The Devouring God (19 page)

 

CHAPTER 36

Thursday Morning

W
hen Takuda got back to the warehouse, Mori had his ear pressed to the warehouse door, and he didn't hear Takuda as he climbed the loading dock stairs. Mori jumped when Takuda spoke.

Mori cursed with an Osaka gangster's flourish, straight from the movies. Takuda had to laugh. He needed a laugh, and the thought of what he must look like with his bulging eyes and wicked fangs made him laugh even harder.

Mori was beside himself. “You think this is funny? What the hell is wrong with you? Suzuki is in there screaming and crying and carrying on. It's driving him insane. We need to get in there.”

Takuda put the bags of food down on the concrete. “You should have pulled up some crates to sit on at least. Have you done anything while I was gone but stand there with your ear to the door?”

Mori was beyond listening. “I can't get the door open. He's locked it from the inside.”

Takuda sighed and took out one of the boxed lunches. He doubted Suzuki would eat, but there was a can of hot tea to help him wash down the Kurodama. As he reached for the door handle, a length of pipe fitted vertically to the steel plating, Takuda wondered himself why he was so casual about this situation. Trapped with their backs to the water, obviously watched by the enemy, dependent on the victory of their weakest link, why did he feel such a deep-­seated and resounding . . . joy? Yes, joy. There was no other word for it.

Takuda rejoiced silently for a second and then he wrenched the door open. It resisted briefly from the inside, then gave with a snap and a splintering of wood and squealing protest from the pulleys above. Takuda crossed the threshold into darkness, kicking aside the shattered broomstick Suzuki had used to jam the door shut.

The warehouse was a filthy tin shed attached roughly to concrete stanchions, the kind of metal box that's a few degrees warmer than the outside, winter or summer. Soiled sleeping mats, sake bottles, and plastic food containers were piled in the corners. Suzuki had cleared the floor, and he sat on a stack of pallets in the center, an emaciated Buddha on a makeshift dais, weeping like a child.

Takuda approached Suzuki. “Priest,” he whispered, “can you do this, old boy? Can you end this thing?”

The sobbing priest raised trembling hands bandaged with strips torn from his brocaded sash, the silken symbol of his vocation and ordination. The silken strips were soaked with blood.

“It resists,” Suzuki wailed. “It is stubborn and uncommunicative. It is very old, and it cannot fathom that its own end has come!”

Suzuki's laundry-­pole sword lay unsheathed and bloodied at his side. A full third of the blade had broken off. The remaining length was so deeply scratched and marred that it could never be fully restored, even if the squared end were ground off to form a new tip. Takuda was pleased to see the beautiful antique ruined.
Good riddance to it.
Suzuki had always cut himself more than he had cut anything else. He was hopeless as a ­swordsman.

“Priest, I brought you food. Do you want something?”

Suzuki laughed till his face was purple and tears streamed down his cheeks. “I'm so hungry I can't stand it. Every bite I take just makes it worse. I'm a hole! I'm the eye of a cyclone! I'm a blazing furnace!” He shrieked and rocked back and forth on the creaking pallets, his bandaged hand on the hilt of his ruined sword. “Oh, oh, I'm so hungry, but if I stop for a snack now, all this evil will turn into needles of volcanic glass in my belly! I can't stop for . . . what is that, chicken cutlet?” He peered at the box lunch in Takuda's hand. “It smells like chicken cutlet.”

“We'll save you some,” Takuda lied. He placed a can of hot tea on the corner of the pallet, within easy reach. “Just in case you get thirsty.”

Takuda bowed and backed out, still bowing. He really should have kowtowed and crawled away backward, he thought, because Suzuki was doing such a hard job. For a split second, he wondered if that was the Kurodama talking, worming itself into his mind. The dark presence stirred in the back of his mind, spinning off a single word:
veneration
. Takuda smiled. Yes, veneration is finally due this addled priest.

At the door, he glanced up, and he was arrested for a second by Suzuki's blazing stare.

“You're a good man, Detective,” said the skeletal Suzuki. He sat ramrod straight in his ruined robes, gazing at Takuda. “You've always done your best for me.”

Takuda bowed again as he slid the door closed. He was suddenly very glad that Suzuki and he were on the same side.

“Man, he looks weird,” Mori whispered. “Did you see it? Is he eating it? How much is gone?”

