Year of the Demon

by Steve Bein

  The sight of the empty sword rack hit her like a hammer in the chest, but she didn’t have time to think about it. Someone had been in her apartment. Her only safe place wasn’t safe anymore. Someone had been in her apartment.

  Her pistol was at work, locked in a desk drawer. Her Cheetah stun baton was on the little wall-mounted bookshelf above her kitchen table. Her gaze flew wildly around the room, looking for a weapon. There was nothing. The intruder might still be in her home and she was unarmed—and caught in panties and a T-shirt, no less. She’d never felt more vulnerable.

  The best weapon she could find was her alarm clock—battery powered, not heavy enough to really hurt anyone, but it was the best she could do. She gripped it like a cavewoman’s brain-clubbing rock and got a sight line on her kitchen. It was clear. She traded the clock for the Cheetah, then opened a drawer with her free hand and dug around for her biggest kitchen knife. It seemed cheap, flimsy, almost toylike now that she needed to use it for self-defense. But she was as heavily armed as she could make herself, so she checked the last hiding place in her apartment: her bathroom. It was empty.

  She went to relock her door, only to find it was already locked. She’d actually hoped she’d forgotten to lock it the night before, because now the truth was clear: she wasn’t safe at all. Not here. Her doors and windows were no protection. Someone had been standing over her in her bed. He could have beaten her with her own stun baton. He could have put that flimsy knife to her throat. Raped her. Killed her. Anything.

  Noise erupted behind her. She whirled, her breath frozen, her heart pierced by a million icy needles. She brought her feeble weapons to bear, but only in vain. It was just her alarm clock.

  It buzzed irritably on her countertop, louder than it had ever been. In truth it only seemed that way, and Mariko knew it. She was jumpy. The damn thing had taken her by surprise.

  She killed it and slumped to the floor. Her back pressed against her front door, and the cold of the floor tiles seeped into her feet and her ass. She felt naked. What now? she thought. Call the cops? You are the cops. Call Mom? Saori? They wouldn’t be any help. But Mariko had to call someone. She didn’t want to deal with this on her own.

  That in itself was an alien instinct. Self-reliance was one of her strong suits, maybe her strongest. But this invasion of privacy had shaken her to the core.

  Dialing 110 was the right thing to do after a burglary. It was what she would have advised anyone else to do. But Mariko didn’t do it. She grabbed her phone and dialed Han. “Get to my place as quick as you can,” she said. “Bring a fingerprinting kit with you, and don’t touch my door until you dust it.”

  • • •

  “Screw the prints,” Han said, “how are you?”

  “I told you, I’m fine,” Mariko said. They both knew she was lying and they both knew why, and Mariko wished Han could just leave it at that. “What did you find on my doorknob?”

  “Prints all over it—most of them yours, probably, but we know your guy definitely didn’t wipe it clean. No scarring around the keyhole, so I don’t think he used a bump key. No scuffs on the frame near the jamb either, so I don’t think he worked the bolt. But I’ve got this funny suspicion that you knew all of that already. What’s going on here?”

  “Weird stuff. Ninja stuff.” Mariko took the fingerprinting kit from him and started dusting her apartment, starting with the sword rack in the bedroom. “I checked with the night watchman; only four people came in or out all night, and they all live here. The security cameras tell the same story. My windows are all intact, all locked from the inside—”

  “Which hardly matters, since you live on the seventeenth floor—”

  “But I checked anyway, just to be thorough. And you’re going to love this: the door chain was latched too.”

  “What? That’s impossible.”

  “Clearly not.”

  “Come on. How could he—?”

  “I don’t know, Han. All I know is that when I come home I always slide the chain on the little thingy, and when I woke up this morning, the chain was on the little thingy.”

  Han poked his head in her bedroom. “So your perp couldn’t have come through the door.”

  “Nope.”

  “And he couldn’t have come through a window.”

  “Not unless he knows how to relock them from outside.”

  Han scanned the room, maybe looking for additional entries and exits. “So what’d he do, pass through the wall?”

