“Don’t sorcerers have some sort of contract they make their apprentices sign?” I asked. “You know, where they promise not to give away any secrets upon pain of death?” I directed the question to the room in general, but my eyes were on Cassandra. As the eldest she should know damn near everything by now. But she deferred to Vayl.
“I suppose.”
“Write something up, Bergman.”
He went from resembling a parakeet, darting glances from trailer to monitor to TV screen, as if somewhere something was going to leap out and eat him, to watching me with the still sharpness of an owl. “What are you saying?” His voice broke on the last word, making him sound like a seventh grader at the Valentine’s Day dance. He cleared his throat.
“It’s close quarters. None of us can help seeing whatever you’re forced to trot out of that trailer during this mission. So we’ll all sign a paper guaranteeing that we will never utter a word of what we have seen to anyone anywhere ever, or else, well, you figure out the or else.”
Bergman immediately ducked behind his laptop screen so none of us could see his face. Off went the glasses. Left arm crossed the face to blot the tears. We heard a couple of sniffs. And then, “Thanks, Jaz. I’ll get right on that.”
Satisfied, I sat back to view Chien-Lung TV. Cole popped popcorn, handed out sodas, and for the next half hour we watched guests arrive from the mainland. At first it looked like any other party where the guests wear uncomfortable clothes and pretend to like each other. Vamps mingled with humans throughout, all of them Chinese. Shunyuan Fa was there, but acting a lot more like a guest than a host.
“Recognize anybody besides the Raptor’s boy?” I asked Vayl.
“No.”
Bergman said, “If you want, I can capture the video of every face on that yacht and send it through your database.”
“Fine,” said Vayl. His plethora of terse replies finally hammered the message through my thick skull. I’d brushed that kiss off like it was nothing. And he’d meant it as more. Maybe a lot more.
But it’s not like you can even tell he has feelings, I reasoned. Most of the time he walks around wearing the same frozen expression he woke up with.
What, so that means he can’t be hurt? demanded Granny May from her perennial spot at a card table near the front of my brain. Currently she seemed to be playing bridge with Spider-Man, Bob Hope, and Abraham Lincoln. She plunked down her glass of iced tea, fed Bob an Ace of Hearts, and said, Have you ever stopped to think how hard a man has to work to show that kind of face to the world? It’s like the Hoover Dam, that mug. Can you even imagine the depth of pain that must be pooled behind it?
I peeked at Vayl from under my lashes. Actually, I could.
As Bergman tried to identify the people in the crowd, they remained quiet, polite, expectant. They didn’t have long to wait. First a petite, willowy woman wearing a red satin dress walked out of the living area. She’d put her hair in that funky Chinese up do that always looks like it’s about to leap off the lady’s head and wrap itself around some poor schmuck’s throat. Traditional makeup whitened her face, blackened her eyes, and reddened her lips. She carried a pair of shiny black rods at her side.
One quick flip of her wrist and the rods transformed into huge fans, one painted with the image of a warrior wearing a long golden robe and a sword belt. The other depicted a golden dragon lounging at the bottom of a river. She began to dance with slow graceful movements, manipulating the fans so it looked like the warrior first fought with the dragon, and then as if the dragon emerged from the warrior.
“She’s good,” Cole breathed.
“Now, how am I supposed to compete with that?” I asked.
Vayl fixed me with the icy-blue gaze that I inwardly referred to as his “intellectual” look. And then, because I knew him so well, I could see him imagining me in my costume, undulating to ancient rhythms while he watched. His eyes darkened. “For some, there will be no comparison,” he said.
My throat went dry. As my eyes dropped to his lips I wondered what would have happened if either of us had been bold enough when we’d kinda kissed to just let go. Would our worlds have exploded with new colors, wonders, miracles? Or would we have already destroyed each other?
Our eyes locked. By his count he hadn’t known me long. But he knew me well enough that I could often tell him things without speaking. Usually it was job related. There’s a guy hiding behind that bush. Give me thirty seconds to get into position before you move. I’ll take out the one that’s pissing me off.
