by Mel Odom
Duncan shouted my name. As I turned toward him, he tossed me the SMG. I caught the weapon and reloaded it, then joined him in firing at the demon. One of Gobbet’s grenades missed its target, but struck close enough to stagger the demon queen.
I ran to Gobbet and pulled her to her feet. I put my face close to hers, knowing she was wracked by physical pain as well as the emotional trauma from the death of her friends.
“Can you go on?” I demanded.
She didn’t answer.
Desperate, I tried another tack. “Do you want her to get away with killing them?”
“No!” The fury on her face was absolute. Twisting her head away from me, she hurled fireballs at the demon as it came at us again. The Queen still laughed, but she sounded weaker now. She waved to her remaining servitor, commanding it to join her.
“Stand behind me!” Gobbet raised a wave of shimmering energy between us and the hideous Queen of a Thousand Teeth. Her fireballs blasted against it, but couldn’t penetrate the invisible barrier. The wind the shaman summoned next threw the demon off balance, and Duncan and I took advantage. Is0bel lobbed grenades over the barrier, landing them again and again with increasingly better precision.
Except once.
A grenade caught the edge of Gobbet’s barrier and bounced back between us.
“Shit—!” Is0bel yelled.
I caught the grenade up in one hand and flung it at the remaining servitor. The thing put its hands out to block the missile, but the grenade detonated centimeters before making contact. The gout of flame and the concussive wave blew the servitor to bits.
We turned to face Qian Ya, who stood there looking undamaged. She moved more slowly, though, and her magic didn’t hit with the same power as it had earlier.
“She’s weakening!” Gobbet said, but the strained look on her face told me she was weakening, too. Sweat beaded her forehead, and it wasn’t just the heat from wherever we were.
Duncan and I worked around the edges of Gobbet’s shield. We were close enough that we didn’t miss. Our bullets blasted into her.
Then my weapon locked back empty. I looked at Duncan. “I’m out!”
“So am I,” he said.
At that moment, Gobbet collapsed, exhausted, and the barrier fell away. Qian Ya laughed gleefully, but didn’t approach. She stood back, gathering power as shimmering energy surrounded her hands.
Without a word, having nowhere to run and not even certain where we were, Duncan and I both rushed toward her. I drew my remaining monofilament dagger again. Duncan reversed the shotgun and wielded it like a club. He slammed the stock into her face, cracking that golden mask. I sliced into her midsection, afraid that I would only cut silk, but there was substance there, and I found it again and again and again.
Qian Ya stumbled back, weakening, but she swiped a hand at both of us and knocked us back. As Duncan and I regained our feet and gathered our weapons, Is0bel hit the demon with another grenade that drove her back a couple steps.
“Die!” the dwarf shouted.
“Die, you fucking demon bitch!” Gobbet screamed as she threw a shimmering blast into Quin Ya that tore through her red silk robes and left a gaping hole in her torso. For a moment, the demon stood, then she sank again into a quivering pile of burnt and broken parts. Black ichor gushed from her wounds.
The blackness happened again—and we were once more standing on the rooftop in the rain.
We waited, watching the crumpled mass before us fearfully. Gobbet lay on the ground, sobbing as she held the limp form of yet another rat that had died. A meter away, Is0bel crumpled to the ground, dead or unconscious. Duncan reached into his medkit and started toward the decker.
In despair, I watched as Qian Ya’s body regrew, and the demon queen arose once more, her contemptuous laughter echoing around us again.
Battered, bloody, and burned, I just stood and stared at her, the true horror of our situation becoming all too clear.
There was no escape from her. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. And we were dead on our feet; low on ammo, low on mana.
In just a few moments, we would all be easy prey for the Queen of a Thousand Teeth.
Chapter 98
Final Showdown
Qian Ya’s form was different this time. The silk robes were gone. She stood before us with multiple arms, all of them ending in mouths sporting huge fangs.
She truly was the Queen With a Thousand Teeth.
“I am not defeated,” she said. “Projections on top of projections. All aspects of our divine being, shed as easily as a lizard sheds its tail.” Her arms moved like snakes, like there were no joints.
Part of me just wanted to tell her to get it over with, but I knew torture and fear were two of the many weapons in her arsenal. There was nothing for her in the death of those she captured. She lived for the fear and the pain. That was why she wanted into find a way into our world. She and Josephine Tsang were the same in that regard. They just counted wealth differently.
Clutching my lone remaining dagger, I fought to stay upright. I had nothing left to fight with—both my body and my arsenal were depleted—but I would die on my feet, facing her, drawing the last bit of blood—or whatever flowed through her otherworldly veins—that I could get. It wouldn’t make a difference to anyone but me, and at the moment, that seemed to be all that mattered anymore.
“You cannot harm us, meat,” she taunted. “But, you have amused us. Perhaps you are worthy of an audience after all. Perhaps…”
She stopped speaking, and tilted her head to look behind us. I heard the sound of pounding feet, of many people approaching us. I dared not hope, but when I looked over my shoulder, I spotted figures running toward us out of the rain.
