by Zoe Marriott
A lunge for the exit, a scrabble at the handle, and I was out in the hall with the door firmly closed behind me, taking slow deep breaths and trying to understand what had just happened. It took a few minutes for the buzzing in my brain – and my body – to calm down. Had he…? And then I…? Oh no. I grabbed my head with both hands and groaned as I realized I’d literally abandoned him in there without even saying thank-you. Or sorry.
I could not be a bigger freak if I’d trained up and taken an exam in it.
I swallowed hard, turned round, and barged the door open, marching back into the bathroom.
“Shino – oh!”
Shinobu had unwrapped the sash that held his kimono closed at the waist, and the garment was half off, held up only by the sleeves hooked over his wrists. My gaze wandered helplessly over the vast expanse of taut, golden skin and the round, bulging muscles standing out on his arms and chest. He had almost no body hair, except for a thin, fine line that trailed down over the smooth flatness of his lower belly…
“Is something wrong?” Shinobu hurriedly shrugged the kimono back over his shoulders and pulled it closed.
I snapped my eyes away from him and fixed them on the showerhead. “No, everything’s fine. So … I just wanted to say, you know – use the shower. Although apparently you were, um, way ahead of me there.” I cleared my throat. “Towels are under the sink. I think some of my dad’s clothes will probably fit you. I’ll leave them for you outside the door, OK? Take your time.”
“Thank you,” he choked out. A darting glance at him showed me that every bit of visible skin was going a deep crimson shade. Oh, good – at least I’m not alone in my mortification.
Luckily my legs waited until I had closed the door behind me again to give out.
CHAPTER 12
LOYALTY AND LIES
Andy Greaves checked his watch, sighed, and heaved himself out of the comfortably sagging chair in his Portakabin. It was time for the forty-five-minute perimeter patrol. He took the high-visibility security coat off the back of the chair and put it on, tugging his walkie-talkie off the front of his belt as he stepped out into the grey afternoon and slammed the door behind him. The sleet had stopped at least, but his breath was still clouding in front of his face, and he could feel his old joints stiffening up.
“I hate winter,” he muttered as he depressed the button on the walkie-talkie to contact the two other security guards in the second Portakabin on the opposite side of the building. “Hey Phil, it’s Andy. Send Islam out and I’ll meet him on the east corner.”
The walkie-talkie let out a high-pitched squeal. Andy’s ears rang. He cursed, nearly dropping the walkie-talkie. Interference – feedback on the channel, maybe?
He tried again, shouting this time. “Phil! You there, mate?”
There was a weird, almost-human groaning sound, then another shriek. Andy held the transmitter away from his ear. “Come in?”
Nothing but white noise. Andy sighed and hiked his trousers up with one hand. Standing about in this cold made his bad knee worse, and Islam was probably already out patrolling anyway. He might as well just start walking.
He hooked the walkie-talkie back onto his belt, shoved his hands into his pockets, and started his routine walk around the outside of the building. The concrete scuffed noisily under his feet and he amused himself by trying to whistle the tune of Star Trek in time to the sound. He ran his eyes over the chain-link barriers around the outer walls, but he wasn’t really expecting to see anything. Officially the old station was a high-value target, but in reality the only people who ever tried to get through security were students on a dare or photographers. They were usually shocked to find that they weren’t just allowed to come in and wander around and beat a hasty retreat when they saw the security banners. Andy blamed Dr Who. They shouldn’t have set an episode here. It was asking for trouble.
He was so used to his route that his eyes wandered over the dark stain without registering it the first time. When he did realize what he’d seen, he ground to a halt.
A large spill of thick, black liquid was pooled on the concrete by one of the sealed-up entrances. Oil? Andy nudged it with the toe of his shoe. The pool … rippled. Like jelly. Weird. A leak from somewhere?
Andy looked up at the brown-brick wall and saw long streaks of the same liquid there, glistening in the dim light. It was like someone had climbed up the wall holding a bucket of black paint and dripping it as they went. Only this stuff wasn’t paint. And it definitely hadn’t been there on the last patrol.
