by Vance, Ramy
“No, you just weren’t here for it all. But you were with us. Always.” She understood what I was feeling. And in order to do that, her empathy had to be enormous.
Just like Blue’s.
↔
I gave Keiko a hug which turned into an embrace that probably lasted longer than what was socially acceptable for two people who’d just met—at least in Canadian, Scottish and Japanese culture.
Apparently it was a bit too much for American culture, too, because Jean said, “Alright, ladies. Not to break up what I’m sure Egya and I are hoping will turn into kissing, but angry stone guardians. Somewhere behind us. Got to get somewhere safe.”
Damn it, I thought. As much as I hate to admit it, this annoying American is right.
“I’ll have you know that a lot of people find me charming,” he said.
Thinking out loud again. I shook my head and finally let go of Keiko. “Thank you for saving us. As you can see, we’re in a wee bit of trouble, so if you could drop us off at our hotel and the American at wherever Americans go, we’ll be—”
“No way,” Jean and Keiko said in unison.
“Excuse me?”
Jean was the first to speak, lifting his butt up enough to dig his wallet out of his back pocket. He tossed it to me and I opened it up, seeing his badge. “I can’t let you go, ma’am,” he said, his voice getting all authoritative. “You were attacked by several class-B and -C Others. Until we know what’s going on, I can’t permit you to leave. I’ll have to take you to base to continue our ongoing investigation.”
Ongoing investigation my ass, I thought.
Before I could answer, Keiko piped in, “We have been waiting for years for your return, Katu-san. My grandmother will kill me if I do not bring you to her. In addition, I owe you a blood debt. I shall aid you until we know that you are safe.”
“First of all,” I said, pointing at Jean, “I’m not under your jurisdiction, so you can shove your investigation into the orifice near where you got this.” I tossed his badge back to him.
“I’m afraid I can’t accept that,” he said.
“Do you have magical powers?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, ‘do you have magical powers?’ ”
“Not that I’m aware of.”
“Good, because that’s the only way you’ll be able to take us in. Not unless you plan on fighting an ex-vampire, ex-were-hyena, a changeling and a ninja.”
By which I meant Keiko, who I had no doubt—given her driving skills and her heritage—could lay some smack down.
“I see your point,” he said with a resigned grin.
“And as for you, young lady, I want nothing more than to see Blue again. Believe me. But I cannot risk endangering her. Or you, for that matter. You saw those things. They’d destroy her home and—”
“I have been training my whole life for a chance to protect you, Katu-san.” Keiko lifted her sword before me. “I am ready to help. And once we have restored peace to your life, then we will go to my grandmother. Agreed?”
Her eyes met mine and I saw the same stubborn, fearless determination I had seen in Blue all those years ago. There wasn’t a force in this world or any other that would deter her from her mission. She would help me get those damned golems off my back and then she would bring me to meet her grandmother.
And I was going to let her.
“OK,” I said, nodding.
“OK,” she repeated, a wide, Chester Cat grin painted her face.
“So,” I said, turning to everyone in the backseat except Jean, “after we get rid of this guy, what’s our next move?”
And that’s when I saw the beeping light in Jean’s shirt pocket. “What’s that?”
“This?” he said, fishing out the little device. “I was thinking about what you said—about what I’d need to take you in and all. And well, while I don’t have magical powers, I do have—”
We heard the loud whoosh of helicopter blades as a Warbird landed not twenty feet from where we were parked.
“—that,” he said.
Ma’ams, Metal Tables and Sole Eyeballs
A significant part of Okinawa is covered with U.S. military bases. It was one of the conditions settled upon at the end of World War II, and although this is a sour point for the local population, their presence is mostly peaceful. Mostly.
Every now and then, some U.S. marine or army personnel does something culturally inappropriate or horrific or illegal, or all three. The locals protest, arrests are made and things return to an uneasy peace. All that said, in the years since the war, there were very few instances of violence on any large scale. Still, resentment against the bases exists. Understandable, really … would you want a foreign army in your backyard?
As the decades rolled on after the war, things had been peaceful enough that there had been significant talks about moving the bases from mainland Okinawa to the outer islands or even mainland Japan. Agreements had been drafted, plans were made, but as advanced as those talks had been, when the gods left, the U.S. military backpedaled on the deal. The world had changed in unimaginable ways and they didn’t want to lose their Asian presence in case Earth’s new citizens tried to, you know … take over the world, starting with Japan.
If anything, the arrival of the Others increased the presence of U.S. military on the island.
Just another side-effect of the gods leaving.
Sure, the Others’ presence was something that made everyone nervous, but again, any fighting between humans and Others tended to be isolated incidents, not full-scale attacks. Things had been pretty tame.
Or so I’d thought.
Given everything I thought I knew, I figured we’d fly into your typical peacetime army base. But as the chopper flew us onto Kadena Air Base, I didn’t see a peacetime base.
What I saw was a place gearing up for war.
Soldiers were doing drills by the hundreds as grunts moved enough supplies and equipment to arm an—well, an army. And I knew just by the sheer, staggering numbers: of people, of gear, of supplies.
