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Summer couldn’t keep her mouth shut a moment longer, always her abiding failure. Brother Neville was like some unctuous Dickens character—rail-thin and dependent on a cane, as if he’d recently been sick. His plain older wife would have looked at home as a prison warden, and Summer was damn if she was going to sit silently by while they congratulated themselves on their upcoming Armageddon.
“I thought it was going to be plague and poison, not blood and fire,” she called out from her place outside the sacred circle.
Brother Neville lifted his head to look at her, and in the brightness of the fire she could see piercing blue eyes, like chips of ice, glance her way.
“Pay her no attention, Brother Neville,” the Shirosama said blandly. “She will soon be in a better place. Who have you brought with you?”
“You cannot see, your holiness?”
“My ascension is almost complete. I have lost most of my sight, becoming one with my ancestor. But I can sense there is someone with you.”
Brother Neville’s eyes slid to Taka, and for a moment Summer thought she might have imagined a slight nod. Crazy, of course. Unless Taka really was a follower of the Shirosama, and everything had been a lie.
“I think the young man came with your two guests. We caught him as he was trying to sabotage the airplane. I’m afraid he’s dead, but we thought we should bring him here as well, so that he may be joined with you in the ascension. Your mercy and forgiveness know no bounds.”
“Indeed,” the Shirosama breathed. “Put the body over by his friends. They will join him soon enough in the liberation of their souls.”
“I only wish Sister Agnes and I could be here, as well,” the man said.
“Your work out in the world is more important, Brother Neville. I’m counting on you to make sure the supplies get dispersed properly.”
“It will be as it was ordained,” he murmured in a sanctimonious voice. Summer opened her mouth to say something, but Taka managed to nudge her into silence.
Two of the white-robed brethren were dragging Reno’s limp body around the outside of the circle, dropping him onto the hard ground beside them, and Summer stared at him, wanting to cry. He despised her, he’d done nothing but razz her, but seeing his body on the ground was somehow the last straw. A small, broken sound escaped from her throat, one of hoarse pain.
Taka glanced at her, face impassive, then back at his beloved cousin. And it was at that moment that Summer realized Reno was still breathing.
As a matter of fact, there was no blood, no sign of injury at all. His eyes were closed, his body still except for the barely discernible rise and fall of his chest. He wasn’t dead.
She looked away from him, afraid her expression would be too revealing, and back to the tableau in the center.
“May we stay for the first part of the ceremony, Master?” Brother Neville asked in that oily voice.
“You may. It is time. Brother Heinrich?”
The brother stood up, raising his hands, and the place was suddenly flooded with lights—blinding lights, illuminating the setting. Summer saw the cameramen, two of them dressed in the traditional white robes, focusing in on the Shirosama as he sat in front of the kimono and the sacred, ice blue Hayashi Urn.
He began to intone loudly as he poured what looked like dirt and gravel into the bowl. Belatedly, she realized those were probably the remains of the original Shirosama, and she waited for the next stage, wondering if some kind of genie was going to swirl out of the smoke and ashes, ranting like Robin Williams.
Nothing happened. The bone chips and ashes settled into the bowl, the dust dancing in the firelight, as the Shirosama spoke, again in that crazy mixture of languages. One of the brethren sat to the side of the cult leader, gesturing, and she realized he was interpreting in sign language for the television cameras. Brother Heinrich, his loyal lieutenant, sat at his other side and in the bright light she could see what she’d missed before. The shining silver blade lying on the kimono.
She’d forgotten what the Shirosama had told her. She was going to have the truly forgettable treat of watching the ritual of seppuku firsthand, and if she remembered her movies correctly, Heinrich would then decapitate him. Her stomach roiled. Not that she wasn’t perfectly happy to have the Shirosama shuffle off this mortal coil, but she really didn’t want to watch, and she’d never been big on severed heads. Besides, he was going to get blood all over the priceless kimono.
But she said nothing. Taka was utterly still beside her, next to the supposed corpse of his cousin, but either things had spiraled totally out of his control and they were all going to die, or a lot more was going on beneath the surface and she had a slim chance in hell of surviving.
Either way, there was nothing she could do about it, particularly since Taka seemed to have no interest in cutting through her bonds. She sat back on her heels, figuring she could always close her eyes at the gross part, just like she did with CSI.
Other brethren were appearing out of the darkness, forming an outer circle around the kneeling monks, with the Englishman and his mousy wife to one side. As the chanting grew louder the Shirosama began opening his robe, and Summer decided gazing at his soft, pasty body might be even more horrifying than watching him butcher himself. She looked away, meeting Taka’s dark, pitiless gaze. Silently, he mouthed something unbelievable. She was sure it was, “I love you.”
She was going to die, after all, and he’d taken pity on the love-sick gaijin. She would die with his lie in her heart, and even a lie would bring her some comfort.
She closed her eyes. Then opened them again at the rush of wind as Taka surged to his feet, leaping across the kneeling monks to tackle the Shirosama before he could sink the blade into his belly. Suddenly all was chaos, noise, shouting. Taka was leaner and stronger than the Shirosama, but he wasn’t batshit insane, and they rolled on the ground, over the gorgeous kimono, knocking the priceless urn to one side.
Brother Heinrich stood up, but before he could come to the aid of his master, Reno rose from the dead, launching himself at the German. Summer yanked at her bonds furiously, but they wouldn’t budge, and she could do nothing but try to scuttle out of the way of what was rapidly becoming a pitched battle. Almost all the combatants were dressed in the white robes of the True Realization Fellowship, though they seemed to be fighting each other and she had no idea who was winning, until Reno f
ell to one side, his red hair flying out behind him, and lay still.
Taka had managed to straddle the Shirosama, but the cult leader was still struggling, screaming out a mixture of words that Summer couldn’t understand; any connection with sanity seemed to have vanished. Brother Heinrich rose again, and in his hand he held the long, ceremonial katana with the wicked steel blade. For a moment she thought he was going to go for Reno’s still body, but then he turned to Taka.
