Heroes Return (34 page)

And she went pale for a moment. Then she proved her gross stupidity by straightening her shoulders and saying, “I’m sorry, Taro. I know you didn’t want her to find out like this.”

I slapped my hand over my eyes. So stupid.

“What have you been telling her?” he demanded of her.

She took a step back. Taro could be a little frightening when he wanted to be.

“Nothing that I’ve believed,” I said quickly. I didn’t believe he would actually strike the woman, but he seemed to be quivering with rage, and it was alarming me.

“She sent you to where my Shield lives. Like a whore. You’re a whore?”

Simone gasped and flushed and opened her mouth to speak, but Taro didn’t let her.

“She thought that, what, I would take up with you just because you showed up? She really thought that would work?”

It did seem to me a rather weak plan. On the other hand, maybe there were men who would jump on that kind of opportunity without thinking. Maybe that was the kind of men the Dowager knew.

“You are irrelevant, do you hear me?” he ranted. “You could be the most beautiful person in the world. You could be the smartest person in the world. The best natured in the world. It doesn’t matter what you are. It doesn’t matter what Lee is. I will never want anything to do with you because you come from that woman. And now you come into my home, my very rooms, and try to interfere with my partner? What kind of parasite are you?”

He whirled around in place, tearing at his hair, his gaze moving about the room. He seemed to be looking for something. I tried to think of a way to calm him down. It would embarrass him later to have appeared so frantic in front of Simone.

“Why can’t she leave me alone?” he demanded. “What is it going to take? Does one of us have to die before she’ll leave me in peace?”

I felt my eyes widen as unease took root in my stomach. That was a dangerous thought for him to be having.

He abruptly left the room. I scrambled after him.

“I’m sick of it,” he said. “Sick of it, sick of it. Water wiping away stone is what it is, scraping scraping scraping until there is nothing left.”

He was heading swiftly down the stairs, continuing to talk as he went, servants stopping and staring as he passed.

“Taro, where are you going?”

He didn’t answer me. “Black and rotting,” he said. “Attacking pink flesh until there is nothing left but putrescence and stench and empty death.” Down to the main floor and out the rear entrance.

“Taro, please talk to me.”

“Pounding and pounding and pounding. Why won’t she stop? She has to stop. I’ll stop her.”

That didn’t sound good. “Please calm down. Please, Taro.” I grabbed his arm but he easily pulled free. He was heading for the stables. “I don’t think you should be riding now, Taro.” What would I do if he insisted on riding? In this mood he was sure to be reckless and break his neck.

But we passed the stalls and entered the tack room at the back. Seeming to know exactly where to find what he was looking for, he grabbed up an axe.

Unease transformed into outright fear. “Taro!” He wasn’t going to kill his mother. He couldn’t be that far gone to anger. Getting Simone to pull that little stunt was nowhere near the worst the Dowager had ever done.

I grabbed at the axe handle. “Put it down, Taro.” He tried to pull the axe out of my hands, but I had been expecting that, my hands spaced wide on the handle, my weight balanced far back over my heels.

Taro twisted the axe end over end, wrenching it out of my hands. I fell on my behind on the floor. “Taro, please listen to me.”

“Black,” he said. “Nothing but blackness spreading everywhere and killing the roots.”

“That doesn’t mean you get to kill her.”

I was relieved that, upon exiting the stable, he headed toward the manor rather than the dowager house. On the other hand, I liked the people of the manor much more than those of the dowager house. “Please give me the axe, Taro.”

But no, he charged back toward the manor, constantly muttering in seething metaphor. He didn’t run, so I could keep up with him, but he wouldn’t listen to me, and he shielded the axe from my hands.

This didn’t make sense. His reaction was so far out of proportion to what had happened. “You can’t kill Simone, either.”

Back in the manor, back up the stairs. Maids gasped as we passed. “Get Dane,” I hissed at one.

“His Lordship isn’t here.”

“Then get Bailey!” Or some footman. Why wouldn’t anyone stop him?

