As Dodge slipped unwillingly into oblivion he heard fire crackling and then glass shattering. Then, as though from far away down an empty corridor, Dodge heard Susan shout his name.
Dodge found himself in the centre of an enormous cavern. Gone was his dark funeral suit, replaced with his usual gear; leather flight jacket, comfortable shirt and jodhpurs. He wore his pilot’s cap and goggles. He could feel the familiar weight of his Smith & Wesson on his hip, a comforting sensation. Before him towered a gigantic tree, bigger than an American redwood. Its trunk appeared as thick as the base of the Empire State building and looked almost as tall. Its branches seemed to support the roof of the cavern. Distance and darkness obscured the topmost branches. What Dodge could see clearly was green, verdant and lush.
How the Hell can a tree like that survive in a cave? he wondered.
He heard water trickling behind him. It echoed around the cavern and seemed the sweetest sound he had ever heard,
Dodge turned to find the source of the water. He noticed a naturally- formed rock pool containing water clearer than crystal. He licked his lips. He could not remember a time when he had felt so thirsty.
Abandoning his usual caution he rushed forward. He dropped to his knees at the edge of the pool and started gulping down the cold water. It had a slightly metallic taste, but was cool and refreshing. Dodge drank until he started to choke. But he couldn’t stop. He continued gulping the wonderful liquid, choking and gagging all the more.
“Wake up pal!” a muffled, alien voice drifted into Dodge’s mind. “Come on. Try to wake up!”
Dodge reluctantly opened his eyes to find himself lying on a cold, damp city street. His throat felt sore and raw. He coughed.
“We thought that you were dead! You must have fallen when you were running down the stairs. Your face is all battered and bruised! You were lucky we arrived when we did. Otherwise you’d have been fried!”
Dodge focussed on the fireman kneeling before him. “The girl,” he rasped “Where’s the girl?”
“There wasnae a lassie with you.” The fireman stared at the building. It was blazing. From the fire that had started in Henry’s office the whole building had been engulfed. Other firemen battled desperately to prevent the flames from spreading.
“I’ve seen nought like this since the Stewartbank slums burnt down ten years ago!” the fireman continued. “Luckily all these buildings are offices, and hardly anyone is workin’ this time o’ night. In fact ‘twas a cleaner on the bottom floor that called for us. If there was anybody else left inside...” he trailed off, his silence saying more than words ever could.
Chapter Three
Chinese Water Torture
Susan woke with a start and took a moment to focus. She appeared to be lying in dank, misty surroundings. Not recognising them and thinking she was still dreaming, she closed her eyes and drifted back towards sleep.
A droplet of water landed on her face, dragging her awake. She tried to doze off again, but another droplet splashed against her forehead. Then a few seconds later a further droplet struck her. She frowned; her mouth was sore and her tongue felt huge. The bed or table on which she lay grew increasingly hard and uncomfortable.
Drip! Yet another droplet fell on her.
Susan decided it was time to get up. She tried to move, but to her horror found that she was secured by heavy leather straps. Her ankles, legs, torso, shoulders, arms and wrists were all held tightly – too tightly! And it wasn’t her tongue that felt enormous – it was the length of rag that had been twisted into her mouth, muffling any potential cries of protest.
All she could remember was Dodge sliding down the wall -finally knocked out by the last blow to the back of his head. His assailant had then grabbed her and she felt a slight prick in her left arm.
And now here she lay, strapped to a hard table in some dimly lit room. Another droplet hit her face. She had already lost count.
“Good evening, Miss Kirkmuir. Or do you prefer Animalia? I hope you are well?” a sweetly accented voice drifted out of the darkness. Susan tried to move her head to look, but the bonds prevented her from seeing. A lilting laugh followed her misguided attempts. “You will not escape, Miss Kirkmuir.”
Her captor moved from the darkness. Susan could barely see her out of the corner of her eye. Another droplet of water broke her concentration.
