The Name of the Blade, Book Two: Darkness Hidden (3 page)

“That was harsh, Rach,” she said sternly.

Rachel sighed. “Sorry, OK? But this situation is nuts.”

“I know that,” I muttered.

“I don’t think you do,” Rachel said. “I – I can’t even believe we’re having this discussion.”

“Yeah, we get it,” Jack said. “Monsters, magic, mega-swords. It’s freaky.”

“No, I mean I can’t believe we’re having
this
discussion.” Rachel sat up, swinging her feet down to the carpet. “This one. Why aren’t we having a discussion about us and what’s going to happen to us next? Mio, that nightmare – the Nekomata – threatened us with its ‘Mistress’ coming after the sword. She could be coming right now. So
why do you still have the sword
? Why isn’t it on the bottom of the Thames?”

“She already tried that,” Jack said. “We told you. It doesn’t work.”

“Mio-dono is compelled to protect the sword. She cannot be parted from it without unbearable suffering,” Shinobu said, his voice deadly serious.

“Oh, really?” Rachel snapped. “Unbearable suffering like, say, being strung up on the wall of an abandoned warehouse and tortured by a monster that wants to eat you alive?”

Jack recoiled, speechless. Shinobu bowed his head, his face very grave.

I swallowed hard, all too conscious of the weight of the faintly buzzing sword on my back.
Is it listening?

I tried to ignore the insistent pulse of energy, but when I spoke, my voice didn’t come out strong and calm like I wanted. I sounded … defensive. “If I could get rid of the katana somehow, believe me, I would do it. But I can’t let it fall into the wrong hands. It’s too dangerous for that. Nuclear-bomb dangerous. I don’t really know what it could do if its powers were unleashed. The Nekomata seemed to be able to smell it, or sense its energy somehow, so even if I could hide it, more creatures might come after it – us – anyway, and without the sword in my hand I couldn’t even fight them off to protect us. We have no choice but to keep hold of it.”

Rachel glared at me for a long moment. Then she stood up. “That’s it. I’ve had enough of this crap. I’m calling your parents.”

The room seemed to tremble around me; my voice came out in a sort of roar. “
WHAT?
”

Shinobu was out of his corner in a flash, his hands closing over my shoulders. I realized that I’d launched myself off the sofa at Rachel. He was holding me back by both arms. Jack was on her feet too, hovering, like she wasn’t sure who to protect from whom.

Rachel didn’t flinch. She lifted her chin and stared me straight in the face. “I said I’m calling Mr and Mrs Yamato. This mess is not my and my sister’s responsibility. It’s not even yours. The sword belongs to your family and that means it’s up to them to figure something out. They need to get back here and deal with this.”

“
Deal
with it? Deal with it
how
?” I demanded. “What, you think my dad can turn up and slay demons for us? Just because they’re adults that doesn’t mean they can handle
this
. They won’t believe us, they won’t know what to do, and they might get killed!”

“So might we! And you just want to put your hands over your ears, close your eyes and sing ‘La la la, I’m not listening’!”

“Oooookay,” Jack said, sliding between me and Rachel and making calming motions in the air. “Can we dial this down a notch?”

The sight of Jack playing peacemaker was enough to freeze both me and Rachel for a second. Jack took advantage of the pause. “Let’s not turn on each other now. When friends fight, the monsters win, right?”

“Jack, tell her that we can’t bring my parents into this.”

Rachel bristled. “Don’t try and get my sister on your side!”

“She’s got the right to her own opinion even if she is your sister!”

“Her own opinion? That’s rich! Did she get a vote before you dragged her into this mess?”

Shinobu let out a little grunt of effort. I realized that I was straining forward against his hands – and with my still unfamiliar new strength, he was actually struggling to hold me.

Jack was hanging onto Rachel’s arm with both of hers. “Stop it!” she shouted. “Just stop it! This isn’t helping. Mio, don’t shout at Rachel – she’s been through enough, it’s not fair.”

I shut my mouth with a snap. Rachel grinned. The expression congealed as Jack turned on her. “And you, don’t start bossing people around and giving orders. You are not in charge here. It’s Mio’s sword, and she saved your life with it. She gets to make the decisions.”

“Wrong. The parents left
me
in charge,” Rachel snarled. “Which means
I
get to make the decisions about what goes on in this house.”