Only then did Takuda realize that he had not seen the Kurodama at all. He told Mori, just to see the younger man's horror and disbelief.

They ate their lunches with their legs dangling from the edge of the loading dock like a pair of children, accompanied by shrieks, howls, and cackling laughter from the warehouse. Takuda ate his own lunch, Suzuki's, and a chicken cutlet and pickled radishes from Mori's. He thought he might have to be careful about eating with his new fangs, but his whole face seemed to have accommodated nicely. While he ate, he watched the rooflines of adjacent warehouses. He saw shimmering movement, and he saw shadows against the pale blue summer sky, shadows that had no referents in the daylight world. He pointed out the distortions and the host of gathering shadows to Mori, who did not see them.

“Maybe you're just seeing the heat rising from those clay tiles. It gets pretty hot up there.”

Takuda nodded as he watched a wayward shadow sneak toward them, darting from one darkened space to another. He borrowed Mori's sword. “Maybe they're just curious about the feast in the warehouse,” he said as he jumped down to the tarmac and unsheathed the sword, sending reflected sunlight toward the fleeting shadow. It darted away toward a jumble of loose cable. “Maybe they're just harmless scavengers.”

“Maybe your imagination is a little overactive,” Mori said.

Takuda sheathed the blade and handed it to Mori. “We've been out here all morning, and we haven't seen as much as a security guard. You know we're being watched.”

“Not by shadows.”

Maybe not
only
by shadows.
Takuda bowed in agreement. It wasn't worth arguing with a blind man.

“You're treating this like a game,” Mori said as Takuda climbed back on the dock.

“I am,” Takuda said, “because Counselor Endo has taught me to do so. You're a brainy fellow, so you might enjoy imagining we're in a giant game. Each of the players has different strengths and weaknesses . . .”

“Attributes.”

“Attributes, yes, like good to evil, or neutral to ­chaotic . . .”

“That's alignment. You're talking about alignment, not attributes.”

“Okay, yes. Alignment. But attributes are also important.” Takuda stifled a sigh of frustration. “They are all continua, though, right? Like perfect good to absolute evil, omnipotence to impotence, like that.”

“There could also be special attributes. Special powers.”

Takuda considered. “Let's leave that alone right now. Let's say these powers are all reflections of the same thing. Power is power, no matter how it manifests itself.”

“Like the ability to push ­people around or . . . like appetite.” Mori's smirk was only in his voice.

Suzuki's sustained, juddering screams interrupted Takuda's deliberations on slapping Mori unconscious. He folded his hands in his lap. “If the priest walks out of there alive, will you grant that appetite can be power?”

Mori stripped off his glasses, rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, and then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Okay, sorry. I'm sorry. Please continue.”

“Our biggest weakness is awareness. Our lack of awareness. That's where we're almost off the charts. Or barely on the charts. You know what I mean.”

Mori frowned. “Self-­awareness, or other-­awareness?”

“Both. I get glimpses.” He told Mori again what he saw in mirrors and about his vision at the old moat, the dark fires of sacrifice sending pillars of suffering to the empty heavens. He didn't mention the animal spirit in the bar girl's body. He didn't know where to start.

“But glimpses don't tell us what we are or what our enemies are. We are ignorant, so ignorant, of ourselves and the invisible realms around us. That's how Endo plays us according to rules we don't understand.”

Mori stared off at the roofline, where he probably saw nothing unusual. “We don't even know what there is to see. There are five worlds that we know of: the world we were born into, plus the one only you can see, the one you almost see, the unseen . . .

“And on the other side, the gloriously bright, upon which we cannot yet bear to look.”

Mori blinked. “The priest says there are somewhere between ten and thirty-­one worlds, but that's storybook Buddhism . . .”

“Don't bet on it.”

Mori turned to him. “So if we're playing the priest's game, what's the point?”

Takuda didn't miss a beat. He couldn't afford to. “The point is to send enemy players back to ‘Start,' straight to hell so they can burn off their evil karma. Then they'll come back to the neutral middle so we can help them past us, all the way to the other side of the board. We're here to help them leave the game altogether.”

Mori looked him full in the face. “You think we're saints sent to help others achieve enlightenment. You know how crazy that sounds, right?”

“That's the problem with such low self-­awareness,” Takuda said. “We don't know yet whether we're saints on the way down or demons on the way up.”