This time I had something else to say. That kiss caught me off guard. Scared the hell out of me. Let me know how bad you could rock my world. I loved it. Now give me some time to deal, okay?
He sat back, a smile slowly lifting one side of his mouth. When his eyes softened to brown and he gave me a brief nod I knew we were all right.
The sound of clapping brought my attention back to the TV. The dancer had finished. She waited for the applause to fade, then turned toward the dining/entertainment area and bowed so low she could’ve gnawed her knees if the urge had hit her. The rest of the crowd bowed as well as Chien-Lung emerged from the shadows and stepped into camera range.
I’d seen pictures of Lung taken on his previous trips to the States. They’d showed a robust man of average height with an elegant mustache and beard, fierce brown eyes, and an expression of haughtiness that told you right away he totally bought the concept of racial supremacy. This shot of Lung showed a radically changed man. He’d lost so much weight his skin seemed to adhere directly to his skull, with no layers of fat or muscle to soften it. No hair covered his head. He didn’t even have eyebrows to soften the harsh lines of his face.
“Does he have cancer?” asked Cole.
Nobody knew how to answer that.
The dancer held out her arm. Lung rested his hand on it. At first I thought he wore gloves. Then I realized dark material covered both of his hands. Something about the shape of them bothered me, but before I could get a better view the dancer turned and led him toward a cushioned chair that had been set up for him at a point exactly opposite that of the doors he’d just exited. Two flags that hadn’t been there before hung from the edge of the awning. They flanked the chair, and though they flapped steadily in the breeze, I could tell they depicted gold dragons on a lush green background.
Lung swept past his guests at a stately rate of speed, his golden neck-to-ankle robes swishing with each step. When he reached the chair, the dancer stood in front of him, blocking the view while he rearranged his clothes. When she stepped back he was sitting. On his knees.
“Okay, that’s just weird,” I said.
Eating, drinking, and polite conversation followed, during which the dancer played an instrument she’d retrieved from inside. Though it wasn’t the kind of music you could rock to, it worked for drinks and appetizers. Then she started to sing.
“Holy crap!” I exclaimed. “It sounds like somebody’s seesawing dental floss inside her nose!”
Cole stuck his fingers in his ears. “Are you sure she’s not our target? Because I think a strong case can be made for that racket being a threat to national security.”
“Bergman,” said Vayl, ignoring our juvenile outbursts, “do you have any idea why Lung is sitting on his knees?”
“None at all. Every part of him but his head is covered, so I can’t tell how the armor is interacting with his body.” Very professional wordage, but underneath it all Bergman’s voice shook with a rage that said, “If I had the son of a bitch alone in a lawless universe I’d rip his head off and parade it through town on a pike.”
Responding to those unspoken feelings, I said, “Vayl, I wonder if you and I should go back out there.” In a seaworthy boat this time. “Lung’s a perfect target right now.”
Vayl nodded. “It looks that way. But he has not lived this long through carelessness.” He thought awhile. “We will wait,” he decided. “Let him believe his current security measures suffice.”
“They probably will,” said Bergman, managing to sound depressed and proud at the same time. “As soon as the armor detects danger, the hood will automatically cover his head. This vamp is not going to die by conventional weaponry.”
“He’s got to have some vulnerability,” I said, getting the urge to throw something. Like Bergman. “You do want to get your invention back, don’t you?” I asked him.
“Of course!”
“Then you’re going to have to find a way to beat it!”
Bergman tapped a few keys and said, “Do you think there’s any way I can get a piece of it? I could do some tests.”
“Why can’t you just make some more and test that?” asked Cole.
“Because it physically changes once it’s been put on according to who, or what, is wearing it. We had that, at least, figured out before it was stolen.”
“How much do you need?” I asked.
“A fingernail. A scale—”
I looked at Cassandra. “We’re the ones most likely to get close to him. Do you think, between the two of us . . . ?”
