Tokyo Blood Magic (Shinjuku Shadows Book 1)

by Travis Heermann

  The monk grinned again and stoked Django’s anger. Who was this weird little twerp?

  “Yeah, and so what?” Django said. “I got dealt a pretty shitty hand.”

  “Indeed you did,” the monk said. “How well have you played the hand you were dealt?”

  “My parents were murdered!” Django yelled.

  “So I’ve heard. A terrible tragedy.”

  “And my brother!”

  “Indeed, he was a kind and gentle soul.”

  Django scoffed. “You act like you know them.”

  “Well, I have not spoken to them recently, but—”

  “You don’t know my parents! You’re a liar!”

  The monk sighed and gave him a long, searching look.

  Then the monk attacked so swiftly Django didn’t even see it coming. The pilgrim staff struck him across the ear with a flare of blazing pain. The pain knocked him sideways and shocked the breath out of him.

  “Do not think you can impugn my honor without consequences, stripling,” the monk said with a stern voice.

  Django kipped to his feet and lashed out with a front kick, but the monk was no longer there. The monk’s foot was bare, but it felt like iron against Django’s other ear. Both ears rang with pain. Django spun just in time to see the monk swing once more around the top of his pilgrim staff...then the monk Shadow Blinked away.

  He reappeared twenty feet away, leaping from the shadows of a crevice at the foot of the rock formation.

  Django’s cheeks burned. He knew this little shit was trying to egg him on, but it didn’t matter. He was Django Fucking Wong! Ninja sorcerer! He swung his arms to activate his Fortress, but there was nothing left in his Root pool. And he had no weapons to infuse with fire.

  He leaped toward the monk with a flurry of kicks and punches, but before the blows could land, both arms and both legs from the knees down had been numbed by precise nerve strikes from the monk’s staff. His legs buckled under him.

  The whiff of the staff came for his ear again, but his buckling legs let him duck the strike. His attempt at rolling had as much grace as a trout in the bottom of a boat, but he avoided a lightning-fast series of strikes from the staff. Fleeing back to the top of the rock formation for high ground and distance, he spun in time to see the monk...doing nothing at all, just watching him placidly.

  It felt like a taunt.

  He snatched up a fist-sized stone and flung it with pinpoint accuracy at the monk’s chest. He didn’t want to kill the little fellow, only teach him a lesson.

  The monk seemed to have all the time in the world, as if the stone were coming in slow motion, and slid to the ground to assume a batter-up stance. Then he whacked the stone with his staff, jangling the rings and sending a line drive straight for Django’s forehead. Django tried to duck, but the stone glanced off the top of his skull and dropped him like a clubbed water buffalo. He fell hard onto the rocks and lay moaning in a crumpled heap, half blinded by pain. Through the haze of agony and dizziness, he saw the monk pretending to run all four bases, waving to an imaginary crowd.

  The monk’s voice was closer now. “Rest assured, boy, that if I wished you dead, you would in fact be very, very dead.”

  He wanted to yell and rail at the placid little monk, but he couldn’t. That lid on his ugly truths was still there, taunting him with its presence. How well have you played the hand you were dealt?

  Suddenly, the bloom of hot anger felt like someone else’s clothes.

  “This is Jianghu,” the monk said. “The mortal world, with all its contraptions and burdens and calamities, cannot touch here. Free of all such things, we can seek the truth, accept the truth we find.”

  Django’s eyes teared up again, but it wasn’t from the physical pain. He heaved himself into a sitting position, throbbing head in his hands.

  The monk said, “There are no warlords, no gangsters. There are dangers, to be certain, but the lies we tell ourselves cannot exist here for long. Stay awhile, and you’ll soon discover them stripped away, one by one. I see in you a boy who could become a great warrior, perhaps even a master. But right now, you’re just a boy blinded by anger. Where does your anger lie, Kenji Wong?”

  His entire life could be stitched together between bouts of anger, like a daisy chain.

  Anger at his parents.

  Anger at the world.

