Supernatural Heart of the Dragon

by Keith R. A. DeCandido

  Located on the edge of the park, Marx Meadow had plenty of picnic tables that were perfect for their use, and nearby streetlights kept the area safe and well populated, even after the early darkness of winter. Myra read the part of Gina, the heroine’s best friend—which was exactly the kind of role she always got. A lot of the dialogue was really clunky, she thought, but the playwright took a lot of notes.

  When it was all done, most of the others announced that they were going out for drinks, and invited her along, but Myra had to be at work early the next morning.

  Besides, she hated drinking.

  So she said her goodnights and headed north. Since there were plenty of lights, she cut through the trees toward nearby Fulton Street, where she would catch the bus.

  Suddenly there was a man on fire, blocking her path.

  “Ohmigod,” she said. “Don’t move... wait, no! You have to drop and roll—yes, that’s it! That’ll put it out. Drop and roll!” She grabbed for her purse to pull out her cell phone and call 911.

  But then she realized that he wasn’t screaming.

  Or doing anything, really.

  He just stood there.

  “Can you hear me?” she asked, a shiver running up her spine. She glanced around quickly, but there was no one in the vicinity who might help. So she turned her attention back to the burning man.

  Still he remained silent. That was when she saw that, even though they were surrounded by trees and bushes, nothing else had caught fire. Not even the grass.

  She opened her mouth to speak again, but nothing came out. As she did so, the man raised his arms, which was when she noticed the big, curved sword.

  It was also when the man finally spoke. His voice sounded like it was coming through a really lousy sound system—kind of murky and staticky. But whatever the guttural words meant, he wasn’t speaking English, Chinese, or German. It sounded to Myra like Japanese, and she thought she recognized the word “dragon” somewhere in there.

  Doragon Kokoro. That was what he said.

  But somehow, even though she didn’t understand the words, Myra knew.

  Moving suddenly, he loomed over her.

  She ran.

  She didn’t pick a particular direction, she just started moving. Two years of waitressing had blessed her with strong legs, so she was able to move quickly through the trees.

  But no matter where she turned, no matter how fast she moved, somehow Doragon Kokoro kept up with her, flames always burning upward, sword raised as if ready to slice her in two.

  She lost track of where she was. Adding to her panic was the fact that the park—which even on a cool December night should have been at least a little crowded—was empty. Even when she found herself running across what she recognized as Kennedy Place, there was nobody.

  She tried to scream for help, but all that came out was a rasping croak, and it only served to make her breath more ragged. Strong legs were one thing, but she hadn’t gone running for years. Her lungs were beginning to burn, and sharp pains were starting to shoot up through her calves.

  Still she pressed on, hoping that she might lose her attacker.

  Where is everyone?

  Stumbling more than running, she came to the edge of Lloyd Lake, where she had to stop. And as she turned, she knew what she would see.

  The burning man was there, sword held high, firelight reflecting in the dark water.

  Finally she found her voice, but rather than a scream, it was a whimper.

  “Oh God please no I don’t want to die. Please don’t kill me, please. I don’t want to die!”

  Her voice rose, Doragon Kokoro hesitated, and Myra stopped, hoping beyond hope that she might have convinced him. She thought for just a moment that she saw sadness in his fire-covered eyes.

  “I don’t want to die,” she repeated.

  “Neither did I,” he replied as the sword slashed downward.

  It was different, this time.

  Now Nakadai could communicate with the living. His actions were still under the control of another, but he felt stronger, faster, more capable.

  With these changes came a vexing question. He could still feel Albert Chao’s presence, but this time he could not be sure that it was Albert whose influence he followed.

  He appeared in a forest lit by torches that burned without flame. Within an instant a woman stood before him, and one thing was clear—whoever she was, she had to die.

  And so he pursued her until she had nowhere else to run.

  “Oh God please no I don’t want to die. Please don’t kill me, please. I don’t want to die!” she said plaintively.

