A sob rose in his throat. That hadn’t happened since he was four and foster mummy two had drunkenly pushed him into a kerosene heater and his pyjamas bottoms had melted into his thighs. The memory flared a moment of panic and he dropped his arms and pulled away.
When they broke connection, the drumming in his chest stopped mid-beat; his heart instantly became cold and quiet again. The tears in his throat evaporated and his brain clicked in, razor-sharp, as the rest of his body became comfortably numb.
What the hell was that? he wondered.
Samantha teetered there without him, her eyes bereft.
‘What happened to you?’ she said, tears streaming.
How do I answer that? he thought. He didn’t try.
For the first time, Luke noticed that Zac wasn’t behind him, crawling out from under the bed. He was standing at the open doorway of the wardrobe. Luke wasn’t surprised. It was difficult to be shocked by anything Zac did any more. Besides, there was also the fact that his twin sister had just stepped out of a cupboard. He’d never done surprise very well, anyway.
And who was the other kid?
He turned to face the taller boy who was staring back at him. The kid was completely panicked. Fear crouched in his dark eyes and he ducked his head, cowering, as a newbie might in his first week at Dwight when he was about to be ‘counselled’ by Mr Holt and his henchmen.
‘Who -’ he began.
And then the wardrobe door creaked again.
Oh, for God’s sake.
‘Seraphina!’ yelled Zac and Samantha simultaneously.
That was a little too loud, Luke thought. He didn’t know whether Georgia knew that she had all these people chilling out in her hanging space, but she was gonna be aware of it pretty soon if everyone kept up with that volume.
‘Quiet!’ hissed the woman, stepping down from the wardrobe and quickly scanning the room.
Her eyes stopped at Luke, and he stared right back. Well, she was beautiful. Definitely hot, even in her Rambo outfit. But who on earth was she?
‘Um,’ he said. ‘What’s going on?’
Seraphina spoke first. ‘We haven’t got long,’ she said. ‘Samantha, I trust you’ve met Luke, your brother?’
Samantha nodded.
‘It was a terrible risk of me to give you that phone, and I hope one day you’ll forgive me,’ said the woman.
‘What phone?’ said Luke.
‘How does it work?’ said Samantha.
‘It’s an ancient object embedded within a communication device. It calls me to you when you desperately need me. But it also attracts others. We had to risk it when we lost track of you in Windsor, Luke.’
‘But I’ve never seen you before in my life,’ said Luke. ‘And what the hell are you doing hanging around in a closet?’
Seraphina’s golden eyes glinted. ‘Obviously, Luke, you realise that it is not an ordinary wardrobe.’
‘There are extraordinary wardrobes?’ said Luke.
‘There are many things you need to learn, but now is not the time. You and your sister are in immediate danger. I’ve no doubt the creatures hunting you are on their way. Whoever created this portal -’ she pointed at the wardrobe, ‘- is a very powerful being. Using it requires much skill.’
Her eyes locked hard on Luke’s, and then she turned quickly. ‘Zac Nguyen, your mother would be very proud of you.’
Zac blushed and bowed. Luke stared at him. He’d never seen anyone bow before.
‘And who is this?’ said Seraphina, turning towards the boy wearing no shoes and a terrified expression. The boy looked wildly around the room and then at the door.
He’s either gonna bolt or cry, thought Luke.
‘I don’t know his name,’ said Samantha quietly. ‘And I don’t think he can talk, Sera. But he can draw. And he’s really, really frightened.’
Luke’s eyes turned to his sister. Every word she spoke made him want to hear more.
Seraphina moved very slowly towards the boy, her palm outstretched as though approaching a trapped animal. Her lips moved, but Luke couldn’t pick up what she was saying. The boy’s head stopped thrashing about, but his eyes still looked freaked.
‘Please, would you tell us who you are?’ said Seraphina.
The kid reached around behind his back and pulled a notepad out of his backpack. He flipped back the cover and Luke could see some writing at the top of the page.
‘Kyle Greene,’ read Seraphina. ‘Is that your name?’
The boy chewed his bottom lip and then inclined his head, once.
‘Kyle Greene?’ said Luke. ‘Samantha, I think he’s one of our brothers!’
‘One of our brothers?’ Samantha stared at Luke.
‘What?’ hissed Seraphina. She grabbed the boy by the arm. ‘Kyle, why did you bring Samantha here? Who sent you to find her?’
Kyle wrenched his arm away and barrelled out of the room. Samantha hesitated, but the trail of fear and despair he left behind was too strong and she bolted after him.
And as she left the room, the world changed forever.
Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney, Australia
July 2, 7.32 p.m.
‘Are you certain that this was all that was at the front desk?’ asked Kirra, standing before the door of Room 323 of the Shangri-La Hotel.
Dagger’s Breath stood beside her, his scar glowing, sword sheathed across his shoulders. She could feel the heat of his need for revenge.
‘There were no other messages?’ she repeated.
‘Nothing, boss,’ said Golden Tiger, eyes averted.
Kirra turned the electronic pass-card over in her hands, her stomach muscles cramped.
