by Mel Odom
“I’m getting the feeling we’re the only ones in here,” Duncan whispered.
“People who think that usually die thinking that,” I replied. “Those guards were stationed outside for a reason.”
Back out in the hallway, we continued to the next corner, passing a bathroom that somehow managed to smell even worse than the rest of the building.
A locked door with a sec keypad blocked the way ahead. Smudgy fingerprints covered the unit. I examined the buttons, looking for clues, but the keypad didn’t offer any insight.
I glanced back at Gobbet. She was quiet for a minute, not completely there with us, then she said, “There’s another way.”
“Then let’s go.”
She took the lead, and Duncan and I followed her out of the building. Doubling back the way we’d come bothered me, but I didn’t say anything because Gobbet moved without hesitation.
We went past a street market area where a tattered awning stood watch over a rug covered in old blood. Beyond that was another market space where homemade candles burned around a bloodstained man’s shirt. Sickly sweet fragrances filled the spot, and I got that astral itch again.
I looked at Gobbet as she stared at the blood. “What is it?”
She knelt and touched the shirt. “This cloth has a lot of negative energy coming off it. I think there’s a spirit bound to it. The rats sensed it and told me.”
At the back of the area, several fetishes and animal horns and tusks hung from thin wire strands. I guessed that whoever had done business here was a shaman himself.
“How’s this going to help us?” I asked.
“Well, it’s a ghost…or a Spirit of Man that thinks it’s a ghost. It’s hard to be sure.” Gobbet frowned as she ran her fingers over the cloth. “Whatever it is, it’s upset. I can feel its anger and sorrow. I can coax it out, and we could talk with it. The rats believe it knows something we need to know.”
“All right.” I didn’t like being around astral energy that intense. Things could slide out of control way too easily. “What’s the downside?”
“It could attack us and rip out our souls.”
Duncan cursed.
“The rats are telling me I should try to contact whoever this was.” Gobbet stared at me, and I knew she was thinking about Is0bel.
“Fragging rats don’t have to worry about this, though, do they?” Duncan pointed out. “Maybe they’re just looking for a meal.”
Gobbet shot him a withering look. “The rats won’t hurt me.” She cut her glance back to me. “There’s no way to know without trying.”
I nodded, and hoped bullets would work if things went sideways.
“Sure thing.” Gobbet sipped a breath and her brow furrowed. “Let me try to establish a connection. I haven’t tried this myself before, but I was taught by a shaman named Yabah, who follows the Totem of Crab.”
Shimmering waves rose from the bloodied shirt. As Gobbet stood and stepped back, the waves became more substantial, adding layers until a being stood before us. I wouldn’t say it was human, though it was man-shaped, with bloody flesh hung in tatters and strips, like the poor bastard had been flayed alive.
Eyes the consistency and color of egg drop soup focused on me. Its voice was soft and hollow, barely enough to be heard over the drumming rain. “What…is…this? Where am I?”
Gobbet nodded to me. “I built the connection so he would respond to you.”
As I stared at the thing, I didn’t know if I felt more afraid of it or sorry for it. “Kowloon. The Walled City.”
Some of the confusion smoothed from its ravaged face. “Still?” It lifted its hands and peered at them with those macabre eyes. “How?”
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
“The…last thing.” It gazed into the rain clouds swirling above as lighting flickered across the dark sky. “I was…pushed from my shop…hunted through alleys…I…” Its voice broke, and a tint of anger painted the grim visage. “Bao. Bao and his men. I wouldn’t pay them…wouldn’t accept their protection…” It shook its head. “Proud…I was too proud…they tore me apart…butchered me like a duck…they…”
As it spoke, rips opened in its flayed flesh and black ichor dripped to the floor, swirling for a moment, then vanishing with the rain sluicing across the tarmac. Its jaw unhinged and radiance dawned in its too-big mouth. A glowing mass vomited forth, splattering at its feet.
