The Name of the Blade, Book Two: Darkness Hidden

by Zoe Marriott

  My father’s eyes focused on me again. “I still have that key. I’ve carried it with me every day for over two decades. So what happened, Mio? What changed my father’s stories from myths to reality? How did you end up with the katana?”

  I heard Ojiichan’s voice in my head again, as clear as it had ever been.

  Promise me on my life, on your mother’s life, on your own life.

  You will keep the sword hidden, no matter what.

  And I remembered exactly what had started all of this. That day six years ago. Grandfather coming in the night before to tuck me in and tell me one of his stories about Japan, setting my little Mickey Mouse alarm clock to get me up early so we could “practise”. The way he had challenged my father that morning. Started a fight that would send Dad storming off. The way Ojiichan had sprung into action the moment my parents left us alone in the house. The crowbar from the garage – he had known just where to find it – and how skilfully he had used it to bust the padlock on the katana’s metal box.

  The padlock he had promised never to open again.

  I met my dad’s eyes for a long, tense moment as memories reordered themselves in my head, old events suddenly lighting up with new significance or fading away into the background. I had grown up in the middle of a battle between my father and my grandfather, and like most kids, I had chosen a side. I had chosen my grandfather, chosen to believe everything he did was right and everything my father did was wrong. But I was just a kid. I didn’t know what was really going on between them. I had made my decision based on who laid down the law and who sneaked me treats, who made me feel important and who made me feel like a baby.

  Ojiichan had loved me. I was sure of that. But … I had carried the sword myself now. I knew what it could do, how it could push at you, even when it was sheathed, how it could get inside your head. My grandfather had been its guardian for years. What if Ojiichan had loved the sword more than he loved me? More than he loved my dad? More than anything, even his family’s safety and what was right?

  What if I’d picked the wrong side?

  Promise me. You will never speak of this to your father.

  I’m sorry, Ojiichan. But you broke your promise first.

  Haltingly at first, then faster, the words tumbling over each other in my eagerness to confess it all, I told my father how the sword had come to be mine. I told him about that day all those years ago, and the dreams, and the fancy-dress party. About Jack and Rachel, the Kitsune, the Nekomata, and the Foul Women. I told him about Shinobu. I told him everything.

  Except the solution that Mr Leech had proposed to us. I couldn’t bring myself to think of that, let alone explain it to my father.

  When I’d finished, Dad was silently scrubbing at his face with both hands. It took him a little while to speak. Then he said, “Do you know the worst part? I mean really, the most horrible thing of all?”

  I shook my head.

  “When I opened that bathroom door, I was sick with anxiety for you. Guilty. Desperate to make things better. But when I saw that you were holding the katana? For a heartbeat all of that was wiped out. All I could feel was jealousy. Jealousy that you had my sword.”

  “It’s my—!” I bit the indignant exclamation in half and swallowed it, nearly choking on the surge of possessiveness. Involuntarily my fingers tightened into a fist around the saya.

  He stared at my red-and-yellow knuckles and made a sort of chuckling noise that broke halfway through and became something else. Something low and hurt-sounding. “I never even took the sword from him, but it didn’t matter. It was in my blood. Every day, every single day, the compulsion has hounded me. Pulling at me. Calling me. Every day of my life since I turned sixteen and your grandfather held the katana out to me and told me it was mine.

  “My hands were shaking with the need to reach out that day. My heart was thundering. I actually thought that I might die if I didn’t take the katana from him. But I also realized that if I laid my hand on the sword there in that moment, it would all happen again. I would become what he was. In twenty or thirty years I would look into my child’s eyes and sacrifice him or her to the katana, just as he was doing. I would take away my own son or daughter’s choices in life, rob them of their free will. I couldn’t do that. So I found the strength to say no.” He lifted his head to look at me again. “And in the end, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. In the end, the katana won. You ended up as its servant anyway.”

  “I’m not its servant,” I said. The denial sounded weak even to my own ears. Aren’t I? No. Not now. But how much longer was I going to be able to hold out?

  My father reached into his pocket and pulled out a yellowing, crumpled piece of paper. “This arrived for me at the beginning of last week. It’s from your grandfather. He left it with his solicitors along with his will. It was to be delivered to me just before your sixteenth birthday.”

  “What does it say?” I asked, fascinated and unnerved.

  “He asks for my forgiveness – again. And he says that you are special, Mio. As soon as you were born, he began to have dreams in which the spirits of the old country talked to him. They told him you were the key to everything. When you became the sword-bearer, everything would change. He says he thinks the sword will call to you more strongly than it has ever called anyone, and I will not be able to resist giving it to you. That trying would drive me insane.”

  “The beginning of last week…” I repeated slowly.

  “As soon as I got this, I arranged the trip to Paris,” my father said. “The compulsion – the overwhelming need to pass on the sword – had been growing stronger and stronger for months leading up to that point. Maybe years. Your grandfather was right. It was driving me mad. I knew if it got any worse, I would be in danger of giving in without even realizing what I was doing. Being away from you when you turned sixteen seemed like the only way to avoid it. That first night, in France, the feelings that had been plaguing me suddenly eased. The calling, the yearning, the sense of being half-empty … it all faded, and I realized that it was the first time for years that I’d felt fully at peace. I was sure I had done the right thing. But I was wrong. The sensation of relief was because you had taken the sword, wasn’t it? It let go of me – at least partially – because it finally had you.”

