Blood Ninja (33 page)

She smiled at him. “I am sure you will do all that, one day. But for now I’d prefer you stayed alive. Revenge has a way of consuming people.”

Just then there was a sharp bang and Taro whirled round on the
spot. Behind him the door had been shut. He pushed against it, but it didn’t yield.

From the other side of the door came Little Kawabata’s voice, unmistakably reedy and nasal. “I wonder what that upstart Taro could be doing in this rice store,” he said to himself in a stage whisper, “when he’s supposed to be sleeping! I should probably notify my father that Taro and Heiko have crept out of the crater at night.”

Taro banged on the door. “Little Kawabata, let us out!”

“
Little
Kawabata?” said the boy in a silky, dangerous voice. “Are you mocking my weight? Since you insult me, perhaps I’ll wait until daytime before I inform my father of where you are.” His voice moved around to the side of the hut, and then Taro saw fingers appear through a crack in the wood and wiggle up and down. “There’ll be lots of light in there when the sun come up. I hope that doesn’t
hurt
or anything. But then, being turned early has to have some disadvantages.”

Taro gazed around the stone store room. Moonlight, filtering through the thin gaps between planks, pierced the air above the rice mounds in shafts that crossed over one another, filling the room with a latticework of dim blue light that shimmered with motes of rice dust.

Soon that light would not be moonlight.

It would be bright autumn sunlight.

“Gods …,” he whispered—not because he was afraid that someone might hear, but because the awfulness of his realization had robbed his speech. “He means to kill me.”

Heiko’s eyes widened. “Of course … the light. It’ll burn your skin.”

She too began to bang on the door and shouted to Kawabata to let them out. But to no avail. The boy simply laughed, low and slow, then walked away. “I’ll be back for you when daylight comes, Heiko. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll think about your version of events, in case anyone thinks to question me. I wouldn’t want you having any
accidents
during your time at the crater.”

They heard the sound of his footsteps softening and finally disappearing as he walked back up the hill toward the crater.

Eventually they turned to each other. “The bolt,” said Heiko. “He picked it up and slid it back in. We’re locked in.”

Taro groaned. “The men we incapacitated will wake up soon. Then they’ll rouse the village. And we have no more than one incense stick of time before dawn.”

Heiko looked aghast. “But … how can he do this? He’ll kill you!”

Taro closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Gods
, he thought.
This is it. This is how you die
.

But when he opened his eyes again, Heiko was looking at him, eyes wide with anxiety, and he knew that he could not simply dissolve into purposeless terror. He didn’t want to die, and his heart was pounding with the fear of the coming daylight, but he would fight to stay alive.

“We have no time to lose,” he said to Heiko. Tensing, he aimed a hard kick at the door. It barely shivered. He kicked again, then again. Heiko joined in, but the door would not budge. The stone walls, too, were unmovable. Taro even climbed up into the rafters, looking for gaps in the roof that might permit him to climb out. But there was nothing.

By the time they gave up, slumped against each other, lying against a pile of rice, the light that streamed through the roof was already brightening. One of the shafts moved across the floor toward Taro’s foot. Heiko winced, as Taro yanked his foot away from the light. “We need to get you out of here.”

Taro nodded. Then a branch cracked outside, and Taro whipped round. He could hear voices approaching, laughing and joking. “It’s a shame to start on the dried rice already,” said one of the villagers.

“It’s always a shame when harvests are bad,” said another.

“And when lords raise their taxes at the same time,” grumbled a younger, deeper voice.

“Shush!” said another, as if it were dangerous even in the middle of nowhere to speak of such things.

Taro and Heiko glanced at each other nervously. They were about to be discovered!

Taro knew there was no time to lose. The light might hurt him, though it was not yet full daylight, but at least he would draw attention away from Heiko.

There came a shout from just outside the door. “The guards! They’ve been overpowered! Hideo, get the key! We have thieves!”

