The Demon Crown

by James Rollins

  He slipped the sleeve of his shirt higher to expose his inner wrist. His skin was now paper-thin, unable to hold the ink that had marked him with the same symbol that once graced Miu’s soft flesh in the same spot. It represented a set of tools framed around a crescent moon and a black star. It was an honor to bear such a mark, proof that they had survived the training of their masters, the elusive Kage. He remembered kissing her wrist after they had been tattooed, his lips seeking to draw the sting of the needle. The act had bound them as thoroughly as their secret marriage.

  But now even this connection to Miu was fading.

  He dropped his sleeve and stared again as fire consumed the last of the incense, the aromatic trails vanishing into the air.

  Where does it go?

  He had no answer. All he knew was that Miu was lost to him forever. She had died during their first mission, to steal a treasure from under the noses of their enemy. Shame burned through him as he recalled fleeing from her body through a dark tunnel, forced away by both gunfire and the need to make her sacrifice mean something.

  In the end, the mission had been successful. Later, when he eventually learned the true nature of what had been recovered from that cursed tunnel, he took it as an omen. His gaze swept the lines written on the ancient monument. While Miu could never follow in her ancestor’s footsteps, Takashi had taken up that mantle for her.

  With a small bow, he rose to his feet. His two retainers tried to come to his aid, but he took it as a matter of pride to wave them back and stand on his own. Still, he did accept his cane once he was upright. Bony fingers clutched the rose gold handle, sculpted into the beak and fiery cowl of a phoenix.

  It had taken him decades of study and financing, but finally he would exact his revenge and return Japan to its former glory—and to achieve it, he would use the very treasure that had cost Miu her life.

  Satisfied, he turned and headed across the garden toward the pagoda, his cane thumping along with his hammering heart. The temple of Kan’ei-ji was founded in the seventeenth century. Its grounds had once encompassed all of neighboring Ueno Park, where the city’s zoo and national museums now resided. The temple’s downfall began in 1869 when the Japanese emperor attacked the last of the Tokugawa shoguns who had sought to usurp his reign and who had taken refuge within the temple. Bullets from that siege could still be found imbedded in sections of the wooden walls.

  Few seldom visited this lonely temple now, its bloody past nearly forgotten.

  But I will make this nation humbled by war remember its former glory.

  He rounded the pagoda and crossed under the boughs of a large cherry tree. His passage disturbed the last of the clinging blossoms. Petals floated around him, as if Miu were blessing him. He smiled softly and continued to the street to await his limo. Leaning on his cane with one hand, he rubbed the faded tattoo on his wrist with a thumb.

  It will not be much longer.

  Soon he would join Miu—but not yet, not before he exacted his revenge and elevated Imperial Japan to its rightful place as masters of this world.

  While he sat, his mind drifted into the past, as it did more often with each passing year. He and Miu had both been bastard children of aristocratic families. Shunned for sins that were not their own, they had been cast aside by their respective families and ended up within the Kage. In Miu’s case, she had been sold to them. Takashi had sought them out of bitterness.

  At the time, the public knew little about the Kage, whose name simply meant “shadow.” Rumors and whispers abounded. Some believed they were descendants of a dishonored clan of ninjas; others even considered them ghosts. But eventually Takashi learned the truth, that the cabal’s lineage went far back in time. They bore many names, assuming different faces across the globe. Their purpose, though, was to grow stronger, to root deeper into all nations, to use dark alchemies and later science to achieve their ends. They were the shadows behind power.

  Here in Japan, as war broke out, the Kage briefly came more into the open, discovering opportunity in the chaos. In particular, the Kage were drawn to the blood and pain flowing from a series of secret Japanese-run camps, where morality held no sway. The Imperial Army had constructed covert research facilities in northern China—first at Zhongma Fortress, then in Pingfang—specializing in biological and chemical weapons development.

