Naoko went on, “It reminds me of a great manga from America—”
Chen Xiu rolled his eyes. “Oh, she is a manga fiend.”
“Really?” Django had seen no evidence of this throughout his life. What had made her turn away from that kind of enthusiasm?
With a twinkle in his eye, Chen Xiu said, “Yeah, she goes full otaku on that stuff. If she’s not training, she’s face-down in manga.”
She elbowed him. “As I was saying, there’s this great manga from America about a team of superheroes but they’re not really superheroes, just normal people dressing in costume and becoming vigilantes—up until a real superman is created by a nuclear accident. Anyway, he is more powerful than Superman, but he’s so powerful he’s in danger of losing touch with his humanity. But then he falls in love with another vigilante, but she’s a normal human. When he realizes that her unique existence is a miracle in a random universe, it grounds him in his humanity.”
Django recognized the story instantly as the one he often told himself in dark moments.
Had she told him that story when he was little?
In his darkest moments, was she still whispering it to him?
He wiped his eyes and sniffled.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Chen Xiu said, “You’ve bored him to tears, my dumpling.”
She elbowed Chen Xiu again.
Django said, “I know that book. It’s one of my favorites, is all.”
It was strange speaking to his father in Japanese. His father’s Japanese was far better than his English, but Django’s teenage self hadn’t bothered to learn much Japanese. Whenever his mother had tried to teach him, he simply spoke English, wanting to be like all the other kids. He’d always been embarrassed by his father’s poor English and hated him for it. It made him feel all the more a fool for who he’d been.
They joined the procession climbing down the mountain. With all the animals ahead, it was a slow-moving train, but it was also a merry one. All the people were chattering among themselves like long-lost friends, happy to be alive and free, but they were also worried about still being in the forest when night fell. They wanted to get down from the mountaintop and find shelter. Now that Django knew what kind of predators stalked Jianghu, he could hardly blame them.
Every step downward made him feel heavier, each step bringing him closer to parting with his parents. Conversation paused so they might concentrate on the treacherous, darkening stairs. It was a long way down.
When they finally reached the skirt of the mountain, they found the strange monk with the gourd-shaped head sitting upon a fallen log, smoking a clay pipe. The sweet, earthy aroma of fine tobacco wafted through the forest glade. With a bemused smile, he greeted them. “Hello! How splendid that you are still alive!”
Recognition bloomed in Naoko’s and Chen Xiu’s eyes. “Hello, Sir Monk,” Chen Xiu said.
“I am inexpressibly pleased to see you!” the monk said. “I gather that the tsuchigumo has met its demise?”
Chen Xiu said, “Thanks to Mr. Django here.”
Django said, “I am honored to have fought by your side.”
The monk’s eyes twinkled, and he puffed his pipe.
Chen Xiu said, “I have been meaning to ask you, Mr. Django, where did you get that sword?”
Django had the dusty old scabbard slung over his back. The lacquer was chipped, the wood cracked, the copper fittings green with age. “I found it in the cave.”
“May I examine it?”
Django handed it to him with both hands, bowing. Chen Xiu accepted it with the same gesture and drew the blade. The flow of Django’s magic had wiped away any hint of age or corrosion, leaving it bright and shiny.
Chen Xiu studied it. “This side of the blade is engraved with mountains, rivers, and trees, the other side with the sun, moon, and stars. These characters on the hilt are the oldest Chinese writing.”
“Can you read it?”
“They taught us many things in Shaolin Temple.”
Django stared. “You were a Shaolin monk?” Why had his father never told him this? Why had Django never asked?
“My mother sent me to them when I was eight. I never saw her again. They told me she committed suicide. I studied and practiced with them. They raised me. But I did not join the order. I like girls too much.” He winked at Naoko. “When I turned nineteen, I left to seek my fortune.”
