The Dragons of Heaven

by Alyc Helms

  Two of the men came for me while Song Yulan was occupied with the others. One of mine held a black woolen sack open, as if I’d meekly submit to him slipping it over my head. Or not so meekly, I revised, as his friend lunged at me for a grapple. I ducked under his outstretched arms, grabbing his wrist as I slipped past. I used an elbow lock and our combined momentum to lead him around. Before he could get his bearings, I kicked at his shoulder while yanking back on his arm. The shoulder popped, and my opponent’s face crumbled into pain.

  The man with the bag flinched back at seeing his mate go down. I took advantage of this, tearing the bag from his hands and shoving it over his head. The drawstrings made a good garrote, and he forgot any training he might have had as he scrabbled at the rope constricting around his throat. He sagged to his knees, but I released my hold before his struggles had fully stopped.

  I turned to help Song Yulan with her attackers, too late. She lowered a man’s limp body to the pavement, laying him out next to his friend. She straightened and finger-combed her hair to smoothness. I tugged the brim of my hat lower.

  “Come along. We need to hurry before their back-up arrives.”

  The crowd around us had paused when the fight started, moving back in a ring to watch with blank-faced interest, as if street brawls were a common thing in Shanghai. For all I knew, they were. They didn’t bother to part as Song Yulan and I tried to leave. She was forced to shove her way past. I followed before they could close in her wake.

  The exit from the arcade dumped us into a back alley warren, the gutters between high-rises. A few twists and turns left me more lost than I had already been. Song Yulan paused at a break along one of the walls, peering out through the gloom of twilight onto a small park wedged between concrete and glass.

  A woman with the build of a linebacker stood in the middle of the park, beefy arms crossed over an ample chest and a frown on her round, sun-roughened face.

  “Song Yulan and Mitchell Masters. You are in violation of Quarantine Directive four-five-three. Surrender now or we will take necessary action to secure you.”

  Song Yulan muttered something fit for a dockworker and rolled back to lean against the wall.

  “The commander, I take it?”

  “Not that bad, but if she’s here, he’s on his way. I’m going to get some back-up of our own. Wait here, and don’t let her get her hands on you.”

  “I’ll do my…” She faded from sight, leaving me alone in the little alleyway. “Best.”

  I peeked back around the corner.

  “I can see you. Come out.”

  “And who are you?” I called, playing for time. I pulled the shadows closer around me. If it came down to it and she closed the distance between us, I’d have to abandon the alleyway in favor of the maneuverability the park offered, but there weren’t as many shadows. Better for movement, horrible for cover.

  “I am Hekou Yangtze,” said the woman. It translated roughly into “Mouth of the Yangtze”. So, not a given name. A title, like Skyrocket or Mr Mystic.

  “You’re with the People’s Heroes.”

  “And you are spy of the Argent Corporation.” She dropped her arms to her sides and approached my hiding place. Stay and fight, or run and evade capture? But if I ran, where would I run to? And would Song Yulan be able to find me?

  So, compromise. Stay and evade.

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. I broke off my affiliation with Argent many years ago.” I slid around to the other side of the wall after I’d spoken. A basic ruse, but it worked. Her attention was on where I had been.

  “Liar. You arrived with one of their men. The flying one.”

  That almost surprised me out of the shadows. Skyrocket? How did she know about him?

  And did that mean he and Tsung had safely made it out of the Shadow Realms?

  She rounded the corner, and I didn’t dare ask. I snapped a kick out of the shadows, going for the back of her knee – on top of my usual aim for low casualties, I didn’t want to offend the People’s Heroes by permanently disabling one of their agents. Yangtze grunted and stumbled, but she didn’t go down. It was like kicking a sack of rice. She just kind of… shifted.

  Then she turned to face me.

  Hell.

  Yangtze swiped for me. I rolled under her arms. At least, that was the plan, but she spun about faster than I would have expected for someone of her size. She caught my ankle and dragged me out of my roll and into the park. I tried rotating my ankle out of her grip, but there was no gap between her fingers and thumb – her hand was so large, my ankle so thin in comparison, that her digits overlapped by a healthy bit. No freedom to be found there.