  To fuel this project, the army collected subjects from local Chinese villages, along with bringing in captured Russians and Allied POWs. From there, three thousand Japanese scientists set about experimenting on the unwilling subjects. The researchers infected patients with anthrax and bubonic plague, then surgically gutted them without anesthesia. They froze the limbs of patients to study frostbite. They raped and exposed women to syphilis. They tested flamethrowers on men tied to stakes.

  At these facilities, the Kage worked in the shadows, seemingly to help, but mostly to gain whatever advantage they could from the knowledge gleaned by these ghastly experiments.

  It was then that word reached Kage’s masters of the discovery of a secret that was believed to have been lost to them forever. They had attempted to secure it nearly a century ago—a potential weapon like no other—but failed. Now they had another chance as word sifted forth from the United States. Near the end of 1944, a small acquisition team, fluent in English, was dispatched to secure it.

  The mission proved successful, but it had cost Miu her life.

  Unfortunately, afterward, the war came too quickly to an end when two bombs were dropped on Japan, one at Hiroshima, the other at Nagasaki. Takashi always wondered if the motivation for such an extreme action by the Americans could be traced to that theft in a tunnel beneath their capital.

  Ultimately it didn’t matter.

  After the war, Takashi secured what was stolen: a boulder of amber. The secret it preserved remained too dangerous to wield at the time. It would take many decades for science to advance enough to take advantage of the prize, long enough for even the Kage to finally meet its end.

  A few years back, the Americans had exposed the cabal and dragged it into the light, where shadows always withered and died. By that time, Takashi had risen enough in the ranks of the Kage to learn its other names, including the one used by the Americans.

  The Guild.

  During the resulting purge, most of the various factions of the shadowy cabal had been rooted out and destroyed, but some fragments survived. Like a ninety-year-old man who few thought could be a threat. Other stray pieces also scattered and went into hiding. Since then, Takashi and his grandson had been gathering these seeds in secret, building their own Samurai force, while biding their time.

  And now, after much study—both in remote labs and in select field tests abroad—they had nursed and developed a weapon of incalculable strength and malignancy.

  They had also settled upon a first target, both as a demonstration to the world and a strike against the very organization that had destroyed the Guild.

  Specifically, two agents who were instrumental to its downfall.

  As his limo glided through the traffic to the curb, Takashi smiled. He felt weightless, knowing that the location where the pair currently holed up was a significant omen, too. It was the same place Imperial Japan had struck its first devastating blow against a sleeping giant—and where Takashi would do the same again now.

  The devastation would far outshine what had befallen those islands in the past. This first attack would herald the end of the current world order and christen the painful birth of a new one, one in which Imperial Japan would rule for eternity.

  Still, he pictured his two intended targets.

  Lovers, like Miu and I.

  Though the pair didn’t know it, they were equally doomed.

  3

  May 6, 5:08 P.M. HST

  Hana, Island of Maui

  This is the life . . .

  Commander Grayson Pierce lounged on the sunbaked red sands of Kaihalulu Bay. It was Hawaii’s off-season and late in the day, so he had
the small cove of red-black beach to himself. Plus this particular location was mostly known only by the locals and required a bit of a treacherous trek to reach.

  Still, it was worth the effort, both for the spot’s privacy and its unspoiled beauty.

  Behind him, a steep-walled cinder cone, its flanks thickly forested with ironwood trees, cradled the cove. Over the centuries, its iron-rich cliffs had crumbled to red sand, forming this unique beach before vanishing into the deep-blue waters of the bay. A short distance offshore, heavy waves crashed against a jagged black seawall, casting mist high into the air, catching the brilliance of the setting sun. But closer at hand, sheltered by the reef, the water lapped gently at the sand.

  A naked shape rose from those waves, bathed in sunlight, her face lifted to the sky. The drape of her black hair reached to mid-back. As she waded toward shore, revealing more of her body, seawater coursed over her pale almond skin, tracing rivulets along her bare breasts and down her flat stomach. A single emerald stud decorated her navel, sparkling as brightly as her eyes as her gaze settled on him.

