Siren's Song (Cassandra Palmer Series)

by Karen Chance

  They could look like anything, since there was no reason to hide magic in a city built on it. And because they were basically just a platform for a levitation spell, to get commuters above the narrow alleys and sudden dead ends that plagued the mostly unplanned metropolis. But the most common style was a recycled rickshaw body with a giant fan on the back that provided both propulsion and steering.

  In theory, at least.

  John had always thought of them as death machines, buzzing about wildly overhead, many with naked, metal fan blades and no cages to keep them from taking your damned head off. And he saw no reason to revise his opinion. Not after this one plowed through a burning trash pile two stories up, crashed into a building, and emerged from the other side only to careen across the street into a sushi shop.

  The driver was immediately assaulted by a couple of large, graffitied samurai, which seemed to serve as both décor and makeshift bouncers. They peeled off the wall, fluffed themselves out from 2-D to 3-D, and proceeded to pummel the hell out of him. While he yelled something vicious and then started fighting back with an umbrella.

  Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t shielded.

  And unfortunately for John, the whole incident gave Zheng an idea.

  “You bastards come find us!” he ordered his men, who had crowded close to hold the crowd at bay, their umbrellas deployed in all directions, and who were now looking as confused as John felt.

  “You going somewhere?” he yelled at the big vamp.

  “No, we are!”

  And before John could ask the obvious, Zheng had used his elastic arms to snag another passing rickshaw, this one maybe three stories up. Or no, John realized, that wasn’t quite correct. He’d used one of them.

  The other was looped around John’s waist.

  Goddamnit!

  And then they were gone.

  Chapter Eighteen

  J ohn once had a friend who was fond of video games. But when John went by his tattoo shop one day, to take him to dinner, he’d found him cursing at a small screen. Apparently, there was something called an escort quest, where a player had to protect a character from attack for a certain length of time, which had seemed easy enough. Except that said character seemed entirely designed to get himself killed.

  John had laughed at his friend’s consternation when his character was murdered for the fifth time in a row, after which the small device had been thrown at a wall.

  He wasn’t laughing now.

  He was dangling off the side of a wildly careening sky buggy, which Zheng seemed to have no idea how to drive. Which was a problem since he’d just thrown the driver onto a passing roof! That left John hanging by one hand off a decrepit door, because the rickshaw looked to be an original, nineteenth century antique, and struggling to get inside, all while being raked along the side of buildings, dragged through a sky filled with lightning and magic, and then through a string of banners that almost decapitated him! And as he was fighting with them, he couldn’t help but notice—

  “Shiiiiiiiit!”

  John somehow managed to push off the side of a building and launch himself inside the cab, just before he would have been dragged through a huge neon sign. The cab caught part of it anyway, sending a large section crashing down onto the crowd below. Who responded by shooting spell bolts upward, one of which sent them into a spin seemingly designed to ensure that John lost the dinner he’d never had!

  “Give me that!” he said, and grabbed the control, which was simply a tall, joystick-like device set into the floor that operated the big fan. But either it was stuck or the fan blade was bent, John couldn’t tell whilst being slung about as if on a carnival ride. And then he was abruptly snatched out of the cab and forcibly taken on a flying leap courtesy of the crazed, son-of-a-bitch, asshole of a—

  “Auggghhhhh!” he screamed, because Zheng hadn’t just jumped to another cab, which would have been insane enough. No, he was jumping to consecutive ones and taking John along for the ride. Zheng was bouncing them from speeding murder buggy to speeding murder buggy—more or less.

  In quick succession, John lost a clump of hair when a fan blade got too close, giving him a buzz cut over his left ear; took a blow to the solar plexis when the driver of one of the cabs took offense at their jumping on top of him; and was bitten in the right calf by another man’s little bastard of a dog.

  All of which was less of a problem than when Zheng decided to simply jump over nothing but thin air, which might have been survivable for him but wasn’t for John!

  However, they didn’t slam into the ground as he’d expected, but rather into a crosswalk he hadn’t seen because it was a skinny little nothing of a thing, just a few bamboo poles and an occasional cross tie, connecting some buildings three stories above the street.

  Magical Hong Kong had grown up as much as out, and considering how clogged the small arteries below were, John couldn’t blame people for finding alternatives means of getting around.

  Like, he realized with a sinking stomach, the hundred or more bridges crisscrossing the way ahead. Many of which he got to see up close and personal after Zheng dragged him off the bridge and onto the top of another speeding cab, and they went on a wild journey through a tunnel of bamboo and concrete, whilst constantly dipping and rising because the damned bridges were on all different levels. Even worse, half of them were connected by ladders and stairs, and even a long metal slide John that got a good look at since they missed it by millimeters.

  Unlike someone’s clothesline, which they barreled through a moment later, sending a string of laundry streaming out behind them. Or, more accurately, out behind John, because the line had—of course—snagged him. But unlike the banners that had almost garroted him a moment before, at least this one was useful.

  He started reeling it in, as best as he could one handed, because the other was keeping a choke hold on the rain slick top of the cab. He managed to locate a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that looked like they might fit, although nobody had been good enough to hang a pair of boots out to dry. But they had left a heavy coat with some waterproofing, which was fortunate. Because John had to throw it over top of him a second later, when they passed a gutter spewing what looked like Niagara Falls!

