For now.
As he looked down at her he wondered who else was in her keep besides Valentine. He already knew it wasn’t Nick. Nick did not have a tattoo, and a Keeper’s charge always carried her mark.
Somewhere on her body must be her own mark. Somewhere secret. Her nightdress was rucked up high on one thigh and he was tempted…
Another time.
I want to play with you, sweet Mia. Will you play with me?
And after playing with her, he would move in and satisfy his hunger. Steal from her the ultimate prize.
She was breathing so quietly. Her chest seemed hardly to move.
Take care, little stranger. Dreams can be like bondage. They leave bruises.
He sat down in the armchair next to the bed to watch.
CHI
‘ …energy’s seed sleeping interred in the marrow…’
—Octavio Paz, as quoted in Robert O. Becker, The Body Electric
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Sweat rolling off his brow, Rick Cobra turned to confront, once again, the man facing him. Cobra was close to exhaustion, his razor-sharp reflexes blunted and his movements sluggish. The man in front of him smiled and the ruby in his front tooth winked in the feeble light of the lamp-post that lit this seedy side of the docks with a stale yellow glow.
‘Tired, little man?’ he growled.
Cobra knew he had no strength left to beat the giant rushing at him with outstretched hands. Time to think outside the box. Time for Dragon’s Breath. What a good thing he had chewed on burdock root over the past few days. An old Ninja trick, and one Gonzo would be unprepared for. As Gonzo’s fingers stabbed at his throat, Cobra exhaled mightily into the face of his foe. Gonzo staggered back, gagging, his eyes rolling upwards in shock—
Nick stopped typing and glared at the screen. This wasn’t working. Did he really want his hero to win the day because of bad breath?
Maybe he should try it himself, Nick thought sourly. The idea of chewing on stinky herbs was not attractive but he supposed he could simply stop brushing his teeth for two weeks before the fight.
The fight. Shit. He glanced at his watch. If he didn’t leave for the park right this minute, Adrian Ashton would arrive there well before him. It was bad form to keep a training buddy waiting. He grabbed his keys.
He was lucky. Because of the earliness of the hour, there was little traffic and he arrived at the park in minutes. He also had no trouble finding a parking space for the Aston Martin right inside the north entrance.
As he jogged into the park, the horizon was pink with light. A faint mist was rising and there was dew on the grass. Usually he hated doing roadwork: running was boring, boring. And most of the time he wondered why the hell he was still doing this. The constant training. The dieting. The bruises and aching muscles. JC screaming abuse. His next fight would be his first title fight: Southern Regional. If he won the belt, that would probably be as much as could be expected of him, as a shot at a British title was unlikely to be on the cards. On a morning like this, though, he could not imagine doing anything else.
The long lane of trees was coming to an end and ahead of him was the red and gilt pagoda. Standing on the bottom step was Ashton. He looked rested and bright-eyed and clearly had a good night’s sleep behind him.
‘Sorry, mate. Have you been waiting long?’
‘Not at all.’ Ashton shook his head. ‘I just arrived. So, shall we set off?’ Without waiting for an answer he started jogging in the direction of the bridge.
No small talk, then. Right. And the guy was keeping up a hell of a pace. Nick stretched his stride.
He had just found his rhythm, when Ashton kicked up the pace another notch. Shit. But like hell was he going to ask the man to slow down.
Ten minutes later and Ashton increased the speed again. And five minutes later, even more. They were practically sprinting by this time. Did Ashton want to kill him? Nick’s breath burned in his chest.
Ashton suddenly stopped in his tracks. In front of them was a small but steep hill. He turned and looked at Nick. ‘I’m going to get on your back and then I want you to run up that slope.’
‘What!’
‘You do this every day and your endurance and strength will increase like you will not believe.’
Or give him back problems for the rest of his life. Nick looked uncertainly from Ashton to the hill.
‘Come on, Nick. Trust me.’
