The Dragons of Heaven

by Alyc Helms

  Especially not the kids. Cart jockeying among them was twice as cutthroat as in a normal dim sum setup.

  “That one’s mine,” said KC, a fourteen year old beanpole with a crooked grin. He hip-checked me into the wall and made off with my cart.

  “Ow?” I complained, rubbing my side. Andrew laughed. At me.

  “You’ve lost your edge, Missy. Few years ago, you’d have flipped him over your shoulder for that cart.”

  “What was in it?”

  “Shrimp siu mai, spare ribs, and bao.”

  Some of the bestsellers. Of course. Cart like that would never come back with leftovers.

  I shrugged. “Let him have it. Don’t really need the money anymore. Just give me the phoenix talons cart.” The Pearl catered to the tourist crowd on the weekends, none of whom found chicken feet appealing, but Doris was a purist, so she kept making them.

  Andrew shook his head and nudged another cart toward me. “Completely lost your edge.”

  I wheeled out my cart. Andrew had taken pity on me and given me a more palatable dessert selection. I rolled from table to table, inured to the looks of surprise I got when the customers realized I was as white as they were. Tourists.

  My cart sold before I’d finished two circuits of the room. It was getting late enough that the crowd had thinned, and most of the folks left were lingering over tea and dessert.

  KC must have decided that more work was a waste of his valuable time, too. He leaned over the hostess desk to chat up Lin, one of the few employees who wasn’t a member of the extended family. She was another one of Doris’s foundlings, like me. Nobody spoke about Lin’s story, which right away said it was a bad one. But three years under Doris Han’s rough coddling had done a lot to chase the haunted look from Lin’s eyes.

  Like now, for example. She looked more bemused than intimidated as KC yammered at her. She had ten years on him, but that didn’t stop the boy from trying.

  I was about to leave him to his crash-and-burn – Lin could handle herself – when I caught a snippet of conversation that didn’t sound like flirting at all.

  “What did you say?” I asked, keeping my voice down and checking to make sure no customers were nearby.

  KC preened at being the focus of attention from two pretty girls. He’d kill me if he realized I just wanted to ruffle his hair for being so adorable.

  “Those guys at the table in the corner. They’re 49s.”

  “They’re football fans?” Lin asked. KC and I both shot her incredulous looks. How had she worked here for three years without picking up the slang?

  “49s are Hung Society. Triad,” I clarified when she still looked confused. “Mostly the low-level bully-boy types. General membership.”

  KC jumped on the chance to impress Lin with his extensive knowledge. “Yeah. See, they have all these numerological codes for the ranks. Like the Shan Chu, that’s the dude in charge, he’s–”

  “You don’t know they’re 49s,” I interrupted. Yeah, it was a cock-block. I didn’t care. This was too important. Lin was too old for him, anyways.

  “I saw em flashing signs when their friends showed up. And then again when this other guy came and gave them all red business cards.” He leaned over a whispered in the loudest possible aside to Lin, “That means there’s a meeting.”

  “Or coupons for a massage. Hawkers sneak in here all the time,” I said. Lin nodded at this more likely explanation. After all, she was the one who had to try and keep the hawkers out.

  I was a complete ass for downplaying what KC had seen, but I’d have to make it up to him later. The party in the corner was breaking up. I had to extricate. Quick. I pushed my cart back to the kitchen and told Andrew – by virtue of taking off my red server’s apron – that I was done for the day. I swerved past Doris to give her a hug on my way out of the kitchen.

  “Johnny back?” she asked, assuming that was the reason for my rush. With the lunch crowd thinning, she didn’t need my labor anymore.

  “Yeah,” I said, not wanting to waste time explaining. Johnny would be back when he got back. Those guys, if they really were four-nines, were already on the move.

  Out the side door, I sprinted down the alleyway. No time to become Mr Mystic. I’d have to trail them as I was.

  I rounded the corner to the main street just as the group of young men – four of them – were passing. I skidded to a halt to avoid running right into them, earning several glares from the forty-nines and not a few grumbles from the people behind me.

