Romance with a Bite

by Tamsin Baker

  It was midnight before Hana limped out of the shop, hands reeking of garlic and ginger, back stiff with the mopping and dish-washing that Mama had supervised from the corner of her shop, feet propped up on a bright orange crate as sweat dripped in Hana’s eyes.

  “And still you will not use your loft tonight?” She glared as Hana tossed the plastic apron into the wash basket.

  “I’ve things to do, Mama. People to see. You know how it is.”

  Mama tutted as she rolled down the shop’s shutter and locked it behind her. Hana figured it was as well that she wasn’t spending much time here at the moment, given what she was investigating.

  She knew she should wait for first light, until the antique store was open, although she doubted whoever owned it would be forthcoming about whatever had gone down there. Maybe she’d just do some quick recon, see what kind of artefacts the shop sold, without having to arouse the suspicion of the shopkeepers.

  She tapped her pocket, making sure Lylah’s device was inside. Her sister had been a genius when it came to tech. The device could talk to all manner of locks, which allowed Hana to complete her clandestine activities for the Phoenix undetected.

  Hana was a block away, enjoying the cool breeze off the Indigo, when her hand-held beeped. One she couldn’t ignore. Captain Vincent, summoning her team for clean-up crew. The location scrolled across the screen and the breath left Hana’s body.

  A familiar address in Dragon Quarter.

  The building that housed Katana’s penthouse.

  Chapter 25

  Ice skittered down Hana’s spine as she stood at the bottom of Katana’s penthouse. They’d had a report of a young woman plunging to her death from the highest level of the tower. Right where a certain high-level Dragon kept his penthouse. A penthouse that Hana had been driven to leap from in some kind of madness days before.

  Perhaps her first impression of the Dragon had been the correct one. Dangerous, predator, silver-tongued liar. The phoenix clamored in its cage.

  She lifted the tarp, trying to take in some details while her Dragon cronies were mesmerized by the bling in the apartment’s shopfront windows.

  A young woman with spiky black hair, eyes closed in long rest.

  “You’d never afford it,” one of her colleagues was saying.

  “I’d make that armor hot,” another said, and Hana made a show of rolling her eyes. She just needed a few seconds while the goons were occupied…

  There… She slid a hand down to the girl’s hip, gently moved the t-shirt away. There it was again, the symbol she’d seen on the other body. A black circle slashed through with two curved lines. She glanced up and saw way above her a hulking figure leaning over the balcony, backlit by moonlight, his silhouette gilded in silver.

  The Dragon.

  Hana barely stopped her fingers drifting towards the place where elongated canines had slid through her gums.

  “Let’s go, Poncoyo,” her colleagues called. “She ain’t that heavy.”

  “Give me a hand,” she called, eyes on the deadly general above her.

  Prickles of heat and ice ran up and down Hana’s spine. Was he on the Tiger’s list because he was killing off street urchins? It didn’t make sense. The Tigers wouldn’t usually bother with something they thought so trivial. What was different about these girls? She needed to know what the symbol meant. She had a mind to wait right here until the Dragon with the dark hair and silver eyes, and undoubtedly stunning, aquiline features, came down from his castle in the clouds.

  To confront him.

  But she couldn’t raise the suspicions of the clean-up crew, so she got back in the van, snapped on her belt and tried not to glance at the girl’s canvas-covered body strapped to the gurney.

  She pushed down on the anger starting to flicker in her core. She had zero need of hallucinations and mental breakdowns right now. Then she remembered the bug she had set up to monitor Katana’s penthouse.

  Disappointment sang through her. She’d forgotten to reset it to record while she was at Mama Singh’s, being run off her feet cooking up endless rounds of fried noodles. She vowed to get it back up and running at the first opportunity. She watched the hours of footage she did have from her bed, tucked up in the loft above the shop into the wee hours that night anyway. Just to be sure. But there was nothing. The camera cut out after twenty-four hours, only bringing her up to six pm, by which time Katana hadn’t even reappeared.