There were fewer of them than when we had begun, but those who remained looked fearsomely resolved. Gaichu and Racter reached us first, both taking up defensive postures. They both looked like they had been through their own small war, with blood and dirt covering their soaking-wet faces and bodies. Even so, Gaichu had his swords out and ready. Racter stood beside a dented and bullet-pocked Koschei, whose heavy machine gun was prepped and ready.
Raymond Black and what was left of Kindly Cheng’s men followed them. The remaining gangers looked like they’d survived a war. Barely.
Grim determination filled Raymond’s withered features as he faced the demon queen. He moved more surely now, like he’d regained a part of himself that had been lost. I felt better just seeing him there, even though I knew first- and secondhand that Qian Ya was undefeatable.
“The demon still lives,” Gaichu said with a smile. “Good.”
“I did this,” Raymond said. “I brought this creature here.” He stood before her, unbroken, unbowed.
I felt proud of him. If we were all going to die, this was the way to do it.
Except I didn’t want to die.
“My fault,” Raymond said. “My responsibility.”
Qian Ya laughed at him, but I noticed she didn’t come any closer to us. Fear showed on the gangers’ faces, but they stood their ground. And they had plenty of firepower.
My head swam as I fought to keep my senses and not pass out. The pain helped with that as much as it threatened to push me into black oblivion.
“It has returned to us,” Qian Ya said, her toothy arms still in motion. “The tunnel-builder. The architect of my ascendancy.” She leaned toward him, smiling with her horrible fangs. “You will have a special place in our court, builder. You will stand by our side, exalted for all time. A living token of our unending rule, and an undying symbol of the folly of man.”
Raymond stepped toward her, and Duncan and I stepped—limped—up with him. Blood covered our scored, shattered armor, and we sucked in great draughts of air.
“I have been a fool,” Raymond said. “A great fool. But I will not be your slave. I will stop you.”
I looked at Duncan, and neither of us had a clue what Raymond was talking about. I grabbed an AK-97 from one of the gangers a
nd opened fire. Duncan took another rifle from another ganger. Gaichu attacked with his swords, staying low and slashing at her legs, at the toothed arms. Koschei fired systematically, scoring with every shot. The Yellow Lotus gangers started shooting, too.
We had surprise for a moment, and we had the guns, and one of the Yellow Lotus gangers was a mage who raised an earth spirit that matched the one Gobbet called to us. Maybe that made all the difference, that there were so many of us. Or maybe it was because Raymond was there with us this time.
The demon queen fought back again, just as fiercely as before. She managed to kill three gangers with her snake-maw arms, but Gaichu was a blade-wielding blur around her. He lopped two of the sinuous limbs off, then a third that bit him in the chest.
Meanwhile, Koschei fired .50-caliber rounds with pinpoint accuracy, unrelenting as the drone targeted and shot her again and again.
Crippled by such an onslaught, Qian Ya fell easily this time, and by the time she hit the rooftop, only a rancid green mist remained, and the strong winds soon carried that off.
Everyone was silent for a moment.
“That time was easier than I thought it’d be,” Duncan said, but he reloaded his borrowed rifle all the same. “Problem is, she has a real nasty habit of not staying dead, but usually she leaves something behind.”
The gangers and our friends looked unsettled. Gaichu smiled and shook blood from his blades, as if relishing the continuation of the fight.
“We can stop her,” Raymond said. “There is a way.”
“How?” I asked.
“We can turn off the machine.”
I looked at Raymond. “You know how to turn it off?”
He looked up at me and put his hand on my shoulder. He was weaker than he’d been letting on. “I have been ready for more than two decades, but now I know what is needed.” He pointed at the terminal that had gone dark earlier. “The control console is just over there. We must move quickly.”
“Why?” Duncan asked. “It’s over. She’s gone.”
I shook my head. The demon queen had been gone longer this time, but the foulness of the sprawl still coiled around us. She wasn’t gone for good. Only for the moment.
Raymond punched buttons on the keyboard and the computer powered up again. After another sequence, a large, round machine that looked like a giant’s top pushed up through the rooftop and sat there spinning.
“I still must close the rift,” Raymond said. “Otherwise she will be back. I just need—” His eyes widened in fear as he scanned the terminal’s screen.
“What’s wrong?” Duncan asked. “Destroy the thing before she comes back!”
Raymond waved at the readouts in perplexed confusion. “I…I can’t. There is a one-way flow of astral energy moving from the inner Walled City through the tunnel the Fortune Engine must open. I know what it is.”
Cradling one of her arms, Gobbet wrinkled her nose and stepped back. “I can feel it, too. The energy is coming from the people that she’s feeding on. Their essence. Their spirits, for lack of a better word.”
Raymond nodded. “If I destroy the machine now, it will collapse the tunnel. All of those people will have the better part of their essence—what makes them who and what they are—trapped inside. With her. Forever.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “Thousands of people, condemned to an eternity with that parasitic thing.”
I couldn’t believe it. The demon was going to win after all. “Do we have another option?” I asked.
“Yes.” Raymond looked at the Fortune Engine. “Someone could enter the tunnel, close the rift safely. The people would be saved. Restored to life in the real world.”