  He heaved a deep sigh. It was the same, long-suffering sigh I had hated and dreaded for as long as I could remember. But all of a sudden it seemed obvious that it wasn’t aimed at me. It never had been. My dad sighed in regret over a life of constant stress and struggle and resistance. In weariness at this silent, bitter battle that he had fought day after day, every day. For me.

  All for my sake.

  “I’m sorry.”

  We both spoke at the same time, then stopped awkwardly.

  “Don’t apologize,” he said. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “I’m the one that took the sword. I’m the one that unleashed Yomi on London. I’m the one that made your nightmare come true. And I was a huge bitch to you just now.”

  He winced again. “Don’t call yourself that.”

  “But—”

  “I mean it, Mio. Look me in the eye here – I need to know that you really get this. These events were set in train before you were even born. What’s happening here, what’s happened to you, is not your fault. And I was a bitch to you first.”

  “Euw! Don’t call yourself that.”

  “What? You’re allowed to say it but I’m not?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

  “Well, that was clear,” he said in his driest voice. “Why don’t you think it over and let me know when you’ve worked it out?”

  “Dad!”

  “And she’s back,” he said, aiming a grin at the ceiling.

  “Dad,” I repeated, and he looked at me again, suddenly serious. “I am sorry.”

  “So am I, Midget Gem. So am I.”

  Rachel burst out of the hospital doors and onto the street. Her head turned fra
ntically. She couldn’t be here. There were parked cars and people, people everywhere. She had to get away from them all before she hurt someone else.

  Hunt. Hunt! BITE.

  No, she had to remember… She had to remember Jack.

  Jack, oh God.

  Oh Jack. What happened to you?

  What did I do to you?

  She sprinted through the car park, around the side of the building, and found herself in a deserted area filled with rubbish bins. Safe. Her knees buckled and she dropped down next to a massive blue skip. She was shaking convulsively. Her cheeks were sticky with layers of tears, dried and fresh. The itching in her face and hands made her want to claw at her flesh, claw it right off, just to make it stop.

  Claw … tear … drink. Drink sweet, rich blood…

  No. That’s not me. It’s not me!

  I’m Rachel. I’m me. How did I get here? What did I do?

  The last thing she remembered before Jack was that boy – that stupid, stupid boy who just had to play the tough guy with his stupid little knife. Why hadn’t he left when she told him to? Why had he provoked her? Something had broken lose. He had run and she … she had chased. After that it was a blur of exhilaration and motion, instinct and reaction, the intoxicating smell of fear leading her on. She had played with him – played cat and mouse – hunted him through the debris and towering weeds of the scrubland, now letting him think he would get away, now pouncing just to hear him scream. She had backed him into a corner, savouring his panic and desperation, and lunged, intending to bite…

  Then nothing.

  She couldn’t remember anything else. She didn’t remember what she had done. It was complete blackness, as if she had fallen asleep in the middle of the attack. She had woken up in the hospital. Standing over Jack.

  And Jack had been convulsing. Fitting ten times worse than she had when the Shikome first infected her. The rash had been black against her bloodless skin. Rachel had screamed for help. Once help had come, she had run.

  She had left her little sister alone. All alone. She ran away. She couldn’t even trust herself not to hurt someone in the hospital. She couldn’t trust herself not to hurt Jack.

  Please be OK, Jack, please be OK. Please, please, please…

  What had she done? Had she already hurt someone? The boy? What had happened to him while she’d been blacked out? Had she…?

  Frantically she began to pat at her clothes. She couldn’t find any wet, sticky patches. She held her hands out in front of her. No blood.

  Blood…

  She let out a choked moan of horror as the ends of her fingers burst open again. The terrible black claws slid out, curving and sharp.

  “No, no, no, no more. Go away. Stop.”

  The burning itch in her skin was getting worse. Especially in her hands … her hands… They were stretching, wrists lengthening, fingers twisting, distorting. Veins of blackness darkened beneath the skin like bruises writhing up to the surface. She cried out as a fiery cramp ripped through her core, doubling her over. Her hair fell around her face. From the corners of her eyes she could see it moving, wriggling like worms. Like the Nekomata’s tentacles had wriggled over her, wrapped around her, dragged her into the darkness of its lair…

  This is it. Despair made the next cramp even more agonizing. I’m changing for good. I can’t turn back. I’m really a monster now.

  Hunt soon. Hunt now. Claw. Tear. Bite. Drink.

  She squeezed her eyes shut in agony. When she opened them again, her gaze glanced over something on the tarmac and then snapped back. A manhole cover.

  The sewers.

  That was where monsters belonged. Deep down in the darkness, where no one would ever find them. Where they could hurt no one.

  Alien growling noises welled up in her throat as she crawled towards the cover, arching and shaking with the pain of the change. She dug the hated black claws into the metal lid, twisted it, and heaved, dragging the cover sideways until there was a gap. A gap big enough for her.

