‘Hang on a moment, who are the Red Empire?’
‘Zealots,’ Li said.
‘Another faction. The Red Empire broke away from the Order more than two millennia ago,’ Gang added.
‘They’re much larger than the Order and just as happy to kill Order members as vampires,’ Li said.
‘The key difference is that the Red Empire has no problem killing the innocent in the pursuit of killing vampires,’ Gang said.
‘There is no unity amongst those who can fight the vampires?’
‘None whatsoever,’ Gang said.
‘No wonder the vampires are so dominant,’ Anton took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘So while all this has been going on, what has my grandfather been doing?’
‘Operating independently and fighting the good fight. He focuses his efforts directly on Cornelius Crane. Crane has multiple labs and research centers around the world. We don’t know what his aims are, but they are surely not good for humanity. Arthur seeks to find out what the Demon King is doing, and thwart his plans,’ Gang said.
‘What about now?’
‘The last news I have is that he is operating in Brazil.’
‘On the night my family was attacked by Chloe Armitage and Marcus Drake, she showed me photographs of my grandfather in Rio during the Carnival.’
Gang pursed his lips, ‘it is interesting that the Demon managed to have recent photographs of Arthur.’
‘She used them to prove that he is still alive.’
Gang stroked his chin, leaning back in his chair, ‘this throws fresh light on something that has been troubling me. As I said earlier, I have attempted to contact your grandfather and he has not replied. It seems that Chloe Armitage also knows that he is in Brazil and at least one of her operatives got close enough to take photos. I now fear that he may be captured or dead.’
‘Dead?’
‘With Arthur Slayne, I wouldn’t assume he was dead unless I had seen his cold corpse with my own eyes, but yes, it’s now a possibility that we must consider.’
Well, that would explain his absence - if he is dead.
‘I remember that he was carrying a black case in the Rio photos, was that a sword?’ Anton asked.
Gang nodded, ‘the Black Dragon, his personal weapon, there is a story behind that sword which must wait for another day.’
‘What would happen if the Order were to catch up with my grandfather?’
‘He has been convicted of a capital offense. There is no court of appeal. There is a standing kill order on him from Ramin Kain.’
‘Is the Order actively looking for him?’
‘No Force Leader that I know of is trying to catch him. If they happen to stumble across him - who knows? He has a powerful reputation, he’s not liked, or admired, but he is respected and in some cases feared.’
‘Feared?’
‘He is extraordinarily capable in combat. He was my master, and I would fear to fight him. He fought both Crane and Armitage at the same time, back in ‘78 in a secret maze beneath St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican - and he survived. I know no one else who could have done that.’
‘That’s pushing forty years ago, how old is my grandfather?’
‘Over seventy.’
‘He’s ripped for his age. He doesn’t look seventy, more like a very fit forty to forty-five-year-old man. How does he do it?’
‘A side effect of the Ramp, it slows the aging process, not like a vampire of course, but you stay fit and healthy for much longer than normal.’
‘First you have to survive if you are going to get a chance to live that long,’ Li said.
‘Speaking of survival, what about the Tiger Clan, you’re expecting them tonight aren’t you?’
‘Yes, they are sure to attack and in numbers. Their honor has been wounded. They will learn from this morning’s brawl that we are tougher than they thought. However, they will not be deterred, they are mean spirited, but not lacking in courage.’
Gang smiled wickedly, ‘I have made some inquiries, there is a fellow that owes me a favor, who is no friend of the Hu Shizu. We will have some help, of a sort, later tonight.’
‘Is there anything that I need to do?’
Gang frowned, ‘pack your backpack, be ready to travel, and get some rest.’
Anton sensed the return of the tension within Gang that he had felt earlier.
‘Tomorrow we must say goodbye to the Noodle House, it probably will not survive tonight.’
‘Even with the helpers?’
‘Even so,’ Gang smiled wanly and sighed. ‘All things must pass, even this home.’
Li put her hand to her mouth, getting up silently, she walked away.
‘This is the only home that she has known, it is worse for her,’ Gang said.
‘Can I help?’
‘Give her space, get some rest, and tonight - be ready for anything.’
‘Yes, Gang.’
Anton helped Gang clear the breakfast dishes and then returned to the garden where he laid down on a patch of sun-dappled grass, reflecting quietly on what Gang had told him.
Perhaps my grandfather is dead, or got a raw deal, but still - where was he that was so important that he couldn’t protect his family?
* * *
General Chloe Armitage sat across from James Haley in a secured room at the surveillance site opposite the Noodle House.
She listened to the morning recording of the conversation that the Wus and Anton Slayne had had over breakfast. She accelerated the playback on the machine to five times faster than normal, the conversation streamed through her headphones and she accelerated her mind to match the machine. In three minutes, she had memorized everything in the recorded conversation.
Quite the treasure trove.
‘Have these recordings been backed up yet?’ Chloe asked.
‘They’re already on the Panopticon storage farm.’
‘Set the security level to FGEO - Personal Stamp - CA.’
‘Once I set security to “For General’s Eyes Only,” I won’t be able to retrieve them again.’
‘Precisely.’
James nodded, ‘Yes, Ma’am.’
