by Ian Hiatt
I’ve only glimpsed the East Passage from afar, never been marched through the dark gutters. But the smell of it varies only slightly from that of the rest of Saint Roch. The homes are no differently stacked, matchbox-atop-matchbox. The people no friendlier or less. But eyes fall on us. Even so late at night, the youths of the East are moving up and down the street, along with other characters keeping to the shadows, not much different from us.
“Whatcha got there?” a young man calls out to Tim as he shoves me toward the dumpster behind Han Tzu’s club. The obnoxiously bright neon lights on the street-side of the building only serve to make the crevices behind all the darker. The guy strolling forward looks to have a few years and a few dozen pounds on Tim, and he’s got a girl on each arm. Whether he paid for their company or not I can’t tell. They look a little trashy, skimpy clothes and all. But who am I to talk?
His buzzed hair accents the dark glasses he’s wearing, and I know there are only two possibilities. Either he’s a douche for wearing sunglasses at night, or he’s hiding his eyes.
Dragon… shit… shit…
But Tim keeps his cool far more than I do. He reaches out and grabs me by the hair, my scalp burns as he jerks me to him.
“Found some product for Tzu.” I whimper in his grip, but keep the stoned appearance of desperation. He holds me out for the thug like a caught fish.
The man takes his arms out from under his ladies of the night and steps into the alley. He takes off his glasses, and I catch the faintest hint of red before he puts a hand to my chin and grips me, looking me over from side to side, like he’s examining a dog.
“Han don’t like white garbage,” the man says to Tim dismissively. “Why you beat her?”
Tim stands silent, watching the new arrival, and before I can feel even remotely touched by this stranger’s seeming care of my well-being…
“Bitches not worth it when you knock ‘em about. No one want to pay for broken whore.” He slaps my bruised cheek lightly before shoving me back to Tim.
“Hell if I care what Tzu will use her for. I just need some cash to get by for the night…” Tim grabs me by the arm and shudders a little. He sniffles, too, different from my fear-feigning sniffle. He rubs at his covered arm and sniffs again, pursing his lips.
The man grins, all malevolence. “Oh, we might be able to work somethin’ out. What’s you flavor?”
Tim shrugs and twitches, his junkie impression much too accurate for my comfort. “Whatever you got. I just need a fix. If it means I get to lose the bitch, too, then all the better.”
The man turns and snaps at the two girls standing on the curb, likely freezing more than I am, which is saying a lot. He shouts out something in what I assume is Chinese. For all the training in my youth, Mom never thought language was worthwhile. When he’s done with his companions, he turns back to us and points down the alley.
Tim hauls me by my arm, damn near dragging me through frigid puddles, the only warmth I’m getting now from the sputtering exhaust vents of the kitchens of the club.
“Keep on your toes,” Tim mutters. “He’s planning to kill me.”
His training apparently included Chinese.
Tim keeps hauling me along until the man behind us calls, “Here. Han want to see merchandise personally. You wait here.”
Tim shakes his head. “Nah, man. If you want the slut, you gotta get me my fix.”
The man considers, looking Tim over. Tim’s ratty coat does the work for him. The dragon decides he could take him.
“Okay. You funeral.” He gives us both a toothy grin as he opens a door and waves us in. Tim shoves me through, and I stumble on a set of cement stairs. My foot falls out into nothingness before Tim slings out a hand. I’ve done the same, praying for a railing in the darkness. Tim’s got his hand wrapped around my lace bra. I say a silent thanks for the quality of the store we stole from as it holds my weight, but it’s the heat of indoors that I’m more grateful for. I’ve been thrown around a lot lately, but I’ve never felt quite so cold. I finally steady myself and find a metal bar leading down. I grip it for dear life as my captors follow me in, the sunglass-wearing guy taking the lead.
He waves us into an area lit only by the glowing red lights peeking out from beneath closed and slightly ajar doors. From inside some emanate grunts, moans, and others just quiet weeping.
Damnit. Feelings. Focus Layla. You can’t help anyone if you get yourself killed.