Andy ripped his walkie-talkie off his belt again. “Phil! Islam! Come in. I think a vandal’s got through the barriers.”
The radio frequency hummed with white noise.
“Come in! Where are you?”
Still nothing.
Andy swore under his breath and turned back, jogging round the side of the building towards his Portakabin. It was against company policy to carry a mobile with you – his was back on his desk inside, along with a landline phone. He was calling the bloody police…
The walkie-talkie in his hand suddenly crackled to life. “Andy…”
“Islam? Is that you, mate?” Andy ground to a halt again. His fingers clenched around the walkie-talkie as he willed the other security guard to respond.
“Help…”
“Are you all right?” Andy’s heart was stuttering irregularly in his chest now. He’d left the army over twenty years ago, but the old instincts were still there and the prickle on the back of his neck reminded him of fighting out in the Falklands, of that wary feeling right before something went belly-up.
“Get … out. Get—”
Islam’s voice cut off with a choking noise. Andy was about to press the button to speak again when another noise sounded. A low, nasty laugh that went down Andy’s back like an icy cold razor blade.
The channel went dead.
Andy stared at the walkie-talkie for a split second. Then he threw it down and ran for the Portakabin. He wrenched the door open, seized the mobile he had left lying on the pile of papers and jumped back out again. He had to help the other lads. He had to know what was going on.
His bad knee crunched painfully as he sprinted along the outside of the building towards the second Portakabin where Islam and Phil were stationed. His fingers fumbled over the buttons of the phone, trying to unlock it.
“Hold on, mate,” he muttered to himself. “I’m coming.”
He saw more of the black liquid spattered and pooled across the concrete under his feet as he turned the corner. The river spread out before him, gunmetal grey, deserted and lonely, icy wind whistling over the surface. The door of the second Portakabin was hanging open. One of the tiny windows had been smashed, and black liquid dripped down the outer wall. Fine red droplets misted the door and the broken glass.
Andy froze, suddenly more frightened than he’d ever been in his life. He turned in a slow circle. There was no one in sight. Apart from the wind and the distant noises of the city, there was nothing to hear.
His fingers finally pressed the right combination of buttons to unlock his mobile. He got as far as dialling the first nine before there was movement in the shadows of the cabin.
“Andy?” someone said. “Is that you out there?”
“Phil?” Andy asked, flooded with relief. He moved forward, his fingers stilling on the mobile as he squinted, trying to see through the broken glass. “Are you hurt? Where’s Islam?”
“Well, to tell you the truth, mate,” Phil’s voice said, “I’m a bit beaten up. I need your help.”
Andy stepped cautiously through the doorway of the Portakabin. “What do you need—”
Phil was in the cabin, all right. His body lay sprawled across the smashed desk and the mess of fallen papers. His eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, blood trickling slowly from his neck.
“What I need,” Phil’s voice said from the shadows, “is your blood.”
Andy opened his mouth to shout. Something black uncoi
led from the back of the cabin and shot towards him. He jerked away instinctively. One foot slipped in a puddle of the dark liquid. Andy fell with a crash, the back of his skull hitting the splintered edge of the desk.
For an instant, the pain was overwhelming. It blocked out fear, shock, anger. He saw something black and white moving over him, but his vision was fragmenting, blurring, going grey at the edges. The sudden pain was already fading. He closed his eyes with relief.
He was gone before the Nekomata’s teeth sank into his neck.
Jack was waiting for me downstairs in the living room when I finished my shower. She was leaning against the back of the big, leather sofa in front of the TV, arms folded. Her wet hair was slicked back, all her make-up had been scrubbed off, and her eyes were red and puffy. Like me, instead of throwing on some comfy PJs, she’d dressed to go out again, in jeans, boots and hoodie. The black eye she’d got this morning seemed to have darkened a few more shades.
“We need to talk,” she said flatly.
