Katana (26 page)

I crossed my arms. “What are you talking about? I saw it slung across Devil-boy’s back!”

“Devil-boy?”

“That’s what I call the scary guy with horns tattooed on his head.” I shook my head. “But don’t change the subject!”

“Right.” He swallowed hard. “The katana I gave you was stolen.”

I tapped my foot against the floor. “You better start making sense and
fast!”

He sighed. “Senshi’s katana is in my bedroom, mounted on the wall with my nodachi.”

I glanced over my shoulder at the golden-hilted katana braced against the larger sword. “What? If
that’s
Senshi’s katana,” I turned back to him, “what did you give me?”

He dropped his gaze to the floor. “A decoy.”

“Excuse me?” I took a step back. “You lied to me!” Anger coursed through my body, burning through my veins like acid.

“No!” He reached for me, but I stepped beyond his grasp. He let his hand fall to his side. “I mean, yes, but it wasn’t intentional.”

I glared at him. “You knew it wasn’t Senshi’s katana, but you told me that it was. Are you sure you know the meaning of the word ‘intentional’?”

Kim closed his eyes and leaned his head against the door frame. After a deep breath, he said, “I did lie to you, but I did not do it to hurt you. I did it to protect you. You
must
understand that.”

“Go on.”

He continued. “There is a Noppera-bō after you, Rileigh, and we do not know who this person is. It could be a friend, a teacher, or the mailman. I thought that if whoever was targeting you thought that you had your katana back and had completed your transcending, they would move on. I never meant to hurt you.”

“How many times are you going to say that to me, Kim? How can I trust you when you don’t trust me?” I hugged my arms against my body, remembering the feel of his hands pressing me against him. I shivered. How could I have been such an idiot?

He moved closer and raised his arm to cup my chin with his hand. I didn’t move, but clenched my teeth under his fingers.

“In order to have the Noppera-bō believe it,” Kim said, “I needed you to believe it—and with the theft of the decoy, it looks like it worked.” He frowned and dropped his hand to his side. “It is only a matter of time before the Noppera-bō realize they have a fake and come looking for the
real
katana.”

My head ached from the emotions twisting within. Half of me wanted to pull him against me and curl against the warmth of his chest—the other half wanted to dropkick his face. “How do you know the Noppera-bō won’t believe the decoy is real?” I asked.

“Rileigh, did you not even unzip the bag?”

“No. I was afraid to touch it.”

Kim sighed and tilted my chin up with his thumb so that our eyes met. “If you had opened the bag, you would have seen the answer to your question spelled out plainly on the handle.”

“What’s that?”

“Made in China,” he said. Then he turned off the bathroom light.

30

Japan, 1493

N
ow that the smoke was gone, Senshi could clearly make out the approaching figure. What she saw made no sense to her.

“Zeami?” Senshi used her katana as a crutch to push herself back on her feet. It was unusual to see him alone. Zeami had fought side-by-side with Yoshido for as long as they’d been samurai. They were practically brothers. But now, Yoshido was nowhere in sight and Zeami was not dressed in armor. In fact, the red silk robes he wore were spotless and far beyond the reach of a samurai’s pay. The pieces fell into place.

“You!” Senshi failed to keep the rage from grinding her voice into a growl.

Zeami laughed. “Your magic tricks are always amusing. Toyotomi was a fool to have you trained as a samurai. What a waste of talent. You would have made quite the entertainer. I doubt, however, you would have been as gifted as your mother.” He licked his lips.

“I have no mother!” she spat.

“Oh, that is right.” He nodded, his small black eyes glittering. “She would not claim you.”

Rage boiled through Senshi’s blood, and before she realized what she was doing, she’d raised her katana to attack. She took a step forward, but a hand from behind grabbed her shoulder and stopped her advance.

She twisted to face her oppressor, who in turn spun her back to face Zeami with an arm protectively blocking her chest. Senshi blinked, the furious fire extinguished by Yoshido’s cool gaze. She shivered as his fingers brushed down her arm when he dropped his hold on her. She could think again.

