The Fifth Rule of Ten

by Gay Hendricks

  I realized what they were saying and also not saying. “Valerie showed up at the monastery. My mother was the answer to his petitions.”

  Yeshe touched my arm. “Yes. So when they practice Kalachakra tantra, intention is for liberation. Right action, for bringing more sattva, more goodness into world. Not for . . .” Yeshe looked pained. “Not to . . .”

  “Not to make a baby,” I said.

  It made a certain sense. After all, what did my father know about birth control? And as for my mother, she was gullible to the point of delusion. One was completely ignorant, the other, blindly trusting. But both burned with a fierce desire to taste enlightenment.

  They’d felt sexual attraction and assumed a sacred imperative. Mistook temporary madness for that one true love. The minute I met your father, I knew we were soulmates, my mother used to say when wine had rendered her maudlin.

  So they’d entered into a crazy pact and made a sexual commitment to a higher cause, with one disastrous result.

  Me.

  The possibility of pregnancy hadn’t occurred to them. Not when their intentions were so pure. So when I arrived, squalling and discontent, I didn’t just signal naivete. I served as living proof of my father’s utter failure to advance. He not only didn’t achieve the stage of perfection, he broke his vows in the process.

  No wonder he was so hard on me.

  The rage started as a kernel of heat in my solar plexus.

  “No,” I said. “He wasn’t that naive. Apa knew this could happen. He knew.”

  “What you mean?” Yeshe said.

  The heat spread. I was seething. “Nawang.”

  Their expressions were blank. They still didn’t know.

  “My father didn’t tell you about Nawang, did he, during this big confession? How convenient for him.”

  Lobsang waved a hand, as if to ward off what my words implied.

  “I do not understand. Did not tell us what?” Yeshe said.

  “My mother wasn’t Apa’s first vessel,” I said. “And I wasn’t his first mistake.”

  CHAPTER 49

  Lobsang scowled, but said nothing. Yeshe seemed to shrink inside his robe at my words.

  The air darkened. Shadows reached from either side of a rocky gully, brambled and thick with growth. Our path had narrowed and now sliced between a pair of cliffs like a wound.

  Lots of cover here; perfect place to stage an ambush.

  We had lost sight of Julie and Wangdue, but just ahead another weathered wooden sign pointed us right, to Fiddler’s Crossing and the falls beyond.

  Male voices shouted. Raucous laughter. And then, ominous silence.

  We hurried over fallen boulders, zigging left and right toward the sound of tumbling water.

  And then we were there. Leafy limbs arched green across a natural stone grotto, carved slowly over time. A narrow stream skipped down multiple levels of mossy granite and fed into an oval pool at the base—not exactly thunderous, but a waterfall nonetheless.

  Julie and Wangdue had stopped at a grove of trees a short distance from the water. Julie shot me a look of warning and gestured slightly in the direction of the waterfall.

  I focused on the four young men thigh-deep and shirtless in the shallow swimming hole. They glared at us, arms crossed. Discolored ink marked their necks, trunks, and forearms. Their skin tone was in that same indeterminate range as mine—the tea-colored no-man’s-land between black and white. Everything else pegged them as Hispanic gangbangers.

  One of them, the alpha of the pack, met my eyes, all lean muscle and meanness. He raked back a dark slick of hair. His flat stare hinted at violence and a close acquaintance with untimely death.

  He stepped forward, a clear challenge.

  I moved in front of Yeshe and Lobsang.

  His hostile eyes skimmed past me and took note of Lobsang’s shaved head and red robe. He lingered over Yeshe’s Dodgers cap and cocked his head, as if puzzled.

  Alpha looked back at his three friends. “¿Qué son?” he asked, his voice mocking.

  “Payasos,” a second man answered.

  The leader turned back, his smile a sneer. “My compadre, he thinks you are clowns. But me? I see your colors, and I think maybe you are bad boys.” He directed his next question at Yeshe. “Are you a bad boy, chava? Where are you from?” His crew moved beside him, hands reaching for the pockets of their baggy, low-riding shorts.

  The situation was escalating quickly, but why?

  “You from Sacramento, bitch?”