  No mischievous grin greeted him. Her features remained stoic to the undiscerning eye, but Gray noted the slight tilt to her head, the barest arch to her right eyebrow. She moved toward him with the sultry grace of a lioness stalking its prey.

  He propped himself up on his elbows to better appreciate the sight. His legs still toasted in the day’s light, but shadows cloaked the rest of his naked body as the sun sank into the cliffs behind him.

  Seichan climbed the hot sand and closed the distance. As she reached him, she stepped a leg to either side. She climbed over his body and loomed above him. She came to a stop at the shadow’s edge, still bathed in sunlight, as if trying to make the day last just that much longer.

  “Don’t,” he warned.

  She ignored him and shook the cape of her soaked hair, scattering cold droplets over his sprawled form. His tanned skin immediately prickled from the chill. Her gaze never left his face, but the arch of her brow rose higher.

  “What?” she asked. “Too cold for you?”

  She sank down upon his waist, settling atop him, stirring him with the heat found buried there. She dropped forward, a hand landing to either side of his head. She stared into his eyes, her breasts brushing his chest, and rumbled low, “Let’s see about warming you up.”

  He grinned and reached around her. He glided his palms down to the middle of her back, then tightened his arms in an iron grip. He cocked a knee for leverage and rolled her under him.

  “Oh, I’m plenty warmed up.”

  An hour later, shadows had swallowed the two of them, along with the rest of the beach. Still, bright daylight cast forth rainbows through the mists rising from the jagged seawall out in the bay.

  Gray and Seichan huddled together, still naked under a blanket, spent and exhausted. The fading heat of their passion warmed through them, making it hard to tell where one began and the other ended. He could stay this way forever, but it would soon be dark.

  He craned toward the cliffs framing the cove. “We should head out while we can still see the trail.” He glanced over to the two wetsuits drying on the sand nearby and the toppled stack of scuba equipment they had used to explore the reefs around Ka’uiki Head. “Especially if we want to haul all our gear out of here.”

  Seichan made a noncommittal noise, plainly unconvinced to leave yet.

  They had rented a small cottage south of the small town of Hana on Maui’s picturesque east coast, a region of lush rain forests, waterfalls, and isolated beaches. They had planned on staying only a couple of weeks, but three months later, they still were here.

  Prior to that, they had been traveling for half a year, moving place to place with no itinerary in mind, all but circling the globe. After leaving D.C., they had spent time in a walled-off medieval village in France, taking residence in the attic of a former monastery. Then they flew to the savannas of Kenya, where for a fortnight they shifted from tent camp to tent camp, moving with the timeless flow of animal life found there. Eventually, they found themselves amid the teeming sprawl of Mumbai, India, enjoying humanity at its most riotous. Afterward, seeking isolation again, they jetted off to Perth, Australia, where they rented a truck and drove deep into the wilds of the Outback. After that long desert trek, to cleanse the dust off their bodies, they continued to a hot-springs resort nestled deep in the mountains of New Zealand. Once recharged, they worked their way slowly across the Pacific, hopping island to island, from Micronesia to Polynesia, until they finally settled here, in a place that was a veritable Eden.

  Gray sent the occasional postcard to his best friend, Monk Kokkalis, mostly to let those back in D.C. know that he was still alive, that he hadn’t been kidnapped by hostile forces. Especially since he had left so abruptly, with no warning and no permission from his superiors. He had worked for more than a decade with Sigma Force, a covert group tied to DARPA, the Defense Department’s research-and-development agency. Gray and his teammates were all former Special Forces soldiers who had been drummed out of the service for various reasons, but because of exceptional aptitude or talent, they had been secretly recruited by Sigma and retrained in diverse scientific disciplines to serve as field agents for DARPA, protecting the United States and the globe from all manner of threats.

  According to his own dossier, Gray’s expertise was an amalgam of biology and physics, but in truth his training went deeper than that, courtesy of his time spent with a Nepalese monk, who taught him to search for the balance between all things, the Taoist philosophy of yin and yang.