Hesitantly he got down on one knee. Christ, this was going to look really strange. It was a good thing there were so few people around.
Ashton was a bloody deadweight. How much did the man clock on the scale? It felt as if there was an elephant on his back. Nick started shuffling up the slope. ‘Try increasing your speed.’ Ashton’s voice came from behind his ear. He sounded as calm as though he were having a cup of tea.
Nick gritted his teeth. Driving from his hips, shoulders bowed, he attacked the hill. By the time he reached the top, his thigh muscles were quivering.
‘Now run down backwards.’ Ashton pointed to the bottom of the hill. ‘I’ll meet you down there. And then we do it again.’
The hill was not the end of it. After Nick had staggered up the slope for the third time, Ashton made him do a series of plyometric exercises. Nothing was more energy-sapping than squat thrust jumps and explosive hand-clapping press-ups. After ten minutes, Nick was close to collapse. What was galling, though, was that with the exception of the hill, Ashton had matched him movement for movement and looked little the worse for wear.
‘Time to stretch you out.’ Ashton slapped him on the shoulder. ‘By the way, I know this is a kickboxing fight and you won’t be going down to the mat, but I’m a firm believer in groundwork.’
Nick nodded and winced as Ashton pulled back his arms and pushed his elbows close together. ‘JC is too. Wrestling is part of my training.’
‘Good. We can roll together. I did a stint at Gracie Barra in Rio.’
Nick looked at him with respect. Gracie jiu-jitsu was the best in the world. ‘I thought you said you were into internal martial arts.’
‘I like to cherry-pick. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. I know there are martial-arts masters who frown on training in more than one system, but I don’t believe in getting attached to any one style.’ Ashton stepped back. ‘Right, you’re done.’ Turning away, he opened his rucksack and took out two bottles of water. ‘Catch.’
Nick managed to grab the bottle—a remarkable feat considering his reflexes were shot to hell with fatigue—and twisted open the cap.
For a while it was quiet between them. Nick looked over at the other man, who was staring into the distance. His blond hair was dark with sweat but he looked completely at ease. The guy was super-fit.
‘So, you’re a doctor?’ Maybe Ashton was related to Dr Mengele.
‘I started out as one.’ Ashton took a swig of water. ‘After a few years I changed to pure research and worked at the chronobiology institute at Exmare. In their sleep clinic.’
‘Hanging out with sleeping people. That must be exciting.’
Ashton smiled lazily. ‘All kinds of interesting things happen to your body when you sleep. You’d be surprised. A dangerous time, night-time. But I’m no longer at Exmare.’
‘Why did you leave?’
‘Let’s just say I decided to walk down a road less travelled.’
‘The road less travelled sounds like an interesting place to be.’
‘I like to think so. Although some people might call it an exercise in futility. Or trying to catch a white crow.’
Nick blinked. ‘Crow…’
‘A term used by William James, an American behavioural scientist. He used it to describe those things in life that did not fit. Anomalies. That’s where I like to potter around. I am trying to prove something that has never been clinically established inside a laboratory. Not everyone approves.’
‘I thought that was what scientists are supposed to do. Find proof.’
With his left hand, Ashton suddenly lobbed his empty water bottle in the direction of a rubbish bin about fifty yards away. Nick watched as the bottle sailed unerringly into the bin. How long would it take him before he would be able to pull off a move like that, he wondered dispassionately. Probably never.
‘Acupuncture points have been researched before, of course.’ Ashton looked back at him. ‘Other scientists have proved that there are differences in the levels of potassium and sodium in acupuncture points compared with the surrounding tissue. Acupoints also exhibit lower skin resistance—in other words, these points conduct electrical current more efficiently. What’s interesting is that this lower skin resistance is even measurable after death. Isn’t that cool?’
Cool? Yes, that was one way of looking at it, Nick supposed. Not that he was really all that interested in what happened once you copped it. When you’re dead, you’re dead, and it didn’t much matter if your skin still crackled like a transistor radio.
