The Name of the Blade, Book Two: Darkness Hidden (8 page)

Jack nodded again, squeezing her eyes closed for a second. When she opened them, they fixed on me. The intensity of her stare made her seem even smaller and more pathetic hunched up in the pale blue hospital gown; the uncharacteristic lack of argument over being left behind drove home to me just how terrible she must be feeling. Jack always fought. Only … not today.

“What are you going to do?” she asked, a little hoarsely.

“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “But I promise I’ll figure it out.”

CHAPTER 6

I
had voted to take the Underground route home from the hospital. I couldn’t imagine any huge, winged monsters would be able to get at us on the Tube or in the stations, especially if we lost ourselves in the crowd.

So it was kind of a shock to find there was no crowd.

It was a weekend afternoon, and Christmas was in a few days. There ought to have been tides of bad-tempered people heading out to do shopping or hauling their pre-Christmas-sale bargains home again. Instead, the station felt like an echoey ghost town. When we got on the Tube, there were precisely two other people in our carriage – a woman standing right next to the doors with a scarf pulled up over her face despite the uncomfortable humidity in the train tunnels, and a man sitting on the opposite side, as far away from everyone else as possible, who kept darting worried looks at us. I couldn’t tell if it was because Shinobu’s presence was playing games with his perception or if we just looked mad, bad and dangerous to know. Maybe both.

Self-consciously, I checked the hood of my father’s old sweatshirt, which I’d pulled up in an attempt to hide the rapidly darkening necklace of bruises around my neck. I felt Shinobu, who was sitting on my right side, stiffen as he caught the movement. His gaze flared with the same dark fury I had seen in the hospital, and then dropped to the floor. His big hands clenched into a single fist on his knee.

“They’re no big deal,” I said, trying for breezy unconcern. It didn’t quite work; my throat actually hurt like hell, and my voice was raspy and rough.

“Please do not lie to comfort me.”

I sighed. “Well, stop beating yourself up, then.”

“This is the second time that you have had to fight him alone.” He paused. When he spoke again his voice was nearly as hoarse as mine. “You could have died.” His hands flexed and clenched again.

I chewed on my lip for a moment, then haltingly reached out to lay my hand over his. A tingle of the natural electricity that was always waiting between us made my breath catch as Shinobu instantly turned one of his hands over and twined our fingers together. He lifted his eyes from the floor to meet mine.

Maybe now he would listen.

“It was horrible, and I was scared,” I admitted carefully. “But he didn’t intend to kill me today. He didn’t even mess me up that much, and he could have. He still wants – needs – me to protect the sword for some reason. I don’t know why. I don’t think he really cares that much about the fate of this world, or humans. But for whatever reason, whoever he is, he wants me alive.”

Shinobu frowned again, but it was a thoughtful frown now, not a self-loathing one. “If he is invested in the fate of the katana, why does he not simply take it back and protect it himself?”

“Yeah, I can’t figure it out. He’s way more powerful than me. Look at the way he froze everyone in that place. Everyone except…”

Inexorably, my head turned to look at Jack’s sister, who was sitting in the seat on the other side of me. Shinobu followed my gaze. “Except Rachel-san?”

Rachel shifted away from us. Her eyes looked huge and tense. There was a long, uncomfortable pause.

“Rachel?” I said finally. “You want to chime in here? How did you do it? You broke out of his – his freeze-ray effect. You actually managed to
hurt
him with your bare hands.”

“I – I … I’m not really…” Her nervous eyes darted away from us. She looked down, fiddling with the ends of her black-and-white scarf. Pity twinged under my ribs.

Rachel had been through so much in the past twenty-four hours. She probably shouldn’t even be out of bed yet. But what she had done to the Harbinger … that should have been impossible. It was impossible for me, even with my katana-boosted muscles and speed. Something was going on, and I needed an explanation. I tried to put as much compassion into my voice as possible. “Come on, this is me, not the Spanish Inquisition. Just talk to me.”

She shoved her glasses up her nose. Her eyes stayed down. “I remember having a really weird dream,” she said, her voice barely audible. “I was stuck. I couldn’t move or see or hear.”

“Right.” I nodded encouragingly. “That would have been when the Harbinger froze everyone.”

