Heart of the Sword
an excerpt

The doors opened and the elevator was empty. She stepped inside the narrow box, irritated as she punched the button for the fourteenth floor. She would have liked someone in here to harass. The doors slid shut and she leaned against the railing inside the elevator. She wasn’t sure the purpose of those. There was no saving a mortal when an elevator plummeted fourteen feet. She doubted she would even be able to save herself. Michiko shivered and pulled back the long furred end of her sleeve to glance at the scar on her wrist. It, of course, wasn’t her doing. How like a previous owner to muck up a place before going! A scar on a woman was most unbecoming, especially one like this which showed she had not the character to preserver and instead wilted in the face of the world. Still it worked out for her, she supposed. She had a fresh young body, almost a chance of living again, and a world of people who were far beneath her and didn’t even know it. Like this Josiah kid. Killing him would be as easy as snapping the neck of a chicken, like she did when she was a child, up to her ankles in mud and dirt, a place far removed from the glory and fantasy of the floating world. How she longed to go back there, to that time, to that world, it tasted like a dream, a soft scent in the back of her nose.
Well what had Karen said? There was no use to want to go back, that was impossible. What one needed to do, she’d said, was recreate. And, oh, Michiko would. No one was going to stand in her way this time. She would no longer hesitate from plunging her blade into the hearts of those that deserved it. That was what got her killed the first time. The elevator settled and the doors slid open. Michiko stalked along the hall, one foot in front of the other like she’d seen the models do on TV. For the all the pale scars on the wrist and belly, this body was young and firm and glamorous and she would not hesitate to show it off.
She located Fourteen A and was pleased to see a window right beside it with a wide enough ledge to stand on. She pushed open the window and slipped out, the wind biting cold once again. The ledge here was narrower than she thought and the rounded edges of her boots poked over the edge. No matter. It wouldn’t hinder her unless she fell and she had much more control over this body than that. She glanced up to see the Sixteen A balcony. Michiko closed her eyes a moment, reaching out her spiritual hands and pulling at the red aura of the building into herself, adding it to her own, making it silvery gray. The human heart thumped faster under her breast and she took until she almost wanted to scream from the thrill. Then she opened her eyes and jumped, the wind ripping at her hair, the energy boosting her, pushing her faster. She had to catch the fifteenth floor balcony to add an extra push, and heard the crash of the metal under her foot, echoing in her ears. As she reached the railing of the Sixteenth, she grabbed it and flipped herself over, landing neatly on the concrete.
Well- That was nice. She pulled the dagger from the sheath, feeling the cold weight of it in her palm, then peered in the glass doors. There he was, her target, just lying on the couch wrapped in a blanket. His head was tossed back as he looked at someone or something moving in the kitchen and the paleness of his throat was exposed, she could see the blue vein pulsing and around him his ki, red and gold with flecks of white like spirit orbs dancing in his energy. She was supposed to watch him, Karen had said. Keep an eye on him. It was so much easier just to kill him and she wanted to. She hungered for it. So much energy could all be hers. She wanted to squeeze the energy out of every core of him, out of his beating heart.
He hadn’t yet noticed her. She smiled, placing her free hand flat against the cool glass. After taking a moment to focus, she sent a pulse of ki through the glass, watching it ripple then bursting through as the glass exploded in a shower of silver rain. He turned to look at her, moving his head at a mortal’s sluggish pace, the pupils of his eyes dilating in fear. She grinned sharply, as if her teeth were fangs and her smile cutting, sharp points of slicing death. She bought the dagger arching down and suddenly someone was there in front of Josiah and her blade screeched against another. What the- It was a knife and the face that looked back into hers was unexpected and unfamiliar.
“You got lucky,” she hissed, then pushed against him, using the ki she’d gathered to power her strength. His feet skidded across the carpet and he fell back on the couch, nearly pinning Josiah underneath him as she bore down on him, her dagger slowly cutting into the metal of his knife.