Taro pointed at the mounds of rice. “Burrow under there,” he said to Heiko. “I’ll be safe. I promise.” He wished he felt as confident as he sounded.

There was a metallic click, and then the door began to creak open.

Tensing against the pain he was sure would come with the light, Taro launched himself at the doorway.

In a flash he saw that one of the men framed there—a village elder, Taro supposed, from the extra body weight the man carried around his soft belly—had a drawstring money pouch on his belt, and that gave Taro an idea. If he took their money, they’d have to follow him.

And that would leave Heiko safe in the store room.

He ran straight at the men. They stepped back in surprise, giving Taro the space he needed to duck, grab the money bag, and snap it off the man’s belt. One of the men snatched at Taro as he ran past them, catching at his cloak, but Taro twisted and managed to throw him off. Then he was running down the path and away. He glanced fearfully at the sky. Light was creeping over the treetops, and when he looked down, he saw a glow spreading on the fallen leaves.

He rubbed at his skin. No pain yet, but he knew it would come.

If he didn’t get into the shade soon, he was going to die.

The men turned, shouting, and ran after him. Taro found himself having to slow down in order to let them keep up. He was so much stronger now, so much faster, that it was easy to get carried away. He paused, looking behind him. The men came thundering along, panting heavily. One of them pointed at him. “Ninja!”

Taro turned and ran, coming off the path and into the woods.
He was heading uphill now, and the going was steep. The ground was littered with rocks and roots. Taro hoped to tire the men out; perhaps, if possible, twist an ankle or two. He leaped lightly over the ground, his coordination and reflexes getting better by the day. He felt exhilarated, untouchable—and then there was a glare that he recognized as the sun rising above the trees, and the scene was flooded with light.

It felt as though everything inside him had turned to rushing water, and he wondered distantly whether the roaring sound he could hear was out in the world—a storm, maybe—or only in his ears.
No
, he thought.
I can’t die before I see my mother again
.

He closed his eyes.

A moment later he opened them again.

He frowned down at himself as he realized that there was no pain at all.

Strange.

The light flooded the world now, so bright after days and days of night that he had to blink to clear the shapes that flashed and flared in his vision. He stopped and turned his hands in the sunshine. They were completely exposed, and yet nothing was happening. He flexed his fingers.

Still nothing.

Had Shusaku lied to him about the light? But why would he do that? And then, Little Kawabata too had thought the light would harm him. He had counted on it, in fact.

Taro closed his eyes, and the light of the sun was red against his eyelids.
Do I
always
have to be different?
he thought.

But then there was a crunch of a foot on leaves behind him, and he turned to run once again, leaping over rocks and ducking under overhanging trees. He glanced back. The men were catching up. A branch was suddenly in front of his face, and then he was lying on his back, all the breath knocked out of his body. Pain flared from what felt like a broken nose—not as intense as when he’d been human, but bad nonetheless. He tried to move but found that his arms and legs would not obey.

There was a shout, a footfall that snapped a twig.

“Ah, here you are,” said a voice, somewhat out of breath. A face swam into Taro’s field of vision—one of the men, the youngest in fact. The man grinned in triumph and reached down to grab Taro by the throat. With his other hand he reached for the money bag still gripped in Taro’s fist.

Taro listened carefully. His hearing too had improved vastly. The other men were far behind, clearly less used than this one to such exertion.

He made a snap decision, hoping that he could move again. He intercepted the man’s arm, clasping his wrist. He pulled, hard, yanking the man off balance and toward him. At the same time he rolled, letting the man fall face-first onto the ground where a second ago he had lain winded.

Twisting the man’s arm behind his back, Taro reversed his roll, kicking with his feet so that his body spun in the air to land, knees down, on the man’s back. “I’m sorry,” said Taro. Then he leaned forward and sank his teeth into the back of the man’s neck. He hoped he could stop before he killed him.

With the fresh blood pumping in his veins, Taro ran easily through the woods, taking a long detour back to the rice store.

