These Violent Delights

by Chloe Gong

  It was her fault for underestimating him. As his hand clasped on to hers and he pulled himself to his feet, he was also pulling the tip off a syringe in his other hand. Juliette’s arm straightened in her effort to haul him up… and then Paul was plunging a needle into the exposed veins at the crook of her elbow.

  Juliette gasped; the needle glinted. Before she could pull her arm away, Paul was pushing down on the syringe, and the vial of blue emptied into her bloodstream.

  Too late, Juliette hurled herself backward, clutching her elbow. Roma managed to catch her before she tumbled into the water in her shock.

  “Did he hurt you?” Roma demanded.

  “No,” Juliette replied. She slowly removed her hand from her inner elbow, finding a pinprick of red. “He vaccinated me.”

  Paul straightened to his full height then, dropping the used syringe and all his pretense into the water.

  “I’m only trying to help you, Juliette,” he said. “I don’t want you to die. I love you.”

  Juliette let out a single laugh.

  “No, you really don’t,” she croaked. “That is not what love is.”

  Paul’s face thundered. He jabbed a finger toward Roma, who still had his arms around Juliette. “And that is? Love, tainted with the blood of all your dead kinsmen?”

  Juliette’s breath caught in her throat. It wasn’t at Paul’s insult—she had barely heard his words. It was at the low growl of his voice and the sudden realization where else she had heard it before.

  “You want to talk about my dead kinsmen?” Juliette seethed. “Let’s talk, Larkspur.”

  Roma inhaled sharply. Paul only smiled. He did not attempt to deny it. Instead, he tilted his head in a bastardized, cherubic manner and said, “I’ve been wanting to tell you, Juliette. I must admit, when I imagined this revelation coming to light, I envisioned you more impressed than you presently seem to be.”

  “Impressed?” Juliette repeated. She was perhaps three decibels away from screeching. “What part of this is impressive to you?”

  “The part where I have the whole city dancing on my puppet strings?” Paul reached into his coat pocket and Juliette braced, her hands inching toward her pistol, but he was only retrieving another blue vial, holding it up into the light. It refracted little crystals onto the beige walls, lapis lazuli marks dancing in tandem to one another. “The part where I unleashed the solution to my father’s suffering? Tell me, Juliette, is it not a child’s wish for their parents to live as happily as possible?”

  Juliette raised her pistol. Hesitant fright registered in Roma’s expression, and though Juliette was perfectly aware that it was dangerous to provoke Paul before they knew what more he had up his sleeve, she had too much anger raging within her to keep herself temperate to Paul’s standards.

  “All the gangsters and merchants who were targeted along the river,” Juliette said. “I thought it was the Communists. I thought it was them eliminating their capitalist threats.” She laughed bitterly. “But it was you. It was you clearing the market for your business to thrive. It was you clearing your threats so the Larkspur couldn’t be questioned.”

  Paul smiled brightly, rows of white teeth flashing. “Brilliant, no? And to think it all started when I found an itsy-bitsy bug in England.”

  “You fool,” Juliette hissed. “How dare you—”

  “It started as a favor to this city,” Paul cut in, his eyes darkening. He was starting to take offense at Juliette’s anger. He had never before seen this irate side of her. “Had you not read the papers? Heard the whispers? Everyone was talking about how capitalist ventures in this city would be threatened if legitimate politics entered Shanghai, and the Communists were looking to be the most likely contenders. I was going to help. I meant to kill the Communists. Surely you cannot disapprove of that.”

  Juliette disapproved mightily. But this was not the time to vocalize such an argument.

  “You wanted to infect Zhang Gutai first,” she guessed. She spared a glance around the living room, at the overturned chairs, her inspection sharpening. Instead of merely one syringe lying by his feet, she saw two. Where had that second one come from? More important, what had it been used for? “You didn’t realize you were speaking to his assistant.”