  “Sorry! Sorry.” I held up my hands and smiled, trying to look innocuous. The young men didn’t care. They continued on their way, laughing in Cantonese about the stupid laowai tourist with no tits.

  I frowned, cheeks hot. Feminine pride warred with practicality. At least they weren’t suspicious of me?

  I followed them at a more sedate pace, promising myself that if the afternoon ended in a fight, I was going to whup each of their asses.

  * * *

  The afternoon passed in a haze of boring. The guys stopped in several emporiums, but they were window shopping, not extorting. They tried on coolie hats, played with fans, ogled girls. I couldn’t get close enough to make out what they were saying without fear of them recognizing me as the laowai from earlier, but they code-switched freely between English and Cantonese. Local boys, then. Immigrants only spoke English when they had to.

  They meandered along until they reached the narrow entry of a massage parlor – the Garden of Willows. They paused at the door, looking around. I hid behind a street pole covered in flyers: complimentary facial with massage, housecleaning and gardening, a “have-you-seen-me” poster with a pale chow-chow being ridden by a chubby toddler. I studied the missing dog until the boys went in. Then I made myself feel better by banging my head against a nearby doorway. I’d wasted my entire afternoon; that’s what I got for listening to the claims of a fourteen-year-old boy who was trying to impress a girl.

  I was not going to wait around for my marks to have their “happy ending”.

  I turned to go and spied David Tsung walking down the street toward me. I ducked back into a shop doorway, waving off the woman who perked up and started trying to sell me a jade… something. I had no idea what, and I didn’t care.

  Tsung passed within a few feet of me, eyes sliding right past as he idly perused the shopfront windows. Of course he wouldn’t know me. Why would he connect the gothy redhead lurking in the doorway of a jewelry shop with Mitchell Masters? I breathed a sigh of relief, then caught my breath almost as quickly.

  David Tsung entered the Garden of Willows.

  I considered and tossed out several plans for how to infiltrate the massage parlor myself, from calling down a police bust – I had no cause – to sneaking in Charlie’s Angels-style using a sexy cheongsam and my dazzling beauty. Problem was, I didn’t have the dress, and I doubted I had enough of the beauty. I’m no slouch, but I ain’t no Cameron Diaz.

  I settled on going round back and seeing what the rear façade had to offer. Somebody had left an upper-story window cracked, and it was easy enough to scale the fire escape and slip through.

  Which left me in a narrow closet that had been repurposed as a bedroom, if the mattress wedged into the space was any indication. I picked my way across the rumpled bedding and opened the door a crack, peeking out.

  The corridor was bare except for a line of narrow wood doors painted the same institutional green as the walls and a few faded pictures. Given the parlor downstairs, I decided it might be better not to speculate who these rooms were for. I could come back and gather enough evidence to warrant a bust. Places like this were the hydra’s heads. I was after the heart.

  At the front of the building, the hall opened up into a more opulent lobby. The wood floors were polished and not scarred, the walls painted scarlet and the moldings gilded. A black gate guarded an elevator shaft. Down or up? I opted for the stairs and went down.

  I expected only one level to the ground floor. It’s
San Francisco. Nobody sane does basements here. But the stairwell boasted a heavy fire door opposite the street exit. I scanned the frame; it wasn’t alarmed. A noise above that sounded like a door opening decided me. I pulled open the fire door, revealing an unlit staircase descending into darkness.

  It is a sad statement on my life that on seeing that, I sighed with relief. Most people fear dark places. I find them comforting.

  I slipped into the shadows, my shoulders relaxing at the extra cover. Straddling the divide between worlds isn’t true invisibility. People can still bump into me, and bright lights will chase the shadows away and leave me standing there with a stupid look on my face. Anyone feeling particularly vicious can mow me down with a spray of gunfire. Slower weapons are less of an issue; they give me enough time to get out of the way or cross into the Shadow Realms.

  But I have a healthy respect – read: fear – of the Shadow Realms, and I wouldn’t risk crossing over in this place. If this were some sort of Triad stronghold – and why else would David Tsung be here, besides the obvious? – then they would have protections. Lao Chan’s Incense Master was no slouch at the sorcery side of things, and the denizens of the Shadow Realms flocked to ritual spaces, feeding on the inevitable energy bleed. Here be monsters? I didn’t want to find out.

