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An actual monster.
This was the real world, and there were monsters in it.
Benny kept screaming.
Tom lifted the trunk hood and shoved Benny inside. Then he grabbed his sword. There was no time to remove the trigger lock on the gun. They were coming.
They were here.
Tom slammed the hood, trapping the screaming Benny inside the trunk even as he ripped the sword from its sheath.
All those hands reached for him.
And for the second time, a part of Tom’s mind stepped out of the moment and struck a contemplative pose, studying himself, walking around him, observing and forming opinions.
Tom had studied jujutsu and karate since he was little. Kendo, too. He could fight with his hands and feet. He could grapple and wrestle.
He could use a sword.
Twice in his life he’d been in fights. Once in the seventh grade with a kid who was just being a punk. Once in twelfth grade when one of the kids on the hockey team mouthed off to a girl Tom liked. Both fights had been brief. Some shoves, a couple of punches. The other guy went down both times. Not down and out, just down. Nothing big. No real damage.
Never once in his twenty years had Tom Imura fought for his life. Never once had he done serious harm to another person. The drills in the police academy, even the live-fire exercises, were no different from the dojo. It was all a dance. All practice and simulation. No real blood, no genuine intent.
All those years, all those black belts, they in no way prepared him for this moment.
To use a sword on a person. To cut flesh. To draw blood.
To kill.
There is no greater taboo. Only a psychopath disregards it without flinching. Tom was not a psychopath. He was a twenty-year-old Japanese-American police academy cadet. A son. A stepson. A half brother. He was barely a man. He couldn’t even legally buy a beer.
He stood in the middle of his own street with a sword in his hands as everyone he knew in his neighborhood came at him. To kill him.
Video games don’t prepare you for this.
Watching movies doesn’t prepare you.
No training prepares you.
Nothing does.
Nothing.
He said, “Please . . .”
The people with the dead eyes and the slack faces moaned in reply. And they fell on him like a cloud of locusts.
The sword seemed to move of its own accord.
Distantly, Tom could feel his arms lift and swing. He could feel his hands tighten and loosen as the handle shifted within his grip for different cuts. The rising cut. The scarf cut. The lateral cut.
He saw the silver of the blade move like flowing mercury, tracing fire against the night.
He felt the shudder and shock as the weapon hit and sliced and cleaved through bone.
He felt his feet shift and step and pivot; he felt his waist turn, his thighs flex, his heels lift to tilt his mass into the cuts or to allow his knees to wheel him around.
He felt all of this.