Rachel’s trembling hands knotted together. “But then there was this – this voice. This … awful, scary voice.” She shuddered. “It said – she said –
The little birdie needs you. Awaken. Move
. And I woke up.”

I could feel my eyes bulging.
Little birdie?

“And then?” Shinobu was leaning into me now, his chest a warm, solid wall against my back.

The announcement for our stop came on the Tannoy. The Tube grumbled to a halt and the doors hissed open. Before I could even get my feet under me, Rachel was up and bolting out of the carriage.

I shouted her name. She didn’t look back. I was so shocked that I almost forgot we needed to get off here too.

“Quickly!” Shinobu hauled me upright and out of the doors. But we were already too late to catch a glimpse of where Rachel had gone. We jogged up and down the platform peering through the tiled archways.

“Why would she run away like this? It’s pointless. She needs to get on the next train out of here to get home, just like we do.” A sudden image of the way we had found Rachel last night – her wide, staring eyes as she fought the Nekomata’s bonds – made my stomach do a queasy flip. What if it was all finally catching up with her? She could be having a flashback, freaking out – and who could blame her? I tightened my grip on Shinobu’s hand. “Come on.”

Now it was me dragging him as I slapped my Oyster card on the ticket barrier. If an invisible man fails to pay his fare in a busy Tube station, does anyone notice? Not this time. We walked out into the blinding orange light of the low winter sun without interference.

The pedestrianized area between the Tube stop and the main train station was lightly scattered with people – not half as many as I would normally have expected, but still enough for someone to hide among. Light glinted off the windows of the buildings towering over us. The Gherkin’s sleek form almost blinded me. Shielding my watering eyes, I scanned the crowd, trying to make out Rachel’s curly hair and red jumper before she disappeared completely.

“There!” Shinobu pointed.

I saw Rachel’s small form almost opposite me. She was hustling up the steps of the main train station, past one of the giant white mushroom-lights that stood in the courtyard.

We wove through the crowd, dodging briefcases and shopping bags. “Rachel!” I yelled.

All around me people turned around to stare. Rachel froze for a second, then sped up.

“Perhaps we should let her go,” Shinobu suggested. “She might simply wish for some time to herself.”

“Maybe. Yeah, maybe. But…” But we still had no idea what was behind that sudden burst of incredible strength and aggression. And then there was the fact that Rachel had just confessed to hearing a “scary” voice in her mind, speaking the same words I had heard in my dream. Words that might have come from Izanami. I shook my head. “She’s panicked and emotional. She might put herself in danger.”
She might endanger other people…

I let go of his hand and put on a burst of speed. Shinobu kept up with me easily, making me realize that he could probably have caught Rachel before, if he’d been willing to abandon me in the crowd. We caught up with her just as she was about to scoot into the giant glass structure that served as the train station’s porch.

I snagged her arm and drew her back out of the thin trickle of people between the twin brick clock-towers, firmly ignoring her attempts to shrug me off. It was the sort of move I’d have pulled on Jack. It was only once I actually had hold of her that I realized I’d been a tiny bit reckless, given that Rachel just might be capable of tying me into a pretzel if she wanted to.

No
. This was Rachel. Jack’s Rachel! The bossyboots who had been babysitting and lecturing me about my mess since I was a kid. Remembering that made me feel guilty, which made me mad.

“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Why did you go running off like that? Are you an idiot?”

“Let go!” She struggled, apparently not worried about the curious looks we were getting. “Leave me alone!”

“What do you mean leave you alone?” I hissed, hanging onto her arm doggedly. “What if another Foul Woman turns up, like the one that got Jack?”

She winced. Before I could apologize for my trademark sensitivity, she recovered and poked her finger at my face. “It’s none of your business what I do! I don’t answer to you, Mio Yamato. I’m an adult, for God’s sake! I’m nearly twenty-one years old.”

“Then start acting like it! We’re on the same side here. We are trying to
help
you.”

“How?” Her voice hit a pitch so shrill that it echoed even in the middle of all the deadening sounds of the city. We got a slew of horrified stares. Rachel didn’t seem to notice. “How? You have no idea what happened to me! You have no idea what’s still happening to me…”

All the fight seemed to drain right out of her. Her tense shoulders sagged and, to my horror, big, fat tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks.