“And what happens to the person in the tunnel?” Is0bel asked quietly.
“He stays there forever,” Raymond answered. “With her.” He looked at the console, staring at it. “There’s no way out once the tunnel is closed.”
I listened to the rain fall, unable to speak. Someone would have to make the ultimate sacrifice—and even if we won, we would still lose. Everyone was quiet for a moment, trying to get around that. My heart ached more than my wounded face.
I opened my mouth to speak, then Duncan put his hand on Raymond’s shoulder.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “Just tell me what buttons to press.”
Chapter 99
Farewell
I was torn. I’d run away from this family, tried to avoid the ties I’d sworn I never wanted.
Raymond straightened and stood taller. “No, my son. I am not truly Raymond Black. My name is Edward Tsang, and I built this machine. I set this terrible avalanche in motion. Whether I meant to or not. It is my responsibility to stop it.”
He turned to me. “This is what this is all about. What it’s been about since the very beginning. If anyone is to do this, it must be me.” He paused and pressed on, determined, unstoppable. The way I remembered him. “It will be me.”
“Don’t…don’t do this, Ray,” I whispered.
“No.” He hugged me for a moment, and I almost couldn’t let him go. I knotted my fists in his jacket and held him close, thinking about all those years I’d missed. Because I had been so proud and stupid. My eyes burned. “The demon could return at any moment. There is no time to teach you what to do in there. I must set things in motion.” He nodded to himself. “It must be me.”
He turned to Duncan and hugged him. Duncan had tears running down his face. I knew I did, too.
“You must be there for your brother,” Raymond told me. “As you were so long ago. At least for a while.”
“I will,” I promised, my voice breaking even as I said it.
“Thank you for coming to Hong Kong. Thank you for coming when I called.”
I nodded, opening my mouth again, but this time I couldn’t speak for a moment. Finally, I forced out what I knew would be my last words to the old man. “Goodbye, Dad.”
Fearlessly, Raymond flipped a lever on the machine. A wavering tunnel suddenly opened above it. Without a look back, the only father I’d ever truly known stepped into that opening.
And when that tunnel closed, he disappeared forever.
Chapter 100
Aftermath
I want to say that the world changed instantly with Raymond’s sacrifice. But that’s not true.
Except for the storm. That broke immediately and was gone, leaving the sprawl half-drowned and leaking, but more or less intact in spite of all the wind and madness that had swept through the streets.
The media released the story that an illegal drug lab explosion caused all the mass hallucinations and violence. The street criminals started back to work the next night, so the world didn’t stop.
At first, Kindly Cheng wasn’t happy with the fact that she’d been shut out of the true story until it was all over with. When I finished telling it to her the next day, she was convinced I was lying about the whole thing. Then she was convinced I had control of the Fortune Engine and wasn’t cutting her a piece of the action.
Either way, she was mad at me for a while.
Somewhere in there, our relationship broke even. I was good in the shadows, and she still wanted to use me. As it turned out, her immediate supervisor was killed that night and she got a promotion, which made shadowrunners even more necessary for her. Strangler Bao got a promotion, too.
Neither of them threw a party. Or if they did, we weren’t invited.
When we got back to the Bolthole, after getting our wounds tended, none of us could sleep for a while. Gobbet had a broken arm and the missing ear. The rest of us were burned and banged up. We sat up and talked for the rest of the night, trying to make sense of it all. And I think Is0bel got the closest to the truth about everything Josephine Tsang was doing by trying to convert Raymond’s memories.
“I felt something in that room while we were there.” Gobbet sat and petted her new rat friends, taking calmness from them. “A flow of positive qi that I didn’t expect. I think it was leaving the Walled City.”
“She sealed up the Fortune Engine,” Duncan added, “siphoned the good qi for herself, and took Tsang Mechanical Services from the minor company Ray’s father built to the ballbusting near-mega it is today.” He clenched his jaw. “That’s how she got herself on the Executive Council of Hong Kong.”
Of course, that was all speculation. We couldn’t prove any of it. All the evidence of Josephine Tsang’s crimes had disappeared with Raymond. Whatever luck she’d sucked out of the Walled City stayed with her for a while. With all the blame that went around for that night, none of it landed on Josephine Tsang. She kept on making money like she was printing it.
None of us liked that, and we followed the stories in the screamsheets and thought about things. It didn’t take us long to start putting together plans to take away some of Josephine Tsang’s good fortune.
Another oddity was that the APBs on all of us were dropped. Kindly Cheng told us that a “mysterious benefactor” had called the shots on that, and even she didn’t know who it was.
So that was another mystery that needed to be solved at some point before it bit us on the ass. Nobody does anything for free. The butcher’s bill for that little act of kindness would come due someday, and we didn’t know what it would cost. We wanted to be ready.
With the APBs gone, Duncan and I could have gone home. Except we were now SINless. There was no future for us that we didn’t seize with our own two hands.
So Hong Kong’s our home now, and we have one of the best teams in the sprawl. The work is good—dangerous, but good. Kindly Cheng isn’t our only client these days, but she’s the most regular.
Not much has changed. Except for the times I sleep. There are no nightmares anymore.