Gross.
She went to the window and looked out at the night. She couldn't see the street, only rooftops and the glow from all the lighted marquees on 45th Street directly below. Was someone down there in the crowds, watching the hotel, waiting for her to come out? Waiting so he could collect his reward?
She couldn't leave, couldn't even risk going to the hotel restaurant. She'd have to order room service and hope the delivery guy didn't recognize her.
She felt just as trapped as she had at Mr. Osala's, but at least there she'd been safe. Here…
This was a nightmare.
Why not just call Henry and have him pick her up? But then she'd be back where she started.
She couldn't take it. She'd been ready to end it all before but had let Mr. Osala talk her out of it. Why not finish the job now? Get it done this time.
She tried to open the window but it wouldn't budge. She picked up the room's one chair and slammed it against the glass. It bounced back. She tried it again with the same result. Some sort of safety glass.
She dropped onto the bed and began to cry.
She had to find a way out of this. She'd formed the beginnings of a plan on the subway. Maybe she should go with that.
She pulled herself together, grabbed the bag of stuff she'd bought at the drugstore, and headed for the bathroom.
Using his flashlight sparingly, Shiro rushed back through the dark woods to his teacher, praying the news he brought would not cause him to abort the test.
"Sensei, there are people in the little cabin there!"
Akechi-sensei, a faintly limned shadow in the starlight, nodded. "All the better. Proceed."
"But what if they interfere?"
"They will not." He pointed back toward the woods. "Go. Hurry."
Shiro obeyed, returning to where Tadasu waited with the shoten. The chosen site lay half a mile north of a golf course and barely more than half a mile from any dwelling, yet here among the silent trees, civilization could have been a thousand miles away.
That changed as he neared the rotting cabin in a tiny forgotten clearing.
Not completely forgotten, obviously. Four teenagers—two couples—had driven a battered Jeep to the cabin and begun an impromptu party. They had beer and were playing loud music.
He found Tadasu about fifty yards from the cabin. The shoten lay bound and gagged on the ground before him.
"Sensei says to proceed," he said when he arrived.
Tadasu nodded, then knelt next to the shoten. He pulled a blue vial from his pocket.
"Hold his head and remove the gag," he said.
Shiro did as he was told and the shoten began cursing.
"What the fuck you sonabitches—"
"Drink this," Tadasu said, forcing the mouth of the vial between his lips.
The old drunk apparently never refused anything to drink because he swallowed it in one gulp. Then he made a face.
"Shit! What is that shit?"
Shiro reapplied the gag, then stepped away. Tadasu remained kneeling.
"Now we wait."
The shoten's muffled protests and struggles against his bonds slowed, then ceased. When he lay quiet, Tadasu removed the gag and then produced a red-striped wooden sliver.
"A doku-ippen?" Shiro said.
"Akechi-sensei's idea. Just to be safe." He pricked the shoten's neck with it, then rose and stepped over him. "Back to sensei. Quickly. We don't know how soon it takes effect."
Shiro led the way, and soon the three of them were standing together next to their car on an empty side road, staring in the general direction of the shoten.
Suspense gripped Shiro like a vise. His breath felt trapped in his chest.
"What will happen, sensei?"
"Something wonderful, Shiro. No one alive has seen a Kuroikaze. We shall be the first in a generation."
"Why did we use a doku-ippen?"
"The ekisu causes the one who drinks it to become a focus for the Kuroikaze. The Black Wind will last as long as the shoten survives. Because this is an experiment to test the ekisu, I do not want large-scale death. We will save that for later. I had you choose a sickly shoten because, while the Kuroikaze is sapping the life from all it touches, it is also diminishing the life of the shoten. The longer the shoten survives, the more fierce the wind, the greater the radius of death. The particular doku-ippen used will bring death shortly after it is introduced into the body. So even if this wasted shoten taps into some hidden reserves of strength, he won't survive long enough to raise a full-fledged Kuroikaze."
"There!" Tadasu cried, pointing. "Something is happening!"
Shiro strained to see, but the starlight was dim, and the trees dark.
And then he saw it—a layer of blackness overspreading an area of trees… a cloud, blacker than Shiro had ever seen… so black it didn't reflect the meager starlight, but rather seemed to absorb it… devour it.
The way it oozed across the treetops made Shiro's gut crawl. This was evil, and he didn't like to think of the Order to which he had devoted his life as dealing with evil. But then, this was certainly no more evil than the atomic bombs that killed so many in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Yes, if he thought of it that way, he could accept.
He watched and waited, expecting to see the inexorable flow of the blackness slow and then begin to ebb. But it continued to expand, coming their way.
"Sensei? Shouldn't it be stopping now?"
Akechi-sensei turned to Tadasu. "You are sure the point pierced his skin?"
"I saw blood, sensei."
"Then he should die any minute."