‘Despite all this evidence, acupuncture doesn’t get much respect in the West. It is still considered wild territory.’ Ashton sighed. ‘In China it is different. The codified Chinese acupuncture studies go back two thousand years. So I went looking for my white crow in Asia. I studied the Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine—sort of the historical equivalent of the Western Corpus Hippocraticum.’
‘Did you find your white crow?’
‘I came closer. I did further research into sleep patterns and it confirmed my belief that they are correlated to cycles and fluctuations of vital energy.’
‘Vital energy. You mean chi?’
‘Exactly. You know about chi?’
‘A bit.’ You don’t work out next to a group of vogues every day without absorbing some of that stuff through osmosis, Nick thought. And Mia, of course, believed in it absolutely. ‘It has to do with internal energy flowing through your body? Or something like that?’
‘Something like that. Chi enters the body through acupuncture points and flows through twelve meridians and two midline collaterals and through paired yin and yang organs. The movement of chi builds up in wave-like movements, completing a cycle every twenty-four hours. In the early morning hours, chi is at its lowest ebb. That’s when many people have trouble sleeping. And when many people die in their sleep, incidentally.’ He shrugged again. ‘The Western medical mind has difficulty with the concept of chi. It cannot be dissected under a microscope and does not fit the empirical model. You can’t exactly cut through an artery wall and look at it.’
Nick frowned. ‘Seriously? I always thought chi was so much mystical mumbo-jumbo.’
Ashton’s voice was sober. ‘I once saw an operation in Guangzhou. A woman was having a goitre removed. She was completely conscious, with only a number of needles stuck into her neck. No anaesthesia, nothing. It was all about manipulating the hollows along the meridians and working on her chi. I watched the surgeon pick up a scalpel and cut her throat and she was just lying there, eyes wide open, smiling continuously. Don’t know if you would call that mystical.’
‘I’d call that creepy.’
‘There’s that, of course.’ Ashton looked amused.
‘You should talk to Chilli. He’s into this kind of thing.’
‘Chilli?’
‘He is my friend Mia’s instructor. He has been her sensei for ages. Actually, Mia will be interested in your ideas as well. She very much believes in chi: all part of the martial-arts philosophy taught to her by Chilli.’
‘I could tell. It shows in her training.’
‘You’ve seen her train?’ Nick was surprised.
‘I left my mobile at Scorpio last night. Before I came to the park this morning, I stopped to pick it up. Mia was there—training by herself. I didn’t interrupt but I watched for a while. She’s very, very good.’
Nick nodded. ‘Her mother enrolled her with Chilli when she was only six.’
‘Her mother is a martial artist as well?’
‘Oh, yes. But she died a few years ago. She and Mia’s father both.’
‘What happened?’
Nick hesitated. But it was hardly a secret: everyone at Scorpio knew. And it had been in all the papers.
‘They tombstoned.’
Ashton’s eyebrows flew up his forehead.
‘Tombstoning. It’s an extreme sport. You jump off high cliffs. Really high cliffs. Mia’s dad was a diver and he and Molly used to do this for fun.’ Nick shook his head. ‘On this day, Molly decided to sit it out because the current was so strong. Juan jumped alone but something went wrong. He couldn’t get enough distance between himself and the cliff face and he hit a rock on the way down. When Molly saw what had happened, she jumped after him and tried to pull him ashore. The autopsy showed that Juan was alive when he hit the water but probably unconscious because of his injury and therefore unable to help Molly get him to safety. The current took both of them and they drowned.’
For a while it was quiet. Then Ashton said, ‘It’s a good way to die.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Would you rather die hooked up to a tube, drooling all over your chin, or would you rather do something fearless and life-affirming before dying in the arms of the one you love?’
Point taken, Nick thought, surprised by the intensity in the man’s voice.
