Eight Million Gods

by Wen Spencer

  The prepaid cell phone had been decorated with cherry-blossom stickers and a half-dozen overly cute charms dangling from straps. It looked like a phone that any Japanese teenage girl would be carrying. It was utterly devoid, though, of any personal data. There were no numbers in the contact list. The incoming and outgoing call logs were all scrubbed clean. If he hadn’t taken it from her purse, he wouldn’t have been able to guess it belonged to her.

  Who was this girl? Why was she so careful?

  The phone did have dozens of photos, but only of manhole covers, vending machines, and bicycle chains. He thumbed through a collection of links, sprockets, and chain guards from various city bikes, wondering at her fascination. What did they have to do with a kami enshrined in a stolen katana and a dead tanuki?

  He was about to abandon the phone when it rang. He read the caller ID as he waited for the call to drop to voice mail. It was a local number. Nikki Delany knew at least one person in Osaka.

  Luckily Miriam Frydman wasn’t as secretive as Nikki Delany. By the start of evening rush hour, he knew her life history. Miriam was the second child of four siblings, but the only one who attended a boarding school. That hint of her being a problem child was smoothed over by the fact that she had no criminal record, had graduated from high school with honors, and had been accepted to Princeton University’s East Asian Studies Department. She was in Japan on a work visa, employed as a translator by the gaming company Capcom, and living in Osaka. By his standards, she was squeaky clean.

  Miriam called Nikki’s phone a dozen more times; she obviously didn’t know that Nikki had abandoned her ID and cell phone at her apartment. If that was the case, she also didn’t know that Nikki had bolted. Most likely, Miriam’s next step would be to visit Nikki’s apartment. Sooner or later, the people who sent the tanuki after Nikki would be looking for their “man.” It would be best if squeaky clean didn’t cross paths with monsters—human or otherwise.

  He caught up to Miriam as she stepped onto the subway train. She sensed him before she saw him moving toward her and shied away, scanning the other passengers with wide frightened eyes until she spotted him. And then her eyes went even wider, as if she knew what he was.

  He should have guessed that Miriam Frydman would be a Sensitive. Talents like Nikki Delany were like metaphysical bonfires to spiritual moths.

  “Ms. Miriam Frydman, I’m with the FBI.” He flashed a badge to prove it, but she didn’t believe him. Even a normal person would have trouble lying to a Sensitive.

  She edged toward the door, trying to flee. “I didn’t think the FBI had jurisdiction overseas.”

  “The FBI investigates any murder of an American citizen abroad.” He stuck as close to the truth as he could. “I’m looking into the murder of Gregory Winston on Saturday night.”

  She hit the closed door, and her eyes widened even more. “I don’t know anything about it. Really. My friend is writing a horror novel, and some psycho fan copied one of the murders from the book.”

  “Yes, I know.” He knew that Nikki Delany had written Gregory’s murder hours before it happened. It was the most recent file saved on her flash drive. The wall of Post-It Notes was an accurate portrayal of the current condition of Nikki’s work. The novel wasn’t one solid manuscript, but hundreds of scenes labeled by the “character’s” initials and a seemingly random numbering scheme. For some reason, though, she had changed everyone’s name. So far, he hadn’t been able to identify what name she’d given Simon.

  “We think that Ms. Delany might be in danger,” he said truthfully. “Do you know where she is?”

  The next station was announced, and she relaxed slightly with the promise of escape. “She’s probably doing research for her book. During the week, she visits locations she’s using for her novel. She goes out to Kobe, Kyoto, and such by train.”

  In other words, she could be anywhere. “Is she fluent in Japanese?”

  “No, but you really don’t need to be to get around.”

  The train was slowing down as it entered the next station. All around them, people shifted, readying themselves for the doors to open. Miriam’s relief grew more evident on her face.

  “Ms. Frydman, we believe Ms. Delany is in danger.” All evidence of the struggle in the apartment had been erased, so he stayed vague about the location. “She was attacked by a man armed with a knife last night in Otamae.”