I tumbled into speech. “I know, Jack, and I’m so—”
Jack held up her hand. “Shut up a minute and let me get this out.” She took a deep breath and rolled her shoulders, like she was warming up for a fight, then started: “Mimi, you’re my best friend. Whatever you’re into, I’m down with it. But Rachel isn’t a part of this. She’s not a fighter. She doesn’t know what’s going on. She just got dragged into it, and what that thing might have done to her…” Jack paused, shook her head fiercely, and fixed her eyes on mine. The look made my stomach lurch.
“I need you to promise me something,” Jack continued. “I know the sword has been in your family for a million years, and it’s precious and dangerous and you’re, like, supposed to protect it and all that stuff, but if you have to make a choice … if it comes down to Rachel or the sword … you have to swear to me, swear, that you will do the right thing.”
The right thing?
A million thoughts swirled through my head. I wanted to remind Jack that we had no guarantee the Nekomata would give Rachel back to us even if I did surrender the sword. The sword was so powerful, even Hikaru, an immortal, had seemed frightened of it. But I didn’t. I forced myself to put the katana down on the back of the sofa. Then I went towards her and threw my arms around her – ignoring the hot, warning throb from my injured arm – and squeezed her until she made a wheezing noise.
“I swear,” I whispered. “We’re going to get Rachel back. It doesn’t matter how. We will get her back.”
Jack let out a shuddering sigh that was almost a sob, and we clung to each other for a minute.
“OK, that’s enough of that,” she said finally, her voice trembling, as she pushed me away. “Don’t be such a girl.”
“Sorry, but I am a girl. I have all the right girl parts and everything.”
“Euw!” Jack said, snorting unsteadily. “Don’t talk about your girl parts! I’ll need mental bleach.”
“You love it,” I said, making a kissy face. Jack lightly smacked the back of my head.
Just like that, things were all right between us.
And those conflicted thoughts that were still clamouring at the back of my head? That alarmingly loud internal voice that was crying out in protest? I slammed the door on them, hard. They belonged to some other person. Some other Mio that I didn’t know. And didn’t want to.
“Did you, like, grow or something?” Jack asked, frowning.
“Since when?” I rolled my eyes at her. “This morning?”
“I don’t know, but—” She put her hand on the top of my head and then brought it forward in a straight line. It hit the bridge of her nose. “You can nearly look me in the eye, and you’re not even wearing high heels.”
I blinked, took a step back, and realized she was right. “Huh. I thought this T-shirt had just shrunk in the wash.” My bra had been a bit uncomfortable too. I’d ended up putting a stretchy Lycra tank top on instead.
“Long-overdue growth spurt?”
“Maybe. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that’s happened recently,” I said, sliding past her, snatching the katana up again, and collapsing on the sofa. “Argh, I’m exhausted.” And frightened and freaked out and worried… My hands opened and closed around the saya and hilt of the sword, never quite letting go.
“I ordered pizza,” Jack said, sitting next to me. “We – we need to keep our strength up, you know? Rachel would be telling us we needed to eat…” Her voice broke a little at the end.
I nodded, swallowing hard. It felt heartless to even mention food, but that was probably why Jack had done the ordering instead of leaving it to me, like normal. Neither of us had eaten anything today. We couldn’t afford to pass out. And I wasn’t going back in the kitchen right now. I noticed that Jack had closed the sliding doors that separated the living room from the kitchen. I was grateful. The room was wrecked. How was I going to explain that to Mum and Dad?
Mum and Dad.
Hell. I dived for the cordless house phone standing on top of a stack of books on the coffee table, snatched it up, and then collapsed back on the sofa, clutching my bad arm. “Eff, that hurts.”
“What are you doing?” Jack asked.
I checked the phone and saw a little symbol of a tape with “x3” flashing next to it on the display. “Oh, hell. Of course they phoned up to check on us. Mum will be worried and Dad will be furious. What am I going to say to him?”
“Why are you panicking?” Jack asked. “You’re good at this stuff, Mimi. Phone your mum’s mobile and just tell her that we didn’t hear the phone.”
