I rushed to Mack and tried to pull him up. His eyes fluttered open and he struggled to his feet, his face bloody. I half-carried him away from the brawl, and then we ran past parked cars and dark storefronts, staying in the shadows.
Mack finally stumbled to a stop in an orange puddle of light, his back against a brick wall, panting, clutching his stomach.
“I can’t,” he gasped. “I’m done.”
I glanced down the block. Most of the men were down, sprawled on the ground. The only one still upright had a two-way radio in his hand.
“We’ve got to get out of here!”
Mack struggled upright and we managed to get back into the shadows.
“Who the hell are those guys?” His teeth were clenched. “I thought I was gonna die.”
I sank to the ground beside him, suspended in a fog of disbelief. “They’re my grandpa’s bodyguards.”
“Did you hear them say … they saw me last night?” Mack struggled to keep his voice level. “That truck … in the alley … What the hell, man?”
I couldn’t answer. Why would they want to hurt us?
We heard tires screech and another black SUV roared up the street behind us. We were crouched behind a parked car, but it wasn’t good enough.
“We’ve got to get further away.”
“I can’t.”
I reached down and pulled him up. We disappeared into a narrow space between buildings as the SUV roared past. I didn’t stop moving until we were behind one of the buildings.
Mack looked up at me from where I’d dropped him.
“You … you carried me?”
“Listen,” I said between breaths, “you need to stay here, OK?”
He looked awful. “What’re you gonna do?”
I heard engines roaring all around us. They’d started circling the block. It wouldn’t be long before they started looking for us on foot.
“I’ll run and let them chase me, draw them away from here.” I tried to hide the panic that was starting to overtake me. “Stay here until they’re gone. Then call the cops.”
“But …” He looked groggy.
I grabbed his collar and focused my energy at him. “You’re OK, all right? Now do what I said.”
His eyes opened wide. “I will. Good luck.”
The stream was screaming at me, warning me. What was going on? If Grandpa thought I was the one who opened the safe … No way. I wouldn’t—couldn’t—believe he’d send these guys after me, not like this, no matter how much the gold might have changed him.
But the man said they’d seen us last night. The stream was still whispering to me, insisting that all these things were somehow connected—if I could just figure out how.
Right now I didn’t have time. I had to lure those men away from Mack.
When I stepped onto the sidewalk, there was a black SUV parked up the block with its lights on, facing away from me. A man stood at the passenger door, talking to the driver and looking toward the building Mack lay behind.
I started to jog up the street, away from them, letting my shoes slap the pavement.
They heard me. Over my shoulder, I saw two men running after me. The SUV swung around and barreled up the narrow street behind them. My adrenaline spiked and I started to sprint between the parked cars. I turned the next corner. The street was empty—no trees or parked cars to use as cover. Behind me the men were still coming, but they sounded farther away.
My neck started tingling as headlights flashed on up the block. I darted into another narrow space between buildings, barely two feet wide. I ran down that and then turned up another narrow lane, with nothing to hide me while the sounds of pursuit closed in around me. Headlights appeared behind me and a dark sedan skidded to a stop in the intersection ahead.
I turned in a slow circle, looking for an escape as doors opened on both vehicles. I waited until the men had climbed out and moved away from their cars and then I vaulted the fence beside me and crashed into a row of garbage cans. I startled a cat as I raced into the next street and then through a yard. I still heard the squeal of tires and the occasional shout, but they began to fade.
On a dark residential street, I slowed my pace. I’d led them far enough away from Mack, but I had no idea where I was. While I caught my breath, I studied the houses and looked for clues. They were all Victorians, but that was no help. There were thousands of Victorian houses in San Francisco, from mansions to dumps, and they all looked the same at night.
I stopped in front of a house and tried to make out the street number. The gate hung by one hinge and the building behind it looked to be in similar disrepair. From inside came voices, a couple yelling at each other, punctuated by a smashing sound like a plate crashing into cupboards.
Dark clouds swirled above me. I began to shiver as the breeze touched my sweat-covered skin. My shirt was soaked. I sat down on the curb, head in hands. I felt raw inside. Was there anyone I could trust? I had no idea anymore, but I decided I’d run far enough.
I reached out with as much energy as I could muster. I sensed them, still searching—these guys didn’t give up easily. A few minutes later, I felt them approaching.
I stood up.
An SUV rolled slowly down the hill, windows open, its occupants searching both sides of the street. My sides ached and my legs felt like rubber. I leaned against a tree trunk for support and waited. I needed to find out why they were doing this.
They were right beside me when they finally saw me. The truck jerked to a stop.
“Did my grandfather send you?” I asked.
The driver looked surprised, and then his energy changed. I was already moving behind the tree when the Taser gun pointed out the window. The projectile slammed into the tree beside me, sending sparks into the night.
And I swear to God I heard the tree cry out in pain.
