Now or never
.
Murdoch drew on his Soul Gatherer powers and leapt, springing into the courtyard with an easy flex of his thighs. He landed four feet from his opponent and, using the shield-piercing augmentation on his weapon, promptly knocked the gun from his grasp with a sharp whack of steel on steel.
The younger warrior reacted swiftly to the attack. He fell back in a smooth motion, letting go of the switch and drawing his katana. In a flash, he had settled into a firm guard position, snarling at Murdoch in Japanese, ready to battle.
Murdoch felt a warm burn in his muscles.
His berserker doing a lazy stretch.
“You don’t want to do that, lad,” he said gently. “Trust me. It’ll only end badly. Put the sword down.”
The gleam in his opponent’s eyes remained bright, and the volume of his Japanese lecture only increased.
“Yamete!”
It was Kiyoko, approaching from behind him, speaking in a crisp, unequivocal voice.
Murdoch tensed, his berserker springing to protective alertness. The man had a bloody bomb strapped to his chest, with the bright red thumb switch dangling visibly from a couple of wires. Why the hell hadn’t she stayed where he left her?
“Lass,” he said, addressing her as calmly as he was able to under the circumstances. “I have this under control. Get the hell out of here.”
“Under control? He says he’s going to blow up the whole compound.”
“Exactly why you need to back up,” he muttered.
She ignored him. Continuing to speak to the young warrior in a soothing manner, she tried to step around Murdoch.
He extended an arm. “Over my dead body.”
“He just got word his father killed himself after losing the job he’d held for thirty-four years. He’s very bitter, but we can still reason with him.”
Murdoch trusted his gut. And his eyes. The bomb spoke volumes. “Wrong. He came here to die. Talking isn’t going to change anything. I’d prefer not to help him meet his maker, but I’ll do it if I must.”
Kiyoko said something to the warrior.
Another burst of Japanese spilled from the young man’s lips. The lad’s eyes were locked on Kiyoko, his face flushed with resentment, and an unsettled feeling landed in Murdoch’s belly.
“You’re right,” she said. “Takeo says he has lost faith in the
onmyōjō
ways, that he no longer believes we can defeat the demons. He has embraced the dark side of his soul, and he is pleased that he has slain several of his fellow
senshi
because it will save them from the futility of our daily demon hunts. He accepts that he will die today.”
“Fine,” Murdoch said grimly.
“But he wants
me
to do it.”
He bristled. “Not in a million bloody years.”
“He is my student. It’s a fair request.” She waved a hand to a warrior standing just inside the dojo. The young fellow raced to her side, presented her with an intricately engraved scabbard, then scurried back. “I will lose face with his peers if I do not grant him his wish, Mr. Murdoch.”
“Lose face?” He shot her a quick, angry stare. “You’re going to let pride get you killed? You’ll lose a sight more than face if you give in to him. He just wants you close enough to guarantee he takes you with him when he flips that damned switch.”
“I’m faster than you think.”
“I don’t care how bloody fast you are,” he said hotly. The berserker was clawing its way up his chest. “You’re not going to duel a madman with a bomb. Understand?”
“I’ve fought demons. I can handle a man.”
“For God’s sake, woman, you just admitted that you trained him to kill creatures more powerful than himself.”
“I’m still the teacher.”
Murdoch couldn’t keep his eyes off the four blocks of plastic explosive strapped to the young man’s chest. If the bloody bomb went off, Murdoch would suffer and suffer badly. It wouldn’t kill him, but it would come as close to killing him as it was possible to come, shredding his flesh and pulverizing his bones. Imagining that same impact on Kiyoko was almost enough to make him puke up his meager breakfast.
“He’s still the one with the bomb.”
“Stop worrying,” she said mildly, drawing her sword with a light rasp of steel. She bowed to Takeo, and the young warrior bowed back. Neither of them took their eyes off each other. “I’ll survive, and so will you. My shield magic is very strong.”
Murdoch snorted. “Lass, you’d have to be a mage to manage a shield spell capable of holding off a bomb at close range.”
The young warrior was growing antsy, and he took a step toward Kiyoko, brandishing his weapon and snarling an obvious threat.
Murdoch stepped between them with little thought.
Kiyoko’s katana sliced through his jacket and into his side, burning along his ribs. She shoved him away, but not before the blood flowed. A warm, sticky stream ran down his side and pooled at the waistband of his trousers.
“Stop trying to protect me,” she said angrily.
“My actions are not entirely my own,” he admitted, though not one whit unhappy at where his feet had taken him. “Remember what I told you about my berserker and its primitive claim? It’s having a little trouble with this scenario.”
“I remember. But didn’t you also say the basic motivations while you were in the berserker state were your own?”
Murdoch’s breath snagged.
True
.
“I think you’re blaming your inner demon for your chauvinistic tendencies, Mr. Murdoch. Step out of the way.”
He blinked.
Was he?
Unfortunately, a blink was enough time for Kiyoko to slip past him. She rushed the young warrior with her sword aloft and attacked with a sharp yell.
Kiyoko recaptured her still-water state of mind the moment she entered into battle with Takeo. Tumultuous thoughts of Murdoch fell away, replaced by cool, lethal purpose. She reached the young warrior in two measured steps and engaged him in a flurry of standard attacks and parries, made possible by the steady flow of energy into her body from the Veil.
Sadly, there was no way to undo what Takeo had done here today. His continued existence would poison those around him, robbing the other warriors of the confidence they needed to win. Faith was the mainstay of the
onmyōji
. Without an unshakable belief in the rightness of what they were doing, they would not win the war against evil.