“How am I supposed to explain the fact that no one answered the phone all day? I bet they tried my mobile too, and yours,” I pulled my phone out of my pocket, and sure enough, Mum had started phoning right about the time we’d been fleeing from the cats in the coffee shop. “She probably called Rachel as well! No answer from any of us? We’ll be lucky if they’re not already on the way home! What if they called your mum?”
Even Jack looked daunted by that.
“What’s wrong?” Shinobu’s voice made me and Jack jump violently. I looked over the back of the sofa to see him leaning against the doorframe. I momentarily lost the power of speech.
He was dressed in the soft, worn jeans that I had dug out of the bottom of my dad’s chest of drawers and a plain black T-shirt that my dad used to exercise in. On my dad they were loose, boring, ordinary clothes. On Shinobu’s larger frame they clung faithfully to every muscle. I could clearly see the outline of his pectorals and abdominals shifting as he breathed.
I had a sudden, nearly uncontrollable urge to lay my head on that chest, to feel it gently rising and falling with the movement of his lungs, to hear the slow, steady rhythm of his heartbeat. The feeling was so intense that it was as if it had already happened, as if I had done it a hundred times before and it was my absolute right to do it again whenever I wanted. It felt less like wanting and more like … more like … remembering…
A leaf-shaped blade flashed in the red light as it sliced down—
“Mimi!”
I jumped again as Jack shrieked in my ear. “Whoa! What?”
Jack shook her head at me. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“Shut up,” I muttered, flicking a humiliated look at Shinobu. “I was thinking.”
“What were you thinking about?” Shinobu asked, coming forward. He looked suddenly intent and a little wary. Like my answer mattered to him. A lot.
“Yeah, right, you were ‘thinking’,” Jack said, making quotation marks in the air with her fingers. “Can we please get back to working out how to handle your parents, before they call my mum and they all come back to London and get eaten by demons? Cos I, for one, am not ready to be orphaned.”
I didn’t bother pointing out that Jack’s dad was still alive. Since he’d gone off to California with his new girlfriend he might as well be dead to Jack.
“OK, OK, let me think.” I put the phone down on my lap and ran the hand n
ot resting on the katana through my damp hair, carefully keeping my eyes on the phone and away from Shinobu. I didn’t want to zone out again. Zone out … aha!
“I’ve got it.” I found Mum’s mobile number on speed dial and pressed the button, ignoring Jack and Shinobu’s baffled expressions.
The phone only rang once before Mum answered. “Mio? Is that you?”
Her voice was the perfect mixture of parental fury and parental concern. This was going to have to be really good.
I let my voice take on a shrill, anxious note. “Oh, thank God! Mum!”
Mum instinctively responded to the anxiety in my voice. “Mio, are you all right? What’s happening over there?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you for hours!” I babbled. “We all have. We just kept getting a ‘Service not available’ message. I tried calling from Rachel and Jack’s phones. Nothing worked. I was so worried. Did you get there OK? What about Dad?”
“We’re fine, sweetie,” she said soothingly, automatically flipping into Mum Reassurance mode. Thank God my dad hadn’t answered. “You didn’t need to worry about us.”
“But I didn’t know what was going on,” I said, putting a bit of a tremble into the words. “I kept thinking about train crashes and stuff, but there was nothing on the news…”
“Now, don’t be silly. There’s no need to be a drama queen! We’re absolutely fine. There must have been some sort of disruption on the line when we moved into the new service area, that’s all.”
I sniffed, playing it up a little bit. “You’re in the hotel?”
“Yes, we are, and it’s lovely! You can just see the Eiffel Tower from our balcony. It’s so beautiful, Mio. You would love it – although it’s a good job you didn’t come, really. Everywhere is booked solid. We’d never have got you an extra room at short notice.”
“So you’re having a good time?”
“Wonderful. It’s even sunny here! And I’ve already seen this amazing coat that you’re going to love…”
We chatted for another few minutes. I could tell that Mum was going all out to coax me out of my fake panic attack. It made me feel queasy.
