Now, they’re screaming, voices tangling, mixing into a slurry of punctuations and half-coherent exposition:
“We must consolidate!”
“The dog-women lie. Not kind. Not kind. They come to eat and feast—”
“So old. Sopowerful.”
“Tear out our hearts. Eat our livers. Drink our blood. Punish us. Punish us for the sins of our father. We will not allow—”
“We must consolidate!”
Before I know it, one of the kwee kia propels itself into my face. Dirty nails dig gutters across my cheeks and my nose, grime-encrusted toes claw for purchase on my lips. I stumble backwards, stubbing my toe against the desk, and scream into moldering flesh. Terrible, terrible idea. A foot jams itself into my mouth, and I splutter as I try to rip the beast from my sideburns.
Then, as quickly as it began: stillness.
Nothing moves. Nothing speaks. Nothing so much as twitches a membrane. The kwee kia freeze, their attention riveted by the window. Even the one on my head presents no objection when I detach its grip and deposit it on my desk, only rocks there like a discarded voodoo doll, still and stiff. Something comes. The thought is cigarette-burn hot, sudden as infant death. It hums under my skin like an itch.
I suck in air. “What—”
The kwee kia scatter, squirming into the cracks in the walls and the gaps in the ceiling, their eyes blinking out one after another.
I glance over my shoulder, every hair on my body quivering on end, and take stock of the turbulent cloud formations, and how they churn and writhe; amoebic, snarling, hungry. The city is very, very dark now, the storm practically smeared across my—
The world implodes with a muffled whumph. The window crunches inwards, screams as it breaks. Silver glitters through the air. Fog boils through splintered glass; too dense to be natural, stinking of incense and salt and the smell of dead, drowned things. I throw myself over the desk and burrow into the alcove beneath before curling armadillo-tight, arms over my head. Forget machismo. Cowards live to breed to another day.
A muscular shadow worms through the gray, out of the sky and onto the ceiling. There’s a fusillade of claws. Clack. Clack. Clack. Clack. A sound like a heartbeat. Ceaseless, systematic. Clack. Clack. Clack.
I peek out. Up.
“Shit. Shit, fuck. Kanasai diu—”
DRAGONS ARE EVERYWHERE in Chinese mythology: sinuous, slithering beasts with magnificent whiskers and incongruously stubby little limbs. Totally ridiculous-looking next to their colonial cousins. What purpose, after all, could four fat legs serve on a six-hundred-foot long serpent? None, obviously.
Except to make them a little less terrifying to their devotees.
Real Chinese dragons are nothing like their literary depictions. Real Chinese dragons have faces that could launch a thousand traumas. They’re fire-breathing, lightning-swilling centipedes with mouths full of knives. Mile-long komodo dragons with scales and an attitude like a lungful of acid.
Primordial monsters. Lovecraft’s Elder Things squeezed through a lizard-shaped mold. Pre-pre B.C. shit.
And one of them is now dangling over my head.
“Rupert Wooooong.” Its voice is the song of the anglerfish. The rasp of the ocean storm. The moan of a sperm whale as it is ferried into the abyss, insides unspooling, slurped down by indescribable abominations.
“You know—” I wet my lips. Hysteria feeds chemical courage into my veins, double-dose of adrenaline. “I am never, ever getting my deposit back on this place. Couldn’t you have just knocked on the door like everyone else?”
“If you please us, you will never want for anything again,” Us. Not me. Us. The bottom of my abdomen opens and my entrails plummet through, yanking my throat tight. Horrified epiphany crawls up my vertebrae. “Serve us, and we will reward you.”
“Your Highness—” My mouth is dry, dry, dry. This isn’t just a dragon. This is a Dragon King. The Dragon King of the South Sea. Dolphinfucking Ao Qin himself.
“You are as good as they say you are, Rupert Wooooong.” Foghorn laugh that sinks, halfway between that drawn-out syllable, into something that verges on human. “You haven’t wet yourself. We are impressed.”
I look down. No point explaining it was timing and not courage that held my bladder in check. “Sure.”