  Anger at the Black Lotus Clan.

  Anger at the Council for making him feel like a well-paid slave.

  Anger at himself, for all that anger he couldn’t let go.

  The monk smiled. “Anger is born of suffering. Let the suffering go, and the anger will follow.”

  Django turned away and scoffed. “Life is suffering. How can it not be?”

  “Life is often painful, but it does not require suffering.”

  “What the hell is the difference?”

  Just as the monk had poked him in the chest, he hit Django again but this time a sharp blow squarely to the kidney.

  Django’s back arched as he clutched at the sudden agony, yelping in surprise. As the pain subsided into a throbbing ache, he rounded on the monk, still gasping, fist cocked.

  The rings of the monk’s staff laid against Django’s chest, holding him in place with a strength no man that size should possess. “Forget the past and the future. Soon, the pain of my blow will be gone. But if you remember that pain and hold it against me from now until your death, if you pull out that memory and chew on it like a dog worrying a bone, that is suffering. It’s all right not to suffer. Let the pain pass. You do not need it.”

  “I’ve read books on Zen Buddhism and meditation and mindfulness and all that soft-hearted crap.”

  “So you learned nothing, then.”

  “I understand it, but...” Django sighed and lowered his head. “How do I do it?”

  “The same way you study martial arts. The same way you cultivate your mahō. Practice. Discipline.” The monk grinned again. “Cultivating a bonsai tree requires care, attention, discernment, mindfulness. It must be tended, coaxed, encouraged, over and over again. You Americans have an appropriate term that is perfect for how not to do it—half-assed. How much of your martial training has been spent half-assing things? And your mahō training, too.”

  Django sighed.

  The monk poked him again, this time sharply on the sternum.

  “Ow, goddammit!” Django had so many new bruises, he didn’t know which one to rub.

  “It was not a rhetorical question.”

  “Too much, all right! Thanks to some good genes, martial arts always came easy for me. I got into some bad habits, I suppose.”

  The monk sighed with satisfaction and squatted beside him. “Finally, now, we are getting somewhere. Cultivation, boy. Practice. Discipline. With cultivation, you might have had enough magic left to erect your defenses. Simple techniques naturally become more complex as your foundation strengthens, yes? Slow becomes fast through mastery.”

  Suddenly the monk was standing on the tip of his counterbalanced, diagonally poised staff, gripping the rings—a kung-fu technique Django recognized as Monkey Climbs a Tree. The monk’s form was not only perfect, but he held it rock steady, as if he were standing on his own two feet, not on the side of a counterbalanced stick like the letter y.

  It was the technique Django’s father had been trying to teach him...that day.

  I can’t do it, Dad! Another round of cursing had followed his umpteenth failure of the afternoon. He kept losing his grip on the staff, missing the foot hook, letting his other foot slip down the staff, getting halfway up, and losing his balance. There were a million ways to fail at Monkey Climbs a Tree. Only one way to succeed.

  You are too impatient! Become monkey. His father had shrugged as if this were no big deal. And then climb tree.

  This monkey is tired of this bullshit! Had Django thrown the staff down? He couldn’t remember.

  Then his father had gotten in his face with those iron-hard monkey fists. You watch your tongu
e in training hall, boy!

  Oh, yeah? Well, fuck you, old man!

  Django had stormed out and went to hang with the Red Dragons. They stole a car stereo from a Jaguar XJ, then some trinkets and snacks from tourist shops while he fumed at his inadequacy.

  And when he came home, his father was dead.

  Worst home movie ever. And it played incessantly inside his head.

  Django sniffed and wiped his eyes. Truth hurt. And that shit-talking cat had been right about a lot of things.

  Still atop the stick, one arm dangling like a monkey’s, the monk regarded him with a look of profound compassion, which annoyed Django more. “It was a terrible blow. But the pain is past. Now there is only suffering.”

  “How do I make it go away?”

  “What if I tell you that your parents are alive?”

  “I would call you a liar. I saw their bodies.”