  “Kind of looks that way, doesn’t it? And he walked out of here with a sword this big.” She spread her arms as wide as they would go. “Not exactly inconspicuous. I’ve had the radio on ever since I called you. No reports of a ninja creeping through the neighborhood with a giant sword.”

  “To hell with the radio. You need to call Mulder and Scully. This isn’t a home invasion, it’s a damn X-Files episode.” He studied her for a second. “Shit, Mariko, I’m sorry. This has to be scary as hell for you.”

  “I’m not exactly thrilled about it, no.” She looked away from him, and pressed her eyes shut and her lips together as if sheer force of will could keep her face from going red. She didn’t want to have this conversation with another cop—not even with Han, the one person she trusted more than anyone else on the force.

  “Did he . . . I mean, are you okay? Like, okay okay?”

  Mariko swallowed. “If you’re asking what I think you’re asking, no, he didn’t rape me.”

  Han sighed as if she’d just lifted a parked car off his chest. His relief was so palpable that she even felt some of it herself. This was why he’d earned her trust. Any other man in the department would have pressured her to go in for a rape kit. Han took her at her word, and he did it because he treated her like an adult. Lots of the other guys respected her, but they did it the same way they’d respect a high school athlete doing something amazing, something only the pros should be able to do.

  So when he felt relieved, it wasn’t fatherly or brotherly or anything else. It was plain old thank God you’re okay, and that meant the world to her. Given the morning she was having, it almost made her cry.

  But that wasn’t something she was going to do, even in front of him. She busied herself with studying the crime scene so she’d have something other than her emotions to think about. Her eyes passed over Yamada-sensei’s sketch of the demon mask, in the notebook she’d left faceup and sprawled open the night before.

  She winced at the thought of what damage she’d done to the spine of the notebook, leaving it sit open like that for hours. It was the most trivial concern imaginable, and yet it niggled at her, so she reached down to close the book. As she did so, the next page flopped over, and on the overleaf she saw Yamada’s handwriting running like a banner at the top of the page: What is the connection between the mask and Glorious Victory Unsought?

  She sat heavily on the bed. Kamaguchi Hanzo—the man who had a contract on her life, the man whose drug den she’d raided the night before, the man whose brutality on the streets had earned him the name Bulldog—owned an ancient mask that was somehow related to her sword. A sword that was now missing. A sword that had been taken by someone standing over her bed as she slept.

  “Oh, hell,” she said.

  “What?” Han said.

  “It was the Bulldog. I think he’s sending me a message.” Mariko handed Han the notebook, opened to the page with the mask. “Remember the shelf of antiques in his office? All medieval stuff, most of it related to the samurai. My sword would fit right in.”

  “So what, last night he decided to expand his collection?” Han thought about it for a second. “I don’t like it. I mean, there’s a hit out on you, right? If he’s going to take all the trouble to break into your place, why not just shoot you?”

  “Gee, thanks. You really know how to help a girl feel safe.”

  Han winced as if he just felt the squish of dog crap under his shoe. “Sorry. But you know what I’m getting at. Why not collect a double pay
day? The sword plus the bounty?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said, I think he’s trying to send me a message. But I’m damned if I know how to read it.”

  Han looked back at the door, then at the windows, his boyish face scrunched up in thought. “There’s something else: that message of his is in the wrong language. I mean, the dude’s got a list of priors going back twenty, twenty-five years, almost all of them violent crimes. Now picture a guy like that breaking into your apartment. How is he going to do it?”

  Mariko thought of the Bulldog’s photo on the top sheet in his file. Broad shoulders, ferocious eyes, an underbite like a wild boar’s. Not the type to run a stealth mission. “Good point,” she said. “Kicking down the door and shoving a shotgun in your mouth is more his speed.”

  “Exactly. This ninja stuff is just weird.”

  “So is his dope deal.” Mariko ticked off each point on her fingers: “No cash on hand for the buy. A dealer who knows there’s a sting and shows up anyway. Kamaguchi-gumi enforcers who don’t mind beating the hell out of their supplier but somehow grow a conscience when it comes to killing him—”

  “I don’t know about that,” Han said. “Last time I checked, the dude was still in surgery.”