Mori gaped at him.

Takuda shrugged. “I think it's an important distinction. Something to think about anyway.” He elbowed Mori and pointed to the long, black car speeding toward them through the deserted warehouses. “I'll bet you a bottle of sweet potato liquor that's Counselor Endo. Time to stow away this talk of games, because the black king has arrived. Let's see if Suzuki can demote him to pawn.”

 

CHAPTER 37

Thursday Afternoon

M
ori came to Takuda's side. “We'll split up and hit them from the blind spots. You take the back, and when Endo gets out, slam the door on him. Take him out. I'll get Ogawa.”

Takuda at first didn't intend to answer, but it wasn't Mori's fault that he was in the dark. Takuda himself couldn't have explained how he knew what he knew. “Counselor Endo is unarmed. He doesn't need weapons.” He felt Mori's incredulous, challenging stare, but he didn't take his eyes off the black windows of the sedan in front of them.

Mori hissed: “The priest can't do anything now. He's helpless in there. We have to hold Endo and Ogawa back. We have to give him more time.”

Takuda said, “He'll have exactly the time he has, no more, no less. Let's hear what Counselor Endo has to say for himself.”

The left rear passenger door opened, the far side from the loading dock. Endo's head rose above the car's roof as he stepped out onto the pavement. “Mere steel cannot shield me from your disappointment at my arrival, I know, but I hope putting a little distance between us may help you temper your reactions.” He raised his empty hands as he strolled around the car toward Takuda and Mori. “A little time to think, a little time for dispassionate discourse.”

“We've had lots of time to think,” Mori said. “Be careful. Another step means war.”

Endo grinned. He was dressed for the warehouse district, but not for a Fukuoka summer: a black turtleneck sweater with a short, squarish black leather coat and cheap, boxy shoes. It was insane to wear such an outfit in southern Japan at any time of year, but in August, it was suicidal.

“Are you masquerading as KGB or Stasi, with those Eastern Bloc shoes?” Mori's tone was harsh and challenging. “You'll pass out from heatstroke in ten minutes.”

“I won't pass out,” Endo said, “and I doubt I'll even be here ten minutes.”

“He won't pass out,” Takuda said. “You need a pulse to get heatstroke.”

Endo laughed aloud. Mori stared at each of them in turn.

“Please,” Takuda said, “empty the car. Let's see who you've brought today.”

Endo bowed. “I regret that I cannot comply. I don't want to spoil the surprise.”

Mori started forward, but Takuda checked him with a raised hand. “If you want surprises, keep approaching without telling us what you want,” Takuda told Endo.

“What I want is simple.” Endo beamed. “I want harmony and wholeness. I want a shining accord between us and a new understanding of how we may cooperate to deliver our entire nation from ignorance, oppression, and mortal danger.”

“You want the stone knife.”

Endo bowed. “At your earliest opportunity, please.”

Takuda said, “Now that you're getting it back, will you tell us where it came from?”

Endo spread his hands and widened his eyes as if mystified and amazed. “Who could say where such a thing came from? Across frozen seas of endless time or something like that, I would imagine. From the markings, I assume it's older than human language and perhaps the progenitor of bone script, but since you are said to bear the same markings on your ample and well-­muscled frame, could the same be said of you? Really, since you and the artifact share a common language, I should be asking you these questions.” He leaned forward, eager for new knowledge. “What is it? Where is it from? Are your shared markings the equivalent of an origin label?
Not Made in Japan?
” He laughed, pleased with himself.

“Not Made in Japan,”
Takuda said. “That's very clever. So how did it come here?”

Endo tried on a serious frown. “Shall I tell you an illustrative story?”

“Will this illustrative story tell me how the Kurodama came here?” Takuda asked.

Endo raised an eyebrow, which was no kind of answer. “Pacific islanders used to expand habitable territory by releasing piglets on snake-­infested islands. When the rains came, the snakes were forced out of their hiding places, and the piglets gobbled them up. When the settlers returned, the pigs were fat, and new islands were ready for habitation.” Endo smiled as if pleased with the explanation.

“So the Kurodama was sent to help clear land for conquest, but it got out of control. Somehow your predecessors managed to contain it to an island in the bay,” Takuda said, “until we were in place. You could test-­drive it a little once we were here to retrieve it.”