She suddenly had a hard time meeting my eyes. “Maybe. I would like to consult the cards first.”
Bergman snorted. “Like that’ll help.”
I grabbed a pillow and winged it at his head.
“Hey! What was that for?”
“Just jogging your brain out of asshole mode.”
“Something is happening,” Vayl said, the urgency in his voice calling everyone’s attention back to the plasma screen.
At first we could only see quick movements at the limits of the cameras’ range. Then the woman with the criminal singing voice screamed. A group of maybe ten masked intruders raced into view, still dripping from their recent swim. They headed straight toward Lung, accompanied by several men and a couple of women from the crowd. The rest of the guests scattered, clearing out so fast you’d have thought they participated in duck-the-violence drills on a regular basis. Only Shunyuan Fa and the singer remained.
The singer grabbed a passing guest and ripped his throat out with her delicate little fangs before moving deeper into the fray.
Shunyuan Fa struck a straggler of the attackers, jerking the man’s head sideways and burying his fangs in his jugular. The man died flailing, his last word an anguished gurgle.
The man’s companion was better prepared. He pulled a short, straight sword and cut off Shunyuan Fa’s head as he leaned over his victim’s body. Vayl and I shared a silent moment of dejection as our best clue to the Raptor’s location went up in smoke. Then we turned our attention back to the screen. We still had Lung, and our original connection to Samos was faring quite a bit better.
Lung’s headgear had activated instantly, moving up from his neck so fast it was a blur. Later, when Bergman slowed the footage down, we witnessed how the scales erupted from his skin like immense golden blisters, growing up and outward at his eyebrows and mouth, so by the time the scales stopped moving two pairs of barbed horns jutted from his forehead and his long, square snout bristled with fangs.
Lung shed his robe in a single, quick motion. Scales covered his entire body, flashing gold and red as he moved, which brought my attention to his legs. He hadn’t been sitting on his knees after all. They seemed to have become fused in a permanently bent position. He’d actually been crouching on his feet, which had grown at least another twelve inches. His toes had lengthened to the point that he could walk on them like an ostrich. It looked awkward, but he moved just as fast as his would-be killers.
The first wave was almost on him when he stopped it with a single burst of blue flame that caught two of the attackers in the face. It burned so fast and hot that seconds later nothing remained of their skulls but smoking craters. Despite the fact that their clothes were soaking wet, the three men standing nearest those unfortunates also caught fire. They immediately stripped off their jackets and threw them overboard.
“Remarkable,” Vayl murmured.
Watching through clenched fingers, Bergman muttered angrily, “Just wait.”
Lung dropped off his perch, held his hands in the air, and flexed. The wrapping material shredded as they swelled to twice their bandaged size. In fact, he was growing, filling out in height and breadth until he at least doubled the size of his largest attacker. My gaze went back to his hands. As Bergman had described earlier, they were gnarled claws now, massive weapons tipped with poison that he used with deadly efficiency, raking deep furrows in faces, necks, and chests. He left his victims writhing on the ground as he met the next wave.
This group carried a variety of machine guns—Uzis, MAC-10s, MP40s, likely bought out of the back of some thug’s van—which they trained on Lung’s face. Made sense to me. The eyes, nostrils, mouth, any one of them should admit a round, especially one traveling nearly three hundred feet per second. But, as Bergman had said, the armor deflected the ammunition, closing over the vulnerable areas with lightning speed. And while the assassins concentrated on Lung’s head, his tail swept into action.
He’d kept it tucked behind him all this time. Now it whipped through the gunmen like a snapped guy wire, leaving a wake of severed and broken bones.
“That’s new,” said Bergman. His hands were in his hair now, pulling it in two directions, just like his heart. The scientist in him was fascinated. The creator in him had never been so violated.
Lung’s cohort had kicked ass too, though she much preferred the hand-to-hand method highlighted by the occasional terminal bite. I watched her work with grudging admiration. She spun to deliver a head kick and her opponent chose the same block and counter I would have used. Neither worked.
