The Name of the Blade, Book Two: Darkness Hidden (17 page)

But I was different now.

I
wasn’t
harmless any more. The extra height, speed and strength were the least of it. Now I knew what I was capable of. I knew that I could fight. That I would kill.

What if people could tell by looking at me?

I flicked a glance back at Shinobu and saw that he was scanning the street with focused, intent eyes. One hand rested on the button of his coat, ready to rip it open and grab his blades at any minute. Seeing him made me realize that my own hands were hovering at my sides like a gun-fighter from the Wild West, ready to hit out or draw the katana.

If I’d seen me coming towards me in a dark alley? I’d have run like hell.

“Shinobu, please can you walk next to me like a normal person?”

He opened his mouth on what was clearly destined to be a protest. Then he met my eyes, and his frown eased into a look of understanding. He moved alongside me and held out his hand. I pulled my left hand out of my pocket and let him take it. He twined our fingers together.

“If you watch the streets, I will keep my eyes on the sky,” he said.

My knotted-up shoulders unscrunched from up under my ears, and I squeezed his hand in gratitude. “OK. Thanks.”

We crossed the road hand in hand. I tugged him around the corner onto the shortcut I’d planned across Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Shinobu squinted up at the empty sky, and then turned his attention to me as we walked. “Will you answer a question?”

“It depends what it is,” I said warily.

“Last night, you said something that … surprised me.”

“Oh. Was it my dad’s Blitz spirit speech? Because I’m kind of thinking that was a load of—”

“No. Actually it was something you said in your sleep.”

My gaze glued itself to his face. “What? What did I say?”
Please God, don’t let it have been a sexy dream…

“It was shortly before I woke you. You became disturbed, struggling in your dream. You said a name. Yoshida-sensei. ”

My embarrassment faded, to be replaced with puzzlement. “I did? I have no idea who that is.”

“You have not heard the name before?”

“Not that I can remember.” I frowned up at him. There was a deep crease between Shinobu’s eyebrows and his eyes had that distant look. “But
you
have. Haven’t you?”

Shinobu hesitated. “Yes. It was the name of the stranger in our village. The newcomer. The one who taught us about the Nekomata, and sent me to fight it.”

The green blade flashes down in the red light—

I flinched as the strange vision burned itself on the back of my eyes again. “You never told me that. Am I – am I dreaming your dreams again? Still? How is that possible?”

“Possible and impossible are relative terms for us,” he said dryly. “Can you remember what you were dreaming about?”

“Well, I still dream about you – about your fight with the Nekomata – a lot. Sometimes I see other things. Fragments. You know how dreams blur together, and you seem to know things in them, but when you wake up none of it makes sense? I thought I was imagining, maybe. What it was like to be you. Lying there in the red leaves, looking up at the sky. I dreamed about … about being someone in your family. Someone who loved you and was waiting for you to come back. Wishing I hadn’t let you go…”

His lips pressed together into a thin line and he turned his head a little, as if to hide his expression from me. I shut up, mentally cursing myself as we left the park and crossed the road to head into a quiet area filled with red-brick buildings and parked cars. At least, at first glance it looked peaceful and quiet. Until you noticed that two of the cars had been attacked, their paint scratched, their windscreens smashed and tyres slashed. One of them, I saw as I got closer, was partially burned.

The large, posh houses around us also showed signs of trouble. Some had boards nailed across their windows on the inside and starburst cracks in the glass. One house had black scorch marks streaking the front door, as if someone had set a fire on the doorstep. Debris crunched underfoot. Rocks, crushed cans, and smashed glass.

What in the world had happened here? It looked like there had been some kind of riot.

As we passed by the Lincoln’s Inn Fields sign onto a narrow, shady road where the buildings on either side had deep arches of greyish-white stonework, a woman turned the corner onto the pavement ahead. She was the first person I had seen outside – not flying by in a car or other vehicle – since we left the house. She did a double-take as she caught sight of us. Then she whipped round and ran in the opposite direction. A moment later I heard a door slam.