  The stairway opened up onto another hallway: long, and made crooked by water-damaged boxes stacked along both sides. Bare, florescent bulbs flickered at epileptic speed, so dim that it hardly felt like they were doing their job. Not that I needed the light to see. I was offended on principle.

  I crept through the maze, passing boxes stamped with every dialect I knew, and a few I didn’t.

  Lucky cats? Who needed twelve boxes of beckoning lucky cats? Seriously.

  The hallway opened up on a storeroom, or what might have once been a storeroom. The mold of long sitting boxes patterned the floor, but they’d all been cleared away to make room for four large kennel cages like you could get at any Petco, one at each corner of the room.

  Johnny sprawled in the far cage, bleached-blond and electric blue hair a dead giveaway.

  “Shit.” I kept enough presence of mind to scan the room before rushing across it. Empty, if you didn’t count the animal occupants of the other cages.

  “Sifu!” I pulled back with a yelp as the bars burned me. I sucked on my fingers. Electrified? But then how come Johnny wasn’t crispy bacon?

  He rolled over with a groan, eyes fluttering open and closed. His irises crossed and wandered. I couldn’t tell if they were dilated. Beaten, then. Or drugged.

  I checked the cage for some kind of connection or cord leading away. Nothing. My hands hovered over the mesh. I could touch it again, if I had to, but it would hurt like fuck-all. My fingers were already red and pulsing pain. “I can’t open the door.”

  He groaned again and pushed himself up to sitting. A few more blinks, and he managed to keep his eyes focused on me. “Warded.”

  Oh. Well, duh. Should have thought of that.

  “Can you pop out?”

  “They’re. Warded.” Johnny’s enunciation of each word was its own reprimand.

  “How do I break the wards?”

  He tried standing, but the top of the cage wasn’t quite high enough. He settled to his knees, rubbed his face and ruffled his hair. “Not sure.”

  “I could help you,” hissed a voice from my left. I twisted to face the cage in that corner. An emerald-patterned boa slid down from a single forked branch that had been propped across the cage for her comfort. The draped loops of her body rustled and slid as she sought her way to the bare mesh floor of her kennel.

  A snake talking to me, and I didn’t even blink. My life.

  “And I suppose you want out, too?” I asked.

  “Thank you, Xuan Wu,” Johnny said at the same time, giving the snake a respectful bow. “Forgive my student for her rudeness.”

  Xuan Wu? That was a guardian’s title. “I thought you were Guardian of Chinatown,” I whispered.

  “I am a guardian of Chinatown. Have some manners.”

  Manners. I could do manners. I headed over to the snake’s cage. In the cage opposite the snake’s, a large, red-tailed hawk ruffled her feathers and let out a soft, curious cry. The dog in the other cage raised her head with a throaty whine. It took me a moment to place that bristling coat of pale fur. The chow from the poster.

  They’d kidnapped some kid’s dog? Now that was just low.

  Grumbling about dognappers, I bowed before the snake’s cage as I would to Johnny. “You said you could help, Xuan Wu?”

  “There is a key in the shape of a knife. You must wash it with your own blood and touch it to the wards that bind us. That is all.”

  That was all. “And where is this key?” I asked, pretty sure I wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “The Shan Chu has it.” The Shan Chu. Lao Chan.

  “Great.”

  Any other complaint I might have made was interrupted by the creek of the fire door echoing down the hallway. Johnny fell to a prone position, and the snake slithered up to its branch. I looked back at the hallway. The only way in was the only way out. There wasn’t enough cover to hide in the room.

  Yay me for not needing cover. I flattened against the wall behind the snake’s cage, deepening the shadows there even as I phased into them. Not all the way into the Shadow Realms. Just far enough to not be noticed.

