by Alyc Helms
“I don’t have to kill you. The Shadow Realms are lovely this time of year. Could just send you there.” Another nearly-empty threat. The Shadow Realms were never lovely.
For some reason, Johnny thought this was hilarious, chuckling and coughing behind his hands.
“I won’t talk,” Tsung said. “I’m not here as your enemy. If you are who I think you are, I’ve been looking for you for days – since I got back from Shanghai.”
I crossed my arms. “And who am I supposed to be?”
“I think you might be Mitchell Masters’s granddaughter. I think you’re Lung Xin Niang.”
I swayed where I stood. Sat, before I embarrassed myself by falling over and cracking my head on the hard wood of the door frame. Johnny collected himself and tossed my hat back at me.
“You never told me,” he said with a hint of underlying accusation. Not for the connection with my grandfather; Johnny had been my sifu since toddling days. For the other.
“It was never…” I shook my head. Pretended to be fascinated by my hat to keep the tears at bay. “It’s not something I like to talk about.” And especially not now. Not with Tsung here. “It’s complicated.”
I put on the hat to give myself a moment to process, a moment to be someone else. Tsung. The New Wall. Focus. “What do you want with me? With Lung Xin Niang?”
“I was sent to bring you – her – an invitation.”
Like pulling teeth. “What invitation?”
“This.” He took something out of his coat pocket and slid it across the mat – something hard, bundled in silk. I had to lean far over to get it. I unwrapped the silk and scootched back with a yelp, flinging the contents away like a snake.
The dull wood-carving knife thunked to the mat. Johnny picked it up. Turned it over in his hands and arched a brow at me.
“Careful,” I said. I knew that knife, and it was a lot more dangerous than it seemed. Which meant Tsung probably was as well. “How did you get that?”
“I stole it. From the head of the Shadow Dragons. My master sent me to bring it to you. She said you’re our best option for sorting out what’s going on.”
I didn’t believe him. “The head of the Shadow Dragons isn’t so easy to steal from.”
Tsung raised a brow. “You would know, wouldn’t you?”
I looked away first.
Johnny snatched up the silk and re-wrapped the knife. “Just how many do you call ‘master,’ Tsung?”
Tsung flinched. “Song Yulan approved of my coming, if that’s what you mean.”
Song Yulan. Shanghai’s guardian, just as Johnny was for San Francisco or Judy for Oakland. There was a lot more to the daggers Johnny and David Tsung were glaring at each other than I could figure out just by watching. “I’d like Exposition for five hundred, Alex.”
Johnny rose to his feet. Tsung followed suit, and I scrambled to mine so I wouldn’t be the only one left sitting. Perhaps there was going to be a fight after all.
Johnny handed me the knife. “Mr Tsung was Song Yulan’s apprentice until he left to go work for family. And now it appears he has changed allegiances again.”
Family. Which meant “dragon” if he’d been in training to become a guardian. My hands trembled as I tucked the knife away in my coat. “You’re working for Lung Di.” It explained Tsung’s prominence in the Shadow Dragons. It explained the knife and the ability to see through shadows. And the penchant for betrayal and shady dealing.
“Was. He’s gone too far with this ward, which is why I was sent to bring you that.” He nodded at my breast pocket. “It’s the key, the master key. Free China’s guardians, and the other wards will go down like dominoes.”
It didn’t make sense. “Why bring this to me? Why not free the guardians yourself? Perhaps before the wards went up and sent the world into a panic? ”
“I… can’t.”
I snorted.
“Come to Shanghai. My master will explain–”
“I don’t think anyone is going anywhere at present,” said Johnny, peering out the window. I skirted the perimeter of the mat and looked out. Several dark sedans had pulled up, blocking the street at either end, and shadowy forms waited on the rooftop across the way, cradling large, dull-surfaced assault rifles.
“Of course. Now Lao Chan wants to talk.” He could be here for Johnny, but I doubted it. Someone had seen me enter the building and made a call.
“He has orders not to kill you. Mr Mystic, I mean.” Tsung said, coming up on my other side. “Now I know why.”