  “But it didn’t matter, did it?” Paul took a step forward; Roma and Juliette took one step back. “I thought that the first insect would simply jump from one host to another and kill the Communists individually. Imagine my surprise when the old man transforms into a monster! Imagine my surprise when he becomes the mother host and releases thousands of replicate insects capable of driving everyone in this city mad!”

  In her anger, Juliette’s arm started to shake. Roma placed a hand on her elbow, but it did nothing to persuade her to lower her weapon.

  “The water,” Juliette whispered, half a question, half an answer that she already knew. She swished a foot, disturbing the liquid that was rising all around them. It had reached the middle of her calf now. Paul had meant to kill the Communists, but his plan evolved once the monster only ever appeared along the Huangpu River. That river was the beating heart of this city; an infection starting there meant the madness would sweep through the gangsters working at the ports, through the merchants taking meetings.

  They weren’t even true targets. It just so happened that it was the gangsters and merchants who spent the most time by the Huangpu River, and that was where the monster went to release its insects.

  And with every wave, suddenly Walter Dexter’s business was booming again. Suddenly the Larkspur was sweeping in with a vaccine that earned more money than an ordinary merchant could ever imagine. A vaccine that the workers couldn’t afford but bought anyway. A vaccine that other merchants could afford, only to be given a saline solution that would offer false assurance and then their death, dropping like fruit flies to clear the market for Walter Dexter to shine.

  “Water,” Paul echoed. “How fortunate for the city above the sea.”

  Juliette could take this no longer. She pulled the safety on her pistol. “You disgust me.”

  Paul took another step forward. “My father gave up everything to find a fortune in this country.”

  “Oh, your father experienced being a little poor,” Juliette sneered. “Was it worth it? Was his sense of success as a merchant worth the lives of all my people?”

  Paul sighed and wrung his hands, like he was finally experiencing some guilt.

  “If you really wish,” he said, as if he were doing her a grand gesture out of the good of his heart, “I’ll mass-produce the vaccine to the Scarlet Gang—”

  “You don’t get it,” Juliette interrupted. “I don’t want your vaccine. I want the madness stopped. I want the monster dead.”

  Paul became still, the hopeful lift of his brow lowering. He became who he had always been, the mask shed.

  “Would you complain if the madness was only killing White Flowers?” Paul asked coldly.

  Spittle flew from Juliette’s mouth in her vehemence. “Yes.”

  “Because of him, right?” Paul tipped his chin at Roma. Ten thousand pinpricks of loathing passed in that one motion. “Well, I apologize, Juliette, but you cannot kill Qi Ren. I won’t allow it.”

  “You cannot stop me,” Juliette said. “More apt men have tried and failed. Now, where is he, Paul?”

  Paul smiled. That smile was the city’s damnation, planting rancor into its layers. And Juliette—Juliette felt possessed by her terror, goose bumps breaking out on every inch of skin, a shudder sweeping from head to toe.

  The water in the apartment hallway sloshed quietly. Someone was coming out from the bedrooms.

  Roma and Juliette swiveled around. A shaky inhale filled the room. A breathless exhale.

  A creature emerged into the sunlight, shaking with its own effort. Qi Ren was in there somewhere. Juliette could see it in the tired slouch of the monster’s shoulders and the constant squinting, as if the old man’s eyesight had transferred into this other f
orm. But that was where the resemblance ended. For the monster’s eyes had turned wholly opaque with a sheen of silver, slimy with the same texture as seaweed. From head to toe, it was built of wiry, blue-green muscle, hosting scales along the chest and suction-cup circles along the arms.

  With a pitiful hiss from its loose, gray lips, the monster emitted a noise that could have been one of pain. It pressed a webbed hand to its stomach and doubled over, gasping for breath. The triangular horns studded along its spine shook vigorously. Seconds later, they all disappeared, receding into the monster and leaving diamond-shaped holes in their wake.

  Juliette felt Roma grab her hand. He gave her a sharp tug, trying to pull her back.

  “No,” Juliette said, her voice hardly audible. “No, it only releases in the river. It hasn’t released its insects outside the river before.”

