‘Are you certain that this was all that was at the front desk?’ asked Kirra, standing before the door of Room 323 of the Shangri-La Hotel.
Dagger’s Breath stood beside her, his scar glowing, sword sheathed across his shoulders. She could feel the heat of his need for revenge.
‘There were no other messages?’ she repeated.
‘Nothing, boss,’ said Golden Tiger, eyes averted.
Kirra turned the electronic pass-card over in her hands, her stomach muscles cramped.
The Chairman himself had called her. That was the first bad sign. When he ordered an important execution he liked to be personally involved on some level – but never directly, never like this.
Had she angered her boss so much that what lay beyond Room 323 was the afterlife? He’d want to have sent a pretty good crew if that was the case. She mentally reviewed the weapons she carried. Nine, all lethal, none visible.
She ran through everything again. The Chairman had told her that he knew where the two targets were hiding. Send someone to reception, he’d ordered – your instructions will be waiting.
And this was what Golden Tiger had brought her. The key to a room on the third floor of their own hotel.
She knew that the Chairman could have organised to have anything on the other side of this door. But could he possibly have captured the gypsy witch and had her brought here? Was that what he had summoned her to see – that others had succeeded where she’d failed? She would rather he had set up a trap for her crew – she would have preferred to meet her ancestors than face that humiliation.
If the gypsy witch was behind these doors, the Chairman would expect her to bring her to him, alive, as instructed. But he would always remember that she had failed the most important part of the mission and forever more she would have to watch and wait for his retribution.
And she knew that he was a very patient man.
But if the witch wasn’t in here, well…
She smoothed a single errant hair back from her flawless face and flicked her glossy ponytail off her shoulders. She knew – without vanity, and without make-up, for that matter – that she was one of the most beautiful women in the world. But she was more than that. She was a Yakuza assassin, feared in all dark corners throughout Japan and everywhere else she should happen to be.
And if she died tonight – on the night of her twenty-first birthday – well, she would ensure that people would still be speaking about it on the hundredth anniversary of her death.
Kirra Kiyota inserted the passkey into the electronic lock of Room 323 and pushed the door open.
The moment she pushed through the heavy hotel door, Kirra knew they were walking into a trap. The room was dark, but it wasn’t that: it felt far too small, as though it had been boxed up to cage them.
For a microsecond her instincts told her to back out, to run. But she squashed them immediately, ashamed. If it was her destiny to die today, punished by the Chairman for failing in her assignment, then she would die with honour. Not in a year from now, hunted down in some alley by a fellow Yakuza.
She led her crew into the room with her. They were Yakuza, all, and she knew they would react the same way.
But once crowded into the cramped, airless space, she became confused. The barricade restraining them was wooden, flimsy, as though they were ordinary doors. She could see light and hear voices beyond them.
She put her eye to the crack in the doors and hissed quietly.
The gypsy and others. And there is the boy!
A massive sense of relief overrode all instincts telling her there was something bewitched about the situation. The Chairman still trusts me, she thought. The job is still there to do properly. I will be redeemed.
Kirra silently thanked her ancestors and turned to face her crew. Suddenly she was again proud of them all; their names would live forever.
She manoeuvred a little so that her beloved, Dagger’s Breath, could see through the crack in the doorway.
‘Keep the targets alive,’ she whispered. ‘All others are disposable.’ She waited for each of their murmured assents.
‘Dagger’s Breath,’ she breathed behind him, ‘on your go.’
Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, Australia
The cupboard door smacked back and a nightmare stepped through. A screaming, sword-wielding, tattooed freak. Luke threw himself sideways as another shrieking black-clad daemon leapt into the room. But this one was definitely female – even in his shock, Luke registered her icy beauty. And behind her were more.
Before his mind could process what was happening, the female ninja launched herself right at him. He sprang up onto the bed just as Seraphina crash-tackled her and Zac hollered his name.
He whipped his head up to see Zac straining with everything he had to push the cupboard doors closed. He had no idea how Zac was keeping at bay whatever roared and smashed against the inside of the doors, but he knew he needed help fast.
Luke flew from the bed and shoulder-charged into the doors. He heard the door lock-snap into place, felt the wardrobe immediately become still, and then, much too late, registered the swipe of silver from the corner of his eye.
Samantha froze in the hallway, hearing the shrieks from the room she had just left, and flattened herself against the wall. Every sense told her to get the hell out, start running and never come back. But her brother was in there. She couldn’t leave him.
Her heart firing like a machine gun, she peered around the door frame.
The scarred monster from the Carnivale seemed to fill all the space in the room and she plastered both hands over her mouth to smother her scream.
Samantha watched, horrified, as Luke dived a split second before Scarface landed in the spot he’d been standing. Scarface hit the ground hard, and rolled.
Samantha made herself small behind the door frame, terrified that he would see her when he stood up again.
And then Kirra leapt through.
Kirra screamed the same bloodcurdling battle cry Samantha had heard at the Carnivale – the sound that accompanied the whistle of the throwing star that had buried itself in Tamas’s neck. The sound Samantha heard replaying in her mind every time she closed her eyes.
Sam pushed her fingertips into her ears, praying to just curl up on the floor and disappear, and watched, horrified, as Kirra flew towards Luke. But before she could even take a breath to warn him, Seraphina sprang from a standing start to head-height in a blur of frenzied movement, and brought the black-clad ninja to the ground.
For a single heartbeat they each lay on their backs as though stunned, and then, in a near identical move, both women propelled themselves from flat out to kickboxing without making a single sound. Samantha would have cheered, but while the two women fought viciously hand to hand, Zac threw himself at the wardrobe.
She rushed forward to help.
Right into the chest of Scarface.
