Eight Million Gods

by Wen Spencer

  They were in her story. They were her characters. Could she actually write a scene from their perspective? It was a scary idea; it meant she could possibly crawl into anyone’s head that crossed her path and know what they were thinking and what would happen to them in the future.

  Could she push her power to include anyone?

  She sat back up, pen and notebook in hand. Chevalier had been lead agent, so where did he take his team?

  Because Chevalier was Impenetrable, people often thought he was imperceptive and insensitive, too. But he was a Frenchman, and so, when it came to love, he saw things perfectly clear.

  Mister Pussycat was in love.

  Chevalier found it endlessly amusing. He sauntered through the ancient streets of Izushi, retracing his steps to his car, grinning hugely.

  Secretly he liked cats. Perhaps it was because the French were like cats. They did what they wanted and didn’t care if it pissed people off. If a cat didn’t like you, it left. Dogs wouldn’t leave. They had to come over, see what you were doing, and usually decided you needed to be chased off, especially if you were Impenetrable. Big dogs bit. Little dogs barked, barked, barked and waited for your back to be turned, and then bit. He hated dogs.

  Just because cats didn’t care what you did as long as you left them alone, it didn’t mean that they weren’t loyal. Others thought Simon’s fierce kitten was dangerous, but it was clear to Chevalier from day one that Leo’s sun and moon circled around his adopted father. Nothing got the little tomcat growling and hissing more than something threatening Simon. Chevalier used to take pokes just to get him to spit; teasing him had gotten to be a dangerous habit, though.

  So, yes, secretly, he actually liked Leo. He had been worried that their kitten was going to go rogue after Simon vanished. But Leo was in love with a strong Sensitive. And, more importantly, the girl obviously loved him back, and that changed everything.

  Sato was waiting by the car. By the lack of emotion on his face, the Talent was clearly upset. The man was a clam; the more vulnerable he felt, the more he withdrew into himself. It was only by years of association that Chevalier had learned to read him.

  “You’re just leaving him?” Sato’s tone suggested that he didn’t care one way or the other, which meant he cared very much indeed.

  “We’re going to go kick some pretty-boy butt at a club called Kiss Kiss in Dontonbori.” He opened his car door but didn’t get in. In a mood like this, Sato probably would just stay standing on the curb. “There will be pretty boys for me to smack around. Yakuza for Mister Pussycat to bloody. Tanuki for you to vanish into thin air. It will be fun. Come on. Get in.”

  “You’re going to attack a human nightclub based on what he says? Without checking that what he claims is true?”

  Chevalier stood tapping on the roof of the car. He had planned on going without double-checking. He trusted Leo to move the world to find Simon. But there was the girl—her motivations were unknown—and a boy in love is easily swayed. God knows, the boy wasn’t experienced in the dangers of romance. It was possible that it wasn’t even the girl that was moving the pieces on the chessboard, but the god of the sword.

  Sato stood unmovable on the sidewalk. “You know what Ananth will ask if you call in and tell him where we’re going.”

  Yes, Chevalier did. He checked his watch. They still had time before they needed to check in. He rapped twice on the roof. “We’ll check it out.”

  So off across the torn earth of the dam construction they went, the noise of the bulldozers deafening close up. Five minutes of walking from there, they reached an abandoned farmhouse. It was a seedy old place where obviously the owner had spiraled downward before dying without anyone remaining who cared to clear out the space.

  Sato walked through it and out into the overgrown garden beyond. There was a muddy track that led up a hill. The prints of Leo’s boots and the girl’s small tennis shoes went out and returned. Without even glancing down at the footprints, Sato led the way. Dusk was starting to gather in the far eastern sky.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Chevalier asked.

  Sato stopped and nodded. “Yes, I know.” He turned and shot Chevalier. “I’ve known for two months now.” Sato stepped over Chevalier’s body and started back toward the car. “But that damn cat just made a mess of things.”

  Nikki jerked to a stop, dropping her pen and staring at the notebook in horror. She hadn’t written of the bullets hitting Chevalier and the moment of incredible betrayal he felt as he died. He’d known that Sato was dangerous, but after years of working together, in a vague way, he thought they were a team. Friends. A thousand tiny freedoms he’d given Sato in the name of that friendship, all suddenly used against him.

