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cleansed soul and a new life in a new world.
    His needs were simple, and had been met by divine providence. He needed followers, true believers who never questioned. He needed the strong and the young, the old and the wise. He needed disciples of unflinching character who would do what he asked, and never consider it morally repugnant. There were times when delivering death was the greatest gift of all, helping someone past his or her current state of greed and passion, into the next life of pure thought.
    The Shirosama had the disciples. He had the tools, the toxins and the gases that would render the subway systems and train stations in every part of this world into instruments of disease and death. This method had been tried before and failed, due to the weakness of the followers, the lack of vision.
    Or perhaps it would simply be his time. The others had tried, for all the wrong reasons, the wrong faith.
    The hour was almost right. The Lunar New Year was fast approaching, and he knew that time was finally right. Year after year had passed, but now things were finally falling into place as it was ordained. He had the followers, the weapons, the plan.
    All he needed now was the Hayashi Urn, the ice blue ceramic bowl that had been in the care of his family for hundreds of years. The urn that had once held the bones and ashes of his ancestor.
    The year 1663 had been a time of upheaval in Edo period Japan. Amid the warring clans, the daimyos and their armies of samurai, and the battling priests, there had been one man, one god. The original Shirosama; the White Lord—the half-blind albino child of the Hayashi clan, first considered a demon and later recognized as a seer and a savior. He'd foretold the disasters that had befallen the modern world, the terrifying eclipse of power and the new worship of greed and possessions. But he had been too powerful, his vision too pure, and in the end he'd committed ritual suicide by order of the shogun. His body had been burned, his bones and ashes placed in the ice blue urn and set in the remains of his temple up in the mountains, guarded by members of the Hayashi clan.
    The steps were clear, laid out by the original Shirosama in the scrolls kept hidden by his family. The bones and ashes would be reunited with the urn at the place of his death, and his spirit would enter a new vessel. His descendant.
    And that would signal the conflagration that would cleanse the world. Armageddon, where only the pure souls would survive.
    There were too many stumbling blocks. For years the present Shirosama had no idea what that crazy old woman had done with the family treasure, and once he found out that an American had it, it was proving almost impossible to get his hands on it.
    He could blame the disastrous war that had ravaged his country and his family. Only the oldest male member of the Hayashi family knew the location of the ancient temple, and he'd died without passing that knowledge on to anyone but his young daughter. In an effort to safeguard the treasure, the bones and ashes had been removed from the urn and hidden in the family home, and Hana Hayashi had been sent to the country of their enemies with the priceless urn and the location of the temple ruins.
    He knew it was one last test to prove his worth, and he accepted it with humility. Once his followers were able to bring him the woman and the urn, there was still the problem of locating the ruins of the original shrine. At least he had the bones and ashes of his ancestor. For the last seven years he'd been mixing the ashes with his tea, to ensure his transformation, but the chunks of whitened bones were still complete, and when they were placed in the urn and set at the site of his ancestor's sacrifice, all would become as it should be. Even the original Shirosama had been a test run. It was his destiny to finish what his ancestor had started.
    He sat, and let his let his eyes roll upward in his head, ignoring the scrape of the contact