My dad had always said that fear makes people do strange things. Bad things. Suddenly my head was filled with a selection of awful possibilities as to how the Shikome’s taint could have sparked this violence. What if someone had asked for shelter here and been turned down – and in their terror they tried to break in? What if people got ill here and no one would come out to help – and someone tried to punish them for it? What if, what if…? There was no way to know for sure. But this couldn’t be a coincidence; it wasn’t just my life that was falling apart. The whole of London was starting to seem frighteningly like a war zone. A war zone packed full of unknowing, unprepared people who were still capable of hurting themselves – and others, too – in their fear.

Shinobu squeezed my hand. “Mio, tell me more. Tell me what else you have seen in your dreams.”

I took a deep breath, forcing my attention back to our conversation. “I keep dreaming different versions of – of you dying. Sometimes I see it from the outside, looking down at you, with you staring up through me. Sometimes I’m inside you, seeing what you see. But the last few times I saw – there was a man there, bending over you. Most of his face was hidden, but
you
recognized him. He had a sword in his hand. It wasn’t shaped like a regular sword. It was sort of like a leaf, thin at both ends but fatter in the middle, and it was green. And then the blade came down and everything went dark. That’s where the dream ends.”

Shinobu let out a shuddering breath. His fingers had slowly tightened on mine until his grip was almost painful. “I don’t remember that. I don’t remember anything after I looked up at the sky and thought of…” His voice trailed off.

“Look, maybe I did imagine it. Maybe it isn’t real,” I said. But even as I said it, I knew that I was talking rubbish. Shinobu’s decisive head shake just confirmed it.

“That cannot be. You spoke his name. I had almost forgotten it myself. That means Yoshida-sensei was there when I died. He precipitated my death. But I cannot understand why. Why follow me into the woods? Why murder a dying man?” He paused. “And … what else might I have forgotten?”

That was a question I would have liked answered, too. Why could I never remember my dreams properly? Why did they always fade as soon as I woke up, leaving me with only vague feelings and disturbing fragments that made no sense? I needed to start trying to piece them together, to make sense of them. I had to be seeing these things for a reason…

A sudden cold shiver raked down my back. My senses ratcheted up to high alert; spinning in place, I caught sight of the dark shape the second it flashed into the sky above us. I shoved Shinobu with all my strength, pushing him back into the shadows of the nearest archway. My momentum slammed me into him as he hit the stone. Swallowing a grunt, I craned my neck to try and keep the monster in sight.

Shinobu’s arms wrapped around me and he swiftly reversed our positions, caging me against the wall with his larger body. He whispered, “Shikome?”

I nodded, my eyes fastened on the sky like grappling hooks. The massive winged shape was darting in and out of sight above the road. For such a huge creature it was incredibly agile.

The thing disappeared. I leaned sideways, trying to catch a glimpse.

“Is it still there?”

“Wait,” I whispered, my instincts still screaming. My hands tightened on Shinobu’s shoulders.

The Shikome dived into the road.

The thundering of its immense wings blasted the air below it, a force-ten gale tainted with the burned-hair-rotten-garbage stink of the monster. My hair and Shinobu’s flew around my face. My ears were filled with the deafening sound of dry, desiccated feathers chittering together. Dead leaves, dust and litter spun around our feet. The monster’s huge paws grazed the buildings on either side of the street as it shot along the narrow gap, sending chips of brick and tile and cement raining down onto the tarmac below. Only the narrowness of the gap stopped it flying lower and seeing us. I closed my eyes and hid my face in Shinobu’s shoulder, breathing through my mouth. His arms crushed me against him.

The sound faded away. The wind died down. The icy-cold tickle on my spine dried up.

“It’s gone,” I said, opening my eyes.

He blew out a relieved breath. “You saved us both.”

“You’re welcome. But don’t think I didn’t notice your little bodyguard manoeuvre just now. You have to stop putting yourself between me and danger like that. I don’t need you to protect me any more.”

One corner of his mouth quirked up as his eyebrow lifted. He probably didn’t even know the phrase,
Girl, please
, but his expression said it for him.

“Look—”

He leaned down and kissed me.

For about half a second I contemplated smacking him for trying to derail the discussion. Then I decided it could wait.

