Eight Million Gods-eARC (25 page)

Chevalier eyed her with puzzlement and mild concern. He seemed genuinely concerned that the nice little girl was sitting and eating with a monster.

Sato shifted his gaze from Leo to Nikki and back. It reminded her of the countless times doctors had considered her, face impassive, weighing her possible sanity, her mother’s influence, and their own needs and convictions. They were always the ones who bowed to her mother’s wishes.

“Who is this?” Sato said.

“I’m Natasha Deming.” Nikki said the first lie that came to mind. All Leo’s strengths aside, he was apparently not a glib liar. “I’m an art student at the Osaka University of Arts. I’m studying manga creation under Kazuo Koike.”

Leo glanced at her with surprise and slight alarm. “We found out what happened to my father. There’s a shrine on the hill behind one of the abandoned farmhouses. There are signs that something was sealed there under a rock like a
namazu,
but all the wards are broken. Simon got too close to something powerful, and it took him.”

Some emotion was smoothed off Sato’s face before Nikki could identify it. He drifted backwards, as if putting distance between him and Leo.

“Such devotion,” Chevalier said. “Sato, if I go missing, will you search for me so diligently?”

“I would leave you in whatever hole you fell in,” Sato said.

Chevalier grinned at this as if it were a joke.

Sato hit the doorway and said quietly, “She’s not fully human.”

Chevalier’s eyes widened with surprise, but he was instantly on his feet. “She’s not?”

Leo growled a deep rumbling menace. “She’s not dangerous. She’s helping me find my father.”

“What is she?” Sato said.

Nikki opened her mouth to spin out a lie, and Atsumori said, “She is harmless. I am the one that you can sense. I am Taira no Atsumori Kami.” He gave a slight nod of her head, a suggestion of a bow, and brought up the
katana
so that it was visible to the two men. “I have business in Osaka I wish to attend to.”

“Oh hell,” Nikki hissed. “I told you not to do that.”

“He is dangerous,” Atsumori said. “And the other is solid granite.”

“For the love of God, will you let me deal with this?”

“I thought—” Atsumori started.

“No, you did not think,” Nikki snapped. “Just—just—just let me do the talking.”

Chevalier whispered “
Merde
” and took three steps back. Weirdly, even though Nikki didn’t know French, she understood he had just said “shit.” It made her realize that the entire conversation so far had been in Japanese. Apparently it was some god superpower to speak all languages.

“They’re cooperating?” Sato asked.

“He’s benign.” Leo moved sideways to stand between Nikki and the men. “He’s only involved because his
shintai
was stolen by the American, Gregory Winston.”

Sato turned his gaze to the Frenchman.

Chevalier gave a bitter laugh. He pulled a slender metal case out of his suit pocket and selected a dark-papered cigarillo. “Let the muscle take the sword?”

“It is your job,” Sato said.

Chevalier grunted. He put the cigarillo into his mouth to dangle there. “Getting the sword would be easy. Doing it without hurting the girl, would be difficult. Personally, I don’t see the need.”

“Protocol is . . .” Sato started.

“ . . . determined by the lead agent,” Chevalier finished. “Mister Pussycat was told to find the
katana
, and he did. He is in Izushi, as he claimed, and he has a lead on his father, who is a useful agent. This is all—how do the Americans say? Win. Win.”

Sato gazed coldly at Chevalier for a moment and then stalked away.

“Well, that put him in a snit,” Chevalier murmured and lit his cigarillo.

Leo took out his wallet and threw money onto the table. “I think whatever is riding my father is behind the raids on the various shrines we’ve been investigating. The
kami
is seeking a
shintai
strong enough to hold it. It’s using
tanuki
to do its legwork. There is a good chance my father is alive if it’s being careful with him.”

Chevalier nodded. “Do you know where it is now?”

“I think it’s in Osaka.” Leo obviously didn’t want to explain why. “We were about to head there.”

Chevalier glanced to Nikki, one eyebrow raised in question. “You’re going after one
kami
with another in tow? Not the most brilliant of plans.”

“I’m not leaving her with you.”

