The Devouring God

by James Kendley

  He stepped to the center of the loading dock. Takuda, Mori, and Suzuki stepped back toward the edges of the concrete, leaving Endo beside the abbot with Ogawa skulking at his shoulder.

  “So here is our situation,” the counselor said, folding his hands in preparation for a formal summation. “The three of you are apparently immune to the effects of the artifact, as expected. We already knew that madmen had some protection—­who knew madness such as yours would grant complete immunity?” His laughter then was more for punctuation than pleasure, which made it all the more insulting to Takuda. “Anyway,” Endo continued, “this really is a ludicrous situation. You seem to want the artifact for yourselves. The abbot knows that it cannot remain with you, no matter how he and I disagree on its final disposition. Therefore, I propose a solution. If the artifact is returned to its place in the Zenkoku General Sales office, Abbot Suzuki will take his son and whomsoever his son shall choose as permanent residents at the head temple.”

  The abbot snorted and turned on Endo. Endo silenced the abbot with a forefinger on his liver-­spotted wrist.

  “If, however, the artifact is not returned immediately, the abbot’s life is forfeit.”

  The abbot stared at Endo.

  “Yes,” Endo continued, smiling at Suzuki. “The artifact returned to the place from which you stole it, or your father dead at your feet.”

  Mori stepped forward with the ruined swallow-­cutter in his left hand and his sword in his right. He had drawn so silently that Takuda hadn’t even heard. Endo stepped away from the abbot, his hands raised. “Swords or guns or bombs can’t stop this. It will simply happen.”

  The abbot glared at Suzuki, a look of pure hatred on his face. “You have done this to me. You’ve killed me.”

  “How can you say such a thing?” Suzuki said, his face a perfect picture of curiosity and wonder. “How can you believe me responsible for this other man’s actions?” He peeled the bloody rags of his priestly sash from his hands—­fully healed but hideous, even longer than before, with tapering fingernails of bluish-­purple, like burnished claws. He grasped the abbot’s robes at the throat. He’s going to squeeze it out of him now, Takuda thought with satisfaction.

  The abbot struggled, but Suzuki drew him close and grasped his head between those pale, hideous claws as if to crush it between the palms. The abbot flailed and kicked, but Suzuki was suddenly strong, horribly strong, and the light Takuda had seen earlier shone from his eyes like a searchlight into the old man’s soul.

  “I see the evil in you,” Suzuki said. “I cannot explain how, but I see it, and I see that it is not yours. It was somehow planted in you, and it can be removed as the sin was removed from the heart of Muhammad.”

  “Blasphemer,” the abbot snarled.

  The priest grinned steely gray. The gaunt, pallid creature with its glowing eyes and shining teeth was no longer Suzuki. In Takuda’s eyes, it was no longer human.

  Suzuki has crossed over, Takuda thought, a wave of sadness passing over him. He has become something inhuman, as I have.

  Of those on the loading dock, only Takuda saw the change. Mori was watching Ogawa, Ogawa was looking to the counselor for instruction, and the counselor regarded Suzuki and his father with bemused tolerance. No one had noticed the sudden shift in the world.

  “Priest,” Takuda said, not sure if the being before him was really Suzuki at all. “What has happened? What are you?”

  Suzuki’s grin widened as he stared at his father’s head pinned between his palms.

  He hissed: “I . . . am . . . hungry!”

  He opened his mouth wider and wider, as if his jaw would unhinge. It was a shocking display of cutlery. He drew the struggling old man toward him in a yawning, sucking kiss.

  CHAPTER 39

  Thursday Afternoon

  They watched Suzuki seemingly suck the life out of his struggling father in an obscene and deadly kiss. Mori shuffled forward and back, a sword in each hand, as if unsure whether to advance or retreat. Takuda watched with a mixture of wonder and simple satisfaction as Suzuki drew the evil from his father’s heart in a great, squirming lump. He saw it pass smoothly from the old abbot’s heart to his windpipe and into his mouth, whence it passed directly between Suzuki’s cold, blue lips.