  “What? Was she hurt?”

  “We don’t know. We found her phone. We know you’ve been calling her.”

  Miriam whispered a curse. “I’m going to her place now.”

  “I would advise against that. She’s not at her apartment. You might make yourself a target if you go looking for her.”

  “I don’t fucking care! She’s my best friend. She’s in this mess because I talked her into moving to Japan!”

  “You can help her by telling me where she might go to be safe. Does she know anyone else in Japan?”

  There was someone else; he saw the thought flash across Miriam’s face. The girl, however, only shook her head.

  He put his hand on the door behind her and leaned over. He hated having to terrorize her, but better him than someone who would actually hurt her. “We think that Gregory Winston might be related to a murder in Kyoto. A sixteen-year-old girl was killed and then raped.”

  Miriam went pale at the news. “Was—was she a shrine maiden?”

  He nodded. Nikki must have shared her writing with Miriam.

  “And someone set fire to her family shrine?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh God!” Miriam gasped. The level of her shock was measured by the fact that the train pulled into the station and the door opened without her seeming to notice. She flinched hard as he caught her arm and pulled her onto the platform. “This isn’t the right stop.”

  “You’re not to go to her apartment. She’s not there, but he might be.”

  She frowned up at him, nearly vibrating with fear and anger. “Let me see your ID again.”

  He gave it to her, and she studied it closely.

  “What is it with government employees?” she grumbled. “Every one I’ve ever met has never told the whole and honest truth.”

  “People don’t want the truth. It’s big and scary. It has sharp teeth, and it’s hiding under the bed, just waiting for the lights to go out.”

  She jerked her gaze up from his badge to glare at him. “Lying doesn’t make the monsters go away.”

  Had she spent her childhood terrorized by things no one else could see? The boarding school made more sense now. Her parents must have given up and written her off as impossible to deal with. Let someone else deal with the child who insisted that monsters were real.

  “No, it doesn’t make them go away.” He sighed. He’d had this argument countless times with Simon; the irony was that he normally took Miriam’s side. “Just—just sometimes it’s easy to be wrong.” He couldn’t tell her about the tanuki and kami, if for no other reason than that he wasn’t sure what had happened in Nikki Delany’s apartment on Sunday night. He was fairly sure, though, that Nikki was in over her head. “Ms. Delany might have been taken by force. There’s no way I can know for sure without checking the places where she might hide. If she was taken, I need to find her—quickly.”

  She sensed he was telling the truth, but she still didn’t trust him. She hunched her shoulders against the burden of protecting her friend in the face of danger and stared down at his ID. She traced her fingertips over his badge as if she could sense the twofold truth and lie held within it.

  “We’ve been friends since high school,” she said softly. “Her mother is a control freak. Nikki just wanted to get away from her. Coming to Japan was my idea. We had this plan—we go to Princeton and come here at the same time—but everything kept going wrong. We were supposed to have an apartment together. We were supposed to watch out for each other.”

  “Please . . .” Asking her to trust him was impossible; all her senses
had to be telling her that he was dangerous. “I can protect her. I promise you.”

  She flinched slightly as if he had hit her. “I don’t know where she is. Her mother made it impossible for her to make friends. I’m the only person that she knows here in Japan.”

  The joy of working with Sensitives was that they were so used to being able to tell when someone was lying that they operated on the assumption that everyone had the same ability. They told shades of truths. The key word obviously was “know.” There was someone that they both considered trustworthy but whom Nikki didn’t know. A friend of Miriam’s that Nikki had never met? An estranged family member? Whoever it was, Miriam wasn’t going to tell him.

  But the moment he was out of sight, she’d contact whoever it was to see if Nikki was safe. All he needed to do was give her a chance to make the call.

  He pulled out the card that said “Tobias Gregson, Special Agent” and listed his cell phone number as 06-4397-2948. “Call me if you hear from her.” With that, he let her flee.