His fingers cupped my face, cradling my cheek and jaw as if I was made of glass. I found a handful of his soft hair and wound my fingers into it, while curling my other hand into the shoulder of his leather coat. My heart hadn’t even stopped thundering from the Foul Woman’s presence. Now it was thrumming against my ribs again, too fast to count the beats. I did something I’d always secretly wanted to and bit down, very gently, on his beautiful bottom lip. Shinobu’s breath shivered into my mouth, and he pulled me closer.

I was taller now, but not tall enough. Tiptoes didn’t bring me where I wanted to be either. I jumped and hauled myself up the steel pillar of his body, wrapping one leg around his hip. The big, warm hand on my waist slid slowly down the thin fabric of my trousers to cup my thigh, supporting my weight. His other hand was clenched in my hair. A wave of almost painful excitement and yearning crashed through me, and sent me into a full-body shudder that I had no chance of hiding. A tiny moan popped from my lips straight into his.

“Mio. Oh, Mio…” His shaking voice echoed in my ears, mixing with words in Japanese. I recognized some of them.
My beloved. My Mio
. He pressed his mouth to my eyelid, my cheek, the edge of my jaw, the skin beneath my ear.

There was a loud tearing noise. We both froze.

Abruptly I was aware of the wall against my back, and the tremble in my thigh from hanging onto him like a demented spider monkey. I swallowed and blinked as Shinobu eased back, letting my feet drop to the pavement again. Our eyes met.

“What just…?” I asked.

He cleared his throat. “I think – my shirt.”

I looked down and saw that at some point I’d traded my grip on his hair for a handful of the T-shirt and jumper under his jacket. My fingers had gone straight through the thin wool and made a nice tear in the cotton beneath that too.

“Darn super-strength,” I muttered.

Shinobu’s lip twitched up at the corner again. I snatched my hand away from his ruined clothes and clapped it over his mouth. “No laughing at me,” I said, only half joking. “Not at a moment like this. Romance will die forever and it’ll be your fault.”

He peeled my hand off and pressed a kiss to my palm. “Where are we now? What is this place?”

“Um … Remnant Street, I think.”

“No. From now on it will be Paradise Street. Heaven Road. Happiness Avenue.”

“You big cheese-ball…” I muttered, putting my arms around his waist and hugging him tightly.

“What?”

“Never mind!” I grumped, then sighed. “I wish we could stay on Happiness Avenue a bit longer…”

“But we can’t,” he finished. “It is all right. I promise we will come back whenever you want.”

CHAPTER 12

M
useum Street.

It was another narrow road, made narrower by the motorcycle rank that took up half of the tarmac. On the corner there was a cafe with its white awning still out, although the window and door were shuttered and the little metal tables and chairs you’d have expected to see outside were missing. A hairdresser’s and the Japanese restaurant on the other side of it were both obviously closed too. But next to the cafe, and to the right of the hairdresser’s, there was a shop with a dark blue-green façade. Its large display window was unshuttered and an
OPEN
sign hung on the door. The plate glass was painted with swirling golden lettering that declared:

AVALON BOOKS

OCCULT AND ANTIQUARIAN BOOKSELLERS

EST. 1977. PROPRIETOR: L. LEECH

I read the words aloud, then repeated, “Nineteen seventy-seven.”

“That must be incorrect. The king said this being has dwelled here for centuries.”

I waved that away. “I suppose he’d have to change his name and business every now and again, to stop people getting suspicious. It’s just … seventy-seven was the year my grandfather came here from Japan with my dad.”

Shinobu eyed the lettering with more interest. “Perhaps it is a message?”

“If it is, that means he’s been waiting. For me. Waiting since – since – before I was born. And…” I gulped and squared my shoulders, “the only way to find out is to go in there.”

I moved forward. Shinobu quickly stepped in front of me and pushed the door open, holding it for me while making sure that his body was between mine and the interior of the building.
Bodyguarding me again, damn it
.

Then we were both inside, and the door had snapped quietly shut behind us.

The first thing that struck me was how big the place was. Not exactly TARDIS-like, but a lot larger than I’d been expecting from the exterior. This row of buildings had three storeys, and the height of the ceiling in here seemed to suggest that someone had taken out the second floor to create a double-height space for the shop.