  “Heh,” Zheng said, watching John flail around under his makeshift tarp, trying to get dressed without falling to his death.

  John stuck his head out long enough to glare at him. “What?”

  Zheng grinned, his good humor apparently restored either by adrenaline—if vampires had such a thing—or by watching John’s contortions. “You adapt well.”

  “Do I have a choice?” John snarled.

  “No.” And then the rat bastard pushed him off the buggy!

  Fortunately, they’d just dipped low to avoid a lady tossing out a bucket of fish guts, and so didn’t have three stories to fall. Just one and a half. They landed hard—at least, John did—on a patch of wet earth on what looked like the edge of a park, with the maze of buildings behind them and a small hill ahead, crowned by a grove of trees.

  Zheng immediately bounced back to his feet and scrambled up the water slick grass as if it was dry land. John had a little more trouble, partly because the fall had knocked his breath out and left him gasping. And partly because he’d almost landed on a war mage who had decided that he was a threat.

  But Zheng was right—John did adapt well. At least when the choice was do or die. Which is how the war mage ended up with a face full of heavy, water logged coat and John ended up sprinting over the hill with his newfound jeans still around his ankles.

  And then he abruptly stopped, wondering if he wouldn’t have been better off on the other side.

  He took a moment to snatch his trousers up under the scant shelter of a tree, and to survey what looked even more like a battlefield than the panicked action back in the city.

  In a valley beyond the small grove, a battle was being fought fiercely and on every possible side. Windblown spells slashed through clouds of poison
ous gasses, sending colorful tendrils clutching at the combatants like clawed hands. Drifts of smoke floated about like low lying clouds, cutting down visibility, as did the smoke and fires raging everywhere. Especially in the distance, where John could see a small pagoda swathed in spell fire. And in front of it—

  He stopped, his eyes narrowing in confusion. “What are they doing?”

  “You tell me!” Zheng spat, appearing out of nowhere.

  The big vampire must have been further down the hill, nearer to the battle, because John hadn’t seen him when he crested the summit. But he was back, and his mercurial emotions had shifted once again. At least, John assumed so, considering that he suddenly found himself flat on the ground, a beefy hand around his neck, and an enraged master looming over him.

  “Release me you bloody idiot!” John spat.

  The bloody idiot stayed where he was.

  “Release me or you’ll regret it!”

  “One of us will,” Zheng promised, his hand tightening—just before a stray spell bolt hit him square in the back.

  He in turn hit John, when the force of the blow thrust him forward like a fleshy club, trapping the mage under hundreds of pounds of dead weight. Although there was less of it than there had been a second ago. The spell had taken a cannonball sized chuck out of the vampire’s back, and the effect was now spreading further.

  Or it was trying to.

  John lay there for a moment, stunned from the feel of being bitch slapped by three hundred pounds of vampire, and getting a close-up view of exactly how formidable their healing abilities were. He assumed the effect was exaggerated considering that this was a senator, and therefore had a huge family who could feed him energy through the blood bond. But it was still eye opening.

  John had thought he’d seen it all at one point in his life or another, but watching veins reknit themselves, flesh bloom where none had been mere seconds ago, and a spine, white and slippery, rise from the blackened meat of the vamp’s back like a string of islands poking up from the sea . . .

  Well, he was grateful that the old wars between Zheng’s kind and humans were long over.

  Or they were supposed to be.

  But within seconds, while he was still fighting to get out from under, the giant fist clenched shut once more. John did some mental swearing, then tried to cast a spell to pry the damned thing open. When that didn’t work, he resorted to more hands-on sorts of persuasion. Because the Corps didn’t work out like they did in order to throw spells!

  John used a combination of several martial arts and a huge reserve of pent up rage to break the creature’s hold, then did his best to also break his jaw. He didn’t think the latter worked—the bastard had bones like solid steel—but he hit hard enough to get a look of surprise out of the vamp. And then another when he managed to throw him off.

  Zheng landed on the back that was still attempting to mend, but didn’t so much as flinch. He was on his feet the next instant, but the short fight seemed to have cleared his head. At least enough that he didn’t immediately come after John again.

  For a moment, the two men regarded each other warily while the battle raged nearby. John was taking a chance by paying more attention to the vampire than to the several hundred heavily armed combatants below, but he didn’t have a choice. He had to get the man to listen.

  “I don’t know what the hell set you off—”

  “What set me off?” Zheng waved an arm at the little temple. “That set me off. Are you blind?”

  No, and despite the drifts of smoke, John could currently see quite well. The rain had finally let up, although the angry skies bore witness to the fact that this was a temporary respite. What he didn’t understand was what he was seeing. It looked like a couple hundred corpsmen were trying to destroy the picture postcard pagoda, which seemed like a strange target.

  Even stranger, they did not appear to be succeeding. A powerful shield sparked and flared in the gloom with every volley, to the point that the little temple appeared to be wreathed in lightning. Yet not so much as a tile on the many small rooftops appeared to have been disturbed.

