Angel Eyes (50 page)

"Okay." Russell slithered forward and, using Tori's body as a base, passed over the second monofilament. Then he reached back.

"Don't use your fingers," Tori warned. "The monofilament will cut right through your skin.''

"Right." Russell lay on his stomach, took out his knife, slid the blade between the monofilament and the hollow at the center of Tori's back. Carefully, he brought the blade back toward him until it took the monofilament to the same tension it was at against Tori's shoulder blades.

"Move," Russell said. "Now."

Tori moved gingerly away from the monofilament, and Russell immediately felt that odd tension transferred to his arms. It was like being near an electric current. Then Tori had scrambled across the monofilament and had joined him on the other side. She crouched down beside him, whispered in his ear, "I'm going to get behind you. On my signal, take the blade away from the wire."

"What?"

''Don't worry. Trust me."

Russell closed his eyes for a moment. The sweat was burning on his face, and he could feel his hands beginning to tremble with the task of maintaining just the right amount of tension on the monofilament.

A moment later he felt Tori gripping his ankles.

"I'm going to count to three. Ready?"

"Ready."

"One. Two. Three. Now!"

Russell, breathing a prayer, jerked the blade from its position against the monofilament. At the same time, he felt himself being slid backward, hard and fast.

There was an ugly breeze against his face, a blur in front of his eyes as the monofilament flew to his left, and he heard a soft thock!

Tori played the beam of the flash along the right wall, and they saw embedded there a shuriken, a miniature steel dart, a thorn dark with an unknown substance on its tip.

"This is one mean woman," Russell said, wiping the sweat off his face.

"Yes," Tori said. "Clever, too."

"I'd say diabolical." Russell stood. "No wonder Hitasura split. You picked one hell of a nemesis.''

"Karma. I must have sinned like a sonuvabitch in a previous life."

Russell grinned at her. "Time for atonement."

Tori came close to Russell, her eyes glittering. "I think you should stay here. You've come far enough. This is between Fu-kuda and me."

"Like hell!"

"Russ, try to put your male ego aside for the moment. There's no sense-"

"Forget it," he said curtly. "How would you have come through back there without me?"

"I'd have found a way."

He gripped her shoulders. "Tori, I told you my feeling about vendettas-they have a way of eating people alive. Everyone who gets involved in them.''

"Nevertheless, I know Fukuda, and you don't. I'm afraid that from now on you'll be more of a liability."

Russell sighed, then nodded. "Go on," he said. He put his hand on her hip, as he had in the library at Diana's Garden, which now seemed a lifetime ago. "I understand the need to pay her back for what she did to you."

"Thanks." Tori kissed him quickly on the lips, then she was gone, swallowed up by the darkness.

Russell stood quite still for a moment, then he said, "Bullshit," under his breath. "I'm going to protect you whether you like it or not"

When Tori left Russell, she removed her shoes, tying them to her belt; then she went very fast down the corridor. Her steps were utterly silent across the marble squares. It seemed as if she were barely touching the floor. In fact she was using only the extreme outside of her soles, never putting her full weight on either foot. The principle was akin to the way in which four-legged animals ran. At times all their hooves were off the ground at once because they were able continually to redistribute their weight as they ran, their center of gravity rotating away from each leg as it struck the ground.

At length the corridor ended and Tori found herself at a bank of elevators. She could see that they were all shut down. To her right was a wide flight of sculpted marble stairs curving upward in the classical style that in this venue seemed wildly out of place.

Tori mounted the stairs. The way to ascend under these circumstances was with her back to the wall. The idea was to put herself in Fukuda's mind and try to outthink her.

One quarter of the way up, Tori paused; she could feel a kind of grit on the stairs. Otherwise the marble was immaculately smooth. Just in this spot...

Tori squatted down. Another shuriken! In the feeble light she saw the glint of the miniblade not two paces in front of her, stuck between two squares of the marble wall. She examined the blade. It, too, was dark with some kind of herb toxin.

Tori reached down beneath her feet, picked up some of the grit on her fingertip, rubbed it. Fukuda had cleverly carved out a slitlike niche for the blade in the grout between the marble slabs.