Ranting about poison and rotting and decay, he raged up the stairs to the third floor. I really feared he was going back to our suite, where I assumed Simone still was. But no, he passed it. I was relieved but baffled. What was he doing?

He threw open the doors to his old nursery. With a wordless cry, he swung the axe right at the wall. It sank deep into the wood. “You know nothing!” he shouted, yanking the axe free. “You are twisted!” Another swing at the wall. “You are dark!” He smashed through a set of shelves. “You are shallow and ignorant!” He swung at the door itself, right at the hinges, and he kept swinging at the hinges. “You are nothing to me! You have no power over me! You have no rights to me! I will let you do nothing to me!” Once the door was wrenched from its fitting, he started at the windowsills. “I will be free! You can’t hold me! I’m a Source and I’m free!” He swung the axe again and again, at the windows, at the furniture and the walls and the floor. The ceiling was spared only because he couldn’t reach it.

I jumped every time the axe struck wood. I watched Taro, saw how no blow seemed to satisfy him. I could see that the axe didn’t sink deeply enough to suit him, watched him wrench it free with a twist to do as much damage as possible. Each strike seemed to fuel his anger instead of easing it, and I worried how much worse it would get when his frustration overcame him.

Splinters flew. Sweat soaked through Taro’s shirt. His shouting and screaming brought almost everyone in the house. Including Bailey. None dared enter the room to try to stop the destruction. We all crowded in the corridor by the door.

“Is it not your place to soothe him?” Bailey asked.

Oddly enough, there had been no lessons on how to deal with a Source when he’d gone berserk for little reason. I glared at Bailey. “You’re welcome to try if you think you can do better than I.”

“You’re not doing anything.”

“He won’t listen to me, and I’m not stepping close to a swinging axe.”

I didn’t know how much time passed as Taro swung at every surface in the room, shouting the whole time. It felt like hours, and the shelves were reduced to useless chunks, the walls and floors gouged full of holes, the insults he shouted at his mother growing more and more obscure and incomprehensible. What would happen when Taro deemed the room damaged enough? Would he move on to something else?

But finally, the swings of the axe became slower and wider, the axe sinking less deep and sometimes bouncing right off the wood due to a poor angle. Taro was panting heavily, growing unable to shout. He was gleaming with sweat, and his hair was in disarray. He suddenly went from rage to peace, his shoulders slumping as he lowered the head of the axe to the floor and let it drop.

The following silence was suffocating.

What the hell were we going to tell Fiona and Dane?

I stepped into the room, slowly. Taro didn’t look at me, his eyes on the axe. I realized he was whispering. I couldn’t decipher what he said. More insults at his mother?

Not knowing if it would set him off again, I took his hand and squeezed it softly. He stopped whispering, and he looked at me for the first time since he’d started his rampage. I was surprised by how calm he looked, calmer than he’d been since we first arrived in Flown Raven. When I led him from the room, he followed meekly, silently.

What was the significance of what had happened? I hoped it didn’t mean his mind had snapped. But what else could it mean? He’d destroyed that room. I understood that the room had been a great source of pain for him, but how did chopping it up help anything?

I took Taro back to our suite. Simone was gone. I ordered a bath for Taro. When the bath arrived, I helped him strip down. While he sat in the bath, I rinsed the sweat and flecks of wood from his skin and washed his hair. He was pliant and said nothing. I didn’t speak, either. I had no idea what to say.

After his bath he went to bed, though it was still only the afternoon. He appeared to fall asleep immediately.

I sat in the sitting room and tried to figure out how worried I should be. It wasn’t like Taro to explode like that, but then, he’d been unlike himself for weeks. It disturbed me that he had chosen to express himself with an axe, but maybe something this extreme would make him feel better. I wouldn’t know until he woke.

I wondered how long it would take for everyone in the area to learn what had happened. Would they think he’d gone crazy? Or would they assume it was typical Source behavior?