Django’s heart got heavier. He had so many questions. During his childhood, his parents were tight-lipped about their pasts. He knew nothing about their ancestry, their early lives, or how they met. They often spoke of the greater traditions of martial arts and history, but rarely about themselves, always deflecting his endless childish questions. As a child, he hadn’t thought it strange. It was just how things were. But now...
Chen Xiu turned the sword over and over. “These characters...On this side of the guard are instructions for how to plant crops and raise animals. On this side, how to create a just and unified government. But this cannot be.”
Naoko, Django, and the monk waited expectantly.
Chen Xiu blinked and swallowed hard, holding the sword at arm’s length. “Do you know what this means?”
They all shook their heads.
The stunned reverence on Chen Xiu’s face was plain, and he spoke slowly and softly. “I think this is the Sword of Divinity, called Xuan Yuan, one of China’s Ten Great Swords. It belonged to the Yellow Emperor.”
“You’re saying this is a forty-seven-hundred-year-old sword?” Django asked. The Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, was one of China’s earliest mythical leaders, a patron saint of Taoism, said to have invented writing, the bow and arrow, the wheeled cart—all kinds of things—and united several tribes to defeat barbarians in a great battle, claiming the Yellow River basin for his people. He was said to have ruled around 2700 BCE, during the time of ancient Egypt, two millennia before the rise of Greece. A long time ago, he’d learned all this from a video game he and his friends had stolen from a Chinese market in Honolulu.
“Maybe?” Chen Xiu said. “Unless it is fake. But I saw your face when you used it with your magic. It did things you did not expect. Maybe a fake would not do that.”
If this were truly the Sword of Divinity, it certainly had a kami, and that spirit could be near god-like in its power.
“You should take it with you,” Django said. “It will...protect you. If you...get crosswise of any more yakuza.”
Chen Xiu considered. “I think not. I cannot make it do what you can. And you may need it sooner than I.” He offered the sword back to Django, but its pull on him showed in a moment of reluctance. Django accepted it with a bow.
“Yes, you have to go and save your lady love, right?” Naoko said, clasping her hands together.
Django sighed, “Yes, but I...I like it here.” And it would be too creepy and stalker-y to say, With you.
Nearby, one of the men called out to the entire group, “Let us hurry to my village! We shall have a great celebration of life! I don’t know your bellies, but mine is screaming for a meal.”
A rousing cheer of affirmation was his reply.
“It’s not far. We’ll be there by nightfall!” the man said and set off downhill through the trees. A procession formed behind him, and the strange monk fell in with it.
Cat, who had been absorbed in licking the dried blood from his coat, glanced at Django.
Naoko and Chen Xiu started after the procession as well but then paused.
“Are you coming?” Naoko asked.
“I don’t feel much like celebrating yet,” Django said. This was it, the moment he had dreaded.
“Ah, that’s too bad. We quite like having you around,” Naoko said. “As if we’ve known each other for a long time.”
One of those sea urchin spines in his belly went straight into his heart.
“You are a formidable warrior,” Chen Xiu said. “Stay here for a while and train with us.”
“And a war
lock, too!” Naoko said. “Perhaps you could teach us.”
Could he?
Could he stay here in Jianghu for a while, where time worked differently, and teach his parents mahō they might use to save themselves and Kuan-yin when the Black Lotus Clan came? Could he change the course of their lives and still exist? These were questions for someone much wiser than some ex-gangbanger-turned-warlock. The temporal spirals made his head hurt. He was a Level Four now and confident he could face this Habu with a snowball’s chance of winning. He could feel his pools expanding, reconfiguring his body and spirit. The Earth mahō still coursed through him, making his limbs feel as if they were made of leather and stone.
Seeing his parents together sparked a yearning in him to experience that kind of love. They looked so happy. Could he have that with Yuka? He had a moment of fantasizing about himself and Yuka someday in the future, two badass mahō artists taking on the world.
Or perhaps he was just making himself into a fool.
But he had to find out.
“I will return someday,” Django said, “if I live through all this. Perhaps, if you’re still here, we can talk about it then.”