The Chairman himself had called her. That was the first bad sign. When he ordered an important execution he liked to be personally involved on some level – but never directly, never like this.
Had she angered her boss so much that what lay beyond Room 323 was the afterlife? He’d want to have sent a pretty good crew if that was the case. She mentally reviewed the weapons she carried. Nine, all lethal, none visible.
She ran through everything again. The Chairman had told her that he knew where the two targets were hiding. Send someone to reception, he’d ordered – your instructions will be waiting.
And this was what Golden Tiger had brought her. The key to a room on the third floor of their own hotel.
She knew that the Chairman could have organised to have anything on the other side of this door. But could he possibly have captured the gypsy witch and had her brought here? Was that what he had summoned her to see – that others had succeeded where she’d failed? She would rather he had set up a trap for her crew – she would have preferred to meet her ancestors than face that humiliation.
If the gypsy witch was behind these doors, the Chairman would expect her to bring her to him, alive, as instructed. But he would always remember that she had failed the most important part of the mission and forever more she would have to watch and wait for his retribution.
And she knew that he was a very patient man.
But if the witch wasn’t in here, well…
She smoothed a single errant hair back from her flawless face and flicked her glossy ponytail off her shoulders. She knew – without vanity, and without make-up, for that matter – that she was one of the most beautiful women in the world. But she was more than that. She was a Yakuza assassin, feared in all dark corners throughout Japan and everywhere else she should happen to be.
And if she died tonight – on the night of her twenty-first birthday – well, she would ensure that people would still be speaking about it on the hundredth anniversary of her death.
Kirra Kiyota inserted the passkey into the electronic lock of Room 323 and pushed the door open.
***
The moment she pushed through the heavy hotel door, Kirra knew they were walking into a trap. The room was dark, but it wasn’t that: it felt far too small, as though it had been boxed up to cage them.
For a microse
cond her instincts told her to back out, to run. But she squashed them immediately, ashamed. If it was her destiny to die today, punished by the Chairman for failing in her assignment, then she would die with honour. Not in a year from now, hunted down in some alley by a fellow Yakuza.
She led her crew into the room with her. They were Yakuza, all, and she knew they would react the same way.
But once crowded into the cramped, airless space, she became confused. The barricade restraining them was wooden, flimsy, as though they were ordinary doors. She could see light and hear voices beyond them.
She put her eye to the crack in the doors and hissed quietly.
The gypsy and others. And there is the boy!
A massive sense of relief overrode all instincts telling her there was something bewitched about the situation. The Chairman still trusts me, she thought. The job is still there to do properly. I will be redeemed.
Kirra silently thanked her ancestors and turned to face her crew. Suddenly she was again proud of them all; their names would live forever.
She manoeuvred a little so that her beloved, Dagger’s Breath, could see through the crack in the doorway.
‘Keep the targets alive,’ she whispered. ‘All others are disposable.’ She waited for each of their murmured assents.
‘Dagger’s Breath,’ she breathed behind him, ‘on your go.’
Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, Australia
July 2, 7.36 p.m.
The cupboard door smacked back and a nightmare stepped through. A screaming, sword-wielding, tattooed freak. Luke threw himself sideways as another shrieking black-clad daemon leapt into the room. But this one was definitely female – even in his shock, Luke registered her icy beauty. And behind her were more.
Before his mind could process what was happening, the female ninja launched herself right at him. He sprang up onto the bed just as Seraphina crash-tackled her and Zac hollered his name.
He whipped his head up to see Zac straining with everything he had to push the cupboard doors closed. He had no idea how Zac was keeping at bay whatever roared and smashed against the inside of the doors, but he knew he needed help fast.
Luke flew from the bed and shoulder-charged into the doors. He heard the door lock-snap into place, felt the wardrobe immediately become still, and then, much too late, registered the swipe of silver from the corner of his eye.
JULY 2, 7.36 P.M.
Samantha froze in the hallway, hearing the shrieks from the room she had just left, and flattened herself against the wall. Every sense told her to get the hell out, start running and never come back. But her brother was in there. She couldn’t leave him.
Her heart firing like a machine gun, she peered around the door frame.
The scarred monster from the Carnivale seemed to fill all the space in the room and she plastered both hands over her mouth to smother her scream.
Samantha watched, horrified, as Luke dived a split second before Scarface landed in the spot he’d been standing. Scarface hit the ground hard, and rolled.
Samantha made herself small behind the door frame, terrified that he would see her when he stood up again.
And then Kirra leapt through.
Kirra screamed the same bloodcurdling battle cry Samantha had heard at the Carnivale – the sound that accompanied the whistle of the throwing star that had buried itself in Tamas’s neck. The sound Samantha heard replaying in her mind every time she closed her eyes.
Sam pushed her fingertips into her ears, praying to just curl up on the floor and disappear, and watched, horrified, as Kirra flew towards Luke. But before she could even take a breath to warn him, Seraphina sprang from a standing start to head-height in a blur of frenzied movement, and brought the black-clad ninja to the ground.