  “Your parents were masters of their respective arts at a very young age, masters of their bodies and spirits. And this is Jianghu.”

  Django stared at him. “Are you saying...?”

  “I am saying that before they died in the mortal world, they came here, to study, to grow. Because time in Jianghu is not time in the mortal world, they are still here.”

  Part III

  Chapter Eighteen

  MOUTH AGAPE, DJANGO stared at the strange little monk with the gourd-shaped head.

  The monk’s eyes twinkled, but with a hint of warning. “It is true, but I must tell you—they are in danger.”

  Django squared on him, every nerve ablaze, giddy, shaky. “Tell me.”

  “I encountered them some years ago on one of my walks. They were practicing their martial arts, cultivating their skills, and teaching the children of a village.”

  “How did they get to Jianghu?”

  “That you must ask them.”

  “Then where are they? Tell me!” He felt like sobbing for joy and hope.

  “That is the problem. They fell prey to a tsuchigumo.” An earth spider, a powerful yokai. Japanese folklore was full of encounters with these terrible beasts, said to have the face of an oni and the body of a tiger, but the stories often varied regarding the tsuchigumo’s appearance. But one thing was common among all the stories—they preyed upon travelers, capturing them in webs.

  “How do you know they’re still alive?” Django asked.

  “Because you are here, my boy,” the monk said. “Somehow, they must have escaped the beast, or you would not exist.”

  “That’s confusing as hell. Are you saying Jianghu has time travel?”

  “In a manner of speaking, I suppose. I told you that time moves differently here, just like threads can loop back upon themselves. In Jianghu, we weave our own threads.”

  Django’s head was spinning. “Where do I find this tsuchigumo?”

  “It lives in a deep cave in the mountains. But you should not go alone. It is as old as it is cunning.”

  “If I can only find my cat.”

  “I shall take you to someone who can help.”

  “Who?”

  “Shall we move expeditiously? It is some journey, and we can talk on the way.”

  Django nodded. “Let’s go.” Cat would have to catch up as best he could.

  The strange monk set off toward the distant mountains, and Django fell in beside him. The diminutive fellow’s legs moved at a bizarrely quick gait, but he did not run. The rings of his pilgrim staff jangled along, as if he had given them leave to make noise.

  Scores of rivers and lakes dotted the sprawling landscape before them, catching the setting sun that hovered above the shadowed mountain peaks. Between the bodies of water lay dikes and patches of high, dry ground. Profusions of wildflower rainbows peppered the banks of streams and ponds. They traced a circuitous path through, with the sun and mountains as their compass.

  Ducks and cranes burst from quiescence into the air.

  Then a raptor plummeted out of the sky like an arrow and slammed into one of the ducks. Loose feathers spiraled, and the raptor winged away with a dead duck in its talons.

  A chill trickled down the back of Django’s neck. An omen? He found it difficult to shake the feeling.

  “Beware of kappa at the water’s edge,” the monk said. “We are entering an area that is lousy with them.”

  Just as the monk spoke, Django spotted a pair of eyes poking from the still water, watching them from about ten yards away. The eyes were half reptilian, half monkey, and full of sly intelligence. Directly above the eyes, a saucer-shaped indentation, fringed with dark hair, held a puddle of water. Seeing itself spotted, the kappa ducked below the water like a turtle.

  “They will not trouble us,” the monk said. “They know I am too dry and shriveled to get much juice out of. But do not look them in the eye. They can bewitch the unwary.”

  Knowing now what to look for, Django saw them in nearly every pond and lake they passed. The stories he had read of kappa described them as strange little vampires that enjoyed feeding upon children and old people, luring them to the water’s edge, seizing them, and then drowning them so they could feast upon blood and viscera. How many would he have to kill and harvest to level up? They would certainly be rich in Water mahō, and that was a pool he had not yet Awakened. He hadn’t any weapons, however, except for mahō. He knew there was a way to summon a weapon made of Fire itself, but he didn’t know the technique. How could he face a horde of kappa, much less a tsuchigumo, without any weapons?