  Suzuki released the old man. As the abbot collapsed to a quivering heap on the concrete, Suzuki folded his hands in an attitude of prayer. He wore an expression of ecstasy, his eyes nearly rolling back in his head. The lump in his mouth, meanwhile, moved frantically against the insides of his cheeks as if in a bid for escape. Takuda saw the impressions of tiny body parts on Suzuki’s sallow cheeks, as one sometimes sees the shape of an unborn child’s foot move across its mother’s belly. These impressions were in no way so wholesome as an unborn child: here, a splayed claw; there, a half-­furled wing; there, a tiny, snakelike head.

  “Reverend Suzuki,” Endo said, stepping forward with more haste and concern than Takuda had ever seen him display, “that belongs to me. It is, in fact, very precious to me, and it could be very dangerous to you. You must listen to me. In the next few seconds, you must spit or swallow, one or the other. Do not allow my tiny friend to choose its own path. That would be ruinous for all involved. If you swallow, simply opening your throat, new worlds will become yours. You will become a prince in an invisible empire, as was your father before you. If you spit, no harm has been done. We would all start over, though there may be similar opportunities in the future. But please, please, choose quickly. Spit or swallow, it’s all up to you.”

  Suzuki opened his eyes. They blazed with the fires of dark worship Takuda had seen so often of late. Suzuki looked at each of them in turn, even sparing a glance for the collapsed abbot at his feet. He smiled then with great mirth and warmth, despite his terrible mirror-­bright teeth, prison bars for the tiny thing still struggling in his mouth. Then Suzuki closed his bluish lips tightly and, as Takuda had half expected, he chewed.

  The thing in Suzuki’s mouth shrieked, a high-­pitched, mewling wail above the bone-­deep crunching and popping. Red-­and-­black froth appeared at the corners of Suzuki’s mouth as his jaw crushed and minced the living evil until it fell silent and Suzuki swallowed it down in three great gulps.

  Counselor Endo stood still as stone. Takuda watched him for a few seconds before he realized why this stillness was so unnerving: Counselor Endo is so surprised that he has forgotten to pretend to breathe.

  “Reverend Suzuki,” Endo finally said, “I beg your pardon. I thought I knew who you were, but I do not. I do not know who you are at all. Please be so kind as to tell me your name. Your true name.”

  There was an echo of command in the counselor’s voice that made Takuda think to tell him Suzuki’s given name, just in case Suzuki himself didn’t volunteer it quickly enough. Whatever Suzuki had become, however, he was unmoved by words alone.

  “I have no name,” he whispered. He drew a cotton handkerchief from his robe. Hello Kitty. He dabbed the bloody froth from the corners of his mouth. “I come from times before all names, even before the figures scratched on your old stone knife. However, I shall continue to be called Suzuki.” He grinned dark blood and steel. “That’s Reverend Suzuki, to you.”

  Endo lowered his head like a bull about to charge. “Yes, about the artifact you mention,” he said. “I would like you to return that now.”

  Suzuki shook his head. “It’s done a great deal of damage, but that’s all over now. You may recall, or you may have heard, that our strong friend here used it to carve protection for himself in his own flesh.” Suzuki indicated the silvery scars on Takuda’s forearms. “That was a very, very long time ago, another partial foiling of the stone knife’s original purpose. I was curious to see if the scars would disappear with the destruction of the knife. What would you say, Counselor?”

  Endo did not glance at Takuda’s forearms, but Takuda knew the counselor didn’t need
to turn his head to see. “Some scars never heal. You’re not making sense, Reverend Suzuki. You mention the destruction of the artifact, an impossible event.”

  Suzuki smiled a thin and knowing smile. “My guess is that you don’t see some of the amazing changes in the former detective.”

  Takuda’s hand raised involuntarily to the horn growing down into a fang.

  Suzuki looked at Endo with dull, burning eyes. “Counselor Endo, I think you’ve got one foot in hell, and you can’t see half of what you pretend to see of this world or any world beyond it.”

  The counselor stepped forward and laid a forefinger on Suzuki’s wrist. “Tell me now: What is your name, your true name, and what have you done with the artifact?”