Well, crap
.

Jack and me … we didn’t do this. We didn’t cry in front of each other. We didn’t do that Reality TV Big Emotional Moment stuff. It wasn’t us. If this had been Rachel’s sister in front of me, I’d have known just how to handle it – let her turn away, let her get herself back together without trying to help. Jack would already have been sucking it up.

But this wasn’t Jack. And Rachel wasn’t sucking it up. She was just standing in front of me in the middle of a crowded London train station courtyard, with one arm wrapped around her middle like she was about to fall apart, crying silent, pathetic tears.

Shinobu’s face filled with a mixture of sadness and understanding. He made an abortive move to touch Rachel, then stopped and stepped back, as if realizing contact from him probably wouldn’t be welcome. “Then you must tell us, Rachel-san,” he said gently. “Trust us with your fears. Trust that we will listen and understand.”

He gave me an urgent look and mimed a hugging movement.

Thanks. Thanks a bunch
.

Feeling stiff and uncomfortable, I put my arms around Rachel and patted her on the back. “Shush. It’s all right now. It’s all right.”

To my surprise she flopped against me, burying her head in my shoulder as she cried. It was like … like she’d just been waiting for someone to lean on all along. For the first time it really dawned on me that Rachel and Jack were different. Yeah, they had something of the same attitude, a lot of the same mannerisms, even looked alike if you ignored Jack’s goth thing – but they weren’t the same person. I needed to start seeing Rachel for who she was, not just Jack’s Big Sister.

I hugged her a bit tighter, and patted her back with a bit more enthusiasm. “I’m not going to pretend that I understand exactly how you’re feeling, because … you’re you, and only you can know that. But I can sympathize. Maybe I can even help. Please tell me what’s going on.”

“I’m sorry I’m being such a bitch,” she sobbed into my shoulder. “I don’t mean to be, honestly, but I – I feel
different
. I’m so angry. There’s this huge bubble of awful stuff inside me and it keeps bulging out.”

“You’re allowed to be angry. You’re not going to drive me or Jack or Shinobu away, no matter how bitchy you get.”

She shook her head. “But when I saw that Harbinger guy strangling you, it was like I went crazy. I didn’t even know what I was doing. I wanted to rip him up, kill him. I’ve never felt like that before in my whole life. I’m not saying that I was a saint, but that? That wasn’t
me
.”

I definitely got that. I’d been just where she was, and only a few hours ago. Which made it easy to get the fact that however freaked out I’d been about what I’d seen Rachel do, Rachel was freaked out squared. With a cherry on top.

“We’re not exactly in a normal situation here. You can’t expect to react the same way you always do. The last time I got really pissed off, I decapitated something. Does that seem in character for me? You were trying to save me – there’s nothing wrong with that impulse.”

“You seriously don’t get it, do you?” Rachel pulled back to stare at me with watery, red-rimmed eyes. She took a deep breath and grabbed the scarf around her neck. She tugged it down. It took me a minute to work out what I was supposed to be looking at. There was nothing there. Then a few brain cells sparked to life – and I remembered that there
should
be something there.

This morning the sight of Rachel’s neck, covered in swollen red punctures from the Nekomata’s teeth, had brought me up short. Now that terrible wound was completely healed. Gone. There wasn’t a scab or a bruise there, not even a scar.

“Nobody just heals up like that. Nobody human. That thing bit me,” she said. “Now I’m changing. It’s like a part of it is still inside me. I don’t know what I’m becoming.”

My blood suddenly felt as cold as ice water, and goose pimples prickled on my skin like nettle stings.

Holy shit. What if Rachel was turning into a Nekomata?

I could feel Shinobu’s stare. Rachel was still staring at me too. Waiting. Hoping. Just like last night.

Rachel had been dragged into a supernatural nightmare because of me. She’d nearly died because of me. She’d seen Jack in a hospital bed because of me. I was the one who had brought the Nekomata into our lives. And when I’d had to make a choice between Rachel and the sword … I had chosen the sword. I had hesitated and let her fall.