Chevalier grinned with delight. “Oh, Mister Pussycat wants all the sweet cream for himself.”

Leo rumbled with annoyance that only made Chevalier grin wider.

Nikki blushed hot and stalked out of the restaurant. Once safe beyond the doorway, and sure that Sato wasn’t in sight, she quickly shouldered the
katana
and dug out a pen.

In the noodle shop behind her, she heard Chevalier laugh and say, “I will get Sato and meet you in Osaka. Even you should not try to face a
kami
and a pack of
tanuki
by yourself.”

She fled toward the
onsen,
face still burning with embarrassment, clicking her pen. They had kept Chevalier and Sato from knowing about her writing, but they knew that Atsumori could easily possess her. Shiva would be after Natasha Deming, but how long would it take for them to realize that Natasha didn’t exist? Hours? Minutes? Any idiot could guess that the American girl with the sword was Nikki if Natasha didn’t exist.

Chevalier, though, seemed to be perfectly happy to label her as a “good monster.” Having Shiva know about her might not be the disaster that Leo painted it. Certainly Leo and Sato seem to be waltzing around Japan without strings attached.

Her mother, though, wanted her locked up and tied down. And her mother was in Japan.

Leo appeared beside her, silent as a cat. “Are you okay?”

She considered telling him the truth, but would he understand? He loved his foster father; could he understand that she wanted nothing to do with her mother? “I’m scared,” felt safe to admit. Any sane person would be scared by now.

He went still beside her. After a moment, he took a deep breath and murmured, “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

It would be more comforting if her mother didn’t often say the same kind of thing.

She trusted him—perhaps more than she should. What did she really know about him? That he had been a scared little boy nearly twenty years ago? That his foster father loved him? She wasn’t even sure love moved him to find Simon, let alone how he felt about her.

“I need to—” Surely to him she could confess that she sometimes had to write. He would understand that she wasn’t crazy. Wouldn’t he? But she wasn’t sure. “I need to take a bath before we take off—since I’m not sure when I’ll be able to take another.”

He nodded without looking at her. Only after he walked her to the hotel room did it occur to her that he must be impatient to get going. Still, he didn’t complain, only stoically said, “I’ll be waiting by the car.”

She bathed as quickly as she could.
I didn’t lie
, she thought as guilt squirmed around in her stomach.
I don’t know when my next shower will be
.
The god isn’t going to hurt Simon—he’s too important to her.

The need to write was so strong that Nikki was shaking as she pulled on the last of her clean clothes.
Oh God, don’t let Leo come in and find me like this, shaking like a junkie needing a fix.
Kneeling over her open suitcase, she flipped open her notebook and flicked the ballpoint pen. She breathed out in relief as the point touched paper and bled out ink.

She’d just write a little bit, enough to take the edge off her need. One scene and she’d be sane enough to deal with rampaging gods, tattooed
yakuza,
and her controlling mother. She still had her normal resources plus her freaky new power, a boy god, and Leo. Of course, she didn’t know how Leo felt about her. Sometimes she thought that he liked her, but other times it was like he couldn’t stand to be around her. Not that she wasn’t used to it; every guy she ever liked would get all interested until they got to know her, read something that she wrote. She started not showing her writing to her boyfriends, and finally not even telling them that she wrote at all. It was like being a drug addict, constantly trying to hide how addicted they were. Leo would just be the latest guy that would be totally creeped out by what she wrote. Hell, he had more cause than any of the others, because he knew it was real.

She had her eyes closed, her headphones on, and was dancing to something on her iPod, and he was trying not to watch. Her shirt had ridden up as she slowly swayed her hips, showing the softness of her stomach.

She opened her eyes and caught him watching and blushed with embarrassment. “I love this song,” she said shyly.

“What is it?” he asked.

She surprised him by taking one of the buds from her ear and stepping close. She brushed back his hair and put the bud into his ear. It was a slow love ballad about golden fields of barley. She stood so close he could feel the warmth of her body nearly touching his. Every breath, he drew in her scent. She closed her eyes again, swaying to the slow beat.

“Will you stay with me, will you be my love, among the fields of barley,” She sang, eyes closed, oblivious of him. “We’ll forget the sun in his jealous sky, as we lie in fields of gold.”