  “My name, if I ever had one, is lost across oceans of frozen time, to use your phrase. As for the Kurodama, I ate it bit by bit, from the tip of the blade to the handle, and then I sucked the evil from that shrunken lozenge like syrup from shaved ice. It was delicious. As you will be.”

  Suzuki flipped his hand so quickly that even the counselor couldn’t escape his grasp. Now Suzuki gripped the counselor firmly by the wrist. The counselor’s whole body seemed to shiver apart and come back together more quickly than Takuda’s eyes could make sense of the change. Endo tried to pull away from Suzuki, but Suzuki was far too strong. The counselor strained and shuddered until he finally pulled away from Suzuki with a snap. He stared at Suzuki’s hand. Everyone on the dock stared at Suzuki’s hand.

  A small creature struggled between Suzuki’s thumb and forefinger. It was pale and moist, eyeless, unformed. It sprouted flapping wings, then reabsorbed them when it failed to escape. It grew a mouth to bite Suzuki, and then the tiny maw collapsed upon itself. The miniature demon struggled for freedom, but Suzuki would not release it.

  Mori’s sword flashed. The pieces fell from Suzuki’s fingers.

  Suzuki looked down at it mournfully. Endo turned on Mori.

  “You will pay,” he said. He widened his attention to the whole group. His eyes were black, like a shark’s. “You all will pay.”

  Mori stood stock-­still, his blade still at the ready. Suzuki looked at him with cool disdain. “That’s not the first time you’ve come between me and a square meal.” Reddish fumes boiled slowly from the outer corners of Suzuki’s eyes. They rose in delicate, tapering columns past his forehead. Takuda realized for the first time that he might be unable to protect Mori from the hungry priest.

  There was sudden motion at their feet. Small distortions in the air, mirages like those Takuda had seen on the eaves of the buildings surrounding them, burrowed across the reality of the concrete deck. The bleeding halves of the creature Mori had cut disappeared without a trace.

  “Nothing is wasted in this secret economy,” Suzuki said without a smile.

  “You will wander,” the counselor said, backing toward the edge of the loading dock. Ogawa moved to Endo’s side, eyeing the edge of the loading dock. “You can just say goodbye to this gorgeous Fukuoka City right now, because you will be leaving very, very soon. You will find no work here. Even your begging bowl will be empty, Reverend Suzuki. The three of you will find no sustenance. You will find no solace, no succor. Every door will be closed to you, and you will be visited by pestilence, famine, suffering, and death.”

  He stepped backward off the dock, and the limousine door opened for him. He flowed backward into it, his eyes still on Suzuki. The door slammed, echoing off the opposite buildings, the echo finally losing itself in the sounds of distant traffic and nearer seagulls.

  Suzuki grinned his terrifying grin. “Show-­off.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Thursday Afternoon

  They gathered once again in the Lotus Café to wait for Yumi. Suzuki sat still and gaunt while his father, the abbot, jabbered apologies meant to atone for decades of abuse and neglect.

  “My son, my son, I don’t know how you can ever forgive me, or how I can ever forgive myself. We abandoned you. We left you alone to continue the fight in that nasty little valley. It’s unforgivable.”

  Suzuki laughed, an abrasive echo of his formerly breezy self. “There’s nothing more to be said about it, Father. You were possessed. Possession is an understandable phenomenon. You acted more or less against your own will.”

  The abbot blinked. “More or less?”

  Suzuki cocked his head in return. His smile seemed fixed, a calculated expression unrelated to human pleasure. “Yes, more or less against your own will. Being possessed by a demon is certainly an extenuating circumstance, but you have to admit that it just barely counts in this case. After all,” he said, “it was a very small demon.”

  Suzuki winked at Takuda.

  Takuda felt a surge of relief, and he felt the grin spread across his own face, despite any embarrassment it might cause the abbot. Thank the Lord Buddha, Suzuki is still Suzuki, no matter what else he may have become.

  After the third heartbeat of silence, the abbot burst out laughing. He laughed until his face turned purple. Takuda hoped this stress-­driven hilarity wouldn’t devolve into tears. Finally, the old man settled into a steady chortling. He sat back wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes.

