The Dragon’s Mark

by Alex Archer

  Sensei had spoken to her gently, but firmly. “You are going to stay here with Toshiro for the next few years, Shizu, and he is going to teach you many things. When you are finished, when you have learned all you need to know, then I will return for you. Your destiny awaits you, but destiny is a harsh mistress and you must be strong if you are going to bend her to your will. Can you do that, Shizu?”

  She remembered staring into his eyes, seeing the challenge there, and knowing deep down in her heart that if she did not get out of the car and do as she was asked, then the second chance at life that she had been granted when this man walked into the warehouse in Kyoto would be finished. He would abandon her as quickly as he had taken her in.

  With a trembling hand, she had opened the car door and presented herself to Toshiro.

  “Again! Begin!”

  Focusing her concentration, Shizu started the sequence of movements that began the kata, letting her thoughts drift as she felt the proper movements more than thought about them. Katas had been developed to allow a martial artist to practice against an imaginary opponent—or, in this case, opponents—and as Shizu moved through the sequence she concentrated so strongly that she could picture them before her. She could see their strikes, feel the passage of their limbs, as they punched and kicked and spun, trying to defeat her. Shizu was a good pupil, probably one of the best Toshiro had ever trained, though he’d never tell her that, and she moved from defense to attack and back again with almost effortless ease.

  Toshiro had been a harsh taskmaster over the years, but a fair one as well. He had taught her so much—art and language, history and culture, math and science. She took to it with an aptitude and a hunger that had surprised both of them, and in a very short time she had surpassed even his brightest students.

  It was in the second year of her residence that the physical training began. Strength conditioning to prepare her body. Meditation to train her mind. Martial arts to prepare her for what was to come in the years ahead. Karate. Tae kwon do. Brazilian jujitsu. Thai boxing. Wing Chun kung fu. Ninjitsu. A mishmash of styles and disciplines, all designed for one end—to prepare her for the destiny that Sensei said awaited her.

  She had learned much, it was true, but even she knew there was more to come. Toshiro was not done with her yet. This was just another of his seemingly endless tests, but Shizu welcomed it as she had all the others.

  Besides, this day was different.

  Sensei was there.

  She did not know how she knew; she just did. She had not seen him, had not heard Toshiro speak of his presence, but she could feel him, out there, somewhere, watching.

  And so she strove to perform the kata without error.

  Seeing the near perfection of her movements, Toshiro decided to show his unseen guest just how good his pupil actually was. With a nod at the doorway in the back of the room, the martial-arts master summoned those he had handpicked for the occasion.

  Five darkly clad warriors rushed into the room, armed with a variety of weapons, from a bo staff to a katana. Without hesitation they rushed across the room and attacked Shizu, who was still moving through the sequence of her kata.

  The young prodigy felt them coming, could sense them in her mind’s eye, and she waited for them to reach her.

  Then, once they had, she fell on them like a lightning storm.

  It didn’t matter that they were armed and she was not. It didn’t matter that they were warriors who had been studying for decades, well versed in their particular disciplines, while she had been studying for only three years. It didn’t matter that she had been enduring a grueling training session for forty-eight hours without a break while they were well rested, well fed and eager to show Toshiro what they could do.

  None of that mattered.

  What mattered was the heart of the warrior, and Shizu had that in spades.

  She made it look easy.

  One by one, her opponents were disarmed, beaten, battered and tossed aside like leaves before a gale-force wind. Even as they lay there groaning, trying to figure out what had just hit them with such ferocity, Shizu continued with her previous exercise, flowing into the next step in the kata as smoothly as if she had never been interrupted.

  Behind her, out of sight, the old teacher smiled in grim satisfaction.

  When she had finished all two hundred steps of the form with perfect execution and flawless precision, she turned to her teacher and bowed low, just as she’d been taught on the very first day.

  But then Shizu did a surprising thing.

  As Toshiro watched, his pupil turned to face the wall behind which their guest stood, observing the session. With just as much respect as she had shown her teacher, Shizu bowed to their unseen guest.

  The move brought a bark of laughter from Toshiro, something his students heard so seldom that it caused Shizu to spin around and stare at him in surprise.

  TOSHIRO SAT AT THE FEET of his guest and served him tea prepared the old way, the only way that mattered. As any true warrior would, the man accepted the proffered cup and then offered it back again to Toshiro, indicating that the elder should be the one to drink first. Back and forth it went until honor had been satisfied and his guest took a long drink from the tiny cup.

  With the ceremony out of the way, the two men could get down to business.

  “You saw?” Toshiro asked.

  The other man nodded. He’d been watching from behind a hidden slot in one of the studio’s shoji screens, the same one Shizu had so impertinently bowed toward, and was privately thrilled with how far his protégé had come. “She has learned well, yes?”

  “She is a good student. Still thinks too much, but we’ll drive that out of her yet.”

  Toshiro’s guest frowned. “You think she needs to remain here longer?”

  The shorter man beamed. “Oh, yes. Another year, maybe two. She is not yet ready.”

  “But I thought you just said she was a good student. That she was ready.”

