Katana (35 page)

Please,
she silently begged,
please no more.

As if in answer, a hand slid through the darkness and wrapped around hers. That touch alone stilled her agony, and she fell into peace.

40

T
he first stirrings of wind fluttered through my hair, reminding me that I was still very much alive and still pinned to my bed with a sword through my shoulder. In the next instant, a tornado slammed my closet and bedroom door shut and ripped my curtains free from their rods. I flung my arm over my face to shield myself from the debris flying around my room. The wind came from nowhere and everywhere all at once, twisting and turning, whipping my hair across my face and pelting my head with dirty socks. I twisted my head and cupped my hand over my eyes to see Whitley huddled against my door, struggling to remain standing.

The wooden windows rattled in their sills as my room grew thick with power. The pressure crushed down upon me until I thought I would be smashed flat. I opened my mouth, but the wind pushed my scream aside as it forced its way down my throat. Suddenly, the room around me became still as the power that had threatened to tear it down poured inside of me. My body bucked and jerked as the power searched for a way out. It stretched and pushed until I thought my skin would shatter like glass.

And then it found an opening.

The katana burst from my shoulder as the wind streamed from my wound, giving me seconds to roll across my bed to keep from being stabbed a second time when the blade came back down. I rolled to the ground on my knees, panting as I leaned my head against my mattress.

My room had become the eye of a cyclone again. I thought I heard Whitley screaming, but I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from. I could no longer see anything. The energy had grown so strong that it had become a visible force of white streamers. I ducked as unidentifiable objects soared overhead only to become wedged into the drywall.

Ignoring the pain in my shoulder, I flattened myself to the floor and crawled forward, hoping to reach the door. I didn’t make it far. As if sensing my intentions, the wind bore down on me again, pelting me repeatedly with everything from underwear to books. I curled myself into a ball, keeping my arms protectively over my head. I felt an internal snap and the first piece of me break away.

I didn’t have time to react. In the next second there was a shake, followed by a pop, and then an earsplitting crack. Shortly after, I found myself somewhere near the ceiling, staring down at my crumpled body on the floor. Terrified, I tried to make my way back to my body, but it was like swimming in quicksand. The harder I struggled, the farther I felt myself being carried until I was through my ceiling and outside of my house.

At first, as I watched my house shrink to nothing more than a blue speck, I was filled with terror. But the higher I flew, the more a growing sense of awe and wonder filled me until my fears were completely pushed aside. My suburb shrank and soon the entire city lay beneath me. The buildings and cars shimmered like gems on a bed of black velvet. The Arch reflected in the Mississippi River like a million glittering diamonds.

I wanted to stay forever and stare down at the city of jewels, but the wind carried me higher still, pushing me through a blanket of clouds that I couldn’t see through. I thought this should make me feel nervous, but then I realized that I didn’t feel anything. I was the air around me and the wind blowing through me. I was everything, and yet, I was nothing that could be.

Just above the gray night clouds, my flight came to a halt. The air holding me ripped, giving me a moment to admire the black hole that lay underneath before it swallowed me.

At the rate of speed I fell, everything should have been a blur. Instead, I saw it all with crystal clarity. The image of a smiling young woman with raven hair and almond eyes appeared before me. She held out her hand, and, even though I had no form, I took it, letting her join with me and lead me down to the life that was.

The memories flickered past like images from a movie projector, but the emotions they stirred stayed with me, embedding themselves into my being.

I was a toddler, playing alone with a broken doll on a bamboo floor.

I was a child, braiding my mother’s hair as she stared at her reflection in a mirror.

I was a scared young girl with a torn robe and a knife, refusing to give my body away without a price.

Then I saw
him.
A braid of jet-black hair swung past his knees as he stepped forward and held out his hand.

I reached back only to find that he had vanished, leaving behind a crooked blood-stained dagger. Unable to stop myself, I picked up the dagger and, without hesitating, plunged the blade deep into my flesh.

Screaming, I opened my eyes and found myself back on the floor of my bedroom. I inhaled the thick smell of smoke, but a twisting pain in my stomach made me gasp. I sat up and hugged my sides, my fingers running across something warm and sticky that soaked into my tank top. I slowly lifted my shirt and found that the small birthmark to the right of my belly button had split open, spilling fresh blood down my waist.

“What did you do?” Whitley screamed. I looked up as he gripped my shoulders. His hair had fallen completely out of its ponytail and knotted into a halo around his face. He shook me hard enough that my head flopped against my shoulders like a rag doll. “My power is not back! How did you keep it from me?”

Smiling, I put my hand on top of his, and he stopped shaking me. His eyes filled with disbelief. Suddenly it was all so clear. I knew what had happened. I could feel it in my center and coursing through my blood.

“Your ceremony trapped energy into this room,” I whispered.

Uncertainty flashed in his eyes. “I trapped your energy so I could take it when you died.”

“You forget,” I hissed, “that I have the ability to manipulate ki. But the only problem when using life force energy is that it’s like a battery. The more you use, the weaker you become. And if you use all your ki before time and rest can restore it, you die.”

“So why aren’t you dead?”

“Because of you.” I smiled. “When you contained my ki to my bedroom, you made it a battery charger. You trapped the energy you tried to take and gave me an endless supply of power.”

Whitley paled as he stumbled back away from me. “No!”

I could feel the power flowing inside of me. Like a warm river, it mixed with the blood flowing through my veins, energizing me. As it worked through my body, I noticed a tingling sensation in my shoulder and stomach. Carefully, I pulled my torn and bloody tank top past my shoulder to find that my stab wound was no bigger than the size of a dime, and it appeared to be shrinking before my eyes. I lifted up the bottom hem of my shirt and wiped away the smeared blood with my hand, discovering nothing but smooth skin underneath.

