Year of the Demon

Mariko looked at the table again, then at the madman sitting beside it, then at the barrels of hazardous chemicals arrayed at the end of the line of tables. That motor oil smell permeated her nostrils and seeped into her mouth. She remembered what Joko Daishi said about his lieutenant, Akahata: he is bound on his holy errand. She remembered what Yamada-sensei had written about the mask too, and about the weapon fetish attached to it.

“Han,” she said, “take a walk with me.” When they were well out of their suspect’s hearing, she said, “What do we know about hexamine?”

“Big barrels like those ones make a whole lot of MDA.”

“No, I mean what do we know? What if we don’t assume he’s cooking?”

Han shook his head. “We know he cooks. How else do you explain Akahata carrying fifty kilos of speed?”

“They could be unrelated, neh?”

“What about the Daishi? The drug, not the dude. Word on the street says it’s outselling cigarettes. And we never heard of it until we heard of this idiot.”

“I know,” said Mariko. “Just bear with me. I’m not saying he’s not cooking; I’m just saying he’s not cooking here. Does this place feel like a meth lab to you?”

Han looked around. “Honestly? No.”

“Neh? That’s been bugging me since the minute we kicked down the door.”

“So what are you getting at?”

“Han, what if he’s using the hexamine for something else? What else is it good for?”

He shrugged. “What am I, a pharmacist? I barely passed high school chemistry.”

“But you’ve got a smartphone, neh?”

Han nodded and opened his Web browser, and Mariko headed back toward their suspect. “Joko Daishi,” she said. “Great Teacher of the Purging Fire. Teach me. Tell me what needs cleansing.”

“The mind is in fetters,” he said. Even now he looked past her, up into the distance. “Property. Family. Hope for the future. The people cling to them as if they are lifelines, but in fact they are shackles. The mind is bound by them, constricted, weighed down. You are bound too, drowning, but I can set you free.”

It was clear he’d given this little homily before. Mariko wasn’t interested. “Swell. You do that.”

“You belittle because you do not understand. You dream of stability, order, immortality. It is in the nature of what you do, who you are, but you are living a lie.”

“So enlighten me. Tell me how you rescue all these drowning minds. And don’t waste my time on the pretty speeches; that crap might work on your little Wind cult, but not on me.”

“Divine Wind,” he said. “Born of the Wind and yet not of the Wind.” He seemed to find this funny; it made him giggle like a little boy. “And I am divine,” he said. “My mother is the future and my father is the past. I am come to shatter the fetters, to burst the bonds, to explode the barriers. I am the light, the brightest fire. Stability, permanence, order, belonging, harmony, they are but shadows. Before my light shall they disperse, never to return.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” Mariko said. She could see the excitement rising in him, swelling his chest, raising his gaze higher. It got her heart racing as well, but not out of some twisted sympathy inspired by his charisma. She was afraid. He was a zealot, all right, and he was dangerous. “Tell me,” she said. “You want to do away with order and harmony? Tell me how.”

“Still you cling to your fetters. You shy away from the light when in truth the light will set you free. Nothing you can do will stop the Purging Fire.”

“Then you might as well tell me your plan. Your deadline’s coming right up, neh? What did you call it? The hour of the demon?”

“The Year of the Demon,” Joko Daishi said ecstatically. “The appointed hour is at hand.”

“Of course it is.” Mariko tried to remember what else he’d said. “Your friend, Akahata-san, he’s out to do some purifying right now, is he?”

“Soon. Very soon.”

“Right. Because the wind is coming.”

“There is no place the Wind cannot reach.” He said it as if singing a hymn.

“Mariko!” Han shouted. She turned to see him running toward her with his phone outstretched. She ignored the phone, her attention captured by the look on his face. He was terrified.

He forced the phone into her hand and see saw the screen. “Holy shit,” she said.

“Bombs,” Han said, panting. “The hexamine. You can use it to make high explosives.”

“There is no place the Wind cannot reach,” Joko Daishi said joyfully. “The appointed hour is at hand.”

Mariko grabbed him by the beard and jerked him to his feet. “Where’s Akahata? Where are the bombs, you crazy son of a bitch?”

As she lifted him up, the demon mask slid down over his face. He locked eyes with her, his nose not a millimeter away from hers, looking at her from behind the crazed iron visage of the mask. “The Year of the Demon,” he whispered. “The appointed hour is at hand.”

BOOK EIGHT

MUROMACHI ERA, THE YEAR 198

(1533 CE)

44

The waves roared so loud that Kaida could hardly hear the thunder.

Lightning ripped another gaping rent through the dark gray underbelly of the sky. It was just after midday, and yet the lightning’s claws stood out clearly against the clouds. Kaida had never seen a storm so angry.

If anything, the sea was angrier still. Another huge, rolling wave tossed the rowboat as easily as Kaida could skip a stone. Her mother held her close with both arms, her knees and feet pressed hard into the sidewalls of the boat to keep herself and Kaida stable. She sang in Kaida’s ear, and though Kaida could scarcely hear her she knew which song it was. No other girls’ mothers ever sang this one. It was the song about the Kaida-fish, a little lullaby about a make-believe creature, which she’d been singing for as long as Kaida could remember.

Her father was the very opposite of calm. He clenched his teeth so hard that the tendons in his neck stood out. He back-paddled like mad, trying to keep their bow pointed into the waves. The muscles of his arms stood out like braided cords. He snarled and cursed and battled with the sea, a samurai armed with twin oars.

The boat lurched again, and for a fleeting moment Kaida was atop a mountain of water instead of falling down into a valley. She looked toward Ama-machi and saw nothing but flinders. Her mother told her the village would be destroyed and that they’d build it anew, but Kaida hadn’t understood what that meant until now. There was no home. Nothing to re-build, nothing there to repair. Just a beach and the rolling walls of water that pounded it, grinding down what little remained of Ama-machi.

This was the way, her had mother said. The ama had always lived like this. Kaida had taken comfort in it when the storm was still on the horizon, but now she saw it as an empty promise. She could not see a future for her village, for her family.

Kaida’s stomach dropped, the boat falling with it. For an instant she could see Ryujin’s Claw. It ripped the guts out of a rogue breaker and then vanished, swallowed by the water. The teeth of the Maw were always visible above the waterline, but the Claw was in deeper water. Kaida realized these waves were far bigger than she’d