“Ah, Yoshido, why do you bother with her?” Zeami sneered. “She is the daughter of a courtesan. Surely you could have done better.”

Yoshido turned slowly, giving Zeami the weight of his full stare. “Hold your tongue, Zeami. If not, I will gladly remove it for you.”

“Yoshido, that is why I have always liked you.” Zeami put his hands on his hips. “So direct. You are absolutely right, of course. The time for talking has passed. These walls are surrounded by ninja and you will soon be defeated.”

Senshi felt the tingle of tension creep along her shoulders. Dozens of samurai lay slain around her. The garden stank of sweet copper from the blood glittering on the grass like midnight dew. Only a handful of ninja joined the dead. Where was the rest of the army? Captured? Dead? Were she and Yoshido the only ones left? She pushed a trickle of her ki energy outward, searching. She only found ninja—too many to count—waiting in the darkness.

Yoshido shook his head. “I do not understand. Why, Zeami? We fought side by side for years. We were family.”

Zeami snorted. “Family? You are disillusioned, my friend, if you think that we were ever Toyotomi’s family. A samurai is nothing more than a glorified slave.”

Yoshido’s eyes widened. “That is absurd!”

“Is it? Slaves have no choice but to serve, and neither do samurai. What happens if a samurai chooses not to fight? Are they not executed?”

Yoshido narrowed his eyes. “Why would you not want to serve? There is no greater honor.”

“Bah!” Zeami threw his arms in the air. “Honor means nothing if you are dead, and death is of no interest to me, Yoshido. In case you have not noticed, the invasions have increased. We have been successful in stopping them, but each battle has been worse than the one preceding it. It was only a matter of time before we were defeated. I was not going to stay and wait for death.”

“You disgrace yourself!” Yoshido screamed, his nodachi trembling in his hand. “You disgrace your ancestors! You swore an oath of loyalty!”

“I am loyal, Yoshido … to myself. I have enough money now to own land. I am my own master and will never have to fight someone else’s battle again. Toyotomi could not give me that.”

“Maybe not,” Yoshido said, “but he treated us like family. Few daimyo treat their samurai so well.”

“Wrong again,” Zeami said. “My current employer paid me not only in money, but power. I have been bestowed the gift of dark magic. Toyotomi was always so proud of Senshi and her gift. Well, her power cannot stand against my new strength. My only regret is that Toyotomi did not live long enough to see me, Zeami, defeat his two favorite warriors.” A giggle escaped his throat before he could clamp his hand over his mouth to stifle it.

“Toyotomi is dead?” Yoshido’s face folded into lines of disbelief. “You lie.”

Senshi held back a sob and placed her hand on Yoshido’s arm.

Startled by her touch, Yoshido’s eyes widened as he searched her face for the truth. Her silence told him everything. “No,” he whispered, turning back to face Zeami.

“Do not be so sad, Yoshido,” Zeami sneered. “You will join him soon.” He held his arm out and a ninja appeared to his right. “But first, a surprise.”

“Cheap ninja magic,” Senshi muttered under her breath.

“Ah-ah,” Zeami scolded. “Do not spoil the surprise.”

The ninja strode toward Senshi and Yoshido, a bundle of something, masked by darkness, hanging from his hand. He stopped a few yards away.

Yoshido drew his sword, and Senshi readied her own.

“Go ahead.” Zeami nodded at the ninja. “Please give my gifts to my old friends.”

The ninja nodded and threw the objects into the air. They fell with a wet thud at the feet of Yoshido and Senshi.

At first, Senshi’s mind refused to make sense of the horror of the severed heads at her feet. As she stared at the milky eyes before her, the puzzle clicked into place, one anguishing piece at a time. The twins, Kiyomori and Yorimichi. The two young boys had not quite finished their training under Yoshido. They spent most of their days following Senshi around like starved puppies, convinced they could learn the art of ki manipulation if they watched her every move.