The fog recedes, as does the stench of deep waters. Oil-black Berlutis peep into view. I scuttle out from hiding as a foot begins to tap, my smile dangling like a loose eyeball. Soundless, the Dragon King has gone from nightmare to billionaire Bruce Wang, trading claws for cufflinks, arm-length teeth for an armory of pinstripes. Ao Qin folds his arms as I straighten, before he nods with all the gravity of a god whose existence has never been in doubt, his eyes raking over my Tesco-bought wardrobe.
“So, uh. To what do I owe this magnanimous visit?” Despite my best efforts, my attention frays, skipping from his patrician visage to the water-logged ruins of my office. This is going to cost thousands I don’t have.
“We wish to hire you.” Even in human form, his voice is strange and low, a heartbeat in the marrow. “We wish to borrow your services for an important duty.”
“Uh-huh. Sounds good,” I rub my neck, skin pimpling under his yellow search-light stare. (Here’s a trick to remember, ang moh: the supernatural can and will never completely hide who they are.) “And this comes with all the money I could possibly want for the rest of eternity, right?”
He grins. There are mandibles in the dark behind his teeth.
“Yeeessss,” Ao Qin croons, gliding closer. “All the treasures of Atlantis. All the wealth rotting in the South China Seas. All of it is yours if you find what we want.”
“Okay. Uh-huh. Sounds good. I’m thinking about it,” I gnaw on the inside of a cheek. I’m clenching and opening my hands, only half-consciously. “Yeah. Definitely thinking about it. But, you gotta tell me what you want first.”
The air crisps with burning ozone.
“Nooooo. We will not-t-t-t-t-t-t-t—” Ao Qin unwinds that last letter like a cartoon snake, spits each repetition with a resounding click. “We have already shown you great favor by not devouring your heart. We would not normally tolerate this show of disssssrespect—”
Hindsight is always so incandescently clear. In retrospect, I probably should have kowtowed or curtsied or, better yet, crawled on my belly until Ao Qin expounded on the proper way to exhibit respect in the countenance of omnipotence. I gulp and try not to disgorge my intestinal tract one swollen loop at a time.
“—but we have heard such great things about you.” He dusts his shoulder with a pale, elegant hand, takes another step nearer. We’re practically in sexual harassment territory now. Gods have no concept of personal space. “Rupert Wong, Seneschal of Kuala Lumpur, you have been called by Heaven to participate in an investigation of unparalleled importance.”
Dimly, my breath clogged with salt and reptilian musk, I catch myself wondering why Minah hasn’t come knocking. She must have heard the din. Had Ao Qin ensorcelled the room? Did he do something—
“Repeat after me: I, Rupert Wong, pledge to forfeit eternal respite if I fail at this task, for there is no peace for those who fail Heaven’s will.”
I lick my lips again, ricocheting back to the pants-wetting present. “I, Rupert Wong, pledge...”
(You don’t say no to a six-hundred-foot-long dragon, ang moh. Ever.)
CHAPTER THREE
“ARE THOSE CHICKEN feathers?”
Ao Qin narrows his lambent gaze and chuckles, the noise gargling in his throat, almost loud enough to disguise the ticking of his mandibles. “Always the comedian, Wooooong. Yes. We desire that you seek a chicken worthy of us.”
“Ah.” I run a nervous tongue over my molars and then try for a grin. It comes out a tortured rictus. “Okay.”
He holds his position. I really, really wish he’d blink.
The silence lengthens and lengthens, stretching like filaments of mucus, so heavy with expectations that you could asphyxiate a
small pony in the tangle. Ao Qin is clearly waiting for me to arrive at some important epiphany, and delighting in the fact I don’t even have a postcode in mind.
I look back down at the box in his hands. Inside, three massive feathers on a bed of crushed velvet. Nothing else. No personal effects, no disembodied appendages, no letter of incoherent farewell. The only clue is the rust-brown blood congealed in the plumage.
“Murder most fowl?” I ask, careful to emphasize the last word. Irreverent humor is the last bastion of the beleaguered bureaucrat.
Ao Qin says nothing.
“Crane?”
The corners of his mouth twitch a millimeter upwards.
“Phoenix?”
He cocks his head like a lizard, jerkily.
I inhale until my lungs sting. Then, in one spaceless burst, the words mangling together: “Angel? Fenghuang? Garuda? Griffin? Sphinx? Thunderbird? Pegasus? Cannibal flying unicorn?”