  She cursed herself. Screamed into her pillow. It didn’t mean anything. Didn’t mean he wasn’t involved. Whatever the Dragon was up to, she would find out, she promised herself. And make him pay.

  If she could just find out what that symbol meant, maybe she’d be able to link him to it. When she checked in to precinct on the second day of the New Year celebrations, the body was not in the morgue. None of the crew were around, all of them down at the river, fawning over the Roaring Tiger parade. She knew better than to ask Vincent about it anyway. A quick check told her there was no record of what had been done with the body on the official channels.

  The cover-up was as slick as it was frightening.

  A ping on Hana’s hand-held from Quan told her that Rex was awake. This day just got better and better.

  The boy’s eyes were clear, but he paced the small space of the hidden room as Hana laid it out for him. Was he aware of any Phoenix ancestry in his family’s history? Had he had the rage attacks before?

  Then, in as soothing a voice as possible, she laid out the plan.

  “Rex. You can survive this. Look at me. I can hold the Dragon tattoo on my arm, okay? You just need to try to remain calm, not get angry or pissed off. You can still fight in the den. We’re here for you, we’ll help you. But you can’t go racing off to other fight dens, trying to take on the big bads, okay? If the Tigers know who you are, what you are…well there’s not much we can do for you then, okay?”

  “So, I have to hide it? Pretend I’m someone else? Forever?”

  She winced. “That is what we all have to do, Rex. For now. To stay safe. To stay alive.”

  He swore. “Well, it sucks.”

  “I know it does. But if you can do it, it’s worth it. You get to live. You get to go and see a dark-haired girl who’s been asking about you every day, threatening to go three rounds with Quan to get down here to you.”

  “Nancy? She’s up there?”

  She nodded. “She’s waiting for you. But you have to promise to be really careful, okay? And check in with me or Quan every day, okay?”

  The boy nodded and she let him go. They had done all they could. Now it was up to him.

  Chapter 26

  Relief and shame warring in her at the outcome for the boy, Hana headed toward the antique shop. A solid wall hid the ruins of Phoenix Quarter, but the phoenix quivered, silent, inside her, the ancient sadness so overwhelming there seemed to be no song mournful enough for it to sing. Hana wondered what was left there now, the remnants of old buildings overtaken by the vines and animals, and the forests surrounding the Jade City.

  A middle-aged Snake Clan woman showed Hana around the shop, which rather than house original antiques, looked like a tourist den from another age. Cheap New Year lanterns, white with the embossed sword of the Tiger on them, firecrackers and other worthless bits of bric-a-brac littered the shelves.

  “Have you got anything…older?” she asked, trying for a sorrowful look on her face. “My gran, you see, she is Dragon Clan.” Hana glanced toward her upper arm with the teal tattoo circling it. “She collects old Clan artefacts, and she thought that you might have…”

  She noticed the old woman blinking a little too many times as she dusted the shelves. Now that Hana was paying attention, she could see that the woman’s hand clutched the duster a little too tightly, too.

  “We’re not that sort of shop, love. You want to see the collections, you can go to the Tiger Heritage Centre.”

  The words left an imprint on Hana. Her phoenix tasted them, and for a moment she
was back on that balcony with Katana. It wasn’t that this woman tried to control her thoughts as the Dragon had. No, it was more that Hana could…taste her lie. Hana knew that this shop had sold more than knock-off New Year paraphernalia. The date on the intel was marked little over a month ago.

  Hana’s gaze zeroed in on the woman’s left hand, to her ring finger. A snake circlet of silver sat there, the signal that this woman was sworn to another for life. As Hana gazed at it, the silver of one of the snakes, entwined with its pair, blackened to ash, the other’s mouth screaming in mournful rage.

  Whatever had happened here, her mate was dead. And Hana would be putting her in danger by asking more questions. She drew her gaze away from the ring, grabbing a fistful of the closest New Year offerings, some firecrackers and sparklers. When she looked at the woman again, the ring had returned to its silver colour.

