I picked up my cell phone and tried to reach 9-1-1 again.
“…don’t,” she managed, suddenly becoming animate. She shook her head sadly, her sweat-dampened black hair rattling around her pale face. “Please, Kevin, don’t call the police…”
“I’m calling for an ambulance,” I told her.
“Please…!” she cried. Her face contorted with horror. “I don’t want them knowing…!”
“I won’t tell them about Qilin, I promise.”
She closed her eyes again. She looked exhausted, finished.
Miracle of miracles, I was able to get through. The dispatcher told me to stay on the line, that an ambulance was on its way. She started saying other things to keep me talking, but I turned the speaker off.
“It’ll be all right,” I told Aimi. “They’re on their way.”
She shifted uncomfortably until she was leaning against me. Obviously, her wounds pained her, even if they did seem incapable of killing her. “Don’t tell anyone,” she pleaded, panting through the pain. “Don’t tell them about me. Don’t tell them what Daddy did…please…”
I looked at the gashes, at all the blood. “What did your dad do?” I said, taking her gently and cradling her against me.
I thought of those eyeless MIBs at the police station. Dr. Mura had more than a vested interest in Qilin, I thought. He wasn’t just interested in cleaning up after the monster. He was also trying to clean up after Aimi. And it was no wonder he wanted me nowhere near his daughter; he was terrified my Kami would hurt Aimi. “He knows you’re a Keeper, doesn’t he? And he knows about me, too.”
“Oh, Kevin,” she said, “there’s so much you don’t understand. Just promise me you won’t tell anyone about Qilin.”
I saw the absolute horror in her face, but I could understand it. There’s something about being a freak that makes you want to protect other freaks, even if they are your sworn, mortal enemies.
I held her. I took her hand and watched it curl slowly about mine, but her grip was weak and her eyes drowsing. Around us the candles flickered, the room full of flitting, mothlike shadows. I had to keep her talking. If she talked, she wouldn’t slip into shock. “What did he do to you…and to Qilin?” I said, hoping the ambulance would hurry.
She let out a hitching breath. She started to cry, and the tears that leaked from the corners of her eyes were as black as the weird alien blood that had leaked from Qilin during the battle. They left shining, tarlike tracks down her cheek as they fell to the floor and burned holes in her music pages. “We made a mistake, Kevin, me and Daddy,” she said. “A horrible mistake.” She stared up at me with her bleeding black eyes. Then, slowly, she told me the rest of the story.
11
All of my life I’ve experienced horrible nightmares. Daddy took me to medical institutes all over the world, but none of the doctors could help me because there was nothing physically wrong with me. Finally, he started taking me to dozens of psychiatrists. But they, too, couldn’t find anything wrong. He finally became so desperate that he started taking me to priests.
It was there, at a Shinto shrine at the foot of Mount Fuji, that we learned about the Watchers and the Keepers. It was there that my Watcher taught me to summon Qilin, who is a water god. You wouldn’t know it to see him now, but he was once a beautiful white serpent who guarded an undersea kingdom. I guess you find that very hard to believe.
My dad was not a very religious man, but he was very understanding, very open-minded about these things, and he worried about me constantly. He also felt that this was a good discovery—a breakthrough of sorts. His company had been struggling to clean up toxic spills for years, even though we weren’t a very large or important company. Now, finally, he thought he could change that. He thought it might be possible to use Qilin to eliminate pollutants in the water. That way, something like Karkadon might never be born again.
I often played with Qilin in the water—he was very funny, and tame, and he would do whatever tricks I taught him to do. He was my friend, Kevin, my only friend, growing up. One day Daddy asked me if I could train him to swallow toxic spills. He would do anything I asked, so of course he did that, too. After a while I trained him to listen to Daddy, to do whatever Daddy asked, and the company began to grow. No one knew, of course. It was our secret. We were so much in demand, especially after San Francisco, that we were finally able to move the offices here, to New York City.
