Shadows and Anguish (A Cat Among Dragons Book 8)

by Alma Boykin

  “Not that I know of, sir.”

  That decided it. Joschka needed to be easing out of operations anyway, and this would be the perfect excuse. “Then I believe a visit to your lab is in order, General, provided there are no difficulties. Riley and Commander Na Gael will come with us.”

  Rachel began a token protest when Colonel Vuorinen interrupted. “I’ll speak with Przilas, Commander.”

  “Very well, but please be aware that I need to assist Captain Ahkai with her presentation tomorrow at 0900.”

  “We are not that far from the Branch headquarters,” Takahara informed her. “Your general security access level should be sufficient, Commander, but if not a temporary pass can be arranged.”

  Three hours later, Rachel limped through the doors to the Japanese Branch’s laboratory. Any questions about her security access had vanished when she swiped her ID at the first gate and every light on every doorway turned green. Only Joschka had known before that moment that she possessed true unlimited security access, and the others had all blinked with surprise as they made the discovery. She’d just waited quietly as the others logged in, then followed General Takahara down the long corridor leading into the heart of a small mountain. She’d never met Leiji in person, but the setting of the base and his lab brought a half-grin. I must hold a record for friends-who-cause-stereotypes, she thought. Rachel cleared her expression as Takahara opened the lab door, revealing a much larger facility than she had access to.

  The amount of physical space made the Kiwi general whistle. Rachel and Joschka exchanged knowing glances, and she wondered if Riley would comment on the unusual height of the lab tables and the lack of chairs or lab stools.

  “Dr. Fujimori, General von Hohen-Drachenburg wishes to speak with you,” General Takahara informed his xenology specialist.

  «Very well.» A sound of rustling and talons on tile caught the soldiers’ ears. A long, dark shape loomed up from behind a traditional, if oversized, paper screen. Rachel leaned on her walking stick and smiled broadly at the stifled gasps from Colonel Vuorinen and Major General Riley.

  Dr. Fujimori Leiji looked like something off the cover of a human’s fantasy novel—or from a Playdragon centerfold. The True-dragon basked in the attention, enjoying the humans’ shock. Crimson red accented his nostrils, and formed twin stripes that extended back around his eyes before trailing over his head and fading into black on his neck. Steel-grey talons and red eyes completed the picture, accented by silver-white whiskers and ears. His round ears twitched, revealing his amusement. Commander Na Gael was suitably impressed, even as she smothered a laugh at his posing and preening. Seeing him on a computer screen could not compare with being in the presence of a full-sized True-dragon. He bowed to Joschka. «My lord General, how can I be of service?»

  “I need to know what, if anything, you know about the shrine at Storm Breath Mountain,” the HalfDragon stated, apparently unimpressed. As he spoke, he moved his hand so that the signet ring with his House sigil caught the light. Rachel did the same and the True-dragon dipped his head in acknowledgment of the two House Heads’ rank.

  «Very little, my lord General, since it is a native deity.»

  Rachel and Joschka looked at each other and she sighed under her breath, “No rest for the wicked.”

  «However, sir, I am under the impression that it could cause a great deal of difficulty if its ire is roused further. I also suspect, and General Takahara might know better than I do, that because the objects kept at the shrine are not entirely of domestic manufacture, their removal could cause us difficulties.» His tail sweep took all the humans in as “us.”

  “A deity,” Riley managed to squeak, fighting to recover his aplomb. “As in a god?”

  «To be more precise, sir, a native entity that has been, and currently is, venerated as a deity by the humans residing in the area.» Leiji’s exaggerated formality made Rachel bite her tongue, and he gave her a quick wink.

  “A native entity?”

  Rachel raised the hand that wasn’t on her walking cane. “Yes, sir. Dr. Fujimori and I are not the only non-human residents of this planet, nor is he the only non-human native.”

  Joschka’s voice teased in her mind, «And here I thought you only knew ballroom dances, Rada, not tap dancing.» She resisted the urge to stick out her tongue at him, but not easily. Aloud he added, “The non-humans are known to the appropriate Branches, Riley.” Takahara nodded his agreement. The whiskers on one side of Leiji’s muzzle twitched up and stayed there, his version of a raised eyebrow.