For a single heartbeat they each lay on their backs as though stunned, and then, in a near identical move, both women propelled themselves from flat out to kickboxing without making a single sound. Samantha would have cheered, but while the two women fought viciously hand to hand, Zac threw himself at the wardrobe.
She rushed forward to help.
Right into the chest of Scarface.
This close to him Sam suddenly felt the past deaths he’d been responsible for. Their ghosts wailed and moaned, and her legs jellied as the stored-up emotions of people he’d crushed and killed seeped through his pores and into her own. He grabbed her arms as she almost collapsed, and she was swamped by his hatred for her; it scalded her skin at every point of contact between them.
He threw his head back and howled.
Whimpering, incoherent with terror, Samantha tried, but failed, to close her eyes as he bent down to her head height to make her face him. His teeth were bared in a broken-lipped snarl and she saw in his black eyes that he was beyond human reach, beyond compassion. Her legs gave out completely and she bowed her head, waiting for his sword to fall.
But, as though from somewhere far away, deep inside, she heard a voice trying to tell her something. You’ve done it before, it whispered. In the street in Pantelimon – you reached him then.
Samantha White, you’ve done it before.
Although she wanted nothing more than to just allow her mind to go blank – to do what it wanted to do: overload its circuitry and shut down – she forced herself instead to search for the yellow light inside her.
But this close to Scarface, it felt impossible. The only energy streaming through her right now was wound-red and burned-black.
She tried to shut him out, she managed to close her eyes, but she could taste blood, and the charred stench of his rage filled her nostrils.
She needed an image, a place, a time to help her channel the light.
And suddenly, it came to her.
The burning stench Scarface emitted transformed in her mind to wood smoke, to the campfire crackling in preparation for Esmeralda’s evening meal. She found herself sitting cross-legged in the long grass, her lime-green skirt fanned out around her, the purple twilight warm upon her skin. She smiled, because behind the fence, within an arm’s-reach, Tamas whispered patiently to a broken horse, his brown face just visible, nuzzling its muzzle, swapping scents.
Tears streaming, Samantha gathered his whispers, his tender promises to the horse, and sent them out as quiet energy through her skin and into Scarface.
She felt it immediately.
Scarface hissed. As though a bucket of water had been thrown over white-hot coals, the fire of his rage evaporated. His eyes, locked with hers, became panicked, confused. He swung his head around wildly, as though for the first time properly taking in his surroundings.
What have I done? she thought, as she felt fear flood through him, replacing the hatred. She sensed him slowly losing his grip on reality.
He let go of her arm and swivelled completely, swaying on his feet, gazing back at the wardrobe from which he’d come. The wardrobe Zac and Luke stood pressed against, holding back the rest of the hell-people.
And, with a deafening, demented shriek, Scarface suddenly bolted towards the wardrobe, sword raised.
‘No!’ Samantha screamed, as Scarface struck.
JULY 2, 7.36 P.M.
Luke did not hear Samantha scream.
In fact, he heard nothing at all. The world became completely silent and everything slowed to a syrupy crawl as he watched the tattooed arm swinging its sword down towards Zac. Only these two players were in pinpoint-focus on the board as the rest of the room faded to sepia. His brain computed the microseconds it would take him to pull Zac from the path of the sword, even as it continued its lethal trajectory directly into his friend’s chest.
Zac crumpled to the floor and Luke knew that there was nothing he could do. He jumped anyway, leaping up onto the madman standing over Zac, roping his arms around his neck, heaving with everything he had to pull him down.
The swordsman teetered, Luke wrenched desperately, and they fell.
Luke felt the sword piercing his heart, just as Samantha’s agonised face appeared above
him. Her hand grasped his. A dark, wrenching pain ripped through him and he gasped. An aching anguish (could this be sorrow?) filled him at the thought that he was about to die and he’d never get to know her. But in that moment he was also inexpressibly grateful. Grateful that even though this would be the last time he would experience it, somehow his sister had again helped him to feel.
And finally he got it – finally he understood what everyone meant when they kept asking him, What do you think it would feel like if someone did that to you? He finally knew how someone else felt, and he was glad that the other person was Zac, his first real friend.
As his life pumped from the wound in his chest, Luke managed to drag himself a few centimetres closer to Zac.
He reached a hand out to touch his dying friend’s shoe, smiled up at Samantha, and then closed his eyes.
Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, Australia
July 2, 7.37 p.m.
From the age of seven, Kirra Kiyota had been able to out-fight any grown woman.
And at that age, no male under the age of sixteen could beat her in hand-to-hand combat.
She’d begun her martial arts training while still in nappies, chosen and schooled by Heaven’s Thief himself. She’d been told, even then, that when he’d had his dream about her destiny, her family had had no choice but to hand her over to the Yakuza.
She had no memory of her parents and wanted none. Heaven’s Thief had been her father, the Chairman her benevolent uncle.
When, at twelve, she’d knocked senseless their best adult male fighter, the Chairman had offered her the right to take the defeated man’s life. Still shamefully soft, she’d declined, so the Chairman had bought her a Lamborghini as a prize for her win, and forced her to sleep for a mid-winter’s month on the stones in the courtyard for refusing the kill.
Disharmony Page 27