Ice Blue - Anne Stuart [105]
“There’s a road heading up past the waterfalls. It won’t take you to the shrine—you’ll have to get out and hike—but it’ll get you most of the way there.”
Taka didn’t ask how he knew about the hidden shrine—the old man seemed to know everything. “When did the Shirosama arrive here? Was he alone?”
The man shrugged. “I try not to pay attention. He’s not looking for followers like me—he wants them young and smart or old and rich. Someone said they saw his limousine heading into the mountains late this morning, but that’s all I know.”
Taka bowed low, not making the mistake of insulting the man by offering him money. If the night ended with any kind of success, he’d see that some kind of reward made it into the old man’s gnarled hands. Tonazumi was a poor town, and the Shirosama wasn’t going to be around long enough to make a difference.
“We’ll be climbing partway,” he told Reno when he caught up with him. “The main roads are guarded.”
“Why don’t we just shoot our way through?”
“Because they might kill Summer,” Taka said patiently.
His cousin wisely said nothing.
There was an odd glow halfway up the mountain, hidden by the evergreens. Television lights, for the Shirosama’s big production.
Fortunately, the Shirosama was missing a major prop. The Hayashi Urn was safely tucked in Taka’s leather backpack. Even if the cult leader still had the remains of the original Shirosama, if he didn’t have the proper receptacle, then what was the point?
Unless he had a fake urn. The sacred remains were probably a fake, as well. Taka had grave doubts about the condition of bone and ash after almost four hundred years. But if Summer could manage to produce three creditable copies of the urn, then the Shirosama could do just as well faking a pile of ash and some chunks of whitened bone.
In which case, why was he holding Summer hostage for the real urn? Why the hell did it matter? The plans were in motion, the eve of the first full moon of the year was upon them, and the appearance of the real urn tomorrow or the next day would be too late. Tonight was the signal for everything to begin; their intel had been faultless at least that far. The weapons, wherever they were, would be distributed, and in the next few days the subways and train stations would be flooded with toxins, and no color of alert or high level warnings were going to make any difference. There had already been too many false alarms.
For the first time in his life Taka felt absolutely helpless to stop the disaster. Things were in motion, and if the Shirosama had his crazed way, Armageddon would follow.
No, Taka was going to stop it, even if it seemed an impossibility. He was going to put a bullet right between the Shirosama’s fat, ruined eyes, and he was going to get Summer the hell out of there to a safe place, where no one could ever put murderous hands on her again.
Including himself.
They ditched the car halfway up the mountain, grabbed their backpacks and began circling around toward the glow of artificial light.
The night was cold, with the sharp promise of snow in the air. For now the ground was dry and bare. If it started snowing, things were going to go from difficult to almost impossible.
Even from a distance, Taka could see the outlines of the ancient torii gate, leading to the temple grounds, and the wide, flat field nearby. A perfect landing strip.
The landing field was an integral part of the Shirosama’s crazed doomsday play. Sooner or later a plane was going to show up. In the banked lights of the airstrip Taka could see crate after crate piled high, and he knew with absolute certainty that he’d found the weapons after all. What better place to distribute them than the sacred mountain shrine itself? The Shirosama would send those weapons out into the world with his faithful followers, and it was up to Taka to stop them.
The backpack had more than the well-padded urn inside. There