“I have heard of your uncanny rapport with most beasts, Animalia,” declared Reptilia. “Have you ever heard of the infamous Chinese water torture? It is fiendishly simple, but very effective. There is no physical pain involved apart from the discomfort of your bonds. However, it has been known to drive men … and women … insane.”
Reptilia glided into the light and gazed contemptuously down at her captive. Susan couldn’t believe that such a delicate, beautiful Asian woman could look so cruel.
“At first the single droplet of water hitting your face every thirty seconds seems a mere nuisance. But after an hour or so it will be a major irritation. This will continue and soon you lose all concept of time. The only thing that you will live for is the droplet! It will become your only future. You will count the seconds awaiting its next visit.” Reptilia laughed and stroked Susan’s hair. “After a week your mind will only know one thing. The sweet release and agonizing cruelty of the droplet.”
As if to emphasise the point a drop splashed against Susan’s face.
“You will beg to tell us what we want to know!” Reptilia slipped out of Susan’s field of vision. She struggled to think what knowledge she had that these people could possibly want. Her captor opened a door and light streamed in from outside.
“I will visit you in a little while, Miss Kirkmuir, perhaps then we can talk.” The door closed and Susan was shut in the darkened room.
Drip!
She struggled vainly against the leather straps. She had been unconscious when she had been bound. Her body had been limp and had offered no resistance to the restraints. She could hardly move! She reached out with her mind, but her prison was strangely immaculate… not a single customary rat to ask for aid!
Drip!
What did these Chinese villains want?
Drip!
Susan closed her eyes and awaited the next, inexorable drip of water. Was it her imagination, or were they getting bigger and harder? They were beginning to feel almost painful!
DRIP!
Dodge, where are you? she thought miserably.
Dodge gazed around the smoky main room of the Stewartbank bar and opium den known as the Bamboo Dragon. His eyes shadowed, he held his Smith & Wesson in front of him, his gloved fist curled around the smoking weapon’s grip. Everyone in the bar was staring at him. It was unusual for a Caucasian to enter this place and even more unusual when they charged in and started shooting up the bottles of cheap booze behind the counter!
“Now, I’m gonna ask again, and this time I’d appreciate a little courtesy instead of insults to my ancestors!” Dodge growled in Cantonese. “I’m looking for a white woman-”
“You come to wrong place! No white whores here!” some fool on Dodge’s left guffawed in broken English. The bar erupted into defiant laughter. No way was a big fat white man throwing his significant weight around in the heart of Wallace’s tough Chinese community.
Dodge smiled as if amused by the joke. It was time to do some convincing!
Hi lefts hand closed none-too-gently around the laughing Chinese man’s neck. As his eyes bulged, Dodge yanked his hand down. The Chinese man’s face smashed into the bar table, spilling beer and teeth in almost equal proportions.
The laughter stopped abruptly.
Dodge smiled grimly. Since being pulled out of the fire, he’d had to spend a couple of hours at the hospital. The diagnosis; he had suffered some minor damage from smoke inhalation, bruises, cracked ribs, and he was lucky his jaw hadn’t been broken. However, he had endured far worse during his life and knew he’d definitely live. Much to his doctor’s displeasure, Dodge had discharged hi
mself as soon as he could stand up, and started searching for Susan. It was possible that she had been murdered by their assailants, but according to his sources within the Wallace police, only three bodies had been recovered; Henry and the two goons who had attacked them.. So, the only other option was that she’d been kidnapped. Coupled with Marcus’ dying request to look after her, this had convinced Dodge that her abduction was somehow connected to the runes.
Apart from the contents of this one sleazy tavern, the majority of Wallace’s Chinese population were honest, hard-working people. If Dodge didn’t find out what he wanted here, he never would.
Satisfied he had everyone’s undivided attention, Dodge continued; “This woman was abducted by some of your countrymen. She was under my protection and I am honour-bound to the memory of her brother to keep her safe. I need to know who took her.” Dodge’s steely gaze swept around the room. The bar was half full, the clientele extremely unhappy at the unwanted intrusion. Finally a powerfully-built man stood up. His face was badly marked with scars. They didn’t look like cuts sustained in battle, rather they seemed to form a strange pattern, almost like runes. He looked at Dodge with resentful eyes.