  She snatched up the pen, clicking it rapidly as she realized that Sato had stopped Chevalier from calling Shiva until they could “double check” Leo’s story. He didn’t want Shiva to go to the Kiss Kiss club and find out where Iwanaga was holding Simon. He’d probably been part of the Shiva search for Simon. Judging by his last comment, he’d found Simon and Iwanaga months ago and hidden them away from Shiva. Since he’d been familiar with the farmhouse, he had probably found the shrine that Leo had missed and then tracked down Kenichi, just like Nikki had. Only he had erased all the evidence in the process.

  “Oh, this is bad!”

  Sato had killed Chevalier to stop Leo from rescuing Simon. He knew that Shiva would go after Leo when Chevalier didn’t check in. Shiva only had to track Leo’s phone to find . . .

  “Oh! Oh!” The first time she called Leo, he arrived minutes later at the Osaka Castle, and yet they were attacked almost instantly by tanuki. After Harada’s attack, Atsumori’s kidnapping her and the weirdness at Inari’s shrine, she had taken the inexplicable assault for granted. Leo probably assumed that the tanuki had followed her, but she’d been at the castle for hours. She was filled with sudden certainty that Sato had found a way to monitor Leo’s calls, just in case Leo found the katana.

  She remembered when she tried to call Leo from the love hotel, the horrible sense that she had reached out and touched evil. The call hadn’t gone through to Leo, but it had connected to someone. Something.

  Shiva had been subverted by one of their own monsters.

  No wonder Iwanaga Hime was being so successful at quietly gathering power when Kenichi hadn’t been providing any information and limited cooperation. Sato had spent years cleaning up messes for Shiva; he put all that he’d learned to use for Iwanaga.

  The question was, what did Sato want out of the deal?

  Nikki picked up her notebook. Time to find out.

  “There’s a plane, Grandpa.”

  The newly repaired watch in Denjiro Sato’s hands read 8:10. Breakfast, his own included, from a dozen kitchens scented the air. The cicadas were starting to stir with the heat of the summer day, threatening to drown out the radio playing softly on the shelf behind him. His four-year-old granddaughter was standing across the street at the river’s edge, pointing toward the sky over the distant Aioi Bridge.

  “A plane?” Planes weren’t unusual; Hiroshima had a number of military camps after all.

  “It’s high up.”

  Which meant it was an American bomber, because the Japanese planes couldn’t fly so high.

  “Just one?” There had been another plane earlier, cruising high overhead. It had sent them scurrying toward the air-raid shelters, but that had proven to be a false alarm. The all clear had come before they scrambled from bed, gathered up the baby, and reached the shelter. Maybe this was the same plane, returning. They’d heard stories of other cities being carpeted with bombs, of firestorms razing neighborhoods, buildings going up like tinder wood. So far, Hiroshima had been blessed; not a bomb had been dropped on it.

  “Just one plane, Grandpa. It’s so high; it’s tiny—like a toy.”

  He ducked into their kitchen that was off his workshop. His daughter Kayo was frantically assembling breakfast on the table in the small di
nning room beyond the kitchen.

  “There’s a plane . . .” he said.

  “Breakfast is done.” Kayo brushed past him carrying the rice. “It’s just one plane. They haven’t sounded the siren. And if they do, it will be a false alarm like earlier. I’m going to be late for work.”

  So like his wife. She never let anything scare her, not even his unnatural ability to mend anything. He was not so sure, though, that there was nothing to fear. He had already lost his son and son-in-law. What was here in this house was everything dear to him. One direct hit could destroy it all. He wavered in the doorway, heart leaping in his chest like a fish on the line. Surely the Americans would send more than one plane to bomb a city. But what did he know of planes? He had been born in a time before men even thought of flinging themselves through the sky in metal cans.

  “Rieko!” Kayo called to his granddaughter. “Come! Eat!”

  And his granddaughter was much like her mother. “I’m watching the plane.”