  I kicked her with my free leg, but this time it was more like kicking a side of beef than a bag of rice. She grunted, and I ignored the pain of impacting an immovable object when I was nothing like an unstoppable force. She grabbed me above the knee with her other hand and choked up her grip, lifting me high above the ground. I twisted about, dangling by the one leg. My hat tumbled to the grass.

  “You are a liar,” she said, shaking me. Her face swam in and out of view as I swung about. “And you are also not very smart.”

  I was almost glad Song Yulan wasn’t there to agree with the second bit. That would teach me not to listen. “So I have been informed on numerous occasions,” I said, hoping the guardian would arrive with that back-up. With the way the blood was rushing to my head, sooner would be better. “Now that we have found some common ground, I would very much appreciate it if you would set me down so we might talk.”

  Yangtze laughed, a hearty alto that would have made Wagner weep. “I have nothing to say to you. You are the reason for this attack on China. We know of your alliance with the Shadow Dragons. We have your master trapped, and now we have you. Perhaps if I killed you, that would break this spell.”

  She grabbed my other leg and pulled like she meant to tear me in twain. She was strong enough that I feared she might manage it. I curled up and grabbed at her wrist, trying to break her grip as she pried me into upside-down splits. Without any leverage and my body being gumbied into a shape it wasn’t meant to take, my struggles were as effective as a fly pinned by a bully.

  “Yangtze. We have our orders. Release Mr Masters.”

  The strain on my inner-thighs eased as Yangtze stopped prying me apart and turned to the new speaker. “He will get away if I do.”

  “No, he will not.”

  I twisted to catch a glimpse of my savior, just in time to witness him fling a ribbon of paper at me. It hit like a floodlight. I flinched and squinted as the park was illuminated from all sides like Madison Square Gardens. There didn’t seem to be any source to the light. It was just there. Sorcery. The People’s Heroes were more comfortable with its use than their western counterparts. Damn. There would be no escaping into shadow now. Even my face was unshielded.

  Unshielded, and probably beet-dark. It was hard to hear my captors’ conversation for the ringing in my ears.

  “Song Yulan got away.” Yangtze told the newcomer.

  “Doesn’t matter. Mr Mystic is the one we want. Put him down. You both look ridiculous.”

  “He tried to kick me.” But she put me down. I lay on the grass for a moment, letting my circulation regain equilibrium. The other speaker picked up my hat and held it out to me. I sat up, taking the hat and settling it back on my head. I pulled the brim low. With the magical floodlights, it was impossible to coax even a wisp of a shadow to cover my face. I popped my collar in a vain attempt to make up the difference.

  “My apologies for any discomfort, Mr Masters, but you really shouldn’t have tried to kick Yangtze. You are the visitor here, after all.”

  The man eschewed the dark suits of the other People’s Heroes I’d seen, favoring instead a monk’s garb: loose peasant pants, grass sandals, and a dun-colored short robe that was all folds. His legs bowed out in a gentle curve, and his head was shaved bald.

  “You’re the Commander?” Hard to imagine
Song Yulan being afraid of this man, until I recalled the little strip of paper that had turned on the floodlights.

  Monks were tricky like that.

  The man laughed and helped me to my feet as a dark sedan pulled up to the stone archway. The alley was too narrow to open the doors anywhere else.

  “No sir. I am Seven Lotus Petals Falling, the Incense Master for the PHC in Shanghai. But our commander is very eager to meet with you. Will you come quietly?”

  “He will.” Yangtze gave me a look that said I’d better.

  I dragged my feet all the way to the car, keeping my face buried in my collar. Between Yangtze and the floodlights, what choice did I have?

  “I suppose that I will,” I said, ducking my head as I was helped into the car by the monk and the woman. Yangtze climbed in beside me. As we scraped our way down the alley and onto the busy streets, her hand closed around my wrist.

  Who needed handcuffs when you had China’s answer to Brunhilde?