Keeping her fingers away from the darkened tip, Tori carefully pulled the blade from the wall, took it with her.

Now she went directly up the center of the stairs, peering intently ahead as she wound her way up to the second-floor gallery.

She was almost at the top of the stairs when a ball of darkness came hurtling down at her. It struck her folly on her chest, and she crashed backward down the staircase until she landed painfully against the curved marble wall.

Hot breath in her face, claws digging into the flesh of her shoulders, she had no space in which to work and, worse, her position left her no chance to use either momentum or her greater weight against the creature.

She saw the red eyes of the Akita, knew immediately it had been trained as a guard dog. It was utterly silent, all its efforts directed at subduing her. It was very powerful, and she was still slightly dazed from its initial attack. She knew she had to disable it quickly or its teeth would eventually find her throat.

She jammed her elbow far back into its mouth, reached down for the poisoned blade she had taken from the wall, slammed it all the way into the Akita's belly. The paws scrabbled at her, but their fall power was already waning.

Tori threw the creature off her, scrambled over it, gaining the second-floor gallery.

Silence.

Then a slight singing, as of a draft through a grate or a cord being vibrated. Tori looked around; there was something odd about the bank of elevators.

As soon as she moved cautiously toward them, she saw that one of the doors was open, revealing a gaping shaft, the source of the singing. Tori could see the main cable moving against the auxiliary one. Gripping either side of the doorway, she looked down, and could just make out Fukuda, already below the first-floor level, descending the cable.

Tori leaned out and, gripping the cable, wrapped her legs around it. Down she went. It was not easy. The cable was thick, coated with grease. She put a great deal of tension in her thighs, knees, and ankles.

It took her several moments to get the hang of it, but then she was making good progress. She had just passed the main floor when she felt the cable grow taut. Beside her the auxiliary cable began to move and, soon, she saw the counterweight soaring upward past her and knew what was happening. Fukuda was sending the elevator car down.

Tori, trapped between the main floor and the basement, looked up, saw the car plummeting down on her. Its shadow was already covering her, and she could feel the kineticism in the cable she was gripping so tightly.

She realized there was only one thing to do, released her grip with ankles, knees, and thighs and, using only her hands to guide her, shot down the cable.

Without the grease coating, she knew the friction would have flayed the flesh off her palms. As it was, she felt the abrasion building, but the elevator was still gaining and, in the instant she raised her head to glance at its progress, she missed the basement level, shot on past, heading for the subbasement

Here there were no doors, and the shaft ended abruptly. With mounting honor, Tori looked down at the concrete bed of the elevator shaft: a dead end.

Shadows descending, a hot wind on her neck. She felt the encroachment of the oncoming car, thought. What have I to lose? and let go completely.

She dropped the last fifteen feet, willed herself to relax. She landed in a ball on the oil-stained concrete, rolled, came out of her tuck, took a great leap sideways. Behind her, with a whir and a whine, the elevator settled into its bed.

Tori heard swift footfalls echoing in the chamber of the subbasement. She turned, headed in their direction. Bare bulbs burned in sockets along the walls. By their light she could see that the subbasement of this new building was far from finished. Rough concrete walls were interspersed with spackled wall-board on which hurried instructions for electrician or plumber had been scribbled.

She put on her shoes; the floor was poured concrete, filthy with oil and debris. But, often, gaping holes opened into noisome trenches strung with enormous bundles of cables, the lifelines of the Kinji-to.

Tori leaped over these holes, moving farther into the building's interior. Abruptly she came to the far side of the Kinji-to, the end of the subbasement. There was no wall, but rather a vast space opening onto the Japanese solution to the utter lack of parking space in Tokyo. An automated parking tower had been incorporated in the design of the Kinji-to. It was made up of a kind of vertical Ferris wheel of steel slots onto which cars were driven, then parked, which were then rotated like a dry cleaner's rack to get to the car needed.

Tori turned briefly back the way she had come, but she could neither see nor hear any sign of Fukuda. She stepped onto the steel slot of the parking tower, and it immediately began to move upward.

