“Is this happening right now?”
Mira shook her head, eyes fixed on the basin. “No, it hasn’t changed in the last two hours. This is just the last thing I can see before he was taken beyond my sight.” Being dragged, I realized. Whatever had taken him down was slowly dragging the body off… somewhere. “Beyond your sight. Dead?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see any more. Something just… ends it.” The salt abruptly dissipated, the basin clouding over into murky water. The item in her hand dropped free, clattering across the floor. It crossed the barrier of her magic circle and came to rest against my foot. A wooden bead; I recognized it from a choker Miguel always wore.
Mira curled up again, hiding her face against her knees, and I immediately crossed the broken circle to gather her into my arms. She wrapped her arms around me and held me as tightly as she could, shaking. “Shh… You did good, baby. You did real good.”
Her skin was ice-cold. I could feel it through the thin fabric of my shirt. God, how many hours had she been sitting here, just watching that horrible image replay into infinity and holding that thread of magic as it drained her strength? And I, like a jerk, stopped to eat dinner in the kitchen first. “You shouldn’t have done this… It wasn’t worth this, baby.”
“We had t-t-to know.” One small sob shook her; then she took a deep breath to gather herself, just as I knew she would. “Are you going to tell Rosaline?”
I looked at the bowl of salted water and shook my head. “No. We don’t know that he’s dead, and… there’s no need for her to know this.” Hell, I wished Mira didn’t know it. “Come on, let’s get you to bed.”
I got her to her feet with some urging, then scooped her up into my arms. She didn’t even protest, providing evidence of the incredible exhaustion caused by her efforts. I got her tucked into the bed with some extra blankets, but she still shivered visibly. “Check on Anna p-p-please?”
In her room, Annabelle was sprawled in her big-girl bed in one of those positions only kids and cats can sleep in. I tucked her in and kissed her forehead before returning to Mira in our bedroom.
She barely stirred as I undressed and crawled into bed beside her, but the moment I was under the covers she turned to snuggle tightly against me. Her entire body was almost frozen, and I pressed her close to take advantage of my body heat. Big magic takes a lot out of you, or so I’m told. She’d be freezing and exhausted for hours.
I kissed her forehead. “Go to sleep, baby.”
She was probably asleep before the words left my mouth. I lay awake a little longer, just listening to her breathing in the dark. After a while, I could swear our hearts beat in unison. The house did its nightly creaking and groaning around us. Down the hall, I could hear Annabelle mumbling in her sleep. She gets that from me.
My big secret-probably not that well kept-was that I hated Mira’s magic. The passive spells were one thing. The protective stuff on the house, some hocuspocus on my armor, was simple stuff. It lay in wait to be triggered. But the active spells, such as the scrying she’d done tonight, drained so much out of her.
If I hadn’t come home, how long would she have held that circle closed? There were horror stories, things I’d gleaned from Ivan and others, of magical addicts, casting and casting until their life was literally drained away into their craft. I didn’t think Mira would go that far, but I worried. I never wanted her to sacrifice so much for me. I wasn’t worth it.
Regardless of what I’d seen in Mira’s salt scrying, there was nothing I could do for Miguel at this exact moment. And with a job on the horizon, I would need all the rest I could get. But oh how I dreaded sleep.
The dream came like it always does. Well, not always, but a good seventy-five percent of my nights are spent fighting old battles.
I’m not sure where I was. It was dark. It’s always dark in my dreams. Snow crunched under my boots, and I could smell pine needles. Maybe I was back with the president again, my blood draining into the soil of Camp David.
I didn’t feel injured, though, just cold. And everything was so quiet-quiet enough that I could hear the breathing to my right. The breaths were large, pumped through massive lungs. I knew those breaths. I’d felt them on my face, over my chest. And if they got that close again, the pain would follow soon after. I reached for my katana to find my hip bare. I was unarmed.
“I know you’re there.” My voice echoed as if I were inside a jar-or a cave maybe. I’d never fought underground, but who said dreams had to make sense?