The music from the nightclub, still alive in the earlier hours of the morning, is nothing but dull thuds between the many floors separating us from the kids home on winter break and the normal city patrons. For a brief moment, as Tim grips my arm in both acting and general concern, I have to wonder how many of the people out on the dance floor have no idea what’s going on below. Though it disturbs me more to think of all who do, sipping on their cocktails and crappy beers, knowing full well the horrors that are going on just beneath their feet.
We pass by locked doors, and I only get to wonder about the freak show of suffering Han Tzu’s running out of his daddy’s club. The doors where I hear people making noise are unsettling, but it’s the rooms that are completely quiet that freak me out. And we haven’t heard a noisy room for about a minute as we take another set of stairs down.
The red lights of the hallway above are all that light our way now as the stairway grows dark, ending in a single doorway ahead. Our guide, likely planning how he’ll put a bullet in Tim’s head and take me up to one of the less crowded rooms upstairs for a test drive, grabs the handle, and electronic beeps echo in the gray of the basement. The door opens with a metallic clang, and he steps forward, waving us in sharply.
Tim hauls and pushes me into the room as I slide onto the concrete floor like a runner sliding into home. My chest and shoulder scream at me, scraping against the floor and opening up new and old wounds.
The room is silent, much too silent for what I had been hoping for: Han Tzu and maybe one or two other people. It was a best-case scenario, and I was expecting a dozen people.
In truth, I was expecting to die in a blaze of glory. I’m nothing if not practical.
Tim steps over the threshold behind me, and I lift my face off the floor, my hair a knot of tangled strands blocking half my view of the room.
But that’s just fine. Half a view is more than enough to see how righteously fucked we are.
y plan was not overly elaborate. I needed a skilled partner to accompany me into Han Tzu’s club and get me in the same room with him. Between myself and the partner, we would disable―whatever that would entail―all other occupants of the room and render Han himself incapable of shifting. Shifting to a form I had only ever heard stories of but had never witnessed. I wouldn’t say I was unfriendly with the Westies, but I was never invited into their homes. I was certainly not on good terms with those in the East Passage, but few are.
The problem with this plan, that neither Tim nor I had thought of, was a rather glaring issue at the moment. In hindsight, it’s more likely that neither of us wanted to consider the possibility, because it entailed definitive failure.
And as I pick my head up, my eyes shaded by the black hair draped over my bruised and bloodied face, I’m staring at definitive failure stretched across the enormous room we’ve walked into. Mottled red scales trace up and down the snakelike body, shifting to golden at the stomach and the enormous and razor-sharp scales lining his back. I say his because, as I quickly sum up my life, I come to the conclusion that the fifty-foot-long dragon sprawled at the end of the luxurious palace-like room is Han Tzu himself. Already shifted into his dragon form. Even at a distance, I start to sweat at the heat radiating off the beast as he moves.
If not for the movement, I’d assume him a statue. Or pray that he were. But he does move, eyes flicking back and forth, tail wavering about, armed with scales far larger than the ones adorning his back. From the deep gouges in the stone wall and floor where he’s moving, I can tell that tail is more than decoration. As he exhales
deeply, the room vibrates and the temperature spikes. Seeing a dragon like Han is amusing when it’s on a menu at the local Chinese joint that serves suspiciously American food. In person, it’s significantly less so.
The air parts before us, the thick scent of some mind-numbing incense. Tim has walked up behind me and forgetting himself, drops character. “Fuck me…” His gaze darts around the room to take in the many other men flanking the walls and on either side of the door behind us. I look around the room myself, in complete awe that such a room exists just under the feet of the dancing kids upstairs.
The man with the buzz cut looks a little startled to see Han, and though he tries to maintain the tough exterior, it’s a miracle he doesn’t leave a trail of urine as he approaches the monster. Han’s eyes, the size of sewer covers, immediately focus on the morsel approaching him. His lips curl over fangs the size of machetes while tendrils extending from his chin curl and uncurl of their own accord.