Hage lingered, listening to this exchange while pretending to tend his purple gaslights. Was he worried that Django would say something he shouldn’t?
“Before you go,” Django said. Shit, there was so much he wanted to say! Keeping his voice even required every ounce of willpower. “Uh...I know you’ll be very happy together. I can see the future, a little. And I need to warn you, there’s danger in it. Terrible danger.”
Hage frowned and stepped closer.
“I see children in your future,” Django said. “Maybe not soon, but someday.”
“Really?” Naoko said, looking skeptical.
“Two boys. They will love you very much.”
Chen Xiu grinned from ear to ear. “Sons!”
Hage edged closer, frowning deeper but feigning jocularity. “We should go, or we’ll lose our guide to the party.”
“Do come back, Django-san,” Naoko said.
“And wield Xuan Yuan with honor,” Chen Xiu said. “May your enemies flee before you.”
The three of them bowed to each other.
But then Django could restrain himself no longer. He stepped forward and threw his arms around his mother. She resisted at first but then laughed and patted him on the back. “Americans and their hugging.”
Then he hugged his father, too. It was like hugging a wooden sparring dummy, but Chen Xiu accepted it stiffly.
He bowed again and said, “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye!” they said and followed Hage into the darkening forest.
Then he turned away and let the tears flow.
After a while, Cat said, “The sun will set here soon. And worse, it’s a full moon. All the yokai here will become stronger. As night deepens, the darkness will seep through the Veil into the mortal world like an ink stain. The mortal world is entering a dark time.”
“The mortal world isn’t exactly cotton candy and puppies,” Django said. He wiped his face, blew his nose, and composed himself.
Cat shuddered and grimaced. “Ugh. Puppies. Vile, disgusting creatures.”
Django said, “Shall we go home?”
“All we require is a pool of still water.”
Part IV
Chapter Twenty-Three
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE’S gone!” Habu snarled. “How are we supposed to follow him if you lost the target?”
Yuka Nishihara flinched from his anger, her heart beating like a taiko drum against her ribs. “I mean, his implant doesn’t show up in the Mirror. See for yourself.” As scary as Habu was when he was angry, he would get even scarier if she threw her own burgeoning anger back at him, so she tried to squeeze it into the edge of the table where the Mirror of Destiny lay. Kenji’s disappearance was not her fault. She’d been trying to relocate him for over an hour.
The Mirror of Destiny was a flat copper disk about a half meter across, polished to a flawless shine. Around its rim were engraved dozens of Chinese characters so archaic she could make no sense of them. The engravings flickered with light that wasn’t light, more like sparkles of thought, of intention. It was an artifact that the Black Lotus Clan had looted from China during World War II. Its exact age was a mystery, but judging by the script, it had to be at least three thousand years old. And it was a powerful scrying tool. Before she had even Awakened, she had been able to learn how to use it. Now that her Third Eye had Awakened, she had scrying powers normally possessed only by high-level mahō users like Habu.
Habu’s Shinjuku penthouse towered above the scintillant, sprawling metropolis below with its glowing arteries of traffic and tissues of lighted buildings and pulsating signs.
Yuka’s hair, still wet from the shower, hung loose over her shoulders and down her back. She clutched her silk robe tighter around her, still feeling naked, and squirmed under the blade of his gaze. Her flesh still crawled from the memory of his touch. Her thighs would have fresh bruises tomorrow.
Still nude from the same shower, Habu leaned over the Mirror, tall and lean, with all the warmth of a vulture, the cords of his muscles visible under taut flesh. He took a long pull on a cigarette and filled the air with exhaled smoke. His entire torso was swathed in irezumi, with images of serpents, sakura blossoms, an oni, a tiger, a koi fish, and all manner of gods. His stringy hair hung disheveled around his face.
Shadows and half-seen suggestions of images swirled in the Mirror.
