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 undercover 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.
People who worked for the Committee didn’t live a normal life, though he could hardly explain that to his disapproving grandfather. His mother’s uncle, his mentor, had some idea that Takashi O’Brien’s work entailed more than his involvement with the Yakuza, Japan’s organized crime family, but he wisely never asked. As long as Taka completed the occasional duties assigned to him, no one asked questions, not even his crazy cousin Reno. Particularly when his great-uncle was head of one of the largest Yakuza families in Tokyo, a fact that filled his industrialist grandfather with horror.
Not that it mattered. Takashi could never find favor in his grandfather’s eyes no matter what he did. His blood was tainted by his American father and the eventual suicide of his beautiful, self-absorbed mother, and Shintaro Oda would never look upon his only descendent with anything but contempt.
Summer Hawthorne was heading back toward the car, her long hair dripping wet on her shoulders. He didn’t want to think about why he didn’t finish the job he’d started. He had an instinctive revulsion for drowning, even if she’d been unconscious at the time, and it could have raised unpleasant attention. That was the second tenet of working for the Committee. Do what had to be done, without flinching, without moral qualms or second-guessing. And do it discreetly.
She was shivering when she climbed back into the car, the bedspread clutched in her hands. He should have told her to toss it, but that might have given her a clue that she wasn’t going to be returning to her little bungalow anytime soon. If at all.
“I don’t suppose you brought shoes,” she said, not looking at him as she began to braid her long wet hair.
“Behind the seat.”
She reached around for them, brushing against him in the cramped front seat of the car, and something odd shivered through him. A tiny bit of awareness, which was impossible. He liked statuesque American women with endless legs, he liked delicate Japanese women with tiny breasts, he liked athletic English women and inventive French women. He liked beauty, and the drowned rat sitting beside him, even when she was done up for a museum reception, was never going to be a classic beauty.
Besides, she was a job, and he was adept at compartmentalizing his life. He did what needed to be done, and some of the things he’d had to do would make her shrink in revulsion. And he would do those things again, without question. To her.
“What’s next?” He could hear the strain in her voice, and he wondered when she’d break. He’d been expecting noisy tears anytime now, but she’d remained strangely stoic.
“My hotel in Little Tokyo, where you can sleep and I can decide what to do next.”
“Little Tokyo? Isn’t that the first place the Shirosama would be looking for you?”
“They’re not looking for me. They don’t know I exist.”
“But you’ve rescued me twice …” Her voice trailed off, suddenly uneasy, and he realized he had to calm her fears.
“The two men in the limo died in the crash—they never saw me. And I got you out of your house without anyone noticing.” That was highly unlikely if they’d been the ones who’d tried to drown her, but he was counting on her being too worn-out to put things together. By the time she was more rested he’d come up with a plausible answer. In the meantime he needed to stash her someplace safe where he didn’t have to think about her, and the small bungalow he rented inside the grounds of the hotel was as good a place as any.
“Besides, Little Tokyo is much too obvious a place to hide someone with a connection to a Japanese cultural treasure. It’s the last place they’d think to look, and no one’s going to know you’re there.”
She said nothing,