  Part of her wanted to lift her head and look at the sky one more time. Part of her wanted to wait, and pray and hope. Part of her wanted to pretend that she didn’t have to do this, that everything would still, somehow, be all right.

  The rest of her knew that it was too late.

  Without hesitation, she swung her legs down into the hole and let herself fall.

  CHAPTER 17

  PANIC STATIONS

  Dad turned out to be a lot better at cleaning and bandaging wounds than I was. Thinking back to when I was a little girl – back when I’d still run to him whenever I fell and grazed my knee – I realized that he had always been good at taking care of people, really. I’d just forgotten.

  After I’d taken the painkillers he insisted on, I combed my hair and washed my hands and face while he ventured upstairs into Jack’s room again and borrowed more clothes. I was praying I didn’t wreck these ones; if I carried on this way she was going to come home to an empty wardrobe.

  “You’re going to have to shell out for some new stuff for me to wear,” I told him, slightly on the defensive, as I emerged from my room. I was relatively clean and dressed in a pair of skinny jeans – a lot less skinny on me than they were on Jack – and a black jumper, with my sword harness on top. “Everything I own is headed for Oxfam.”

  Dad gave me a calculating look. “Why don’t you use your savings account?”

  “Because when I wanted to buy that leather jacket, you said my savings account was for university, not ‘expensive rags’.” I folded my arms smugly.

  He pretended to scowl, but his eyes were smiling, amused. My breath caught. God, how long had it been since I saw that? An honest-to-God smile in my dad’s eyes? It made him look years younger. Had the strain of resisting the sword and its compulsion – the strain of trying to keep me out of his fight – taken that much of a toll on him? Looking back, I could see the change happening in my memories. The laughter and lightness had slowly stripped away from him, day after day, year after year. I hadn’t understood. He was my dad, but I hadn’t ever really understood him. Not until now.

  Shinobu was waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. As I rounded the landing, he was staring into space, eyes distant. He looked like his thoughts were a thousand miles away, somewhere dark and cold. When he heard my footsteps his face changed, lighting with concern and then relief. Any remaining anger I felt towards him dissolved painlessly. His love for me was flawed – because he was flawed, just like all human beings. I was capable of being every bit as selfish and short-sighted. If I didn’t want other people holding my mistakes against me, then I couldn’t keep hanging onto theirs. I had to learn to let things go.

  I had to learn to be less like Ojiichan.

  I limped stiffly down the staircase and into Shinobu’s arms. The long, silent hug unknotted muscles and eased tensions I hadn’t even realized were hurting me. We might have stayed like that for an hour if my dad hadn’t cleared his throat behind us.

  “Much longer,” he said sardonically as I turned to look at him, “and I’ll start to wish I’d stayed in Paris.”

  I swallowed my automatic retort of We already wish that – being mean to him was another thing I needed to learn to stop doing – and got off the bottom step, pulling Shinobu aside with me so that my father could get past.

  My dad stepped down into the hall, his eyes fixed on Shinobu. Wordlessly, he held out his hand. Shinobu stared down at it. I bit my lip. What had gone on between these two while I was hiding upstairs? And was the manly handshake a ritual Shinobu would have absorbed while following me around in spirit? I needn’t have worried. Shinobu reached out and they clasped hands, exchanging one of those long, steady, mano a mano looks.

  “Thanks for taking care of my little girl,” my dad said.

  Shinobu smiled his quick, sweet smile. “It is the other way around.”

  And a bromance is born…

  Standing next to each other in the hall, the extra inches of height th
at Shinobu had on my father, and his powerful, muscular build, were very obvious. But somehow despite being shorter and more slight, my father didn’t appear overwhelmed by Shinobu’s physical stature. Smiling, like he was now, Shinobu looked like a big, sweet, slightly shy guy. It was only when he had a sword in his hand that his deadly skill became obvious. Dad, even empty-handed, had an atmosphere. He looked like someone you should think twice about messing with – and who would make you regret it if you didn’t. I remembered the confidence in his stance when he had confronted the Shikome, and the easy way he had handled his katana. Had he always exuded menace that way? Was this yet another thing I just hadn’t noticed about him before?

  Then again, I had been a completely different person the last time I saw him…

  “Dad, where did you get that sword?” I asked suddenly. “The one you had in the street? And how did you get your hands on a firebomb?”

  “You can make a reactive Molotov cocktail from everyday household items,” he said. “If you remind me I’ll show you one day. And I had the katana under my bed.”

  “Under your bed? Didn’t Mum notice?”

  “I hid it. It was in the case that was supposed to hold my snooker cues.”

  I frowned as I worked this out. “Then where are – wait a minute, did you ever actually play snooker?”

  “Not if I could help it.” He smirked. “Most boring game in the world.”

  “So when you were supposed to be out with your friends, playing…”

  “I was in a dojo across town,” he confessed. “I’ve always kept up with my training. I might not have bought into my father’s beliefs about the sword, but I wasn’t stupid enough to deny that the thing was powerful and probably dangerous. I had to know that I could protect you and your mother if anything ever happened.”