Eight Million Gods-eARC (31 page)

It was telling that despite looking terrified of Nikki, Kenichi trapped himself in the tiny elevator with her instead of staying behind.

“What’s a
jorogumo?
” Nikki whispered. A loud bang echoed down the elevator shaft as something hit the club’s lobby doors.

“
Yokai,
” Atsumori said unhelpfully. “A man eater. Very dangerous.”

“
Jorogumo
translates as “binding bride” or “spider whore”—depending on what kanji is used,” Miriam explained completely. “It’s a
yokai
that can take the shape of a beautiful woman, but its true form is a giant spider. And yes, it eats men that it traps.”

“This does not bode well,” Atsumori said. “Iwanaga Hime must have promised something dear to have gathered this many
yokai
who are willing to serve her.”

27

Night at the Imperial

Kenichi fled the first chance he could. He unchained his bicycle and paused only long enough to say, “Come with me to Tokyo.” When Miriam shook her head, he rode off without another word.

Atsumori muttered darkly about the cowardice of whores as Nikki and Miriam ran through the nearly deserted streets.

“You just hacked three men to pieces in front of him.” Nikki felt responsible for the betrayal of Miriam’s heart. She had written the scene that made Miriam fall in love with Kenichi.

“They were
tanuki.
” Atsumori missed the point entirely.

“They looked like men to him.” She understood the fear that moved Kenichi. If things were slightly different, she’d be heading to Tokyo, too. She’d spent a lifetime being made helpless; the
katana
was the only thing that was allowing her to believe she could actually help someone else.

Atsumori snorted with contempt. “Kenichi knew they weren’t men.”

“We’re probably being chased by a giant
geisha
spider,” Nikki pointed out. A fact that had her jumping at odd shadows.

“They are web-hunters,” Atsumori said calmly. “She will not chase us out into the open.”

“She won’t?” Miriam stopped running. “Good.”

“Kenichi knows that there are probably more
tanuki
with the goddess.” Nikki winced as the statement felt very true.

“He’s not going to understand.” Miriam turned in a circle, getting her bearings, and then set off in a purposeful walk.

Nikki lost track of who “he” might be. “Kenichi?”

“Taira no Atsumori!” Miriam used the Kami’s full name. “The Genpei War was between the Minamoto and the Taira—both clans were descendants of imperial family members who been demoted to the rank of samurai. One of the Minamoto Clan allies was the great warrior Kumagai Naozane.”

“What?” Nikki wasn’t sure why Miriam was suddenly giving her a lesson on ancient Japan. “Where are we going?”

“You said that Leo drove his car to Dontonbori and parked it close to the Platea Dontonbori Hotel Gloria.”

“Yes, the hotel with the goofy head statues.”

“We’re going to rescue a man who is nearly dead and currently tied up. A car would be useful for a quick getaway. I don’t really want to try to carry him around on our shoulders through the subway. Especially if we’re being chased.”

“Oh, good point.”

“Anyway, before the battle of Ichi-no-Tani, Kumagai heard the sound of a flute being played in the enemy camp. He had been impressed at how refined the player must be—a true noble.”

“What does this have to do . . .”

“Just listen,” Miriam snapped. “The next day the Minamoto Clan stormed the Taira fortress and set it on fire. The only survivors were those that fled to their ships. Kumagai spotted a samurai swimming toward the ships that were already sailing away. He taunted the samurai, calling him a coward. Despite overwhelming odds, the samurai returned to prove his courage. Kumagai defeated the samurai easily and struck off his helmet for a finishing blow. To Kumagai’s horror, his opponent was a handsome boy the same age as his young son. Even as he realized that he had lured a boy to his death, there was no way to forestall it. The Minamoto were killing all that they found. Weeping, Kumagai beheaded the boy. When he searched the body for some way to identify the boy, he found a flute. The boy was the flute player that Kumagai had admired. He was so grieved by what he had done that he gave up his sword and became a priest.

“The boy was Atsumori.”

“Oh!” Nikki turned to look at Atsumori with new eyes—but of course there was nothing to see. The boy was dead, and all that remained was a powerful spirit.

“Anyone as stupidly brave as Atsumori is not going to understand Kenichi.”

“I was not stupid,” Atsumori grumbled. “Odds were that I would have drowned; I was in full armor.”