“Ectoplasm,” Gobbet said. “It’s nothing to worry about.” She looked sad. “It’s reliving its death.”
I stood my ground with effort. “Maybe you can help us.”
It studied me and looked truly lost. “Help?” It swallowed. “I can.”
“You can get us past Bao’s guards and into the Walled City so we can find him.”
“I…had a friend. A smuggler of animals. He had a space…hidden…secret.”
“Tell me about the secret space.”
“An entrance…in the sublevels…” Its eyes closed in concentration. “…a chute…a door…red paint…and numbers. Five, four, six, five. Five, four, six, five.”
I nodded, and watched as the thing faded and vanished back to wherever it had come from.
“A red door?” Duncan grimaced. “We’re supposed to find a red door in this place? We’re slotted. There’s all kind of colors on all kinds of doors.”
“He said his friend was an animal smuggler,” Gobbet said with a smile. “I know where that place is.”
Chapter 18
Hellhounds Gonna Get You!
We headed west over more rooftops, and I couldn’t believe how much misery was packed into such a small area. Seeing that thing Gobbet had raised hit me harder than I’d thought it would. The squalor and hopelessness weighed on me even without thinking about how the old man was lost somewhere in all of this.
We went down a flight of stairs and ended up on another level and I realized how difficult it would be to find your way around in the sprawl. Even if a person spent a lifetime prowling through all the levels and sublevels, he probably wouldn’t ferret out all the secrets in the Walled City.
Yet somehow, we were supposed to find the old man.
Duncan didn’t say anything, but I knew his thoughts echoed mine. There was no way they couldn’t. But we kept going, kept following Gobbet because she seemed to know the way.
Finally, she stopped and pointed. “There’s the animal vendor.”
Hanging on a storefront next to a sidewalk noodle shop, a red sign glowed in the darkness, boasting of EXOTIC animals.
Gobbet led us over, and I kept my weapons ready and my senses alert. Empty crates sat along the boardwalk in front of the shop, just more abandoned refuse.
A series of iron bars secured the door, driven by motors hidden within the building’s walls. No one was going to just break into this place, although the scarred surface of the keypad on the security lock indicated that several had tried.
I pulled my pistol and nodded to my companions, making sure they were ready to go. Then I keyed in the code we’d gotten from the spirit. Five, four, six, five.
Motors groaned and shivered inside the walls and the bars retracted into their recesses.
A burst of fetid animal odors rushed out of the shop in a rank cloud that held taints of sulfur. Two low-slung, four-footed shadows moved within and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Evidently the shop owner didn’t trust security just to the electronic systems.
“Grab cover!” I waved to Gobbet and Duncan, and headed for a pile of crates in front of the door myself. Gobbet joined me while Duncan took up a flanking position.
The shadows loped to the door and I recognized them. Coal black with gleaming eyes, the hellhounds stood as tall as my waist. Thick layers of muscle covered these beasts, and they moved quickly and silently.
I opened fire, aiming at the lead beast’s broad chest. Wounds opened up and blood spilled out, but the hellhound dodged away, not looking much worse for the wear.
“I don�
�t have a shot,” Duncan called out.
“Hold your position,” I told him. “They’ll come to us.”
Beside me, Gobbet spoke words and gestured. Within the shop, a shimmer signaled the arrival of some kind of spirit that she’d summoned. As soon as the spirit took shape, it unleashed a ball of lightning that exploded over both hellhounds, staggering them.
Before I could open fire, one of the hellhounds rushed out of the shop and leaped over the barrier at Gobbet. I stood and raised an arm as I shouldered the shaman away. She stumbled and fell, rats scattering from her clothing.
I tried to bring my pistol to bear, but the hellhound clamped its jaws around my forearm and drove me back with its weight. Driven back and down, I went with the momentum, hoping the armor protecting my arm held, and twisted, coming up on top of the snarling animal. Levering the pistol under the creature’s muzzle, I fired three rounds that blew craters in the hellhound’s skull, making it shudder and die.