Her opponent attacked fast, but without originality. Lulled by years of sparring with her, he assumed his familiarity with her style and stance would telegraph her next moves, and she took advantage of his arrogance. Varying her speed and drawing on the entirety of her attack repertoire, she pressed him hard, forcing him back. A flurry of rapid sword strikes, then a spin to the left, and she sliced through his flimsy first-level shield with a smooth arc of her blade.
The detonation switch dropped to the ground.
Takeo had slain his fellow warriors, turned on his own brothers with unforgivable brutality. Even if she managed to convince the young man to return to the fold, the faith others had in him would never be the same. And that reluctance to rely on him would get the rest of her men killed.
She deflected Takeo’s swinging sword with her own.
Worse, he now represented the very evil they fought every day. If she showed him mercy—if she allowed him to live—her men might hesitate when faced with evil in the future, wondering if leniency was the proper course of the day.
She could not permit that.
With a wealth of regret and a steady hand, she thrust her katana between the fourth and fifth ribs.
Takeo’s eyes lifted to hers the instant her weapon pierced his heart, an instinctive need to connect in his last moments. She grabbed his arm as his knees gave out, her chest heavy. How many times had they dueled together in the dojo? How many hours had she spent with him on his technique? Lowering him gently to the ground, she watched the dark ferment in his gaze fade. Evil had abandoned him to his fate.
“You’re good with a sword,” Murdoch said grudgingly. He tugged Takeo’s sleeve free of her chilled fingers.
“There are times when I wish I were not.”
He nodded. “The day you take a life without regret is the day you should lay down your sword and walk away.”
Kiyoko looked at him. “Have you killed a man?”
“Worse. I’ve killed boys.” His face was grim. “Lads who never got a chance to bed the girl of their dreams or dance at their own weddings.”
His admission surprised her. Such an act did not mesh with the obvious honor that held him upright. “Why?”
He shrugged. “In war, you do what you must.”
As the other warriors poured from the surrounding buildings, tending to their fallen comrades, Kiyoko glanced down at Takeo’s lifeless face. “You yourself have died.”
“Aye.”
“What was it like?”
“Unpleasant.”
Such a minimalist word. Kiyoko smiled faintly. “Was it a swift passing?”
“No,” Murdoch said. “I’m an ornery sort. I didn’t go quickly or quietly. I bled out on a battlefield, cursing the seven maggots who felled me with every breath, even my last.”
“Did your comrades not try to save you?”
“I was buried deep in the enemy line and there were scores of other wounded men on the field. By the time the healers reached me, it was too late.”
“Oh.”
He grimaced. “Spare me the pity, lass. I was quite the fool in those days. My death was a blessing.”
“I doubt your mother and your wife thought it so.”
He said nothing. Just met her stare for a long moment, then turned and surveyed the courtyard. “Three dead. A very unfortunate loss. How do you report this to the authorities?”
“We don’t.” Kiyoko bent and retrieved Takeo’s katana. It would be destroyed, along with his personal possessions. “All who have chosen to follow this path understand that they will not be buried alongside their loved ones.”
“They just disappear?”
“Technically, they disappeared the day they entered the compound. For most, that was several years ago. To the outside world we are a martial arts school, and we open a few sessions to the public to keep the authorities from becoming curious.”
“And what do you do with the wounded?”
She pointed to the middle-aged woman kneeling in the dirt beside the sole surviving warrior. “We have a full-time doctor on staff and she has a well-equipped infirmary at her disposal. Many of our
senshi
have also received training as field medics.”
The phone holstered at Murdoch’s waist vibrated. He tugged it free and glanced at the display. “You should hire a mage.”
Kiyoko shook her head. “Healing spells are very difficult to perform and the excellent ones demand a gifted practitioner. Unfortunately, there are too few genuine mystic healers in the world. We’ve not had any luck in finding one.”
“You know a great deal about magic,” he said with a frown, as he dropped to one knee beside a fallen
senshi
.
Curious, Kiyoko watched him. “Our branch of the
onmyōji
has studied and plied the mystic arts for centuries. Plus, my father was a descendant of Abe no Seimei himself, so we are privy to many of his magical volumes.”
Murdoch placed a bare hand on the neck of the dead man, seemingly oblivious to the dark red blood still seeping from the fatal wound. He closed his eyes.
He could have been offering a simple prayer, but Kiyoko knew he was collecting the warrior’s soul. Once, back when she and Lena Sharpe had been on speaking terms, they had talked about the gathering process. Lena had described it as a feathery warmth that floated up her arm and wrapped around her heart.
“Kiyoko-san.”
She glanced to the left. Sora stood in the entrance to the dojo, his silvery white hair flowing down his back, his hands folded in the long sleeves of his black robes. The very epitome of serenity.
“Yes, sensei?”
“This is a most disturbing event.”
She nodded. “Our safeguards were not enough.”
“Safeguards?” Murdoch moved to the second body. “What safeguards?”
“The two stone
niou
at the gate,” Kiyoko explained, “are tasked with preventing evil from entering the compound. Yet Takeo was able to walk in yesterday without a problem.”
“Which means he was either unaffected when he entered, or he found some way to disarm your barrier spell.”
She nodded. “And of the two, the second is more likely.”
“Can you boost the barrier?”
“That particular spell has served us well for centuries,” she said. “I will need to consult my spell books to see if there is anything stronger. I’ll inform Watanabe-san that visiting the city today is not possible.”