Miriam stopped at the edge of a parking lot. “So, what kind of car are we looking for?”

Nikki dug out Leo’s keys and tapped the “lock” button on the key fob. Distantly a car chirped. “That one.”

Leo had parked in shadows, backing into the spot like any Japanese driver would have. Just seeing it made Nikki want to cry. She knew that saving Simon would be what Leo would want, but it felt wrong to be doing anything but looking for Leo.

“Oh! An BMW Z4! Okay, Mr. Freaky just gained serious style points for his car! Oh my God, I think I’m in love.”

Nikki unlocked the car with the fob and then realized that she was on the wrong side of the car to drive. Japanese drove on the other side of the road. Her driving experience was limited to automatic transmission and a mall parking lot in New Jersey. “Can you drive a stick?”

“Oh, yes, I can,” Miriam said with obvious relish.

Nikki tossed Miriam the keys.

Miriam slid into the driver’s seat and then yelped as Maru scrambled into her lap before she could close the door. “Jesus fucking Christ!”

“Maru!” Nikki snatched up the kitten before Miriam could hit him out of pure knee-jerk reaction. He purred at the attention but chewed at her fingers with razor-sharp teeth. “Ow, ow, ow, stop that.”

Miriam scooted the seat forward so she could reach the pedals. “That’s not your
bakeneko,
is it?”

“No, it’s Maru from Atsumori’s shrine.”

“Oh!” Miriam’s eyes went wide. “Okay, that’s cool and weird. The actual kitten.”

“It gets weirder when it’s people.”

“Considering some of your characters, I’m hoping to avoid meeting any of them.”

* * *

They swung down off the Hanshin Expressway onto the city streets. The Imperial Hotel rose in front of them, a tall building at the edge of the river, its reflection gleaming on the dark water. It looked easily thirty stories tall, meaning that it would have hundreds of rooms, all with locked doors. Nikki had no idea what name the goddess was checked in under; she doubted it was Iwanaga Hime. If the goddess had been using Simon’s credit cards, Leo would have found him ages ago. And writing out scenes wouldn’t solve the problem either—so far all her names had been wrong.

But it would tell her if Iwanaga was currently possessing Simon or not. She juggled the
katana
, the kitten and her backpack to find a notebook and pen.

“What do you think? Hotel parking? Across the street?” Miriam drove slowly past the hotel, its lobby a gold-lit cave in the night.

“I’m checking.”

Something had happened. The pattern of Simon’s hell had changed. He was bound and gagged on a hotel bed, but night cloaked the room. Instead of facing the window, he faced the door. Cat statues covered every surface, half-hidden by the darkness, faint streetlights reflecting off unblinking eyes. A gleaming line in the darkness showed that the door to the connecting room had been unlocked and left cracked open. In the room beyond, a woman was speaking what seemed to be Japanese, her voice hard and angry.

Exhaustion weighted his body until he felt like he was made of stone. He was too weary to try to move. Just to breathe seemed too much effort.

“Iwanaga’s not within Simon right now.” Nikki closed her eyes and focused on the unwritten sections of the scene. “He’s alone in the room, but there are several people in the adjoining room. I think the female speaker is the goddess housed in one of the shrine maidens; I think Simon’s picking up on the fact she’s speaking old Japanese. The maid at Izushi said that Atsumori uses a style of Japanese that seems out of a samurai movie.

“And you’re right.” Nikki closed her notebook. “We’re going to have to carry him out.”

“Hotel parking then.” Miriam pulled up to the entrance of the underground parking grarage. She rolled down the driver’s windows and took the ticket that the machine fed out to her. “And we’ll have to find a luggage cart or something.”

Nikki clicked her pen nervously, her mind racing through what they would need. In theory, she knew how to pick locks, but most hotels had gone to a magnetic key system. Some had mechanical override, but still it took her minutes to get through a single lock. There were hundreds of rooms, which meant hundreds of locks. If they went around, blindly opening doors, someone was bound to call the police.

How could they safely find Simon at the hotel? Had there been anything in Simon’s scene that would indicate which room he was in?

“The goddess was using beckoning cat luck statues as backup
shintai
,” Nikki said.

“Yeah.” Miriam was focused on finding a parking space. “So?”