‘Who else knows of this?’
James said quietly, ‘only myself, the rest were at breakfast, I didn’t mention it.’
A small rise in his heart rate on that question.
Chloe smiled, ‘excellent.’
‘Orders, Ma’am?’
How much to tell him? Just enough to lead him to act as I require.
Chloe stared at James for a long moment and said quietly, ‘forget what you have heard today.’
James nodded, ‘yes, Ma’am. It’s obviously nonsense – they believe in vampires.’
‘Indeed, obvious nonsense ... be prepared to track the Wus when they depart tomorrow - do not lose contact with them - that is all.’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ James said, leaving the room and closing the door behind him.
Gang Wu suspects that Ramin Kain is in league with the Vampire Dominion. He could well be right. There is only one vampire that could get away with such an arrangement - Cornelius Crane. However, Li Wu makes an error in thinking that this is about allowing Crane to focus on the Red Empire, no, while that is a useful side effect, the main goal is to allow Crane to focus on the acquisition of the three Metaframe artifacts.
Is Arthur Slayne, Brazil, and Crane’s super soldier program linked? I must find out the facts.
Chloe paused, reviewing her immediate plans.
I need to draw the Mirovar team into the open with the Wus and Anton as bait and take some heads. I need to get Cornelius Crane to focus resources back into the North East and not send me back to Jerusalem. I will need a credible threat to make him do that - something that I don’t yet have.
Chloe realized that the details of her new plan had not yet jelled together; she felt a stab of annoyance at the promise that she had made back in Jerusalem.
Chloe sighed, standing up, she wa
lked into the operations room. James Haley and Louise Wesson were observing monitors, the other two, Johnson and Higgins were at their stations managing their equipment.
Chloe addressed the room, ‘report.’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ Louise said. ‘We have something unusual.’
‘Yes?’
‘Four vans have arrived, parking further down the street than they needed too. They are all registered with a local pet food company. There were twelve men in them, no women, they have all gone into the Noodle House. There are no other patrons yet, so they either have a single booking or something else is about to happen.’
She’s smart and useful.
‘Thank you, continue to observe and monitor the site. No matter what you see tonight, do not take any action without further orders from myself. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, Ma’am,’ James and Louise both answered.
Johnson and Higgins also gave their assent.
Chloe left the operations room, ascending to the roof. The sky was cloudless, the night cool, a full moon had cleared the horizon in the east. She stretched her arms up, arching her back, luxuriating in the experience of power that nightfall had brought.
Perfect conditions for hunting.
The roof of the building was flat, surrounded by a five-foot high parapet. Chloe leaped up on top of the parapet, standing tall, her hands on her hips, extending her senses to their maximum capabilities, she focused her attention on the building opposite. Sensing human heat signatures through the walls, she counted twelve and three.
The new arrivals, Li and Gang Wu, and Anton Slayne. Anton covers the rear, the other two are positioned back from the kill zone before the main entrance.
She listened carefully to the quiet murmur of conversations from the men in the Noodle House.
Ms. Wesson is correct. No food has been ordered, these men are waiting, I can almost smell the anticipation from here. There will be a battle tonight.
With a predator’s patience, she settled in to wait and see what would happen.
* * *
Li held her katana sword, still in its scabbard at her lift hip.
Her mother’s ancestor, Kanenaga Yoshindo, had crafted the Green Dragon in Japan during the winter of 1675, it was only distinguished from its four siblings by a marble sized Emerald that graced the end of its handle.
The front door of the Noodle House swung open, the men of the Hu Shizu, the Tiger Clan, filed into the restaurant, spreading out across the front wall. They were armed to the teeth with submachine guns, 9mm handguns, knives, short swords and baseball bats embossed with hard strips of gray metal. In their midst swaggered the large form of Mr. Wang, he was unarmed, and he puffed on a thin cigar which was wedged between his thick lips.
‘Out,’ Mr. Wang shouted and Gang’s helpers rushed out the front door and into the street.
Li glanced at her father.
That’s convenient, after all, they’re not here for the fight.
Her father grinned, winking at her, then frowned, whispering, ‘MAC-10s, .45 or 9mm, very high rate of fire and a tendency to pull high.’
There will be a lot of bullets coming our way.
As the last of the helpers disappeared out the front door, it swung shut behind them. Li and Gang stood side by side at the back of the restaurant. They both let their scabbards fall to the floor, lifting their swords into attack positions above their shoulders - ready for action.
The more than three hundred and forty-year-old blades gleamed in the soft light of the restaurant’s lanterns, their shape and edges the very measure of perfection.
‘You bring a knife to a gun fight?’ Wang said derisively.
Li said fiercely, ‘when your souls enter the afterlife, you will be able to tell those you meet there that your passage was provided by the White and Green Dragons.’
Wang pulled out his cigar and laughed, long and loud.
Li’s eyes narrowed, the Green Dragon becoming lethally still above her left shoulder.
Li heard glass break behind her, the back door had been breached.
Anton’s party is about to start.
Wang abruptly stopped laughing and shouted, ‘cut them down!’
Li and Gang ramped to their maximum ability.
