She glanced behind her, but there was no back seat in this tiny sports car. “I don’t think so,” she said. “Take me outside the city and I’ll go change in the bushes.”
“I’ve already seen you, Summer,” he said in a bored voice. Unfortunately, that didn’t help.
“Then you know you’re not being deprived of anything spectacular. Find me a darkened street and some bushes and I’ll be fine.”
He glanced over at her, and for a moment she thought he was about to argue. She was going to forestall him when she started coughing again, finally leaning back against the leather seat, exhausted.
“All right,” he said. “I’ll find you some bushes.” She must have imagined the odd note of guilt in his soft, emotionless voice.
What did he have to feel guilty about? He’d saved her, again.
Hadn’t he?
4
His holiness, the Shirosama of the True Realization Fellowship, sat in meditation, considering his options. His practice was a far cry from the traditional forms. When he freed his mind the visions would come, the plans would form and true enlightenment would beckon like a bright white light.
He knew what he had to do to attain that permanent state, and the thousands of faithful were well trained, well organized to follow in his ways. He had the best scientists, the best doctors, the best soldiers, and the supplies were stockpiled, ready to be used. Awaiting his signal.
The blindness was increasing, a sure sign that all would soon be ready. His eyes were a milky brown—he still needed the contact lenses, but not for long. His colorless skin had needed no ritual treatment, and he hadn’t had to bleach his hair for months. It had stopped growing, and what remained was the pure white he’d managed to achieve. His transformation was almost complete.
It was really all very clear to him. A simple matter of various forces coming into play, and he had learned to be patient over the years.
He knew his destiny. Karma had brought him to this place and time. It was his task to reunite people with their lost souls, reintegrate them into a new life past pain, suffering and need. He would bring them all to that place of white-light purity, leading the way, a beacon of truth and retribution. The more they suffered in the task of being set free, the greater the reward, and flinching from what needed to be done was unacceptable.
Pain and death were merely transitory states, to be moved through with as little fuss as possible, and those who weren’t willing to embrace the change would be helped along by his army of followers. The gift he offered was of immeasurable value—the gift of a cleansed soul and a new life in a new world.
His needs were simple, and had been met by divine providence. He needed followers, true believers who never questioned. He needed the strong and the young, the old and the wise. He needed disciples of unflinching character who would do what he asked, and never consider it morally repugnant. There were times when delivering death was the greatest gift of all, helping someone past his or her current state of greed and passion, into the next life of pure thought.
The Shirosama had the disciples. He had the tools, the toxins and the gases that would render the subway systems and train stations in every part of this world into instruments of disease and death. This method had been tried before and failed, due to the weakness of the followers, the lack of vision.
Or perhaps it would simply be his time. The others had tried, for all the wrong reasons, the wrong faith.
The hour was almost right. The Lunar New Year was fast approaching, and he knew that time was finally right. Year after year had passed, but now things were finally falling into place as it was ordained. He had the followers, the weapons, the plan.
All he needed now was the Hayashi Urn, the ice blue ceramic bowl that had been in the care of his family for hundreds of years. The urn that had once held the bones and ashes of his ancestor.
The year 1663 had been a time of upheaval in Edo period Japan. Amid the warring clans, the daimyos and their armies of samurai, and the battling priests, there had been one man, one god. The original Shirosama; the White Lord—the half-blind albino child of the Hayashi clan, first considered a demon and later recognized as a seer and a savior. He’d foretold the disasters that had befallen the modern world, the terrifying eclipse of power and the new worship of greed and possessions. But he had been too powerful, his vision too pure, and in the end he’d committed ritual suicide by order of the shogun. His body had been burned, his bones and ashes placed in the ice blue urn and set in the remains of his temple up in the mountains, guarded by members of the Hayashi clan.
The steps were clear, laid out by the original Shiro-sama in the scrolls kept hidden by his family. The bones and ashes would be reunited with the urn at the place of his death, and his spirit would enter a new vessel. His descendant.
And that would signal the conflagration that would cleanse the world. Armageddon, where only the pure souls would survive.
There were too many stumbling blocks. For years the present Shirosama had no idea what that crazy old woman had done with the family treasure, and once he found out that an American had it, it was proving almost impossible to get his hands on it.
He could blame the disastrous war that had ravaged his country and his family. Only the oldest male member of the Hayashi family knew the location of the ancient temple, and he’d died without passing that knowledge on to anyone but his young daughter. In an effort to safeguard the treasure, the bones and ashes had been removed from the urn and hidden in the family home, and Hana Hayashi had been sent to the country of their enemies with the priceless urn and the location of the temple ruins.
He knew it was one last test to prove his worth, and he accepted it with humility. Once his followers were able to bring him the woman and the urn, there was still the problem of locating the ruins of the original shrine. At least he had the bones and ashes of his ancestor. For the last seven years he’d been mixing the ashes with his tea, to ensure his transformation, but the chunks of whitened bones were still complete, and when they were placed in the urn and set at the site of his ancestor’s sacrifice, all would become as it should be. Even the original Shiro-sama had been a test run. It was his destiny to finish what his ancestor had started.
He sat, and let his let his eyes roll upward in his head, ignoring the scrape of the contact lenses against them. Soon.
In the end, Takashi O’Brien had settled for a small park in a run-down neighborhood, pulling the car off to the side of the road. There were probably addicts roaming around, looking for a score, and maybe gangbangers, but they’d be much more interested in his very expensive car than a woman sneaking off into the bushes. If by any chance they found Summer more interesting he could take care of that as well.
Because, of course, he watched. She shuffled into the bushes, the bedspread clutched around her, and made him solemnly promise not to look. Was she really that naive? So far she’d taken him at face value, and he could back up the Ministry of Antiquities story quite easily. He was very good at convincing people who and what he was—he often went under-cover as Hispanic, Italian, Russian, Native American and any Asian background. Being a mongrel, or ainoko, as his grandfather would have termed him, gave Taka advantages. He looked different, but he could shift those differences to mirror any number of ethnic groups.
He was going to need to
make a decision, fast, before the Fellowship made its move. Once he finished this job he could get the hell out of here, back to the tattered shreds of the normal life his interfering family was assembling for him. The proper Japanese bride, the proper future.