  Sacramento? And then I understood. Unbelievable. This idiot saw burgundy robes and high cheekbones and actually thought we were part of the Sacramento Bad Boys, a nasty Asian-American gang making inroads in Los Angeles. If it weren’t so potentially deadly, the situation would be laughable.

  “We from Dorje Yidam,” Yeshe answered brightly. “In Dharamshala.”

  Alpha chewed this over, scowling. I needed to diffuse the tension before we found out what was in those pockets.

  I quickly read Alpha’s tats for clues, registering the ribbon-banner inked across his flat belly, displaying the Latin words Veni, Vidi, Vici; the naked woman on his upper torso; the iron cross at his throat; the handguns on both biceps.

  There.

  Directly over his heart was a crude, five-pointed crown. Above it, the initials PLK. Pasadena Latin Kings.

  Of course. They’d left their calling card on the trail.

  I knew what to do.

  “We come in peace,” I said. “These men are Buddhist monks. They’re from Tibet, and they live in India.” I gestured. “But Yeshe here already met another friend of yours in Pasadena.” I willed Yeshe to understand. “Remember? He taught you their special mudra, didn’t he, Yeshe?”

  “Oh, yes!” Yeshe said. Beaming, he held up his palm: middle fingers bent; pinkie, thumb, and forefinger up. The Pasadena Latin Kings’ hand sign.

  After a moment of stunned silence, the leader burst out laughing. His soldiers relaxed. “No shit,” he said, and flashed the same sign back. “Welcome to L.A., homes.”

  CHAPTER 50

  In the end, it was Wangdue who did the honors, his river-walking Tevas sealing the deal. As rituals go, this was turning out to be pretty makeshift. Just the way I liked it.

  I fished two handbells out of the backpack, followed by a heavy globe-shaped container bundled in embroidered cloth. I unwrapped the cloth and found a large sand-filled urn. Adina had wisely sealed the rim with plastic wrap and tape. I peeled off the temporary lid and handed the urn to Wangdue.

  He waded into the swimming hole and crossed to the far end, where glinting drops of water tumbled in a narrow sheet.

  Yeshe and Lobsang began the chant, invoking Green Tara’s blessings. They asked that the healing powers of loving-kindness merge with the water, that the intentions dissolve, evaporate, form into clouds, reincarnate as rain, and fall like healing tears of compassion onto a suffering earth.

  The bangers were long gone. Too bad, they might have gained something by hanging around.

  Or were they? A movement caught my eye, high and to the left, by a forked trunk at the edge of the tree line. I shaded my eyes, squinting into the direct sunlight. Nothing stirred.

  There you go again, looking for trouble.

  Wangdue tipped the urn, releasing a steady flow of sand. Colored particles clouded the water before sinking out of sight. Julie and I rang the drilbus, and the clanging echoed in the steep canyon before fading into silence.

  This time, it was the snap of a branch that set my nerves jangling. I spun toward the noise but found only a clump of straggly bushes clinging to a steep path.

  “Good,” Yeshe said. “Is finished.”

  Wangdue waded out, his robe dripping. He handed me the empty urn and bowed. And finally, something in me shifted.

  Wangdue was exactly like me, before I rejected my vows and any part of me that believed in them. His one-pointed focus was disconcerting. That didn’t mean it was bad. As my sober friend Joan lo
ved to remind me, “You spot it, you got it.” Worse, Wangdue’s stern nature also reminded me of my father. My dislike had been automatic and without investigation—the polar opposite of mindful.

  “You did well,” I now told Wangdue, and bowed back. His eyes widened in surprise.

  A rabbit shot across the rocky slope to my left, flushed out of its hole by something. Or someone. My pulse accelerated.

  “I’m going to check out that trail,” I said to Julie.

  Her expression was dubious. “It looks pretty steep. Are you sure?”

  I was already moving.

  “We should leave in twenty minutes, Ten.” Julie pulled out her phone. “I’ll let Adina know.” She frowned at the screen. “Nope. No signal.”

  I reached the base of the slope and started climbing.

  “Be careful.”

  There was no time to be careful. I traversed slippery shale, urging my body to move quickly. Real or not, I could smell danger.