I stood up.

Whitley scrambled backward, tripping over one of my shoes and falling onto his back. With a yelp, he crab-crawled in reverse until his back hit my door. With a shaking hand, he pulled three palm-sized metal squares from his back jeans pocket. The tips gleamed where they had been filed to a point. “Don’t take one step closer!” he screamed.

“You’re actually threatening me with shuriken?” I asked, remembering the weapons fleeing ninja used to discourage pursuers. “Really, Whitely, isn’t that a tad cliché?”

“Why change something that works?” He looked like he was about to say more, but snapped his mouth shut as his eyes wandered over my head. “Look!” He inclined his head to point behind me. “Fire!”

I rolled my eyes. “Please, how dumb do—” But my words trailed in the air as I spotted orange flames licking out from under my closet door. One of the candles must have fallen and rolled into my closet during the wind storm!

I froze. Michelle lay dying on my couch, my house was on fire, and I was alone in my room with a homicidal maniac. Which problem did I address first?

A scream from behind me forced my decision. I looked up seconds before three flying shuriken hit me.

Reflexively I lifted my arm to protect my face and felt a disturbance in the air made by my swinging arm. When I opened my eyes, Whitley’s right shoulder had been pierced through to the wall with one sharpened square, a second pinned his left forearm in place, and the third wedged firmly into the middle of his thigh. He howled as he pulled against the metal that gouged him. I watched, mesmerized, as the blood stain crawled down Whitley’s thigh until most of his left pant leg turned a brilliant red.

Unable to move his arms, he shifted his shoulders and looked up at me with desperate eyes. “The fire!”

I looked behind me to see that the flames had spread from the closet to the entire back wall. Thick black smoke collected on the ceiling and pressed down by the second.

I snatched my katana from the bed and paused briefly in front of Whitley. A thousand emotions passed through me in a second. He had tried to kill me and, rightly, deserved no mercy. But I wasn’t sure I had the strength to walk away and deal with the stain his blood would leave on my conscience.

Whitley quit struggling and fell limp against the wall. “You can’t leave me here,” he pleaded. “I’ll die.”

“You deserve to.” My voice sounded hoarse as I struggled to breathe through the thick air.

“But I’m the only one who can get us out of here.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You would say anything to save yourself.”

The smoke had now descended to waist-level and Whitley coughed several times before he was able to continue. “I’m telling the truth! Transcending should have drained you of your power, but I have contained it to this room. Once you break the barrier, you’ll lose all of your energy. But if you let me go, I give you my word that I will get you and Michelle out of the house safely.”

I took a moment to consider that. “So my choice is to let you go or lose all of my energy?”

Whitley nodded and smiled. The expression was identical to the smile worn by Zeami the night he killed Yoshido.

“You know what? I think I’ll take my chances with the fire.”

His face crumpled. “No! You can’t do this!”

I paused in the doorway and gave him one last look over my shoulder. “As much fun as it’s been, consider this our last date.”

I left the room without looking back.

41

W
hitley had told the truth about one thing. The moment I stepped from my bedroom, my energy slipped away like sand through my fingertips. The smoke was already thick and rolling down the hallway when I stumbled to the floor.

I heard Whitley’s wordless screams, but after a loud crash followed by a slight tremor in the floor, he fell eerily silent.

I couldn’t help but taste the irony, cold and bitter on my tongue. I had survived an attempted sacrifice as well as my transcending, but now I was going to be burned alive in a house fire before I could pull my friend to safety. Just my luck.

I tightened my grip on the katana and shimmied forward down the hallway on my elbows. When I could no longer see out of my watery and burning eyes, I buried my head against my arm, coughing up the thick air that cut like razors down my throat. After rubbing the tears from my eyes with my shoulders, I lifted my head back up. The wave of heat that pressed against my face surprised me. The fire had beaten me down the hall and was making headway into the living room where Michelle lay helpless, and there was nothing I could do to save her.

I was too exhausted to be afraid. A violent series of coughs wracked my body, and when it was over, I collapsed my head onto the floor and stared at the shadows cast by the orange flames dancing against the wall. I couldn’t look away.

A loud crack sounded to my right, followed by something white-hot searing into the skin above my left elbow. I shuddered but was helpless to do more.

As the burning sensation spread, I tried to keep the panic threatening to overtake me at bay. Quentin had given me tips for dealing with anxiety once. He suggested that reciting the alphabet backwards would keep my mind too busy to succumb to an anxiety attack. It seemed silly, but I had to do something while I waited to die.

Z, Y, X, W, V …

A memory of my mother popped into my mind. I had just turned thirteen and was sitting on the couch watching a movie when I heard soft sobbing coming from my mother’s room.

Startled, I turned the TV off, tiptoed down the hall, and eased her bedroom door open. “Mom?”

“Oh, Rileigh!” Debbie quickly wiped away her tears with the back of her hand before burying her face in her pillow. Her voice was muffled, but I could still understand her when she said, “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”

I crept to the edge of the bed, careful to not step on the dozens of crumpled and ripped pictures of my mom from her modeling days that littered the floor.

I could remember the strangeness of cradling my mother in my arms. When her sobbing stopped and her heaving chest stilled, I got the nerve to ask the question I’d always wanted to ask. “Do you regret keeping me?”

She sucked in a breath and held it for the longest seconds of my life. Finally, she let it whoosh out before pulling herself up and locking her puffy red eyes onto my own. “Never. Not even for a second.”