They had enough stockpiled here to outlast a dozen apocalypses. But that wasn’t the most stunning part.
There was equipment with the classic Memnock Securities logo on it, three rings that overlapped to form a triangle of circles:
That logo struck fear in every Other that saw it, and from the way Deirdre and Egya drew in their breaths, I knew they’d encountered equipment by those guys before, too.
They were the arms dealers that specialized in anti-Other weaponry. Finely tuned clocks with radar functionality that could detect magic being burned from miles away. Electrified, steel-wire nets specially designed to make angel and valkyrie wings useless. Custom-made grenades filled with all kinds of stuff Others were allergic to: wood splinters for dwarves, holy water for demons, toad tongues for goblins, cat hairs for pixies. Fish hook-style missile harpoons with heat-seeking guidance systems for dragons. The list went on and on, with all kinds of nasties specifically designed to capture, maim or kill Others.
There were crates and crates of this stuff being unloaded from ships at the harbor. The only reason you’d stockpile so much equipment was if you were preparing for war.
Not good, I thought.
“Well,” Jean said, eavesdropping on my thoughts, “that depends on who’s side you’re on.”
↔
Egya, Deirdre and I were to be separated before being escorted to our individual holding cells. But before they could pry us apart, I ran over and hugged Egya like he was the love of my life and I couldn’t stand to be away from him.
Jean, whom I pegged to have a wee bit of a romantic streak in him, let us embrace and as we did, I used some slight-of-hand tricks I’d learned over the centuries to get the Soul Amulet into Egya’s pocket. I knew what was coming and the last thing I wanted was some military geek figuring out the amulet was magical … and I figured that since the nio were after me, they wouldn’t look at Egya quite as cl
osely as me.
↔
I wanted to wring Jean’s neck, but given that they showed their hospitality by handcuffing us, I settled on giving him a look of death.
“If looks could kill …” he said, guiding me to a holding room. “And you’re welcome.”
“For what? Handcuffing us? Locking us up?”
“For saving your ass back at the izakaya.”
“Hardly. We had it under control.”
“Sure you did,” he said, giving me a wide grin before closing the door and leaving me alone in the cell.
I sat down on the one chair provided, placing my shackled hands on the cool metal table. The walls had soundproofed paneling, two cameras tucked away in the upper corners of the room and a two-way mirror. I’d like to say that these circumstances weren’t familiar to me, but that would be a bold-faced lie.
This was the second time I’d been inside one of these rooms this year (I’d snuck one in just before the New Year … yay me!).
Perhaps my New Year’s resolution should have been to avoid these places, but then again, perhaps not. I liked giving myself goals that were doable, like eating healthier or not getting killed.
Or retrieving a missing soul.
So I did what I always do when waiting to be interrogated. I sat perfectly still, replaying my favorite movie in my head: Legally Blonde.
I was at the part where Reese had just gotten into Harvard when the door opened. It was Jean, standing there with a backpack and an I-got-you grin. “OK,” he said, “you were definitely a vampire. Ex-vamps are the only kind of humans that can sit perfectly still like that.” He seemed unsurprised.
“So in your world, excellent meditation skills means ex-vamp? I hardly think my zen-ness warrants such an accusation.”
“Yeah, maybe. But then again, we have this,” he said, putting a file down on the table. “You haven’t registered.”
“Was I meant to?”
“Says here that you’re a normal girl. You did a good job covering your tracks and if I hadn’t seen you do what you did, I might have actually believed that you are a normal human girl. But normal human girls don’t dress like this.”
He dropped a photo of me in my cherub mask and dirk and kilt that was my clan’s pattern. Granted, women didn’t wear kilts back when I was a teenager, but times change, and why should the men have all the fun?
I looked at the pictures. They were from when I’d fought a bunch of wannabe superheroes on campus about twenty-four hours before I was turned into a vampire (for the second time) and lost my soul (also for the second time).
“Why do you think that’s—?”
“You, and not some other Scottish girl with extraordinary fighting abilities? Oh, I don’t know … detective work.” Then he showed me another photo of me stuffing my costume into the vent in a McGill arts building bathroom. “Welcome to this brave new GoneGod world. There are cameras everywhere.”
He picked up one of the zoomed-in photos and touched my masked face. “What are you supposed to be, anyway? A fighting baby? Is your superpower throwing tantrums?”
“Oh, haha,” I said, seeing no sense in denying it. “I’m part of the Divine Order of Cherub Hunters. An organization my father—”
“—started a few months after you were turned. Right around the time you turned your mother and about three years before you turned your father,” he said, reading from a file. “We know.”
“How?” The fact that I’d turned my mother was common knowledge, but me turning my father … that was something only I (and Mergen) knew. And Mergen, being an avatar of truth, was incapable of telling others my secrets.
So it was really the same as if only I knew.
“We didn’t,” he said. “Just a guess. You father went missing three years later and I put one and one together. Detective work, Ms. Darling.” The kariyushi-wearing soldier tapped the bulb he called a head.