That explained my continued existence after the motorcycle incident. “Orders from whom?”
David Tsung looked at me like I’d eaten stupid for breakfast. Right. Lung Di.
“Just checking.” I tugged on the brim of my hat and deepened the shadows around my face. “Shall we see what Lao Chan wants?”
* * *
The alleyway that ran alongside the Pearl was dark. A lone street lamp lit the street out front, its chemical-orange glow fighting a losing battle with the darkness. This was a different Chinatown than the one I knew – gaudy lights and tourist traps on the one face, arcane family networks and community drama on the other.
This was the third face. The Triad’s Chinatown.
As if in response to my thought, a footstep scuffed from behind a sheltered stoop. Deliberate. Letting us know someone was there. A signal to the rest to come forth. Shadows that weren’t shadows moved.
Lao Chan stepped into the light of the street lamp; the Incense Master from the basement of the Garden of Willows stood at his side. The lamplight strengthened. It pushed back the shadows, leaving the men standing in a glowing amber nimbus.
“Mr Masters. I see Mr Tsung has found you after all. How… industrious of him. Especially since he indicated earlier that you might be an imposter.”
“Did he?” I glared at David Tsung. So much for not giving me up.
“I was wrong, Shan Chu,” he said, bowing to Lao Chan. “I am now confident in Mr Masters’s identity, and I have passed along Mr Long’s invitation.”
Mr Long’s invitation? How many different lies was Tsung telling?
Lao Chan folded his hands and regarded Tsung coldly, as though he wondered the same thing. I ventured a few steps closer to him. The nimbus of light carried the damp smell of pu-erh tea, pungent and earthy. I tried to touch the shadows around me, but my connection to darkness slipped from my grasp. Even the shadows that concealed my face felt thin and insubstantial. I stopped. Lao Chan and his Incense Master were still several meters away, cocooned in their street light. Another ward. Had to be.
“It is well enough for you to be satisfied, but I am not. I think perhaps a demonstration of proof is in order.” He straightened the starched white cuffs under his dark suit sleeves and refolded his hands.
There was no purpose to the gesture. Lao Chan was impeccably dressed and he knew it.
It was a signal.
I let instinct take over, turning to block the first strike almost before I knew it. I guided the fist past me, pulled the attacker off balance, and used his body as leverage to spring up and bring an elbow strike down on the back of his neck. He was too eager to please his master – overconfident. He went down with a soft grunt. The rest wouldn’t be so easy.
They streamed from the doorways and alleys where they’d been waiting, silent save for the flutter of their dark cotton tunics, faces covered as a means of intimidation. They formed a semicircle of various stances, leaving a wide open space with me in the center.
“Don’t interfere,” Lao Chan snapped when Johnny and Tsung tensed and moved to cover my back. Tsung stepped back up to the sidewalk, obeying. I’d expected that. But so did Johnny. I glared at him for his betrayal, but he was too busy watching Lao Chan with narrowed eyes.
Fine. It was a test. He’d been ordered not to kill me, if Tsung was to be believed. Perhaps beating me up was Lao Chan’s way of regaining the face he’d lost from the failed bust and the disrupted ritual.
> I’d faced worse adversaries in worse conditions. I took a centering breath, shifted my legs, and lowered into a fighting stance. Better a dozen attackers than just one, I supposed, if the inverse effectiveness rule was to be believed. I waited for them to strike.
Unlike their cinematic brethren, they didn’t pay me the courtesy of attacking one by one, nor were they foolish enough to attack en masse. They clustered in three groups of four, each cluster blocking a path to escape. I concentrated my focus on my front and right flank. The cluster to my left mistook this for inattention and launched their assault.
Perhaps this would be easier than I’d feared.
The middle attacker, thicker-set than the others, charged for my back. His fellows came around my sides. I was meant to meet the large one’s attack, but that was an amateur’s tactic. I went low with a leg sweep, catching the attacker on my right unawares as he tried to circle around me. Forward roll under the outstretched arms of my main opponent, then up with a low kick to the back of his knee. The knee popped, and he collapsed with the first scream of the fight.