  Nakadai hesitated, her words reminding him of what it was like to be human. Reminding him of what he had felt the day of his own death. How long ago had it been?

  The sword slashed downward.

  Moments later he stood over her charred, violated corpse by the still water of the lake, wondering how long he would be cursed to endure this.

  “Well, well, well,” a voice said from behind him. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Nakadai?”

  Turning, he saw a blond-haired young man wearing short pants and a sleeveless shirt.

  “It sure is good to see you again,” the blond man said with a bright smile. “Of course, this isn’t quite going according to plan, but it’s a start.”

  “I do not know of what you speak,” Nakadai said to the stranger. “But it is of no consequence. I will go now.”

  “Not so fast, chuckles.” The man gestured.

  Suddenly Nakadai found that he could not move.

  Narrowing his eyes, he stared at the stranger. This was a Westerner—he was no descendant of Nakadai’s, so how could he control him, unless...?

  “You.”

  “Yup.” Blue eyes and white irises were replaced by solid black. “I like this guy a lot more than Cho the messenger. He was one ugly cuss.”

  “What do you want?” Though he could speak, the ronin still could not move.

  The demon grinned, revealing perfect white teeth.

  “What do you think I want?” he said, and this time there was a hint of the gutteral he had heard in Akemi’s voice. “You don’t think I had you burned alive just for kicks ‘n’ grins, do you?”

  “I would not presume to understand how your mind functions.”

  The demon laughed raucously.

  “Fair enough,” he responded. “But no, I had me a long-term plan for you, Nakadai. Or should I say, ‘Heart of the Dragon’? I gotta admit, it tickles the hell outta me that you got stuck with that moniker for over 200 years. You did hate it so.”

  “A plan?” Nakadai spat.

  “Of course! And it’s finally time for that plan to bear fruit.”

  “What is so special about now?”

  The demon threw its head back and laughed again.

  “Haven’t you been paying attention? I realize it’s not quite your bag, but the end of days has come! Y’know, ’death comes on a pale horse’? Dogs and cats sleeping together.... Mass hysteria? It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine!”

  Having no idea what the demon was babbling about, Nakadai simply stared.

  Shaking his head, the demon sighed dramatically.

  “You spirits of the damned, you have no appreciation of the classics. Look,” he held out his arms, as if to indicate the whole world, “what we’re talking about here is the Apocalypse. Demons and angels squaring off, and may the best seraph win. And you, Nakadai-san, are my ace in the hole.”

  Nakadai frowned.

  “I do not understand.”

  “Surely you’ve noticed that you’ve got more mojo this time around. Before, you couldn’t do much more than swing your sword like a flaming fool. But things are different now.

  “The seals are broken, Lucifer is free, God’s not in his Heaven, and all’s wrong with the world. So it’s time for you and me to go kick some angel ass.”

  Another sigh.

  “Unfortunately, it’s not tha
t simple. That grand-niece of yours did a nice job of piggybacking onto my spell, and of creating that counter-spell. It’s too bad she was totally binky-bonkers—she could’ve had one helluva career as a witch.

  “Be that as it may, what’s done is done, and her grandson’s got you all sucked into his groove.”

  Nakadai shook his head in disgust.

  “I knew I detected his hand in this,” he said. “So he has once again brought me back to commit evil in his name.”

  “Nope—not this time. Thanks to that bastard John Winchester you were well and truly ensconced in the penalty box.”

  Nakadai almost flinched at the venom with which the demon spoke. He wondered what the man—this John Winchester—had done to earn the demon’s hatred.

  “But when the new moon came around,” the creature continued, “your little schmuck of a descendent didn’t even bother to call you back. Truth is, this is what you were built for—the Apocalypse. You’re our secret weapon.

  “Yet Albert’s bound to call you sooner or later, and thanks to his loony tunes grandmother, as long as he’s got his hooks into you, the best I can do is make you do things on his behalf. But in order to keep you around, we need to keep him alive, too. If he bites the big one, then poof, you’re gone in a flash.