Ao Qin sighs, an infuriating little sound, somehow both condescending and long-suffering. Honestly, you’d think it was his office that was gutted and maimed, his windows that were chewed up by a localized climatic holocaust. He dips taloned fingers into the box and extracts a feather, holds it up to the pale light of the evening. His face changes then. Softens. The can’t-be-fucked-with-you-mortals arrogance, the mannequin alienness, even the anglerfish glow of his eyes—it all dims, drowned in a bone-deep, heart-pulping anguish. The sight of it braids ice around my spine.
What could possibly hurt something like him?
“Erinyes.”
“Oh.”
The chill spreads and suddenly, I can’t breathe, because I can see my future and it is written in claret. Greek mythology isn’t exactly my forte, but anyone who knows anything about the supernatural know about the Furies.
The Kindly Ones. The Gracious Ones. The motherfucking matrons of vengeance.
“Oh,” I repeat, mushing my face with a hand. “You want me to—”
“—find out why they killed our youngest child.”
His voice is so soft, so human that it roots me in place. There is something universal about the language of hurt, something about it that makes it impossible not to ache in echo. I look up, mouth filling with half-considered platitudes, in time to see the Dragon King extend a finger and prick the dead center of my forehead.
My vision detonates.
A JIGSAW OF body parts: legs split and sucked clean of marrow, arms gnawed down to the white of their tendons, finger-bones scattered like dice. I can’t look away, won’t look away. My throat fills with copper, salty-sweetness that brims as pain saws through my tongue. I bite down harder. A foreign thought hammers against my temples: I am a king. I cannot break.
Ao Qin’s memories permit only a moment’s sliver of personal autonomy, enough to register what is happening. Then they descend again, waves boiling, choking.
His rage is volcanic, primal, acid in the arteries. He/I run our fingers along the arc of an exposed spine. The smell is her. He—I—We would recognize it anywhere. This is our child, our youngest, our mate’s sweetest and most beloved.
We follow the vertebrae up to the flayed line of the throat. To her jaw, the serene bow of her mouth. Eight centuries since we’ve seen her smile, and we find it now. Still luminescent. Still beautiful in death.
Dimly, we register the bloodied detritus that was her husband. His face wears its terror. His lips still scream. Strange, so strange. Why did he exhibit his pain but not our daughter? Perhaps it was her royal lineage that gripped her composure tight as her ribs were cracked open, her chest emptied of lungs and nerve. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps...
We stop ourselves. Such contemplations are merely auxiliary to this horror, this nightmare that we can never remedy, no matter the offerings we heap upon the absent Jade Emperor’s lap. Our daughter is dead.
Our daughter is dead.
Our daughter.
Is.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
“My lord,” a voice seeps through the thundering mantra of our grief. “You may want to see this...”
“I’M SORRY,” I slur the words, gorge rising as the borrowed memory is devoured by the present. Everything is too bright, too loud, too... everything. A sensory deluge so acute that even the throb of my pulse overwhelms. My knees buckle and I sag forward to vomit today’s lunch into a waste bin.
(You have to understand, ang moh. Ignoring the fact that it is absolutely jarring to be forced into someone else’s mind, butchery and violence are not synonymous. There’s a difference between being able to prepare a Scottish rump roast—yes, it’s exactly what you think it is—and being dragged through a stew of phantasmal gore. One is a systematic ecosystem of parts; order translated into cold-cut meats. The other? Far less orderly.)
Ao Qin’s voice unfurls. “We do not require condolences. We require justice, Mr. Wong. We require blood.”
Nasal cavities aflame with stomach bile, I wipe my mouth on a sleeve and stand. Push up and unbend, one wobbling leg at a time. The world swims dangerously, but my balance holds. Hysteria quickens my speech. “Look, I’m not going to kill a Fury for you. I can’t. Not because I don’t want to, because Guan Yin knows I’d like nothing more than to keep razor-mouthed gods like you happy, but there is absolutely no physical way I can—”
The Dragon King makes a strange, high noise. Over and over, stuttering like a broken VCR, until the sound transmutes into a tooth-grinding wail. It takes me a moment to realize he’s laughing. “We do not expect you to kill them, Mr. Wong. We expect you to gather evidence. Ineluctable proof that they performed a crime. We require these materials before we can confront the Greeks.”