  From his blanket on the floor, his grandson started to fuss. Kayo made a small cry of exasperation and gave Sato an imploring look.

  “I will get her.” He hurried out of his workshop. The street was full of people heading to work. He scanned the sky as he wove his way through the crowd to the river’s edge. The one plane was up so high, it was just a dot in the sky. It was turning in a hard circle that would lead it back to the sea.

  “See it, Grandpa?”

  “I see it.” He gasped as something came falling into view. A single black teardrop of death. It was going to hit near them. “Oh no! Reiko! Run! Run to the shelter!”

  He started to reach for Reiko, and there was a massive, brilliant flash of light. It seemed as if he’d been dropped into the heart of the sun. Light sheered through him and a second later, a burning hot hand slapped him into unconsciousness with the roar of a thousand dragons.

  He came back to awareness in burning rubble. Night seemed to have fallen until he realized that a great cloud filled the sky, blocking the sun. All around him was nothing but broken, burning rubble. It was as if, in one instant, the entire city been smashed to nothing. There was a low crackle and growl of fire all around. Otherwise, the world was eerily silent.

  “Reiko?” He tried to get up and gasped in pain. His right leg was pinned under a heavy piece of wood. He couldn’t even guess where it had come from; it seemed to be a rafter from a house, but he was down by the river, twenty feet from any building. He struggled to push it off him. “Reiko? Where are you, Reiko?”

  He didn’t have the strength to push the timber. Each time he shifted it, pain shot through his leg. Old-man strength. Old-man fragile bones. He cried in frustration and fear. What had happened to Reiko? She had been beside him. All around him was a mad confusion of broken lumber, roofing tiles, and bicycles. Flames licked on the wood, found it dry with summer heat, and leaped higher.

  The thin wail of an infant rose from the wreckage, and his heart lurched as he realized that he couldn’t tell where his house had been standing. The confusing jumble of broken timbers continued as far as the eye could see in the unnatural darkness. Was that his grandson crying? Where was his daughter?

  As if drawn by the baby’s cry, the fire reached out with questing fingers.

  “Kayo!”

  He needed to get the timber off his leg.

  He tangled his fingers in the spiderweb of possibilities and yanked hard. He screamed as the pain became unbearable. He was aware of the timber slipping back along the path that had brought it to him, a thousand splinters and shards leaping up and tunneling back to what was to reform the Fujii’s house halfway down the block. The house stood seemingly untouched, a sole upright building in a sea of shattered houses.

  The leg underneath was a massive wound, gushing blood. He clamped a hand on the wound, suddenly aware of the fine mesh of possibilities. He’d never noticed them on humans before. Head swimming, he pulled on the lines. The blood seeped back into the wound, the flesh merged back together, and his trousers mended.

  He stumbled to his feet, vision blurring and pain like a knife cutting into his skull. “Kayo!”

  “Papa!” His daughter’s voice came from the wreckage, trembling with fear. “The fire is coming closer. Papa! Help me! I can’t move! Papa!”

  Darkness surged in, and the last thing he heard was his daughter screaming as the fire consumed her and his grandson.

  Nikki stared at her careful neat handwriting in confusion. She’d written several scenes from Kayo’s point of view, mystified as to how the events of World War II were going to affect her novel. The bombing had happened on August 6, 1945. Kayo’s father had been an elderly man in his seventies, having outlived his wife and various younger siblings.

  How could this be the Sato that Nikki had met? It had been impossible to judge the age of the man at Izushi. He could have been anywhere from his early thirties to well-preserved late forties, but he certainly hadn’t been in his seventies, or nearly a hundred and forty.

  But what if he somehow reversed his age in his desperate attempt to heal himself so he could save his daughter? What if he was the same man who had lost everything that day? Daughter. Grandchildren. Home. Business.

  The entire city blasted away in a blink of an eye.

  She had wanted to know what Sato planned. It was terrifying to think that this was the answer.

  She had to contact Shiva and let them know that Leo hadn’t killed Chevalier and that Sato was planning something awful.