Before I could regroup, the one on my left came at me with a series of short, quick jabs to my gut. I fought the urge to curl around the pain, tightened my abdomen, and tried to redirect the blows. I missed as many as I caught. He drove me back into his partner, who had recovered from my sweep. I slipped through his arms as he tried to grapple me, spinning to one side to shift the angle of their approach.
They weren’t comfortable fighting side-by-side. The grappler reached for me again, but the close-fighter got in his way. I caught the grappler’s arm, wrapped it into a lock under my own, and struck his exposed throat with the heel of my hand. He went down choking, right into the path of my third attacker.
With his footing off, the third relented on his attacks. I did not. Lowering my center, I skirted the obstacles of my downed opponents. He turned to meet me, throwing off his own center. I feinted to one side, and he moved to block. Dropping to one knee, I snapped out a kick to his exposed solar-plexus. He didn’t have enough air to cry out as he collapsed next to his fellows.
I looked for the fourth – there had been four, hadn’t there? – but a shift of movement behind me warned that the second wave was coming. A body struck my back, rolling us out of the pile of moaning fighters. My side scraped along pavement, my breath gone for a moment.
I kicked out to flip my attacker off me, but he rolled away. Someone else’s foot came down into my exposed center. I fought the urge to puke, retained enough presence of mind to grab hold of the leg. Using it as leverage, I pulled my second attacker down and windmilled myself up. I mimicked his stomp, but aimed higher. The bones of his clavicle cracked under the sole of my boot.
I had no time to be queasy about that. The assailant who’d tackled me had paired with his buddy. They lunged at me with a series of coordinated spins, kicks, and punches. I blocked and diverted, but with both of them coming I couldn’t spare a moment for a counterattack. They drove me back until one of the kicks broke through. It connected solidly mid-chest, sending me lurching backwards.
I hit a wall of light that burned like acid fire along my back – Lao Chan’s wards. The pain saved me. Rather than collapsing to my knees, I launched away like a scalded cat, stumbling into my startled attackers. We went down in a tangle of limbs. I locked legs around one and proceeded to kick him in the face until I heard bones crack. I rendered the other one unconscious with several good, old-fashioned head-butts. Not pretty, but it worked.
I wiped blood from my face and rolled up to my feet. My back burned and my chest ached, but the adrenaline had kicked in; I hardly noticed the pain.
Like the two before, the third group didn’t grant me a moment to catch my breath. They circled me in a blur of movement, a series of spinning jumps and kicks so fast they were hard to follow. I didn’t have to. If you’ve ever seen someone thrust a length of rebar into the spokes of a moving bicycle, then you have a rough idea of what happens when you deliver a high kick to someone mid-spin.
Of course, the outcome isn’t always pretty for the rebar, either. I snapped out a kick at one of the leaping attackers, catching him hard at the hip joint mid-spin. He lost the trajectory, came tumbling down wrong, and cracked his head on the pavement. I tried to pull back, but my leg got caught in his flight, twisting me off balance and bringing me down hard on one knee.
I collapsed to one side, which is the only thing that saved me from the kick aimed at my head. I rolled in the direction of my collapse, using the momentum to push myself up. Each time I went down, getting up became harder. How many left?
These two at least. The one who had missed kicking my head circled me, looking for an opening. The other didn’t wait, launching into a flashy kick. Somebody had dabbled in Taekwondo and liked to show off.
I ducked underneath, leaping up after he sailed over me, and delivered my own kick into his back. The extra momentum was more than he knew what to do with. His form dropped and his arms and legs wheeled as he slammed face-first into Lao Chan’s wall of light. It was somewhat edifying to hear him scream where I had not.
I turned to face my final opponent. He started in with a series of quick arm strikes, but they lacked strength. I blocked and redirected until he grew impatient and went for another kick. I shifted around it. Catching his leg, I locked it against my side and dropped to the ground. His only option was to follow me down or risk a dislocated knee. He chose poorly.