  The grizzled old warrior shook his head. “Not ready. Still has not learned the path of the lotus flower, the way of the crane, the—”

  His guest held up his hands. “Okay. Enough. I will not argue. You are the master here, not I.” Still seated, he bowed low to show his respect and to apologize for his doubt.

  The older man slapped him on the knee, an affectionate move that one might not have expected for a man of his reputation, but the two of them had known each other for a long time, a long time indeed.

  “You shouldn’t worry. I will forge for you a weapon with such precision that not even Death will know she is coming.”

  The other man smiled. “I know you will, Toshiro, I know you will.”

  16

  Now

  Feeling very flustered by what she had experienced in the hypnotherapist’s office, Annja wandered the streets for a bit, keeping her mind purposely blank. She didn’t want to think about the drawings on the pad in her hands, didn’t want to think about the possible implications, how it all might be interpreted. Not yet, at least. She just wanted to calm her racing heart and get her pulse back under control.

  She found herself standing before a quaint little café on the corner of Bleaker and Main. The place was only half-full, with several of the tables outside under the canopy empty. She sat at one and glanced over the menu until a waiter came to see what she wanted.

  “What can I get for you today?” he asked.

  She ordered lunch—a glass of water and a chef’s salad—even though she wasn’t all that hungry. It was more about giving her something to focus on, something for her hands to do, rather than needing to fill her stomach.

  Once she had relaxed she pulled out the sketch pad she had taken with her from Dr. Laurent’s office and flipped it open to one of the pages where she had drawn the execution scene. With the detached eye of a scientist she studied it.

  Had she seen the image before? she wondered. When she had first acquired the sword she’d done a tremendous amount
of research into the woman who had once carried it—could she have seen it then? In a museum or an art book? Maybe a research site on the Internet?

  There was really no way to know.

  The other solution—that it wasn’t something she had seen, but a memory from another time and another place—freaked her out more than she expected. She had always known that there was a reason the sword had chosen her, but having it do so because she was…what? A descendant? A distant blood relative? Or even crazier yet, the reincarnation of Joan herself?

  Heaven only knew and right now it didn’t seem to want to tell her.

  Tired of chasing down streets that seemed to have no end, Annja gave up on those images and turned to the other set that she had drawn, marveling again at the detail she’d been able to capture.

  She was examining the image of the sword itself when someone said, “Excuse me?”

  Annja looked up to find an Asian woman standing beside her table. She wore ripped jeans, a black concert T-shirt, and a jean jacket that had been drawn on with Magic Marker so many times that the words had long since blended into an incoherent stream of letters. Her long black hair hung freely down her back.

  “Excuse me, but are you Annja Creed, from Chasing History’s Monsters?” the young woman asked.

  Not now, Annja thought, but it was too late. Might as well get it over with.

  “Yes,” she said, a bit abruptly.

  The woman couldn’t help but notice the tone. She dropped her eyes to the ground and began backing away. “I’m sorry to have bothered you. Sorry.”

  Way to go, you coldhearted idiot! Annja berated herself. Probably took all her courage just to come over and say hello.

  As she turned to go, Annja said, “No, I’m the one who should be sorry. Please, don’t go.”

  The woman hesitated, clearly uncertain what to do.

  “Come on, join me for a minute,” Annja said, forcing a smile to show that she meant it. Her audience was small enough; she didn’t need to go chasing off any of her viewers, no matter how badly her day had been going.

  The fan sat down and, smiling shyly at her, held out her hand.

  “I’m Shizu,” she said.

  “Annja, though you already know that.”

  “Right. And, like, don’t worry about it, by the way.”

  Annja was confused. “Don’t worry about what?”

  “That you were going to dis me like that. I mean, you’re a celebrity, right? You must get people interrupting you all the time—like, what a bummer. I completely understand.”

  Annja stared at her as if she was from another planet.

  Someone up there must hate me, she thought, but she smiled graciously and said, “Thanks. For letting me apologize, that is.”

  “Like, no problem.”

  Once she got beyond Shizu’s annoying speech habits, Annja actually began to enjoy herself. She discovered that Shizu was going to New York University, was majoring in philosophy and had lived most of her life in the San Francisco Bay Area before moving to the Big Apple. The girl was actually quite well-read and Annja began to suspect that the vapid airhead exterior was really just a front she’d developed through the years to allow her to fit in with others her age.

  Annja, in turn, answered her questions about what it was like to work on a cable television show, how she’d gotten involved in archaeology, and whether or not she thought her cohost, Kristie Chatham, was any good at her job.

  Lunch passed quickly and for a short while Annja actually forgot about the disturbing events in Dr. Laurent’s office.

  Eventually Annja excused herself to go to the restroom and when she returned she saw that the waiter had left the check on the table in one of those black plastic sleeves. She was in the process of reaching for it when Shizu jumped to her feet and grabbed her hand.

  “Oh, my God, like, I totally didn’t realize what time it was!” Shizu exclaimed. “I was supposed to meet my boyfriend twenty minutes ago! Thanks for talking with me for so long. My friends are never going to believe this!”

