Stone 02 Kato

by DB Reynolds

  “This way.” She urged her warrior through the heavy glass doors and into the mall.

  “This is your marketplace?” He wasn’t being obvious about it, but she could see his eyes moving, could almost hear his thoughts churning, as he took in this new environment. He was cataloguing every exit, every vulnerability, judging and dismissing all of the people around them.

  A slow smile spread across her face. She’d thought of him as her warrior. She was the geeky girl who’d read fantasies all through school, who’d graduated to romances as she got older, and who’d known, even as she dreamed, that there was no such hero out there for her. But now there was Kato. And maybe he wasn’t hers, but he was a hero just like in her books. Handsome, strong, brave. Unflinching in the face of danger. He hadn’t hesitated for an instant when that demon had attacked them in her office. He’d barely managed to break free of his stone prison, and yet he’d come out fighting, even though this wasn’t his world.

  Except . . . this was his world now. He didn’t have any other choice.

  Did he? She hated the idea that he might want to go someplace, some when else. That he could disappear from her life as unexpectedly as he’d appeared. She frowned at the thought, and then realized he was waiting for her to say something, to tell him what the hell they were doing in this crowded place, besides breathing in the heavy perfume of the woman who’d just hurried past.

  “Right. This is our version of a marketplace,” she said finally. “The mall.”

  He nodded, staring up at the open levels, nostrils flaring as the scent of the food court drifted downward. She could only imagine what was going through his head. Actually, she probably couldn’t imagine it at all, so she turned to what she did know. And that was that he needed some new clothes. This was a problem she could solve.

  Now, where to shop? He was a big guy. Designer duds could come later, though he’d look spectacular in Armani or Michael Kors. But for today, they needed fast and good, and that meant Bloomingdale’s.

  “Let’s go, big guy.” She tightened her arm in his and started forward, only to be jerked back when he didn’t move. He was like a statue—oh, bad analogy. She winced. But it was accurate. She couldn’t move him without his cooperation. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “So many changes,” he whispered. “The people, the buildings . . . the cars. So many.” He had that sad look again, and her heart broke for him. What must it be like? But then his jaw clenched, and he drew a breath, and said, “Let’s go.”

  TWO HOURS LATER, Kato was done with Grace’s mall. There were too many people and too little space, and all of it reeked of a million different scents, including the ones they’d tried to spray on him when he walked by. Tried, but failed. One look from him, and the sprayers had turned their attention elsewhere. By all the gods, he was a warrior on a hunt. The last thing he needed was to leave a trail of some foreign perfume behind him.

  He had to admit, however, that the clothing Grace had selected for him fit and moved well. He was very pleased. And the boots were far superior to what he’d been wearing. Not to mention the jacket. He flexed his shoulders in the soft leather as he waited for Grace to finish her latest cell phone call, something she’d finally explained to him. And what a boon it was. He thought of what he and his brothers could have done with cell phones of their own on the battlefield . . . especially if their enemies had none. The possibilities were endless.

  Grace’s voice interrupted his fantasies of great and bloody victories. “Okay, we’re good,” she told him, hurrying over. “There’s a big investigation going on at the museum, but we’re in luck. The security system fritzed out just about the same time your demon appeared, so there’s no record of when we left, and, even better, no video!”

  “Your demon, not mine,” he said automatically, wondering what “fritzed out” meant.

  “The demon,” she corrected. “Anyway, no video. No video!” she repeated when he simply looked at her. “Duh, Grace,” she muttered, thunking a hand against her own head. “Right, okay. Video is . . .” She frowned. “It takes pictures, lots of pictures. Which means if it had been working, the museum people and the police would have seen you walking out of the museum with me, even though there’d be no record of you arriving. They’d definitely want to talk to us, then.”

  Kato nodded. He understood. Not exactly, but well enough. And he knew now why the dark magic in his soul had assured him it wouldn’t matter. “Your video wasn’t working last night.” He said it as a statement, but Grace answered anyway.

  “Right. Good luck for us. But they still want me to come in to inventory my area, and tell them if anything is missing. Just like I’d hoped.” She looped her hand through his right arm, and urged him back toward their original entrance. He automatically shifted her to his left, and she tipped her head thoughtfully at the change. “Dominant right hand, huh?”

  He glanced down at her, somewhat surprised at her understanding. “I am effective with either hand, but I prefer the right.” He noticed a slightly older man passing by, saw him eyeing Grace’s body in its figure-hugging clothing. Kato gave the man a cold stare, and he immediately averted his gaze and hurried along.

  Grace laughed, having apparently noted the exchange. She squeezed his arm. “That’s good. We need to practice the boyfriend routine.”

  “Boyfriend?”

  She blushed hotly, which made him wonder exactly what being a boyfriend meant. A lover, perhaps? He wouldn’t mind playing that role, he thought, observing as Grace dealt with the young male who’d taken her car earlier. There was an exchange of money and keys, and then they were climbing back into the car and on their way to the museum. Their route took them on yet another very busy road, but this one curved along the oceanfront, with bare peeks through the buildings at the ocean itself.