  Right?

  Paul snorted. He had heard her hesitance.

  “The thing is, Juliette”—Paul straightened his sleeve cuffs—“it’s rather irritating that Qi Ren has to transform back as soon as all the insects come out. So I did some fiddling around. I made some… alterations, so to speak.”

  The second syringe.

  An insect dropped out from the monster’s spine. Then another. They came slowly, like the trickle of a single bead of water, creeping down a slope of dry asphalt.

  “Run free!” Paul commanded. He threw open the sliding doors to the mini balcony, letting in a burst of wind and a burst of sound, and without wasting a beat, the monster charged for the balcony, crashing through so fiercely that it chipped off a chunk of the drywall and shattered every potted plant placed outside.

  And as it hovered on the edge of the balcony, poised to jump, the insects started to pour.

  “No!” Juliette yelled, lunging forward.

  It was too late. The monster leaped from the balcony and crashed upon the street below, insects pouring and pouring, landing on the ground and dispersing outward. An infection like this would be colossal. If the monster ran through the city, ran through the crowds—the riots—at this time of day, the casualties would be devastating.

  Juliette aimed her gun and fired—again and again and again in hopes that it could kill the monster or, at the very least, slow it down—but the bullets bounced off its back like she had shot at steel. The monster began to move, began to lumber down the street, its speed steadily increasing.

  “There’s no use, Juliette.”

  With a scream, Juliette spun around and fired into the apartment. Her aim went wide in her anger; Paul swerved and jerked out of the way. Her bullet merely grazed his arm, but he winced, backing up against the wall with his fingers pressed to the wound.

  “How do we stop it?” Roma demanded. He crossed the length of the room in two strides, grabbing Paul by the collar and giving him a shake. “How do we stop it?”

  “You can’t,” Paul rasped, grinning. “You can’t stop the monster. And you can’t stop me.” In a flash, he gripped Roma’s arm too, twisting until Roma let go with a startled breath. Paul ducked, and though Juliette aimed again in an attempt to shoot, he was too fast.

  Three bullets embedded into the wall along a straight line. Paul Dexter swooped his briefcase from the water, hugged it to his chest, and fled out the door of the apartment.

  “Dammit, dammit,” Roma muttered. “I’m going after him.”

  “No!” Juliette searched the view from the balcony again, her breath coming fast. “The monster—it’s heading due east. I think it’s going back to the Huangpu River.”

  If the monster was going to the river, then it had to cut through the whole French Concession first. Juliette could hardly swallow past the lump in her throat, a sourness building behind her nose, her eyes. The monster had to pass all the open storefronts, all the little kids that ate their red bean buns on the steps of the shops. It had to merge into the city central, into the clusters of students walking out of their classrooms to protest, into the elderly doing their regular afternoon strolls.

  Juliette grabbed the balcony curtain, tearing it right off its rod. “Go, Roma,” she exclaimed. “Get to the river before it does. Clear the people out.”

  “And you?”

  Juliette twisted the curtain until it was a solid rope, until it was a swath of fabric thick enough to hold her weight. The riots tearing through the city were on the move, dispersed across different areas regardless of which country owned the sidewalks they marched on. They would not know the monster was coming until the insects were crawling deep into their skulls.

  “I need to warn everyone on its route to get the hell inside,” Juliette breathed. She stepped onto the balcony, her shoes crunching down on the broken potted plants. She glanced over her shoulder. “I’ll meet you at the Bund.”

  Roma nodded. It seemed he wanted to say more, but time was of the essence, so he simply settled for a look that felt to Juliette like a soft embrace. Then he pivoted on his heel, sprinting out of the apartment.

  Juliette gritted her teeth. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

  Her eyes landed upon the pipe running down the exterior wall, right by the edge of the balcony. She pulled herself up on the railing and leaned against the wall for balance, her gaze darting down to the street every few seconds to keep track of the monster ambling for the east. It would disappear down the long street in mere seconds. She had to hurry.