  “This chick saw something she shouldn’t have.” He gestured at the corpse lying at Nakadai’s feet. “Can you believe that idiot was going to let her live? Moron. And he’s got bigger problems, too.”

  The demon stared at Nakadai thoughtfully for a moment.

  “Time’s running out. The angels are kicking our asses, and we need you. So just a warning, big guy—you’re gonna be playing for the home team soon enough.”

  With that, the blond-haired head tilted backward, and black smoke came pouring out of his mouth. Once the smoke disappeared into the night sky, the man fell to the grass-and-dirt ground.

  Dead.

  Then Nakadai began to fade away, to remain in limbo until he was summoned again.

  But by whom?

  TWENTY-ONE

  At age ten, Sam Winchester had become obsessed with maps.

  It all started when he kept asking his father where they were going next. It was a reasonable question, since the answer was always different, and Sam was still young enough at the time to think it was exciting to know.

  However, neither John nor the fourteen year-old Dean had much time for Sam’s curiosity. So to shut him up, his dad bought him an atlas.

  This proved beneficial all around. John and Dean were no longer being pestered all the time, and Sam had found a hobby.

  For weeks after he received the atlas, he would spend every minute of his spare time studying the maps it contained, learning how the highways and byways intertwined and intersected, the arrangements of smaller roads, the way some cities sought to lay out their streets in organized patterns. He studied the effects of topography, and the placements of borders and boundaries.

  But the thing that most captured the fancy of his ten year-old brain was the U.S. Interstate Highway System—or, as he breathlessly told his father and brother after a trip to a public library in Indiana, “the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways.” He lectured his indulgent dad and an impatient Dean all about the thirty-fourth President’s championing of the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, to create a system that would support commerce and serve as arteries should there be a nuclear war.

  Sam especially loved the way the interstates were numbered. For the two-digit highways, odd numbers ran north to south, while the even numbers ran east to west. The higher the number, the farther north or east the road was located.

  Dean refused to believe him. He claimed it was ridiculous, and that Sam had just made it up, but their father leapt to his younger son’s defense.

  “A lot of those highways were being built when I was young,” John Winchester said, much to Sam’s delight. “Where there was a hill, they just cut right through it, and built the bridges over the rivers. Other times they followed the paths for existing roads.” He grinned at his sons. “’Course, there wasn’t much need for that in Kansas—don’t have much in the way of hills there.”

  Dean just hunched back in his seat and scowled, calling them a couple of dexters.

  Like most childhood obsessions, this one burned itself out fairly quickly. But Sam still retained the facility for maps that it had engendered, and it wasn’t long before he was doing all the navigating for the Winchester family hunts.

  To a great degree Mapquest and Google Maps had subverted the need for the atlas. Even so, Sam didn’t entirely trust them. Too often they sent the brothers the wrong way down a one-way street or across a bridge that no longer existed—if it ever had. So for every trip Sam pulled out a traditional map and used it as a backup.

  Invariably he was able to find a more efficient route than the one suggested by the computer.

  Dean and Sam both knew all the best ways to get from the Singer Salvage Yard in South Dakota to pretty much every major highway. Interstate 80, the one on which they were currently motoring, stretched across the country from New York to San Francisco, and was probably the highway on which the Impala spent the most time. It was a straight shot west from Omaha, Nebraska to the Bay Bridge.

  As soon as they finished scouring Bobby’s library, looking for everything he had about Doragon Kokoro, Sam and Dean had hit the road. It was midday, and Sam took the first leg while Dean—who’d been up all night playing poker—slept in the passenger seat. Then, by the time evening rolled around, Dean took over.

  That meant two things.

  First, the music from the tape deck got louder, beginning with Metallica’s ...And Justice for All.

  Second, it meant Sam had the opportunity to reread the journal. Bobby’s books and papers hadn’t turned up a lot, nor had the internet, but it was a start, and now he wanted to review what John had written.