Endo looked at his watch, perhaps only admiring it. “Think of the artifact's recent excursions as a sort of performance review.” He looked up brightly. “I'm not allowed to say which of the functional components involved were being assessed.”

“But this isn't the first time it got loose,” Mori chimed in. “The cannibalism of the airman's liver. The butchery of the Mongol invaders when their fleet was destroyed by the Divine Wind.”

Endo made a dismissive gesture. “You underestimate the creative exploration of the Japanese ­people at play.” He rocked back on his heels. “Perhaps it's just as well that you have remained ignorant. If you knew a fraction of what I know about the artifact, you would have dumped it into the South China Sea as soon as you got your hands on it—­which would have caused an entirely different set of problems.” He nodded as if to himself. “Best just hand it over.”

Takuda said, “Is your sales force still losing its edge?”

“I'm losing my patience. Let's have it.” Endo started toward the landing dock.

Mori buttonhooked behind Takuda as if to intercept Endo, but Takuda stopped him with an open palm. Mori tried to brush it way or move past it, but Takuda didn't let him do it. With a fraction of his strength, it was like controlling a kitten.

As Endo neared the concrete slab, Takuda said, “You shouldn't just walk in there. I really don't advise it.”

“What, will the priest say sutras at me?” Endo leapt up onto the loading dock, more than a meter straight up. No normal man could manage that jump flat-­footed. Takuda and Mori stepped back.

Endo grinned at them. “I hope your hungry priest is burning the right kind of incense.”

“Your mockery and impiety don't serve you here,” Takuda said.

“They don't serve me anywhere,” Endo retorted. “I serve them.” He indicated the warehouse door with a nod. “Step aside, and I'll have a word with your priest.”

On impulse, Takuda stepped aside. Mori's mouth dropped open.

Endo bowed graciously and reached for the vertical bar that served as the handle on the giant warehouse door. He hesitated with his fingers centimeters away from it and then drew back his hand in a knuckle-­popping fist. “Is your Reverend Suzuki alone in there?”

Takuda grinned, trying to mimic the counselor's frequent display of large, yellow teeth. He doubted the imitation was convincing. “Slide open the door and find out,” he said. He pulled the struggling Mori farther from the counselor and the door. He had never seen Endo hesitate, never seen him afraid. He didn't know what Endo would do if he were truly frightened.

Endo backed away from the door. He reached toward Takuda and Mori quickly, without turning his head, and laid a finger on Takuda's wrist. “Please tell me what he's doing in there,” he whispered.

Takuda and Mori looked down at Endo's finger on Takuda's wrist, then they looked at each other. Mori raised his eyebrows to show that he didn't understand the significance either. Takuda shrugged. “He's eating it,” he told Endo.

Endo turned his head by degrees. “You can't mean that he is physically eating the artifact,” he said. “Not with his mouth.”

“Exactly what I mean,” Takuda said. “He's using an antique laundry-­pole sword to shave bits off it, and he's swallowing those bits one by one. He was having a hard time of it, but he's gone quiet.” Takuda reached for the door handle, careful to keep Mori at arm's length from the counselor. “Allow me.”

Endo shrank from the door as Takuda grasped the handle, ready to throw it open.

The door flew open on its own, ripping the handle from Takuda's grasp. It slammed into the stanchion at the end of its track and hung shuddering and booming on its pulleys.

Suzuki stepped pale and skeletal from the gloom. Both hands were still bandaged with strips of his priestly sash. The blood in the silk had gone brown. In his right hand hung the remains of the sword, less than half its original length, broken off clean, the remaining steel marred and hazed with deep scratches from shaving down the stone.

“Reverend Suzuki, how nice to see you again,” Endo said. “I hope that blunt little blade isn't meant for me.”

Suzuki turned his sunken eyes toward his own hand as if just noticing the remains of the sword. It hit the concrete with a dull clunk as if contact with the curved jewel had somehow ruined its temper. It rolled to Mori's feet, losing chips and flakes of lacquer from its hilt guard as it spun on the concrete. Mori picked it up, frowning deeply as he examined it.

“Thank you, Reverend Suzuki. I hope you'll release the artifact in your possession just as easily. I've brought someone to collect it from you.” Endo motioned toward the car, and the driver's door popped open.