“Look at that speed,” I murmured, my eyes unable to keep her movement from blurring as the man went down, leaving his neck open to her final attack. I felt a sudden need to work out old-school, accompanied by some stirring music from, say, Rocky IV. Just in case she and I squared off, I did not want to find myself flat on my butt with the heel of her foot as my last living visual.
Within three minutes it was over. Lung and his partner stood triumphant in a spreading pool of blood while the chicken-shit party guests slowly made their way back to the deck. For the first time, Lung spoke. Holding out his massive arms he challenged the crowd. In Chinese.
“What’s he saying?” I asked Cole.
He’d sat absolutely still through the action, a toddler at his first pay-for-your-ticket movie. Had he done any better than a three-year-old at connecting the pictures on the screen with actual reality? I studied him. Relaxed face and shoulders, hands crossed quietly on his lap. But his heel jumped up and down like it needed to telegraph a battleship, and his hand inched toward the bowl on the table where he’d dumped his bubble gum. Somewhat relieved to see our rookie wasn’t as green as the bowl, I waited to hear his translation.
“See me. Hear me. I. Am. DRAGON!” Lung looked slowly around the crowd. “You have witnessed my enemies. Though they try to destroy me, they are powerless against my strength. I will be your next emperor!” Nobody said a word. One by one, they began to bow.
CHAPTER TWELVE
We sat in the RV, watching Lung’s cocktail bash become a mop-up. Nobody felt like talking. Not on the yacht. Not in our bus.
Cassandra sat hugging her knees, her luxuriant braids hiding her face.
Cole slumped beside me, warming up a new piece of Dubble Bubble, looking away from the TV every few seconds to check on the rest of us.
I couldn’t read Vayl, but if I had to guess, I’d say he looked the way you’d expect a Roman warrior to appear right before being impaled by an enemy lance.
And there was Bergman, immersed in the technology, calling out the names of the guests as the software matched their pictures.
“General Sang Lee and wife.”
“General Ton Sun and wife.”
“General Wing Don.”
Clearly Lung had designs on the People’s Liberation Army. No doubt he’d convinced the surviving generals to ally with
him. And if he could figure out how to replicate the armor, his military, already the largest in the world, would be unstoppable.
It felt like someone had sucked all the hope from the room along with most of the air.
“This whole deal pisses me off,” I said. Rising from the couch took effort, made me realize the battle had already begun. Our foe had made the first sortie. And dragon fear was no myth. But now that I’d hit my feet, I felt better.
Cassandra swept her hair back from her face. Nodding at her I went on. “This guy is nothing but a duded-up version of Tammy Shobeson.”
Cole straightened and turned to listen.
“Who is Tammy Shobeson?” Vayl asked.
“My childhood nemesis. If God is just, she is now a fat, pimply divorcée with a chronic yeast infection.” I even had Bergman’s attention now. This had been our first point of commonality as college students. His bully had been a redheaded jerk named Clell Danburton, and I thought sometimes he still had nightmares about their showdowns.
“So what’s your point?” he asked, sounding less like a robot and more like my old jogging partner.
I looked him in the eye. “Bottom line, Lung is just a spoiled brat who gets his way by scaring people. He may have found an effective way to do that, but it is not assassin-proof. We”—my gesture took in everybody in the room—“are being paid to kick this bully’s ass. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
Almost dawn in the Body of Christ. As gross as that sounds, Corpus Christi glowed like a promise from our vantage point on Bay Trail. The breeze felt great, invigorating. Or maybe it was the renewed hope that our plans could work, that we might all make it to the other side of this mission without being roasted alive by Iron Chef Lung.
The five of us watched the lights of the Constance Malloy wink out one by one. We’d emerged from the RV by silent agreement. Even Bergman stepped out for a breath of fresh air, as if the massacre we’d watched had somehow poisoned the RV’s ventilation system. He didn’t stay long.
Another One Bites the Dust Page 8