  “What ocean is this?” He asked the question, but didn’t expect the answer to be anything he knew. He’d already come to the conclusion that this world shared nothing at all with the one he’d been born and raised in. A different dimension, perhaps. Or such a vast passage of time that the continents and oceans had all formed and reformed into something else. Nicodemus would know such things. Kato did not.

  “The Pacific Ocean,” she told him, maneuvering along the crowded road with admirable ease.

  He repeated the name to himself. Pacific Ocean. “And this road?”

  “Pacific Coast Highway. But we call it PCH.”

  PCH, he mouthed. He didn’t absolutely need the names of the roads he travelled. Those tended to change over time, and he’d already memorized their route thus far without knowing names. If necessary, he could find his way back to Grace’s condo dwelling on his own, although he’d have to walk or run, and it was a considerable distance. It would take time, but he could do it easily enough. He’d walked far farther in his own time. He doubted that was true of Grace or anyone else who lived here, however. Distances between everyday places were great in this world, but the residents took it for granted, driving their cars everywhere instead of walking. He frowned. He’d have to learn to drive if he was going to fit in.

  “The museum is this way?”

  She nodded, cursing as another car cut closely in front of her. “Asshole. Not you,” she added in a quick aside. “That guy.”

  Kato smiled. He’d known whom she meant. “So what does being your boyfriend involve? I want to get it right.” He asked the question mostly to see her blush again. Which she did.

  “You just have to be, you know, supportive. I’ll be traumatized by this invasion of my personal space, and you’re there to take care of me, provide moral support.”

  “Am I allowed to slay your enemies?”

  “No slaying!” she said urgently, then gave him a suspicious glance, smart enough to know he’d been teasing her.

  And what the hell was he doing teasing her anyway? Why was he driving along the beach on a sunny day, teasing a beautiful woman, when demons were out there somewhere, roaming at will? Who knew how
many they’d killed while he was enjoying himself?

  “How much farther?” he growled. He was irritated with himself, not her, but it earned him an equally irritated response.

  “I can’t help this traffic, you know,” she snarled, but then added grudgingly, “It’s not far. And after this next light, we’ll move faster.”

  True to her word, the red light they’d stopped at turned green, and Grace took off on a suddenly wide-open highway, driving with a natural speed and agility that would serve her well if she ever took up a blade. Maybe he’d teach her when this was all over. In the meantime, he couldn’t help noticing that she was checking his reaction after every abrupt lane change and every close encounter, as if hoping to startle him. But he’d fought on the great battlefields of Nico’s homeland, with blood and mud up to his knees, and magic arcing through the air like the gods’ own lightning storms. A few close calls with Grace’s car barely raised his pulse.

  Finally, they arrived at the museum. Grace turned off PCH onto a twisting side road that wound past two manned gates, before dead-ending at a third. She stopped long enough to insert a card of some sort into a metal device, and then the gate rolled back, and the guard nodded as they drove past. The road behind the gate was narrower, barely enough for two cars, as Grace proved when she had to slow to a crawl to yield as a much larger vehicle—a “truck” according to her colorful swearing—passed them going the opposite direction.

  “I hate those fuckers,” she muttered. “They’re not supposed to use the road this time of day.”

  Kato found himself studying her, trying to establish who she really was. This Grace, the one who swore foul imprecations at passing trucks and risked mayhem and death on a crowded highway, was a very different woman from the one who’d sat quietly night after night, hunched over ancient parchments. That woman had worn modest skirts and figure-concealing blouses and sweaters, and she’d stroked her long, delicate fingers over his arm on her way to brew the several cups of tea that sustained her. He was beginning to think that Grace was only a mask that she donned for her superiors, while this Grace, the one who’d made him a pile of eggs for breakfast and guarded his back with her gun, was the real woman.

  The contrast intrigued him. The studious Grace had soothed a little of his torment during their late nights together, easing his soul for the first time since his curse, despite his stone prison. He’d watched her work and been reminded of the women of his tribe, who, for all their flirtations with him, had been gentle and hardworking. But he found himself more drawn to this Grace, than the other. This one reminded him of the Dark Witch herself, a woman of intellect and courage who’d suffered no fools, male or female, and who’d carved her own path through life. Of course, his mother had also been a cruel and uncaring bitch, a description that certainly didn’t fit Grace.

  He was jerked out of his thoughts when the car came to an abrupt halt. He looked up as Grace parked her car in front of the grand edifice of the museum they’d escaped from just last night, seeing details he’d missed before. This was a much larger complex than he’d first thought.

  “Remember,” she was saying, as she unsnapped her safety belt, “you’re my boyfriend, so pretend that you like me.”

  “I do like you,” he murmured, releasing his own belt and climbing from the too-small car.

  Grace was smiling at him over the top of the vehicle, and he found himself smiling back, despite the seriousness of their mission. Life didn’t stop just because evil had reared its many-faceted head. He’d have stopped living a very long time ago if that were true.

  She came around the car, took his hand, and started walking, not toward the marble stairs and huge glass doors that were the obvious main entrance, but to a much simpler door with a metal card-reading device much like the one she’d used to open the gate. “We’ll have to play it by ear once we get in there.” She gave him a quick glance and started to explain. “That means that—”

  “That you don’t know what the situation will be in your office, so you’ll devise a strategy once you get the lay of the land,” he finished for her. He then added, “I did fight one or two skirmishes in my time.”

