The cherry blossoms were in full bloom, their bright pink and purple petals transforming the space into a riot of color. They rustled, like the whisper of a thousand voices, in the cool evening breeze.

In their midst, death awaited her.

The Dragon stood in the center of the grass. In her hand she held the Muramasa blade—the Ten Thousand Cold Nights—that Garin claimed was the dark counterpart to Annja’s own sword. Maybe it was her imagination, but to Annja the steel seemed to gleam with eagerness for the blood that was about to be spilled. The sword and the Dragon expected her to fall.

Annja had no intention of letting that happen.

With a thought her sword materialized in her hand and she stalked forward onto the field, coming to a halt several yards away from her enemy. She could see Shizu almost vibrating with fury. Good, she thought, maybe she’ll make a mistake.

Annja kept her own anger bottled up and locked away behind a wall in her mind. The woman in front of her had almost killed Roux, and had probably taken care of Henshaw, too. She had more than likely broken into her home, chased her through the streets and had endangered her life. But Annja knew she couldn’t think about that now. There was no place in a sword fight for anger—just attack and counterattack, thrust and parry, until only one was left standing on the battlefield.

The Dragon looked at her through narrowed eyes. “Surrender the sword and I shall let you live,” she said.

Annja shook her head but did not say anything in return. She knew the Dragon’s words were meant as a distraction and when she sensed her opponent shift her weight from her rear foot to her front, Annja knew what they were supposed to conceal.

Without another word the Dragon launched herself at Annja, in a spinning whirlwind of an attack, her sword coming around and down toward Annja’s unprotected flesh.

But Annja was no longer standing there, she had moved several feet to the right. She’d seen the shift in weight, had known what it signified, and had reacted by twisting to her right, away from the deadly blade.

The Dragon was on her in an instant, trying to overwhelm her with the sheer ferocity of her attack, using the same tactics she had utilized that night in Paris when they had first crossed blades. Slash and parry, cut and jab. Back and forth they went, neither of them gaining any significant advantage, their blades ringing in the night air.

They broke apart, gaining a momentary respite.

Annja tried circling to her left, watching Shizu closely, searching for some opening in her guard that she might exploit, when the opportunity presented itself.

The Dragon was doing the same, however, and apparently saw one before Annja.

Shizu exploded in movement, her weapon swinging toward Annja’s midsection in a vicious strike, and the assassin was faster than Annja had expected her to be.

Annja dropped the point of her sword and met Shizu’s blade with the edge of her own, channeling the energy of her attacker’s strike away from her and toward the ground instead. She twisted and brought her own weapon around in an arc that was aimed at the Dragon’s midsection.

But Shizu was gone before the blow landed, dancing out of range on nimble feet.

Back and forth they went, blow after blow, twisting and turning, moving across the grass while cherry blossoms drifted through the air around them, each of them striving to gain the upper hand and deliver the winning blow.

It was Shizu who drew first blood, cutting in beneath Annja’s guard and slashing the tip of her sword across Annja’s shoulder. Blood flowed, staining her jersey, and Shizu grinned in triumph.

“The beginning of the end,” she mocked.

Annja ignored her and the wound, as well. She could tell it wasn’t too deep and she wasn’t in any real danger from it at the moment, though eventually the blood loss would take its toll, she was sure.

She’d just have to redouble her efforts and put an end to this before that happened.

Shizu came at her again and they traded another series of blows, the sound of their swords colliding ringing out across the field. This time, when the Dragon stepped in close, Annja took advantage of the situation and lashed out with her leg, striking the Dragon straight in the chest and causing her to stumble backward.

Annja kept up her forward momentum, driving the Dragon back across the field with a combination of sword fighting and martial-arts moves, throwing out strikes and kicks between sword blows.

Finally the Dragon began to tire and came in with a new overhand blow, trying to end it all.

Seeing it coming out of the corner of her eye, Annja shifted her hold on her weapon and struck out at the hilt of her enemy’s.

Their swords slammed together and the Muramasa blade rang like a crystal bell in the second before it flew out of Shizu’s grasp, tumbling through the air.

Annja hadn’t expected the maneuver to work. The Dragon was shocked. She turned her head to watch the blade go flying from her.

Afraid that Shizu would simply call her weapon back again, just as Annja regularly did with her own sword, she didn’t hesitate but drove home a short, sharp thrust.

Looking the other way, the Dragon never even saw it coming.

The broadsword entered Shizu’s body between the third and fourth ribs and exited out the back just to the right of her spine.

Annja released her sword and stepped back.

The Dragon tottered for a moment and then sank slowly to her knees, her bloody hands searching for and finding the hilt of Annja’s weapon but without the strength to pull it free.

“How did you take the sword from me?”

Her eyes glazed over and she crumpled to the ground.

The Dragon was dead.

And with her death Annja’s sword, which just a moment before had been shoved horizontally through the Dragon’s body, vanished back into the otherwhere, ready for the next time Annja would need it.

Annja knew she should have felt satisfaction at the end result, but all she could think about was that final question.

She didn’t understand. She knew instinctively that the Dragon had not been talking about her own weapon, but about how Annja’s sword had vanished right out of the Dragon’s very hands. And that didn’t make any sense.

How could the Dragon not know about the sword’s ability to vanish and reappear at will? Surely the weapon the Dragon carried had been able to do the same?

Annja looked across the field, expecting the Dragon’s weapon to have vanished the minute its wielder died, only to find it right where it had fallen, jammed point first into the earth about ten feet away.

For a long moment, Annja couldn’t look away.

The sword was still there.

Her thoughts churning at the implications, Annja climbed to her feet and cautiously approached it.

The sword was as she remembered it, right down to the etching of the dragon on the surface of the blade just below the hilt. Even now the etching seemed to be snarling in defiance.

Reaching out, afraid of what might happen should she touch it but needing to know nonetheless, she wrapped her hand around the hilt.

Nothing happened.

Where she expected to feel something from the blade, some sense of its bloody history and evil reputation, she felt nothing.

It was just a sword.

An inert piece of metal.

While it might have historical value, there was nothing otherwise special about the weapon.

Garin and Roux had been wrong.

Priceless historical artifact it might be, but that was all. The only mystical sword Annja knew of was the one she carried.

Epilogue