  The hillside started out steep and quickly grew steeper. The angled rock face was pimpled with boulders and bearded with scrubby brush. A pair of chipmunks skittered past, as the narrow path quickly became a perpendicular twist of dirt. I pushed between tangled branches and granite, using crevasses as footholds and roots as pulleys.

  At the top of the cliff I found the forked trunk where I’d first seen movement. The dying tree marked a split in the path. A narrow stone lip wound to the right. Beyond it lay the falls. I edged toward a flat ledge of rock overlooking the tumble of water. It would provide the clearest view of the area.

  The sound of rushing water grew louder.

  I reached the ledge. The 100-foot drop was almost vertical. For a moment, my legs turned to jelly.

  Crack!

  The sound was deafening. A rock to my left splintered.

  Crack!

  To my right, stone shattered, spitting up shards.

  “Julie! Get down!” I yelled into the void, my voice muffled by the ringing in my ears. “Everyone down! Someone’s shooting!”

  Crack!

  This one didn’t land, not that I could see. Where was the shooter?

  A faint shout—Lobsang, maybe—followed by Julie’s panicked cry.

  “I’m coming!” I shouted.

  I shimmied across the narrow rim, my hands splayed against rough stone. If I lost my footing, I’d fall to certain death—that’s if a bullet didn’t kill me first. I hit the path and broke into a crouched sprint, zigzagging in tight angles until I could take cover behind the forked tree trunk.

  There was no easy way down, especially not at top speed. I plunged anyway, scrambling, sliding, grasping at roots, colliding with stones. I grabbed something thorny and pain stabbed my left palm.

  Crack!

  Too close. My eardrums shrieked.

  Was I hit?

  I assessed. No blood. Still breathing. So, no.

  The bullet had entered a tree six feet to my left. A thick branch hung at an odd angle, partially snapped off.

  The dirt. Check the dirt.

  The earth beyond was untouched. No tunneling, no telltale mound.

  It didn’t go through.

  I tucked and rolled sideways until I was by the trunk, its damaged limb bent and dangling. I stood and yanked hard, praying this brief, exposed pause wouldn’t prove deadly. A second wrench, and the branch splintered off. Hunkering again, I half scuttled, half sprinted until I reached the steepest part of the descent, somehow keeping hold of my broken prize.

  The path below was riddled with twisted roots. A straight drop.

  I flipped onto my stomach and climbed down backward, rung by rooted rung, the wooden tree limb awkwardly pinned across my chest. At times I had to point the branch straight up like a spear so it wouldn’t catch. Finally the trail spilled back onto the bouldered hillside overlooking the swimming hole. I turned and sat on my haunches, balancing the branch across my lap, and slid down the steep slope. Pebbles cascaded in front of me. Below me, the grotto was silent.

  This is taking too long!

  I stood upright and slung the thick limb. It arched through the air and landed on the ground below. I would complete the final yards at a dead run.

  I took a giant stride, but the ground gave like loose grain. There was nothing to break my momentum and I pitched headlong. My brain said curl and roll but my body said break the fall.

  The crash came hard. My right wrist took the brunt of the impact. My forehead landed second, striking hard ground and snapping back. A sudden, brutal hit.

  I tasted blood.

  “Ten!” Julie’s panicked voice came from behind a group of boulders.

  Sheer adrenaline compelled me to my feet. I cradled my arm and ran. I found them all huddled in a group.

  “Are you okay? Is anyone shot?”

  Julie’s face was white. “No! We heard gunfire, so we hid.”

  “Good. Good. Did you call for help?” Julie’s helpless expression reminded me: no service up here.

  “Baby,” Julie said. “God, are you okay?”

  I inventoried my body. “I think so,” I said. “I’m not shot, anyway.” My right arm looked strange, the wrist thickening before my eyes. But there was no pain, only a numb weightiness. I flexed the fingers. Made a fist. “I may have sprained my wrist,” I said.

  “You’re bleeding.” Julie touched my lip.

  “Bit my tongue. It’s nothing.” My forehead throbbed. I located a tender bump the size of a golf ball. My tongue was sore. A sharp, needling pain in my palm was a reminder where the thorn had pierced. I didn’t even want to think about what other bruises might be forming.

