We were hiking up to Hoa Sen Falls, one of the most beautiful, remote, and lesser-known waterfalls in Vietnam. We’d just crested the top and were enjoying the beautiful view when it happened. There were six of them and the first one got off a shot just as I hurled a blade in his direction. He was down for the count, but the bullet tore through my side. I dropped to my knees as Victoria sprung into action. Earlier I mentioned that Victoria is well equipped to utilize her looks in order to take a life. But make no mistake; those looks simply compliment a skill set that makes her one of the most impressive fighters I’ve ever come across. Yet another reason to love her.
She’d dropped two before another pulled a gun. I wasn’t moving very fast, but I still got myself in the way of the shot, taking a bullet to my shoulder, forearm, and thigh before a knife from my good arm managed to take the gunman out. I don’t even remember doing it, there was so much pain flashing through my body. To this day I think the only thing keeping me upright was a drive to protect the woman I loved.
There were only two left and Victoria finished the first off easily. But the last was the brother of the man she’d killed. Like me, he was fighting for the love of family. So even though Victoria drove a knife into his chest, he used every bit of remaining strength in his body to grab hold and carry her over the ledge. I stumbled to the edge just in time to see their bodies vanish into the mist. The fall was a couple hundred feet and I assumed impossible for anyone to survive. Even in my injured state, I spent days searching for her body. Now it’s clear why I never found it. But back then all I knew was that I’d lost her. I felt dead inside and grabbed at the only thing I had left in my life, revenge. So, with a heavy heart I returned to Japan.
My rapid healing meant that after a few days my bullet wounds appeared to be a month old. This helped sell my story when I returned to the ninja clan. I explained that Yoshida’s organization had a few loose ends that needed to be dealt with. I spun quite a tale using the Russians and explaining my wounds as requiring me to stay away as I recovered. But I never mentioned Her. Before too long I moved on to my next mission and tried with ever fiber in my being to forget about Victoria. That was four years ago. Since that time I haven’t made it through even a single day without thinking about her.
Now it seems I was being given a second chance. Whatever the reason for her absence, she was here now and I was planning to make the most of it. So, as she slowly stirred awake and her eyes met mine, I smiled so wide it almost hurt. I walked over to the bed, kissed her gently and simply said “Good morning.”
CHAPTER 2
I showed her how much I missed her…three more times, before we finally showered and headed down for breakfast. It was past noon and a few Poptarts clearly weren’t going to be enough food to recover after our extracurricular activities. She’d always had an impressive appetite. I never could figure out how she fit so much food into that tiny body. So, I ordered in, and we drank Jasmine tea in my kitchen nook while we waited. I enjoyed the comfortable silence, as I didn’t have anywhere else to be. Dutton had ordered the team to take a few days R&R after our last mission, leaving the two of us plenty of time to catch up. I think part of me was afraid to ask her what happen for fear of shattering this wonderful playful mood.
She was only wearing underwear and one of my button-up shirts with the sleeves rolled up. It was obviously too big for her but she looked sexy as hell. I also appreciated how she strategically forgot to do the top few buttons. We kept meeting each other’s gaze, both of us wondering where to start. There was a lot of smiling, giggling, and general sillyness before I finally broke the fun. I hated doing it, but there were questions that needed to be answered.
“So, you must be an amazing swimmer?”
Her smile faded and she looked down at the table for a bit before meeting my gaze again. I could see her dark eyes start to water up as she replied.
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
“I’m not even sure where to start,” she said.
“The beginning is probably best.”
“Do you hate me?”
“I could never hate you Victoria.”
“Victoria? A little formal don’t you think?” she asked.
“Trying to keep my focus right now. It’s been a rough four years.”
“I can imagine. Still.”
“Vix was what I called the woman I loved. A woman who said she wanted to spend the rest of her life with me. Prior to last night, I believed she’d made good on that promise. But here you are in my kitchen. Which leads me to two possible conclusions. Either you survived your fall and decided you no longer wanted to be with me or you’re not really Victoria. So, which is it?”
“You don’t think I’m really me?” she smiled.
“Maybe you never were.”
That cut her deep. I could see the pain on her face. I hadn’t meant my tone to be so harsh, but years of pain were bubbling up to the surface and I was having a tough time keeping my emotions in check. She tried to smile and cover the hurt, but it didn’t work.
“I guess I deserve that. But it wasn’t quite as simple as you’re making it out to be,” she said.
“Letting me know that you’re alive seems pretty simple to me.”
“Really? Was there an email address to your super secret ninja cult that you forgot to give me?”
“Come on, you knew enough to find me.”
“You’re right, I did know enough, and I did eventually find you. But it was a few months later after I got out of the hospital,” she barked.