“Why should we help you, American?” he growled in perfect English.
“Firstly I’m an Australian, not a bloody Yank! Secondly, because I’ve asked nicely and if I don’t start getting some cooperation soon, I’ll have to get a little more insistent!” Dodge cocked his pistol to emphasise his point.
“Don’t think you can intimidate us into helping you! Your churlish efforts are less than impressive. I witnessed the Japanese invading in my adopted home in Manchuria! Those soldiers of Nippon have forgotten far more about causing terror than you will ever learn. Now, leave here while you still can!” The man sat back down. As if taking this as a cue, the patrons of the Bamboo Dragon started rising threateningly from their chairs, some producing wicked looking knives or meat cleavers. Dodge’s mind started racing. He had three bullets left in his gun and was about to be confronted by about fifteen very angry men. He did the math – that meant one bullet for five guys. Only if they came at him in three straight lines!
“Listen, this could get real ugly real fast. Sure, I’ll probably end up chopped into fishbait, but I promise to take as many of you with me as I can first!”
The man who had addressed him looked over his shoulder and shrugged. Dodge swallowed, beginning to regret his heavy-handed approach. He wouldn’t do Susan any good by getting himself killed.
“All I want is some information about men who carry small handheld cannons!” He looked around, not noticing that the spokesman had started at the mention of the weapons. The crowd of men was closing in on him. Dodge raised his gun to fire.
“Aussie!” the spokesman’s voice cut through the crowd. The hostile crowd paused. “Describe the cannons for me!”
“They were small, about two feet long...” Dodge began.
“Did they look like dragons?” the man asked.
“Yeah.”
“Damn!” the man spat angrily. “The men you speak of, were they wearing black sashes around their waists?”
“Yeah!”
“Then they were warriors of the Ebon Claw! I had thought - I had hoped - that he was dead, Aussie!” the badly scarred man looked genuinely concerned, even afraid.
“What?” gasped Dodge. There was a name he hadn’t heard for 11 years!
“Yue Tiansiang, Aussie, the vilest, cruellest warlord in Guangdong!”
Slowly Dodge lowered his gun.
The throne room was enormous. During the previous decade it had been part of a bustling shipyard filled with goods from all over the world. But the Depression had forced the company out of business, and it was abandoned. Or so the unemployed wharfies of Stewartbank thought.
Reptilia knelt on the floor, gazing up at her father’s ornate throne. Dwarfed by the enormous, gold-covered chair Yue Tiansiang was frail and old, and it seemed to Reptilia that his hair had turned white and wispy within a few short months. However, his eyes still blazed with vitality and fierce intelligence. Two bare-torsoed guards wearing hoods stood to attention on either side of him. Intricate tattoos of angry dragons adorned their chests and shoulders.
“Tell me daughter, where is the captive?” the ancient crimelord asked, his thin voice cracking with age.
“Father, she is our guest within the chamber of tears. I had her placed there seven hours ago.”
“The chamber of tears? Tell me child, why did you make such a decision?” Tiansiang asked mildly, but his eyes had taken on a hard, dangerous edge. His daughter had begun to show a wilful streak during the past few years and he didn’t like it.
Ah well, that was children for you!
“I thought that it would please you, father.” Reptilia looked demurely up at her father, but her eyes were hooded and sly.
“Please me? In what way daughter? That she may come from the chamber a gibbering and mewling fool? That she may not be able to provide any answers because of her ordeal? I worry that perhaps you are not as eager to aid me in my quest as you should be!” he snapped suddenly.
His anger surprised her. “Father, I-”
“Enough! Now, bring the woman to me and pray that she is still of some use!”
The moment of pure tension passed. Reptilia lowered her head in submission. “As you wish ... Father,” she whispered.