  Zheng must have read the confusion on his face, because he finally calmed down. At least enough to demand: “Don’t you know what that is?”

  John looked at it again. It was a pagoda. He looked back at Zheng.

  He did not seem like a particularly religious person to John, but what did he know?

  Zheng swore some more. “That’s the Pagoda of the Whispering Winds. It’s one of the six pillars supporting the phase spell.”

  “The phase?”

  “Yes, the phase! The phase!” Zheng looked a little crazed. “The one that keeps this place from crashing into human Hong Kong? The one that keeps it from killing everyone in both cities?”

  Annnnnd, finally, something started to make sense.

  John stared at the pagoda some more. Built of dark hardwood, it had classic upturned roofs painted blue underneath, six progressively smaller stories as it went up, and strings of brass bells swinging from the corners. It was attractive, as was the small park it was set in, but was otherwise unremarkable.

  Except for the fact that it was about to kill them all.

  Chapter Nineteen

  H ong Kong’s phase was famous for being one of the biggest feats of magical engineering on earth. It required multiple conduits—masked as pagodas, apparently—to channel enough energy from the ley line sink below the city to fuel the spell. The reserve there was so deep and so large that it could power almost anything.

  And, John realized, could destroy it just as easily.

  The city was sitting atop potentially the biggest bomb on earth, the equivalent of thousands of nuclear reactors. Meanwhile, the supernatural world was involved in a war, one in which neither side had been able to score a definitive victory. But annihilating two cities, along with a sizeable chunk of the War Mage Corps, would certainly qualify.

  John felt his blood run cold.

  “How many pillars have to fall,” he asked Zheng through numb lips, “before the spell fails?”

  “How the hell should I know?” the big vampire snarled. “You’re the mage! You tell me!”

  But John couldn’t tell him. Spells as important as the phase tended to be excessively overengineered. If their enemies wanted to bring it down, they would need to destroy more than one pillar, maybe a lot more. Although how many John didn’t know because this wasn’t his city!

  But if they didn’t stop this, it wasn’t going to be anyone’s city, and millions were going to die.

  “We have to find Caleb,” John said.

  “Who?”

  “The war mage we’re tracking! We have to find out who’s behind this—”

  “You have to,” Zheng responded, whilst searching for something in his suit. “I have to see the tong.”

  “The tong? Why on earth would you go back there?”

  “Because they have men!” Zheng said, gesturing at the leather coated army. “And they’re the only ones who do!”

  “Men who are already fighting—”

  “Yes, in the damned streets, when they need to be here! This is the real battle—”

  “The battle is the whole city!” John snapped. “If the tong pulls its forces here, the Corps will follow. They won’t have anyone slowing them down anymore—”

  “And if they don’t come here, those pillars will fall and we’ll all die,” Zheng pointed out. “And I know the tong. They haven’t committed all their troops. Not by half—”

  “Then where the hell are they?”

  “Where do you think?” Dark eyes flashed. “Guarding their warehouses and rerouting mages away from their businesses. They’re trying to minimize losses when we’re about to lose the whole damned thing! They have to send their people here—all of them. Now!”

  “And you’re going to convince them of that how?” John demanded. “Even if they didn’t see you rescue me—”

  “They didn’t see shit. Your lot m
ade sure of that!”

  “—they didn’t seem exactly friendly!” John thought of the duel Zheng had had to face simply in order to get a hearing. And that was after he’d dragged John in as a prize! “What makes you think they’ll listen—”

  “They’ll listen.” It was grim. “They’ll listen if I have to—"

  Another earthquake hit, sending both men to their knees.

  “—rip their damned insides out!” Zheng yelled, glaring at the Corps, who had just launched another massive volley at the pagoda.

  John could feel the magic like sunlight on his skin. Could smell it on the air, a harsh, buzzing, peppery odor that stung his nose and watered his eyes. As if anger had a scent.

  Shield or no shield, that pillar wasn’t going to last.

  John gripped the big vampire’s arm. “If you survive, tell them to reroute the barriers—those great blue shield walls of theirs. Tell them to trap as many mages as they can in the city—”

  “With the civilians?” Zheng looked at him like he was mad. “That will leave the people no way out—”

  A stray spell from the battle slammed into the canopy of trees above their heads, sending burning branches and leaves pelting down on the two men. Zheng swore, but other than moving back slightly, there was nowhere to go. The battle was worse.

  “A way out where?” John yelled, through smoke and drifting ash. “You said it yourself, the portals are closed! We’ve must have been pushed out of phase far enough that they can’t find us!”

  It would explain why Jonas hadn’t been pulling any more mages out of here. The clogged, narrow streets should have served as the perfect bottlenecks to allow for the extraction of large numbers of the enthralled. Yet, if that had happened, John had seen no sign of it.

  No sign at all.

  Probably because, for any portal to be opened, it had to have a fixed point on either end. When John first arrived, the city had still been in its usual phased position, since whoever was masterminding this had needed to get his own troops in here. But as soon as they all arrived, it had been in his best interest to knock the place out of alignment, ensuring that no rescue attempts could be made.