Calamity Rising (Deathwalker Book 1) by Z.V. Hunter

Author:Z.V. Hunter [Hunter, Z.V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-03-26T18:30:00+00:00

15

KEN DIDN'T SAY anything when I told him about the bodies in the house. Maybe I didn't let him say anything. I gave him a quick call to tell him about the Calamity and the new lead— the one that involved the Longneck Women, though if they were connected, it was all tangential.

I needed to find those kids, dead or alive.

Solve this case and keep all of them from becoming ghosts or Calamities themselves.

I heard him take a breath, but I told him I had to go and hung up.

He wasn't the type of person to hold a grudge. And I'd make it up to him later.

A few rays of pale spring sunshine broke through the clouds as I made my way to the San'en-zan Zōjō-ji Temple. It warmed my cheeks pleasantly after the endless chill the night before.

And that morning with Kuro.

I pushed all that from my head and ascended the steps.

Lux still hadn't said a word, even after I went home and changed into a more fitting outfit. Gray leggings, a black thigh length dress, and my black boots. I need to have them resoled soon. I wore a different coat than my usual trench. This one was red wool. It reminded me of the color of a Torii Gate.

However, I didn't skimp on the weapons. I might not have a new iron sword, but I brought all the shuriken and Spirit Seals from my apartment and tucked them into various places on my person.

This Temple was on a small hill at the edge of Neo-Tokyo, and the steps were so steep and narrow my thighs burned. When I was small, my mother told me they put Temples on hills so it was like climbing to heaven—though I'm not sure if she believed in heaven or not. Buddhists believe in nirvana, but religion here is a strange thing. Most people don't believe in one set system, it's more like they choose the parts that suit them.

Is there something a Buddhist Temple can do for you—cure a curse or whatnot? Visit one. Need a blessing from a certain type of Kami—a God—or your fortune read? Go to a Shrine. And they only seemed to believe in the Kami that help them or the Kami they fear. A significant number of obscure Kami no one called on anymore hid around the country or withered away in the Spirit World.

Temples are somber places and this one was no exception. It didn't have a Torii Gate to the Spirit World the way Shrines do, but the veil here was thin. I'm not altogether convinced that Bodhisattva and Calamities are different creatures.

According to Buddhism, a Bodhisattva is someone who could reach nirvana but holds off to save others. They usually come in fearsome forms, twisted demon-like faces with hundreds of arms—stuff like that—and while they aren't evil, they can punish the wicked.

I've seen them in the Spirit World.

Maybe just different names for the same sorts of things, but I'd never tell a Monk that.

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