Shoving the dead body off, I scrambled to my feet as more shots cracked behind me. I whirled, bringing my pistol up, and watched the remaining hellhound leap at Duncan. Before it reached him, the air elemental Gobbet had summoned slammed it with a wall of air that blew it off course.
Duncan tracked the creature and purple tracer rounds from his rifle punched into the hellhound again and again. It stopped fighting and dropped over the walkway into the deep alley. The air elemental vanished.
Satisfied that we were all intact, I led the way into the shop. Like the spirit had said, there was a door at the back of the shop. I went through it and up the ladder that lay beyond.
Chapter 19
The Straw Sandal Speaks
After negotiating the ladder, we stepped into a room that—once I’d flicked on my cybervision—looked familiar with its bunkbed and dining table. It smelled familiar, too. I peeked outside the door and discovered we were back in the first area we had checked behind the Yellow Lotus guards we’d knocked out. It hadn’t seemed like we were heading back there, yet here we stood again. Kowloon Walled City was even more confusing than I’d realized.
“Déjà vu all over again,” Duncan grumbled.
“Look around,” Gobbet suggested. “Maybe there’s something we can use.” She spoke softly and her rats scurried from beneath her clothing, quickly darting across the floor.
I tossed the room, but didn’t hold out much hope. After a few minutes, one of Gobbet’s scruffy little companions ran out from under the bunkbed with a sec card in its teeth.
She knelt and thumbed the unit to life. “There’s a code here. Six, three, seven, eight.” She stood and offered the card to me. “Maybe it works on that sec door we found earlier.”
I took it. “Only one way to find out.”
Out in the hallway, I took a left and headed down to the sec door. I punched the number into the keypad. Servos whined and the door opened, revealing another room that looked a lot like the others we’d been through. A power cable snaked across the grimy floor.
“Who’s out there?” a gruff voice demanded.
Leaving my weapon holstered, I entered the room with my hands up.
The room was twice the size of anything we’d seen so far. An old mattress lay on the floor. The occupant wasn’t living in the lap of luxury, but he had a simsense rig, refrigerator, and microwave against the wall.
Strangler Bao looked like the image I’d downloaded from the ’Net. In his fifties, broad and solid with a leather mask covering his chin and wrapping his jawline to blend into the neck brace that ran halfway up his head, he stood in a fighting stance. Fade lines had been cut into his short-cropped hair and a lot of scars tracked his fleshy face.
“I don’t know how you got in,” Bao growled, “but you’ve got my attention.”
“Good,” I said easily. “I have a message. From Kindly Cheng.”
His features relaxed, but only a little. “A message from Cheng? I can’t wait to hear you mangle it.” He chuckled. “You speak Cantonese so well.”
I ignored the sarcasm. There were three of us, and he wasn’t feeling vulnerable—not the best sign of how things were going.
“But before I hear it,” he went on, “I have a little message for her, too. You tell her that her operations are done in the Walled City. Strangler Bao has given himself a promotion. And tell her that if she sends any more errand boys with another message, Strangler Bao is going to send them back in a box. You think you can tell her that, errand boy? Should I write it down for you in English?”
I held out the datastick. “Just slot the stick, listen to the message, and I’ll be gone. Okay?”
“I don’t get to hear you butcher the message? I’m sad.” He took the datastick and slotted it into his trid on the nearby table. The player juiced for a moment and a three-dimensional image of Kindly Cheng standing in the middle of an opulent room covered in oriental rugs took shape.
“Mr. Bao,” the image said. “As everyone knows, you are a man of swift action. I respect that. And because I respect that, I will get right to the point. I know where your money is coming from. I know you have friends working for Straw Sandals like myself.
“These people have been siphoning funds from their organizations,” Kindly Cheng went on in a damning voice. “I know about the noodle shop that you launder the money through. I have tasted the broth and found it wanting.” Her voice hardened. “You have been stealing from the Yellow Lotus—glorifying yourself with revenue we have earned.” She took a breath and narrowed her eyes. “And I have the files to prove it.”