Totally underestimated you, I thought. You’re not nearly as stupid as your shirt.
“Again, kariyushi-wear is the thing here,” he said, apparently listening in on my thoughts. “Anyway, all of that is to say, we might not have taken as close a look at you had you not been at the izakaya meeting with one of the biggest Yakuza leaders in town.”
This caught my interest. “Kenji is part of the mob?”
“An Other boss.” Jean waved a dismissive hand, then returning to an earlier conversation, pointed at a photo of Cherub-me. “You know, the amnesty program is a must. It’s the only way to be forgiven for all the people you, you know …” He made a sucking sound.
“I don’t need your forgiveness,” I growled. “Not when I’ll never forgive myself.”
Jean narrowed his eyes like he was examining a puzzle and not little ol’ me. “That may be,” he finally said, “but the amnesty program is the only way to expunge your past. Look here, Ms. Darling, we’re willing to give you a clean slate. All you have to do is register.”
“So that when some asshole gets elected and policies change, we’re all the easier to hunt down,” I said.
Jean pursed his lips, but didn’t disagree with me. He seemed to understand where I was coming from and had been around the block enough times to know I had a point.
“OK, we’ll circle back to this later. For now, I have this one burning question. Why were souped-up, supernatural guardian golems after someone as cute as a button?”
“You hitting on me, soldier?”
“No,” he said honestly. That, or he was one hell of an actor. “It’s just that young girls like you tend to be into partying, dancing, school. You know, typical stuff that—”
“—humans do,” I said. “Believe me, I’m trying.” I shook my head. “But how do you know they were after me and not, I don’t know, trying to take out a human spy?”
He gave me a look that said, “Come on.”
I shrugged. “See, not as stupid as you look. Fine, they were after me, but I have no idea—”
He started with that look again, but before he could fully form his condescending face, I added, “I don’t. I swear.”
“You’re going to have to give me something. If, that is, you want out of here. As in, ever.”
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t tell him about my soul or the Soul Jar, so I just sat quietly and waited to see how this whole thing would play out.
That’s when the two of us commenced a stare-off the last for about ten minutes before he finally broke it with an eye-roll and a, “OK … you win. But not really …”
He pulled a laptop from his backpack and a little USB with a mic at one side. He plugged it and I heard my voice play back, followed by Kenji’s.
“You bugged me?” I said.
“Shush,” he said, “I haven’t listened to this yet. I thought we could listen to it together.”
I pursed my lips as the conversation between Kenji and me played in the interrogation room. I heard myself talk about the map and futakuchi-onna ghost. A rustling sounded when I tried to show the nurikabe my invisible map.
Then Kenji said the magic words: Kami Subete Hakubutsukan.
Once those words were uttered, my Big Trouble status got upgraded to Disastrous.
↔
The door burst in and an aigamuchab wearing army fatigues walked into the room. The faceless creature put her flat, eyeless surface right in front of my face and started clicking … their way of seeing.
I knew what this creature was, although I’d never seen one myself. They were legendary as vicious hunters with incredible speed and strength. And despite not having a face (and the eyes that tended to go with faces), they had built-in radar. A few well-timed clicks and they could see better than most eye-card-holding creatures. Other than the whole facelessness and incessant clicking, they looked like humans, and this one had a gymnast’s physique locked in a six-foot frame.
She clicked three more times before saying, “Kami Subete Hakubutsukan? You possess a map to Kami Subete Hakubutsukan?” Her voice soun
ded like shattering glass.
“First of all, you’re in my personal space. Secondly, it was only a theory. I have no idea where this map leads to.”
The aigamuchab clicked twice more before saying, “A treasure hunter?”
“Possibly, General Shouf,” Jean said.
“General?” I said, “Really? You’re a general for a human army.”
“Yes,” Shouf shattered, “I am.”
“Humph,” I said, appraising the general. The OAIU was known to kill first and be reasonable second. They were ruthless and vicious, taking down Others for minor offenses. Brutally efficient, too.
And it seemed some of that efficiency came from their Other general. I would have branded her a traitor, but who was to say that different kinds of mythical creatures had to be loyal to anyone but their own?
Common decency, I supposed.
But then again, such principles were in short supply these days.
“The map—where is it?” Shouf asked.
There was no point hiding it. I pulled back my sleeve and showed them my arm, where I saw swirling mists of blue and orange and red outlining Okinawa’s shoreline.
But of course, only I could see it. Jean took a closer look. “Oh, haha. There’s nothing there.”
“For you. For me, I see … well, I see a map.”
“She’s messing with us.”
General Shouf clicked twice before saying, “I don’t know, Jean-Luc.” The human soldier cringed at his full name being used. “She may not be. Tell me, young vampire, how is it that you came into possession of the map?”
I didn’t want to tell her about the amulet sitting in Egya’s pocket—or losing my soul to some messed up curse. Nor that I was in touch with some strange stalker guy who could give her a run for the creepiest voice ever. So instead I pulled a line used by dozens of tough-guy heroes in hundreds of books and movies. “I know a guy.”
“I’m sure you do,” the aigamuchab said.