  The headache-inducing fluorescents flickered off, replaced by a steady, yellow glow from the mouth of the hallway. A single file line of figures entered, the first two carrying paper lanterns hanging from tripods. Two more lantern bearers brought up the rear. My 49s, looking very serious about their lantern-carrying duties.

  Most of the men wore business suits, but a few had opted for red-on-black embroidered robes. I spotted David Tsung among the suited members, sneaking a peek at his smart phone. I recognized a few of the other attendees, all respected businessmen and leaders of the community. But no Lao Chan.

  My dim sum buddies set their tripods down, one between each cage, spreading the light more evenly. How annoying. One of the robed men set down a folding card table. The other two set down a large plastic tub and started pulling out props: a cloth to cover the table, a red banner with “Fan q’ing – fuk ming” in black letters, a red tupperware bowl filled with rice, a stack of robes that they started handing out to the others while the first robed man arranged candles, and other props on the makeshift altar.

  Must be the Incense Master, the official sorcerer for the Shadow Dragon Triad. I slid along the wall, dragging the shadows with me, and leaned in to get a better peek at his box of supplies, but I didn’t see a knife or anything key-like. So much for hoping.

  One of the assistants turned at a command from the Incense Master, nearly bumping into me as he put the depleted pile of robes on the edge of the table. I lurched back to avoid a collision, my hand knocking one of the lantern tripods. Not hard, just enough to make one of the legs grate against the cement floor and set the lamp to swinging. The apprentice, the Incense Master, and several others looked in my direction. I pulled back deeper into Shadow, far enough that I could hear the howling of the Shadow Realms like a rush of blood between my ears, and feel the tug of a hundred questing tendrils. It was like standing on a steep slope. I struggled to keep my footing, to not fall back completely. I could escape there, but I’d almost rather try my luck against two dozen triads. Most of them looked pretty harmless. There’s nothing harmless about the Shadow Realms.

  Before anyone could investigate further, the chow started barking. The red hawk stirred, flapping her wings and screeching. The snake hissed, which wasn’t much in the way of sound and fury compared to his companions, but a nice try nonetheless. The din echoed loud enough to burst eardrums in the confines of the basement.

  Johnny sat up. That got everyone’s attention. I slid away from the altar and back behind the snake’s cage.

  “Where is Lao Chan?” Johnny asked, as pleasant as if he
hadn’t been drugged, kidnapped, and warded into a cage. Nobody could pull off cool like Johnny.

  Nobody except Lao Chan.

  “I am here.” Even the dog and the hawk – and the snake – quieted as the Shan Chu of the Shadow Dragon Triad spoke from the hallway.

  He wore robes open over his charcoal suit. They were blue and black, heavy with embroidered dragons. A wide sash wrapped around his waist, a sheathed knife hanging down from it.

  Score! Now to get to him.

  Another tripod blocked my way. It wobbled as I squeezed past. Without getting caught, I amended. The hawk flapped and screed unhappily. The chow paced, growling and snapping at the nearest men. Johnny kept talking as I inched along the wall to the opening where Lao Chan stood.

  “There appears to be a misunderstanding. Someone drugged me and left me – all of us – in these cages. I am honored that you have come to rectify the matter yourself, Shan Chu.”

  I’d never heard Johnny play the self-effacement game. This was the guy who prided himself on out trash-talking twelve-year-olds on XBox Live. Lao Chan didn’t seem to notice anything off about it. He left the hallway, approached Johnny’s kennel.

  Damn. I backtracked past the wobbly tripod and behind the snake’s cage. If I could get to Lao Chan, I could get to the knife, no problem. I’d filched off harder targets than him.

  If I could get to him.

  “There has been no misunderstanding. I am sorry for your discomfort, Sifu. You and the other Guardians.” He bowed to each cage in turn. “But you will all see that this is for the good of Chinatown. For our protection.”

  “Then why did you not ask?” snapped the dog. One man yelped and the others backed away from her cage.

  Noobs. Even I understood that the guardians weren’t normal animals.

  Which was why, when one of the robed acolytes interrupted the standoff with a wary, “Shan Chu, Xuan Wu is doing something,” I was smart enough not to look in the snake’s direction to see what that something was.