  “I bet you did,” she muttered, with a squeeze of his hand. She slid her card into the reader, and the metal door opened with a loud buzzing noise. Kato reached over her head to grab the door before it could close.

  She looked up at that. “I keep forgetting how damn big you are. Is that some magical thing you do? Projecting a less intimidating image, so your enemies won’t expect the real you?”

  “Something like that.” It was, in fact, the last real gift the Dark Witch had given him, one she never would have granted had she’d known he would leave her someday. It was a corollary spell to the one that concealed his sword, and, like that one, it vanished the moment his blade left its scabbard, which was something he itched to do as they started toward Grace’s office. The stench of the demon he’d slain lay thick over this part of the building, growing stronger with every step. His fingers flexed with the need to have his blade in hand, an urge made more immediate as Grace’s tension ratcheted upward along with his own.

  GRACE HELD ONTO Kato’s hand as they made their way into the bowels of the building. This was the working part of the museum, the part the public never saw. It was well lit, but there were no dramatics, no elegant statues in niches, or even semi-priceless pieces of art along the walls. The floor was concrete and covered by a short-piled carpet that was designed to withstand years of traffic by eggheads like herself.

  She was grateful for Kato’s solid presence by her side. She felt slightly off kilter in her leggings and oversized hoodie which did little to conceal the belly-baring T-shirt she wore underneath, along with her turquoise and black Nikes. Kato seemed to appreciate the ensemble, but she doubted her boss would. George Gabler was a real throwback—an older guy from a wannabe WASPy family, who was a stickler for what he considered to be the proprieties. Grace wasn’t sure he’d even recognize her without her usual camouflage of cashmere sweater sets and calf-length skirts. Her mom gifted the sweaters to her every year at Christmas, which was helpful, because Grace couldn’t even have said for sure where her parental unit found them. It might not even be in the U.S. Her parents traveled a lot.

  She was a little surprised to discover she wasn’t as nervous as she’d expected to be about the coming confrontation. A week ago, she’d have been breaking out in hives at the very idea of showing up dressed in her morning gym clothes, terrified that Gabler would snatch away her treasured post-doc appointment for the sin of being a normal twenty-something female in the twenty-first century.

  But after everything else that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, she just couldn’t find the energy to care about Gabler’s reaction. Oh, she still wanted her post-doc position, still wanted access to the treasure trove of ancient history available only through the auspices of a world-class museum. But it was as if her eyes had been opened to a whole new world, or rather an unexplored dimension of this world, one that no one seemed to know existed. A dimension where magic was real and beautiful warriors were cursed to stand as statues for eternity.

  But not her warrior. Because she’d saved him. And he was every bit as big and beautiful as she’d always known in her fantasies that he would be.

  Slow down there, chicky, her inner voice cautioned. This wasn’t some make-believe world with fair maidens and handsome heroes. A man had died. And his death had been violent enough to leave blood splattered all over a room that was only a few feet from where she slept every night. In fact, she’d probably been asleep right there when the slaughter had been happening. She swallowed hard and forced her thoughts elsewhere.

  As they drew closer, she could hear voices coming from the office at the end of the hallway. Kato pulled her to a stop, turning so his back was to the open door, and she was tucked into the curve of his delicious body. She fought the urge to get closer, to wrap her arms around his narrow waist and . . .


  “Grace,” he whispered intently, in a way that made her think he’d said it more than once.

  “I’m here,” she murmured, leaning sideways just enough to catch a glimpse of the speakers. She’d recognized Gabler’s voice, but the other, . . . “That must be the police,” she said quietly. “I figured they’d be here.”

  “Are you ready for this?”

  She looked up at him in surprise. This was her office, her world, and he was asking her if she was ready. Damn right, she was ready. She nodded once. “Let’s go.”

  Kato tightened his arms around her in silent reassurance, and then he turned them both in the direction of the office and started forward.

  Gabler caught sight of her almost at once, looking past the unknown man’s shoulder. “Grace! You’re alive. Thank God.”

  She hesitated, taken aback by his concern. He’d thought she was dead? Why would he think that? She hadn’t spoken to him directly, but she had made contact with one of the others who shared the office. Kato pinched her arm, reminding her that Gabler was waiting. “I’m sorry, Dr. Gabler,” she said as they drew closer. “I came as soon as I got your message. We were on a hike in the hills this morning, and there was no . . .” Her voice trailed off when she got her first good look at the office. They’d rushed out of there so fast last night, and she’d been in such shock at everything that had happened, that she hadn’t paid all that much attention to the full scope of damage done. That inattention served her well now, because the stunned look on her face was real. “Oh, my God,” she breathed, shifting her gaze to meet Gabler’s worried stare. “What happened?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out. Grace Van Allen, this is Detective Harding. He’s investigating—”

  “Stan Harding,” the detective supplied. “L.A. County Sheriff. And you are?” He was looking over her head at Kato.

  “Oh.” Grace dragged her attention away from the wreckage. “This is—”