I was answered by a low rumbling growl, distinctive in pitch and tone. It’s the one sound in the world that makes my guts turn to water and my legs go all quivery. I turned to keep it in front of me-or where I thought was in front of me. I couldn’t get my bearings in the all-consuming blackness.
“Just get it over with. I don’t like playing games.” It did, though. I knew it just as surely as I knew what waited out there in the dark. It would play with me, even after it got its claws on me. It would toss me in the air and bat me around like a cat with a mouse.
The growl came again from the front, but the attack came from the rear as I had known it would. Even knowing it, I couldn’t turn fast enough; I couldn’t strike hard enough. The red eyes and silver claws seemed to float from the endless night, and swept toward me in a beautiful and deadly arc. And there was nowhere for me to go when the Yeti struck home.
To my credit, I no longer lurch from bed yelling and waking the whole house up, so my eyes merely popped open, following the slow spin of the ceiling fan as my heart pounded in my ears. In her sleep, Mira snuggled close, perhaps sensing my distress, but when she found my skin sweat-soaked, she frowned faintly.
“Shhh… Sleep, baby. It’s okay.” That seemed to be all the reassurance she needed, and the creases on her brow smoothed. For my part, I lay awake for another hour, counting revolutions of the fan and waiting to see if the Yeti would pay me another visit.
The night officially sucked.
6
The cannonball landing in the middle of my bed announced dawn’s arrival. Annabelle giggled, proud of herself. “Mommy, come turn cartoons on for me!”
Keep in mind, my daughter is quite capable of manipulating the television on her own. I’m pretty sure she could program the DVR. But it is always more fun to have Mommy or Daddy do it for her.
Although she could barely keep her feet, Mira slid out of bed before I was fully awake, and my girls disappeared down the hallway. I struggled out of my short nap, intent on at least trying to help Mira with breakfast this morning.
Pulling on a pair of loose sweats, I grabbed a ratty T-shirt and shambled my way out through the kitchen. Mira’s eyes were ringed with dark circles, but she threatened me with a spatula when I tried to go near the stove. “Out. I have this.”
I debated for several long moments before relenting. If she said she was all right, then she must be all right. I kissed her gently, and then Anna, before I headed out to the backyard. The cold dew on my bare feet served to wake me up quite nicely. Of course, it was a thousand times better than the subzero midwestern winter we’d just passed, so I wasn’t about to complain.
The sun was barely up high enough to shine over our neighbor’s privacy fence, casting my long shadow across the yard. I kept my face to the light but closed my eyes as I set about going through my morning katas. It allowed me to feel the warmth as it seeped into my stiff muscles, feel the life flowing into my limbs without the distraction of sight.
I could do every kata I knew without thought, simply moving through the forms for the exercise, but that wasn’t my preference. Each gesture, each step had a purpose and a function. The graceful wave of my hand here could snap bone at speed. This step to the left would block a low kick and bring me inside an opponent’s guard. Each movement was at once beautiful and potentially lethal. Something like that should be contemplated. Before a person does something he should always have a full awareness of his capabilities and where his actions might lead.
I follow the bushido, the Japanese code of honor and conduct dating back to the thirteenth century and possibly before. The samurai believed in loyalty, frugality, mastery of oneself and one’s art, and most important, honor. You might wonder how in the world one comes to call himself a modern samurai.
Well, I wasn’t always the fine upstanding member of society you see today. I had a temper, as a child. Oh, who am I kidding? I still do. But at fifteen, it was fueled by all the usual teenage angst, the slings and arrows of a misspent youth. I traveled with a pack of like-minded degenerates and malcontents, and we left destruction and violence in our wake. I wasted more nights than I like to think about, blitzed on whatever drug we could easily get our hands on, gleefully causing mayhem in the name of whatever entitlement we felt we had. I was headed down that long road that so many travel and very few escape.
The best thing that ever happened to me was getting arrested for chucking cinder blocks through business windows. Sure, you might say I was a juvenile, and therefore pretty much untouchable, but you didn’t grow up in my little Missouri town. They still believed in straps behind the woodshed back then.