He heard dim cries from behind him, in the woods, where the pursuers had found their companion. Taro was almost certain the man would live; he hadn’t drunk for long. But he hoped that the men would now keep away from the rice store. As far as they were concerned, the thief had got out and was on the run.

Soon he reached the hut and skidded inside, closing the door behind him. He didn’t want anyone else seeing the open door and deciding to investigate.

“So you can go outside in the light, even though you’re a vampire?”

Taro nodded. “So it would seem.”

“And that means that when Little Kawabata comes back, you’ll be waiting for him.”

Now Taro grinned. “Oh, yes. I have an idea about that.”

Obeying Taro’s instructions, Heiko stood by the door inside the hut, while Taro slipped outside. He had explained to her what he wanted her to do.

Taro locked the bolt from the outside, then slipped the key under the door so that it was only partly exposed to anyone coming from outside. He was making an assumption: Little Kawabata did not have a skeleton key, and would be expecting to have to pick or force the lock. If he saw Heiko’s key sitting there under the door, chances were he would try to pick it up, to make his task easier.

Taro hoped that Heiko would remain alert. Her job was to keep an eye on the key, most of which was on her side of the door. There was a gap between the door and the ground just high enough
for Little Kawabata to get his hand under it. As soon as his hand appeared, she was to grab it. The rest should be easy after that.

Taro sat, waiting, on the roof of the rice store. Despite the fullness of the daylight, he was invisible from the ground. So he hoped, anyway. The sun hung high up in the sky now, illuminating the slopes of the valley with hard, flat light. Yet it didn’t hurt him, and he was at a loss to understand why. He had seen Shusaku’s pain on the beach in Minata, when the rays of the sunlight had reached him. He ran his tongue over his long, sharp canines. Yes, he was definitely a vampire.

One, it seemed, who could go abroad in daylight.

Even as one part of Taro’s mind fussed over the strangeness of this, there was another part that thought something else. That thought,
This could be useful
. Idly he spun his sword in his hand. Little Kawabata was taking his time. As he waited, Taro’s mind wandered. He thought of the story of Susanoo,
kami
of storms, and the eight-headed serpent—for this was what had inspired his idea.

Susanoo, who was a powerful god of the sea, was roaming the northern mountains one day when he came across a grieving family of
kunitsukami
, gods of the land, led by Ashi-na-Zuchi. When Susanoo asked the leader what was wrong, the
kami
of the land told him that his family was being ravaged by the fearsome Yamata-no-Orochi, the eight-headed serpent. This monster had carried away and killed seven of Ashi-na-Zuchi’s daughters, and now it was coming for his eighth and final daughter, Kushi-inada-hine.

Susanoo looked on the eighth daughter, and saw that she was beautiful. (In fact, he had seen this before he’d stopped to speak to Ashi-na-Zuchi. He wouldn’t have taken an interest in the tedious problems of land gods, had there not been a beautiful girl involved.) He asked Ashi-na-Zuchi for his daughter’s hand in marriage, in return for defeating the serpent, and the old land god readily agreed.

Immediately Susanoo prepared eight bowls of sake, since it was
known that all monsters were great lovers of rice wine. These he placed on eight platforms, which he had the men of the village build. These platforms in turn were placed behind a new fence, with eight square gates just large enough to allow the passage of a serpent’s head.

Sure enough, the serpent took the bait and put each of its heads through each gate, slurping up the sake with each green and monstrous tongue. Thus distracted, the monster did not see Susanoo as he calmly walked along the fence, chopping off each head in turn. The later heads attempted to extricate themselves, of course, but as anyone who has ever been a child knows, it is much easier to push your head through a fence than it is to pull it back out again. Soon all eight heads were sliced off, and Susanoo chopped off the tails, too. In the fourth tail he found Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi, the greatest sword ever to cut flesh, which he presented as a gift of appeasement to Amaterasu, his half sister and the goddess of harvests and plenty, with whom he had an enduring rivalry.…