Eight Million Gods-eARC (44 page)

Sato had been here.

Leo hurried down the hall, fear churning in his stomach. The spider-whore was a man-eater.

Around the next corner was a huge splash of blood and flesh like someone had exploded outward with massive force. There wasn’t enough to identify the person but he recognized the scent and the high heels. It had been Nikki’s mother.

Around every corner were signs of Sato’s passing. He’d gone straight to the temporary cells.

The cell door had been ripped from its hinges. Sheets of paper littered the ground with her careful tiny handwriting, splattered with blood. Leo stared at them in grief and dismay . . .

Nikki stared in horror at what she had written. Not only had she written it, she’d written it in ink. There was no erasing it. She started to frantically cross out the words when she realized it was useless. She had no power to change what was rushing toward her—she was trapped in the closet, and everything was already happening.

She flipped the page and wrote what any sane person would at that moment.

Leo, I love you. I wish I’d kissed you and held you tight and kept you from leaving me at the hotel. I wish I had kept you safe.

She heard the soft scurry of claws, and a shiver went down her spine. It was coming for her now. The door rattled, and she whimpered in fear. She wanted to be brave. The door rattled again as sharp claws dug at the edges, and then suddenly it jerked open as it was torn from its hinges. She hated that she screamed as the creature reached for her, but she knew it was going to hurt her. There would be blood. Maybe a lot of it.

39

Churn the Dark Waters

Nikki woke in a backseat of a car driving through the night. An echo of a headache and a parched mouth told her that she’d been given Ambien. The streetlights flashed overhead in a steady beat while the wheels whistled and whined on the grooved highway.

Sitting in the passenger side was a beautiful Japanese woman who looked somehow familiar. As her elaborate haircut shifted unnaturally, Nikki realized that there were gleaming black spiders hidden within her hair. Nikki recoiled and the woman laughed, clicking her teeth, and it was the sound that Nikki remembered first and then her face. The monstrously large spider had worn this face as it loomed over her, eyes staring into hers hungrily.

Nikki clawed at the handle to the car door and jerked on it. The door didn’t open.

Sato said something in Japanese.

“What? I don’t understand. I don’t speak Japanese.”

Sato breathed out a laugh. “Of course, the giant’s child comes to our land and we are the ones that must speak its language. So it is—the victor stands triumphant at all levels.”

She frowned, confused, and then realized that he was referring to the idea that the United States was the sleeping giant awakened when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping Iwanaga Hime? You know what will happen. This is your homeland. This will be like Hiroshima.”

“Exactly. The Americans wiped the slate clean and built what they wanted on that scorched earth. I learned that lesson well. The best way to remake the world is to completely level the old one first.”

“But—but your family died.”

“Yes. Humans are like cherry blossoms. They bloom, they shower you with their splendor, and then they are gone, only to come again. I have lived for nearly two hundred years. I have lost track of all the flowers that withered at my feet. And that is the fault of Amaterasu’s grandson, Ninigi no Mikoto.”

It took her a moment to grasp that he was talking about the sun goddess and her grandson who had founded the imperial bloodline. “Huh?”

“Amaterasu’s grandson. Ninigi, was to marry Iwanaga Hime, the eldest daughter of Ohoyamatsumi. On the way to meet his bride, though, he happened onto her younger sister, Konohana Sakuya Hime, on the seashore and they fell in love. He refused Iwanaga Hime and took Konohana Sakuya Hime as his wife.”

“I don’t understand.”

Sato laughed bitterly. “Of course not. It’s all just random sounds to you. Iwanaga Hime means the Rock Princess and Konohana Sakuya Hime means Flowering Trees Princess. If Ninigi had married Iwa Naga, humans would have been enduring and long lasting as stones. But he had chosen the goddess of blossoms, so human lives are short and fleeting as cherry blossoms.”

The car was stopped at a cliff edge. The earth fell away in a sharp line. Clouds gathered below in a rumbled blanket of gray.

Sato got out of the car, saying something quietly in Japanese.

The spider woman climbed out of the front and yanked open Nikki’s door.

Nikki yipped in fear, scrambled into the front seat and out Sato’s door. The spider woman scrambled over the car on all fours and leapt at her, tackling Nikki to the ground.