There was no getting out of it. The cops caught me red-handed while my supposed friends bailed out over the back fence. I remember standing there in the flashing blue lights, fists clenched, ready to take on the world simply because it existed. These days, a kid like that would get shot, but I grew up in a different time. It probably saved my life.
The second-best thing to happen was coming before Judge Carter, a staunch advocate of alternative punishments. It was his idea to stick me in a court-mandated martial arts class, saying it would teach me discipline and control. (His opponents insisted it would teach me only a more efficient way to cause havoc, and he retired under pressure shortly thereafter. I still send him a Christmas card every year.)
I hated him, at the time. I hated the class. I hated the sensei, and all the other clean-cut, bright-eyed students. I sulked my way through, feeling they were lucky I even showed up. Any effort on my part was just gravy.
While I would like to tell you there was a tiny little Asian man in my life, a Mr. Miyagi to set me on my path, there wasn’t. Instead, I had Carl. Carl Bledsoe was as large and as black as they come. As a teenager, I had to crane my neck upward to look into his face, and he seemed an immovable mountain of solid obsidian. As an adult, I still do, and he still is. Every once in a while, I go spar with him and get my ass handed to me. I’m getting closer to beating him, though. Maybe someday I will, when he’s old and in a wheelchair or something. (Hell, he’ll probably just run over my spine with it.)
He worked out in a cut-off sweatshirt and Gi pants, his thighs as big around as my waist, and his biceps bulging like cantaloupes about to burst. Back then, I had no doubt in my mind that he could squash me like a bug and laugh while doing it. He told me so himself. Trust me-he cut me no slack. If I wasn’t on the ball, I paid for it. But amidst the sparring and the humiliation, he would also spout sayings and ruminations that sounded really cool, things I’d never heard in my sleepy redneck town. He would say, “For a warrior whose duty it is to restrain brigandage, it will not do to act like a brigand yourself.” I even went and looked up brigand, just to see what it meant. I liked the idea of being a warrior instead of a punk kid.
I was way too cool at the time to admit I was intrigued, of course, so I mocked Carl and called him some names I refuse to repeat now. But I remembered everything he said, and I wondered where he’d learned it.
One day, after my usual halfhearted efforts, he tossed me a video as I headed out the door.
“What the hell is this?” I wrinkled my nose, turning the case over in my hands. It was some old black-and-white movie, and I sneered.
“Kurosawa. The Seven Samurai. Watch it. It’s in Japanese, but it has subtitles.”
“You give me a movie, then expect me to read?”
He grinned, white teeth flashing against his ebon skin. “Trust me.”
I watched it, just so I could tell him how lame and stupid it was. Then I watched it again. After about the fifth viewing, I knew parts of it by heart. My favorite scene involved the samurai who masqueraded as a monk to disarm an enemy with his bare hands. My mom told me The Magnificent Seven was based on it, so I had her rent that and watched it, too. It wasn’t as good, in my opinion, but I could see the parallels between the two movies, the themes that carried over. Here were men with honor, who used their powers for good (so to speak). I was fascinated.
When I took the movie back to Carl at my next weekly class, I felt so educated and worldly. After all, I’d watched a foreign film! Carl quickly proved me wrong.
“If you want to truly understand bushido, and the way of the samurai, you have to read-a lot. Samurai were educated men, not just trained thugs.”
The first book he gave me was Hagakure. He quizzed me over it as we sparred, forcing me to use my mind and my body at once. I can honestly say, I got so caught up in learning about this foreign and exotic culture, I forgot to be a hoodlum.
Once we moved past hand-to-hand techniques and on to weapons training, he gave me The Book of Five Rings, and my studies continued. They still continue. Every time someone comes out with a new translation of one of the classic texts, I’m there. Sometimes, someone even writes something new, relating bushido to modern life. Countless businesses cite it in their ideals, alongside Sun Tzu’s Art of War.
I admire people who try to keep the code. Honor and duty are fairly good concepts, no matter what credo you maintain. But I am the only practicing samurai I know. Even Carl can’t say he ever used his training in actual combat.