  “Please don’t snap,” she prayed, pushing one end of the curtain between the pipe and the wall. “Please, please, please—” She pulled the other end out, and with the two ends of the curtain looped around the pipe, she held the fabric as if she were noosing a tie.

  Juliette leaped off the balcony. The fall was fast and bumpy; by the time she landed on the streets, the curtain had almost frayed into two pieces from friction, but it didn’t matter—she took off running, her pistol aimed up at the sky.

  “Get inside, get inside!” she screamed. She fired, the sound startling those who were not near enough to hear her call. By the time she was racing to catch up with the monster, chaos had already erupted in its wake, leaving insects scrambling upon street stalls and civilians clawing at their throats. Others—those who had not been infected—only stood by, unable to believe the sight that had passed them in broad daylight.

  “Go!” Juliette shouted. “Move!”

  Those who had frozen snapped out of it and scampered back inside.

  Juliette kept yelling, moving without pause, her lungs burning both from exertion and from hollering so loudly. Onward and onward she persisted, and yet no matter how fast Juliette ran, she could not catch up to the lumbering monster.

  In absolute horror, she watched it enter the Chinese part of the city. She watched it charge right through the crowds that were congregated here, watched it penetrate the clusters of protesters so swiftly that none of them realized what was happening until those first infected by the insects started to drop. Then the rioters stopped pumping their fists. Then they looked around, noticed Juliette approaching in their periphery with her arms waving frantically, and if it wasn’t too late, finally dispersed, taking shelter.

  This city was bigger than a world unto itself. No matter how loudly Juliette yelled, the people one street over would be oblivious to the panic until the insects crawled over, burrowing into their heads. No matter how much she shouted, the crowds that raised their red rags did not care to listen until the monster barreled right by and their hands flew to their throat. They would drop—one by one by one. They were fighting for their right to live, but this city had not even promised their right to survive.

  There were so many. So many goddamn crowds on the streets.

  “Please!” Juliette cried. She crossed into the next street briefly, almost skidding right upon the tram tracks. “Get inside! This isn’t the time!”

  The rioters paid her no heed. Rich gangsters were always going to tell them that it was not the time—why was this instance any different? Why should they ever listen?

  Juli
ette could hardly blame them. And yet this meant death. This meant the pavement stacking up with bodies, piled atop one another, staining the whole city red.

  The monster was rapidly disappearing up the other street. If they just looked, if they just walked over a few steps and looked, the rioters would see the path of destruction, would see the twitching bodies and the frantic bodies, the bodies hurrying away by stepping on the bodies collapsed.

  Juliette tightened her fists, tightened her grip on her gun. She forced back the maddening tears threatening her eyes and cleared her throat, forcing the hoarseness away. Then she fired into the air once more and surged after the monster again.

  It felt like a lost cause.

  But no matter what, she still had to try.

  * * *

  Roma had hijacked a car.

  To be fair, he really had no choice. And when the heir of the White Flowers marched toward you with a pistol in his hand, demanding you get out your car, it did not matter what important position you held in the Municipal Administrative Council—you got the hell out of the car.

  “Faster,” he told the chauffeur. “I really do mean it, as fast as you can possible go—”

  “You want us to drive over the people?” the driver asked. “Is that what you want?”

  Roma reached over. He pushed on the horn and did not let go. The clumps of rioters that they passed by were forced to scatter, lest they be run over. “Drive!”

  They tore through the Concession, taking as direct a path as possible. It was hard to gauge how much time was passing, how fast they were going in comparison to the running monster. He didn’t know if Juliette was managing to keep up.

  But the chaos was starting.

  Outside the car’s window, if it was not groups of angry laborers with red rags tied around their arms, it was ordinary civilians trying to get a meal in before the whole city was turned over by the Communists. Yet everywhere Roma looked, people were moving fast, running up to loved ones and telling them to hurry, ushering children into corners and peering over their shoulders, tasting the bitter sharpness in the air. The sharpness that warned of disaster coming.