That one hit me in the gut. I was getting so upset about her surviving that I didn’t even stop to think how difficult her recovery might have been. When your blessed with an advanced healing factor like mine it’s easy to forget how tough it is for regular folks to recover from serious wounds. I took a deep breath and gave her a softer look.
“How did you survive?”
“I don’t really know. A lucky twist had me going into the water feet first and relatively straight. I still broke both my legs and snapped my pelvis. I floated downriver for what seemed an eternity, holding onto the floating corpse of my would-be killer. Eventually I nodded off, the pain too much for me to handle. A farmer found me and got me to a hospital. I spent a month in a comma. After several surgeries and a few fancy metal pins, I was mostly back to normal. The physical therapy took a while, but all in all I made a full recovery. They said I was a miracle.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t around to help.”
“Me too,” she smiled, “But I never stopped thinking about you. Although lots of time to think isn’t always a good thing.”
“What do you mean?”
“The more I thought about us the more I realized I needed to let you go.”
“What the hell made you think that?”
“You did, the day you explained to me how you were going to stop at nothing to avenge your father,” she said.
“Yeah, but…”
“No buts, you were killing people to avenge his death. Was I supposed to treat that as some small thing?”
“Of course not, but you don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?” she asked.
“I was…I don’t know. Maybe I could have given it up. For you.”
“I know. That’s why I had to stay away.”
“What?”
“I might have stopped you from doing what you needed to do. I couldn’t let myself be the reason you made that choice. You meant too much to me. So, since you already thought I was dead, I let you continue believing it. Better a broken heart that living a life of regret,” she said.
“I’d never regret you.”
“Either way, you did what you had to do and I moved on.”
Just the words “moved on” almost tore my guts out. Even after all this time she still brought forth the most powerful emotions in me. Considering I spent ten years letting revenge drive me to kill ninjas, that’s saying something.
&
nbsp; “Even if I understood why you stayed away, which I’m not saying I do, why come back now?”
She gave me a soft smile, “Because I need your help.”
“Oh.”
“It’s not like that.”
“How is it then?”
“Okay, it is like that. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only reason I’m here. Once I heard about the ninja clan being taken out, I did look for you. But you completely vanished. By the time I found you, you were already living this other life as a GHOST, and yes I know what they are. I was just waiting for the right moment to contact you. Fate it seems got tired of me waiting,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“Because I’m in serious trouble Bruce, and there’s no one else I can turn to.”
“I don’t understand, why am I the great savior here?”
“Because I’m looking for a Wu Xing Key, sometimes referred to as a chameleon key,” she explained.
“What is that and why do you think I can help?”
“It’s pretty much what it sounds like, a key. Obviously this key is special. It uses the power of the five elements to open a lock. The power of the elemental spirits must be recaptured each time as the energy is released after the key is used.”
“So you’re coming to me because you want me to fight some spirits? I think you misunderstand what GHOST Team means.”
“While I would appreciate your help defeating the spirits, I’m far from helpless in that regard,” she stated, “Mainly I need your help finding the proper key and the spirits for the vessel. Although not specifically your help, but rather the help of someone you have access to that I do not.”
“And who is that?”
“His name is Froederick Blair.”
“Freddy? Why the hell do you need Freddy?”
“Because he is the world’s foremost expert on the keys,” she said straight-faced.
“Seriously?”
“Yes. Why is that so hard to believe?”
“If you met Freddy you’d understand. I guess I just never really thought of him as anything more than a generic nerd. Not really the world renowned expert type.”
“Well, I don’t know what type he’s supposed to be, but the key is a fairly obscure artifact. Due to the difficult nature of using the key, it’s a mostly forgotten relic. They are considered rather insignificant items within the supernatural community, if that makes it easier to believe. Even the spirits the keys capture are normally of the low powered variety,” she said.
“Oh good, hopefully that means they are easy to defeat.”
“We can hope, but it’s not likely,” she smiled.
“Yeah, didn’t think so. Do I even want to know how we fight a ghost?”
“Honestly, it varies with each spirit. I’m hoping Mr. Blair has all of those answers.”
“Fantastic. What could be better than trusting our lives to Freddy?”
“I told you, I don’t expect you to come along. I just need you to get some information from Mr. Blair for me,” she said.
“First off, don’t be ridiculous. There’s no chance I’m letting you do this alone. And second, his name is Freddy. Stop with the Mr. Blair stuff before you make me ill.”
“Well, my hope is that Freddy knows where to find this particular key and how to best deal with the spirits.”
“Okay, then I guess we just have to find him.”
“Aren’t you friends?” she asked.
“We’re teammates. But, I’m sure he’ll be happy to do a favor for a nice guy like me. Heck, as much as he loves to try and teach me boring supernatural stuff he’ll probably relish in the opportunity to tell me all about the Wu Xing key or spirits or whatever.”
“Bruce, I know this is a lot to ask…”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll find some way for you to make it up to me,” I winked.