“Could he have found the implant and removed it?” Habu asked, his gaze boring into her.
“Then the implant would still be visible. The Mirror would be able to see it through their mahō bond.” He had to know all this. He was just looking for ways to make her feel incompetent and unworthy.
“He could have destroyed it.”
“Then I would have known. I would have felt its destruction. You know all this yourself. You taught me how to use this fucking thing!”
His eyes flared, then went cold as a shark’s. “Am I going to have to slap that beautiful mouth off your skull? Rip out that talented tongue and feed it to you?”
Her blood chilled. “Sorry.” His threat was not hyperbole. She had once watched him do that very thing to a Black Lotus goon who’d snitched to the police.
He circled the table and stood so close, looming a full head taller, she could feel the heat of his skin. His voice was smooth, quiet, measured. “Ever since Awakening, you’ve been giving me attitude, and I’m fucking tired of it.”
“I’m sorry.” She trembled. “It won’t happen again.” Maybe she could appease him if she were subservient enough and defuse the coming explosion. She had seen enough of them that she could read it building in his voice, in his posture, in his eyes.
“Or maybe you think because you’ve Awakened one whole pool, you’re a big, strong witch now.”
“No, Habu.”
“You think you can sass me.”
She shook her head. “No, Habu, really—”
“Shut the fuck up. Everything you say to me is a lie.”
“No, I—!”
His fist plowed into her stomach, driving her breath out of her. Once upon a time, a punch like that would have brought her to her knees, but she’d learned how to take them. He rarely hit her in the face, but her body was always a canvas of pain and he, an artist. He kept the cigarette burn scars to a minimum by burning the same handful of locations over and over.
Habu’s voice took on a business-like tone. “So, our intrepid Hunter-Seeker is not visible in the Mirror of Destiny. What do you suggest as an explanation?”
She gathered her breath and straightened, clutching her belly. “It’s like he ceased to exist.”
“And how would that be possible?” Now he spoke as if he were talking to a three-year-old.
She racked her brain. That was the question, wasn’t it? She had been studying mahō for six years, since falling under Habu’s “tutelage,�
�� carefully experimenting with techniques that fell under auspices of various essence pools.
A lifetime ago, she had been foolish enough to look to Habu to save her from a life of drug-hazed degradation. First, she caught the eye of this mysterious, up-and-coming gangster, then paid him special attention, special favors, until he had seen fit to ask the boss to keep her for himself. The boss gave her to him.
At first, she’d been attracted to Habu’s bad boy persona, much like how she’d been attracted to Kenji once upon a time, yearning to uncover the passionate, beating heart beneath the rough exterior. She had found that heart in Kenji only to be ripped away from him. Looking for it again to assuage her desperate loneliness and pervasive misery, she had found in Habu no such heart. Whether he had ever possessed one, it was long since gone, replaced by ambition, arrogance, and cruelty. Habu was every bit as cold and slithering as his namesake, the venomous Okinawan viper. And now there was no escape.
“Well?” Habu said.
“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
He cuffed her upside the head. “You fat, stupid pig.” Then he said, “What hasn’t stupid Yuka thought of? Hmm? What’s that? Stupid, retarded Yuka has not considered that maybe our target has left this world?”
She blinked. “What?”
“He has gone to Jianghu, O Fat, Retarded One.” Habu leaned against the table again, nodding with self-satisfaction. The faraway look in his eyes, the direction of his eye movements, told her he was reaching into memories.
The cosmology of mahō made her familiar with Jianghu, but to her it was only an abstract construct, a metaphor. She had never considered it as an actual place a person could visit.
Habu mused, “I have long wondered when our timelines would intersect again. And now we have it.”
“What are you talking about?”
He gave her a disdainful smirk. “He’ll reappear soon. Keep your eyes open. And when he does, you’ll tell me immediately. Understand?”
She nodded quickly.
Tokyo Blood Magic (Shinjuku Shadows Book 1) Page 21