  Nikki frowned at the page. She could tell that the card was a lie. His name wasn’t Tobias Gregson; that was a name she would pick out for some obscure literary in-joke. Gregson was a police officer in Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries; Holmes thought the policeman had promise. She sensed, too, that Scary Cat Dude wasn’t an FBI agent, but if someone called the FBI, they would unhappily vouch for him. He worked for someone who moved in the shadows. Maybe the CIA. It still felt more like British Secret Service, although she wasn’t sure why. The phone number on the card didn’t connect directly to his cell phone; he wouldn’t give out his real cell phone number. Someone could track him via his phone. The number on the card, though, somehow reached him. A whole web of lies surrounded him, and yet, for some reason, he felt trustworthy.

  She became aware of Atsumori leaning against her, feeling as solid as a real person, reading what she wrote.

  “Is this the same man as before?” he asked. “The one that searched your apartment?”

  “Yes.” She realized that Atsumori might not approve of her plan and had the ability to stop her. “I was worried about my friend, Miriam, but he kept her from going to my apartment. She’s safe. I need to go to the bathroom.”

  She put away her notepad and stood up. He rose with her. Not good. She liked Atsumori as far as boy gods went, but if handing him over to Scary Cat Dude meant Miriam would stay safe, she’d do it in a heartbeat. At least she would try. With him riding her shoulder, though, she probably couldn’t.

  “I really want some privacy to pee. I’m just going up to the gift shop to use the one in the courtyard. I should go quickly—I don’t know if they lock those for the night.”

  She tucked his katana up into the eves of the shrine. “I’ll be right back.”

  She half-expected him to possess and stop her, but he didn’t. She walked away trying not to feel like she was betraying him.

  She went to the bathroom first, rehearsing what she was going to say. Then, with heart pounding, she fumbled coins into the pay phone and dialed Scary Cat Dude’s number. There were some odd clicks, and then it rang.

  “Moshi moshi.” He had a voice like distant thunder, a deep menacing rumble.

  “Scary Cat Dude, is that you?”

  He breathed out a huff of surprise. “Nikki Delany?”

  “You have my wallet and passport.”

  “I do.”

  The important stuff established, they listened to each other breathe. She was hoping he would say, “I’ll give it back” to make things simple.

  “I want them,” Nikki said. “Needed” was more accurate, but it was a weaker position.

  “You have the katana.”

  “I know where it’s hidden.”

  They listened again to the rhythm of the other’s breathing. He was in a room or a parked car, no other sound leaking into the conversation. What was he learning from her silence? Dusk had given way to full night; the cicadas finally quiet. The sound of distant traffic was muted by the thick stone walls of the castle.

  It started to rain, the raindrops glittering as they fell into the pool of light around the phone booth. Beyond Nikki’s island of brightness, the darkness seemed to close in.

  “Are you still there?” Nikki hunched against the falling rain.

  “Stay where you are. I’ll be right there.” He hung up.

  She cursed as she realized that he hadn’t asked where she was. He got her position that quickly? Part of her just wanted to run and keep running. If she was going to get her passport back, though, she needed to stick to the plan.

  Nikki didn’t know where he was when she called him, but it must have been close. It was only a few minutes before he ghosted out of the darkness into her island of light. She recognized him even though she had never considered what he looked like; the angular shape of his face, his long black hair, and the way he moved reminded her of a lion. He looked very scary-sexy in a black trench coat.

  She had one moment of intense relief until she noticed the gun in his hand.

  He gave her an odd look, as if she’d confused him and surprised him at the same time. “What are you doing standing in the rain?”

  “You told me to stay put.” Her teeth started to chatter.

  He scanned the darkness around them for hidden dangers, finding nothing. He studied her again, still looking confounded. Then he looked away, set his shoulder, and said, with his voice full of ridicule, “You should have taken shelter.”

  “I didn’t want to risk you not finding me.”