“I’m sure you will. Now, I don’t mean to rush things, but how soon do you think you can talk with him?”
“Well your timing is impeccable. The team has been forced into a few days of rest and relaxation, so he’s probably got some free time. Although if I know Freddy, he’s spending that free time in the library researching something incredibly boring.”
“That’s the library at your headquarters?” she asked.
“Yup, that’s the one. What do you think, wanna see where I work?”
“I’m not sure that’s a very good idea.”
“You’re probably right. You wouldn’t believe how much trouble it was to just get Vlad cleared to visit there.”
“Vlad?” she raised an eyebrow.
“Yeah, my car…sort of a long story.”
“I’m all ears.”
I couldn’t help but look at her ears. The urge to lean over the table and start nibbling on them almost overtook me. But, somehow through the magic of ninja willpower, I refrained. Trust me when I tell you that it wasn’t easy.
“Well, without dragging it out, Vlad is the spirit of a dragon that bonded with my car in order to prevent himself from being destroyed. He’s pretty awesome. Normally I’d take you out to the garage and let him introduce himself, but he got a little banged up on my last mission. My brother said it could be a few weeks before Vlad’s back to his normal self. In the meantime, the more I ask him to talk or move the slower he’s able to recover. So, for the duration of our quest we probably won’t have his help and we’re going to need another set of wheels.”
“I see,” she smiled, “Without you thinking that I’m not totally curious about the dragon you keep in your car. Care to explain the brother bit?”
“Yeah, it’s been an interesting couple of days. It turns out I have a brother and he’s an elf.”
She stared at me for a minute, her eyes searching my face for signs of deceit. I guess it’s easy to understand how nuts most of this sounds. If our positions were reversed, I might think she was messing with me too.
“Okay? So, do you have pointy ears that I should have noticed at some point?”
“No,” I laughed, “He’s adopted like me. We were separated when I was very young and we just found each other again. He works for another GHOST Team. Apparently it runs in the family.”
“So it would seem. Well, now that we’ve sort of cleared that up, maybe we should get going on this quest. Do you want to give Freddy a call or something?”
“Like I said, chances are he’s in the library. I think it’s best if I do this in person. We’re not really close enough for the phone favor. Plus, he probably wants to give me a ton of books and scrolls and whatever other junk he thinks we’re going to need on this little mission.”
“Okay, I guess I’ll just wait here then,” she smiled.
“I’ll try not to be long. You can watch tv or something. Unfortunately the best television in the house is the projector in the garage. But there’s another smaller one upstairs in the bedroom.”
“Do I want to know why your best tv is in the garage?”
“Because me and Vlad watch tv together, duh.”
She shook her head, “Interestingly, I’m not even a little shocked by that. Should I be jealous of this dragon?”
“Well Vlad can be possessive,” I laughed.
“Maybe I’ll go say hello after you leave,” she smiled.
“Whatever entertains you. By the way, there’s a gym in the basement if you want to work out or anything. Obviously the house is yours. Whatever you need. Just be here when I get back, okay?”
“I will.”
I stood up and walked around the table, giving her a soft kiss on the forehead. Before I could even stand back up she grabbed me around the neck and pulled my lips into hers. It was a long, slow kiss, and I wasn’t in any rush to break it. After an eternity of being lost in her embrace I finally broke contact. I could see a bit of worry on her face.
“Everything’s all right Vix, I’m going to help you.”
“I know,” she smiled.
I started to turn and stopped myself. It
occurred to me that I didn’t even ask why she wanted the key. Obviously I wasn’t thinking straight in my emotional state. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t like the answer to the question, but I knew that I had to ask.
“Vix, why do you need this key?”
She tried to smile to cover up her fear. But even after all these years I knew her better than that. I held her gaze, trying to be supportive but making it clear that I needed an answer.
“Vix, what aren’t you telling me?”
“I screwed up bad,” she said.
“What did you do?”
“I stole something from the wrong people. I gave it back, but they said I needed to make amends for my actions. So, I have to get the key.”
“Why do they want the key?”
“To open a sarcophagus.”
“What’s inside of it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What happens after you open it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Vix, we can’t just open some Pandora’s box of evil for the badguys when we have no idea what could be inside. Who knows what they are planning?”
“Bruce, I have no choice,” she pleaded.
“You always have a choice.”
“Not this time.”
“And why’s that?”
“They have my parents,” she said through watery eyes.
“What?”
“They took my parents as collateral to make sure I found the key. If I don’t deliver in the next three days, they’re going to kill them. I’m sorry Bruce, I never meant to drag you into this, but I need the key and you know Freddy and I didn’t know what else to do…” she rambled.
I put my arms around her and held her tight. She took a few deep breaths and finally started to relax. I reached up and gently held her face in my hands, my eyes peering deep into hers.
G.H.O.S.T. Teams (Book 3) Spirits Page 2