Ice Blue (34 page)

The Shirosama rose to his full height, coming up to Taka's chest, and held out his arms. "Give me the urn," he breathed.

Taka dropped it.

Brother Heinrich dived for the bowl, catching it just before it hit the frozen dirt, and the cult leader stepped back in distaste. "That is not the way to rescue your young woman, Brother Takashi," he intoned, clearly disappointed.

"Don't call me that." Taka's voice was low, deadly.

"Why not? You know as well as I do," the Shirosama replied in that soft, singsong voice, "that you really want to be one of us. But you are afraid to listen to your heart, Brother Takashi. Listen to it now. Join us. It's not too late. Don't waste your time trying to stop me—I'm unstoppable."

Summer couldn't keep from watching Taka's face, his treacherously beautiful visage. "I've brought you the urn," he said. "Now give me the girl and we'll get out of here."

"Do not be foolish, child," he said. "You know I was never going to let you take her. Surely you couldn't have been that naive."

There was no expression in Taka's dark eyes as he stared down at the guru. "Anything is possible," he said. "You might have become a man of your word."

"My word is the sacred word of God," he said.

"And God told you to kidnap a helpless American and murder thousands of people?"

"No one is being murdered. The world is being cleansed. Baptized, if you like. Only the most trusted will accompany me on my final journey."

Taka's eyes narrowed. "What final journey?"

"You don't think I would ask such a sacrifice of my followers if I were not willing to make the same sacrifice, do you?"

"I think you're a lying, devious psychopath who comes up with justifications for everything he does."

"And I think it is time you joined your friend," he replied. "The new moon is upon us, and everything is in place. Do you hear that?"

"The plane? I heard it. I'm assuming more of your goons have come to pick up your little packages of poison to deliver around the world."

"My strongest followers are coming to bring freedom to all corners of the globe."

"The earth is round, your holiness."

"With no place to hide," he murmured. "Tie him up, Brother Heinrich, and let him sit with the woman he tried to kill."

He didn't react. Taka's very lack of guilt was even more telling than a protest. Brother Heinrich bound his arms and legs, roughly, and shoved him down on the ground, against Summer, so that she almost fell over. She scooted away from him quickly, refusing to look at him.

"You see?" the Shirosama murmured. "I told her you were the one who held her under the water, that you were planning to kill her. Even now, you probably believe your best course is to silence her. It doesn't matter. Before long you will both be silenced, and perhaps you'll both do better in the next life."

Taka said nothing, pulling himself into a sitting position. "You brainwashed her so quickly? I would have thought she'd give you more trouble than that."

"I told her the truth, and she saw it for what it was," he replied. "Brother Heinrich, go to the plane and make certain it's loaded and the disciples are on board. Then return to me with the final packet of medicine. I need to be certain everything is going according to plan before we take the final steps."

Brother Heinrich disappeared into the darkness, but not before glaring at Taka. The Shirosama seemed to have forgotten about both prisoners. He'd begun chanting, some strange mixture of languages that held few words Summer had ever heard, as he sprinkled gray dust on the fire in front of him, followed by the same cloying incense. White-robed brothers began to emerge from the surrounding forest, some carrying weapons, some unarmed. They lay their guns in a pile and moved to form a circle around the Shirosama, taking up the same nonsensical chant.

When Taka had been thrown against Summer the knife had been knocked loose from her bra, and was now beneath her loose shirt. With her hands bound behind her there was no way she could reach it. She would have to count on her would-be murderer.

"Your holiness!" She raised her voice, forcing herself to sound tearful and supplicatory. "If we are to die, would you let me kiss him one last time?"

She half expected Taka to react to her uncharacteristic behavior, but he didn't move, didn't look at her. He was kneeling in the frozen dirt beside her, every inch of him alert, and she was probably the least of his concerns.

"You want to kiss the man who tried to kill you? You are a very foolish young woman," the Shirosama said. "Go ahead."

Taka turned to her, his eyes dark and unreadable, waiting. She reached up, put her mouth against his and whispered, "I have a knife that's fallen down the front of my shirt, you son of a bitch. See if you can get it." The feel of his lips against hers was agony. The sickness deep inside her was that she wanted to kiss him anyway, no matter what he'd done.

A moment later he'd flung himself at her knees, babbling a mixture of contrition and love. Somehow, in the darkness, and even with his hands tied, he managed to reach up under her flowing shirt and grab the knife.

The Shirosama's half-blind eyes were turned in their direction, an expression of distaste on his face. "I misjudged both of you," he said. "You are unworthy of the great honor I chose to give you."

"What great honor?" Summer asked. Taka was still doing a creditable job of being collapsed in grief and hopeless love, and she needed to hold the Shirosama's attention while Taka worked on their bonds.

"The great honor of dying with me, Miss Hawthorne. Your mother would appreciate it and as one of my most generous supporters, she would have had that honor. But someone took her away and I've had more important things to do than try to find her."

"Like kidnap my sister?" Summer shot back. Taka was still now, and she kept waiting for him to lean toward her, to do something about the bonds that were slowly cutting off the circulation in her arms.

But the Shirosama was no longer interested in arguing with her, or anyone. "Drag them out of the circle, Brother Shinya. They can watch from a distance."

Shit
, Summer thought, as one of the brethren advanced toward them. He would see that Taka had gotten his hands on a knife, and their last hope of escape would be gone.

But she underestimated the brother's dislike of the unclean, particularly women. He came to stand over them, an expression of disgust on his pale face as if he were enduring a bad smell. "Move back," he ordered them.

With their hands and feet tied, it was a difficult maneuver requiring a crablike effort, but Summer had given up dignity long ago, along with trust, love and the remote possibility of a happy ending. She'd put her faith in a murderer.