  Mori pretended to study the Lotus Café’s one-­page menu as if he had never seen it before. His hand shook slightly.

  The abbot leaned forward when he had recovered his breath. “But the three of you, you and young Takuda, and this Mori who severed the water-­imp’s finger . . .”

  “He cut off its arm later, and I lopped off its head.”

  The abbot beamed. “That must have been something. But what happens now? We need you in the order. We’ve been thriving up in the hills. We have converts and satellite temples and . . .”

  “And your luck has run out,” Suzuki said. “You were living in a fool’s paradise, and now it will come crashing down around your heads. Counselor Endo had you all under his thumb, all in the same place where he could see you. Now that your eyes are open to his evil and his villainy, he must either possess you all over again, if that is even possible, or he must destroy you and everyone else involved in the order. I doubt that he will leave you in peace or leave a single brick of your temple standing. He doesn’t do things by halves, this counselor.”

  “But he gave us the temple outright,” the abbot said. “He can’t just . . .”

  “Don’t think for a second that you know what he can and cannot do,” Suzuki countered.

  The abbot spread his hands. “What can we do? Will the three of you come and assess the situation? Perhaps we can keep the temple, with your help?”

  Suzuki looked at Takuda and Mori. “We don’t seem to have much else going on right now. Shall the four of us take a trip with my father, if Yumi agrees?”

  Mori nodded distractedly. Takuda bowed to the abbot and said, “We would be honored to be of ser­vice, if there’s anything to be done. You understand, of course, that having us there might be the single most dangerous thing you could do.”

  The abbot jumped out of the booth. “Let me make a call. Where’s the nearest pay phone?”

  They pointed him toward the Heiwadai Hotel, next to the college. He took off at a trot.

  Mori said, “Is it wise to let him run off by himself?”

  Suzuki said, “I don’t know, but we can’t hold his hand forever. He has to go to the bathroom. Fairly often, I’d guess, judging from his age.” Suzuki looked pensive.

  Mori turned an exasperated look to Takuda.

  “He’ll be fine,” Takuda said. “Fukuoka is a good city, and the shadow of evil is gone. Don’t you feel it? Can’t you feel that it’s lifted?”

  Mori shook his head.

  The three of them sat for a few moments. “So,” Mori said, “where does this leave us?”

  Suzuki looked back and forth between them. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, what
have you become, and where will it lead us?”

  Suzuki looked steadily at Mori. Reddish fumes slowly wafted from Suzuki’s head, radiating more than they drifted. It wasn’t smoke, and Takuda had no idea what to call it.

  Suzuki continued to look at Mori. Suzuki smiled, and Mori finally looked away.

  He sees, Takuda thought. Maybe not as much or as clearly as I do, but he sees.

  “You recall that our Takuda had the water sword, the massive blade with the hilt guard with a pattern of overlapping concentric ripples.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.”

  “And the hilt guard of the one I used? The laundry-­pole sword?”

  Mori pulled a shard of the broken hilt guard from his pocket. The lacquer had chipped off completely. “As you see, great triangles like gnashing teeth. It made me think of your hunger. You eating us out of house and home.”

  “It looks more like massed mountains meeting the sky,” Takuda said.

  “I think so as well,” Suzuki said. “I believe this was the Earth sword. Ironic for a swallow-­cutting sword . . . yes, I know, Lieutenant, I should call it a sword designed to make the swallow-­cutting stroke. But I don’t think the swords have much to do with the abilities of their bearers. It’s the nature of their opponents.”

  “As the water sword was made for the water-­imp, so the Earth sword was made for the Kurodama.”

  “Exactly.”

  Suzuki gazed at Mori. “And what is on the hilt guard of our one remaining sword?”

  “I don’t know,” Mori said. “I haven’t looked.”

  Suzuki’s smile didn’t waver. “I see.”

  Mori flushed.

  Suzuki’s smile broadened, revealing the leaden glints on his teeth. “I would guess it is the fire sword, even if the element has more to do with the opponent than the bearer. You are much like fire, like the wind. So quick and consuming, so mercurial as well.”