“I said stop it!” Jack grabbed a handful of her own hair and tugged. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Fine!” Rachel screeched, her voice hitting a pitch that raked up every fine hair on the back of my neck. “
Take
her side then. Whatever!”

She marched to the door into the hall and threw it open, turning back at the last moment to stab me with a vicious look. Her narrowed eyes glinted in the sunlight. She was so furious that they looked almost yellow. Then the door slammed behind her.

Jack grabbed me into a crushing hug. I hugged her back, feeling her shoulders jerk just a little, exactly like mine were. “It’ll be OK. I’ll talk to her. I got your back, Maverick,” she whispered.

“Oh my
God
,” I managed to mumble. “Seriously?
Top Gun
quotes are
never
going to be cool, Jack.”

“Sez you, She-Ra.”

My choked laugh was nearly a sob. Jack let go of me, knuckling her eyes, and disappeared out of the room after her sister, leaving me alone … with Shinobu.

I stood very still. He was just as still behind me. Right behind me. So close that I imagined I could feel his breath disturbing my hair and the warmth of his large body sheltering mine. I wanted to turn around into his arms and just sink into him. But I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him. I just
couldn’t
.

“Mio…”

“Sorry,” I blurted, tearing free of the magnetic pull of his presence. I fled, taking the stairs to my bedroom two at a time and then slamming the door shut behind me.

The iPod dock said it was ten-thirty in the morning. This time yesterday the most terrifying thing in my whole world was the Nekomata. I would have promised anyone anything if they could just tell me that we would be able to get away from it, to survive it.

And we had. It was gone. I had cut its head off myself. Yet somehow the world was a more terrifying place than ever. Rachel was clearly not OK. Jack was struggling to cope with a sister and a best friend who were both melting down in different ways. I was half-sick with feelings for a boy who was – let’s face it – a complete stranger.

And Rachel was right: None of us knew what might be coming after the sword next.

Who was this great “Mistress” that the Nekomata had been willing to die for? It had feared her and threatened us with her arrival right to the end. Shinobu had argued that the cat-demon could be the servant of any number of powerful supernatural beings from Yomi, the Japanese Underworld … but that had been before Battersea. Before we had found ourselves fighting beneath the moon of Yomi, had seen the mortal realm warped and twisted and made into a tiny piece of hell on earth, just for us.

I couldn’t escape the fear that there was only one being in Yomi powerful enough to do that. Izanami. The Mistress of Yomi.

The Goddess of Death.

Slowly, with clumsy fingers that felt too long and thick, I took off the sword harness and dropped it on the floor. The sheathed katana gleamed in my hands, black and gold.
Beautiful
. I could feel its power humming through my palms, singing with the same strange note that seemed to run in my own veins now.

“How am I supposed to protect you? Why me? Why us?”

It didn’t react. Its power kept on humming and my blood kept singing. I didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that it wasn’t speaking to me – that it still couldn’t communicate while it was sheathed. The memory of the sword’s inhuman, metallic voice in my mind made me shudder with revulsion. It had been inside my brain, inside
me
. But even as I shuddered, a part of me was overwhelmingly tempted to remove the saya now, to reveal the crescent moon silver of the cutting edge and feel the white-hot flood of the katana’s power engulf my body.

A part of me?
Was it really a part of
me
that felt this way? What if this urge to unsheathe the blade was really a part of the sword? Its intelligence, its will, its voice, still inside me. How could I ever know?

“I hate you,” I whispered. My voice was so quiet I could barely hear it over the heavy percussion of my heartbeat.
“I hate you.”

The sword was responsible for every bit of pain and suffering and fear I had known in the past two days. It had put Jack, Rachel and the Kitsune in danger. It had caused the deaths of those innocent men and women who had been caught and eaten by the Nekomata. I hated the fact that the sword’s powers had already
altered
me, that my body was no longer solely mine. For years I had prayed for some long-delayed growth spurt to come along; now I wished that I was back in that old, familiar frame, even if it was smaller and weaker. At least it had been mine. By changing me, the sword had taken possession of me. My newly long, newly strong legs and arms were the property of the katana.

What did that make me?