He had scared the hell out of me. I really resented that. I might shout at him for that, once I was sure he was sane.

There was a brisk knock at the door, and I let in Fiona and Dane. I stifled the urge to tell them to keep their voices down, as Taro was sleeping. That might be considered being too presumptuous, under the circumstances.

“What the hell happened?” Fiona demanded.

I debated how much to tell her, and decided on as little as possible. “The Dowager has been harassing Taro since we arrived. Now her guest has gotten involved. He had enough.”

“So he decided to purge his anger on my house? Will he go after the master bedroom next? After all, she used to sleep there.”

“I’m really sorry about this. I know he will be, too, once he gets up.”

“How often does he get into these rages?” Dane asked.

“I’ve never seen him like that.”

“And what if next time he decides to swing an axe at a person?” said Fiona.

“He would never do that!” I protested, well aware I had been worried about that very thing.

“I wager this morning you would have said he would never destroy a room like that.”

That was true. “Destroying a thing is leagues away from destroying a person. Taro would never do anything like that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” I was now pretty sure I’d seen him at his worst.

Fiona sighed. “I suppose that will have to do,” she said. “It’s not like we use that room.”

I loved practical people. And she gave me an idea. “You should get that young man to try that cleansing ritual again.”

“Why?”

“It’s just a feeling I have.”

“Shields and their mysteries,” Fiona commented sarcastically.

I resented that. I never tried to appear mysterious. “No. I just don’t have a rational explanation. But I think it’s worth a try.”

After that, the most forgiving people I had ever met left Taro to sleep and me to think. In time I ate supper in our sitting room and then, after reading for a while, went to bed. Taro slept through it all and he was still in bed when I woke the next morning.

I was sipping on coffee when Fiona tapped on our door. “Want to go for a walk?” she asked.

“No, thank you. Taro’s not awake yet. I want to be here when he rises.”

“He’s slept all this time?”

“Aye.” I was starting to get worried, actually.

“Well, I thought you’d like to know that we brought Cavin in and he declared the room cleansed.”

“That’s excellent.”

“So it appears Shintaro’s rampage did some good.”

“Strange, that violence can be cleansing.” And offensive, really. Violence wasn’t supposed to accomplish anything.

“Still, I’m not comfortable with what Taro did.”

Neither was I. Taro wasn’t a creature of violence and aggression. That wasn’t his way, and I liked that about him. Having reacted that way once, was he more likely to react to frustration that way again? Just because he wouldn’t physically hurt a person didn’t mean he wouldn’t be violent and disturbing.

Fiona left shortly thereafter, and then, finally, Taro woke. He shuffled from the bedroom, with his hair all rumpled, wearing his nightgown and looking adorable. “What time is it?” he asked.

“Late morning.”

He looked at his hands, bending and straightening his fingers. “My hands hurt.”

“That’s from how you worked that axe yesterday.”

He flushed, deep and full.

“What happened?” I was a little afraid to hear the answer, actually.

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You destroyed that room in front of everyone. You don’t have a choice. I’d like to know what to tell people.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I was angry. I had to get it out. That was all I could think to do.”

“And did it work?”

He stared at the floor. “I feel looser. In a way I haven’t for a long time.”

That didn’t assure me that it wouldn’t happen again. “We’re going to be here for at least a few years.”

“I know.”

“You’re going to have to figure out how to deal with the Dowager.”

“I know!”

All right, all right, I didn’t want to start an argument and undo whatever good his rampage had done. “You know I would never believe anything the Dowager says, right? Nor any of her associates.”

“Good.”

Good. “So if you see any of them around, there is no need to assume the worst.”

“Yes, yes.”

He was acting like I was the one being unreasonable. I wasn’t the one who’d gone crazy with an axe. I’d have to watch him, though I had no idea what I would do if he went crazy again.

Chapter Twenty-five

Taro was quiet and subdued through the morning, and he stayed close. I read while he stared out the window.

“Isn’t Reid expecting you?” he asked eventually.