Leaving the last of my attackers moaning on the ground, clutching at his joint, I staggered up and faced Lao Chan. He smiled. Genial. Pleasant. Not what I expected from him when nine of his men had failed to kill me in less than a minute.
Wait. Nine. Hadn’t I counted twelve at the beginning?
Something shuffled behind me. With a sigh, I turned to face the three I’d missed. They held their stances without eagerness or hesitation. In every line of their bodies was the control that came from years of training. These were the masters. I’d wager it was their students I’d just taken out. Lovely.
Fresh, I could perhaps hold my own against one of them. Now, I had not the slightest chance.
I took a breath, two, then shifted back into my stance. Better to go out fighting.
“Enough.”
The three masters flowed to attention. I hesitated. Perhaps the reprieve was another trap, but if so, what was the point? Straightening, I turned to face Lao Chan. He looked at David Tsung. I realized it was Tsung who’d spoken. Tsung who’d stopped the fight.
“Are you satisfied?” Tsung asked. “He’s no imposter.”
The older man nodded. “So it would seem. I have never seen you fight, Mr Masters. You are very skilled.”
“Not skilled enough.”
Lao Chan frowned. “You took down nine of my best men.”
“But you brought twelve.”
“So I did. You would do well to remember this lesson when you go to see Mr Long: when it comes to anticipating a conflict, I am the student; he is the master.” A dark Lexus pulled up beside Lao Chan, followed by a black, windowless van. The light from the street lamp dimmed back to its normal amber glow. The pungent, earthy smell had dissipated. A driver got out of the Lexus and opened the door for his boss, while a crew of dark-clad figures loaded my downed assailants into the van.
“At first, I was put out by your interference in my business,” Lao Chan said to me over the roof of the car. “But then I realized that you deserved my pity, not my antagonism. Mr Long commands much… respect. I believe you will be rewarded amply for the trouble you have caused me over the past few years. I leave you in Mr Tsung’s excellent care.”
I stood in the middle of the street, watching the tail-lights flash red before the car turned the corner. The van followed. Possibly, I was gaping. Johnny Cho was pinching the bridge of his nose. Again. He did that a lot with me.
“So. China.” David Tsung joined me in the street. He was neither gaping nor looking for a wall to bang his head against. If anythi
ng, he was smirking. “Any idea how we’re supposed to get there?”
SIX
Enter the Dragon
Then
I dreamed of snow, the kind you never see growing up in coastal California: blizzard thick, muffles sight and sound until it’s just you in a cocoon of white. I struggled against it, but it wrapped itself around me until I couldn’t breathe.
I woke up fighting my blankets. It took me several moments of confusion to realize I was acting like an idiot, that the percale and eiderdown comforter wasn’t attacking. A rich coverlet of red, green, and gold brocade spread in rumpled folds across my feet, and carved wooden panels on all sides latticed the sunlight streaming into the room. I stared up at the wooden canopy for a few moments and then wriggled my toes. I couldn’t see them, but it felt like I still had all ten.
I was in a room. I had no idea how I’d gotten here.
I remembered leaving Jim and Jill and the others, but after the snow started falling around dusk, things got a little fuzzy. Had I been dreaming of snow, or was that part real? Did I find this bed on my own? Had I collapsed in the snow and been rescued? Was this just another illusion of the yaoguai?
I shoved aside the covers at that unsettling thought, peering through the latticework as though it offered any sort of protection.
The red, green, and gold of the bedclothes continued throughout the room, framed by dark, carved woods. The length of one wall had painted shutters thrown open to the outdoors. In the distance rose the snowy peaks of other mountains. Thick clouds obscured everything below; the blizzard I’d dreamed about was still going, or another like it. It didn’t touch the tranquility up here above the clouds.
A mural ran the length of the opposite wall, depicting a series of stylized gardens cupped in the hollow core of a mountain peak: paradise on earth. Seven figures stood in the gardens, sad and somber, while one waited just outside, reaching toward the gates and his companions. Another figure, shrouded in darkness, glowered at them from far below.