know that the mother’s responsible for giving her child a soul? Kind of an automatic thing, usually, but since mine’s the queen of the dead, she gave me a jones for murder, instead. Mother likes ’em young, and so she made sure I’d send plenty of kids her way.”
She sat down on the edge of the bed and gave me a grim smile. “I guess you could say my soul is on lay-away; I get it as soon as I’ve made up for what my brother took from my mother. Kagu-tsuchi gets the souls of people who burn to death, and at Hiroshima and Nagasaki that was pretty much everyone. Mother was very angry about losing the souls, not to mention being vaporized, so I have to match the A-bomb body count: 236,962 people. And since I can’t use fire, bombs and guns are out, so I pretty much have to take lives one by one. So far I’ve only managed to send off 538. At this rate, I won’t be done for another twenty thousand years.”
She rubbed her face. “I wish you guys had just nuked one city, a much smaller city. I’d be lying if I told you killing wasn’t a kick, but I’m ready to do something else for a change, you know?”
“Why … why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“Because you can get me out of this. You’re my father, and if you willingly give me your soul, I’m freed from my birth curse.”
She seemed absolutely, horrifyingly sincere, but I reminded myself she had to be insane, or some sicko getting her kicks at my expense.
“Why should I believe this crazy story of yours?” I demanded nervously. “All that was just a dream I had, and you’re just playing with my head. I … I can’t possibly be your father.”
She dug into her pocket, pulled out a silver chain, and flipped it through the air. “Catch.”
I caught the chain. Two dog tags lay in my palm, gleaming like razor blades. They bore my name, rank, and serial number. The metal was flecked with brownish gunk that might have been blood or rust or both. I turned the tags over and saw the crude American eagle I’d etched with my pocket knife in a fit of barracks boredom. My heart dropped to the soles of my feet.
“Where did you get this?”
“Mother likes to play games. She gave me a box full of hundreds of dog tags a few decades ago, and told me one of them belonged to my father. I’ve blown a lot of old men, Henry, and you’re the only one who tasted of my mother’s poison.”
Her mother’s poison.
Miko met his mortified stare. “I’d always expected my father would be a man who was responsible in some important way, maybe Oppenheimer or the pilot of the Enola Gay or somebody, but it was just you,” she said quietly. “You didn’t ask for this, but neither did I. And if you don’t give me your soul, nearly a quarter of a million people are going to get something they didn’t ask for, either.”
She stood up and went to the window.
“Do I have a choice?” I stammered.
“You have all the choice in the world. Your soul’s no good to me if I have to take it by force. If you want to give me and everybody else a chance at a normal life, you’ll meet me tomorrow at midnight on top of Mount Nebo. Otherwise, you can just stay here, and I won’t bother you again. By the taste of you, I’d say you’ll live to an even riper old age, maybe even see a whole century.”
She swung a leg over the windowsill. “I guess it all depends on whether you’re still willing to die for your country or not.”
And then she was gone.
The memory ended, but another curled around its tail; I followed the new thread:
I opened the top drawer of the bureau, took out the tray that held all my old medals and ribbons, and stared down at them. The tray told me that I’d been a hero once, and like my daddy always told me, heroes took care of business, never shied away from what had to be done.
I felt cold deep in my bones. If Miko had been telling me the truth, I had to deal with her, had to stop her from killing anyone else. But how could I stop a demon?
I went downstairs and reread the Japanese mythology book, pored