  At the time, such insight helped Gray come to terms with his own troubled childhood. Growing up, he had always been stuck between opposites. His mother had taught at a Catholic high school, instilling a deep spirituality in Gray’s life, but she was also an accomplished biologist, a devout disciple of evolution and reason.

  And then there was his father: a Welshman living in Texas, a roughneck oilman disabled in midlife and forced to assume the role of a housewife. As a result, his father’s life became ruled by overcompensation and anger.

  An unfortunate trait passed on to his rebellious son.

  Over time, with help from Painter Crowe, the director of Sigma Force, Gray had slowly discovered a path between those opposites. It was not a short path. It extended as much into the past as the future. Gray was still struggling with it.

  A few years back, his mother had been killed in an explosion, collateral damage from Sigma’s battle with the terrorist organization known as the Guild. Though blameless, Gray still struggled with guilt.

  The same couldn’t be said for his father’s passing. Gray had a direct hand in that death. Bedridden and failing, his father had languished in the debilitating fog of Alzheimer’s, slowing losing more and more of himself. Finally, obeying his dad’s frail request for release (Promise me . . .), Gray had delivered a fatal overdose of morphine.

  He felt no guilt for that death, but he couldn’t say he had come to terms with it, either.

  Then Seichan had offered him a lifeline, encouraging him to set aside his responsibilities for a time, to escape from everything and everyone.

  He grabbed her hand and did just that.

  Seichan had her own reasons to vanish, too. She was a former assassin for the Guild, trained from a young age to serve them. After several run-ins with Sigma, she was eventually turned and recruited by Painter Crowe. She had been instrumental in bringing down the Guild, but her past crimes forced her to forever remain in the shadows. She was still on many countries’ most-wanted lists; the Mossad even maintained a kill-on-sight order.

  Though Sigma offered this former assassin some cover, she was never fully free from her past.

  So they had fled together, using the time to heal, to discover each other and themselves. No one tried to reach him, even after Gray failed to show up for his father’s funeral. They simply respected his need to vanish.

  For the past nine months, the two had been traveling u
nder false papers, but he was under no misconception. He knew Sigma kept track of his whereabouts, both for professional and personal reasons. The team was in many ways a family.

  Gray appreciated them giving him this leeway.

  I’ve certainly earned it.

  Still, a part of him knew this entire trip was an illusion, a momentary respite before the real world came crashing down around them again. Lately, a vague pressure had been building, a tension whose source he couldn’t pinpoint. It was less a sense of imminent danger than it was a feeling that they were nearing an end to this sojourn.

  He knew Seichan felt it, too.

  She had grown moodier, less settled or satisfied. If she had been a lion in a cage, she would have been pacing the bars. He knew one other certainty. She wasn’t dreading this trip coming to an end—she was looking forward to it.

  And so am I.

  The world was calling to them.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t wait for them to answer.

  A rumbling noise intruded upon their quiet moment on the beach.

  Gray sat straighter, his breath quickening with the hair-trigger training from his years with the Army Rangers. While there was no outright threat, his body was tuned from countless tours of duty in sand-blasted deserts to monitor every detail around him. It was an instinct drilled into his bones. Tiny muscles tightened, and his vision sharpened, preparing himself to move at a moment’s notice.

  Across Kaihalulu Bay, a trio of prop planes—Cessna Caravans from the look of them—headed toward shore. While it wasn’t unusual for such small aircraft to be hopping between islands, it struck Gray as strange that they seemed to be flying in a tight formation, as if the pilots had military training.

  “That’s not a sightseeing group,” Seichan said. She must have noted Gray’s tension and what had drawn his attention. “What do you think?”

  As the trio neared the island, the two flanking aircraft split away to right and left. The center plane continued its trajectory straight for their cove. Gray took in several details at once. The aircraft weren’t Cessna Caravans, but the company’s sleeker and smoking-fast single-piston brothers, a model known as the TTx. Each of these hellcats also carried large barrels fixed to their undercarriage.