The man kneels before Han. He rattles off in Chinese, and I feel like I’ve fallen off the edge of the earth as everyone in the room, including my temporary partner, understands what’s going on. Tim leans down and grabs me by the hair, then hauls me to my feet. I almost cry out at the pain of it, but I can’t take my focus away from Han, trying to remember that this titanic dragon was once the little pissant that tried to execute me on a freaking merry-go-round. Tim wraps an arm around my throat and holds me against him, making it look as though he’s got me in a much tighter hold than he actually does. As I draw breath, I hear him whisper into my ear.
“Didn’t pat us down.”
So they’re not all that worried about two little humanoids taking down that? Seems accurate to me.
The man chatters on to Han, the dragon not even lifting his eyes to look at us. And I’m grateful for that because I can only just keep my knees from shaking. For a brief moment, my mind flits back to the behemoth that was Bruce only a few days past. Bruce would be an appetizer to this guy.
“He’s saying he brought Han a gift. You, I guess,” Tim mutters behind me.
Han lifts his forelimbs, armed with five fingers, each bearing scythe like claws; two women clad in little more than makeup appear to stroke the scales of his hand. The man continues to rattle on. The dragon seems so little impressed by the gift that he actually yawns.
“He’s begging for his life.” Tim laughs darkly in my ear.
“You have a plan, right? You anticipated this without telling me, right?” I ask, and Tim shakes me in his hold. He stays silent. I hope he’s the stoic type, and his silence and shake is an “of course” statement and not a “nope, we’re screwed” statement.
The room shakes deeply at such a low frequency that my vision blurs and stomach goes queasy. It takes me only a moment to place it. Han’s lips curl further as he growls in guttural tones, punctuated by snarls.
One of the girls, who looks much younger than me, speaks up. Again, I have no idea what she says, but Tim is kind enough to translate.
“Han is not impressed. He feels that this fellow screwed up bad. Lost a shipment or something. More is owed.”
The girl turns away from the man and returns to massaging Han’s massive hand. She looks up at the great beast as she would a lover, cooing, and Han, in spite of looking upon her fondly, moves, disrupting her affections. His neck twists and curves as the great jaws whip forward, and the man who was so caring about my bruises suddenly ends at the navel, his torso fully engulfed by the head of the beast. Han pulls back, blood spilling across the floor in gushes as the legs flop forward and twitch momentarily before oozing red. The great dragon settles and loudly swallows.
“I suppose they’re even now,” Tim mutters.
The men standing along the side, dressed in crisp, fine suits all turn toward us, eyes hidden behind dark glasses and hands moving to guns and knives on their hips. The two girls, hands still busy caressing scales, look at us.
But it’s Han’s gaze falling on me that distress me the most. I suppose that’s not all that surprising. When a dragon locks eyes with you, it inspires a very strong release-your-bladder sensation. He growls low as he watches us, and the girl who spoke for him earlier stands.
“My master welcomes you into his hall and asks that you approach him.” She holds her hands out genially. Of course she would, she has no risk of entering the digestive system of her master.
Tim has more sense than I do and shoves me forward, shivering behind me with all the withdrawal of a junkie needing his drug. A junkie who doesn’t realize how screwed he is. But we both do. My body goes into autopilot as I walk, realizing I’m likely about to die. And so will Thomas, if he’s even still alive.
Mom was right. Never should’ve kissed a boy. I signed my death warrant…
The rug we walk on looks to be so fine that it parts beneath our muddy shoes like water. The room sparkles with each flicker of the flames adorning the torches lining the hall. And though I notice these things, what I focus more on is the pair of legs staining the rug only a few feet from us as we approach the freight train of carnage sprawled at the front of the room being attended to by his underage concubines.
The girl, apparently the mouth of the dragon, smiles as we approach. But it is not a welcoming smile. Nor is it particularly evil. It’s just a knowing smile. Her long black hair drapes down her back and wisps about like smoke as she turns to face Han and speaks quickly in Chinese.
Han’s eyes, reptilian slits bathed in a sea of gold, peer at me. And after feeling his low rumble, watching him devour half a man, and having a staring contest with him, he finally does something that sets my knees aquiver. He laughs.
A deep, throaty, otherworldly chuckle seeps between his scimitar fangs. The girl turns back to face us and presses back against the belly of her master, where his last guest is likely swimming about. She smiles broadly.