Susan continued to languish helplessly in her bonds. She’d been strapped to this table for ... well, it seemed like days, but she knew that it couldn’t possibly have been that long. The slow dripping of water onto her head had been in turns a nuisance, a nightmare, a comfort, a thing to be dreaded and a thing to be embraced. Susan had run through the entire gamete of emotions; terror, confidence, defiance, and grim acceptance, and retreated into comforting memories to try and take her mind from her situation. She had attempted many things to keep herself alert. At first she tried to measure time by counting droplets, but soon realised this was making her reliant on the water. She had to push it far from her mind.
It was becoming more difficult to ignore the torture. With each droplet she felt her situation becoming even more hopeless. She was bound and gagged in a darkened room, and nobody knew her location!
Finally the door opened and light streamed into the room. The sudden influx of light dazzled after the hours of captivity in these gloomy surroundings.
Two men in black stepped in and started to unbuckle the straps that held her to the table. Susan wondered if perhaps things had just gotten worse.
“He is a devil to my people, Aussie. A name to be whispered in the still of the night to frighten children. For as long as I can remember Yue Tiansiang has cast a shadow over Guangdong province that eventually reached all of China …. My father told me stories of him that he’d learned when he was a child.” The scarred man stared across the bar table at Dodge. The candlelight made his scars seem like deep gashes.
“That’s hardly likely.” Dodge responded.
“Do you doubt me, Aussie?” the man snarled, smacking the table with clenched fists.
“My name’s Dodge Danger, so you can stop calling me Aussie now.” Dodge growled. “I faced Yue Tiansiang a few years ago. He was only about fifty.”
“You occidentals are so linear in your thinking! Yue Tiansiang has hung like a cloud of evil over generations of Chinese people!”
“And you Orientals are always so damned enigmatic in your thinking! How could one man pose a threat to generations of people? He’d have to be hundreds of years old!” Dodge glared at the man, who merely shrugged and sat back in his chair. Obviously this was not too much of a stretch of the imagination for him. Dodge took a breath and continued; “Enough of this arguing. I need to find him. You seem to hate him so, will you help me?”
The man stared fixedly into Dodge’s eyes for a long moment. “I will help you find him, Dodge Danger, but that is all!” He directed his attention at the candle flame, lost in thought.
; “That’s good enough.” Dodge smiled grimly.
Susan was pushed into the throne room. With arms bound behind her back she almost stumbled. The thugs reached out to steady her.
“Get your hands off of me!” she hissed and shrugged them away. Susan glared first at the Oriental woman who had gloated over her captivity and then at the tall, imperious man sitting on the elaborate throne.
“Greetings, Miss Kirkmuir. I must apologise for my daughter’s unforgivable treatment of you. You are here as my guest, not as my prisoner. My daughter sometimes acts rashly ... but she means well.”
Tiansiang smiled thinly. Susan thought her captor’s thin, papery skin would tear from the unfamiliar movement.
“If I’m supposed to be your guest, then why are my hands still tied?” she demanded. Tiansiang nodded and clapped his hands once. The guards stepped forward and cut her free.
“Why have you brought me here?” Susan asked, wincing at the triteness of her question. The ancient Chinese man laced his gnarled, bony fingers together.
“I was so sorry to hear of your brother’s unfortunate demise. You must be very saddened by your loss. I believe he was a bright and shining light in the world of archaeology.”
Unimpressed, Susan rubbed her aching wrists. “You obviously know all about my brother. But I’m afraid the fact that your goons attacked and killed my friends puts a bit of a dampener on your civility! Now, the sooner we get to reason why I’m here, the better. The only way that’s going to happen is if you stop treating me like some flighty imbecile! We’re nearly into the 1940s, so let’s all act like grown ups, shall we?” Susan glared at her captors.
Silence filled the throne room. Susan clenched her fists into tight balls.
The spell was broken as Yue Tiansiang began to laugh, a terrible, rasping, humourless sound.
Dodge Danger Page 4