  All because I just had to sprint those final few yards.

  One careless moment.

  Lobsang touched my shoulder. “Tenzing, you see who is shooting gun?”

  “No.”

  Wangdue squinted up at the cliffs, his expression thoughtful.

  Yeshe’s voice was distressed. “Those boys from before? Is them?”

  “Maybe. But probably not,” I said. “Drive-by is more their style.”

  “Then who? Who want to harm us?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “But they were mostly shooting at me.”

  “Why?” Julie said. “I don’t understand why.”

  “I don’t either, Jules.”

  Yeshe mustered a smile. “You very lucky man. Good karma for you today. Bullets not hit you.”

  “That’s me. Mr. Lucky.” I didn’t tell Yeshe how close I had come to becoming part of the earth again.

  Someone wanted me dead. But who?

  The bullet might tell me.

  The broken tree limb lay where I’d tossed it. I dashed over, snatched it off the ground, and raced back.

  The forest was silent. Watchful. Not even the chipmunks stirred. My sense was the shooter or shooters were gone.

  My right wrist definitely felt strange.

  “Lobsang, hold this?”

  He took the branch, maybe five feet in length.

  “Rotate it?” He looked at me. “Turn it slowly.”

  He rotated it like a spit.

  “Stop.”

  A narrow bullet had lodged in a knot in the thickest part of the branch, just about eight inches from the end.

  Maybe I was lucky after all. I had Wangdue break off that portion and zip it in the backpack.

  We waited as long as we dared, before finally heading back up the path. I jumped at every random noise, and scoured the cliffsides at every turn, but the sniper was gone, or was hidden. We finally reached the lot. A handful of hikers lingered by their cars.

  By then, my head hurt so much that a bullet to the brain didn’t sound that bad.

  CHAPTER 51

  “It’s not broken.” My functioning hand patted a temporary sling fashioned from a strip of Yeshe’s robe. “And anyway, you fixed me up.”

  Julie’s expression was stony as she steered the van back to civilization. The three monks were silent in the back. We were all exhausted.
Lobsang had even managed to fall asleep. I was much too wired to even try.

  “It’s irresponsible, and you know it,” Julie said. “You took a bad fall.”

  “The Advil is really helping. If it’s worse tomorrow, I promise I’ll go straight to the doctor, okay?”

  “No. None of this is okay.” Julie’s voice broke.

  “Jules?”

  “Someone tried to kill you, Ten. I’m scared, okay?”

  “Understood.” An earlier version of me would have tried to talk her out of feeling scared, but I skipped that part. “Look. Bill’s meeting me at the observatory. I’ve got the bullet to give him—that should tell us something. And he’s sending a team to Sturtevant Falls in the morning to take a closer look.”

  “Do you think they’ll find him?”

  “Probably not,” I admitted. “My gut tells me whoever’s behind all this stuff is long gone.”

  Julie shot me a look.

  “All this stuff?” Her fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “What do you mean, all this stuff? There’s more?” Julie’s voice rose. “Babe, you have to talk to me.”

  So I did. I ran through the series of baffling events—young Colin’s license, the person on the Vyrus, Lola’s bindi, the vial of blood. And the Power of Ten symbol, following me like a malevolent shadow.

  “Someone’s trying to gaslight you,” Julie said.

  “Gaslight me?”

  “Manipulate your reality. Make you think you’re going crazy.”

  “Well, it’s working.”

  Yeshe’s voice floated from the seat behind me.

  “Tenzing, when you first notice these things?”

  So he’d been listening. Which meant Wangdue had, as well.

  “Good question.” I mentally rewound the troubling events of the past week or so.

  “I guess when I opened that first envelope,” I said. “No, wait. Before that, even. At the airport. The day you landed. I felt like someone was watching me. And then I got that call.”

  Hram hram hram hram.

  “I feel something there at airport also.” Wangdue’s voice. “Something dark. Like demon.”

  Lobsang chose that moment to let out a loud snore. I jumped. I think we all did. A moment later, he cleared his throat. “When dinner?” he asked.