  “Dr. Fujimori is correct, or so research suggests,” Takahara said, directing the discussion back onto the proper track. “The weather incidents are growing more severe, and when the objects were removed from the shrine in the past, loss of human life ensued.”

  “I take it the prefecture police are over-stretched at the moment?” Joschka wracked his brain, trying to think of how to manage this quietly.

  “Yes, because of the protests at the new power plant, as well as the mudslides and snow storm.”

  Too bad the Power can’t be persuaded to manifest as that giant mutant sea monster from all those movies, Rachel sighed. That would solve both problems. Except those films all take place on Honshu, not Hokkaido—that’s right. And she’d never known of a Power manifesting in physical form, except in one very special instance.

  “Commander, you and Dr. Fujimori look at what he has,” Joschka ordered. “General Takahara, a word, if you have the time.”

  Rachel and Leiji shrugged and he led her behind the paper screen, which turned out to be a very advanced form of silicone film. She thumped it with her finger. «Ah, chemical resistant and you can project images on it! Very nice. New?»

  «Yes. This is one of the test units. I’m supposed to break it, which is too bad, because I really like it and it fits the décor.» As he spoke, Fujimori pulled up some data on his computer. «Here’s what I’ve been watching. Those spikes there? They coincide with the attempts to break into the temple. What bothers me is that only a few people know just what the temple’s treasure is, or that the temple has anything more than historic architectural value.»

  Rachel rubbed under her chin, mimicking his muzzle rub. «Oh, that would complicate matters. Have you had any other signs of external activity in the area?»

  «Nah. Only an absolute idiot would invade Hokkaido in winter. An idiot or an ice monster.» He stopped and craned his head around, making her neck ache. «Are there ice monsters?» He sent a picture from a recent movie.

  She swirled her hand in a negation. «Not like that, and those that do live in cold climates would not be wasting their time coming here. Just take my word for it,» she said, forestalling further questions. «What is the history of the shrine, and what do most people think it has?»

  A little more than half an hour later, a Japanese major coughed from the other side of the screen. Rachel and Leiji peered around at him. “Your pardon, but the Graf-General and Generals Takahara and Riley wish to speak with Commander Na Gael.”

  Rachel bowed to Leiji and followed the man out into a small briefing room. Takahara began before she could even sit down, “Commander, I trust you gained the information you needed?”

  “Yes, sir.” She rubbed under her blind eye as she sorted out how exactly to explain what Leiji had found. “To be brief, sirs, yes, this is of interest to us. No, there is no outside involvement at the moment. Yes, the police are too overcommitted to protect the shrine at this time and yes, things could get worse if certain items are removed from the temple.”

  “What items?” Riley asked.

  Takahara raised a finger. “Items of extreme cultural value and sensitivity, sir. I’d prefer not to say more.”

  Riley winced for some reason but did not pursue the matter or object to having his question sidestepped. The men discussed their options and after confirming that indeed, the matter fell within the GDF’s purview, Takahara opted to send a detachment up to guard the shrine until the police
could resume their patrols. “Commander, is there a chance that the . . . the entity associated with the shrine might be willing to assist in defending the place?”

  She thought back over what Leiji had said. “Sir, it appears that for some reason it is unable to manifest in ways that are sufficient to deter whoever is attempting to break into the shrine.” Joschka raised an eyebrow and she twitched her shoulders in a micro-shrug. If the Power refused to fry the intruders with a bolt of lightning, it must have its own reasons. Logres certainly had access to more than enough raw energy to toast the objects of its ire, and yet it relied on the Guardians to do its wet work. Joschka nodded and returned his attention to the discussion at hand. “You are probably already aware of this, General Takahara, but given the sensitivities of the entity, Dr. Fujimori strongly recommends that no non-Japanese guard the temple.”