It was Hiroyasu Ogawa. Takuda felt a sharp phantom twinge in his neck and a dull throbbing in his thigh, and he looked away. He had to.

Ogawa scampered up the concrete steps past Endo. He held out a broomstick with a cloth satchel hanging from its end. Takuda opened his mouth to tell Ogawa that simply not touching the Kurodama wouldn't protect him from its effects, but Endo motioned him to silence with a conspiratorial wink and a finger raised to his lips:
shhh.

It was so brazen and horrible that it actually worked. Takuda found himself on standby, waiting to see what would happen.

Sweet Lord Buddha, am I experimenting with the Kurodama, too?
But when he looked at Suzuki, he knew he didn't have to worry about the Kurodama.
He's taken care of it. Somehow, he's done it.

It showed in Suzuki's face. He was grim and gaunt, with no softness in his sunken, blazing eyes. Ogawa held the sack up to him like a child begging for treats. Suzuki towered over Ogawa. Then he smiled. Takuda thought at first Suzuki had something in his mouth, but those were his teeth, gray and metallic, like pencil lead. He looked quickly at Mori, Ogawa, and Endo in turn, but they looked at Suzuki expectantly, with no hint on their faces that he looked strange at all. He joined them, waiting to hear what Suzuki would say.

“You're awake now,” Suzuki said. “I was a bit worried about you the other night. How are you feeling?”

Ogawa glanced at Endo for guidance.

“The artifact if you please, Reverend Suzuki,” Endo said with a tolerant smile.

“Ah,” Suzuki said. He reached into his robes and withdrew a grayish, ovoid lozenge of stone. He dropped it into the waiting bag. Ogawa peered into the satchel and made a dismissive farting sound with his lips. He dumped the stone lozenge onto the loading dock. The soft stone cracked in half when it hit the concrete. Takuda recognized it as the same stone he had carried in two pieces, the stone that had tried to steal his soul and his sanity, but it was dead now, dried out, lifeless.

“Reverend Suzuki,” Endo said, his voice so smooth and pleasant that Takuda couldn't mistake the effort, “this just won't do. This isn't the artifact that you and your friends stole from the Zenkoku Sales branch office. I really must insist that you give it back, or I'll be forced to involve local law enforcement.”

Suzuki smiled even more widely. It made Takuda's skin crawl. “Counselor,” he said, “I've complied with your request.” He gestured at the shards at Ogawa's feet. “That's all that's left. I ate the rest.”

Endo's smile did not waver. “You're lying.”

Suzuki shrugged, an oddly normal behavior from a man with steel teeth, Takuda thought.

The counselor sighed an exaggerated sigh. “Very well. If you won't cooperate with me, perhaps you will have to answer to the head of your heretical sect.” He motioned Ogawa toward the car.

Suzuki stood stiff and unsmiling as Ogawa scampered off. Takuda watched Suzuki for some clue as to what the Kurodama had done to him. Mori hefted the shortened sword, looking between Takuda and Suzuki as if awaiting instructions. The counselor studied his fingernails and did not seem entirely displeased with what he saw.

Ogawa pulled a heavy man in robes from the backseat. The man's hands were manacled to a heavy belt around his waist, and he wore a silken hood. Ogawa led the hooded figure to the loading dock, cajoling and cursing the whole way, all but dragging him up the concrete steps.

Ogawa left the hooded man standing unsteadily in the center of the loading dock. Endo smirked and motioned for Ogawa to turn the hooded figure toward Suzuki. As Ogawa did so, Takuda noticed the figure's priestly sash. It looked identical to Suzuki's.

“Priest,” Takuda said to Suzuki, “go back inside. We'll deal with this.”

Endo laughed aloud. “Please don't send him away. I've been waiting for this.”

The silken hood moved with the bound priest's labored breath, in and out, in and out.

“Here's someone who can explain why you must return the artifact,” Endo said, and he motioned for Ogawa to remove the hood.

The hood came off, revealing the livid face of an old man, elaborately gagged and blinking in the shade of the loading dock awning. His eyes adjusted after a few blinks, and then they locked on Suzuki. They narrowed to slits of rage and pain.

As Ogawa began to remove the manacles, the counselor made a grandiose gesture that included Mori, Suzuki, and Takuda. “I believe you have met all these heretics at different stages of their careers. Heretics, I present to you Abbot Suzuki.”