  Their father’s perspective, viewed in light of Bobby’s material, added some interesting wrinkles.

  “Huh,” he muttered.

  Dean reached to turn down the music just as ‘The Shortest Straw’ was starting.

  “What?”

  Sam blinked. He hadn’t meant to speak out loud.

  “I was just rereading Dad’s notes,” he explained. “He had an interesting take on Albert Chao, the guy who summoned the spirit the last two times. Dad saw him as the typical summoner type. Y’know, a weaselly little guy who isn’t able to make it in the world—or at least not in the world the way he thinks it ought to be. So he goes all occult, to make up for his own shortcomings.”

  “He should try a blue pill, instead,” Dean said sarcastically. “Anyhow, it shouldn’t matter. From what little I read, Dad didn’t think Chao had a snowball’s chance in hell of staying alive after the spirit got banished.”

  Sam shook his head.

  “I don’t know, Dean. Everything I read at Bobby’s says that this Chao guy has to be the one to summon it. He’s the one with the ronin as his ancestor, and according to the texts, the spirit remains tethered to whoever summons it, and renders that person impervious to harm.”

  “So, what, we can’t shoot this guy?”

  Sam shrugged.

  “Well, we can, but it won’t do any good. Best bet is to do what Dad did—cast the spell on the sword. Unfortunately, that’ll just banish the warrior for another twenty years.”

  Dean’s expression turned grim.

  “You’re assuming the world’s still gonna be around in twenty years. Hell, I ain’t puttin’ any money on makin’ it another twenty days.”

  That elicited a sigh from Sam.

  “Yeah, you’ve got a point. But Cass seems to think this Heart of the Dragon is important, so we’ve got to do what we can.”

  Neither brother had much to say after that, so Dean turned Metallica back up. The tape had moved on to ‘Harvester of Sorrow,’ and Sam went back to trying to decipher his father’s chicken-scratch handwritin
g.

  Eventually, he drifted off to sleep himself. By the time he woke up, the sun was coming up in the east and the Impala was zipping out of Sacramento.

  “So, we got a plan?” Dean asked without a preamble.

  Sam rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.

  “Coffee?”

  Dean chuckled.

  “Next rest stop we see.”

  Flipping their dad’s leather-bound notebook open to the right page, Sam looked for a name.

  “We might as well head for the motel Dad stayed in—the Emperor Norton Lodge. It’s on Ellis Street, not all that far from Chinatown. Then, I guess we try the restaurant where Dad banished the spirit last time.”

  Dean shot him a look.

  “Emperor Norton?”

  Sam paused before he replied.

  “You don’t know about Emperor Norton?”

  “Not unless you’re talking about Art Carney’s character on The Honeymooners,” Dean replied. “And I don’t think he even made it to Grand High Exalted Mystic Ruler of the Raccoons.”

  Sam laughed.

  “I can’t believe you never heard the story. Joshua Norton was a failed businessman who completely lost it. In 1859, he declared himself ‘Norton I, Emperor of these United States and Protector of Mexico.’ He dissolved Congress, created his own currency—Oh, and he also levied a fine of twenty-five dollars on anyone who called the city ‘’Frisco.’”

  Dean snorted.

  “Yeah, well, if we run across him, I’ll give him a twenty and a five.”

  “Nobody took him seriously, but everybody loved him. And he had some good ideas. One of his decrees was that they should build the Bay Bridge and construct the BART. In fact, I think I remember reading a few years back that they tried to get the bridge renamed after him.”

  “Fine, so we’ll stay in the royal suite and get some Chinese food. Meanwhile, there’s a diner at the next exit.”

  Sam looked up and saw a blue sign that indicated what eateries were available at the upcoming exit. Besides the diner, there were three fast-food joints and a Starbucks. He was tempted to suggest the Starbucks—thanks to Dean’s poker winnings, they could actually afford it—but decided not to open that particular can of worms. They’d been back hunting together for a while now, and things were going well.