“In a earlier scene I wrote of Simon, he knew he was about to be taken over because the statue exploded and dust was settling on him. It was a pattern; it happened enough times that he knew what was coming. The statues are too weak to contain Iwanaga, and when they explode, she has to move to a new container. Kenichi said that Iwanaga leaves a trail of dust wherever she goes.”

“Dust, eh?”

“Yeah, I think we might be able to follow them like breadcrumbs.”

The hotel lived up to the name Imperial. The lobby was an expanse of cream walls, soft butter ceiling and a geometric carpet of blacks and reds, looking properly regal. They scouted for a luggage cart while acting out “we’re debating our plans” complete with one of her notebooks standing in as a tourist book, pointing at things that didn’t exist on the page and making random remarks like “I want to see Osaka Castle at night” and “I want to go to Dontonbori.”

They’d just found the nook where the carts were stored when Atsumori suddenly flooded into Nikki, caught hold of Miriam, and pulled her into the darkness of the storage alcove.

“What are you . . .?” Miriam started to ask.

“Hush,” Atsumori murmured.

For a minute, Nikki wasn’t sure what Atsumori was reacting to. Then she realized that the far across the lobby, the left-most elevator had opened up and men in dark suits were spilling out. There was something very strange and feral about the way they moved. They tipped their heads up as if sniffing something floating on the air.

They were
yokai.
Nikki pressed her hand to her mouth to stifle a cry of dismay. Was the goddess taking Simon away? Surely he was too weak for her to use again.

The “men” conferred quietly and then split into two groups. Some continued to walk toward the doors while the others waited, watching the display over the right-most elevator. The car was stopped on the tenth floor. After a minute, it started to descend, counting down the floors.

She gripped Miriam tightly. “If Simon is on the next elevator, we’re going to have to follow him.”

“Will you be able to recognize him? I don’t want to mess with them if we don’t have to.”

Would she know Simon? She had recognized Leo instantly. Chevalier and Sato had looked familiar. “I think I will.”

The quiet chime of a bell announced the arrival of the center elevator. The door slid open. A woman in a beautiful crimson and gold kimono stepped off. Behind her were three shrine maidens in their traditional loose red trousers and white half-length kimono jackets.

“Holy . . .” Miriam whispered. “It’s her.”

Nikki swallowed hard as her stomach turned cartwheels. If this female got hold of her, there would be no escaping. The goddess, at least, didn’t glance in their direction. She moved toward the hotel’s front entrance so smoothly it seemed like she was gliding on ice. Was she even moving her feet?

A black luxury car slid up to the curb. The dark-suited
yokai
opened the back car doors and stood waiting for the women.

“Where do you think they’re going?” Miriam whispered.

Nikki shook her head. The mind boggled about where a goddess might go after midnight.

“We should follow her.” Miriam tugged at her hands.

“No.” Nikki shook her head again. “We need to save Simon.”

There was a faint trail of dust from the elevator to 1049 and 1050. Both doors had signs hung on the doorknobs, forbidding housekeeping from entering.

“She’s sealed the door against me,” Atsumori murmured.

“Just one?” Nikki glanced at the two identical doors. “Not both of them?”

“Just this one.” He flickered into sight beside 1049 and traced the door’s outline. “I cannot cross into this room. There is another door and a window into this room, but they are barred, too.”

“I think we hit the jackpot.” Nikki took out her lock picks.

“Maybe,” Miriam said. “Or she has a very nasty surprise locked in there.”

“Is there anything in 1050?” Nikki knelt in front of the door to 1049 and started to work the metal carefully into the lock.

“It is empty.” Atsumori vanished.

Nikki could feel him pressing close to her as she felt her way through the lock’s tumblers. It made her uneasy, because it seemed dangerously addictive to know she could become nearly invincible at will. As with any addiction, though, it was a matter of stepping out your skin and letting something else take control. She had always thought she would fall to Valium or Xanax. Somehow she never suspected that she’d get hooked on a teenage Japanese god.

Another mistaken assumption was that she would need to know how to pick locks to break out of a room, not to break in. Preparing for a totally different set of disasters, she’d practiced on handcuffs, filing cabinets, supply cabinets, and hospital doors using everything from paper clips to ballpoint pen parts. It only took her a minute to work quickly through the tumblers of the mechanical override lock on 1049. When the lock clicked open, Atsumori stepped into her and together they swung open the door.