Lord Oda's Revenge (52 page)

Now he was dead but alive, and it seemed that to stay that way, he had to eat the living; he had to become the thing he most feared, to become a maggot or a rat or a crow. He appreciated the irony – he appreciated it almost as much as the joy of Yukiko's death.

He raised her heart to his lipless mouth and squeezed it, and blood ran down his throat and through it and soaked into his bone, and he laughed as he fed.

 

L
ORD
T
OKUGAWA WAS
enjoying a cup of steaming sencha tea when a messenger appeared in the doorway of his private teahouse, a charmingly rustic structure on the beautifully tended grounds of his castle, its shadowy interior a cool and calm retreat from the phenomenal world, with its rivalries and battles and deaths.

He raised his head and sighed. ‘Yes?' he asked.

‘Two pigeons for you, sire,' said the messenger. He approached, bowed deeply, then kneeled, the two rolled-up pieces of paper on his hand, his head held low so as not to meet Lord Tokugawa's eyes.

Lord Tokugawa lowered his cup and took the messages. ‘Go,' he said.

When the irritant footsteps had retreated, he finished the cup of tea. It was, like everything else, an exercise in patience and control. Drink the tea, and
then
read what the messages had to say. It was thanks to these moments, these constant challenges to his own self, that he had been able to secure the position in which he found himself. Slip up for just one moment, allow emotions to cloud his actions, and he could be destroyed.

He could end up like that fool Oda, who by now – Lord
Tokugawa hoped – was dead. He anticipated that one of these messages would bring him news of that death, but he was in no hurry. He wanted to savour the moment.

Finally he set the teacup – a gorgeous and ancient Chinese object, chased with golden dragons, which had been presented to him by the Portuguese merchants – aside. He slowly unrolled the first message.

The boy has the ball,
it said, and it was signed by the abbot of the Tendai monastery on Mount Hiei.

Lord Tokugawa smiled. Everything was going according to plan.

Then he unrolled the second message, and smiled even wider. It was from Jun, and it said that Oda had attacked the Hongan-ji, as Lord Tokugawa had known he would. The monks had slaughtered the samurai with their swords, and Lord Oda himself had died in some fantastical manner – Jun reported that some witnesses claimed to have seen him burst into pieces in front of their eyes, spraying blood everywhere.

The ball, no doubt.

He made a mental note to send a reply to Jun, to thank him for the news, and to ask him to stay with Shusaku and his son, to await further instructions. He was pleased with the boy's performance. Ever since he had contrived to have Shusaku take him on, Jun had kept him faithfully informed. He would reward him one day, when this was all over.

He called out for someone – it didn't matter who, there would
always
be someone, waiting just outside, impassively, for the time when they would be called to do their duty – that was one of the advantages of being a daimyo.

When a head appeared at the door, he said, ‘Bring me the generals.' The head nodded, bowed, then disappeared.

He leaned back on the cushion, granting his spine an unaccustomed break from erect rigidity, and allowed himself to feel one moment of pure peace and happiness.

Everything had fallen into place, and the prophecy was unfurling as he wished it to do, like a bolt of silk rolled across a smooth wooden floor.

He allowed himself a moment of self-congratulation. He had read the signs and researched the legends, and gone to Shirahama one day in search of the woman who would give him this son, this shining vampire son – and now it was all coming together as he had hoped.

The boy, Taro, had the ball.

Lord Oda was dead.

The end had begun.

T
HANKS
,
AS ALWAYS
, to the fabulous team at A.P. Watt literary agency – Caradoc, Elinor, and Louise. Thanks are also due to Alex Cooper at Simon & Schuster and Sarah Norman at Atlantic for their brilliant and insightful comments on the earlier drafts of this book. It would be a far, far poorer novel without them. Finally, thanks to Valerie Shea for doing such an extraordinary job of checking through the manuscript, picking up on all the things I had written that flatly contradicted my statements in
Blood Ninja,
and pointing out the many errors and inconsistencies. By the time the book arrives in your hands, dear reader, it is (one hopes) relatively free of mistakes and satisfying in its structure – so you will have to take my word for it as to what a sterling job these editors do. I'm extraordinarily grateful.