  “Well, gran does like a good firecracker,” she said, making her voice bright and loud.

  Relief pooled in the woman’s eyes. And a frightened sort of understanding.

  Chapter 27

  Hana was running out of options.

  The deaths were escalating. A powerful Dragon had sighted her at Quan’s, with a boy who was about to burst into the flames of the Phoenix. A Dragon who was perhaps responsible for some of those deaths. A Dragon whose life was inextricably linked with her people’s enemy. The Tigers. A Clan that insisted on her annihilation.

  She sighed. Time for another deal with the devil.

  She set up a meeting with Silver, in the laneway beside Korn nightclub. Rain pattered on the cobblestones and the sounds of younglings dancing in the Roar of the Tiger parade echoed from the main streets.

  “Your last intel nearly got me killed,” she hissed.

  He shrugged, his beard turning yellow in splotches. He was amused. Sick bastard.

  “I warned you, Detective, that what you’re sticking your nose into is big business.”

  He ran his eyes down the black dress and the red biker jacket that Hana had donned to meet the Snake. She scowled.

  “I see it hasn’t stopped you coming back for more.” Hana repressed the urge to smack the slimy, self-satisfied grin off his face.

  “You make sure the next information you give me is solid, or I’ll kick your ass—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he interrupted. “You’ll kick my ass to where the sun don’t shine.”

  The grin turned sly. “Or maybe you’ll turn my bones to ashes…”

  Hana slammed Silver up against the wall, gun out of her pocket and digging into his side.

  “What do you know?” she grit out.

  Hana’s heritage was off limits, for both of their sakes. It was a rule that underpinned their partnership. She stared at him, long and hard, just daring him to go any further down that dangerous path.

  “I know you’ve got something there burning a hole in your pocket.”

  Spooky bastard.

  Hana knew it was a risk, and her trust of Silver was teetering on a cliff’s edge, but she needed that information, bad. She relaxed her grip, sheathed her gun and pulled the sketch out of her jacket pocket.

  “What does this symbol mean?”

  Silver’s eyes gleamed as he took the paper and ran his fingers around the brushstrokes of black ink, around the circle, then down the two slashes that bisected it.

  “I don’t know. But I can tell you where I’ve seen it before.”

  Hana waited, while Silver’s beard flashed with excitement.

  “The Tiger scouts I told you about, that were sent to all quarters of the city on the orders of the Seers?”

  Hana nodded, her gut clenching. She knew the Tigers had their dirty paw prints all over this.

  “They wore a uniform I’ve not seen before. White, with this symbol embroidered on their chest.”

  “How do I find out what it means?”

  “I’m not an oracle, Detective.”

  She snorted.

  “However, I sense the meaning of this symbol is rooted in ancient magics and folklore.”

  Fae.

  The word whispered against her skin like a feather caressed by a breeze. But the Fae warriors had long been gone from this world. Only her grandmother’s stories had kept them alive in Hana’s memories.

  As a little girl, she’d been so obsessed by the stories of warrior Phoenix women, she’d made herself wings, a flaming sword, and leaped from boxes piled high against her bedroom wall.

  Bone white.

  That was the color her grandmother’s face had been when she’d seen what Hana had made. The stories stopped for a while then. Until her fading years. Hana pictured her grandmother in her last years, hunched over the small desk in her loft. Painstakingly, slowly scribing stories and knowings with gnarled fingers. Hana fussing and massaging out the knots at the end of the day, by the fire, when she’d finally gotten her grandmother to stop.

  She’d thought to indulge an old woman the fantasies and whims of her last days. But what if Gran had been recording something Hana could use now? What if Gran knew what that symbol meant?

  She’d brooked no bargaining when it came to what Hana would keep, what would go to eternal rest with her in the gold mausoleum, the one it was whispered was infused with the ancient magics of their people. The one that superstition said had power that reached down the centuries to this day so that even the Tigers dared not to dispute her grandmother’s internment there.