  “Here, take my coat.” He took off his long black trench coat, a dozen sizes too big for her, and handed it to her, still warm from his body. She slipped it on and wrapped her arms around her, trapping in the heat, feeling guilty as the rain started to fall harder.

  “Where’s the katana?” He had made his gun disappear behind his back when he took off his coat. He produced it again like a magic act.

  It took all her courage to say, “Give me my passport and wallet.”

  He considered her long and hard. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out her belongs, including her phone, and held them out to her.

  Sniffling in the cold rain, she glanced inside her passport to verify it was hers and then checked to make sure her bank card, credit card, and driver’s license were still inside her wallet.

  “Where’s the katana?”

  “Why do you want it? Aren’t there freaking gods everywhere here in Japan?”

  “We want it because it’s been stolen, along with other minor religious artifacts. We’re working with the Japanese government to find them.”

  “If I just give you the katana, the yakuza will still be after me.”

  “The yakuza?” His eyebrow arched in surprise.

  “That’s who sent the tanuki to my apartment.”

  “If the yakuza are behind this, then we’ll deal with them,” he promised. “Where’s the katana?”

  How much could she trust him? He was supposed to be a “hero,” but so had Gregory Winston and look at how that had ended. A covert international agency tracking down stolen artifacts, though, matched up with the scenes she’d written.

  “It’s at the shrine.” She hated that it felt like she had betrayed Atsumori, but she needed Miriam to be safe from people looking for the katana.

  “Go.” He indicated that Nikki should lead.

  Nikki headed toward the shrine, trying to ignore the feeling that she had made a huge mistake. She still didn’t know his true name. He handled his gun as casually as another man would a cell phone. He was a tall, strongly built man; his narrow waist and flat stomach were proof that everything his T-shirt covered was all muscle. While his clothes were clean and neat, his mane of black hair and five o’clock shadow gave him an air of untamed danger that made her uneasy. Nor did it help that he didn’t seem to trust her, didn’t seem to like her, and had no real reason to keep her safe.

  “What’s your name? You know my name; it would be nice to
know yours.” And when he didn’t answer, she shrugged. “I could keep calling you Scary Cat Dude.”

  “Why do you call me that?” he rumbled in a tone close to anger.

  “You’re scary—and you rescued Misa’s kitten. I could have called you Scary Kitten Dude, but that just doesn’t scan as well.”

  After a minute, he said, “My name is Leo Watanabe.”

  The name felt right. It fit him. He was telling her the truth.

  They rounded the corner, and she stopped short of the torii gates into the shrine. “It’s in the shrine. Under the eaves of the smaller building.”

  He started forward but stopped just beyond the gate when she remained in place. He scanned the castle grounds. “Go get it.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think that would be wise.”

  “We have to get back to my car, quickly,” he said. “Get the sword!”

  She started to back away from him but then heard the sound of running feet echoing off the great stone walls that surrounded the castle. The moat and the high walls were about to create a trap.

  “Get the sword.” He took cover behind the torii post.

  She dashed toward the sword, swearing. There were scenes Nikki knew were going to end badly even before she picked up the pen. It was like a horror movie when the creepy music started to build; it signaled that the monster was lurking in the shadows, breathing harshly, about to pounce, maim, and kill. This time, though, she was the heroine, and when the violins were screaming that the moment of pain was at hand, she was the one who was about to feel it.

  She snatched up the katana and Atsumori flowed into her and through her like a lightning strike. His anger was white static brilliance that her body couldn’t possibly contain. They howled wordlessly and rushed like a storm’s wind through the temple grounds and headlong into the oncoming enemy. There were six tall, lean men with sharp faces and feral grace.

  “Tanuki dogs!” Atsumori shouted and slashed out. The sword whistled as it cut the air, and then it hit. The force translated through her arms with shocking knowledge that they had just struck with all her strength, that the blade was razor sharp, that they had just dealt a killing blow, that they’d cleaved through flesh and bone with impossible power. Nikki cried out with fear and dismay as blood sprayed over the face. She tasted it thick in her mouth.