  30

  Needle in a Haystack

  Simon was younger than Nikki had expected. Even with his face pale and etched with exhaustion, he seemed only in his mid-thirties. He must have been only in his early twenties when he’d adopted Leo. He was tall, lean, and fair-haired with laugh lines at the corners of his mouth and eyes. Despite weeks of imprisonment, he was clean-shaven and well-groomed. Iwanaga apparently did not want to appear disheveled when she was hosted in his body.

  Nikki shifted the katana to one side and knelt beside the sleeping man. She had never seen anyone look so fragile before. The hotel room and the garage had been full of shadows and fear, otherwise she would have never been so cavalier about sticking him into the trunk of the sports car. If she had seen him clearly, she would have taken him straight to the hospital.

  But then Shiva would have been alerted and Sato’s people might have arrived first. Trying hard to believe she was doing the right thing, she tentatively shook Simon by the shoulder. “Simon. Simon. Wake up.”

  His eyes flickered as he awakened. He shifted, moving as if he was trying to sit up.

  Atsumori flooded into her, snatched up his katana, and had the blade to Simon’s throat.

  “What are you doing?” Nikki cried. “Stop that!”

  “He was going to hurt you,” Atsumori said.

  “I don’t care. What the hell would I tell Leo? Good news is I found your dad, the bad news is I killed him?” She struggled a moment to lower her hand. “Atsumori, back off!”

  “You’re greatly overestimating my ability at the moment,” Simon said quietly. “I might have planned on attacking, but I don’t think I can move.”

  Atsumori eased back cautiously and then loosed his hold on her body.

  “I told you not to do that,” Nikki growled, shaking away the feel of him on her.

  “I am sorry, Nikki-chan,” Atsumori’s voice murmured from somewhere behind her.

  Simon gazed over her shoulder, eyes narrowing. “I don’t know you.” He shifted his gaze to Nikki. “Either of you.”

  She glanced behind her. Atsumori stood watching tensely, fully visible and not looking apologetic at all. She glared at him and turned back to Simon. “Yeah, we got into this game late. Long, complicated story, but here are the important parts: Sato is working with Iwanaga Hime. She’s the goddess that has been holding you captive. He killed Chevalier and framed Leo. Shiva hit Leo with a car and locked him in a cage—somewhere. Sato and Iwanaga are planning something real
ly, really big, and it’s going to be bad.”

  “Sato.” Simon gasped as if he’d been handed a piece of a puzzle. “Of course.”

  “Huh?”

  Simon lifted his hand as if it weighed a hundred pounds and dragged it over his face. “He’s been drifting on the edge of my awareness. I knew there was something tugging at me, like a song played so faintly that you can barely hear it, and yet the chords are so familiar that you still recognize it. Sato has been meeting with Iwanaga. I think he’s the reason I’m still alive; she would have worn me out weeks ago otherwise.”

  Apparently Sato could extend his ability to heal.

  Simon’s eyes drifted shut, and his breathing deepened.

  “No! No!” she cried, shaking him again. “Don’t go back to sleep!”

  Across the room, Miriam bolted into a sitting position with a gasp. She looked around, confused by her surroundings. “Where the hell . . . ? Oh, Pixii’s place.”

  Nikki waved her to silence as Simon’s eyes fluttered open. “Simon, we need to save Leo, but I don’t know how.”

  “Call Ananth,” Simon whispered. “Tell him that Iwanaga Hime is looking for Amenonuboko.”

  Across the room, Miriam cried, “She’s what?”

  Nikki waved harder as Simon closed his eyes again. “Oh shit! Simon!”

  “He is very fragile still, Nikki-chan. It would be best to let him rest.”

  Nikki wanted a pen.

  No, she didn’t want a pen. She was afraid of whatever else she might write that was utterly, horrifically true, and that she was way too late to change.

  What she wanted was to grab Simon and shake him until he coughed up the location of all the Shiva strongholds. In the world. With detailed drawings of how to infiltrate them to the detention block.

  She suspected that she’d kill the man if she shook him at this point.

  She might be able to choose Ananth as a character and narrow down his phone number like she had with Leo, but the moment she dialed in, whatever mechanism Sato had in place would be screening the call and running interference. So much she didn’t know.