Nikki screamed and flailed but the woman pinned her easily.

“If you fight her, she’ll hurt you,” Sato said calmly. “She knows I can heal you from near death.”

Nikki forced herself to stay still despite the fear that was choking her. A lifetime of dealing with orderlies made it possible. The spider was just like a gorilla orderly, leering at her like she was prime beef.

A second car pulled up, headlights cutting through the predawn gloom. It was the big black luxury sedan that the goddess had been using.

Slender feral men got out and stood guard as a girl wearing the golden kimono of the goddess drifted out of the backseat. While the woman they had seen the night they rescued Simon had seemed slightly older than Nikki, this girl seemed only about thirteen. She was a tiny little thing lost within the folds of the kimono. Blood was streaming down from her eyes.

The girl drifted toward the cliff edge. The hem of the golden kimono trailing behind her made it painfully obvious that the girl was a foot too short for the garment and that she wasn’t moving under her own power. It was possible that the girl wasn’t even fully conscious.

She floated off the cliff and paused there, a dozen feet out and hundreds of feet up. Nikki whimpered slightly. What was Iwanaga planning? Nikki didn’t want to see this girl die.

The girl jerked like a puppet whose string been pulled and then crumbled into a heap. As if the girl had been a skin that she had shed, a tall woman in a shimmering kimono of white and gold stood in her place. She looked mournfully down at the girl’s body and then walked on. The girl lay there a moment and then dropped silently downwards into the clouds below.

No other women got out of the car. Where was Umeko? Had Iwanaga burned through all her shrine maidens? Was that why Sato kidnapped Nikki—Iwanaga would need a vessel after they remade the world? Or would they just throw her off the edge of the world to make sure she wasn’t revealing his plans to Shiva?

The spider woman hoisted Nikki up and carried her to the edge of the cliff. Only as they neared the edge did Nikki see that the air was distorted beyond the crumbling face. They stepped off, and she locked down on a scream. She could see down through the wispy clouds to the shrine maiden’s body like a small broken doll on the rocks below.

And then there was a bridge under them of gleaming white as if sunlight had become solid.

The need to write had been nibbling at the edges of her awareness, pushed aside by her fear. As the spider monster carried her up the steep arch of the bridge, heading for where Sato stood waiting with the jeweled spear, the need surged up, drowning her. She writhed against her will in the spider’s hold, her hands fluttering madly, seeking anything to write. She knew, though, that she didn’t want the relief that a pen and paper would provide. All that was left of the story was death and destruction. All her characters—every single of them a real living person—Miriam and Leo and Pixii and Simon—were about to die in a massive tsunami. Riding the madness of her OCD, her mind was filling with the images of bodies thrashing in dark waves.

“No!” she wailed. The more she struggled, the worse the OCD rushed through her, threatening to sweep her utterly away into mad writing. She’d be totally helpless if she became trapped in her own insanity. She needed to get free and stop this, somehow.

She flailed desperately, clawing at the spider-whore’s hands that gripped her tightly. The hands looked like smooth white flesh but felt like hard, cold china under her fingers. There were sharp, hard points of chitin under the illusion, like invisible thorns. The spines stabbed into her fingers as she gripped tight at the monsters. She screamed in pain and frustration, welcoming both as they pushed back the need to write. Blood, hot and sticky, flowed from the wounds.

“Let me go!” she shouted. “Go curl up and die someplace!”

She smeared the word “die” on the spider’s upper arm.

The spider spasm in pain and released her. It staggered backwards and collapsed to the gleaming deck of the bridge.

She stared at it, panting. What had just happened? Had she actually killed the monster with her writing? Atsumori said her powers were divine in nature. He had said that heaven and Earth were made of different particles. Could it be that as she got closer to heaven, her ability got stronger?

She turned toward Sato and the goddess and gasped. The two held the brilliantly gleaming spear like a solid ray of light and were raising it upward.

Crying out in dismay, she rushed toward them. She had no plan, but somehow she had to stop them. She slammed into the goddess and, amazingly, the female staggered to the side, letting loose of the spear. Nikki reached out and grabbed hold of the spear. It felt no more solid than sunlight. She would have thought she’d missed her grab except for the tingling potential. She yanked hard, and the bridge shook as the spear point struck the deck.