But then something happened to Qilin. He started getting bigger and bigger, doubling his size everyday. And he was…changing. I guess he was becoming tainted from all the pollutants. He became…dark. He would no longer listen to Daddy, or even to me. He was eating too much, not just toxins and fish, but larger animals, too. Daddy became afraid that when Qilin’s food supply began to run out that he might try to come ashore. He tried to poison Qilin, to shoot him, all kinds of horrible things, but Qilin is a Kami, Kevin, a god, and the things Daddy tried to do to him only made him angrier.
I don’t know. Maybe this is our curse. We have polluted the body of Amaterasu, and now we must pay a price for that. But Daddy swore to me that after Karkadon, such a thing would never occur again. He wouldn’t be responsible for creating yet more monsters.
He worked night and day to defeat Qilin—or, at least, to contain him. But Qilin can’t be contained, or stopped. He’s not some manmade creature, Kevin. He’s not a chemical spill, or some wild animal wreaking havoc. He’s immortal. And he’s different now. He no longer listens to me—or to anyone. He just wants to eat and to destroy. He’s not the same Qilin anymore. Not my Qilin.
I love my daddy, Kevin, and I’m so afraid. I wanted to stop him before he comes ashore again, before he hurts more people. I thought maybe if I died, the tether between us would be severed and Qilin would die as well, or at least go back to sleep like the other Kami. But it’s too late now, and Qilin won’t even let me die.
12
“You didn’t have to do this,” I said, cradling her wrist where the blood was blackening her bandages.
Aimi’s breath came in spurts against my chest. “I thought maybe without me Qilin wouldn’t survive, that he would go back to sleep…” She hesitated, taking a deep, shuddering breath, swallowing as if she were going to be sick. “The Shinto priests who taught me said a Kami cannot survive without his Keeper, one cannot live without the other. But…I don’t know. I don’t think Qilin will let me die. He’s so strong now, so angry with me.” She glanced up at me with glassy eyes. “I just know he wants to punish me, to destroy everything I care about. That’s how vengeful the Kami can be. That is what happens when you betray a god.”
I stared down at her, imagining her opening her flesh again and again to let this darkness out. The very thought of it made me feel sick to my stomach. I didn’t know if I would have had the courage to do what she had done.
“I don’t want to fight you,” she insisted. “I don’t want to fight your Kami. I don’t want to fight anyone. I’m so tired, Kevin. So, so tired of everything.” Every word pounded into me like a fist. She sniffed the black stuff pouring from her nose. “Do you hate me?”
I wiped away the black tears on her face. They left dark, grotesque smudges that gave her eyes a bruised and frightened look. “No, Aimi,” I told her. “I don’t hate you.”
“But I killed them. The kids at the club.” She started shaking like an epileptic. “They died because of me, Kevin, because I’m Qilin’s Keeper...”
No, I thought. Because of Qilin. And Raiju. Me.
“It’s okay,” I said, even though I knew it was a lie. I knew nothing would ever be okay again. I held onto Aimi until I could hear the distant scream of approaching sirens.
13
I followed Aimi and the EMTs to St. Mary’s on my bike. After they admitted Aimi to Emergency, they made me wait in the nearly empty patient’s lounge where the TV was playing the Kaiju Network nonstop. I sat between a bruised, nervous girl who looked like a drug addict who was picking at scabs on her ar
ms and legs and an older lady who had a little boy who kept wandering off. An anchorwoman was reporting on more aftershocks being felt near the disaster zone as Qilin moved underground.
“…worse disaster this city has ever seen. Citizens are urged to stay inside their homes while authorities attempt to trap the monster within the sewer system. If you absolutely must travel, stay on major highways and be prepared for long delays as thousands of New York citizens make their way to New Jersey and Pennsylvania in an attempt to escape further disaster.” A cutaway showed the Lincoln Tunnel and the Delaware Water Gap corked with impatient traffic.