I stepped out from behind the tree as the man got out of the SUV. He was only five feet away when I lunged at him. He didn’t have time to fire a second shot before my knee connected with his solar plexus. There was an ugly crunch. As he dropped to the ground, eyes bulging, gasping for breath, I twisted the Taser from his grip and fired through the open door of the SUV. The projectile hit the passenger. He screamed as his body convulsed so violently that the truck shook.
I turned and walked away. I was really scared now—not of them but of what I’d just done.
CHAPTER
18
I crossed a shadowy park, pushed through a hedge, and stopped in a narrow, cluttered alley that reeked of garbage. About thirty yards ahead, a gate crashed off its hinges and clattered to the ground, and a man burst into the alley. When he saw me, he yelled into his portable radio.
I started running again. The streetlights became a blur. I felt them coming faster, closing in. The wall beside me spit sharp bits of brick at my face.
Were they shooting at me?
“Shoko!” I yelled as I exploded into a sprint with a burst of adrenaline. I took the first left I saw, swerved around a dumpster, and leaped over the legs of a sleeping homeless man. I didn’t know how much longer my legs and lungs could handle this.
I turned another corner. Up ahead, in a pool of light cast from a single overhead lamp, someone stood. Panic rose—had they managed to cut me off?
It was a girl in a school uniform.
“Shoko!”
She spun toward me. Her eyes widened as she looked past me. I glanced over my shoulder as seven men careened around the corner after me. Her wakizashi slid out, and then they were on us.
Shoko became a blur of movement, spinning and twisting, her sword catching the light as it sliced through the air. The first man hit the pavement, a red line expanding across his chest. Another went down, blood pouring from a dangling, half-severed arm. The men scattered amid yells, spinning, bumping into each other, trying to readjust to this new threat. Gunshots rang out, wild shots that disappeared into the ground or ricocheted off the walls. I’d fallen into a stack of garbage and lay t
here, astonished, as Shoko danced among the men, her face expressionless, her wakizashi whirling.
A man with an MP5 leveled it, trying to get a clear shot. Cold fury washed over me as I pushed myself upright. A second later, the man hit the ground with me on top of him. I kept punching until he went limp. I rolled off and kicked the gun under the dumpster. Two more men fell, one with his hand sliced off, the other with a growing circle of blood from a stab wound to his chest.
The last man stood with his back to the brick wall, gun raised, eyes filled with panic. At first he aimed at Shoko, and then he shifted the gun toward me.
Flame burst from the muzzle as I charged toward him. My hands and elbows smashed into his throat and face. I drove his head into the wall until he collapsed unconscious, and then I wrestled the gun out of his grip.
I spun around, panting. Shoko stood among the fallen men, in the middle of an expanding pool of blood, her wakizashi pointed at the ground. Bathed in the light from above, she looked calm but fierce.
“Are others coming?” she asked.
I paused to listen, but my heartbeat was all I could hear. “Give me a minute.”
She bowed her head and squeezed her eyes shut, enduring the pain I was causing her in silence.
“There are more out there … but none close by.”
She nodded. “You are like a blur, so fast.” She swung her wakizashi, flicked the blood onto the ground, and slid the blade back into her racket case.
I studied the men—the one with the severed arm was the worst off.
“That last man was trying to fulfill his mission,” she said. “I was the immediate threat, yet he chose you. You are marked for death.”
I didn’t want to believe that, but what other explanation was there? I glanced around, unable to get my feet to move.
“How’d you know to come?”
She’d moved into the shadows, eyeing the men, still wary. “You called me.”
I nodded as if that made perfect sense. “You’ll need to explain that sometime … soon.”
I still had the gun. It was heavy and I considered dropping it. Instead, I flipped the safety switch on, a skill I learned by watching cop shows, and shoved it into the back of my belt. Then I reached down and pulled a two-way radio from one of the men’s belts. As I put the earpiece in my ear, the radio chatter confirmed what the stream was telling me. More men were gathering to the west, trying to make contact with these guys.
Shoko whispered to me, “Who are these men?”
I didn’t want to say it aloud, but there was no denying it. “They work for my grandpa.”
Even in the dark, I could see her eyes widen.
“But … why?”
That was a good question. “Let’s go this way.”
We were a few blocks away when we heard the first sirens. I could tell they were police sirens—no ambulances yet—and I felt the weight of the gun in my belt. Now I regretted taking it. I was armed and the police would soon know that.
I glanced at Shoko. “Where’ve you been?” We were walking fast, keeping to the shadows and off the main roads.
“I went home,” she said.
“I really wanted to see you.”
“You wanted to see me?” She smiled “You only need to call me, as you did a moment ago.”
“And you’ll just appear like—”
Voices in the earpiece interrupted me. The police were at the scene and a serious search for me had begun—but not by them. Grandpa’s men were hunting me again, and it was clear they didn’t want the cops to get in the way.
We walked down a residential street far from my neighborhood and far from where the men were searching. It was after eleven and the streets were empty and quiet. Only a few lights and the blue flicker of TV screens shone from the houses we passed.