  Even if they now allowed none to step foot within a hundred yards.

  Those journals, and several pieces like the flask Hana used to pay her respects to her gran, now rested with Kamala Poncoyo in the gold mausoleum.

  She’d need to get in there, unseen, need to work out a way to sneak in around the Tiger watch that lined the nearby walls of Jade Palace.

  She had a date with some noodles in the gum tree by the cemetery. She clapped Silver on the shoulder.

  “Thank you.”

  He raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “I owe you one,” she said, rushing from the laneway.

  Chapter 28

  What the hell was she doing?

  It had taken a few days to find out who she was—the spitfire who had dared him to know her and then left him wanting and breathless in the laneway beside the downtown fight club. He’d kept an eye on her comings and goings this past week, knew that the detective—Hana Poncoyo—had been part of the Justice Team that had been sent to deal with the incident with the woman who’d launched herself from his balcony.

  This was the third time he’d followed his Spitfire, as the Dragon had taken to calling her, out of the city limits, the third dusk she’d set out for the cemetery. The outfit she’d worn to meet the two-faced Snake was another face in the seemingly endless supply of roles this woman liked to play.

  When she’d shoved that son-of-a-bitch against the laneway wall, sending her cascades of night-dark hair tumbling over the red leather jacket that set off the sweet curve of her hips, it was all he could do to stop the dragon from leaping out of his skin and throwing himself in the poor bastard’s place.

  He’d thought for a moment that the black sheath dress and delectably wrapped ankles meant that it was a lover she sought out. But apparently, the smoky eyes and ruby lips were yet another costume. And whatever she wanted from the Snake, she’d gotten and continued on her regular—and very dangerous—trek towards the cemetery.

  Detective Hana Poncoyo was definitely not a courtesan, as his instincts had roared at him, even before he’d laid eyes on her for the second time in that brutal fight den. She was a lowly detective who helped the nasty things that went on in this city disappear. Interesting.

  No doubt she also blamed him for what had happened to the dead girl.

  He couldn’t explain it. One minute he’d dismissed his entourage and was enjoying a quiet workout on his balcony, the next, there was a slight girl with spiky black hair there with him. How she’d breached his security, which was usually water-tight, he didn’t know. H
is captains had been loyal to him for years, but…well, no one was above corruption in this city.

  She was crying, tears streaming down cheeks in charcoal tracks, and she clutched a finely made silver dagger. She’d thrown it at him, full pelt, yelling. He’d darted out of the way of her surprisingly true and fast aim, simultaneously sending his magics reaching out to her. She had roared and launched herself at him, nails raking down his face, as if she could take him apart with her claws. His magics then circled her, sensing the control of another being. She was acting on someone else’s orders.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he’d said.

  She was strong, driven. They’d crashed to the balcony’s hard, polished cement and her hands attempted to grip his neck. He had tried not to hurt her as he fought, grasping at her hands. He scented it on her. She meant this to end in his death. He’d worked his magic to loosen the bonds that held her. If he could shift them, just a bit.

  She’d cried and screamed and finally, his had entourage spilled onto the balcony. She paused with her hands around his throat, seeing she was surrounded.

  “Wait!” he’d called to his men.

  She clambered off him and he uncoiled to his feet slowly, hand out, as though he were dealing with a wild creature. Which, judging by the dazed look in her eyes, he was.

  “Easy, now,” he’d murmured, but she cried out again, looked longingly at the dagger, then in five superhuman strides, she lunged through his men, scaled the balcony wall and leaped to her death.

  He’d tucked the dagger away into his tunic so he could examine it later. A symbol he’d not seen before. The circle with two lines running through it didn’t denote any Clan that he knew.

  Hana, the detective, had said under his truth-telling compulsion that he was in danger. Had she known about this attack? These were the questions he pondered as he followed the scent of the detective through downtown and deep into the heart of Tiger territory.