I didn’t even know yet how much influence – or control – it had over my mind. In the horror and blood of the battle at Battersea, when my body had seemed to move on pure instinct and I never had a split second to stop and think, had I really been making all my own decisions, or had the katana moved me, thought for me? In that moment when Rachel’s life was at stake and I’d had to make my choice between her and the sword – when I had hesitated – had the hesitation been mine, or the sword’s?

Which was worse?

And with all that … with all that …
I still loved it
. That love glowed like a fistful of embers beneath my ribs, and couldn’t be ignored or denied.

That was why I couldn’t do what Rachel wanted and just toss the sword away. Why I wouldn’t try. Beneath my desire to keep the sword from the dark forces that hunted it, and protect those I cared for, there was love.
Need
. The katana was mine, and I would fight to keep it, no matter what. I would fight anyone or anything who tried to take it from me. Even myself.

Love and loathing clawed inside me, fighting each other until I felt sick and dizzy. I just wanted everything to go away.

I crawled up onto the pale pink duvet of my bed and lay down, pushing the sword as far away as I could stand – not even halfway across the mattress – but keeping one hand firmly wrapped around the silk-covered hilt. Then I buried my face in my pillow and cried.

When I dragged myself out of the bedroom half an hour later, puffy-eyed and exhausted, and with the sword in its harness on my back, Shinobu was sitting patiently on the floor outside. He leaned against the wall, long legs folded up. One of my dad’s coffee-table books, full of pictures of London’s landmarks, was balanced on his knee.

His eyes zeroed in on mine like lasers, stopping me short. Every inch of my skin flushed with feverish heat, and I looked away hastily. I didn’t feel strong enough to deal with Shinobu, or my own heart, at that moment. It was touch and go whether I would back into my room and close the door again.

As I hesitated, he closed the book carefully and put it down. He rose in an economical, fluid movement. Without my permission, my eyes traced that movement, lingering on the crisp lines of muscle flexing in his thighs. My hands tightened on the doorframe, fingernails biting into the painted wood, as I resisted the sudden, intense urge to touch him.

The conflicting needs – stay, go, reach out, back away – reminded me of my feelings for the katana. At least the saya seemed to protect me from the sword a little. Nothing could protect me from Shinobu or the way he made me feel.

Why couldn’t this be simple? I’d liked boys before. I’d had hopeless crushes that set me doodling love hearts and initials all over my school exercise books. I’d gone out with Dylan Brentwood for nearly a year, and cried for a week after he and his family moved to America. I thought I knew how all this was supposed to feel. But Shinobu was different, and he made me different. I didn’t know where to look, what to say, how to be.

Is this love?

“I heard you crying.”

My gaze flew up to his. It was like walking into an electrified fence.
Zap
. Everything lit up.

The scaffolding pole broke through his chest, blood gushing up like a red flower…

The green blade flashes down in the red light—

I winced involuntarily from the visions that flashed before my eyes. Shinobu’s jaw clenched. He made a small, jerky gesture with one hand, telegraphing helplessness and frustration. “Have I done something wrong?”

Guilt squeezed my insides. I shook my head wordlessly.

“This is the first time you have looked at me for more than an instant since we arrived in the spirit realm. You flinch when I move towards you, turn away if you think I will touch you. If you have…” He stopped short and took a deep breath. “If I have done something that has hurt you, please know that it was the last thing in the world I ever wanted.”

“Shinobu, you haven’t done
anything
,” I said wearily. “I’m just … overwhelmed. Confused. Can you understand that? My whole world has changed. Everything is upside down. I don’t know what to do. Falling in love must be pretty scary even at the best of times. In the middle of everything else it’s…” My voice trailed off as I saw a flash of emotion transform his solemn face, lighting his eyes.

“Falling in love?” he repeated a little hoarsely.

I pressed my lips together, but it was too late.
Me and my big mouth
.

He took a slow, purposeful step towards me. The corridor wasn’t wide. Even with me hovering in the doorway of my room, he was now close enough for me to smell the sweet, spicy fragrance of the Kitsune’s soap, mixed with Shinobu’s own distinctive smoke-and-pines smell. He was close enough to reach out, his hand trembling a little, and lift a flyaway strand of hair from my forehead. As he tucked it behind my ear, the almost imperceptible brush of his fingertip against my skin made something inside me melt.