“The great dragon of the Tzu Dynasty wishes to congratulate you.”
The dragon’s tail stops moving and becomes statuesque as it points toward us. Though I can’t see them, I hear Han’s men moving. Away. Fast. Tim grips my arm hard, digging fingers into my skin.
The girl spreads her arms out, lying against the beast and looking enraptured by the entire experience. She sighs deeply as she speaks. “My master wishes to congratulate you,” she repeats, seeming as though she needs to gather her thoughts all over again. “On getting so far. On surviving for so long. But he says your journey ends here, siren.”
“Fuck,” Tim says behind me. He tugs back slowly as the great clawed hands before us move away from his girl-toys and press into the floor, the claws sinking in and crushing the marble and gold stones beneath him.
“He says the Donahue vault is surely not so empty that they are not willing to pay the original bounty. For you. Dead, or alive.”
Tim jerks me in a back step toward the door. I want to look away, assess the situation. Figure out an escape. Pull out my knife that will be little more than a splinter here. The concubines giggle with delight as they step away, and Han moves with the slowness of a predator that doesn’t need speed. He doesn’t need surprise. Because he gets to fully enjoy his kill.
A feeling I have fond memories of.
“Dead is far easier for my master, though,” the girl calls as Han prowls forward.
“Hate to be a poor house guest,” Tim says. He rummages into his pocket and pulls out a small device that’s no bigger than a stopwatch. And it has only one button.
Shit.
His thumb presses down, and the earth opens up as a blast tears through the wall behind us, shaking the hall and toppling each of the torches, spilling their blazes to the floor. The men behind us shout and scramble, opening the doors to try to escape, only to be set upon by fire and burned where they stand. The girls scream and shrink against the far wall as the room is devoured in darkness, the fires unable to hold the same light now that they’re spread out on the ground.
Far less impressive than the blast, but no less terrif
ying, great impact tremors shake the room. Not from explosions, though. From Han. He roars, a bellow from an ancient time that forcibly takes me off my feet as he moves lightning fast now. The distance between us closes as a hand―a human hand―grabs me and pulls me with such weight that my arm makes an audible pop. There’s so much noise that I can barely make sense of the world, my eyes useless in the dark. The great roars of the dragon bounce off the walls as I sprawl over crumbled floor slabs. The dust chokes me out as I cradle my arm, burning phantom pain coursing from my shoulder. I rise to my knees and the room explodes with light. Han has charged the distant wall in an attempt to run us down.
And in so doing, let the explosions that Tim set off above come down. The raging fire of the stairwell beyond bursts into the room, coating the dragon like nothing more than raindrops. I look around and see that it’s Tim beside me, and that we’re a significant distance from where we once stood as dragon chow. The room looks more like a poorly lit sandbox than a throne room now, the dragon’s rage having demolished a clear path to the far side.
Han turns on us and lets out a screech as he rears back.
“Follow me!” Tim shouts, his voice only just audible as he bolts for the far side, near the huddling concubines.
I don’t hesitate. I don’t think. I don’t trust. But I run. I follow him as he bolts. He pulls a cylinder from his back. He fiddles with it while running and drops a piece. My foot steps on a metallic pin. The room quakes as Han stampedes from his collapsing palace to devour us. Tim pulls back his arm and throws the cylinder forward. And keeps running.
I’ve done a lot of crazy things in my life. Hell, one time I plotted to have a guy get eaten by a crocodile. And given how that turned out, I can’t believe I’m following a guy who’s just thrown a grenade and intends to run into the ensuing explosion. But, given that the alternative is the several-ton beast barreling toward us, I think an explosion would be a better death.
So I follow.
Hissssss. Boom.
The grenade explodes, tearing a hole in the corner of the room, wreathed in fire and smoke. Tim covers his face with his arms as he charges into the billowing blackness and jumps. I mimic his movements, if only because if it works for him, it might work for me. And I may not fully trust Tim, but I assume he’s not planning on dying here. The heat of the blast rips at my bare skin, lashing me with whips of anger. I expect to hit the floor. But I tumble forward, falling. Falling. Falling.