Behind her, through immense green glass windows, Tokyo glittered like a toy city within a glass ball.

Tori looked above and below her, but she could not find Fukuda. It seemed unsafe to stay in one spot, so she began to climb from slot to slot. This was not difficult, as the slots were immense gridworks of iron and steel, affording ample hand and footholds.

To be the master of your enemy's fate. Sun Tzu wrote, one must be as unknowable as one is silent.

Fukuda is doing a good job of it, Tori thought. So far. She is leading me in circles: up, down, up. Why is she doing that? Tori looked down, past the gridwork of the parking tower, past the skeleton of the Kinji-to's subbasement, into the deep strata below Tokyo itself, and she knew: up, down, up, down.

Thoomp! Her head jerked up at the sound. She had just enough time to glimpse Fukuda in the center of the parking tower where the machinery was housed, before her grinning face was blotted out. A black sphere, expanding as it approached. Tori saw immediately that the sphere-some kind of gas-propelled and inflated projectile that Fukuda had invented-would fill the entire area of the slot on which she stood by the time it hit.

There was no time to climb upward. Tori leaped downward onto the next slot. But by then, with the movement of the parking tower, she was again level with Fukuda.

Thoomp! The sphere exploding, expanding toward her.

Leap down onto the next slot.

Thoomp! The sphere exploding, expanding toward her.

Leap down onto the next slot. She had a vision of Sisyphus rolling his burden up the hill, only to see it roll down again.

Thoomp! The sphere exploding, expanding toward her.

And Tori, coiled into a ball, leapt backward, kicking out at the last instant, the soles of her shoes crashing through a window panel. She extended herself, reaching out and backward simultaneously. Gripped a horizontal steel rim. Glass cut her hands, and she gritted her teeth. Blood ran down her wrists.

She was alone in the night, hanging from the sloping side of the pyramid of Kinji-to. Wind brushed her cheek. She could hear the sounds of the city, a vast engine humming on like a star spinning endlessly in its orbit. It seemed so far away.

But at least she was off Sisyphus' hill, the dreadful treadmill that Fukuda had devised for her.

Tori refused to look down; she did not want to know how high up she was, how far away the pavement was from where she hung. The weight on her shoulder sockets was increasing with every moment she stayed in one position.

Carefully, she felt for purchase with her feet; she encountered nothing but smooth glass. Her only chance was to curl upward so that her thighs were pressed tight against her chest; until her feet were over the sill of the steel window rim. In her contorted position she could barely breathe, she was sweating profusely, and her heartbeat was dangerously high.

She hung on a moment more, going into prana, her deep, controlled breathing. Then, having marshalled herself, she gave one final heave, felt herself launched upward and forward toward the building. Her backside cleared the steel rim, and she let go with her hands, flew back through the rent window.

The parking tower had ceased its movement, and Tori climbed through one slot into the center of the conveyance where she had seen Fukuda. She threw the switch to start the engine, then climbed aboard a slot for the ride down.

She pulled out the small shuriken blade she had used to kill the Akita, sliced strips from her blouse, bound her bleeding palms. As she did so, she saw a small cut on the middle finger of her right hand. What differentiated it from the other cuts and abrasions on her hands was the flesh surrounding it. It was dark and swollen. Tori flexed the finger. Motion was restricted, and when she touched the cut, she felt no pain, nothing.

She looked down. She was almost back at the subbasement. She saw, to her surprise, that Russell was standing at the edge of the parking tower, looking up at her.

"Tori! "he called.

"Jump!" she shouted, coming abreast of him.

"What the hell-"

"Jump, damnit!"

Russell jumped down, landing on her slot. They passed below the level of the subbasement; Tori knew where they were headed, she had known it the moment, ascending Sisyphus' hill, she had looked down, past the subbasement, into the tunnels of Tokyo's subway.

Tori and Russell jumped off the parking tower at its bottom, before their slot began its ascent. This is the place she's chosen, Tori thought-the place where she left me to die. Now she's intent on finishing the job.