  * * *

  Once free of the monk’s sorcery, I was able to coax forth my disguise of shadows. We drove past the cluster of hotels that lined the Bund, heading for the tunnel under the Huangpu. Traffic thinned to nothing as police diverted every car but ours. We came to the barricaded entrance to the tunnel and were waved through without being stopped. I glanced over my shoulder as we entered the falsely bright tunnel. The air compression, the white tiled curve of the walls, the brightness of the lights that emphasized just how constricting the tunnel was, all contributed to create a claustrophobic miasma. There were no other cars or noise to break up the impression that we were entering an inescapable labyrinth.

  “Why close down the tunnels?” I asked, wondering if they’d done the same for the bridges. They were the main arteries for commerce between the Puxi and the Pudong. It seemed a new one was being built every year.

  “Public safety,” Seven Lotus Petals Falling said. “The tunnels are unsafe, so nobody wants to use them.”

  Unsafe? Or was that just the Party line? Control of the tunnels meant control of the city. I turned forward to ask the monk when Yangtze’s hand squeezed around my wrist hard enough to make me wince.

  “We have a problem,” she told Seven Lotus Petals Falling as the tunnel behind us glowed with a red-gold light. I shielded my eyes, disoriented for a moment. It looked like the setting sun catching the opening, but the sun had set already, and there was too much city and smog in the way.

  Also, the glow was getting brighter.

  “Drive faster,” Yangtze urged the driver. She strained against her seatbelt, as if that could add to our momentum. I was pressed back into my seat as the car surged faster. The driver’s knuckles were white on the wheel.

  “We can’t outrun her,” Seven Lotus Petals Falling said, twisting around to look behind us. I turned as well, as much as Yangtze’s grip would let me.

  I couldn’t look directly at the light. It blossomed in our wake like a fireball, overtaking us in a dizzying flash of dancing lights and shadows, and then surging ahead. It burst out of the tunnel and exploded into the road beyond. The car swayed as the driver flinched and covered his eyes.

  I pressed forward alongside Yangtze, both of us straining against our seatbelts. The light had resolved into a dragon, red and gold and longer than any of the puppets I’d seen in New Year’s parades. Her serpentine coils blocked the rounded tunnel exit. She’d taken out most of the tunnel lights with her passage, leaving her the only bright spot at the end of our darkened path.

  “She’ll move,” the monk told the driver. “Don’t stop.”

  “No! Don’t hurt her!” Like hell was I going to let him play chicken with the dragon blocking the tunnel’s mouth, but we were too close to stop, and tile walls curved up on either side of us.

  Gripping the edge of my seat, I pulled the entire car through to the Shadow Realms. The engine sputtered a quick, noisy death. The car fishtailed. A bump in the terrain that hadn’t been there a few moments before flipped us. What should have been a long coast to stopping became a whirligig of terror. Rolling world, dark sky, and darker land, and Yangtze’s face wide-eyed and screaming. Metal groaned, safety glass shattered over us in a spray. My head was jerked about on my neck, my legs flopping in front of me, though I kept my grip on the seat. I closed my eyes until the car settled.

  Before I could get my bearings, someone grabbed me by the lapels and pulled me back into the light of the world.

  “I’ve got her. Let’s get out of here.” I knew that voice.

  “Tsung?” Impossible.

  And then another voice, so heart-breakingly familiar that I forgot all about Tsung. “Get the others.”

  “We don’t have time to–”

  “Get them. I’m not leaving them in that place.”

  I opened my eyes as David Tsung tore a wound between the worlds, using the shadows cast by the dragon’s light. He pulled out Yangtze, the monk, and the driver, all still dazed from the crash.

  Red-gold claws clasped around Tsung and myself. The dragon took to the air before my captors could collect themselves. I shrieked and held on for dear life. Shanghai passed below us, the Huangpu River a dark strip between the lights of Pudong and Puxi. My wig whipped about my face. I’d lost my hat somewhere in the crash. I tore the wig free and shoved it into my pocket. Above me, the dragon’s body caught the lights off the Bund. Looking up at her gave me vertigo. I swallowed and closed my eyes until I felt solid ground under my feet. She’d landed in a familiar garden with fox statues lurking behind every bush. A cobbled terrace led up to a temple.