  Riley heaved a silent sigh, or so Rachel guessed from how his shoulders and chest moved. The men discussed logistics and the possibility of needing to backstop the Japanese branch if the situation continued. Since they’d begun ignoring her, Rachel eased into a corner and leaned against the wall, entering the necessary information into her data-link, which would send the data to her laptop. She’d gotten into the first general report before she caught motion out of the corner of her eye as Joschka stood up. “I believe that matters are well enough in hand, Abe?”

  Takahara gestured his agreement. “Yes, sir.” He reached for a phone and, after a moment of conversation in Japanese, he said, “Your car is waiting, my lord General.”

  Rachel’s stomach began complaining even before they made it back to the resort and food. Joschka took pity on her and dismissed her before she got out of the car. He watched her fade into the evening twilight and wondered. Then he took a deep breath and turned his attention back to the problems at hand, including—and perhaps especially—the irritated Power.

  “Abe’s comment about the ‘culturally sensitive items’ worries me, sir,” General Riley murmured as they walked up the steps into the resort’s main building.

  “How so, John?”

  Riley took off his hat and ran a hand over grey-streaked black hair. “If it comes down to it, will any non-Japanese be able to approach the shrine without causing an international incident? And drawing protestors like a salt-block draws sheep?”

  Joschka thought hard. “I believe, with Dr. Fujimori’s assistance, two or three foreigners might be able to work in or close to the temple without calling down the wrath of either the native entity or the nationalists and cultural preservation activists, John. But that is a good point, and I’ll have Colonel Vuorinen remind Commander Na Gael of the need for extra discretion.” He didn’t bother looking behind him to make certain that his aid got the hint.

  The next morning Rachel found her seat, far too close to the speaker’s podium for her taste, and watched Roswy finish setting up her equipment. The computer expert finished and, without any attempt at dignity, flopped into the chair beside Rachel. “What’s your secret for getting it all to work at the same time?” Rachel inquired.

  “I gather silicon powder and henbane at the new moon, then blend it with the fat of lightning bugs and glow worms killed during thunder storms, while murmuring incantations to Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper.”

  Someone behind them made a strange sound and the women exchanged winks. “That explains our problems, then” Rachel said, nodding as if it all made perfect sense. “We tried an incantation to Babbage and Heisenberg.”

  “Heisenberg? Only summon him if you need random number generation,” Roswy averred. The American major behind them made a choking noise and appeared to be turning a fascinating shade of bluish pink with green shadows. Roswy gave Rachel a “mission accomplished” thumbs up sign, then got up and took her place at the speakers’ table.

  Roswy only called on Rachel twice, both times for confirmation rather than detailed explanations. Which was just as well, because Rachel had barely slept the night before. The Power’s agitation and her own nightmare memories had combined to give her cold sweats, although she’d managed to wake up just before she started screaming as she relived bits of the September Disaster and earlier incidents. I can’t keep this up, she’d begged her deity. Please, please, Lord, by all the mercy You have, let me find peace and rest. She wanted to close her eyes and wake up dead.

  By noon, the storms from the mountains reached the resort, and Rachel wondered if it counted as suicide to go out in the pounding rain and ice. She expected to hear trees falling at any moment. Everyone who knew anything about such storms grew jumpy, making Rachel’s temper even worse. She stayed away from people she knew as best she could, so she’d be less inclined to bite someone’s head off, proverbially or literally. The Power’s anger was waking something in Rachel that was better left sleeping.

  Joschka felt it too, and he suspected that one of the Chileans did as well, although he couldn’t be certain. It peaked just after supper, during the parasitology presentation. Rachel came limping out of the conference room. But something more than Rachel Na Gael stared at Joschka from that single grey eye. Commander Rada Lord Ni Drako wanted to kill something, and he wasn’t certain that even he could stop her. He got out of his chair and approached her, ready to knock her out if he had to.

  Instead, the pressure peaked and stopped. They both froze, then looked north and west. “What?” he asked in Trader.

  «I think, one way or another, the interlopers have been stopped,» she told him mind-to-mind. “Storm seems to have passed, sir,” she said aloud, in German.