A little better, but nothing close to ideal. No one likes being treated like a petty criminal. (Personal experience goes a long way, ang moh.) I can’t imagine the Furies would appreciate me poking my stubby nose into their business. “But. Boss. Your Highness. Sir. With all due respect, the Furies aren’t exactly the kind to act on impulse. History shows that they—”
“They killed my daughter.” Ao Qin slams his palms on the table. Wood splinters under the impact. More terrifying than his introductory exhibition of power, than the price tag of his wardrobe, than the hate with which he builds each quiet word, is the absence of the royal pronoun. This is personal for him. Personal in a way I never thought gods could do.
“Okay,” I say again, raising my hands slowly. “I get you. Fine. So, just get in, get whatever you need, get out, and... get paid?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” I say, for what feels like the hundredth time today. I close my eyes and squeeze the flesh along my nose bridge. “And, what if I don’t actually find something?”
“You will.”
“Or what?” The words escape before I can throttle them in the crib. I freeze, as does Ao Qin. We’re both equally shocked by my audacity, I imagine. “Your Highness. I understand that you, uh, see your daughter as a paragon of virtue. But hear me out here: what if, hypothetically speaking, the Furies have a close-and-shut case? If that were the case, what happens to me?”
Something squirms under Ao Qin’s smooth plaster-white skin. Down through the slant of his left cheekbone, down his nose, down his throat where it bulges perversely before vanishing from sight. Silence follows, noose-tight and pregnant with menace. Without altering expression, Ao Qin clicks the box shut and slides it across the table.
“If that were indeed the case,” He begins, gauze-light, his enunciation cotton-edged, like someone speaking through the membrane of a dream. “We would be forced to act as though you had failed us.”
“But—” An argument about fairness bashes against the back of my teeth, but common sense prevails for a change.
Ao Qin’s gaze deepens. “We assure you that we thought long and hard about this. Our daughter is faultless. Our daughter would never do anything to incur their wrath. You will find the answer we desire. We are certain of this.”
“I—�
� Monosyllabic protests seem to be in vogue this conversation.
“If we had the option, if we could ask one of our own to undertake this quest, we would have. But that isn’t possible. Not without risking a war with the Greeks. It has to be you, Rupert Wong.”
Unspoken: human scapegoats are all the rage. “Okay.”
We trade stares. Ao Qin crosses his hands behind the small of his back, eyebrows slightly arched, and nudges the air with an upward thrust of his head, as though rolling a ball into my court. Unwilling to commit just yet, my skin blistering under his scrutiny, I stoop down to harvest bits of smashed pottery, broken glass, and tattered papers. The sloughed-off flesh from the kwee kia—formaldehyde can only do so much for these acrobatic tykes—I leave for the vacuum.
We maintain this rhythm for a while: me, cleaning. Him, observing. A few minutes into my housekeeping, I hear a discreet thud. I look up. A paperweight has been mysteriously returned upright.
The unexpected act of nominal charity kindles a weird anger. You can push me around. You can dick with my life. You can raise my rent. But don’t pretend you actually care about my well being. Especially not now, not here. That fury quickly transfigures into ill-guided inspiration. A plan clicks into place and I stand, giddy with the knowledge I’m about to say something breathtakingly idiotic again.
“By the by, Your Highness. I was thinking,” I draw a circle in the air with a finger, my other arm looped around the waste bin, its bowels acrid with the stomach bile. “Theoretically speaking, if I went to Diyu and told them that you were press-ganging one of their representatives into unsanctioned service, wouldn’t that annul my oath and get you into incredible amounts of legal trouble?”
The Dragon King cants his skull. “Are you threatening me?”
“I’m not threatening you,” I say, as I deposit my container on the desk, all the while thinking to myself: Yes. Yes, I am. “I’m just expressing, in a roundabout way, my desire to not be enslaved by a verbal contract. As much as I’d like the fortune you’ve promised and to avoid the certain death you’ve been implying, there is no way this is happening. I’m not—I’m not risking those Furies.”
Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef Page 2