They moved back, a good five feet out of the circle, and the brethren took their places, kneeling in a semicircle around the Shirosama. He'd set the urn on the antique kimono, and at another time Summer would have cried out at the sacrilege.

They must have taken it when they'd kidnapped her. If Reno had only left the urn behind this would all be over, for her at least. They would have had everything they wanted and she would probably be dead. If Taka didn't get his shit together she wasn't going to be alive to care about antique kimono or ancient ceramics or anything at all.

For that matter, even if he did, there was no guarantee that he was going to bother to save her.

The Shirosama arranged himself in a meditative position, and then nothing happened. The chanting stopped, and they all just waited, in silence.

A moment later Brother Heinrich reappeared in the firelight. "They're here, your holiness. Brother Neville and his wife have seen to the loading of the plane, and the advance force is already aboard. They wish your blessing before they depart on their holy mission."

"Of course," he said graciously. "Bring them to me, that I may touch them and send them on their way." He turned his face toward Summer and Taka. "Brother Neville is one of England's top scientists, an expert in biochemical weapons, and he allows his wife to assist him. Devoted followers like them assure the success of my vision. Death is nothing more than the gateway to paradise, and my followers embrace that truth. My people are everywhere—there is no way to stop what must happen."

Taka still wasn't saying anything, but he was very still. Either he'd given up on trying to cut his bonds or he'd already managed it and was just choosing his moment to jump up.

Either way, he'd done nothing to release Summer, and clearly he wasn't going to. If Taka was somehow able to stop them before they released the gas, then she might survive. Otherwise she could take small comfort in the fact that at least Jilly was safe. Small comfort that if she was going to die, so would Taka. Slowly and painfully.

The Shirosama's British followers approached silently. One was a tall, bespectacled man, the colorless kind of person who'd disappear in a crowd. The woman with him was similarly nondescript—dull clothes, glasses, dishwater hair, frumpy. Older than her partner. And then Summer realized with horror that they weren't alone—two of the brethren were dragging someone else behind them. Someone with flame-red hair, dressed in black leather. Taka must have brought his cousin up the mountain, for all the good it was doing him.

The British scientist approached the Shirosama first, sinking gingerly to his knees in front of him and bending his tall body in half, so that his forehead almost touched the ground. Beside her, Taka had grown very tense. He must have seen Reno being dragged along behind them.

"Greetings and blessings, holy father," the man said in a perfect upper-class British accent.

"Greetings and blessings, Brother Neville. Greetings to Sister Agnes, too. You have served me well."

"And will continue to do so, your holiness. The world will be cleansed by blood and fire, and a new order will arise in your image."

Summer couldn't keep her mouth shut a moment longer, always her abiding failure. Brother Neville was like some unctuous Dickens character—rail-thin and dependent on a cane, as if he'd recently been sick. His plain older wife would have looked at home as a prison warden, and Summer was damn if she was going to sit silently by while they congratulated themselves on their upcoming Armageddon.

"I thought it was going to be plague and poison, not blood and fire," she called out from her place outside the sacred circle.

Brother Neville lifted his head to look at her, and in the brightness of the fire she could see piercing blue eyes, like chips of ice, glance her way.

"Pay her no attention, Brother Neville," the Shirosama said blandly. "She will soon be in a better place. Who have you brought with you?"

"You cannot see, your holiness?"

"My ascension is almost complete. I have lost most of my sight, becoming one with my ancestor. But I can sense there is someone with you."

Brother Neville's eyes slid to Taka, and for a moment Summer thought she might have imagined a slight nod. Crazy, of course. Unless Taka really was a follower of the Shirosama, and everything had been a lie.

"I think the young man came with your two guests. We caught him as he was trying to sabotage the airplane. I'm afraid he's dead, but we thought we should bring him here as well, so that he may be joined with you in the ascension. Your mercy and forgiveness know no bounds."

"Indeed," the Shirosama breathed. "Put the body over by his friends. They will join him soon enough in the liberation of their souls."

"I only wish Sister Agnes and I could be here, as well," the man said.

"Your work out in the world is more important, Brother Neville. I'm counting on you to make sure the supplies get dispersed properly."

"It will be as it was ordained," he murmured in a sanctimonious voice. Summer opened her mouth to say something, but Taka managed to nudge her into silence.

Two of the white-robed brethren were dragging Reno's limp body around the outside of the circle, dropping him onto the hard ground beside them, and Summer stared at him, wanting to cry. He despised her, he'd done nothing but razz her, but seeing his body on the ground was somehow the last straw. A small, broken sound escaped from her throat, one of hoarse pain.

Taka glanced at her, face impassive, then back at his beloved cousin. And it was at that moment that Summer realized Reno was still breathing.

As a matter of fact, there was no blood, no sign of injury at all. His eyes were closed, his body still except for the barely discernible rise and fall of his chest. He wasn't dead.

She looked away from him, afraid her expression would be too revealing, and back to the tableau in the center.

"May we stay for the first part of the ceremony, Master?" Brother Neville asked in that oily voice.

"You may. It is time. Brother Heinrich?"

The brother stood up, raising his hands, and the place was suddenly flooded with lights—blinding lights, illuminating the setting. Summer saw the cameramen, two of them dressed in the traditional white robes, focusing in on the Shirosama as he sat in front of the kimono and the sacred, ice blue Hayashi Urn.

He began to intone loudly as he poured what looked like dirt and gravel into the bowl. Belatedly, she realized those were probably the remains of the original Shirosama, and she waited for the next stage, wondering if some kind of genie was going to swirl out of the smoke and ashes, ranting like Robin Williams.