Receipts and bank statements formed on the trid, flicking past in a rapid montage.
I guessed Bao was in way over his head, and from the way his face fell, he was just now figuring that out.
“Now,” Kindly Cheng said, “in light of our recent—disagreement, you might be wondering why I am keeping this information to myself. Why haven’t I exposed you so you could be dragged from your Lotus Den by the balls and slowly roasted on a rotisserie spit.”
Bao swallowed at that, and it took a lot of effort.
“In truth, I respect your ambition,” Kindly Cheng said. “You have a lot to learn about candor—and loyalty—but I believe you still have value. I am still willing to work with you. However, in order for that to happen, we need to come to an understanding about the nature of our partnership.”
The receipts and bank statements disappeared, and Kindly Cheng leaned forward till her face filled the screen. “I own you, Bao. You and all your men. You are my fucking playthings—dolls to twist and pose as I see fit. I am in this position because I am far better at this than you, and it’s time that you learned it. Accept what I am telling you, and we can get back to business. Prosper together.”
Sweat covered Bao’s forehead.
“But, if you choose to continue your little rebellion, I will mail tiny pieces of you to your children, and take their picture as they open the package.” Kindly Cheng leaned back and took out a fresh cigar. She lit it, inhaled, and held the smoke a long time. “You have twenty-four hours to return to the fold. If you aren’t there licking my heels by then, the information will be released, and you will become food for fish.” She paused. “Your choice, Bao. Twenty-four hours.”
Pale and trembling, Bao turned to us. “Get out.” He cursed. “And tell Mrs. Cheng to expect me at Swift Winds tomorrow.” He wiped his face with a big hand. “Tomorrow morning.”
I nodded. “I’ll let her know.”
We didn’t give him our backs, because none of us really trusted him, but we left.
Once back in the rain, some of the tension unwound from my shoulders, but not all of it. I couldn’t stop thinking about how powerful Kindly Cheng was. And how merciless. And how Duncan and I were risking a lot by working for her.
I just hoped she really could come through with information about the old man—and wasn’t just using us to take care of her own dirty work.
Chapter 20
“Raymond Black Is Dead.”
Duncan strode beside me as we walked back to the mahjong parlor. He looked at me in the reflection of a passing shop window. I knew he had a lot on his mind. So did I.
“Well, that was something,” he said finally. “Never thought I’d be shuttling messages between criminals in a Hong Kong syndicate. I can’t imagine what Raymond would’ve wanted in the Walled City. This whole place just feels wrong to me. I can’t shake it.”
I tried to keep it light because Duncan had a tendency to overthink things. “Looking for more stray kids to take in?”
He grimaced. “After us, I don’t think he wanted any more.”
I knew he actually meant, “after me.”
“Seriously,” he went on after I got quiet, going to dark places myself, “why did Raymond want to come anywhere near here? It makes you feel like your life has no value. Like there’s just no point to anything.” He sighed and looked at Gobbet. “Great life you have here.”
She frowned at him, but chose to ignore his rudeness. “I can’t believe it. We actually delivered the old lady’s message without anyone dying.”
“I’ve had enough of triads.” Duncan shook his head. “Let’s get out of this pit.”
“I’m with you, Gun Show,” Gobbet said softly. “I don’t need to see this place ever again.”
“Gun Show? Seriously? That’s not gonna stick, is it?” In spite of everything we’d just been through and all the uncertainty ahead of us, Duncan smiled.
Back at Swift Winds, Is0bel was still in one piece, so I took that as a good omen. The dwarf decker smiled in relief when she saw us walk through the door. She looked like she had to resist running over and giving us a hug.
As we walked over to join her and Kindly Cheng, the Straw Sandal’s lieutenant leaned in and whispered into her ear. She smiled a little as he pulled away and we stopped before her.
“I’ve heard from Bao,” she said. “He got my message—very clearly. And I understand there were no casualties created during your little delivery run.”