only the barest flick of blood to leave a long red cut right over the spot where Jacky would normally make her bite.

  It barely bled, a thin red line to show where she had made her mark instead of a kill.

  Done! / Done! / Done! / Done! /Done! / Done! / Done! / Done! / Done! / Done! The fish danced an ecstatic gavotte.

  My hands shook. I shook. Jacky had forfeited? Why?

  You / have / won! Our three fish gleefully announced. Ozma burst out in a beautiful, musical laugh.