Immediately after the broadcast ended, the older woman got up with her little boy in hand and hurried for the doors. I felt my stomach do a back flip.
I thought about what Mr. Serizawa had said about the Kami, about how they would seek each other out in order to do battle. And what Aimi had said hadn’t been anymore reassuring. If she was right—and she probably was—Qilin might seek her father out, or me, just to punish her.
I sank back in my seat and covered my face with both hands and wondered what the hell I could do. I was stuck literally between two devils.
14
Around midnight they let me see Aimi in Recovery.
They had patched her up as best they could, but she looked very small in the big white bed—the bandages, the tubes going up her nose, the terrible machines. I approached her like some nightmare thing laid out in the laboratory of a mad scientist. Her arms were bandaged all the way up to the elbows, and I could hear her raspy breath through a respirator. She should be dead, but her bruised and tear-swollen eyes were open, watching me, her black hair spilling raggedly over the pillow around her. I sat down on the chair next to the bed and listened to the rhythm of the heart and BP monitor.
“Hi,” I said, my voice hoarse. “How you feeling, beautiful?”
Her cloudy dark eyes blinked. “Not so good.”
“Should I get a nurse?”
“I don’t need a nurse.” She struggled to sit up against the pillows, then started to pick at the bandages with her fingernails.
My heart leaped up. “Don’t do that…”
“It’s okay.”
I winced as she started unwinding the bandages. I expected to see horrible black bruises and Frankenstein-esque stitches decorating her arms up and down. But as the bandages came off, there was nothing to see. Aimi’s arms were pale and unblemished, not even bruised.
I reached out and touched the smooth white flesh of her wrist as if to prove that the miracle was real. That it was true. Qilin wouldn’t even let Aimi die properly.
I sat in that chair a long time, just holding her hand, looking at her. She looked tired, worn to the bone. More of that black stuff was leaking from the corners of her eyes. I reached for a tissue on the tray beside the hospital bed and handed it to her, watching her dab away the black slime. “I can’t cry anymore,” she said. “Not the right way. Wouldn’t you know, I kind of miss it?”
“What does it feel like?” I whispered, genuinely interested. “Being part of Qilin, I mean. Can you control him at all?”
She stared at me with hard eyes no longer blue; the black stuff had dyed them pitch-black. “It’s like trying to move in a nightmare when you’re stuck. You know you have to, so you make yourself move. You control the nightmare. That’s how I control Qilin…used to control Qilin, rather. Except…he’s so angry, so big now.” She shook her head slowly. “I betrayed him, Kevin. I can’t expect him to listen to me anymore.”
I waited.
She crumpled up the tissue, staring at the slime staining her hand. “And you should know something else.” She took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up warily into my eyes. “The part that attacked the club? It was only a little piece of Qilin. The larger part is still out there, looking for me, and I don’t know if anything can stop him…” She stared down at her unscathed forearms as if she did not quite recognize her own body. “I wish I had died, Kevin. Maybe Qilin would have died, too.”
“You don’t know that for sure,” I said. “He might not die, even if you do. He is a god, after all.”
She sniffed. “Are you mad at me?”
“Yeah,” I said, and she looked up, surprised by my words. “Stop talking like you want to die. You didn’t, so we have to think of something else.” I sat silent a moment, listened to various doctors being paged over the PA system. “You could have told me, you know, if you knew what I was. I would have tried to help you.”
She stared down at her hands and the little, chewed nubs of her fingernails. Her voice was so soft I had to strain to hear it. “I didn’t want you to think I was a…a freak.”
“Freaks of a feather flock together,” I said and she jerked in surprise by my sudden humor. I lifted my hand, palm cupped, and imagined a small—very small—tongue of flame there. My hand shimmered and a candle-like flame danced up almost immediately. I felt a rush of adrenaline. There’s something beautiful and very seductive about fire, which is why there are so many firebugs in the world. It can warm your soul, and destroy your life.
“You’re a fire element,” said Aimi.