Ashton glanced at his watch. ‘I must go. I have an appointment with an estate agent. See you tomorrow, same time?’
‘Will we be doing the hill again?’
‘Of course.’ A grin. ‘Are you training with JC this evening?’
‘No. JC and I will be at Mia’s. Actually…’ Nick paused. ‘If you’re free, why don’t you come as well? Mia has pot luck at her place once a month—sort of an institution. All the fighters from Scorpio will be there. It’ll give you an opportunity to meet some of the guys.’
‘That would be great.’
‘She lives in the same house as her studio. You know where it is, don’t you?’
‘I’ve been there.’
‘Good. Any time after eight.’
‘Thanks. I’d like to meet Mia again. I enjoyed watching her train this morning.’ Ashton paused. ‘She dances.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE BOOK OF LIGHT AND DUST
FOR ROSALIA
XXXII
Last night I watched you sleep and saw you reflected in a million minds—as real as a hallucination; as seductive as a dream. This morning I watched you dance—part poetry, part lethal intent.
You burn with light, while I watch from the shadows with my mummified heart. You have what I steal.
Woman. Child. Angel. Temptress. The way I want to love you is the way I want to hurt you.
What does the Buddha teach us?
The Buddha teaches renunciation. The Buddha teaches repression of desire. Desire leads to dukkha. Dukkha is suffering—an insatiable yearning that can never be satisfied.
Is this truly the Buddha’s message? Because without desire there is no energy. And the greatest desire of all leads us from dust to light.
No. The Buddha’s message is misinterpreted. We fail not because we desire. We fail because we do not desire enough…
THE WAY: YANG RED
BLACKLIGHT: DIR: LU4 GB19, FRC: 8, TIME: 10, SUs: K9 PC2
WHITELIGHT: mas. GB20
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
One of the fighters had rigged his iPod to Mia’s music system and the Cheeky Girls were blaring from the speakers in the living room.
Mia sighed.
She loved these guys but their taste in music was often execrable. Okie once did his ring walk to Chesney Hawke’s ‘The One and Only’.
As she headed to the kitchen to check on the pasta, Mia wondered if Nick had chosen a song yet. Choosing a song for your entrance was a big deal. Fighters spent hours trying to decide what song best embodied their personal credo or what might possibly intimidate an opponent into quivering jelly. Bon Jovi’s ‘Unbreakable’ was a favourite on the fight circuit, as was Europe’s ‘The Final Countdown’. On the other hand, Billy over there was a fervent churchgoer and liked to walk in to ‘Amazing Grace’. But then Billy was an anomaly, Mia thought, looking at his freckled face and innocent eyes. Tall and spindly, he still lived with his mum. On fight nights he entered the arena looking mild as milk in a robe embroidered with the words ‘Jesus is Lord’ hanging from his bony shoulders. And then he’d step into the ring and kick his opponent’s head in.
Caroline, Tom Williams’s long-suffering wife, followed her into the kitchen.
‘Is there anything I can help with, Mia?’
‘No, thanks, Caroline.’ Mia looked over her shoulder where she was standing in front of the stove. ‘How are you holding up?’ Tom had a fight coming up in two weeks’ time, which meant poor Caroline was going to have to grit her teeth and think Zen to make it through the coming days.
‘Tom’s lucky trunks got mangled in the tumble-dryer.’
‘Oops.’
Tom was highly superstitious, Mia knew, especially when a fight was looming. The knowledge that he would not be able to wear his lucky trunks when entering the ring was sure to send him into a tailspin. He also kept to a regime that would put a monk to shame and, as one of the few vegetarian fighters around, was obsessive about his diet. But Tom was hardly alone, Mia thought, prodding the pasta with a wooden spoon. All these fighters were as vain as models and kept a watchful eye on their love handles. Which was why the pasta she was cooking was wholewheat and the sauce contained not a drop of cream. And most of the men tonight would not be drinking beer but sipping diet Coke from a can.
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