  Her whiskers quivered as she gave me the draconic equivalent of a grin.

  “Mei Shen?” I must have hit my head in the crash. But no, I’d seen her before I’d ripped the car into the Shadow Realms.

  “Hello, Mother,” the dragon chirped. She folded in on herself and became a pretty teenage girl in jeans, a red top, and gold-spangled chains. She hurled herself at me, and I met her with a crushing hug.

  “I think Father was right.” She sniffled into my shoulder. We were both crying. “I do get my ability to find trouble from you.”

  TEN

  Chasing Tails

  Then

  Idylls are measured by moments of difficulty, and difficulty never came to Jian Huo’s realm unless it was brought from the outside. A dozen years passed, and I became teacher as well as student, filling in certain necessary cultural gaps in my children’s education. Good thing I could recite The Princess Bride from memory. Jian Huo claimed their brilliance was due to their draconic heritage, and he was probably right, but I cited my genetic contribution anyway. And they were brilliant. Lung Mian Zi Zun could challenge his father at wei-qi before he could walk, and Lung Mei Shen Mi was constantly testing the boundaries of how much trouble she could get into.

  They were never sick, rarely cried or fussed, and the time passed without note beyond the usual markers of raising a family: first words, first steps, first accidental transformation into a big serpenty critter. I woke every morning surrounded by a dark curtain of sandalwood-scented hair and pestered by laughing imps. I spent my days in loving domesticity. Each evening I told my children tales of heroes and villains, just as my grandfather had done with me, and shooed their nurse away to tuck them in myself. Every night my senses were set aflame by my dragon-lover, and I slept sated and content in his arms.

  It was those same arms, more or less, that cradled us now as we soared high above the spiritual reflection of Shanghai. Of all of us, I took the most geektastic joy from flying, whoo-hooing like a madwoman. Mian Zi and Mei Shen couldn’t fly far in their dragon forms, and they found being carried, compounded by my unbridled enthusiasm, embarrassing as only soon-to-be teenagers would. Even so, Mian Zi smiled into the wind, and Mei Shen laughed as rain spattered her face. Jian Huo thrummed with a deeper, quieter sort of contentment, and my whooping was cut short on a breath-catching moment of intense happiness. A heroine in a story might have recognized this as a warning of pending disa
ster, but we’d been so happy for so long that I’d ceased expecting anything to go wrong. I should have remembered that dragons think of time on a different scale.

  We landed in the courtyard of a temple. Jian Huo’s arrival had been preceded by a rainstorm, which cleared away the Shanghai smog into something breathable. The air was still thick and warm, but it smelled clean, and it was heavy with moisture. The gardens rolled out before the temple with studied simplicity, like a lady’s robe dropped at her feet but not yet kicked away. Statues of slender foxes, one paw raised just so, dotted the grounds. Tiny shrines peeked out of grottoes and nestled between tree roots. It was less like a temple, more like a den. I spied a flash of white standing near the door of the temple – Jiu Wei, greeting Song Yulan and the hulking form of Fang Shih. I grinned, anticipating much teasing from him about my grasp of spirit speech… or lack thereof.

  Jian Huo transformed while still holding the children, setting his squirming passengers down so they could rush forward to meet those coming to greet us. Shui Yin, as roguish and carefree as when I’d first met him, bent to swoop up an adoring Mei Shen. Mian Zi cast a disapproving glance at his sister’s outrageous flirtations before greeting Si Wei with a proper little bow. The fox girl greeted him back with equal solemnity, but her fingers plucked at the brocade edges of her sleeves, and the back of her robes twitched. Squeezing Jian Huo’s hand, I smiled my greeting to the couple.

  “Shui Yin, it’s good to see you again. Si Wei, you look lovely.” And like she might snap any moment. I shot Shui Yin a glare that he missed because he was busy tickling his niece.

  “Jian Huo, why don’t you and the children go with your brother. Si Wei and I need to catch up. Jiu Wei can greet any latecomers.” I nodded to the ancient fox-spirit who stood at the doors of the temple. She nodded back and waved me off. Before anyone could protest, I grabbed Si Wei’s arm and dragged her into the gardens.