  Someone flung open the door behind her and three soldiers rushed out, as green as grass. Rachel rolled her eye. “If I find out who scheduled these talks for after a meal, I will—” She flexed her fingers as if they were claws. “By your leave, sir? It appears a medic may be needed.”

  “Yes, go,” he ordered. And made a note to find out who had set up the schedule—he would have a quiet word with them. Preferably after showing them some of the most “interesting” slides from the various presentations he’d endured over the years—and then offering them a large bowl of pasta in basil sauce.

  The following morning dawned clear and cold. General Takahara brought Rachel and Joschka up to date. “I fear, my lord General, that we caught the people who have been trying to break into the temple.”

  “Why fear, Abe?”

  Takahara made a rolling gesture with his hands. “The woman is known in the shadow world of Tokyo, sir, and the man appears to have other, mmm, connections.”

  “And you do not want their associates coming to try again, I take it, sir?” Rachel inquired. To Joschka’s puzzlement, she held one hand up, palm in, and folded her pinkie finger down.

  Abe nodded. “Precisely, Commander Na Gael.”

  «What?» Joschka demanded.

  «Yakuza, sir. Like the Mafia but more intense and better organized.»

  Joschka wondered if he wanted to know how Rachel knew anything about the Japanese underworld. He decided that he emphatically did not.

  Aloud she said, “If I might venture to make a suggestion, sirs, we need to find a way to convince these interlopers and their backers that not only do they not want to intrude again, but that the very stones of the islands will rise up if they try.”

  “Yes,” Takahara agreed. “And without their knowing that the GDF or foreigners are involved.”

  As Rachel rubbed under her blind eye and tried to come up with possible solutions, Joschka began to grin, a grin that spread into a toothy, somewhat terrifying smile. “Commander, find Captain Ahkai and open a line to Dr. Fujimori, then you are dismissed.” He turned to the Japanese branch commander, “I believe that there is an elegant solution to this dilemma.”

  Rachel raised one eyebrow, but did as ordered. Soon Joschka had Dr. Fujimori on his laptop screen and Captain Ahkai standing at his shoulder. He broached his idea and waited.

  “You want to put the fear of a god into them, my lord General?” Captain Ahkai frowned,
slightly confused.

  The Austrian shook his head before smiling a touch evilly. “Not a god, Captain. Me.”

  The True-dragon—or rather, the True-dragon’s avatar—frowned for several long seconds. “I believe it could work, my lord General. If we can invoke another legend, one of the ghost stories, it should be very effective, as well as providing a nice symmetry and making Captain Ahkai’s task easier.”

  “Which ghost?”

  Ahkai’s eyes bulged a little, and she hissed, “Not the demon cat.”

  “The demon cat,” Fujimori replied.

  Joschka put the pieces together and decided that it would work perfectly. “I will take that as a yes, unless you or General Takahara find a hole I’ve overlooked,” he said. “Get started, please.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ahkai and Fujimori chorused.

  He summoned Rachel to a private meeting later that morning. “No, sir. I refuse,” she told him. “Shape shifting is not a parlor trick. It hurts, it costs enormous amounts of energy, and the humans do not need to know about it.”

  “I do not want to order you, Commander, but I will if necessary.” He sat back in his chair, steepled his fingers, and waited.

  She folded her arms. “Then I will refuse the order, my lord General, and take whatever penalty I incur.”

  Joschka needed her there, both to placate the Power and to cement the parallels to the legends. He shifted to Trader and growled, “Damn it, Rada, I’m not asking you to lead a suicide charge or to cut off your hair, I’m just asking you to shift shape long enough to scare the would-be thieves and their backers. Giant ghost cats are a staple in Japanese mythology.” He stood up, looming over her.

  Rachel held her ground. “No, sir—cultural parallels be damned. The risks of my being found out are too great. So is the pain.”

  They stared at each other, neither moving. Finally, Joschka threw up his hands and turned around, his back to her. Damn. There’s no physical way I can force her if she refuses, blast it to the ends of the galaxy. “Fine. What would it take for you to shift shape and do what I need?”