The world has changed a lot since the days of the samurai. The rules have changed. So what does being a samurai mean for some gangly white boy in today’s modern America? It means when in a darkened parking lot, the samurai takes the extra moment to see that a young woman gets to her car safely. It means he watches a lost child until her mother returns for a tearful reunion. It means he sees to it that the local vandals are caught and prosecuted. Yeah, the neighborhood watch took on a whole new meaning when I moved into the area.
I still study the notable names of Japanese bushido. Every day, I choose some quote or teaching to meditate on, most lately revisiting the works of Miyamoto Musashi and his Book of Five Rings. I practice battojutsu, the art of drawing and sheathing a sword. Don’t laugh; it’s harder than you think. I practice kendo and jujitsu, both for combat and for exercise. I also practice down-and-out redneck brawling. It’s the one thing enemies never seem to expect from someone they view as a trained combatant.
But most important, I practice honor. All I want is for my little girl to say, “My father was an honorable man.” I’ve seen people aspire to less.
For nearly two hours, I put my body through the rigors of my own training, as well as the physical therapy assigned by my doctor. I stretched to cool down, feeling the scar tissue down my left side pull slightly. After almost four years, it rarely bothered me anymore. No one could guess that something had tried to carve my heart out through my rib cage.
My left hip was aching when I finally sat down to meditate, and the angry muscles in my right calf were twitching spasmodically. Neither had healed as I would have liked. I was lucky to still have the right leg at all. I had never dreamed that the Scuttle could inject poison through its legs, too, so it hadn’t occurred to me to negotiate around it. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
I cleared my mind, moving past the pain to a place of peace, and focused on my breathing. The sun was higher, beaming over my bare shoulders. It promised to be the first truly hot day we’d had this year. Spring was nearly over, brief as it was.
My quote for the day came again from the Hagakure. “There is a way of bringing up the child of a samurai. From the time of infancy one should encourage bravery and avoid trivially frightening or teasing the child.” I thought on that quote a lot-pretty much every time I looked at Anna. Yamamoto said that parents sh
ouldn’t make their child afraid of the lightning, or dark places, because cowardice was a lifetime scar. But I knew what was waiting in those dark places, and I had a hard time coming up with a justification to leave my daughter ignorant. Granted, at five, she was too little to understand. But when she was older, if I was still around, what would I tell her? I had yet to figure out the answer.
I don’t know how long I’d been sitting in meditation, working the white river pebbles between my fingers, when I heard the scrabbling of claws on stone. I opened my eyes to find a bold squirrel sitting atop a rock not three feet from me. It looked to be a healthy little thing, all fat and sassy, with slick red fur and gleaming button eyes.
I tilted my head to the left. It mimicked the movement. I tilted my head to the right; it did the same. With a sigh, I raised my right hand and flipped it the bird. It repeated the gesture and burst into little rodent snickers. I threw one of the stones at it, and it ducked.
“What do you want, Axel?” My peaceful meditation was officially over.
“Just paying my usual morning visit.” The squirrel scampered off the rock and zipped over to perch on my water bottle, guaranteeing I wasn’t going to reach for it. “I hear you’re working from home this week.”
The first time I’d seen this trick pulled, I’d expected it to speak in squeaks, like the cartoon chipmunks. Instead, the squirrel’s voice was a pleasant tenor and sounded too much like my own. It was creepy. With a groan, I pushed myself to my feet. “I have a client in town, yes.”
“Any chance you’re wanting an edge? A little boost to put that victory in the bag?” The creature’s eyes gleamed an unnatural red for just a moment. “Just a little wiggle of the fingers, a little mojo extraordinaire, and you can be the demon hunter you’ve always wanted to be.”
“Shame on you, Axel. Selling out one of your own?” The eerie little creature followed me as I grabbed my T-shirt off the patio table and pulled it on. A glance through the glass door told me Mira and Anna had disappeared into the depths of the house, and I placed myself where they couldn’t see the possessed squirrel if they came back to the kitchen. There are things I’m just not ready to explain to Anna.
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