I turned to her. “How did you hear me?”
“I told you, your energy is strong.”
“But I thought you couldn’t hear anything here.”
She gazed at me, expressionless. “I was not here.”
I licked my lips. “So, in some other place you can hear me?”
“Yes, and I can travel to where you are, knowing what I am getting into. It is once I am here that I become deaf.”
“Is … is traveling some kind of illusion?”
“It is how we move from place to place or across from my world to this one.”
“What the hell does that mean!?” I stepped back from her. “Look, my mom said you were like a ninja or something, and I think she is too—”
“The ninja are nothing compared to us!” Her face twisted as if she’d bitten a lemon.
My brain felt like it might explode. “What are you then?” I glared at her. “My mom knows your mother, so what is she?!” I paused to catch my breath. “What are you all … and what does it make me?”
Shoko lifted her right hand as if that were an answer.
“Yeah, what’s with that ring anyway?”
“What did your mother tell you?”
“That it was a graduation present from her mother. A great honor that only women in her family clan wear.”
Shoko nodded. “That is correct. The completion of years of training and the beginning of a life of service.”
“So, you’re some kind of Japanese … assassins?”
“I am not Japanese.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, you are Japanese!” I threw up my hands in frustration.
Shoko crossed her arms and spoke a sentence in a language that sounded like German and another in Spanish.
“What was that?”
“We are nothing—and everything.”
I put my hands to my face, more confused than before. “Okaasan … we had a big fight tonight.” I gave her a brief rundown. “She and you … She’s been lying to me my whole life!” I spit the words out.
We’d stopped on the sidewalk in the shadow of a large tree and the street lamps lighted her face.
She smiled. “You are very cute when you become annoyed.”
My heart jumped inside my chest and I faltered, my anger dropping like a windless sail.
“You cannot expect her to explain the unexplainable,” she said, “but I will try to tell you what I can.” She glared. “If you stop yelling at me.”
We began to walk again, side by side, and it occurred to me that her energy was flowing toward me, a warm peaceful sensation that eased the anger and terror that had held me most of the evening.
“My people were once inhabitants of the lands of the god O̅kuninushi, the savior and guardian of ancient Japan. He controlled the islands from Izumo, the realm of gods and the land of myths.”
“Izumo?” I could barely breathe.
She nodded. “As time passed, men began to encroach upon the shrine at Izumo, and O̅kuninushi decided he could no longer remain in this world. He moved to another world and re-created the Izumo shrine there.” She smiled at me. “O̅kuninushi brought a few mortals—my ancestors—to accompany him.”
“OK …”
“That place is much like this.” She spread her hands wide. “The mountains, the water, the sky, the stars—all are the same.”
“You’re saying you—and Okaasan—are from … some kind of parallel dimension?”
She nodded. “My world is the home of the gods.” Her voice took on a proud and passionate tone. “It is where they live when they are not in this world.”
“You mean like … heaven?” I grinned. “Don’t tell me you’re an angel.”
“You just called me an assassin,” she said with a laugh. “No, we are not angels and my world is not heaven.” Her smile faded. “I know nothing of heaven and hell. If they exist, then they exist in each person’s heart. This is all the reward anyone will ever get.”
I nodded, trying to comprehend what she was telling me, but something distracted me—some message in my head.
“This is too much for you?”
“No … Well, it is a lot, but that’s not it.”
I touched the earpiece. “They aren’t talking anymore.” I realized I’d been ignoring it for a while. “And someone’s close by.”
I pointed to a thick hedge at the front of someone’s house and jumped over it. I waited a moment and then stood up and peered over the top. Shoko stood on the sidewalk staring at me.
“Why do you always run and hide?” She looked annoyed. “It is not the way of the warrior.”
“It’s the way of staying out of trouble,” I whispered. “Come on!”
She sighed and walked toward me, taking her time. She’d barely squeezed between the bushes when I heard the click of a car door closing—someone was trying to be quiet. A minute later, farther away, a car door slammed. I glanced at Shoko. She was lying on her back staring at the clouds.
I elbowed her. “Come on! This is serious,” I whispered.
“I think they’re close, Johnny,” a man said in a low voice from the other side of the hedge.
I stopped breathing. Shoko grasped the hilt of her wakizashi.
“Good,” said an older voice, presumably Johnny’s. He wasn’t trying to be quiet. “Let’s see what that thingamajig says.”
There was a pause, and then the first man said, “The signal’s really screwed,” still keeping his voice low. “It’s jumping all over the place.”
“Damn technology,” Johnny said.
“They’re not doing any better from the control center.”
“Those pencil-pushing office pukes couldn’t find that radio if it was halfway up their ass.”
I looked at Shoko. She looked like a coiled snake. I tapped the radio.
“They’re tracking us because of this,” I mouthed.
“The old man must be one cold son of a bitch,” the younger guy said. “How could he do this to a kid?”
“I’ve worked for him for years,” Johnny said. “I gotta say, this surprises me.”
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