  They shook hands and Annja watched her disappear into the crowd moving past at the corner. Still laughing over the uniqueness of the whole encounter, she picked up the small plastic folder with her bill inside and opened it up, intending to pay, only to recoil in surprise.

  The bill had been folded into the shape of a dragon.

  Alarm bells blared in her mind.

  She shoved back from the table and managed to restrain herself from calling on her sword right then and there. Only the thought that drawing it in public might be just what the Dragon wanted her to do kept her from actually doing it; she didn’t need to be on the five-o’clock news wielding a sword in a public restaurant. She was already notorious enough as it was.

  Heads turned in her direction as she surged to her feet and she glared at them all, mentally wrapping each face in a ninja hood and mask, searching for a pair of eyes that looked familiar to her, but none of them were.

  She knew she had only seconds to pinpoint just where the origami had come from and every second wasted was another that the Dragon could use to either prepare for an attack or fade into the background, only to disappear once more.

  She wasn’t going to let that happen this time.

  Having eliminated those around her, Annja realized that the Dragon must be inside the café. After all, that was where the bill had come from and no one but her and her waiter had touched it.

  She focused on the waiter.

  She hadn’t even looked at him when he’d taken her order, not really. She’d been too wrapped up in her turmoil over the sketches. So for all she knew he could be the Dragon himself, though it was more likely that he had simply given the other man access to her check case. Either way, the waiter would have some answers.

  Like an enraged lioness, Annja stormed inside the café itself and then, not seeing the waiter anywhere in the room, she pushed her way through the small crowd of customers near the bar and slipped into the kitchen.

  A man in a dishwasher’s apron intercepted her just inside the doors. “I’m sorry, miss, but you can’t be in here.”

  “Where is he?” she snarled, and watched in satisfaction as the help quickly backed away from her. She followed, deeper into the kitchen, until she could see the guy who had served her. He was in one corner, talking to the chef.

  Hands reached out for her, trying to stop her, but she pushed past and cornered the waiter against the wall.

  With one fist wrapped in his white shirt and the other holding the folded-up bill in front of his face, she shouted, “Who did this? Did you do this?”

  The guy shrank back from her. “Lady, I don’t know what you are talking about! Who did what?”

  “Folded my bill up like this! Did you do it?” She shook him a little, being none too gentle about it.

  His eyes grew even wider, if that was at all possible. “Easy, lady! Take it easy! I can’t even fold a napkin right, never mind do something like that!”

  There were murmurs of assent from the group that was gathering around her. Looking into his eyes, she could see he was being honest. He had no idea what she was talking about.

  She released him and turned away, her thoughts racing. If the waiter hadn’t done it himself, nor allowed it to happen in the back before it reached her table, then it had to be someone else on the staff.

  But who?

  She replayed the final minutes of the meal in her mind: she was sitting talking to Shizu, the waiter had come by and placed the check on the tabletop, she’d gotten up to use the restroom. When she had returned, Shizu had thanked her and raced off to meet her boyfriend.

  Annja stopped the mental replay and backed it up again, watched as the waiter placed the check folder on the edge of the table between Shizu and her, watched as she excused herself to go to the restroom.

  Thinking it through, an uncomfortable suspicion was starting to form in her mind. The only time the bill folder had been within anyone else’s sight was
during those few moments that it had rested on the tabletop. And the only person within reach of it at the time, aside from herself, was…

  Shizu.

  Annja was already in motion by the time her conscious mind caught up with her intuition. She threw some cash at the waiter, ran out of the café, vaulted the small iron fence that surrounded the outdoor terrace and rushed into the nearby intersection, her eyes already scanning the crowd for any sign of the girl who had shared a drink with her over lunch.

  The girl worked for the Dragon.

  Annja hunted up and down those streets for more than an hour, hoping she might show herself, might give Annja the chance she needed to grab her and ask a few, all-important questions, but it was no use.

  The young woman, whoever she had really been, was gone.

  17

  As Annja was confronting the waitstaff at the café and trying to determine just who had left the folded paper dragon in her bill folio, the Dragon was headed for the offices of Dr. Julie Laurent, hypnotherapist.

  Something had happened to Annja there. Her agitated state had been proof of that and the Dragon wanted to find out what had riled her so badly.

  Finding the office was easy. The Dragon climbed the steps and knocked on the doctor’s front door.

  “Coming!” said a faint voice from behind the door.

  The Dragon put a finger over the peephole, preventing the doctor from looking out and seeing anything.

  A moment passed. The Dragon heard the locks being turned on the other side, and then the door was opened to the extent the security chain allowed it. The Dragon reared back and slammed a foot into the door right next to the handle.

  The door flew open, knocking the older woman behind it backward into the office and down onto the floor. The Dragon followed swiftly. A knife was put to the doctor’s throat.

  “Scream and not only will I kill you, but I’ll carve you up before I do,” the Dragon said.

  Wisely, the doctor clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out.

  The Dragon kicked the door shut, relocked it and turned back to face the woman still cowering silently on the floor.