  “Yeah, but you know what I mean. They could have killed him, but instead they just roughed him up. We’ve got a drug deal with no money and no logical motives for the buyers or the sellers. And now the buyer just happens to break into my apartment on the very same night? Why wait this long? If Kamaguchi knows where I live, he could have aced me weeks ago.”

  “And if he wanted to hock your sword for drug money, he could have kicked in your door whenever he wanted.”

  “Exactly. But instead he waits until the very night I’m involved in a raid on his speed operation, and then he does all of this elaborate ninja shit.”

  Han shook his head. “I don’t get it. You?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “But you’re interested, aren’t you?”

  “Ten percent interested, ninety percent pissed off.” Mariko clenched her fists in frustration. “This guy broke into my home, Han. And from the look of it, he can do it whenever he wants. Can you understand what that means to a woman who lives alone? Where the hell am I supposed to sleep tonight?”

  Han took a deep breath, as if he were getting ready to jump off a cliff. Then, just before offering the invitation Mariko knew was coming, he deflated. He couldn’t put her up at his place. That was a line male and female partners couldn’t cross, and both of them knew it. The department’s prohibition against “fraternization between officers” was admittedly old-fashioned, and Han had no qualms about bucking bullshit regulations when he had a mind to, but Mariko didn’t stray outside the lines. She counted herself lucky to have a commanding officer who was willing to let her kick down doors instead of pushing paperwork, and she wasn’t about to jeopardize that.

  Besides, the real problem wasn’t Mariko’s accommodations; it was the break-in, the upside-down drug bust, the price on Mariko’s head. Somehow they’d all become interconnected. Whatever the connection was, it had Mariko feeling so vulnerable that she hadn’t even mustered the courage to take a shower. The thought of trapping herself in a tiny room, naked and cornered, was too unsettling.

  She pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her jeans and checked the time. She and Han had half an hour before Lieutenant Sakakibara would bust their asses for being late to work. No time for a shower now. She stepped past Han, poked her head into the bathroom, and studied her reflection in the mirror. Her short, choppy, bed-head hair stuck out in a hundred different directions.

  “That’s just great,” she said, cranking on the hot water. She’d have to run her head under the faucet and call it good. “Han, do me a huge favor and stand guard outside my door for two minutes, would you? If you see any ninjas in the hallway, shoot to kill.”

  Han grinned. “You got it.” He made a show of racking the slide on his pistol for dramatic effect.

  She forced a laugh, pushed him into the hallway, and locked the door. It wasn’t even six thirty yet and it was already shaping up to be one hell of a day.

  BOOK TWO

  AZUCHI-MOMOYAMA PERIOD, THE YEAR 21

  (1588 CE)

  5

  Shichio sat in his writing room with three scrolls sprawled before him, wholly covering the lacquered red top of his knee-high desk. One showed a map of Suruga, Kai, and Shinano—northern provinces, nuts as yet uncracked. One was a map of Kyushu, dotted with personnel deployments. The third listed all the fortifications and garrisons in the Kansai, along with their troop strengths. Tonight’s puzzle was sorting out which regiments to disband in order to replace the casualties across all the other wounded divisions. It was taxing work, but Shichio was only too happy to leave his battlefield days behind him. He was far better suited to solving logistics problems than to all those sweaty, dirty, bloody days in the field.

  It was late and the hallway on the opposite side of his shoji door had been dark for hours. Now something in the hall glowed like a foxfire, hovering at chest height, indistinct through the rice-paper windows. The shining orange ball bobbed right and left, up and down, making its way slowly to his study. It swelled in both size and brightness, then settled near the floor, close enough to the shoji now that Shichio could make out the blurry outlines of a dancing candle flame. He sighed and laid down his writing brush. “Must you disturb me yet again?” he said.

  “Begging your pardon, General,” said a voice so meek it could only belong to Jun, his adjutant. “There’s someone here you should see.”

  “Do you plan to tell me this someone’s name?”

  “I don’t know it, sir.”

