The Survivors: Body & Blood (book 3)

The Bar in Tokyo

THREE DAYS LATER, I WAS IN TOKYO. SADIE THOUGHT WE COULDN'T track Sam because she kept shifting forms. Unlike a regular nosferatu, who only shifted in and out of animal forms, Sam could turn into different people. It was a rare thing really, and not a power that could be acquired. It was something you were born able to do.

I couldn't help but notice how we were surrounded by rarities. We'd never known real mind-readers, and then we met Sadie and Narcisa within a few months of each other. We encountered Valentin with his reading power, almost the rarest of gifts next to Ginny's Mirror, and now this with Sam. I liked to think I was just attracted to greatness, but I was starting to see the real common denominator: Raven. There were so many supernaturals on this Earth, even powerful ones like me, but we weren't special. We just acquired. These we were surrounded by . . . they were something worth envying. Raven knew that. He had a thing for talent.

Sadie focused all her energy on tracking Sam in Sam form. She tried to alert herself to the Sam appearing on the radar, rather than trying to look for her when she wasn't there.

First, she thought she was in Turkey, in Ephesus. Apparently this had happened as she lay next to Everett, and as soon as he left, she went to Ephesus alone. She came back and found me with urgency.

She'd appeared in my hotel room in a frenzy. "Berkant's dead," she told me. She gave me very few details. In the end, she hadn't found Sam but had found Berkant, the seventh generation protector of the Survivors' hidden cave in Ephesus. He had been murdered near his shack. There was no sign of his wife or child. If Sam had been there, she was gone by the time Sadie got there.

But it had become clear that Sam was traveling a lot, to important places, being given important tasks, and was completing them with impressive efficiency.

And now Sadie was sure Sam was in Tokyo. Needing to get there quickly, we left my body behind in the Leeds hotel and I projected and Sadie teleported. To a bar in Tokyo.

I'd been in this bar before, not that I mentioned this to Sadie. Ginny and I used to go to Tokyo quite often, even spent a good while here. And then she had, let's say, some drama. And then began a sequence of events that I didn't think we could tell Sadie.

So I kept my mouth shut and found myself humming The Wombats' song, "Tokyo (Vampires & Wolves)" mindlessly. The song had always amused us. "If you love me, let me go back to the bar in Tokyo where the demons from my past leave me in peace." In perfection, it goes on. "I'll be animating every night, the grass will be greener on the other side, and the vampires and wolves won't sink their teeth. I'm sick of dancing with the beast." You can imagine our fondness.

But this particular morning (yeah, morning) there was no drama, no big story, and no sign of Sam.

"I thought she'd be here," Sadie was drinking a Sapporo. The bartender looked at her strangely when she'd ordered it. I was just amused.

"It's okay. We're following leads. We'll figure it out."

"Back to England?" she asked.

I nodded.

"Do you think there's a less supernatural way to track her?" Sadie asked.

"Like?"

"I don't know. I just know she's beating us at our own game. Let's figure out a way to beat her at a game at which all of us are equally terrible: human tactics," she said. It was a fair thought.

"I'll think on it," I said, getting to my feet. "Now where do you think we should go to do our disappearing act?"

She looked around the dingy place and then out at the bustling city street outside. "Bathroom?"

"Effective, yet lacking the glamour I prefer," I said, slightly imitating her voice and vernacular. I don't know if she caught it.

"Charming, Marcus," she said, rolling her eyes and ducking into the bathroom. I caught the bartender smirk as I followed her in. I knew what he was thinking. Imagine his surprise when we never emerged.

Seconds later, we were back in the hotel room in Leeds.

Sadie sat down and put her head in her hands. "We have to find her," she said, a growl in her voice.

This was so far from the poised, stiff Sadie we'd met. I loved her new badassness, but I couldn't tell if the transition still totally freaked me out.

Before I had much more time to say anything, she froze and screamed out in frustration. "Damn it! She was there!"

"How do you know?" I asked.

"She just popped up in Kyoto."

"What's she doing?" I asked. Sadie had put her fingers to her temples, and shut her eyes. She was trying to connect to Sam's mind. "She's looking. For someone."

"Let's go then!" I said.

"Ah! She's gone! Shifted again."

"Do you think she knows when you find her mind?" I asked.

"If she does, it's even more reason to find her and then follow her in a human way."

She had a point, but it scared me a bit. I was good at a lot of things, but I relied heavily on my supernatural instincts. It would take thought to figure out what we could do when limited by the constraints of the human world. "So where do we go next? We need a better home base than this."

"I know. It's time to go to Salem again. There are things to figure out."

"Like?" I asked.

"Like who Pretty-shield really is. And why he wants her."