The third head Senshi had trouble making out, as it was bruised to a plum purple. Then she saw the identifying birthmark half-hidden under a swollen gash—Yoshido’s brother Seiko. Her body trembled from the strain of holding back tears. She would not give Zeami the pleasure of seeing them fall.

Yoshido was unmoving, his chest not even rising in breath. “No measure of pain can describe what I am going to do to you,” he growled through bared teeth. His eyes burned with feral rage, and Senshi, terrified, no longer recognized him.

“You do not like your present?” Zeami asked in mock disappointment.

Yoshido roared. “Enough of this! Enough of your games! We finish this here, and we finish this now.”

“As you wish, Yoshido,” Zeami said, no longer smiling. He bowed his head to the ground. When he lifted it up a moment later, his pupils had dilated to encompass his entire eye, making his sockets appear empty.

The air in the garden prickled with hot energy that pulled at the hair along Senshi’s arm and neck, giving her the sensation of a thousand daggers digging into her skin. She grimaced in pain. “What is this?” she asked.

“I have told you, my lovely Senshi,” Zeami replied. “I have been given great power, power even you cannot comprehend.”

Wide-eyed, Yoshido turned to her. “What is going on?”

Senshi shook her head, a feeling of helplessness weighing her down. “This is no magic that I know.”

Zeami smiled. “What did I tell you? So much for the great powers of Senshi.” He turned his attention to Yoshido. “Come, old friend, let this be done.” Streaks of blue electricity snapped around Zeami’s body in hissing and popping rings. He held his arms out, laughing as he embraced the power.

Zeami was right. Never before had Senshi seen or felt anything like it. Her own magic was a cool wind that blew out from her center. Zeami’s energy was sharp and hot, seeming to come from everywhere at once. Zeami turned back to Senshi. He raised his arms and reached for her, lightning raining from his fingertips. Her shoulder was struck, and she marveled that Zeami’s energy felt like a physical blow before she realized Yoshido had shoved her to the ground.

She screamed his name, watching her lover’s eyes widen in surprise as he took the hit meant for her. His neck snapped up, pulled back by the lightning coursing through his body with sickening cracks. He jerked upright, twitching like a puppet shaken on its strings, before he crumpled into a heap on the ground, his eyes never once leaving her face.

The smell of burned flesh mixed with the scent of blood already hanging in the night air.

31

I
woke with a start and had to shield my eyes from the sun glinting off the two swords mounted above the headboard. With my eyes closed, I was even more aware of the scent of sandalwood coming off the comforter I had wrapped around myself. I jerked the covers off, but I could still smell Kim’s scent on the clean T-shirt and boxer shorts he’d given me to wear.

I flopped onto my back and tried to fall back to sleep, but the nightmare was too fresh inside my head. I tried to push the images from my mind, but that only allowed my earlier conversation with Kim to slip in. He said I had nothing to lose by transcending, and everything to gain. Was he right? Was the real me being suppressed and held captive?

Even more distracting were the memories of how his arms felt. They made my heart trip and my blood uncomfortably hot. If I thought about it, I could almost feel his lips beneath my ear, rising higher and higher … I sat up with a gasp.

Dropping my legs over the side of the bed, I grumbled the entire way into the bathroom. I knew Kim wouldn’t mind if I took a shower; I just hoped he wouldn’t realize how cold I intended it to be.

After my shower, I picked up my soiled workout clothes and held them up for inspection. They were spotted with the blood from my torn knuckles and smelled like sweat—but I didn’t care. Anything was better than having Kim’s scent sinking into my skin. I slipped my clothes on and left the bedroom in search of caffeine. Kim sat at the kitchen bar, studying his laptop. He looked up at me when I entered.

“You didn’t sleep long. Were you not comfortable?”

“I’m not very tired,” I lied. “Care if I use your phone? I need to call work and tell them I’m not coming in today.”

“What about your mom?” he asked. “Do you think she’s worried?”