He could imagine her lying in golden barley, her hair fanned out, her stomach bared to his kisses. He wanted to touch her. Hold her. She trusted him, though, and he would do nothing to endanger that fragile state.

Far too soon, the song was over, and he reluctantly handed back her earphone.

“Did you like it?” She was blushing again.

“Yes.”

She smiled shyly and moved away, taking his heart with her.

“Wow.” Nikki stared at the notebook. She had played him the song that morning, and he’d been all still and quiet, like he hadn’t liked the song. Afterwards he had gotten all weird, but he was majorly digging on her. “Oh, wow.”

She closed up the notebook, feeling all fluttery and warm inside. She had written love scenes countless times before, but it was the first time that she was the focus. It was like a rush of a very good drug. It scared her slightly.

When she was younger, before the doctors had started prescribing drugs that she avoided taking, and the hospitals, where she had to be oh so tricky to keep from being medicated, she had written about a character addicted to heroin. It was slowly killing the woman, and she knew it, but she’d been helpless to stop. Everything paled to the wonderful bloom of euphoria as the drug kicked in. The sense of helplessness had etched so deep into Nikki’s psyche that when she first felt that same warm rush, she had done everything humanly possible to flee it.

Surely love wasn’t the same.

Dusk was gathering in the shadows as the color bled from the sky.

Leo was sitting on the stone wall, stray cats arrayed around him like a bored harem. The kitten played with his boot laces.

He’s into you
, she thought for courage. She walked down to the wall. The stray cats watched her coming as if she were enemy aircraft.
He knows all about how freaky you are, and still he’s interested.

He glanced back at her, his face poker calm as always, and she faltered.

Maybe he just wants sex
. Men are like that.
They see a girl that’s not too fat and with a cute smile and blond hair and they think with their dicks.
God knows, she’d written one or two like that.

“Hey,” he rumbled in his deliciously deep voice.

She gave him a little wave and felt all of twelve. “Hi.” She sat down beside him, deliberately getting as close as her courage allowed. At that moment, it translated to a six-inch space between them.

As usual he had nothing immediately to say to her. She always took that to mean he didn’t like her enough to talk to her. As they sat in silence, she wished she had the scene in her hands, so she could read the words again, and know for sure. He hadn’t used the “love” word, but surely he’d meant it by saying she that she’d taken his heart.

She didn’t want to consider that he was the type that confused lust with love. But once she let the thought in, it took root. What if he just found her sexy and mistook that interest for love? Could she live with that? She peeked at his rugged profile. There was an old scar on his jawbone, near his right ear. It served to remind her that she barely knew him.

Did she love him? In all that warm fluttering rush, she hadn’t stopped to think about that. If they were about to start throwing the L-word around, shouldn’t she start with herself? Oh, the found-money feeling of unexpected love was great and wonderful until she realized she had to dig into her wallet and fork over a matching amount.

She dropped her gaze to his strong hand just inches from hers. It would be easy to cast caution aside and take his hand. There weren’t any fields of barley handy. There was the
onsen
room, already paid for, and Atsumori. And no birth control to speak of.

And no, she really didn’t want to just have sex after feeling the rush of knowing he might love her. She wanted it to be real. For both of them.

“We should get going,” he said.

She nodded. “Yes, we should.”

21

War Preparations

With her laptop, all her notebooks, a fistfull of colored pens, a bottle of Coke, a box of Meiji chocolate-covered almonds, a brand-new multicolor pad of Post-it Notes, and a kitten chewing on her shoelaces, Nikki was going to war. She wanted Leo to have all the data she could write down in the three hours it took to get to Osaka. With notebooks and laptop balanced on her lap, it was easy to use it as an excuse to keep her arm near the stick shift so that Leo brushed her hand every time he shifted.

Unfortunately, it was distracting as hell. She struggled to keep her mind on the problem at hand. “I believe that this god is the main storyline of my novel. When I write a novel, there’s all these characters scattered about, sometimes never intersecting, with the exception of the one event that touches all of them. One disaster—actually.”