“Idiot!” Sato shouted and tried to pull the spear from her hands. He succeeded only in pulling her off her feet so that she dangled from the shaft. “Let go!”

“Never!” Ripped from the bridge, the trembling potential surged through her, filling her. “If I do, you’ll kill them all.”

“They’ll die anyway! They always do!”

She seemed to be fraying at the edges from the power of the spear. She clung to it, terrified that it would burn her out, but even more afraid to let go. “Even the stars die and you can’t stop that! You don’t have the right to kill all these people because you’re some kind of immortal freak of nature! You selfish motherfucking prick!”

“I’ll set everything right!” Sato let go of the spear with his left hand and caught her by the hair. She knew with awful certainty that he was about to unmake her.

“Denjiro Sato died at Hiroshima on August 6, 1945,” she shouted as her vision hazed to brilliance. “He gasped as something came falling into view. A single black teardrop of death. It was falling straight toward him. There was no escaping it. He cried out, and his scream was swallowed by an Earth-bound sun.”

She saw the brilliance of the bomb going off. Heard the sound that was louder than the sky was big. Felt the shearing pain and then nothing.

Her vision snapped to normal. She felt like she had been blown up a hundred times her normal size and then deflated. She panted, blinking, her body weak and light as a tattered paper doll.

Iwanaga had hold of the spear. The power of the spear was filling the goddess—her eyes gleamed with brilliance.

“No, no, don’t!” Nikki cried. “I know that you’re angry enough to kill. I understand completely. My mother—she killed my grandmother and great-uncle—and to keep that crime hidden, she kept me locked up all my life. I know that when I realized how much she betrayed me, I wanted to kill her. Yes, I was angry. But I was more scared than anything. I was scared of being helpless. But destroying everything isn’t the answer.”

“They blamed me and locked me up and left me there.”

“And now you’re free and you can make your life anything you want. You can be with your sister. Share her shrine. Be a beloved goddess who protects her people. Wipe it away and you lose your sister, your father, Kenichi, all the people who had nothing to do with your punishment.”

Iwanaga laughed bitterly. “Even if you were willing to sacrifice yourself, you would not last long enough for me to reach my sister’s shrine safely.”

Nikki reached into her pocket and pulled out the jade bead
shintai
that Yamauchi had given her. “I have this. It will hold you.”

Iwanaga gasped, delicate hands going to her mouth. “It’s perfect.” She shook her head. “But they’ll only try to punish me again.”

“By now, everyone knows that Susanoo took the spear. He and his sister can settle it out. You’re now clearly an innocent bystander. You have nothing to fear.”

Iwanaga continued to shake her head.

“All will be good.” And Nikki
knew
that she had said true words. “I can promise you that. I have that power.”

Iwanaga started to weep. For a moment Nikki was afraid that she would have to fight the goddess, but then Iwanaga bowed low as tears streamed down her face. “Please take care of me.”

40

White Sands,
Blue Skies

Only when war broke out at the far end of the bridge did Nikki remember the
tanuki
that had driven the goddess. Someone had caught up with Sato and had been greeted with a hail of bullets. Who was it? Leo?

She raced back toward the cars, fear jolting through her every step of the way. It was like she was running on air, the rocks hundreds of feet down, and the dead shrine maiden a constant reminder that the bridge didn’t support everything. The only reason she could keep moving forward was that the thought of staying on the bridge terrified her more.

She arrived at the cliff edge a quivering, panting mess to see Leo break the neck of the last standing
tanuki.

“Leo!”

Joy and relief flooded his face. Then horror washed in as he realized that he was surrounded with evidence of his deadly nature. He dropped his gaze and started to back away.

“Help me.” She put out her hand to him.

He looked at her in confusion, but he came and took her hand. “What is it?”

She gazed down at his warm strong fingers lightly holding hers. She didn’t want to ever let go. She leaned forward to rest her forehead against his chest. She was trembling so badly that she felt like jelly. “I left the spear out on the bridge and I’m afraid of heights.”