  Shichio saw through the shoji as a kneeling shadow bowed low. “Jun, am I usually in the habit of answering summons from unidentified callers? No. Go away.”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but you ordered me to send for you for this one.”

  “Ah. Him.”

  Shichio rose, Jun sliding the shoji open even as he did so. The hallway was dark but for Jun’s candle and empty but for Jun, who was so slight of build that he could hardly be said to be there at all. Shichio took an object wrapped in silk from his shelf and tested its weight in his hand. It was no bigger than a sushi plate, but it was as heavy as if it were made of stone. He stepped out into the corridor. “So? Where is he?”

  “Just this way, General.”

  Jun popped to his feet and scurried off down the corridor. His candle caused yellow flares to shine here and there on the walls, bouncing its light off the gold leaf that seemed to cover every last panel and rafter in the entire Jurakudai. Shichio smelled incense and wondered if the wind was carrying the scent from the nearby Hongwanji temple or if Hashiba had sent his incense bearers running through the halls yet again. Shichio would have done almost anything for Hashiba, but first and foremost he’d like to give Hashiba some advice in decorating this garish monstrosity.

  As Jun led him across a gravel courtyard under the three-quarter moon, Shichio saw the lunar reflection in the gold leaf on the roof tiles. By the gods and buddhas, Shichio thought, who gilds roof tiles? It was so overwrought.

  But such decisions were not Shichio’s to make. Perhaps he would get to design a palace of his own one day. Now and then Hashiba spoke idly of invading China. If he did invade, perhaps Shichio would go and make a name for himself there. Perhaps he would besiege some city, and ride in triumphantly after it fell. He could seize the most elegant mansion in the most peaceable quarter, and make a proper palace of it. Tasteful colors, unembellished roof tiles, and an art collection to rival the Emperor’s. But until then he would enjoy the comforts of the Jurakudai, such as they were.

  The man kneeling in the courtyard enjoyed precious little comfort. His elbows were tied behind his back with jute rope, each wrist bound to the opposite forearm. He wore no armor, and the gravel must have been punishing his knees. But he had the body of a soldier: broad arms, broad nec
k, a sturdy torso, and a shaved head. Shichio did not recognize him.

  Until the man looked up at him. Then Shichio could see the scar running straight across his forehead, halfway between his eyebrows and the top of his forehead. It was thin, the scar, but even by moonlight it was unmistakable.

  “Bring him inside,” said Shichio. “Now.”

  Jun seized the prisoner by one of his elbows and tried to herd him toward the nearest building. The prisoner did not move. He had the muscles of a career soldier and the belly of a retired veteran; the reedy Jun could not hope to move him. But the prisoner conducted himself with honor: no doubt he saw that Jun or Shichio could summon other, larger men, and so rather than risking the indignity of being dragged off, he stood of his own accord and followed Shichio solemnly.

  Shichio marched ahead, sliding open the first shoji he came across and slipping out of his sandals to enter the audience chamber within. Jun halted at the door, and with a tug he bade the prisoner to stop too.

  “Well?” said Shichio.

  His adjutant looked at the tatami floor. “Sir, he’s shod. And his feet are dusty.”

  “Then you’ll have to clean the tatami later, won’t you? Or if that’s too much trouble, I could just have you skinned and hang your filthy pelt on the wall. That ought to be enough to distract visitors from the floor, don’t you think?”

  Jun swallowed and shoved the prisoner into the audience chamber.

  Shichio was about to tell him to shut the door when he saw it was already too late. Hashiba was crossing the courtyard, heading straight for him. Mio Yasumasa, that old fat oaf, trailed two or three paces behind. General Mio towered over Hashiba like a snowcapped mountain. Of course it was hard to find a grown man shorter than Hashiba, but Mio seemed to lord his size over him, stomping like an elephant and wearing his armor for almost every occasion. What possible need could he have to be armored tonight? Here, in the most secure building in the Kansai? Yet the huge sode at his shoulders made him seem all the broader, and the haidate bouncing on his huge and ponderous thighs made it sound as if an army were approaching.