“I can light my own cigarettes without a lighter. I make things explode when I get upset. I don’t think I can be categorized as exactly normal at this point.” I clenched my fist, snuffing out the flame before it set off the fire detectors in the room.
I couldn’t understand why this was happening to us. It was like some big cosmic joke, and I was willing to bet there was a big, fat god somewhere sitting on his throne, giggling to himself—making Aimi like she was, and me like I was, then shoving us together in this city. All I could do was stare at her and tell the truth. “I don’t care what you are. I don’t care about the things you’ve done. Qilin was there at the club for me, not for you. This isn’t your fault, Aimi.”
“Kevin,” she said patiently, sinking tiredly back against her pillows, “Qilin is looking for me, to punish me. That means anyone I’m around is in danger…look.”
The duty nurse had turned up the TV in one corner of the ward. KTV was reporting on the earthquakes that were spiking steadily in the downtown area. Authorities believed it was Qilin on the move again and the National Guard had been brought in to help with evacuation procedures for Brooklyn and parts of the lower Bronx.
I couldn’t help but wonder where my dad was, if he was okay. I hoped he would evacuate like everyone else. “Is it tracking you now?” I said.
She closed her eyes. “Yes, I think so.”
“Isn’t there any way to…break the link? Or block the connection?”
She shook her head, her tangled hair shushing around her pale face. “This is like a disease I’ll have for the rest of my life, Kevin. I can control it, a little…put it in remission…but it won’t go away, ever.”
I stood up and paced around the ward. The nurse was busy with another patient and wasn’t paying any attention to us. “Are you strong enough to walk?”
“I’m all right,” she said, my brave Aimi.
I grabbed her clothes from a bag under the bed and tossed them down beside her. “Get dressed. We’re getting out of here.”
“Where are we going?”
“West, I think.” I glanced up again at the TV. The shocks were steadily extending east, directly toward us, at about a mile or two an hour, despite the military effort. I knew they wouldn’t be able to hold Qilin for long. He was a water god; he could move through cracks, holes, sewer grates, anything, really. By my estimation, we had less than an hour before Qilin found us. We could use that time to ride west. If we were fast enough, and if the bike I had “borrowed” was good enough, we might be able to outrun Qilin. With any luck, we might even be able to landlock him. He was just sludge, after all, slime. If we could draw him away from any significant body of water long enough, we might be able to dry him out.
I told Aimi my idea while I watched the TV. It sounded crazy, even to me, but when I turned to gauge her reaction, she was f
ully dressed in her flouncy black mourning dress and was slowly pulling on her boots. She sat on the edge of the bed, the laces untied, and dangled her legs off the side. “I don’t think it will work,” she said somberly. “Maybe we should just tell the military.”
“Tell them what? That we have a couple of gods scoping each other out? That we can control them? Do you think they’d believe any of that?”
Aimi bit her lip. “What if we can’t stay ahead of it? Or what if we can, but we lead it through a town or city?” She glanced up at me with her tired eyes full of shining black tears. “I don’t want anymore people to die, Kevin. I can’t stand it!”
I went to her, knelt down and started tying her shoelaces for her. “We’ll avoid the cities, stick to the deserted places, empty roads, ghost towns, forests. It’ll be rough, but we can do it. We can lead it where there’s no water.” I sounded so brave, so together, and my plan sounded reasonable. Didn’t it?
So why did I feel like I had snakes freestyle jive dancing in my stomach?
She just sat there like she didn’t believe me. I half expected her to cry, but she was right. She didn’t even have that anymore.
I took her other boot in my lap and laced it. “Don’t worry. Once we’re on the road, I’ll figure out something.”
“You’re amazing. Like a white knight.”
“Kevin the white knight,” I said, and harrumphed. “I think you should know something. I used to be fat, and play World of Warcraft constantly, and I picked my nose, and I even had a bug collection when I was nine. What do you think about that?”
Raiju: A Kaiju Hunter Novel (The Kaiju Hunter) Page 13