Wang’s men grinned and snarled, their short snub-nosed submachine guns erupted in blooms of gray smoke as streams of .45 rounds ripped through the restaurant.
Li and Gang had been standing as close to each other as they could before they had moved. They had provided a single target to the Tiger Clan, and every man had aimed his gun at the same location.
Where they no longer were.
Li’s mind raced, she could see the rapid puffs of smoke erupting from the barrels of the short submachine guns as each round went off. The spent casings were flying everywhere. The gangsters were close enough together that the gun smoke and casings were obscuring the view in front of them.
To her right, her father had already covered half the distance between the kitchen and the first of the gangsters at the far edge of the group. He was moving from table to table, his feet barely touching the surface as he flew through the room, the White Dragon held in both hands, high above his head. The gangsters reflexively started to track the moving targets in front of them, swinging their guns around.
The gangsters stared as Gang and Li moved a yard or so in front of their streams of fire, panicked fingers pressing hard against triggers as they tried to bring their submachine guns to bear.
The MAC-10, thirty rounds in a magazine at best, a thousand rounds per minute, two seconds and they’re out of ammunition.
Li reached the wall next to a gangster, slashing the green dragon through his neck as she took three steps along the wall to curve in behind him and put herself in the middle of four other gangsters.
The man’s head rolled off his shoulders, his blood fountaining into the air, he slumped forward to the floor his submachine gun continuing to fire aimlessly, clutched tightly in his dead hand.
Beyond the men surrounding her, she could see her father’s sword was already red with blood as he pushed into the far side of the gangsters. To the far right, lights flashed as gunfire erupted in the kitchen, and ricochets rang like bells off dangling pots.
The men beside her dragged their guns around as they pivoted toward her. For one of the men, it was impossible to move quickly enough as Li brought the Green Dragon down through a diagonal slash that cut him from shoulder to hip. His suit splashing red in an instant, he started to fall away a look of shocked amazement frozen on his face.
Before he hit the ground, Li leaped vertically upward as the remaining three men opened fire, two of which were immediately cut to ribbons by the remaining rounds in the guns opposite them. The fourth man’s gun ran dry, he reached for a 9mm handgun as Li landed and ran him through, he fell backward squealing as Li drew the Green Dragon clear of his abdomen.
The guns in the restaurant fell silent, their magazines running out of bullets.
Through the gray smoke, Li assessed the situation as she veered to the right to avoid a thrown knife. Fourteen minus five, minus six, equals five left, including Mr. Wang.
The knife thrower was nearest, she ran past him toward Mr. Wang, slashing the Green Dragon across his belly, disemboweling him. She noticed that he had a fresh cast on his right arm, it was the gangster she had nicknamed Sleazy.
Karma’s a bitch.
Li arrived in front of Mr. Wang, his face was twisted with hate and rage, he pulled the pin on a fragmentation grenade and started to push it toward her.
Li shouted, ‘Father!’
She reversed her sword, striking Mr. Wang hard across the face with her left fist. His knees buckled, the grenade falling at his feet. Li used her forward momentum to swing past the crime lord, landing next to Gang. They both leaped behind a thick dining table, immediately overturning it to make a shield.
Behind them, they could hear Mr. Wang groping near his knees for the grenade.
The grenade went off.
As the dust settled from the explosion, silence descended within the Noodle House.
Is Anton okay?
Li checked her father, ‘are you okay?’
Gang grinned, ‘never better - he definitely had that coming.’
* * *
Anton heard Mr. Wang scream “Out,” from near the front of the Restaurant, and he readied himself as best he could.
Gang had given him a katana sword, and while Anton had made great strides toward mastery of such a weapon, it seemed unwieldy and clumsy given a general lack of space within the kitchen. He put the big blade down, picking up a pair of thick bladed foot long carving knives from a nearby rack - they felt balanced and lethal in his hands. He heard some more conversation from the restaurant and resisted the urge to get closer to Li and Gang.
What if they need my help? What if Li needs my help? But no, my job is here to guard their backs.
He heard Mr. Wang begin laughing.
The glass in the back door shattered.
It’s on.
The whole back door burst apart as six gangsters armed with submachine guns, knives, and baseball bats streamed into the kitchen.
Anton ramped as the gangsters in front of him swung their MAC-10 submachine guns up and fired directly at him. He pivoted away from the guns, rolling across the kitchen table top as bullets whipped past his head, slamming into the heavy fridge doors at the end of the kitchen. Dangling pots and pans above the table rang out as bullets plowed into them and wild ricochets flew everywhere. Anton rolled off the table as the gangsters immediately broke into two groups and streamed around the table, two of them ran directly toward him, their guns blazing.
Anton rolled underneath the table, crouching into a tight squat, he pushed up and sideways with his shoulder, the heavy metal table rose up, turning and smashing into two of the gangsters.
Anton was left exposed to the remaining gangsters, one of whom was the looming Fats. Anton immediately recognized him from the morning’s encounter in the market. All four gangsters were dragging their guns around to point directly at Anton at point blank range. The nearest two held their weapons less than two feet from where he stood. He could see their fingers beginning to squeeze down hard on the triggers.
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