  “So what purpose finds you in Jianghu?” the monk said, trundling along in his uncanny gait. “How did you get here?”

  “It wasn’t my doing. My cat brought me here.”

  “That must be an extraordinary cat.”

  “You might say that. He turned into a tiger and opened a portal to Jianghu to save me from a kijo working for the Black Lotus Clan. A bit of a mouthful, but there it is.”

  “Ah, the Black Lotus Clan. A nasty bunch. They’ve been causing trouble here for centuries.”

  “Here, too?”

  “Always scrabbling for power, stealing, bullying.” The monk sighed. “They cause much suffering. But there is more to your story, I think.”

  “The Black Lotus Clan is seeking a magical artifact of great power, and they’re forcing my...friend to help them. She’s a newly Awakened witch. So I’m trying to find the...artifact before they do.” Django had almost said “scroll.” But he didn’t know if he could trust this strange monk.

  “I have encountered a powerful warlock wandering these lands, looking quite desperately for any information on such an artifact, one might presume the very thing you’re looking for. The Yamabushi Scroll perhaps?”

  “You know of it?”

  “Indeed. I knew some of the men and women who wrote it, before they passed into the Great Wheel, that is.”

  “Who are you?”

  The monk shrugged. “That is unimportant. What is important is that I know someone who might be able to help you find it. And serendipitously, the same person we are already going to see. Whether he will choose to help you is another matter entirely. He can be...capricious.”

  Django sighed. “So tell me who we’re going to see.”

  The monk clucked his tongue. “So many questions with you. Too many questions to appreciate the colors of the sunset on the water.”

  He was right about the colors of the sunset, which had deepened as the two had traveled. The waters reflected ribbons of lemon, orange, vermilion, carmine, and indigo, backgrounded by the misty undulations of the purple mountains.

  It was the most beautiful thing Kenji Wong had ever seen, and in that moment, he forgot the endless layers of strife and struggle that made up his life, the perils and predicaments, the wants, the yearnings. He just...let his eyes take it in.

  After a time he blinked, sniffled, and wiped his eyes.

  The monk said, “That is the power of Jianghu, my boy.”

  HOW MANY HOURS OR DAYS they spent crossing the plain of
rivers and lakes in the light of celestial sunset, Django did not know. When they wearied, they sat and rested. The monk produced onigiri stuffed with pickled plum from his robe, and they ate. Django was pretty sure a rice ball had never tasted so good, each grain bursting to life on his tongue. With a wave of his staff, the monk shooed away the eyes of kappa that drew too close.

  The mountains neared, more slowly than the hands of a clock, until the two travelers passed into their shadow. Groves of bamboo and verdant pine forests swathed the skirts of the mountains. A glittering waterfall burst from a crevice and fell hundreds of feet into a lake at the foot of a cliff.

  They found themselves on a footpath leading from a riverside toward the forest. The footpath joined with others and widened into a road. At the place where the road plunged into the shadowy depths of the forest stood a small shrine, where resided a stone statue under an ancient roof of weathered wood. The waist-high statue was so old and worn that its subject was difficult to ascertain. It was roundish, potbellied, perhaps a bit comical, but it had the face of an animal with eyes that looked up at Django with curious wisdom.

  The monk plopped down, cross-legged, with a sigh of relief.

  “Are we resting?” Django asked.

  “We have arrived,” the monk said. “The person we have come to meet passes this way sometimes. We shall await his arrival.”

  “Doesn’t he, like, have a house or something we could go to?” The urgency of their mission had returned. His parents were in trouble. Yuka was in trouble. He had to find the Scroll. He had to get home.

  “Not to my knowledge,” the monk said. “In the meantime, place this on the shrine as an offering.” He handed Django another onigiri.

  Django frowned but placed the rice ball at the statue’s feet.

  Then he paced for a while.

  “Best to settle in, my boy.”

  “Can’t we find him somehow?” Django asked. The thought of a giant spider sucking out his parents’ bodily fluids...